The Bridesmaid's Gifts Read online

  Sighing impatiently, he shook a finger at her. “You’re trying to change the subject again. Why won’t you talk with your counselor? Don’t you like her?”

  “She’s nice enough. A little too perky. I prefer people with a little pepper to them. Like you.”

  He chuckled. “Flirting with me won’t make me forget what we’re talking about.”

  She laughed softly. “Maybe not now. But there was a time when I could have smiled at you and made you forget your name.”

  “I have no doubt of that.”

  “My late husband said I mesmerized him the first time he met me. Little did he know I planned it exactly that way.”

  “Set your cap for him, did you?”

  She nodded, remembering her certainty that marrying Lawrence would be vital to her future. Turned out she had been right. Had he not left her so well provided for, who knew where she would be now? “He never knew what hit him.”

  The young doctor laughed again, though Cassandra hadn’t actually been joking. And then he sobered. “You and your husband had no children?”

  She shook her head. “I was almost fifty when we married. He was seventy-five and had outlived a wife and a son. I made him very happy for the last few years of his life.”

  “And did he make you happy?”

  She suspected that her smile looked rather sad to him, though she tried to keep her emotions hidden. “He was very kind to me.”

  After a moment the doctor spoke again. “Forgive me if you think I’m prying, but I’ve noticed you never have visitors. You have no family?”

  “None that I would have any interest in seeing. Or vice versa.”

  That seemed to surprise him. “I can’t imagine anyone not wanting to spend time with you.”

  “Yes, well, you haven’t known me very long. I haven’t always been the charming and gracious lady you see now.”

  He looked at her as though he wasn’t quite sure if she was teasing him. She had spoken the truth, of course.

  “Still,” he said, and something about the way he watched her told her that he was choosing his words very deliberately, “it’s a shame you never had children. You wouldn’t be so lonely now.”

  Did he think that was what was bothering her? Loneliness?

  Perhaps he was right in a way, she conceded. But she had no intention of telling him everything. “Not everyone is meant to be a mother, Dr. Thomas,” she said gently, even as the memory of a baby’s cries echoed hauntingly through her mind.

  “Maybe not,” he said, standing, as if sensing that he’d gotten all he was going to get out of her this time. He paused for a moment beside her chair, setting a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I’d like to try another sleep aid for you, Cassandra. If this one doesn’t help you, then perhaps we should pursue some different avenues. Are you willing to work with me?”

  Because the poor man looked so genuinely distressed, so anxious to help, she nodded.

  “I’ll try the new sleep aid,” she said. “Maybe this one will work.”

  He seemed relieved that she had agreed to let him try again to help her. He wanted so badly to be of assistance to her.

  His kind nature was going to be severely tested someday, his tender heart broken. That wasn’t a guess. It was a certainty. But because she wasn’t ready to talk to him about such things, she kept her thoughts to herself.

  She waved him out with a smile that faded the moment the door closed behind him.

  Ethan left the clinic early Thursday afternoon, but rather than heading back to Joel’s house, he drove to Aislinn’s shop. She would probably be busy, but he had an urge to stop by anyway. He didn’t pause to ask himself why.

  She was busy, as it turned out. She was meeting with a giggling young woman and her mother, who were trying to decide on a wedding cake design. Sitting at the reception area table with her clients, Aislinn glanced up when Ethan walked in, excused herself and walked over to greet him, leaving the women to leaf slowly through the photo albums of cakes she had previously designed.

  “Hi.”

  He nodded. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt your meeting.”

  “No problem. I have fresh coffee in the kitchen if you’d like to have a cup while I finish up here.”

  “Sounds good. Thanks.”

  “There’s cake, too,” she added with a smile. “Cupcakes, actually. In the fridge. Help yourself.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Leaving her to her customers, he walked back into the kitchen. She had been busy that day, he noted immediately. There were not one but two cakes on the work island.

  The largest was obviously a wedding cake, though a bit different than the usual tiers-on-pillars design. This one was stacked in four graduated layers covered in a shiny, almost pearlescent frosting tinted a pale lavender. Amazingly realistic flowers in graduated shades of purple were arranged on the top layer and cascaded down both sides, intertwined with glossy green leaves that he could almost have believed were real had he not looked more closely. Rather than a bride and groom, a delicate white cage sat in the very center of the top, holding two white doves and decorated with thin, purple satin ribbon.

  The second cake was more whimsical. A groom’s cake, maybe? It looked amazingly like a fisherman’s creel with a fly-fishing reel lying on top. Fascinated, he studied the woven effect of the piped frosting, making it look exactly like a natural rattan basket. The top was brown and actually had a wood-grain pattern to it, and the hinges and clasp could well have been made of metal, though he knew they were edible. The reel was made of a small, round layer, decorated so realistically he could almost hear the line zing through it.

  Amazing. He couldn’t help but wonder if Aislinn was wasting her talents here. It wasn’t as if she had family holding her in this area. Not that he could tell, anyway. With the exception of a few close friends and her thriving business, she seemed to live a very solitary life. He’d gotten the impression that she loved her rather colorless home but rarely shared it with anyone else.

