MisMatch (A Humorous Contemporary Romance) Read Free

he made me, but you
never know.”
    Vince grinned at him. “And I asked where
you’re off to? How come you never invite me along to your secret
parties? You off to meet a girl?”
    Ahh, if Vince Del Monaco had an Achilles
heel it was women. He loved women. Any kind of woman. Big, thin,
beautiful, homely—it didn’t matter. As long as Eli had known Vince,
he'd always had some woman in his life. He seemed to have no
discernable type, except that they all had sizable racks.
    “I play a good wingman.”
    Eli rolled his eyes. “My brother has a
thing. I promised I'd be there.”
    Deep lines etched on Vince’s dark brow.
“Your brother? I didn’t know you had a brother.”
    Eli almost chuckled. What Vince meant was
that the file the Feds kept on him didn't show he had a brother.
And that's the way Eli liked it. No need to draw any kind of
attention to his past, or worse yet, Samson's. He’d taken many
steps to keep their past private. The least of all being changing
Samson’s name. In Eli’s line of work it would be career suicide to
have an ex-forger for a brother. “Guess it never came up.”
    And he preferred it that way. After their
parents’ divorce, his father had taken Samson and his mother had
taken Eli. His mother had changed their last name to her maiden
name, Marks, and had tried to get by with seeing Samson every other
weekend. Not getting custody of the both of them had killed her,
and it had killed Samson, too. Even though Eli tried to act out the
big brother role from afar, he’d had less and less influence as
they’d grown older. By the time Samson had started getting into
trouble, they’d drifted further and further apart. Finally, the one
thing that had tied them together—art—had eventually torn them
apart. Samson had been only seventeen when the feds had picked him
up for conspiracy, forgery, and grand larceny.
    Jail hadn’t suited him and he’d eventually
gone from recreational drug user to full blown addict. By the time
he’d gotten out at twenty-two, he’d been a shell of his former
self. Unable to paint, unable to create. All he cared about was his
next fix.
    Eli had spent the next several years chasing
after him trying to get him clean. His mother had tried too,
spending every last dime she had putting him into rehab program
after rehab program. They’d all failed because the one thing Samson
needed to survive was his art, and back then he believed he needed
to be high to paint.
    It was only after their mother’s death that
Eli had been able to get Sam clean and keep him that way. He’d
stopped being an artist himself and chosen a safer path. One that
could provide for the both of them. Surprisingly, he’d been good at
it. He could spot a fake in a glance. Probably because he’d spent
years pouring over Sam’s supposed fakes, trying to find a way to
prove his brother innocent. But Sam hadn’t been innocent.
    Vince’s voice broke Eli out of his reverie.
“C’mon man, we can have a beer or two, and you can introduce me to
your brother.”
    “He's not particularly sociable.” Not true,
but Eli couldn't very well tell Vince that Satan would be pulling
reindeer before he intro'd him to his brother.
    “You two are a matched pair then.”
    “You could say that.” In
more ways than one . Eli might be older by four whole
minutes, but in all other respects, he and Samson were completely
identical—down to their a-little-too-long-to-be-respectable
haircuts. Growing up, their similarities had irked Eli, and he'd
wanted to have one thing he could call his own. Then everything had
changed.
    Eli opened his mouth to shoot Vince down one
more time then assessed the disappointed look on Vince's face. He
would probably live to regret his decision. Shit . Sam would probably have his hands busy with
groupies anyway. And he had said not to come, so he wouldn’t be
looking for Eli in the crowd.
    Eli exhaled. “Okay, fine, but you gotta lose
the cheap suit jacket, and you have to promise