a cold chill go down his spine. He’d known for a fact that no one knew about those tests except his parents and himself. Just to confirm, he’d casually asked his mother afterward if she had mentioned the situation to anyone else. Anyone at all.
She had reminded him that she wanted to keep the tests absolutely secret until after she learned the results. She had been especially adamant that Joel was not to be told until after his honeymoon.
So how had Aislinn known?
He knew that so-called psychic con artists performed what were known as cold readings—throwing out vague comments and then watching carefully for the most minute changes in expression and subtle body language from their gullible marks. But as far as he’d been able to tell, Aislinn hadn’t prefaced her remarks about his mother’s health with anything he would have considered fishing for clues. And she hadn’t spent much time talking alone to either of his parents, so he kept coming back to the same question….
How had she known?
Not that he had changed his mind about her alleged abilities. Guess or guile, she hadn’t just pulled that prediction out of the ether. And while he fervently hoped she was right about the tests resulting in good news, he would consider it no more than a happy coincidence if it turned out to be true.
Just as well he wouldn’t be seeing her again anytime soon, he told himself as he finished his breakfast. He was just too uncomfortable around her, for quite a few reasons.
Someone rang the front doorbell, startling him as he set his dishes in the dishwasher. He pushed a hand through his tousled hair and moved toward the front door. He couldn’t imagine who would be at Joel’s door on a Sunday morning when everyone knew Joel was out of town. Maybe his parents hadn’t gotten that early start after all.
Having no psychic abilities of his own, he was surprised to find Aislinn on the other side of the door. She wore a gray T-shirt, jeans and sneakers, her dark hair pulled into a loose ponytail, no evidence of makeup on her striking face. She looked as though she had crawled out of bed, thrown on the first clothes she’d found and driven straight over. “What are you doing here?”
She didn’t appear to take offense at the blunt greeting. “I need to talk to you.”
“What about?”
She sighed. “May I come inside?”
For only a moment, he hesitated, tempted to close the door in her face. He finally stepped aside, not because he didn’t want to be rude but because he didn’t want to think of himself as a coward.
“Okay,” he said, facing her from several feet away, his arms crossed over his bare chest. “What is it? Another ‘prediction’?”
She looked around the room, her expression distracted, and then she turned and moved toward the hallway. Frowning, Ethan dropped his arms and followed her. “Where are you going?”
Without answering, she turned left, into Joel’s bedroom rather than into the guest room on the right where Ethan had been staying.
“Aislinn, what the hell are you—”
“There’s a photograph,” she said vaguely. “I need to—oh, here it is.”
The small, framed photo sat on top of a bookcase in one corner. The paperback mysteries Joel liked to read to relax at bedtime filled the bookcase almost to overflowing. On the wall above hung a framed watercolor painting of a peaceful lake cove surrounded by trees and boulders. Joel was the artist; until Nic had told him a few months earlier, Ethan hadn’t even known Joel liked painting with watercolors.
“You sure know your way around Joel’s house,” he muttered as Aislinn picked up the photograph.
“I’ve never been inside this house before,” she replied absently. “We’ve always gathered at Nic’s instead.”
So how had she…? Shaking his head impatiently, he told himself that he had no way of judging if she was even telling the truth. “Okay, what’s going on?”
She drew a deep breath and looked at him. He noted abruptly that she still looked as oddly pale as she had when they’d parted last night. Perhaps that was why it was no surprise when she warned, “You aren’t going to like this.”
He was pretty sure that would prove to be an understatement.
Aislinn had been too focused on finding the photograph to pay much more than passing attention to Ethan when he’d let her in. She’d managed maybe two hours of sleep last night before she had finally given in to the overwhelming urge to drive to Joel’s house. She’d waited as long as she could, doubting that Ethan would appreciate being awakened before dawn so she could find a photograph that was haunting her. Not that he’d been overjoyed to see her as it was.
Only now did she really look at him. He, too, seemed to have only recently crawled out of bed. His hair was mussed, he hadn’t shaved and he wasn’t wearing a shirt or shoes. His jeans weren’t snapped. A stark contrast to the tidy and tuxedoed groomsman she had seen the evening before, she thought.
She wondered if it was weird that she thought he looked even better like this than he had at the wedding. More natural. This was the real Ethan—and despite his forbidding expression, he was a very attractive man.
Pulling her gaze away from the well-defined muscles of his lean chest and abdomen, she moistened her dry lips, her fingers tightening around the small silver frame clutched in her hands. She wasn’t exactly sure how to begin, since she already knew he wasn’t going to believe a word she said.
“Well?” he prompted impatiently.
Might as well stop stalling. She turned the photo toward him. “You recognize this picture, of course.”
He glanced at it, then shrugged. “It’s my family, obviously. Some thirty years ago.”
“Your father. Your mother. You.” She pointed to each figure as she named them. Ethan was perhaps six in the photograph, maybe seven. She indicated the younger boy next to him. “And this is Joel.”
Ethan nodded, a muscle clenching in his jaw as they both turned their attention to the baby sitting in Elaine’s lap.
“Who is this?”
For just a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer. And then he muttered, “That’s Kyle. I assume you already know he died when he was almost two.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
He crossed his arms over his chest, making the muscles bulge just a little. If he was trying to look intimidating, he succeeded. Of course, he also looked sexy as all get-out, but she couldn’t think about that right now.
“Why do you want to know?”
“Please, Ethan. Just humor me for a few minutes. I know this must be difficult for you.”
“It happened a long time ago,” he said with a slight shrug. “I hardly remember him.”
It took no special ability at all for her to know that he was lying. She looked at him without responding.
After a moment he shook his head and
