Sweet Liar

by Jude Deveraux

  But Samantha didn’t feel very forgiving. When she turned to Mike, her eyes were blazing in anger. “Do me a favor and drop yourself off the nearest cliff.”

  As she turned on her heel and walked away from him, away from the entire group, Mike’s family burst into laughter.

  Samantha was nearly out of sight before Mike caught up with her.

  “Sam, honey—” he began.

  “Don’t speak to me.” When he reached out for her, she said, “And don’t you even think of touching me.” She started walking again, Mike beside her.

  “What are you so angry about?”

  “I’ve been trying to make a good impression on your family and you…you make a fool of me by putting your brother up to pawing me in front of them. It was humiliating. Didn’t you think about how I’d feel?”

  “No,” he said, smiling. “People can’t tell us apart. I thought you’d think Kane was me.”

  Pausing, she stared at him; sometime between yesterday and today his brain had fallen out of his head.

  “Sam, Kane and I are identical twins. We’re exactly alike, even down to moles and birthmarks.”

  Samantha gave him a look that said, Tell me another one. “Mike, tell me,” she said with great patience, “was the person who delivered you and your brother one of your relatives?”

  “As a matter of fact she was, but what’s that got to do with anything?”

  Giving him a look of great patience, she explained. “Because, just like you, she’s a liar. She lied to you and your whole family. Your brother doesn’t look like you at all. If you’re twins, you’re fraternal twins, or maybe one of you is a nine-month baby and the other is an eight-month one. If that’s the case, then you’re just brothers, nothing else.”

  Mike gasped at her in disbelief. “Sam, Kane and I have won contests for being the most identical twins.”

  “Then the losers must have been different colors. Now would you mind—”

  She didn’t say any more because Mike grabbed her in his arms and began to kiss her, and when she tried to push him away, he wouldn’t let her. “Sammy, sweetheart, I really didn’t mean to humiliate you, honest. Kane and I have been playing jokes on people since we were kids. It’s a kind of initiation into the family.”

  “And I failed,” she said gloomily.

  He laughed. “Failed? You passed with glowing colors. Come on, let’s go back to my family. You’ll see how well you’ve passed.”

  She allowed him to keep his arm around her shoulders, allowed him to lead her back to the others, but as they reached the picnic tables, she saw Kane talking to his mother. “Your brother touches me again and he’ll be sorry.”

  Mike kissed her cheek. “No, I won’t let him touch you.” There was pride in his voice, such pride that Samantha refrained from asking him why he had never bothered to tell her that he had a twin brother.

  One thing Mike hadn’t lied about was that his family would be pleased with her for knowing which brother was Mike. The fact that, as far as she could tell, none of them could tell Mike and Kane apart made her understand why his family had not greeted Mike when he’d first arrived—they’d thought he was Kane. It occurred to her to tell them all that they needed a good eye doctor if they thought Mike looked like his brother, because Kane didn’t look anything like Mike. In fact, Kane was rather ordinary looking. He was handsome, yes, but he didn’t have the beautiful mouth that Mike did, his hair wasn’t as curly, he didn’t move as Mike did, and Kane was just a wee bit fat, not muscular like Mike was.

  For the rest of the day, until sundown, Samantha had to put up with one little test after another, with every family member except Mike’s parents and Jilly referring to Mike and his brother by each other’s names. Twice Kane put his hand on Samantha’s shoulder, once when she had her back to him. Heavens, but the man didn’t even feel like Mike.

  It was in the early evening, when the children were getting sleepy and the men had gathered away from the women to talk, that Samantha had a chance to sit quietly on a chair and look at the group. There were more people here named Taggert than Montgomery, but there were enough of each, and she’d spent enough time around both families that she was beginning to be able to tell them apart.

