Page 5 of Dopplebanger

“New… hair gel. I mean, it makes it look longer; it’s not Rogaine or some kind of black market product or anything.”

Her laugh danced across my nerve endings and echoed through my chest. “Are you sure you haven’t been searching the black market? Because that would clear up the questions I had about your browser history.”

A flash of panic hit me, even though I was fairly certain I didn’t have anything to feel that guilty for, and of course she was only joking. “Hey, don’t knock it till you try it.” I gave in to the urge to touch her and wrapped my hand around her wrist. I resisted hauling her over the table, but just barely.

Her eyes met mine, and then her delicate throat worked a swallow.

“For example, name something you want that’s not easy to find.” Right now, I was thinkinga girl like you, and my thoughts had no business going there.

She tapped the finger of her free hand to her chin, and I could practically see the moment the light bulb went off in her head. “I’ve always wanted a pet unicorn.”

“I’ll have my black market associates make a few calls.”

My heart battered my ribcage as my gaze dipped to her lips, and I was about to do the opposite of breaking up with her on behalf of my brother. “Anyway,” I said, releasing her wrist and wanting to kick my own ass when she slid back into her chair.

It’s for the best.

I didn’t know how to start, and we were already way past me admitting who I was, so evidently I’d be doing this as my brother. Now that the moment of half-truth arrived, I found it harder than expected to tell her that we needed to break up. Especially since if it was up to me, I’d vote for getting to know her better.

Her phone chimed before I could start parting words I didn’t want to say, and she lifted it. “That means we have fifteen minutes to…” She peered into my face like she wanted to find answers to questions she didn’t know how to word, and I got the scrunched-up expression for the third or fourth time today. Clearly she sensed something was off, but couldn’t put her finger on it. “To finalize our road trip plans so we’ll be ready to go bright and early tomorrow morning.”

Gwen nodded to herself, almost as if she needed to agree. With somethingshe’djust said—the woman was a puzzle I wanted to put together, but I doubted I’d ever get all the pieces.

She dug into her laptop bag and pulled out her computer. “I checked out the route options like we talked about and made a list of sights we might want to see. Or we could just make it a straight shot if you want to cut the trip down to a day.”

If it meant spending more time with her, I wanted to see every damn sight from here to… My brain struggled to find it, but I was almost sure it was Pennsylvania.

She swiveled the computer screen toward me and came around the table to stand beside me. My attention snagged on the scoop neckline of her shirt. The dark purple contrasted her pale skin and emphasized her curves. As she leaned over the keyboard, I couldn’t help but notice the way her jeans hugged her ass, and my eyes did a quick sweep of her long legs before coming back to all that amazing hair I wanted to run my fingers through.

“Is your muffin okay?” she asked, eyeing it. “I can grab something else if you’re not feeling it.”

“No, this is great.” I lifted it and forced myself to take a big bite, one that triggered my gag reflex, thanks to the time Mom made me eat blueberry muffins when I had the flu. She’d insisted on seeing if food would make me feel better.

Spoiler alert: it hadn’t.

I took a giant swig of my coffee to wash the blueberry nastiness down as Gwen pointed at highlighted places on the map. “This website lets you save your trip. I kinda have this thing with lighthouses, and I’ve always wanted to go the one on Cape Hatteras. It’s the tallest brick lighthouse in the US, and the view’s supposed to be amazing.”

“Then we should definitely stop there.” What was I supposed to do? She’d said it with such longing in her voice, and I didn’t want to be the jerk who let her down.

Maybe I could just explain that my brother is an immature, blind idiot, but that I’m single and available.While Evan didn’t want to stay in a relationship with her, he cared about her, and that alone meant she was off-limits. Hell, the fact that he’deverdated her meant she was off-limits.

“We’d shave off a couple of hours if we went to another lighthouse that’s not so out of the way, even if the others aren’t guarding the graveyard of the Atlantic. Like there’s one?—”

“You expect me to settle for a different lighthouse after hearing a fact like that?”

Her smile shot me right through the heart. She clicked on the icon, adding it to our trip. “Okay, so once we get to Pennsylvania, I figured we could stop at Philly and check out the Liberty Bell. I saw it once, a long time ago, but I care more about how the country was formed now. Or, if you’re more into chocolate, there’s always Hershey…”

I had a slight obsession with how the country was formed, even before law school, and I’d never been to Philadelphia. “No offense to chocolate, but I can get that anytime. Definitely the Liberty Bell.”

The excited way she clicked it made me think she preferred that option. “Okay, so backtracking a bit to before our Philly stop… Save time and go up through Delaware, which I’m sure is a very pretty drive? Or swing through D.C.? It’s about an hourdifference, but with traffic and stopping to see the sights, it’d probably add closer to three.”

Three extra hours with her, on this road trip I was apparently taking? Sign me up. “D.C.”

She added it in and studied the map. “Thirteen hours in two days… Looks doable. And if we get several hours and sights into the trip and decide we need to shorten it, we can do that, too.”

“Perfect. Plus, we’ve got the Camaro to speed things along.”

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I thought we were going to take my car? I don’t want you to have to put the wear and tear on yours, and?—”

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