Page 151 of Our Little Secret

“I—I—” Marilee was slowly shaking her head. Obviously dumbstruck, she said, “I was heading back. I have plans. With my boyfriend.”

“Well, call him. Get him up here!” Leah said. “We can handle one more.”

“I don’t know. . . .” Marilee glanced at Brooke, as if she was looking for a lifeline.

Brooke didn’t have one. “Wait a second. You can’t be serious,” she said, trying to keep the panic from her voice.

But she saw from the determined gleam in her sister’s eye that Leah had made up her mind. Brooke stumbled on. “I mean, it’s just that this is so sudden. I didn’t even know you were dating.”

“Neither did I,” Neal said, as if Leah should have confided in him.

Marilee didn’t say a word.

“Well.” Leah’s lips pulled into a tiny little smile, as if she’d been holding on to a little secret, a guilty little pleasure that she’d been savoring. “I admit, it’s been pretty quick, really. I met Eli when I moved to San Francisco, just this past September, the twentieth to be exact, after I got the job at Central. That’s the private school where I teach.”

“So, how did you meet?” Neal asked.

“I swear it was kismet, or fate,” Leah said, a little more seriously. “We literally ran into each other. Down on Fisherman’s Wharf!” She cuddled closer to Eli. “Didn’t we, babe?”

Marilee had dropped onto the couch and Shep found a tennis ball that had rolled under a side table and carried it across the room to drop it next to Eli.

Neal took in the dog’s antics and didn’t say anything, but Brooke knew what he was thinking—that Shep rarely initiated play with a newcomer.

“I don’t think so, boy,” Eli said and scratched the retriever behind the ears, just as Brooke had seen Gideon do in this very room.

Bile crawled up her throat.

Leah nudged Eli. “You remember how we met at the waterfront?”

“Of course.” He wrapped his arms around his fiancée, so that he could stare over Leah’s shoulder, his gaze finding Brooke’s.

A chill slid down her spine.

This man was a poser.

A diabolical manipulator.

“We had coffee,” Eli said.

Brooke’s stomach dropped.

Leah agreed, nodding, and before he could go on, she added, “In that little shop on PIER 39! And we’ve been together ever since!” She wrapped her arms around Eli and hugged him close.

Oh. My. God.

“So you’ve known each other for what—a couple of months?” Neal asked, his gaze moving from Leah to Eli.

“Almost three!” Leah piped up, the diamond in her ring winking in the firelight. “And trust me, it was like something out of a fairy tale. Magic, you know. I turned and saw him and I knew, I justknew. It was almost as if we’d met before. A weird déjà vu. Like in another lifetime or something.”

Not in another lifetime, but when a stranger on a motorcycle pointed her in the direction of a missing dog.

Leah giggled, twisting her face up to stare at Eli. “Isn’t that right, babe?”

“A little different for me,” Eli said, “but basically, yeah.”

“It was love at first sight for me,” Leah assured everyone. “Like I said, almost as if it were preordained. I mean, what were the chances that we would meet like that?”

“Exactly,” Brooke said, trying to keep the disbelief from her voice, tamping down the fear in her heart. Eli Stone had to be Gideon Ross. He had to be. Not just his nearly identical twin. “A fairy-tale romance.”