The Bridesmaid's Gifts. Gina Wilkins
It was going to take a lot of persuasion for Elaine to get him away for that European vacation she longed for, Ethan thought with a shake of his head. Lou Brannon was the very epitome of a contented homebody. Something Ethan understood a bit too well.
Glancing at the clock on the nightstand, he saw that it was just after seven. Yet he’d bet his parents were already on the road. His dad liked to get an early start.
So here he was, the only member of his family in a town where he hardly knew anyone. During the five days he had been here, he’d spent several hours at Joel’s clinic, meeting the partner and staff, looking over the operations with an eye toward streamlining bookkeeping and maximizing profits. Joel and Bob were literally putting their business into his hands.
He and their newly hired office manager, Marilyn Henderson, would meet with several software salespeople during the next week, as well as have long discussions about existing office practices. They would pore over the books and filing systems, deciding what to change and what to leave alone—though there would be very little of the latter.
Joel and Bob were great guys and excellent doctors, but neither of them had paid much attention to the business part of the practice they had opened just under two years earlier. They could definitely use some help in that area, and Ethan already had a plan in mind. Fortunately Marilyn seemed to be in agreement about the way a pleasant yet efficient medical office should be managed.
Since he was alone in the house, he pulled on a pair of jeans and zipped them but left the snap undone. Barefoot and shirtless, he wandered into the kitchen, yawning and wondering what Joel had left for breakfast. He found orange juice in the refrigerator and poured himself a glass, then popped a bagel into the toaster. Only then did he admit that from the moment he’d opened his eyes he had been trying without success to forget about Aislinn Flaherty.
He had every intention of avoiding her for the remainder of his stay in Cabot. Shouldn’t be too hard. He doubted that she would visit the pediatric practice. And he wouldn’t be ordering any cakes.
He’d given up trying to decide if she was crooked or crazy, but her comment about his mother’s upcoming medical tests had made 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