  Because that seemed all too familiar to him, he winced. He was often called a loner. He, too, kept his somewhat isolated home as a retreat from the demands of the outside world. Nic had once remarked that he and Aislinn were alike in some ways, and he had immediately denied that they had anything at all in common. He didn’t want to start rethinking that denial just now.

  He poured himself a cup of coffee and opened the refrigerator. The cupcakes were stacked on a plate, arranged almost like a cake themselves. Cheerfully decorated with yellow frosting and pink flowers, they were sort of sissy but looked too good to resist. He plucked one from the top of the stack and carried it and his coffee to the table to wait for Aislinn.

  From where he sat, he could easily overhear the conference going on in the other room. He made no effort not to eavesdrop. This was business, after all. His specialty.

  He could hear papers rustling as Aislinn began to talk. Probably taking notes. “So your colors are pumpkin and chocolate, is that right? Interesting choices, and very nice for a late fall wedding.”

  The bride spoke warmly. “Thank you. My fiancé keeps saying I’ve picked brown and orange and he thinks those are weird colors for a wedding, but I told him pumpkin and chocolate aren’t just brown and orange.”

  “No, of course not,” Aislinn agreed.

  Bull, Ethan thought. He agreed with the absent fiancé. Call the colors what you wanted, they were still brown and orange. And they did seem like sort of weird colors for a wedding.

  Aislinn spoke again. “Have you seen a cake you like in the photo albums? Or do you have ideas for a design you would like me to create for you?”

  “Since our wedding will take place in October and the colors are fall colors, I thought maybe something that fit the season, you know? Like maybe leaves and gourds and pumpkins and stuff.”

  For the first time, the mother of the bride spoke up. “Really, Lacey? Wouldn’t you rather have flowers and scallops and more delicate-looking things
on your wedding cake?”

  “No, Mom. I told you—I want my wedding to be different. I don’t want the same stuff everyone else has.”

  For the next twenty minutes they debated traditional versus creative wedding rituals while Aislinn contributed an occasional calming suggestion. At times, the discussion between mother and daughter grew rather heated, and Ethan suspected that there had been other such arguments during various stages of the wedding planning. But Aislinn seemed to be an old pro at keeping such conflicts under control, and by the time the duo left a short while later, they seemed to be satisfied with the results of the meeting.

  Despite how calm she had sounded, Aislinn looked a bit stressed when she joined Ethan in the kitchen. She headed straight for the coffeepot.

  “The wedding isn’t until October and they’re already ordering the cake?” Ethan asked, watching her.

  “I prefer six months’ notice,” she replied with a shrug. “They’re actually running a little behind. But I think I can work them in, since the cake she wants doesn’t sound overly complicated.”

  “You’re booked six months ahead?”

  “Yes. I can usually work in a few birthday and special-occasion cakes, but when it comes to the very complicated and labor-intensive cakes, I need lots of notice.”

  “Do you charge by the hour?”

  “By the serving,” she corrected. “The price per serving depends on the time involved and the cost of the supplies required.”

  “Makes sense.”

  She carried her coffee to the table and slid into the chair opposite him. “Did you have a cupcake?”

  “Actually, I had two of them. They were good. What was that filling? Sort of lemony?”

  “A lemon-orange flavor. A new recipe I’m trying.”

  “I’d add it to the menu.”

  “Thanks. I’ll take your advice into consideration.”

  “I usually get paid for my advice.”

  “And I usually get paid for my cupcakes.”

  He chuckled. “We’ll call it even.”

  They smiled at each other across the table, and he was rather surprised by how friendly and relaxed they were being with each other. Usually there was an under-current of tension, if not open antagonism, between them—and he was well aware that it was mostly his fault. He didn’t know exactly what had changed in his attitude toward her—heck, he didn’t even know why he was with her now, but it felt kind of nice.

  Maybe that was what spurred him to tell her, “I talked to my mother yesterday.”

  She looked at him over the rim of her coffee cup, waiting for him to continue.

  “I asked her some questions about Kyle’s accident.”

  “That must have been a difficult conversation for both of you.”

  Major understatement. “Yeah. It was.”

  “Did you tell her about me?”

  “No. I just implied that the subject was on my mind because the thirtieth anniversary of Kyle’s death is coming up soon.”

  Aislinn didn’t bother to remind him that she didn’t believe Kyle was dead. Instead, she asked, “Did you learn anything new from your mother?”

  He repeated the conversation as best he could remember, and she sat quietly listening and drinking her coffee.

  “The authorities looked for Kyle and Carmen for weeks before giving up,” he added. “They said they could have been carried miles away from the place they went in, considering how fast and how high the river was that week.”

  She remained silent.

  Looking at her narrowly, he asked, “I don’t suppose you can give me any other details about what happened that afternoon?”

  Frowning a little, she seemed to look inward, as if searching her mind for the answer to his question. But then she shook her head. “All I know is that they didn’t die that day.”

  “That day?”

  “Kyle is still living. I don’t know whether Carmen is alive.”

  He stood and poured himself another cup of coffee. “This gift of yours,” he said, annoyed at his own awkwardness, “have you ever used it to—you know—like, help Nic or something?”

