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My twin brother steps into view from my apartment. “I came down to check on you since you weren’t answering my texts, asshole.”
I stop mid-step and cock a brow. “Asshole? Who the fuck do you think you are, you bastard?”
He closes the distance between us with a few broad steps.
“You smell good,” he says as he looks me over. “A suit and a nice shirt, and would you look at that, you’re wearing your best shoes. You were on a date. What’s her name?”
I point at the open doorway that leads into my home. “It’s late. You’re going to wake the building, so get inside.”
He does as I say before I follow him in, shutting my apartment door behind me.
“Her name was Fleur, and I’m not seeing her again,” I say before my brother can ask again about the woman I met tonight.
Call it twin intuition or just curious luck, but he always seems to know when I’ve spent time with a woman.
“Fleur?” Roman cocks a brow.
“Fleur Fonseca,” I enunciate each syllable for good measure.
He narrows his eyes. “Who set you up?”
“Matilda.” I smile. “She’s convinced I need a wife.”
“My wife is convinced of the same thing,” Roman notes. “Bianca’s been talking about setting you up with a woman she met through work.”
“That’s a hard no.” I shake my head. “I’m not interested. I’m not looking. I enjoy being single.”
Roman holds up both hands in mock surrender. “I get it. Marriage isn’t for everyone.”
My gaze catches on the gold band wrapped around his ring finger on his left hand. Marriage has been good to my twin brother. He took the leap a couple of months after he proposed to Bianca. They wanted that bond in place before their son is born next month.
I drop the thick book I found in the elevator on my foyer table, along with my phone and keys. “Tell me the real reason you were lurking in my apartment just now.”
“I was looking for chocolate,” he confesses. “My wife has a craving, and I figured I could save myself a trip to the bodega.”
Before I have a chance to ask if he checked my freezer for the stash of chocolate bars I keep there for my sister-in-law and nieces, he pipes up again. “Since when do you have time to catch up on reading? What’s the title of that? F,” he pauses for a second before he spits out the other letter on the front of the book I found in the elevator, “U?”
Heading toward the kitchen, I let out a laugh.
“FU?” he repeats. “Fuck you. That’s mature, Matthew. What’s it about?”
“Hell if I know,” I call back over my shoulder. “I found it in the elevator. My guess is that one of the guys who live in the apartment above me dropped it. I’ll get it to them in the morning.”
Silence settles in the apartment as I rummage around in my freezer, looking for a few chocolate bars I can hand off to my brother.
His voice startles me when I hear it right behind me. “This doesn’t belong to one of them. This is a diary, Matt. I think it might belong to the woman who lives across the hall from you. Faith Upton.”
Before I can respond, my phone starts ringing. I scoot around my brother and head straight toward the foyer table where I dropped it.
“Who is it?” Roman asks. “Fleur?”
Shaking my head, I let out a low chuckle. “It’s work. Fleur and I were finished before we even started.”
Chapter Seven
Faith
I stumble backward from my apartment door with my heart thundering in my chest. It’s so loud that it’s drowning out everything.
How did my diary end up in Dr. Hawthorne’s hands?
I saw it there when I peered through the peephole in my door. I did that because I heard the unmistakable rasp of his voice as he called out to his identical twin brother.
Both of them live in the building, but I’ve only ever met Roman, and that was in passing one day when one of his daughters bumped into me in the lobby.
He apologized first, and then Georgie, the little girl, stepped up and offered her version of sorry, which consisted of trying to hand me a half-eaten red lollipop while a tear streamed down her cheek.
I looked to her dad for approval before I knelt to take Georgie in my arms for a hug. I forgave her, politely refused the lollipop, and went on with my day after Roman offered his name and an assurance that if I ever needed anything, I could find him in 18B.
Naturally, I saw Dr. Hawthorne’s face when I looked at his brother, but it didn’t send the same burst of need through me that is there whenever I come within ten feet of the veterinarian.
Dr. Hawthorne’s hair is slightly longer than Roman’s, and his deep brown eyes are shaped just the tiniest bit differently.
