“Do you want to punish them? Void the contract?” Richard thought for a moment. “That should be easy.”
Jimmy shook his head.
“I want Aggie,” he explained. “I could happily strangle the Angela twin, but I have different plans for my Aggie.”
Richard looked thoughtful. When he spoke, it was quietly.
“What do you plan for tonight?”
“If Aggie comes, I’ll tease her a little, but I’m not going to waste the night. We’ll end up in bed screwing our brains out.”
“And if Angela comes?”
Jimmy shrugged.
“I have a thought,” Richard offered with a sly smile.
“Go ahead.”
“Say you think she’s unbalanced, a dual personality. Pretend to try to get the real Aggie to come out.”
Jimmy chuckled and then his trademark belly laugh rumbled out. He walked around the desk and clapped Richard on the back.
“You ought to be writing sitcoms, my boy,” he boomed. “That’s perfect.”
Jimmy wasn’t sure he’d be able to tell at a glance which sister arrived for the evening. As the young woman stepped from the taxi, he thought perhaps she was Aggie and his lips turned up in a lascivious smile. She was dressed Aggie-style in a long corduroy skirt and stylish boots. She greeted him with a smile and a peck on the cheek. When he helped her out of her coat in the elevator, he saw that her blouse was a peasant style with colorful embroidery. She looked nothing like a hooker. His hopes rose another notch. When they stepped out of the elevator and into the lobby of his apartment, he pulled her into his arms.
The moment their mouths touched he knew she was Angela. Instead of softening and flattening, her lips remained cool and aloof. Hot anger boiled up in Jimmy at the deception but before it broke through, the humor of the situation overtook him. So, he had just kissed his future sister-in-law. The thought took him by surprise. The word ‘marriage’ hadn’t entered his mind until that errant thought. He pushed it aside for later consideration. He put his hands on Angela’s shoulders and held her away from his body. Then he took her hand and led her toward the living room.
“Can’t we sit in the library?” Angela asked.
“Aggie,” he murmured. “My sweet.”
He ignored her request and pulled her down beside him on the sofa. She inched her leg away from his thigh. Jimmy smiled.
“Aggie,” he murmured lovingly again. “Aggie, I know you’re in there somewhere. Send the evil twin away and come out.”
Angela bridled as though struck and Jimmy grinned inside. ‘Evil twin’ was a masterful touch.
“What evil twin?” Angela asked coldly. The real Aggie would have attacked him by now.
“My poor dear,” Jimmy continued as he lifted Angela across his lap and held her like a child. He smoothed back her hair. “I understand.”
“You understand what?”
His odd words were beginning to crack Angela’s cool facade.
“I understand your disorder,” Jimmy explained. “Aggie, sweetheart, I consulted a doctor from the psychiatric unit at Vancouver General Hospital. He explained…”
“You what?” Angela interrupted. She sat up rigid in his arms. Then her face stilled and she relaxed back into his embrace. She continued sweetly. “What did he tell you?”
Jimmy saluted her quick thinking. Maybe Angela had promised Aggie she would try to avoid sex tonight. Feigning insanity would work. But then why had Angela been the one to come? Had something happened to the real Aggie? Jimmy pushed the worry aside. She was probably scared, he decided. After last night and Angela sleeping with Richard thinking she was Aggie, she probably thought he would kill her. If it had been true, he would have. Since he hadn’t brought it up, Angela must think he didn’t know she had captivated his lawyer. Good.
“He told me you probably suffer from a disorder called multiple personality syndrome,” Jimmy belatedly answered Angela’s question. He hoped the psycho-babble sounded authentic. “You must have had a dreadful childhood, my poor sweetheart.”
“No,” Angela protested. “I love my parents. I had a good childhood.”
“Maybe an early death?” Jimmy suggested. “Maybe you were born a twin and the other one died when you were young and the trauma left psychic scars.”
Jimmy regretted his words when he noticed the pallor that swept Angela’s face. The death of her twin was too awful for her to contemplate. They must be very close. Or maybe she was just worried that he had strayed so close to the truth.
“No,” she whispered.
“Are you aware that you have two personalities?” Jimmy prodded. A devil prompted him to add, “One’s an angel.”
Color flared back into Angela’s face with Jimmy’s use of her hooker name. Good. Though he wanted to punish her, he didn’t like to see her so pale.
“Tell me about my two personalities,” she challenged.
“One is fiery hot. She’s the one I think of as the real Aggie,” Jimmy explained. “She’s the one I like.”
“And the other?”
“The other is cool and collected. I’m afraid I don’t like this persona, the one you are now, nearly as well.”
“I’m sorry.” Tears shimmered in Angela’s eyes. Jimmy wondered how good an actress she really was. Could this be part of the act?
“I’m only one person,” she continued and a tear slid down her cheek. “I’m sorry you don’t like me.”
Maybe he had hurt her feelings. Jimmy wiped away the tear with the flat of his index finger.
“I’d like you if you weren’t hiding the real Aggie,” he offered. The devil egged him on. “I want to help you, sweetheart. Let me book an appointment with the psychiatrist.”
Angela stood and shook her head. She was again the cool, in charge twin.
“I don’t need a psychiatrist.” The words came out clipped, a trace of New York slipping through. She must have realized the slip because she added in a southern drawl, “Jimmy, sweetheart, I appreciate you being concerned about me.”
“Let’s go to bed and work things out there,” Jimmy suggested to see what she would do. His answer was a stricken but mute appeal. He took pity. “No, maybe you should just go back to the hotel and get a good night’s sleep.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. She looked almost ready to collapse in relief. Jimmy’s pity hardened as he pictured the long empty night ahead.
“Banish this cool Aggie,” he warned Angela. “Send the hot-tempered one tomorrow.”
“Or else?” Angela challenged.
Jimmy admired her guts.
“Or else the contract’s off,” he stated. “I’m sure Richard can find a clause to void the agreement, given your persistent non-performance.”
If Jimmy had wanted to rattle Angela, he had succeeded. He wondered whether her ebbing color came more from the threatened loss of the contract or from his mention of her last night’s companion. For Richard’s sake, he hoped it was the latter. Whichever, Angela quickly recovered herself.
“My non-performance, as you put it, has been with your agreement,” she asserted.
Suddenly Jimmy was tired of the game, the deception.
“Go back to the hotel,…”
He had almost said ‘Angela’. Time to get her out of the apartment before he slipped. He helped her into her coat. A few minutes later as he handed her into the taxi, he debated telling her everything. He could go back with her to the hotel, find the real Aggie and bring her to the apartment. But no, he would give the schemers one more night, one more chance to come clean. If Aggie didn’t come tomorrow night, if she didn’t confess to the whole devious plot… Jimmy’s thoughts stalled. What would he do? He would love her anyway, he realized. Right after he strangled her.
Chapter 21
Somehow, miraculously, they had made it through seven nights of the contract. Aggie woke on the eighth morning with that thought foremost in her mind. She lay with her eyes still closed and listened to Angela’s breathing on the second bed. Andrew had been granted the sofa. Five more nights, she thought. She drew in a deep breath and then remembered to be surprised that she could breathe. Her flu must have finally broken.