  “I don’t—”

  “I guess I’m trying to ask if you’ve ever worked with the police to find missing persons. Anything like that.”

  She frowned. “Of course not. I couldn’t do anything like that.”

  “Don’t you ever get feelings about the cases Nic works?”

  “Sometimes, but I rarely say anything to her about it. I wouldn’t want to mislead her in any way. I make guesses, Ethan, and they aren’t always right.”

  “So how often are you wrong?”

  “I don’t keep records.”

  This time he was the one who remained silent, looking at her steadily across the table.

  She sighed. “When I get a certain type of strong feeling, I’m almost always right. But I rarely have clear enough details to help the police or anything like that. For example, I had a premonition that Nic was going to be injured in an accident last year in Alabama—but I didn’t have a clue how or when it was going to happen. I couldn’t prevent her from being hurt. So what good was it, really?”

  He twisted his coffee cup between his hands, thinking of how frustrating that would have been. To know her friend would be hurt yet not be able to prevent it.

  “It’s the same with you,” she added. “I know your brother is alive, but I can’t tell you where he is. Where he has been for the past thirty years. What happened on that long-ago afternoon. So you tell me—just how useful is this so-called gift of mine?”

  Ethan didn’t know quite how to respond to her plaintive question. Yet he was struck by the sincerity of her expression. The visible distress in her eyes. If she was faking, she was perhaps the best actor he had ever encountered.

  “You kept me from being broadsided at a traffic light,” he offered, compelled for some reason to try to encourage her.

  “Did I?”

  He nodded. “You didn’t provide specifics, but I kept your advice in mind. Maybe that’s what makes it useful. You give warnings, but it’s up to the people you tell to figure out how take advantage of them.”

  “Does that mean you’re starting to believe I’m not just making up the things I tell you?”

  Had he just been cleverly manipulated? He frowned, searching her expression again for any subtle sign of satisfaction. Seeing nothing, he shrugged, saying noncommittally, “Let’s just say I’m keeping an open mind.”

  “That’s something, anyway,” she said.

  “Best I can do.” He stood, carrying his coffee cup to the sink. “Are you about done here for the day? If so, you want to go have dinner somewhere?”

  “Dinner?” She seemed as surprised by the invitation as he was that he had impulsively issued it. “Now?”

  “Whenever you’re ready.” After all, he reasoned, he was tired of eating alone. And at least Aislinn was good company who wouldn’t read anything more than he intended into the outing. Heck, she would probably know how the evening would end before he did.

  She studied him a moment from her chair, as if trying to determine his motive for asking—and then she nodded and stood. “All right. I can clear up here in about ten minutes, if you don’t mind waiting.”

  “Not at all.”

  He wandered into the reception area to leaf through albums of her work while she prepared to leave. He noted there wasn’t one wedding cake with pumpkins on it. Yet he had no doubt that if Aislinn designed one, it would look good. When it came to her business, he had complete faith in her abilities.

  Chapter Eight

  She wouldn’t exactly say she was winning Ethan over, but at least he didn’t seem openly antagonistic anymore. She supposed that was a step forward.

  Not that she was trying to win him over, exactly, Aislinn assured herself as she sliced into a steak at the restaurant where she and Ethan had decided to dine. He would be leaving town in a few days, after all. She just didn’t like the thought of
him leaving while still thinking of her as a con artist or a crazy person.

  Maybe he was finally starting to see that she was just an average woman with above-average intuition.

  Even with his self-proclaimed ineptitude at small talk, Ethan managed to carry on a civil conversation with her as they ate. They didn’t talk about anything of particular importance. Mostly business stuff—his and her own. If there was one thing that got Ethan excited, she thought with a secret smile, it was business.

  “Aislinn.” Pamela Maclure stopped by the table, looking delighted to see her. Her round, reddish-toned face beamed with the smile she turned from Aislinn to Ethan. “It’s great to see you. And you’re Joel Brannon’s brother, aren’t you? I saw you at the wedding.”

  “Ethan Brannon,” he confirmed with a nod, rising to greet her.

  Looking pleased with the small courtesy, she extended her hand. “I’m Pamela Maclure. An old friend of Aislinn’s.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  “You, too. Please, sit down. I only stopped by to say hello.”

  Ethan returned to his seat and picked up his fork again.

  Pamela turned back to Aislinn. “Look, call me tomorrow, okay? I need to talk to you about something.”

  Aislinn groaned, knowing exactly what Pamela wanted to talk to her about. “Not another one, Pam. I’m really not interested, okay?”

  Pamela frowned and glanced quickly at Ethan. “No, really, this might really work out. Unless you’re, um—”

  “No,” she said firmly, shaking her head. She and Ethan were definitely not an item, which was what Pamela had implicitly asked. “Still not interested.”

  Happily married Pamela had been trying for months to fix her up with a string of men, none of whom had been in the least compatible with her. It didn’t help that Pamela billed Aislinn as her friend the psychic, which intrigued some men for all the wrong reasons. She would rather spend an evening with Ethan, who openly expressed his skepticism of such abilities, than with a guy who hoped to profit from them, as had the man who’d offered to split the take with her if she would help him place bets on winning football teams.