Rachel continued with the fourth card, but Eslin’s thoughts still lingered on the second. A dark-haired man sitting on a throne of judgment was pretty transparent, even to her—Gage Roundtree, who definitely fell into the category of the opposition.
“Oh, look at five and six!” Rachel’s excited cry drew Eslin’s attention to the layout. “The Hermit in five indicates the possibility of a journey.” She paused and laid a plum-colored nail on the sixth card in the layout, which was also the sixth card of the major arcana. “The Lovers, something that will come to you unbidden in the near future.”
Though Eslin clearly recalled from Rachel’s dissertation that the card represented the harmony of the inner and outer aspects of life as well as choice, temptation, and attraction, Gage Roundtree’s image was still fresh enough in her mind for a blush to creep up her neck. When she looked past the top of Rachel’s head and saw Gage leaning against the atrium arch, she felt her blush deepen.
He stood with his arms folded, one booted foot crossed over the other. His dark head was tilted pensively to one side. As their eyes met, he smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. Sardonic and insolent, it confirmed Eslin’s suspicion that he’d heard every word his mother had said.
Much to Gage’s surprise the blushing Eslin Hillary did not look away. Instead she held his gaze, not boldly or defiantly, but there was definitely a challenge in her deep, almost violet-blue eyes—the same eyes that had kept swimming up at him from the sale lists he’d been studying during his meeting with Ethan, the same eyes that had made concentrating on anything else impossible. He hadn’t daydreamed about a woman in years, and as much as the recurring vision of her face had troubled him, it was nothing compared to the wrench he felt now as he realized first that the challenge in her eyes was not sexual, and second, how much he wanted it to be.
“Well.” Turning halfway around in her chair to look at her son, Rachel gave a short laugh and grinned at Eslin over her shoulder. “If it isn’t the King of Swords in the flesh.”
“What’s this?” Gage asked as he walked over to the table. “Am I in Miss Hillary’s reading?”
“Yes, very significantly.” Rachel turned back to the table and tapped her fingernail on the second card as he leaned over her chair. “You’re the opposing force.”
Bracing his right hand on his mother’s shoulder, and very much aware that Eslin’s eyes were still on him, Gage reached forward with his left hand and placed a finger on the Lovers. “How about here?” he asked, and glanced up across the table.
Though Eslin’s blush deepened, her straightforward gaze never wavered. His stomach tightened and the gold-plated horseshoe nail burned against his chest.
“It doesn’t mean that,” Rachel said, and slapped his hand away. “At least,” she added, with a twinkle in her eye as she glanced up at her son and then at Eslin, “I don’t think so. Does it?”
“No,” Eslin answered quietly.
Her soft, half-whispered reply stung Gage like a slap in the face, but he smiled at her again.
“Better luck next time for both of us.”
“Speaking of luck!” Rachel pushed back her chair and rose. “My chart said I’d be lucky today! You must see it, Eslin.”
“Please don’t bother.”
“Oh, it’s no bother!” she insisted as she disappeared into the atrium.
Metal casters squealed against the tile floor, and Eslin jumped, startled, as Gage shoved his mother’s chair against the table and leaned his hands on the leather back.
“My brother tells me you’re spending the weekend.”
“He invited me,” Eslin replied. “I haven’t decided yet if I’m staying.”
“Mother will be very disappointed if you leave.”
What about you? Eslin wondered.
“She takes this very seriously, you know.” He waved one hand over the layout. “Too seriously.”
The casters screeched again as he jerked the chair back and sat down in it.
“I don’t like it, Miss Hillary. I don’t like it at all.”
“And you don’t like me, do you?”
He hesitated, overlong, Eslin thought, and she felt sure she’d die if he said yes.
“I don’t like what you believe in,” he answered slowly.
That, Eslin thought, was the understatement of the year.
“What about you, Mr. Roundtree? What do you believe in?”
“We aren’t discussing my beliefs,” he replied curtly. “We’re discussing yours.”
“Are we?” Eslin smiled. “Why do you feel so threatened by psychic phenomena?”
