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to their other neighbors, the Zero Technology People, as she’d privately dubbed them. “I do love me my celebrities.”
    “I’m so excited,” Mira confessed, “I’ll probably do something embarrassing like ask them for their autograph. I grew up on their songs.”
    “Probably best not to say that,” Kevin’s sister Rachel laughed behind him. “That wouldn’t be too diplomatic. But by the way, what’s the deal on the name thing?”
    “What name thing?”
    “Yours. You renamed yourself, and your boyfriend doesn’t like it? Or what?”
    “Oh. No big deal. My name’s Almira ,” she said, looking around to make sure Scott wasn’t watching before adding a generous dollop of half & half to the coffee she had just poured. She turned, discovering with a start that Alec and Gabe were standing directly behind her. Only realized she was tilting her coffee cup when she felt the fiery touch of the hot liquid hitting her hand, running down her dress. She exclaimed in distress, hastily transferred her cup to the other hand and shook her right hand in the air to rid it of the scalding liquid. What an idiot. What was she, sixteen? And her dress was pale yellow. Pale yellow with brown splotches, now. That was attractive.
    “You OK?” Alec asked her with concern. “Burn yourself?” He handed his own cup to his brother and took her hand in his, patted it dry with a napkin.
    “I’m fine,” she said, fully embarrassed now. “Just clumsy. I’m all right.”
    “Sure?” he persisted, still holding her hand.
    “ Positive,” she said with a nervous laugh. “It just startled me.”
    “You were explaining your name,” Alec said. “Or should I say, your dual personality.” His brother stood by, his dark gaze intent on her, and she felt more awkward than ever.
    “Your name,” Alec prompted, finally letting go of her hand.
    “Oh.” She shrugged. “They’re both my names. Almira Grace. I go by Mira, normally.”
    “ Almira . Princess,” Alec said. “In Arabic. Perfect.”
    “How do you know that?” she asked in surprise. “It’s not exactly a common name. It was my great-grandmother’s. Old-fashioned, I know.”
    “I know many things,” he said portentously. “Many useless things,” he added with a charmingly sweet smile that, Mira thought, he’d used before. And often. “But they come in handy sometimes.”
    “Well, Scott doesn’t like Mira much. And he doesn’t like Almira at all. So he calls me Grace instead.”
    “He refuses to call you by your name?” Rachel said in disbelief. “That’s not good, huh, Kevin?”
    “I’d call that a major relationship red flag,” Kevin agreed. “Mr. Wrong—Here’s Your Sign. And I should know. Because, honey, I’m the world’s expert at dating Mr. Wrong.” He struck a camp attitude, hand on hip, that had Mira laughing guiltily despite his cataloging of Scott.
    “And there he goes, flinging himself out of the 1885 closet,” Rachel said, putting a muscular arm around her brother and giving him a squeeze. “Ready or not, here he comes. Can’t keep a good man down.”
    “I can’t imagine that’s going to be a problem here, though,” Mira said. “Not in this day and age.” She looked at Alec and Gabe, who gave almost identical shrugs. Wow. They really were twins.
    Kevin looked at her in amusement. “You haven’t been around the block too many times, have you? I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a problem for somebody. But it’s their problem.”
    The brothers turned away as the women Mira was already thinking of as “the blondes” approached. Rachel looked after them, then turned to Mira with a grin on her friendly face, surrounded by a riot of curly brown hair as exuberant as her personality. “They’ve covered all the bases, haven’t they?” she asked. “You’ve got your hot girls, your hot boys—” She nodded at the Kincaid brothers. “They outdid themselves there. Twins. Yum. Imagine the possibilities.” She sighed with