A Breath of Magic

by Tracy Madison

  I opened my mouth to tell Ben that I’d known from the moment his brother touched me that something was wrong, but before the words came out he grabbed Gabriel’s arm and yanked him up.

  “You’ve gone too far. Get the hell out of my life and leave my women alone!” Rearing back, he punched his brother in the jaw. Gabe crashed backward, once again landing on the sofa.

  “Heya, Benji. I figured that was the quickest way to get you to talk to me.” Rubbing his chin, Gabe shrugged, as if he’d expected the punch, as if he knew he’d asked for it. “I need you to understand the truth. It’s time we resolved this, don’t you think?”

  Ben reached out to haul his brother up again, but I stepped in between them, totally aware of the growing crowd of on-lookers. “Ben, let’s leave.” I grasped his arm and tugged. “Come on. Please? Let’s just get out of here.”

  He focused on me, anger and betrayal and hurt darkening his features. Without saying a word, he reached into his pocket and pulled the valet ticket out and handed it to me. “Go wait in the car, Chloe. I’m not finished with my brother yet. We”—he spoke the words slowly—“have unfinished business.”

  I looked from one brother to the other, but neither appeared ready to budge. This, whatever this was, didn’t really involve me. And while I wanted to stay, wanted to protect Ben, I also knew he needed me to leave.

  “Fine. If that’s what you want.” I turned on my heel and faced Gabe. “If you ever try to pretend you’re your brother with me again, I’ll punch you somewhere it will really hurt. Got it?”

  His lips twisted into a grin as he nodded. Weird, but I thought I saw a glint of satisfaction in his eyes. Pivoting back to Ben, I stood up on my tiptoes and kissed him on his cheek and whispered, “I knew he wasn’t you. But thank you for rescuing me.”

  Ben’s eyes softened. “Please go wait in the car. I won’t be long.”

  Knowing I couldn’t dissuade him, I left the room with shaky legs and a rapidly beating heart. I kept my gaze straight ahead as I made my way out into the night air, and while I waited for the valet to bring around Ben’s car. It wasn’t until I was safely inside and had pulled the car up so that it was out of the way that I realized something I should have latched on to immediately. Gabriel was Ben’s identical twin brother. They looked exactly alike. Which meant, they both looked like the man in my drawing. Either could be the man in my drawing.

  Everything inside of me bottomed out, and a whole new slew of shivers overtook me. Fear crawled up my throat. I tried to swallow it away. I tried to calm myself. I tried to think about this new dilemma as rationally as I could. Of course, that was impossible. Because now I had to seriously consider if I’d been focusing on the wrong man this entire time. Was there any chance at all that Gabriel was the man in my picture, the man from whom I’d felt such strong love emanate when I’d fallen into our wedding scene?

  Bile replaced the fear in my throat. Nausea twisted and churned in my stomach. No. Just…no. He couldn’t be. Not with the way my body reacted to him as opposed to Ben. Not with the heat that had coursed through me the very first time I’d laid eyes on Ben, not to mention the complete and utter intimacy we’d found with each other. So, no. It couldn’t be Gabriel in that picture. That would be the worst joke ever. Worse than anything else I could imagine. Because I’d lied to myself earlier that evening, during my dance with Ben. I wasn’t falling in love with him. I was already there, whether the timing made sense or not, whether other people would say it was too fast or not. I was in love with Ben Malone. Not with Gabriel. Nothing would change that.

  But…had I fallen for the wrong man? Or was Gabriel yet another test of fate, to see how I’d react? Honestly, if so, I was getting pretty damn tired of fate screwing with me.

  It was that moment I decided I’d had enough of fate. It was time—past time—for me to take control, for me to put into motion the future I wanted. I wanted it with Ben. Even if, for some reason, he wasn’t the man in my drawing, I didn’t even care. He was the man for me. I was as sure of it as I was of the creepy-crawly sensation I’d experienced with Gabriel. That had been pure instinct; it had been my heart and soul not recognizing him as the man I loved.

  Feeling better, I closed my eyes and thought about how much I believed in me and Ben. About how I’d been able to see us together almost since the minute we met. Another surge of calmness erupted from deep within, and I smiled.