He stared at her for a moment, his jaw tightening, then picked up the King of Swords from the layout and gave it a derisive flip across the table. “There’s no logical explanation for it,” he said flatly. “It’s a crutch for people who can’t deal with reality.”
“Then how do you justify your neck chain?” Eslin asked. “Lucky charms aren’t logical either.”
A sudden mottled flush darkened Gage’s throat above his shirt collar. “Don’t encourage my mother, Miss Hillary. She gets all the encouragement she needs from her witch doctor friend Fitzsimmons.”
“Thank you, Mr. Roundtree,” Eslin snapped, bristling at his command and his insult to Doc Fitz. “You’ve just helped me make up my mind not to stay for the weekend—or for lunch.”
Eslin stood and so did Gage. Lifting her coat from the back of the sofa, she started past him, but he stepped in front of her.
“We haven’t discussed my brother’s proposal.”
“Oh, I think we have.”
“What about this?” He picked up the sixth card and showed it to her.
Hands clasped, the nude lovers stared at a cloud-draped angel above their heads. I will not blush again, I will not, Eslin told herself firmly, yet felt a telltale wash of warmth across her face.
“What about it?” she asked stiffly.
“May I carry your suitcase to my room?”
“Is that your own charming way of asking me to stay?”
“At least for lunch.” He smiled and tucked the Lovers card into his shirt pocket. “Anything beyond that is up to you.”
Chapter 3
Midway through dessert Eslin became aware of the faint, buzzing echo inside her head that meant someone in the dining room was reading her mind. The realization gave her such a jolt that she nearly dropped her spoonful of raspberry frappé as she looked around the table.
With her interest in the occult and psychic phenomena, Rachel was the most likely candidate, but she sat on Eslin’s left contentedly savoring the frappé with half-closed eyes. At the opposite end of the table Ethan stirred his coffee and glanced at his watch. That left Gage, who slouched across from Eslin with his elbow propped on the arm of his chair.
He watched her intently while his untouched frappé melted slowly in its crystal dish. So did the pit of Eslin’s stomach as she looked into his dark-lashed eyes.
“Tell me, Miss Hillary,” he said evenly, as he raised his right hand and fingered the edge of the Lovers card, which protruded from his shirt pocket. “How do you propose to find my horse?”
“I’m not sure I can.” Eslin folded her napkin on the table, tilted her head slightly to listen for the echo—but it was gone. “I only agreed to try.”
“And only if you have my approval.”
“That’s right,” she affirmed, and shifted her gaze to his face.
Between his collarbones and against the tanned skin of his upper chest, the bent, gold-plated horseshoe nail winked dully in the washed-out sunlight filtering through the French doors behind Eslin’s chair. Her palm prickled; she rubbed it against her skirt, and tried to remember what Doc Fitz had said about psychometry.
She knew the basic theory, that certain people, by holding or touching an object, were able to divine facts or impressions concerning that object or a person associated with it. In a paper Doc had written he had put forth the argument that this was possible because some peo
ple were simply more sensitive than others to vibrations.
“If I agree,” Gage said pointedly, “how do you intend to proceed?”
“I usually try to find out as much as I can about the subject and the circumstances of his disappearance,” Eslin explained. “Any insights into his or her personality or the physical facts surrounding the disappearance help give me a—a feel for that person or place.”
“And from there?”
“I prefer to sleep on it, if possible.”
That puzzled him. The slight lift of his left eyebrow told her so.
“You are, then—clairvoyant?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Do you read minds?”
“No,” she replied simply, deciding, as she listened again for the echo, that it was best to avoid lengthy explanations.
Dammit, Gage swore silently, as he hooked his neck chain over his index finger, I wish you could. I wish you could see what you’re doing to me. Irritably, he threaded the nail back and forth on the chain and watched her eyes dart quickly away from him.
“Nor can I levitate this table,” Eslin continued brusquely, as she curled her fingers into her itchy right palm. “And I can’t make candlesticks fly through the air or put you in touch with your dearly departed Uncle Harry.”