  The Montgomery men and the Taggert men were very different from each other, both physically and in their personalities. The Montgomerys were taller, but the Taggerts were prettier. The Taggert men, ranging in height from five eight to just six feet, were all big men, big and thick and heavily muscled. The men together looked like a convention of weight lifters or a crew of construction workers. What made them different, what set them apart from other brawny men, was the prettiness, in a way, of their faces: big eyes, full lips, the sweetest smiles imaginable. For all their size and muscle, not one of them looked as though he could hurt a fly.

  The Taggerts were men that a woman could curl up with, men a woman could go to for help, men a woman could trust to protect her, to pull her from a burning building without giving a thought for his own life. They were sexy men. Samantha had no questions as to why each woman who married into the family seemed willing to bear a countless number of children. She had no doubt that every Taggert father was close to his children from birth to first love to grandchildren. These weren’t men who went off with the boys on Sunday afternoons. In fact, looking at them, Samantha wondered if any Taggert man who had children ever went anywhere without one of them. These were men who knew how to give and receive love, not just tell a woman he loved her, but really, truly love her through sickness, through the good times and the bad, through turmoil and peace, through sadness and happiness. The Taggerts were men a woman could depend on to always be there, men a woman could trust.

  The Montgomery men were different from their cousins, for the Montgomerys were as elegant as the Taggerts were down-to-earth. Samantha thought that a Montgomery man would know if one made a mistake and said an opera aria was by Puccini when it was actually by Verdi. They’d know when a person goofed and used the butter knife on the fish. They’d recognize a Chanel copy from a Chanel. They were, without exception, quiet, reserved men, all of them tall, all of them handsome in a sharp sort of way, with unreadable eyes, sculptured cheekbones, and jaws that were almost belligerent. The only softness in their faces was their mouths. Samantha couldn’t help wondering if, when they fell in love, their whole faces softened. All in all, they were rather fierce-looking men, men who could lead in wars, men who would die protecting the men under them—or their wives and children, she couldn’t help thinking.

  She wondered what the private lives of the Montgomerys were like, did they love with all the fierceness she saw in their eyes? She had no doubt that when they did fall in love the recipient was selected very carefully. Did the Montgomery men laugh? Did they cry? Did they play ball with their sons and talk to their daughters about their Barbie dolls? She wondered if she’d ever know the answers to her questions, for she knew without being told that a Montgomery would allow a person to know only what he wanted a person to know about him.

  “And what have you decided?” Pat Taggert asked, taking a chair next to her, making Samantha aware that she had been watched and that Pat knew what she was thinking. Maybe when Pat had been contemplating marrying Mike’s father, she too had compared the two families.

  “That I wouldn’t mind having an affair with a Montgomery but I’d rather marry a Taggert,” she answered, then realized that what she’d said shouldn’t have been said.

  Pat smiled, seeming to like the honesty of her answer. “Exactly the same conclusion I reached some time ago.”

  Samantha looked down at hands. “You didn’t…I mean…”

  “I didn’t, but I do like to mention Raine’s oldest brother to Ian now and then.” The women laughed together.

  Later, as it began to grow dark, people started taking their leave of each other, and Samantha realized that she felt at home with these people. As she helped clear the tables, all the leftover food to be taken to a homele
ss shelter, she chatted companionably with them.

  Coming up behind her, Mike slipped his arms about her waist. “Okay, everybody, Sam says she’s never changed a diaper so who’s going to lend us a kid overnight?”

  “Me,” said a Montgomery cousin.

  “I will.”

  “Mike, you can have both of my boys for as long as you want.”

  “How about my twins? She ought to learn on twins.”

  “I use cloth diapers, Mike. And safety pins with little ducks on them. Sam should learn on cloth diapers.”

  As Samantha stood blinking at the deluge of offers, Mike said, “Take your pick.”

  “How many children may I take?” she asked.