  “Hey, fate?” I whispered. “Go to hell. I’m in charge now.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ben drove us to his house in total silence. I figured he needed the time to come to grips with whatever had developed with his brother, and I had my own thinking to do, so the quiet came as a relief. It was also a relief to be going to his house. I’d been half-afraid that he would insist on taking me home.

  He carried my overnight bag into his place, and I excused myself to change into more comfortable pajama bottoms and a short-sleeved shirt. When I found him in the kitchen, I had a momentary spasm of panic. This was the setting from my vision at the séance, except Ben hadn’t been there. I could almost see Mari huddled in the hallway and Sara in tears on the phone.

  With great effort, I shoved the disturbing image away and turned my attention to Ben. He had on a pair of gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt, and a pot of coffee was brewing. He nodded toward the table. “We should probably talk.”

  “Yes, we should.” I sat down. “There are things I need to say to you as well, but I’d like you to go first.” Tonight, one or way another, he was going to learn about Mari, the séance and Sara. Even though I’d hoped to see Mari again first, I couldn’t put this off any longer. But hearing his side would, I hoped, give me the complete picture before I shared the bits and pieces I knew. Regardless, right now my concern was for him. “Are you okay?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know if I am. I’ve known you for what? Two weeks…almost three? You’ve made me want things I haven’t wanted in longer than I can remember. I don’t understand that, but when I saw Gabriel with you”—he ran his hand over his jaw—“it brought me back to a place I never wanted to visit again.”

  “I knew he wasn’t you. It didn’t make sense that I knew, but when he touched me…well, everything inside tightened up.” I shivered at the memory. “For a second, I thought I’d lost my mind.”

  The coffeemaker beeped. Ben brought the pot, two mugs and the carton of half-and-half to the table. Sitting down, he poured two cups. “That’s my fault. I should’ve told you I had an identical twin.”

  I wrapped my hands around my mug, the warmth soaking into my skin. “Why didn’t you?”

  “I’m not sure. Eventually, I would have. But I try not to think about Gabe, and he wasn’t supposed to be there tonight. That’s the only reason I went. We tend to take turns at company and family gatherings now. Ever since…” He clamped his jaw shut. “That’s not an excuse. I’m sorry, Red. I’m so sorry I put you in that position.”

  “You couldn’t have known he’d be there.” I remembered the burning sensation of being watched after our dance. Gabe. Otherwise, how would he have recognized me? “And even if you had, how could you have known he’d pretend to be you?”

  Ben drew in a ragged breath. “I might have guessed.”

  That startled me. A lot. “How so?”

  “It’s a game we used to play. It started way back in high school. If he was dating a girl he really liked, I’d pretend to be him to see if she could tell us apart. He’d do the same for me.” Ben shifted in his chair, obviously uncomfortable with his admission. “We used to say that the girl who could tell us apart was the girl we’d settle down with. Only none of them ever did.” He planted his gaze on me. “Until you.”

  A warm glow of satisfaction unfurled in my chest. I had known. Suddenly, the look in Gabe’s eyes made sense. “Your brother was happy I knew, Ben! I mean, I don’t like what he did, but maybe he had good intentions?”

  “No. He wanted my attention and got it. I’ve painstaki
ngly avoided him, and he decided it was time to get something off his chest. So he used you to get to me.” There was more pain in Ben’s voice than anger.

  Suddenly, sickeningly, what Sara had shown me earlier slid into place. “Sara loved Gabe, didn’t she?” That’s what those images had meant. They weren’t all of her and Ben. Some were of her and Gabe. That’s what she’d been trying to show me: how she’d loved one brother and not the other. “Oh, God, Ben. I’m so sorry.”

  “How did you know that?” He gulped a swallow of coffee and then shook his head, as if how I knew didn’t matter. “Yes, and it all started with this stupid game we thought was so clever.”

  “Tell me,” I whispered. “Tell me what happened.”

  By the way his jaw clenched, I didn’t think he would. A few minutes passed, and he nodded. “When I met Sara, I fell for her fast. We slept together after our third date, and by our sixth, I’d already decided she was the girl I was going to marry.” He chuckled humorlessly. “I used to be a romantic.”

