For Love of Liam

By Nhys Glover

Double Trouble befalls Riley Morrison when the love of her life mistakes her for her twin sister.

A Laugh-Out-Loud romantic romp that will have you in stitches from start to finish.

When American Billionaire, Liam Donovan, comes to the Yorkshire dales to repair his relationship with businesswoman, Rachel, he mistakes Riley, her farmgirl twin, for his ex. As Liam tries to win 'Rachel' back, love blossoms between the unlikely pair. Can Riley admit the deception and keep the man of her dreams, or will her twin decide her 'one strike and your out' rule doesn't apply to Liam and want him back?

A fun-filled tale of vagrant bulls, colorful sheep, oddball characters, and breathtaking countryside.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nhys Glover
• Release date: Mar 6, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224600786

Nhys Glover

After a lifetime of teaching others to appreciate the written word, Aussie author Nhys Glover finally decided to make the most of the Indie Book Revolution to get her own written word out to the world. Now, with more than a quarter million of her ebooks downloaded internationally and a winner of an SFR Galaxy Award for 'The Titan Drowns', Nhys finds her words, too, are being appreciated. At home in beautiful Durham County England, Nhys these days spends her time "living the dream" by looking out over the moors as she writes the kind of novels she loves to read.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Riley

THERE’S AN AMERICAN chappie down here looking for Rachel, Mrs. Aimes yelled into the phone.

I held the landline receiver at arm’s length to save my eardrums. Everyone knew our village shopkeeper was a little deaf, so when she rang to report there was mail or interesting gossip, we all learned to adapt. It was what our species excelled at, after all: adaption.

What’s his name? I yelled back, sending the flock of blackbirds roosting in the hedgerow outside the kitchen door into panicked flight.

William Donovan. What started as a yell became a shriek by the time she got to the Donovan part, which usually meant someone was trying to talk to her while she was speaking. No, no, it’s Jusliam not William, so he says. These modern names: Apple, Oprah, Jusliam. What’s wrong with the names my parents gave their children? Good, English, salt-of-the-earth names.

I knew Mrs. Aimes’ first name was Gladys and her twin was Gertrude. I was, therefore, heartily glad her parents had no input into naming me or my twin. Riley was bad enough, but Gertrude ... shudder.

If I’d only been born first, I would have received the much prettier and obviously female name of Rachel. Instead, I got the gender-unspecific Riley, because Mum wasn’t sure if she was having fraternal or identical twins, which meant she could get one of each sex. So she’d hedged her bet with the second child’s name. If the first kid past the post was a girl, she’d be Rachel; if it was a boy, he’d be Ripley. But the second twin was always going to be Riley, no matter the sex.

I shook myself back from mortifying thoughts of being named Gertrude to dealing with the even more horrifying issue at hand: Liam Donovan. My sister Rachel’s ex-boyfriend was in the village looking for her. And Rachel didn’t want to be found.

Two days ago my twin had arrived home sunburned and covered in mosquito bites, her usual calm confidence shattered. Her ten-day dream holiday to the Canary Islands, staying in five-star luxury, had turned into an episode from Survivor. This was all courtesy of Liam, the previously perfect husband-in-the-making Rachel had gushed about during every Skype call for the last two months. Now she’d demoted him to the boyfriend-from-hell.

After licking her wounds for a day at home in the bosom of her family, Rachel had banished the horrendous memory further by taking off for a more civilized holiday week on the Riviera with her less recent ex-boyfriend—the guy she dumped for Liam—leaving me with strict instructions not to tell Liam where she’d gone if he came looking. He was likely a psychopathic stalker; she confided in terror, like that guy in Fifty Shades. I hadn’t had the heart to correct her about the book.

I thought Rachel was probably exaggerating about the stalking, though. She tended to do that. It was part of her appeal. She could always turn the dullest story of her day into an edge-of-your-seat account that left listeners sighing with amazement by the end. It was what made her popular in school and freed her from the stigma of being a Dolly.

Most people never meet identical twins in their whole lives. Sure, they know we exist, and everyone has seen Parent Trap (even if it was the 90s remake, not the original and best version), but we’re still a novelty, a rarity—like a sunny day in Yorkshire. (Just kidding! We had at least two weeks of sunshine last summer. I know this because I recorded those days on the calendar, just to prove a point to a southerner.)

