“Is he a young neighbor or an old neighbor?” Mickey asked with a sly tone in her voice.
“Young,” Diana whispered as she heard Ethan walking down the hall. “Take off your shoes, please,” she called to him.
“Already did,” he said as he came into the kitchen.
He’d put a t-shirt on, but the swim he’d obviously taken caused it to cling to his shoulders and the front of his chest, and his hair dripped onto its collar. She noticed bare, tanned biceps rounding smoothly from under the cuffs of the sleeves. Somehow, the shirt made him look even less decent than when he was bare-chested outside.
Diana realized Mickey was talking to her. “I’m sorry, what did you say? The phone lines are kind of staticky up here.”
Ethan tossed her a grin. “I’ve never had any trouble with my phone,” he told her, turning one of the chairs around and straddling it backwards. The teasing look in his eyes held a second layer of some other emotion.
Heat.
Diana’s mouth went dry and she turned her back on him, her heart suddenly thudding in her chest. “No other issues regarding the Merkovitz case?” she asked Mickey, fervently hoping that there weren’t.
“I don’t think you want to hear about them.”
“Oh no.” Diana leaned both elbows on the counter. That niggle of discomfort exploded into full-blown anxiety. “What happened?”
“DUI. Last week, Merkovitz got picked up on a DUI.”
Diana said a very unladylike word and heard a faint chuckle from behind her. She turned her face downward, cupping her hands lightly around the phone in an effort to keep prying ears from hearing things they shouldn’t. DUI. Her insides shivered as she remembered her concerns about the previous case. There’d been something off about it. “Well, that’ll help his case,” she said, unwilling to put her fears into words, even for Mickey. “He gets sued for malpractice and now he’s going to have a drunk driving record. Great. Let’s just hope this case goes to court before his DUI becomes public knowledge.”
She raked a hand through her thick hair and closed her eyes. She should dump this case...just walk away. But Jonathan had reminded her how important it was to be representing one of the most reputable orthopedic surgeons in the Boston area, and how her career—as well as his own—could be over in a snap if Dr. Merkovitz should become dissatisfied.
Not for the first time, she wondered why Merkovitz had chosen a small firm like hers rather than one of the big powerhouses with a string of partner names across the stationery’s masthead. “Is there anything else I should know?”
“Not yet. I’ll keep you posted.” Then a teasing note crept into Mickey’s voice. “How young is young?”
“Never mind.” Diana was brisk and she felt heat gather at the base of her neck, even though she knew Ethan wasn’t able to hear the other side of the conversation. “It doesn’t matter anyway, Mick. Listen, if anything else comes up, I should be around—give me a call, or I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Diana hung up the phone and turned around to find Ethan looking at her with flagrant attraction in his eyes. Then, as their gazes caught, the interest drained away to be replaced by nothing more than friendliness. He’d propped his chin on hands that rested on the back of the chair.
“How about some iced tea?” Diana asked, her stomach filled with butterflies. What the heck was wrong with her?
“That would be great.” Ethan lifted his chin and let his arms drop so they hung over the back of the chair. “So...did you check the Princeton website?”
Diana’s shoulder jerked, and an instant flush warmed her face. “As a matter of fact, since my wi-fi is finally working, yes I was able to.” She kept her acute embarrassment hidden as she continued with sincerity, “I owe you a big apology. I’m sorry that I jumped to conclusions and made assumptions. Quite truly, that’s very unlike me. I usually require much more...evidence before making judgments.”
He seemed just as surprised as she was sincere. “Thank you for apologizing. I have to admit, I didn’t think you would, and especially with such grace.” He smiled the most genuine smile she’d seen since the first time they’d met. “Thanks.”
Diana drew back, offended and chastised at the same time. “I don’t have any issue with admitting when I’m wrong. And if everyone else did, there’d be a lot less strife in the world.”
Nodding in agreement, he took the tall glass of iced tea that she handed him. “Very true.” As their fingers brushed, he commented, “As your aunt used to say, you have to see it in black and white before you believe anything.”
She stared at him, an uneasy feeling rising inside. “Aunt Bee used to talk about me?”
“All the time.” Bitterness tinged his words and that smile faded. “She would have loved to have seen you—she talked about you as though you were her own daughter.”
Shame and deep sadness crested over her, and she had to blink back a sudden welling of tears. With an impatient hand, she brushed them away before Ethan noticed and tried to quell her guilt. “I hadn’t seen her since the summer I was thirteen. My mother didn’t even let me know about my Uncle Tracer’s funeral when he died.”
“Yes, Belinda mentioned that she and your mother had had a falling out, and that was why you didn’t spend the summers up here anymore.”
