Read Online Taking on Twins by Carolyn Zane - Free Book Online Page B

and you can’t tell him apart from the real guy, really. Stu!” she bellowed. “Stu! Get your butt out here.”
    â€œThis Stu is really good, huh?”
    â€œOr your money back. Used to work on Broadway till he ran into a little trouble with the law. Stu!”
    Patsy arched a brow. “Could happen to anyone, I guess. How much?”
    Stu, an everyman kind of guy, wandered out from the back room. Patsy immediately noticed that he was not the right coloring, but that could be easily fixed. His height and build were perfect.
    The woman behind the counter held up the picture Patsy had provided. “How much to dress like this guy and run a few ‘errands’ for this lady?”
    Stu studied the picture. “Two hundred a day, plus expenses.”
    â€œOh. Okay.” Patsy gestured for Stu to join her away from the desk area. Digging through her wallet, she extracted four crisp fifty-dollar bills. “You get this now, and two hundred more when the job is done.”
    â€œHow will I find you?”
    â€œI’ll find you.” Patsy extracted a file from her satchel. “This is what you need to do.”
    Stu flipped it open and scanned the contents. “You need me to go to this insurance agency, Grimbles of L.A., and take out an insurance policy on some guy named Joe Colton for a million bucks?”
    â€œYes. And when you sign the policy, you need to make it look like this.” She held up a sample of Jackson’s signature. “The policy is small enough that this companywon’t do any checking at all.” She cackled. “After all, if they’re willing to insure Jennifer Lopez’s tush for ten million, I can’t imagine that this is going to be a problem.”
    â€œNot for me.” Stu stuffed the two hundred dollars in his pants pocket and took the file from Patsy. Digging into his shirt pocket, he withdrew a business card. “My cell phone. I should be done by tomorrow afternoon. Call me and we’ll make arrangements to meet. I’ll give you the paperwork, you give me the cash. Deal?”
    Patsy slipped on her dark glasses and prepared to leave. “Deal.”

Four
    â€œM ama?”
    â€œHmm?”
    â€œHow did you know when you had forever love for Daddy?”
    MaryPat Summers looked up from the magazine she was browsing through and regarded her daughter curiously. “Forever love?”
    â€œYou know.” Annie gave her hand an impatient flapping. “More than just plain-old-love love. I’m talking about the kind of love that you have when you know, deep in your heart, that that person is your soul mate and that you will love him forever. And you couldn’t live without him, and…you know.”
    â€œHmm. Well,” MaryPat placed the magazine on her stomach and folded her hands over the top. “I can only speak for myself, of course, but when it came to your father, the way I knew that I was in love with him was—”she paused to chuckle “—whenever he was in the room, I couldn’t breathe.”
    Annie turned from the hallway mirror, where she’d been studying her reflection and stared at her mother. “You couldn’t breathe? Mama, that sounds deadly.”
    â€œNo, no. I don’t mean I couldn’t breathe at all, I just mean it was hard to breathe. Don’t know why. Just happened. Even after we were married, once in a while I’d look at your sweet daddy and…well, he always cut such a handsome figure of a man, don’t you know, with all that wild red curly hair and that ruddy complexion and rugged body and that deep, deep voice.” She sighed. “Ah, me. I still have a bit of a problem catching my breath, just thinking about him.”
    â€œSo that’s all the logic you needed to determine that he was the one?”
    â€œIt’s all I needed, sweetheart. Some things simply cannot be based on logic, but must instead be based on how