She watched a sardonic smile curl one corner of Gage’s mouth. With all her heart Eslin wished he’d let go of the chain.
“Ganymede,” he told her, “isn’t a human being.”
“No, but Marco Byrne is,” she countered, “and if I can’t get a fix on Ganymede, I may be able to tune in on him.”
“What if—there’s nothing out there for you to tune in to?”
The catch in his voice was almost imperceptible, but Eslin heard it, along with another brief snatch of fuzzy echo.
“If he’s destroyed Ganymede, Mr. Roundtree, you’d know,” she said gently. “You wouldn’t need me to tell you.”
His intent, unwavering stare didn’t change, but the taut gold chain around his neck went slack and the nail thudded against his collarbone. Eslin started in her chair.
“Do I make you nervous, Miss Hillary?”
“No,” she lied.
“Gage, really,” Ethan put in tiredly. “A simple yes or no will do.”
Again, that wickedly-pleased-with-himself smile twisted one side of his mouth, and his slate-colored eyes moved toward his brother as he straightened and laid both elbows on the arms of his chair. Lacing his fingers together over his solar plexus, he looked squarely at Eslin.
“I’ll agree to give you a chance, Miss Hillary. I’ll even help you. There’s a dossier on Byrne in my office, compiled by the FBI and the detectives my brother hired. Change your clothes—a horse barn is no place to wear a skirt and high heels—and meet me in the sun-room in half an hour.”
He rose then, and walked out of the pecan-wainscoted dining room.
On Eslin’s left, Rachel exhaled a deep breath. “Where did I go wrong with him?”
You never spanked him, Eslin commented to herself.
“Well,” Ethan said with a smug smile, “I’d say that Gage is coming around to our side.”
No thanks to you, Eslin thought sourly.
“Let me show you to your room,” Rachel said, as she laid her napkin beside her empty dessert dish. “It’s never a good idea to keep Gage waiting.”
And lately more so than usual. Eslin heard the addendum inside her head, but wasn’t sure if it came from Rachel’s mind or her own. Still, there’d been no doubt about the echo she’d heard, and she wondered about it again as Ethan held Rachel’s chair, then her own, and she followed the older woman out of the dining room, through the sun-room, and across the atrium.
Gritting her teeth against the gurgling noise of the fountain, she followed Rachel up the stairs past the plant-dotted gallery behind the Spanish grill. On the second floor Rachel turned left and led her into a large, airy room with French doors that opened onto one of the balconies she’d seen earlier from Ethan’s car. Multicolored rugs were scattered across the red-tiled floor and heavy Spanish furniture lined the white stucco walls.
“Your clothes are there.” Rachel indicated a tall, wide wardrobe as she crossed the room and opened the bathroom door. “I hope Ethan remembered to tell you to bring a dinner dress.”
“He did,” Eslin replied, thinking that it was about the only thing he had remembered to tell her.
“Good. I’ve invited some friends for dinner. They’re all dying to meet you. I hope you don’t mind.”
Oh, Lord, no, Eslin groaned silently, her mind conjuring an image of a roomful of people wearing sequined black caftans. “Oh, how lovely,” she lied with her pluckiest smile.
“Fitzie’s coming, too, of course. Now don’t let Gage forget the time, will you? Cocktails at six.”
Blowing a kiss over her shoulder, Rachel breezed out of the room. As the door clicked shut behind her, Eslin dropped tiredly into a sandalwood chair.
Of course Fitzie’s coming, she thought, certain now that she’d walked into one of Doc’s little experiments. For the past three weeks she’d suspected that he’d introduced her to the Roundtrees for some other purpose besides finding Ganymede. But she’d known Doc long enough—as friend, mentor, and employer—to know that it was useless to ask what it was.
As useless as it had been to ask Ethan about his family. He’d told her very little, just that ten years and four miscarriages separated himself and Gage, and that their father’s death five years ago had left Rachel bereft. But he hadn’t told her that loneliness had driven his mother to dabbling in the paranormal for comfort, or that the sibling rivalry between him and Gage bordered on fratricide.