Diana felt even more uncomfortable. This man seemed to know her whole life story. “I don’t know what they argued about, but I do know my mother always disliked Aunt Bee. She was my father’s aunt, but I had to have somewhere to go in the summers when I was younger, so I got to come here for three years. Mother refuses to talk about what happened to change that. And we’re...not close.”
“But surely you could have visited your aunt when you got older—if you’d wanted to.” He looked at her with steady brown eyes, pinning her there under his microscope.
“Believe me, had I known Aunt Bee was interested in seeing me, and was still alive, I would have.” She couldn’t keep the enmity from her voice so she turned to pour her own glass of tea. “Mother told me outright that Aunt Belinda died, I guess so I would stop asking about her.”
Ethan was looking at her contemplatively, and for the first time, that faint hint of accusation was gone. Instead, she thought she saw sympathy and understanding in his eyes. “Then I owe you an apology as well,” he said. “For thinking that you’d ignored Belinda for years, and only came back into her life for the money.”
Diana opened her mouth to say something sharp...and then closed it. “Apology accepted. Thank you for admitting that.”
He gave her a brief smile and settled back in his chair. “My mother never married my father—or my half-sister’s father, either, for that matter—and she kept us from meeting them or knowing much about them until we were older and could do it on our own.” He picked up his glass and gestured with it, making the ice tinkle. “So I can empathize just a little. And I’m sorry you didn’t get to know your aunt as an adult. I think you would really have enjoyed her. I know I did. She was a mother figure as well as a really good friend of mine, as odd as that might seem. She helped me through a very rough time.”
Diana nodded and sipped from her iced tea, more relaxed around Ethan than she’d ever been. This was good. They were actually conversing, and she hadn’t said anything lame or rude. Making casual conversation was so much different from arguing a case, when she knew exactly what to say and how to say it. “Your mother...er, she sounds like an unusual woman.” Well, crap. There she went, stepping into it with that comment. She looked quickly at him to gauge his reaction.
But he didn’t seem to take offense. “She’s a modern day Flower Child, and Fiona and I were raised in a commune in Western Pennsylvania abounding with Free Love, marijuana plots, a nude beach, and lots of other earthy things.” He flashed her a brief smile that sent a little zip of heat down to her core.
“Free love, huh?” she repeated, wondering why she fixated on that aspect of his speech.
He raised a brow, creating mor
e squiggly stirrings in her belly. “Yes, indeed—free love.” His voice had dropped to a low rumble and Diana found herself unwilling to look at him. “And nude beaches.”
She stood abruptly and walked over to refill their glasses. “What sort of rough time?” she asked, hoping to turn the conversation to something less...intense. At least for her.
He stilled, then began to move his glass in small circles on the counter. “My wife and I split up a little more than two years ago.”
“Oh,” she said, surprised that he’d been married, and at the dark, pained expression that settled on his face. “I’m sorry to hear that. Really sorry.”
“She was sleeping with one of my friends. But the divorce was my fault.” Bitterness flattened his tone.
“Because...she was sleeping with one of your friends?” Diana repeated, allowing full irony into her voice. “That sounds logical.” Now she regretted bringing it up, for it clearly bothered him. And aside from that, it was a situation too close to home for her comfort.
“Yeah. Well, as it turned out, Jenny figured she’d get out of our marriage since I was screwing around with one of my students, even though she’d been sleeping with my friend for months. Maybe even before we got married. I don’t know for certain. So it was my fault. Except that I wasn’t screwing around with Lexie, even though Lexie, my student—are you following this?—made everyone think that’s what was going on.”
“Nice,” Diana said. “How did she do that? Lexie, I mean. The student.”
“Yeah, my life was like a soap opera around that time.” He flashed a brief, wry grin. “Lexie was very smart. She set it up and I walked into it like a complete idiot. She’d been trying to get my attention for awhile, taking all my classes that she could, stopping by at the end of every office hour session so she could walk with me to wherever I was going next. It was the perception, you see. Like I said, she was smart. Anyway, I wasn’t having any of it—not only was I married, but she was a student—and ten years younger than me, and I just wasn’t into that. So she got desperate, I guess, and made sure her car broke down one night outside a place she knew I’d be. She got me to give her a ride home—with witnesses, of course—and then when we got there, she tried her best to get me to come in.” He looked up sharply at Diana, as if expecting her to accuse. “I didn’t. Not even to see her safely inside. I didn’t even step onto the porch.”
She was staring, listening in disbelief. “That does sound like a soap opera. I take it your wife heard about it and didn’t believe you when you told her what happened.”