  A quick spurt of jealousy tightened my throat. Which was completely ridiculous. “Where does Gabe come into the picture?”

  “My brother joined the army instead of going to college. He came home for a two-week leave before deployment. I was under a lot of stress with school, so when he suggested that we play our old game and that he take Sara out so I could study, I foolishly agreed.”

  “And she couldn’t tell you apart?”

  “Not at first. They went out, had too much to drink, and apparently she had more of a connection with him than with me. He felt the same connection, so he confessed who he was. They ended up in bed. I didn’t know this for years.” Ben gulped down another swallow of coffee “But after their date, Sara ended our relationship, saying that we’d gotten too serious. That she wanted to focus on school. I believed her. And Gabe said very little about their night out. But a month or so later, Sara discovered she was pregnant. So we married.”

  “But you had no idea she’d slept with your brother? Why didn’t she contact him? Why didn’t he tell you?”

  “He was deployed and wasn’t easily reachable, and I don’t think Sara knew how to get hold of him. Anyway, he didn’t know she was pregnant or that we married until he came home. By then, Rissa was a little over a year old, and he says now that he didn’t want to disrupt our family.” Ben’s eyes clouded with disbelief. “He actually told me that he thought he’d be able to stay away from Sara and let us be happy.”

  “But…”

  Ravaged eyes met mine. “Sara and I had an active sex life up until she met Gabe. She had no idea whose baby she carried. With Gabe gone for two years, she…she decided to cut her losses with me, rather than being a single mother.”

  “Wh-when did you find this out? How…how could she do that to you? To Gabe? How could he do this to you?”

  “You think I haven’t asked myself that question? I don’t know! Sara was excellent at keeping secrets. Gabe didn’t live in Chicago until the year before the accident, when he was discharged from the army, so I rarely saw them together.” Ben closed his eyes. “I feel like an idiot that I didn’t catch on. Our marriage was never easy, but we had Marissa, and there were good moments that I’d hold on to, believing we had a chance. Once a year or so, Gabe would come home for a visit and Sara would change, grow colder and become more difficult for months after. I never made the connection.”

  At that second, I wanted to strangle both Sara and Gabe. I also wanted to pull Ben into my arms and comfort him. I did neither. “Until?”

  “Until a few months before the accident. I came home unexpectedly. They were arguing, and I heard everything. I remember standing there, listening to her wail about how miserable she was, and him telling her repeatedly that they were in an untenable situation. That he wouldn’t hurt me by taking my wife away.” Ben growled. “What a joke. As if sleeping with my wife throughout my entire marriage wouldn’t hurt me.”

  Anger and pain became a hard, tight ball in my chest. “What did you do?”

  “What could I do? I confronted them. Gabe apologized, but it was kind of late. Sara was strangely calm, as if she knew I’d been listening. She…seemed relieved that she didn’t have to pretend anymore. She asked for a divorce so she could be with Gabe. I told her that Rissa would stay with me, but that she could have the divorce. And then I went back to work because I couldn’t handle being around them.”

  “But you…you didn’t divorce.”

  “No. When I came home that night, Sara had a sudden change of heart. Told me she was sorry, that she wanted to make things work and that she’d stay away from Gabe. I didn’t believe her, and I didn’t want to ‘make things work,’ but I thought that if we could hang on until Marissa turned eighteen and left for college, things would be easier on her. Rissa was all I cared about.” Ben stood and paced the kitchen, lost in his memories.

  My heart shattered as I watched and listened to him. No wonder he’d closed himself off from life. He’d thought he had everything and then found out that the two people he should have been able to trust most in the world had betrayed him beyond reason.

  He cleared his throat and continued. “What I didn’t know until tonight, what my brother has been so dead set on telling me—as if I would suddenly see him as an upstanding man—was that she’d wanted Gabe to fight me in court for paternity of Marissa. He refused. He told her that I was Rissa’s father by the very fact I’d raised her, that no court would see it different, and that he wouldn’t do that to me or to Rissa even if there was a chance. After hearing that, Sara got cold feet. As much as she claimed to love my brother, she still loved her daughter more.”