So, anyway, for most of the world twins are a curiosity. Not so in Thwaitewhistle Moorside, our small village deep in the Yorkshire Dales. Here, nearly every family has at least one set of twins, whether fraternal or identical, in their ranks. We blame it on a common ancestor. Twins tend to run in families, so when you have an insular community where inbreeding isn’t quite up to Deliverance standard but is still somewhat questionable—particularly before cars meant our seed could be sown further afield—twins popped up with more regularity here than elsewhere.

Identical twins share the same DNA. They’re naturally occurring clones. At our High School, after a science teacher taught a class of idiots about the cloning of Dolly the sheep in Scotland during the 90s, and explained about the twin thing, the habit of calling twins from our village Dollys began.

Nobody liked being a Dolly, but we all put up with it. Except Rachel, who got to be her own person. And continued to be her own person by going off to university in Manchester, before taking a job with an advertising firm in London. She was a Dolly that escaped the flock. My twin and my idol. And I would do anything for her. Even protect her from a stalker ex if need be.

I’ll be right down, I yelled to Mrs. Aimes.

Oh, good, Rachel, I’ll tell Jusliam you’re on the way.

I didn’t take the time to correct her. She would already be in the process of hanging up and wouldn’t hear me, anyway.

Glancing down at my clothing, I wondered if I should make the effort and change out of my farm-wear into something suitable for the village. It was frowned upon to wander the streets in excrement-covered overalls, after all, because of the smell as much as the aesthetics of the clothing. Especially in confined spaces.

I hadn’t been out into the yard today, so I was free of excrement, but I knew I didn’t look my best in khaki-colored overalls, even if the color matched my eyes and brought out the red tones in my rust-colored hair. Rachel said her hair was auburn. I said mine was brownish. A spade or a shovel, call it what you will.

With a decisive sigh, I headed for the stairs, ready for a quick change into a dress. If I was going to meet the boyfriend-from-hell, I was going to look my best. That I tripped over my oversized boots on the bottom step and collided head-first with the wall, only served to reinforce my decision to change.

My boots were an ever-present danger better avoided when possible. It was my own fault. I could have had a pair that fit me better, but I’d always hated waste, so wearing the twins’ hand-me-downs seemed the best option. Even if they regularly resulted in unfortunate accidents.

Riley, you okay, luv? came a high, trilling voice from above, no surprise evident in the tone.

The paint-splattered face of my mother appeared at the top of the steep flight of stairs and looked owlishly down at me.

Yeah, mum, of course, I scrambled to my feet and began the climb again.

Because identical twins look alike, they tend to be delineated by behavior or traits: the noisy twin, the bad twin or the crazy twin. In our family, Rachel is the outgoing twin and I’m the clumsy twin. My brother Ethan is the responsible twin and Edward is the slow twin. And I don’t mean he’s disabled.

Eddie is just slow to do everything. If the Zombie Apocalypse started tomorrow, he’d be the first one to have his brains eaten because he’d be dawdling over breakfast. He’s not exactly lazy, he always gets his share of the work done around the farm, but it takes him about twice the time it takes Ethan.

In my family, twins aren’t a rarity or a curiosity, they’re an eventuality. My family hasn’t had a single birth in three generations. They expected my dad—the elder twin by five minutes, who married out of the district (helping to widen the gene pool and discourage inadvertent banjo playing among the offspring)—would break the tradition. Yet he still managed to produce two sets of identical twins: my brothers Ethan and Edward and, five years later, Rachel and me.

So, when I say Mum was unsurprised by my trip and fall, only concerned, it’s because I was just behaving normally for me, the clumsy twin. I could just have easily been called the shy twin or the quiet twin, to distinguish me from my confident, outgoing sister, but somehow the fact that I always had something bandaged up when I was a kid meant the clumsy label was the most obvious. Especially around a farm where there were a lot of ways to injure yourself. My parents had triple nine on speed dial, and all the ambulance drivers knew their way out to our farm.

Who was on the phone? Mum asked as I reached her on the landing. She wiped a stray curl back from her face and smudged red paint across her cheek. It made her look endearing.

My mother’s in her early sixties and eccentric. She’d been a hippie-chick living on a commune at Findhorn in Scotland when Dad met and married her thirty years ago. Back then, she was called rebellious and alternate, now people considered her borderline demented. Her rebellions had grown worse after Dad, who was twenty years her senior, had died of a heart attack three years ago.

Mrs. Aimes. Rachel’s boyfriend-from-hell is here. I’m going down to tell him to push off, I told her as I moved past, heading for my bedroom and paracetamol for the headache I was now developing.