  That response brought a hush to the Taggerts, for if there was one thing they were serious about, it was children. There were no wives in the Taggert family who didn’t have children, in fact, it was a joke of strutting pride that Taggert men could impregnate any woman in the world, no matter what doctors had told her. They had impregnated women who were on the Pill and women who’d had IUDs inserted. One Taggert, after six children, had had a vasectomy. When his wife became pregnant two years later, he’d had some doubts about her fidelity. After the child was born she’d insisted on having a DNA test to prove the child was his. He had apologized with a new house and a three-week trip to Paris where she’d bought a trunk full of new clothes. (Since then, some of the other Taggert wives had been suggesting that their husbands get vasectomies.)

  “You can take one or two or all of them,” Mike said in response to her question.

  Samantha looked at the nearly silent group of people, at all of the children, ranging in age from a tiny creature that looked to be only minutes old to big, hulking teenagers who looked as though they were dying to get away from their relatives. She was seriously tempted by a fat, smiling baby about eight months old, but at last she pointed. “Those two.”

  Her choice was a couple of little boys about four years old who were far and away the dirtiest children at the picnic, their faces sticky, their hands and clothes looking as though they’d rolled in mud. But under the dirt were cherub faces with black curly hair and big, innocent eyes and mouths of sweetness.

  When Samantha chose the two boys, Mike let out a groan that made the whole family burst into laughter. She looked at Mike in question.

  “Do you have to have those two?”

  “Mike!”

  “Those brats are Kane’s boys, and they’re bad even for Taggerts. How about Jeanne’s little girl? She’s adorable.”

  Samantha glanced at Jeanne’s little girl, at the pretty child’s clean dress, her angelic smile, then back at the twins who were at that moment trying to kill each other. “I want the boys.”

  As Mike groaned again, Kane put his arm around his brother. “Ah sleep,” Kane said. “Sweet sleep. That’s what I’m going to get tonight and you’re not.”

  Mike turned to Sam. “Samantha…” he began, but she stopped him.

  “They remind me of you, and when they’re cleaned up, I imagine they’ll look just like you.”

  This brought more laughter from the family. Pat smiled fondly at her two grown sons. “There is some justice in the world after all if it means you boys are going to have children as bad as you were. Yes, Samantha, dear, Kane’s boys are just like he and Mike were as children, and may heaven help you if you want to learn about children on those two.”

  After a noisy leave-taking, with lots of kissing and hugging and hundreds of invitations to come to Colorado and to Maine, Samantha and Mike set off toward Mike’s house, each holding the hand of a dirty twin boy.

  Later, at the house, Samantha sent the boys into the garden to play while she prepared a late snack for them—and Samantha got her first experience of what had made Mike groan when she said she wanted to take the twins.

  It wasn’t that they were bad children. They didn’t play pranks on their elders or see what they could get away with. Truthfully they seemed to be happy with just each other and didn’t seem aware that Samantha and Mike were there. What caused the problem was that they were so very, very active and the fact that there were so very many of them.

  Samantha glanced out at the floodlit garden and saw one child climbing the fence, ready to fall to his death, while another child ran up the fire escape as fast as his stubby legs could carry him, while a third child was climbing up the side of the house, beside the fire escape, and was now at the top of the first story, also on the precipice of death. A fourth child was eating the roses, thorns and all, while number five was climbing onto a lawn chair that was balanced on one leg on the edge of the brick walkway.

  “Mike!” Samantha yelped in desperation as she stood at the glass doors and looked out in helplessness. “They’re going to be killed—all eight of them. Or is it twelve?”

  Mike didn’t look up from his newspaper. “Those two are in a class all their own.”

  “I think you should—” she began, her voice filled with fear since one child was now moving up the wall of the town house toward the second floor.

  “You wanted them, now you have them.”

  Turning to Mike in disbelief, she saw that his face was hidden by the newspaper. Obviously he wasn’t going to help her. She went outside into the garden to see what she could do to prevent the children from killing themselves.