  Okay, that information helped ease the seething anger I was feeling toward Ben’s brother and late wife. Not much, but a little. “You are her father. You know that, right?”

  Ben stopped pacing and faced me. “In my heart I am—was—her father, but I hate that I’ll never know for sure. And with her gone, it’s like I can’t let go of this one thing. Most of my adult life has been consumed by a lie, and I—I just want to know the truth, but I have no way of finding out. Not now. Not ever.”

  “You could have done DNA testing, couldn’t you? We still could! I saw Mari’s hairbrush in her room the other night. We could—”

  “Identical twins, Red. Our DNA is the same, at least as far as a paternity test goes. So no, I’ll never know. It shouldn’t matter. I raised her. I loved—love—her. But this is tearing me up. Because if I’m not Rissa’s father, then what did all those years mean?”

  And there was the answer I’d been searching for. Ben’s emotions regarding his daughter were tying her to him, tying her to this world. But how in the hell was I supposed to fix that?

  “Mari is still here,” I blurted before I lost my confidence. “She’s confused by a lot of things, but she wants to move on. I think she can’t because of what you just shared.”

  Icy blue eyes met mine, and a shiver rolled down my spine. “What do you mean, she’s still here?” His gruff, doubtful tone sent another shiver through me. “You’re saying this as if it’s a fact. As if you know it to be true.”

  “I do know. I’ve seen her. I’ve talked with her. Before I even knew who she was, Ben.” I grabbed my coffee and swallowed a gulp, burning my throat in the process. I coughed but forced myself to continue. “She…she came to me at the Mystic Corner the same day I met you. But she didn’t talk to me then. It was…um…the day I asked you out. And then again the day you came to see me there. Oh, and I also saw her in her bedroom. That night you found me in there. She was there, Ben.”

  I stopped speaking and watched him, holding myself as still as possible, waiting for the moment he’d either kick me out for being a raving lunatic or accuse me of being cruel and heartless. Asking him to believe in this, in everything I’d just said, was a lot, and for a few devastating minutes I was afraid it was too much to ask.

  “Say something.” I clasped my hands together in an attempt to stop them fro
m shaking. “Tell me to go to hell or ask me to explain more or…or…”

  “You can see ghosts?” He spoke softly and slowly, as if I were a nutcase and he was afraid I was going to leap up and do something crazy. Like grab a knife and attack him. He backed up a few paces. “How is that possible?”

  “It’s…an ability. She needs help. I’m the only one who can see her, who can talk to her. She was drawn to me somehow, I don’t know how. And that’s why I gave you that book! That’s why I’ve been so curious about her.” I gulped, not liking the expression on his face. “And that’s why I agreed to have a séance last night.”

  He narrowed his eyes and his jaw tensed. “Assuming I believe in the possibility, how do I know you’re telling the truth, and that you’re not…lying in some misguided attempt to make me feel better?”

  “I wouldn’t lie about something like this! But…um…” I racked my brain, trying to think of something to prove my honesty. “Mari is always dressed in the same clothes. A pair of faded blue jeans and a white zip-up hoodie. Does that mean anything?”

  His face blanched. “That’s…She…” His eyes seared into me, and a tremor rumbled through him. “Rissa was a tomboy. She hated dresses and anything girly, so I refused to bury her in clothes she hated. Those jeans and that sweat-shirt were her favorite clothes, so I…”

  He blinked, and a tear rolled down his cheek, and my heart broke into pieces all over again, for his loss, for his pain, for everything that he’d dealt with.

  “…buried her in those. There’s no way you could have known.”

  “She, um, also introduced herself to me as Mari. You said only her friends called her that. She’s very sad, Ben. I wanted to tell you as soon as you showed me the picture and I realized who she was. Until that moment, I didn’t even know she was a ghost! I thought she was a runaway or in trouble somehow. But”—I cleared my throat—“she appeared at my place, after I fainted, and she shook her head no and held a finger to her lips. I don’t think she wanted me to tell you until I understood why she was here. So I waited.”