I kept a bottle in my bedroom for just these situations. My head hurt.

Take one of your brothers. He might get dangerous, and you aren’t the most forceful of personalities, Mum said, adding more streaks to her face, so she looked like a Red Indian in war-paint. Her near invisible brows soared skyward.

She’d returned to her painting after Dad died, using her bedroom as her studio. Sleeping with the smell of acrylics couldn’t be good for her, but she wouldn’t hear of moving her art into one of the outbuildings. She liked the light in her bedroom; she said. And it would have driven your father mad, she would then confide in an impish undertone. In her books, that alone was reason enough to do it.

I can be forceful when I have to be. I don’t care how rich and American he is, I won’t have him stalking our Rachel.

Mum laughed. You always were a fierce little thing when you thought one of your own needed protecting. That American better watch himself.

I felt a little bloom of pride take up root in my chest. It was rare for me to be the one paid a compliment. So, when it happened, I always took it to heart and then hid it away, ready to bring out when I needed an infusion of confidence. I liked the idea that I could be a fierce little thing when I needed to be.

Five minutes later, I had changed into a dress and sandals and braided my long hair into a neat plait down my back. I even added a little mascara to darken my lashes and highlight my eyes that now reflected green to match my sundress. That was the great thing about hazel eyes; they were like chameleons, changing color with their surroundings.

I decided to take the mini because it was cleaner and didn’t scream farmer to foreigners or southerners in the same way the four-wheeler did. It was a ten-minute drive down the moor to the village, and the narrow lane could get fairly hazardous when the tourists hurtled along it like it was a motorway. But I made it down without mishap and was just parking in the square when the Montgomery’s highland bull walked leisurely down the road.

Rachel, grab him! I heard the yell as soon as I stepped out of the car. Malcolm Montgomery was hobbling towards me and the bull from the other end of town.

I was used to being mistaken for my sister if I dressed in girl-clothes. It had happened far less often in recent years because Rachel was rarely at home. But everyone knew she’d come home in a proper state a few days ago. Not many people knew she’d left again, in the early hours of yesterday morning, to make her flight to France.

So, it made perfect sense the farmer would confuse us and, instead of correcting him, I simply flew into action.

One thing you should know about kids raised in the country: we learn how to handle pretty much any emergency, without missing a beat, even when it involves a shaggy-coated bull with horns as wide as my outstretched arms. And though it might have seemed dangerous to a tourist, we locals all knew this particular bull was as gentle as he was an expert at escaping his field.

This situation wasn’t a new one. Angus ambled through town on a regular basis. The trouble was, Montgomery’s farm formed a semi-circle around the outskirts of Thwaitewhistle Moorside, and he kept his bull in a paddock on one side of the village and his cows on the other side. When the wind was just right, the randy old bull would sniff his harem and come looking for them. And no gate, or village full of people and cars, was going to stand in his way.

Grabbing up a length of rope lying on the back seat of the mini, I trotted over to Angus, who was now blocking the narrow, single-car thoroughfare leading into the square. I could see at least two cars lined up behind him, and one was beeping his horn annoyingly. When I gestured for him to stop, the driver just ignored me. An impatient tourist, I decided, with a long-suffering sigh.

With slow steps, I approached the old fellow and looped the rope around his horns and then through the ring in his nose. At that point, all was going well, and I was about to walk the bull through the narrow gap between the buildings and off to the side of the road so the cars could pass. Montgomery was getting closer, although his limp made his approach slower than I would have liked, but he’d soon be there to take over.

A tall, handsome man with midnight-black hair was just coming out of the village shop as I led the bull out of the narrow confines. A cat suddenly appeared out of nowhere, screeching and skittering, and ran right under the bull’s front hooves.

In the next instant, my quiet charge was balking, throwing back his head and bellowing loud enough to give Mrs. Aimes a run for her money. Clinging stupidly to the rope, my arms almost yanked out of their sockets, I waited for the inevitable. And it came. My feet flew out from under me as the great, shaggy head swung to the side, all the bull’s weight thrown behind the sudden move.

For an instant, I hung in mid-air, hearing Montgomery yelling for me to let go, the screams of onlookers, and the single blast of a car horn. And then I was landing on the cobblestones in a muddy puddle, and the bull was sniffing at me, for all the world as if he was asking me what I was doing down there.

"Rach! My God, are