of those factors made him most uneasy, he tugged at the collar of his deep blue shirt as he strode down the hallway of Rachel’s apartment complex. He hadn’t been sure what to wear. The restaurant where he and Ethan had agreed to meet wasn’t a jacket and tie sort of place. He’d settled on a blue dress shirt, open at the collar, worn with khakis and brown oxfords.
And because he so rarely obsessed about his clothing, that was just another sign of how rattled he was this evening.
Rachel opened her door with a smile that made him forget any qualms he’d had about inviting her.
“You look great,” he said.
“Thank you. I forgot to ask where we were going, so I wasn’t sure what was appropriate to wear.”
Only then did he notice what she had on, a sleeveless black dress with a knee-length hem. A small diamond pendant lay nestled in the tasteful amount of cleavage revealed by the V-neckline of the dress. Just enough of a glimpse to make him fantasize about seeing more.
“You look…great,” he said again, unable to think coherently enough to come up with a new compliment.
Shallow dimples appeared in her cheeks, then quickly disappeared. Captivated by them, he simply stared at her until she cleared her throat and said, “Um, would you like to come in?”
Chiding himself for his uncharacteristic awkwardness, he shook his head—both to clear his mind and as a negative to her invitation. “We’d better go, if you’re ready. Traffic’s pretty heavy this evening.”
“Just let me get my purse.”
She returned after only moments with a small black bag tucked beneath her arm. Locking her door behind her, she smiled up at him, and only then did he see the slight hint of nerves in her eyes. “I’m ready.”
It made him feel somewhat better to know that he wasn’t the only one with hesitations about this outing. “Yeah. Me, too. And thanks again for going with me tonight, Rachel.”
“Actually, you’re helping me out, too,” she confided, falling into step beside him.
“Yeah? In what way?”
“My mother and sister are squabbling and they’re trying to put me squarely in the middle. I’d have had to spend the evening refereeing a family confrontation. I’d much rather deal with your family problems than my own tonight.”
He laughed, as she had obviously intended for him to do. “Caught between a rock and a hard place, huh?”
She smiled up at him as he opened the passenger door of his car for her. “Not quite. You said you were planning to ask me out again today even before your brother showed up last night? I have to admit that I was hoping you would.”
Pleased, he held the door while she slid into the seat. All of a sudden, he wasn’t nearly as uneasy about the upcoming evening.
* * *
Rachel was struck immediately by the resemblances between Mark and Ethan Brannon. In his late thirties, Ethan was more sternly carved than Mark, with a few more lines around his dark green eyes and his mouth. And yet the similarities were so strong that most people would probably assume at first glance that they were related.
Their coloring, their build, something about the way they moved and spoke…within minutes she became convinced that the DNA tests would confirm Ethan’s assertion. While she supposed it was possible that the resemblances were coincidental, it was highly unlikely.
As for Ethan’s companion, Rachel thought Aislinn Flaherty was possibly one of the most beautiful women she had ever met. Perfect skin, gleaming waves of dark hair, exotically shaped dark eyes. Though she was drawn to Aislinn’s warm smile and friendly manner, she sensed a reserve in the other woman that went very deep. A protective wall, perhaps.
Mark had called Aislinn a psychic, though his tone had made it clear that he was skeptical of that term. Rachel agreed. She had never put much stake into any suggestions of extrasensory abilities, figuring that most people who made such claims had a mercenary reason for doing so. But even after a few minutes she could tell that there was something different about Aislinn.
Sitting at a quiet table with drinks and appetizers, Rachel, Mark and Aislinn chatted politely about the nice weather they’d had that day. Ethan didn’t seem the type to engage in small talk, judging by Rachel’s early impression of him. He sat quietly watching them, and she suspected that he was the kind of man who chose to stay on the sidelines of life, observing more than participating. She doubted that he missed much of what went on around him, though he probably kept most of his thoughts to himself.
In that respect, he was very different from Mark. Mark was a participator, someone who could be found at the very heart of most activities, the middle of any crowd. From what she had gathered during their short acquaintance, small talk came easily to Mark, usually, though he seemed to be struggling a bit with Ethan. Mark was a people person, gregarious and concerned, both of which served him well in his job as a physician. Ethan, she learned, was a self-employed small-business consultant who worked out of his home in Alabama, spending more time with a computer than with his clients.
Ethan waited until the subject of the weather was exhausted before he joined the conversation, and then he jumped straight into a more serious topic. “I’m sure you’ve thought a great deal about everything you learned yesterday,” he said to Mark.
“I haven’t been able to think about anything else today,” Mark admitted with a wry glance at Rachel. “As Rachel can attest. She and I were supposed to talk about furnishing my house today and I couldn’t even concentrate long enough to pick paint colors.”
“I’m a professional decorator,” she explained when Ethan and Aislinn looked at her. She figured that was all they needed to know about her relationship with Mark at the moment.
Aislinn looked as though she would like to follow up on that tidbit, but Ethan stayed on topic. “I still haven’t told the rest of the family that we found you. I knew you wanted time to think about everything first.”
Looking a little nervous, Mark nodded. “I think we should wait until the DNA results come back before you break the news—just in case.”
Ethan shrugged. “I don’t have to wait. I know what the tests will show us.”
“So confident,” Mark muttered.
“I was old enough to remember when you disappeared. I remember what you looked like then—and I can see who you look like now. You look like a Brannon.”
Rachel could almost hear Mark swallow hard in response to that blunt comment. She knew he was still trying to adjust to his new identity, that he didn’t think of himself as a Brannon. She doubted that he knew how to think of himself at all now.
“That’s not exactly indisputable evidence,” he insisted. “We should wait until we have the test results.”
“But that could take weeks.”
“Ethan.” Aislinn gave him a stern look. “Stop trying to railroad him. Give him time to come to terms with all of this.”
“I gave him all day.”
She snorted delicately.
