Page 148 of Faking Cinderella
“I think we ran into each other the last time he was in town,” Laney says to me. She tilts her head, studying me.
Rhys takes a subtle half step closer to me.
“Crazy,” she murmurs.
“What?” My heart is starting to pound too hard.
I know who Laney is.
I know people at home who know who Laney is too.
She’s a badass businesswoman in her own right, working for her family’s custom online photo gift company that they founded here. They entered the internet business era at exactly the right time to hit it big.
My father’s talked about them.
And did the triplets—I scan through my memory banks, and yes. Yes, Lucky definitely described Laney in terms of Kingston Photo Gifts when he was telling me about his friends. I can confidently know who she is as Margie Johnson without tipping my hand that I researched her.
“I half thought the triplets were making you up to prank us all, but you have the same nose,” she says. “And your eyes are shaped the same.Oh my god. You have their ears too.”
“Theyarerelated,” Rhys murmurs.
“Hearing it from them and seeing it are two different things.”
I keep my smile plastered on while two other women—Sabrina, the shorter redhead from Bee & Nugget, and Emma, the taller blonde who’s married to Jonas Rutherford, both of whomare in pictures all over the house as well—come in through the back door too.
“Oh, she’s here,” Emma squeals.
“Itold youshe’s real,” Sabrina replies. She greets me with a quick hug. “I’m so glad you could make it. How was your first week of work?”
“Look at her nose,” Laney says to Emma.
Emma stares at my nose. “Oh. That must be why Jonas thought she looked familiar. Because it’s like staring at half of another one of the triplets.”
“Right?”
“It’s so weird how people can be related and not know it.”
Sabrina and Laney both look at her.
“Really?” Laney says the same time Sabrina says, “You can’t imagine how that could happen at all?”
Understandable.
Emma had five minutes of fame as a runaway bride several years back. She and Jonas ended up at the same resort where she was honeymooning solo and he was hiding after a rough divorce.
And Bash, their son, was the result.
But Jonas didn’t know it until about two years ago.
He left the nonprofit I know him from when he finally got the messages Emma had sent him when she found out she was pregnant.
But the triplets didn’t tell me that. I’m positive they haven’t mentioned much about Emma beyond who she’s married to. So I need to pretend I don’t know that either.
Emma grins at her friends. “I mean, yes, that might’ve been Bash one day, but Jonas found us again, so there are officially no more secrets in our group about who’s related to who.”
Rhys coughs.
The three best friends look at him.
