There was something inexplicably sensual about the way he said double, and Logan buried his face quickly behind the menu to give the two of them a moment—feeling a bit like an extra on a sitcom, the foil to the handsome playboy that always got the girls.
Strange. Usually when Logan walked into the room, he spent the entire rest of the night trying to avoid the spotlight and the gaggle of long-legged gold-digger women that came with it. But sitting beside Dylan, a man with the same face and a vastly more outgoing personality, he might as well as been invisible.
...he loved it!
“You got it.” The waitress flashed him a seductive smile, trying to figure out a way to discreetly leave her number, before turning to Logan. “And for you?”
The menu came down. Logan had been considering getting his regular scotch, but was suddenly worried it would sound too pretentious in a place like this. Maybe a beer instead?
“What do you have on—”
“Oh my gosh!” She clapped her hands over her mouth with a high-pitched squeal. “You guys are twins?! That is so cute! Are you identical? You totally look identical!”
The entire thing was fired out in a rapid-fire stream of consciousness that made Logan flush and Dylan grin. The two of them shared a quick glance—experiencing, for the first time, the same reaction that good-looking twins around the world got every day.
“We’re actually not twins,” Dylan informed her in a flat deadpan, “we’re triplets. And the third one’s coming—so let’s get these drinks going, okay?”
Logan leaned back in his chair with a secret smile, blown away by the innate ease with which his brother was able to lie. Nature versus nurture, right? Logan had a hard time hiding it from Millard when he didn’t like a particular dinner. Triplets would be out of his league.
“What about you, bro?”
He lifted his head as Dylan flashed him a mischievous smile—latching onto the familial nicknames more and more. “You know what...I’ll have the same thing he’s having.”
“Excellent.” The waitress gathered up both menus, then remembered herself and dropped down an extra for the ‘third’ member of their party. “Those will be right up. Just let me know if there’s anything else I can get you.” She winked at Dylan. “Anything at all...”
Dylan grinned widely. She left them sitting in silence. A silence that wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as it could have been, considering the circumstances. Just a minute or so later, the drinks came. Dylan lifted his shot glass into the air, motioning for Logan to do the same.
“To us,” he flashed his signature grin, “to family reunions, twenty-five years too late.”
Logan clinked their glasses together.
“Better late than never.”
They downed the shot, and before Logan had even set down the glass, Dylan snapped his fingers for two more. Then two more. Then two more after that. Logan kept pace with him, matching drink for drink, but when Dylan raised his hand for a fifth, he shook his head.
“You know what—I’d better not. I have an early day tomorrow.”
A warm flush had spread through his entire body, and the edges of his words were beginning to slur. In truth, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d acted his age—throwing back shots in a bar with a stranger who was quickly turning into a friend. But that persistent little voice kept chiming in from the back of his head. The one telling him to be responsible.
Fortunately, Dylan’s voice was quite a bit louder.
“In Miami?” The two of them locked eyes and he grinned again—tracing his finger around the rim of his glass. “Yeah, I looked you up too, Logan Alexander Chase. Skylight Resorts. Youngest self-made millionaire on the East Coast. How did you get here tonight? Private plane?”
Over the years, Logan had been forced to talk about his fortune more times than he could possibly count. But there was something funny about the way Dylan talked about it. Like the entire thing was some kind of joke. One they could laugh about together.
“Billionaire,” he corrected his brother with a sly grin. “Self-made billionaire. And yeah—I took the G5.”
Dylan threw back his head with a sparkling laugh. “Oh—apologies. My mistake. I would have taken my own private jet, but seeing as I live in this city, I decided to take a cab.”
Logan nodded with a thoughtful frown, one that barely hid the mischief beneath.
“Not far from the construction site?”
“Whoa!” Dylan kicked back in his chair with a drunken grin. “A self-made billionaire who still finds time to tear down the working class. No one saw that coming.”
“I was kidding.” Logan laughed, watching Dylan trace the rim of his glass once more. It was a habit he had himself. “And I’ve always hated that term. Working class.”
“I imagine that’s a hatred ingrained in you at boarding school—”