The Stand-In(5)

I stop abruptly, causing a runner to shout “Hey” and shoot me a dirty look as they swerve to miss me. The walk should have calmed me—nature, outside, exercise, all that—but I want to scream. I’ll go to bed. A solid night’s sleep will get rid of this itchiness inside my skin.

By the time I reach my street, I’m almost in a daze as worry circulates through my brain. Mom. Work. Mom. Money. Work. Todd.

As I wonder what it would be like to walk and walk and keep walking forever, a glossy black SUV pulls up close enough to make me jump to the side. This is not the kind of car that usually comes by my street, which tops out at a Lexus owned by the dentist five doors down. I automatically take three safe steps back to put me out of snatching range and am off the sidewalk and on the grass staring warily when the car door opens.

“Grace Reed?” A very familiar face peers out and I gawk.

It’s familiar because, except for her long, lustrous tresses—like a shampoo ad or Agatha Wu strolling down Bloor Street on her way to meet her romantic destiny—this woman is my doppelg?nger. We have the same face shape with a pointy chin and similar rounded dark eyes, except I know mine are shadowed with fatigue and hers are simply elegantly shadowed. Her skin is dewy and fresh. I may look dewy, but I certainly do not look fresh.

“Wow,” I say, peering at her. “I have to know, are you a bartender on the Danforth? People are always telling me my double works in some bar in the East End.”

The woman gazes at me with utter astonishment.

I talk on because my mouth won’t stop. “Duh, of course you’re not. Otherwise you wouldn’t be driving around in that fancy car. Hold on. How do you know who I am?” The surprise of seeing someone who so resembles me knocked that first and very pertinent question clear out of my head. I take another step back.

“You are Grace Reed?” says the woman again.

“Gracie,” I correct before my voice trails off. I know that face because—it suddenly clicks—this is Wei Fangli.

Wei Fangli, Chinese A-list movie star, is in my neighborhood. I should have recognized her except it’s so shocking she would be here, talking to me on my street, that I didn’t connect this woman with the celebrity at all.

Wait, Wei Fangli is here and knows my name?

She glances up and down the street. “Will you get in the car?” she asks. “I want to speak with you.”

“No, I don’t think so.” I take a last step back until the branches of a pine tree brush my head. Why would Wei Fangli be in a residential Toronto neighborhood? I look around and confirm it’s not a reality show and there are no cameras filming this interaction.

“Please.”

“How about you come out here?” A compromise, because I’m a little curious.

She’s considering this when a hand shoots out to touch her elbow. The hand is attached to a black-blazered arm connected to a man leaning forward.

Even in sunglasses, he is so incandescently beautiful that he shorts out my brain. He’s Asian, with jet-black hair falling over his forehead, a narrow nose, and a jawline with an angle sharp enough to measure with a protractor. Although he’s sitting, I can tell he’s lean with broad shoulders. His handsomeness renders me literally unable to speak, and I get a bit panicked before resentment sets in. How dare he look so good? Someone that attractive should have a little horn they toot to prepare normals like me for their arrival. Despite the shades, he’s also unnervingly familiar, but where would I have met a man like this? Nowhere but dreams.

He ducks back into the car before I can place him, and the two talk in low voices. Fangli finally stretches one leg to the ground, foot shod in a delicate high-heeled sandal that might snap under her weight. That shoe probably cost a month in rent.

How could I ever think she was my doppelg?nger? Wei Fangli is flawless. She moves like a dancer and her posture is so perfect I feel my own chin lift in response as I try to straighten my back.

“As I said, I have a proposal for you,” she says, hovering in the car door. “I’d prefer privacy. Please get into the car. This will only take a few minutes.”

Why do I follow her into the car? Do I have a death wish? I might, but right now I’m also very sick of being Gracie Reed and doing normal, safe Gracie Reed things. Whatever happens now will at least be different, and after today, I want that desperately.

When I climb in, the car’s interior blows my mind. Two sets of pale leather seats face each other, separated by a shelf with bottles of water and a minibar. A breath of Chanel No. 5 lingers but I can’t tell if it’s from Fangli or the car itself. Beside me is the man, and after I sit down, I take a good look at his face, trying to keep my composure as I do. He recedes back into the shadows of the car as if removing himself from the conversation.

Like, this man is unreal and his lips are…wow. Despite the improbability of this entire situation, I’m laser-focused on them. They’re the Platonic ideal of lips and match the high cheekbones and jet eyebrows that form perfect straight slashes. Then he takes off the sunglasses. Dark eyes taper to lines at the corners and those lips turn down in a frown as he glances at me. There’s a feeling akin to the moment when the roller coaster finally dips after teetering at the top of the hill as I tumble from familiarity to recognition.

Sam Yao, the Sexiest Man in the World (officially, as named by Celebrity magazine last year), is sitting dourly in the seat next to me.