Across the room the big four-poster bed beckoned her, and Eslin stifled a yawn with the back of her hand. Sleepiness was a good sign, but Gage Roundtree was waiting for her.
After quickly changing her clothes, she braced herself against the irksome noise of the fountain, walked rapidly down the few steps to the gallery, then down the main staircase. With relief she crossed the atrium and entered the sun-room.
Gage was already there, leaning against the stone wall that edged the sliding glass doors. His hands were stuffed into the pockets of a faded denim jacket, whose turned-up collar just touched his jaw. He stared out at the garden, his elbows slack at his sides and his right boot crossed over his left.
Eslin’s boot heels clicked loudly against the tile floor, but he didn’t move. She slowed down as she realized Gage hadn’t heard her come in. His eyes flicked toward her then, slid past her green sweater, well-worn jeans, and came to rest on her scratched, scuffed Acme boots.
“You’re full of surprises, aren’t you, Miss Hillary?” He asked as he raised his eyes to meet hers. “Why, may I ask, didn’t you wear those this morning?”
“I had no idea that Ethan was going to take me down to the Stables,” she replied evenly. “If I had, I certainly would have worn them. Outside a barn, however, I think boots look rather tacky.”
Gage said nothing, just smiled as he pushed the sliding glass door open and stepped back. “Shall we?”
Eslin nodded and walked outside. He followed and shut the door. The stiff, cool wind which promised another storm whipped her hair across her eyes as she trailed Gage across the courtyard to a grilled gate in the garden wall. He opened it, again stepped back to let her pass, then led the way across a strip of lawn separating the courtyard from the driveway where a battered blue Jeep was parked in front of a hitching post.
“I thought hitching posts went out with John Wayne movies,” she said with a laugh.
Gage didn’t answer, just walked past her and opened the flimsy, black vinyl passenger door. Leaning his forearm on the roof, he looked at her and waited.
Oh, brother, Eslin thought, as she slid past him and inside the jeep, this afternoon’s going to be about as much fun as cataloging the AMA journal. Gage got in behind the wheel, started the engine, and backed the vehicle away from the hitching po
st.
Bucking wildly in first gear, the Jeep careened onto the road and swooped down the hill toward the Stables. Gage drove with the speed of Mario Andretti, and all the skill of a fifteen-year-old with a learner’s permit. Eslin prayed to every saint whose name she could recall, and closed her eyes as one of the front wheels swerved ever closer to the ditch on the right side of the road.
Mercifully, it was a short drive, and when the Jeep screeched to a stop, she warily opened her eyes and peered at Ganymede’s barn. Gage switched off the motor and jumped out of the Jeep. On weak knees Eslin bailed out of his deathtrap, and hurried after him. He yanked the barn door open by its rope handle, held it aside while she entered, then followed and let the heavy, cross-planked portal fall shut.
Six steps behind, Eslin followed Gage down the loam corridor to an oak-paneled door. He pushed it open, entered ahead of her, and flipped on the light.
Years’ worth of dust covered shelves that were clogged with books, bits, bridles, feed catalogs, socks, and mismatched gloves. The color of the rug, where it wasn’t black with mud or worn down to the woven backing, was indistinguishable. Gingerly, Eslin stepped over the threshold.
Bent over the paper-strewn front of a large mahogany desk, Gage switched on a tarnished brass lamp. “Here’s the file,” he said with a vague wave at a manila folder resting in the center of a green vellum blotter. “Make yourself comfortable.”
While he strode across the room to a tattered horsehair sofa, Eslin eased into a rickety wooden chair behind the desk. Her eyes fell on a milk-glass lighter turned on its side next to a round amber ashtray. Shaped like Aladdin’s lamp, the lighter looked oddly feminine and out of place in the room, and reminded Eslin of a similar lighter that had graced her mother’s lace-doilied dressing table when Eslin was just a child. The memory dredged up others—of medicated inhalers and a respiratory therapy machine screwed to the top of an oxygen tank.
Lynn Michaels Page 3
