Carolina Isle Read Online Free PDF Page B

fifty square feet of it wanting, but she had decided to be gracious. Smiling, Ariel put her hands on Sara’s shoulders and kissed both her cheeks, like in a French movie. Ariel didn’tseem to be aware that it was 4:00 A.M. and that her cousin had to go to work later that day.
    For Sara, the next three weeks were hell. She had R.J. at the office and Ariel at home. R.J. had explained that the reason he wanted to go to Arundel was to look at some tiny island just off the coast of eastern North Carolina. It was called King’s Isle and since it didn’t have a beach, it wasn’t a tourist spot. But Charley Dunkirk was thinking of buying most of the island and making it into an exclusive resort and he wanted R.J. to scout out the place and give his opinion of its suitability.
    Sara asked if he wanted her to do the preliminary research on the island, but R.J. said no, that he’d do it. He wanted her to clear his schedule— which meant he got to sit on a couch and play on the Web, while she had to deal with people who were angry because their appointments had been canceled.
    All in all, Sara’s workload doubled. Since she had no secretarial skills to speak of, R.J. used Sara as a sort of living appointment book. He expected her to remember where he was to be every second of the day, where everything he owned was,and she was to make everything work. This meant doing things like getting down on her hands and knees with a screwdriver to fix his swivel chair. When he suggested that he keep sitting in it while she worked, she gave him her best imitation of Ariel’s icy look. He blinked at her a couple of times, then got up, chuckling, and went to the other side of the room. He loved to order electronic gadgets over the Internet, but he didn’t want to bother reading the instructions, so Sara had to figure out how to work whatever he’d bought, then show him how to use it. He often bought a second one of whatever it was and offered it to her, but she refused to accept it. Her philosophy was that when someone gives you a gift, they want something in return. She didn’t want to owe R.J. anything.
    At home—not that she could still call it that— she had to deal with Ariel.
    For two hours before Sara went to work and until after midnight every night, they rehearsed. Neither was a better actor than the other. Sara’d had years of professional training, but Ariel had had twenty-four years of lying to her mother, so it amounted to the same thing.
    They began to put on little impromptu skits in public. They had to put a scarf and dark glasses over one of them when they left the building so no one would realize there were two of them, but once they were outside, they tried to become each other. Their favorite pantomime was that Sara was a rich snot, and Ariel was her overworked personal assistant. They got so good at it that one day Sara said, “Really, Ariel, can’t you do anything correctly?” and Ariel looked shocked. She said that Sara had sounded so much like her mother that … she couldn’t go on. Sara said, “I sounded so much like her that you were overcome with homesickness?”
    â€œWhy, no,” Ariel said. “You were—” When Ariel realized that Sara was making a joke, she looked at her cousin in astonishment, then they laughed together and Sara began to think that maybe they could carry this off.
    Sara had told Ariel that all she really wanted was a break from R.J., but the truth was that what she really and truly wanted was to meet David. Her best acting was when she pretended to be unconcerned and said, “Oh, yes, what about David? Shouldn’t you tell me about him?”
    Ariel didn’t seem to think David was of any importance. He’d been told that they were going to exchange places so he knew everything, but Sara wanted to hear every word about him. She told Ariel that it was the same way that she needed to know