  Contrary to what it seemed, Mike was very aware of what was going on and very interested in what Samantha was planning. Standing to one side of the glass doors, he unabashedly spied on her, watching as she at first tried talking to the boys as though they were adults, reasoning with them that they were on the very precipice of death and should control their baser urges. She suggested paper and colored pens and lemonade. When that had no effect, she gently tried to take a child down from the wall. Gentleness had no effect on the sturdy four-year-old who was now out of Samantha’s reach.

  Watching, Mike saw that, for a moment, Samantha seemed to have no idea what to do, but then his nephew gave it all away by laughing, letting Samantha know that he saw her dilemma and was enjoying being the cause of it.

  “You little scamp,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him as the boy kept working his way up the rose trellis on the wall. In the next minute, Samantha was after him, and the child, still laughing while his brother shrieked encouragement from the ground, led Samantha on a chase across the side of the wall, like two crabs moving on a perpendicular surface.

  Stepping into the yard, Mike was ready to catch one or the other of them should they start to fall, but Samantha caught the child by the seat of his pants and the imp turned to look at her as if to say, Now what are you going to do? Mike could see that Sam had no idea how to get the big kid down, but she was trying not to let the boy see that. He saw, and he delighted in her consternation.

  “Are you going to let a four-year-old defeat you?” Mike asked from the ground.

  Without looking down at Mike, Samantha gave the child an I’m-bigger-than-you-and-I’m-going-to-win grin and the next minute she had him in her arms—all of what had to be a hundred pounds of him. Somehow, she got him to the ground. Of course Mike was there for those last few feet, catching them both in his strong arms when a rose branch broke and setting them upright on the lawn.

  The minute the child’s feet touched earth, he scampered off with his brother while Samantha rubbed her arms. They were aching from the exertion and from hundreds of rose thorn scratches. “Now I understand why you lift weights. It’s to prepare you for dealing with children. Do you think I should give them a bath?”

  Smiling, Mike gave her a soft kiss and pulled her into his arms. “Mike, where are the boys?”

  “Mmmm,” he said, caressing her back. “You said the bad word.”

  “ ‘Boys?’ How is that a bad word?”

  “No, you said, bath. They’ve disappeared, and you’ll have to find them if you mean to clean those two up. Half the time Kane admits defeat and throws them into a horse trough. His theory is that they
’ll take a bath when they discover girls, so why bother until then?”

  She pushed away from him and when she looked at him, her mouth was set. “My grandmother dealt with gangsters, so I think I am capable of dealing with two little boys. What we need here is a cunning mind and the strength of Hercules. Stand over there,” she ordered and when he was at one side of the garden, she said, “My goodness, it’s Donatello and Michelangelo and Raphael and Leonardo right here in our garden!” When two dirty little boys appeared from nowhere, Samantha grabbed one about the waist then the other. Bowing under the weight like an Olympic bar across a squatter’s shoulders, she held on through ferocious wiggles.

  “You fibbed!” one child yelled, startling Samantha for she didn’t know the boys could talk.

  “Yes I did,” she answered calmly. “I learned how from your uncle Mike. He’s the best fibber in the world.”

  For a moment both boys stopped struggling to look at their uncle Mike with new respect, but he looked just the same, just like their dad, so he wasn’t of much interest. They resumed their attempts to get away from Samantha. She wasn’t very big, but she seemed extraordinarily strong.

  “You two are going to have a bath, then I’m going to read you a story and you’re going to bed.” When the boys kept struggling, nearly tearing Samantha’s arms out of their sockets, she said, “It’s the goriest story you’ve ever heard. Lots of blood and people being chopped in half and—”

  The boys stopped wiggling as they listened to Sam tell them about what she was going to tell them all the way up the stairs.

  It was as she was bathing the twins, trying to get what looked like years of dirt off of them while they bashed each other with soap and washclothes and drenched Samantha, that Mike stood in the doorway and watched her. The boys were so much alike, as Mike said, down to moles and birthmarks.

  “How are Kane and I different?”

  “Michael Taggert, if you’re fishing for compliments—” She broke off as she dodged a bar of soap flying through the air.