He shrugged, his mouth a hard, flat line. “It wasn’t only my wife who heard about it—it was the whole damn department and half the campus. You know what they say about a woman scorned, and Lexie considered herself scorned. It was a very difficult time, and instead of defending and supporting me, like you’d expect a partner to do, Jenny used it as an excuse to end the marriage.”
“She sounds like a real winner.”
“Yeah. I really know how to pick’em.” He gave another one of those wry smiles, and she could see hurt lingering in his beer-bottle brown gaze. “So...when I walked by the den just now, I noticed you were playing with those Tarot cards again.”
Nothing like changing the subject, turning the spotlight back on her.
“I dropped them on the floor last night,” Diana replied casually. But her insides tightened and the ease she’d felt with him dissipated.
Ethan cocked the eyebrow that let her know he didn’t believe her. It arched like an inverted black vee, the point edging into his hair. “And you just left them there, did you?” He gave a little laugh, adjusting his position on the chair. “You aren’t going to give even a little, are you?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said firmly. “The cards are nothing to me.”
He shook his head, folding his arms across his chest. His biceps shifted smoothly, round and sleek. “Diana, we all have instincts and gut feelings. Some people have honed those skills to become even more than just intuition. If you have that ability, it’s a gift. If you want to talk about what’s been going on with those cards you ‘dropped’ on the floor, I’ll listen.”
“There’s nothing going on with them.” She felt the force of the denial like a Biblical Peter, and pushed it away. “I just had a few odd coincidences and it unsettled me a little.”
“You aren’t ready to believe me, or to talk about it. That’s okay,” he held up his hand to fend off her intended fiery retort. “Just think about it, Diana, think about it. A card—The High Priestess—that has shown up randomly five times signifies that one should look beyond the obvious and listen to your inner voice. Isn’t that a bit hard to swallow as a mere coincidence?”
He unstraddled the chair and stood, looming down over her. “Well, like I said—when you’re ready to talk, I’ll be happy to listen.” Then the laughter disappeared from his face and intensity replaced the humor. “I guess I’d better get going. Sounds like you have a lot of work to do.” He opened the refrigerator and pulled the pitcher of tea out again. “I really appreciate this.” he gave a little gesture with his glass after he drained it for the third time.
“I appreciate the work you did in the yard.” What else could she say?
“No problem.” He gave her one last easy smile that sent a long, slow curling through her stomach, and started toward the front door. She resisted the urge to follow him, and paused at the entrance.
“By the way,” he said, leaning his head against the doorjamb and giving her a calm look, “I don’t study ghosts or UFOs. Just people.”
SIX
How in the world had he managed it?
Diana frowned at the ugly black phone, still baffled even though she’d hung up with Ethan twenty minutes ago. She had half a mind to call him back and tell him she’d changed her mind about riding with him to Marc Reardon’s barbeque that evening, but for some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to do so.
With a last, perplexed glare at the phone, she pushed it from her mind and continued on her way to the den, where she’d been headed when his call interrupted her plan to work on clearing out the room.
The first thing she saw when she walked in were the two cards, lying where she’d left them on the ottoman two nights ago.
“Maybe if I start to straighten up this room I’ll get those cards off my mind,” Diana said aloud, sliding into the chair behind Aunt Belinda’s desk. And Ethan as well.
At the desk, which was a heavy, old walnut clunker, Diana looked through the single neat stack of items: bills that were due to be paid that month. A little calendar hung on the wall behind the desk—a promotional item from Dr. Douglas Horner, DVM, Damariscotta Veterinary Hospital & Shelter—and each of the bills’ due dates was clearly marked. She noticed that this Thursday was the date for Motto and Arty’s annual shots.
Diana glared around the den at large, knowing that the aloof cats were lurking about somewhere. “I guess I’ll have to keep that appointment for you two. Heaven knows why I should, since you’ve been nothing but inhospitable since I arrived.” Despite the accusation, her voice was light and chirpy in case the cats were actually listening and would deign to make an appearance.
They didn’t, of course.
Once she cleared off the desk, leaving only the stack of bills to be paid after she obtained access to Aunt Belinda’s checking account, Diana moved to the nearest pile of newspapers. It would have made sense, she thought wryly, if her aunt had stacked each periodical in one place. Instead, Oregon Posts were piled among San Francisco Chronicles and Chicago Tribunes and Detroit Newses and New York Timeses.
As she flipped through them, wondering why on earth Aunt Belinda had saved a decade’s worth of newspapers, Diana noticed that an article in the Chicago Tribune, May 30, 1995, had been circled in green ink. She stopped to read its headline. “Blackout on Miracle Mile Caused by Train Derailment.”
The article was of little interest, simply explaining tha
t an Amtrak train had derailed while backing into its station, knocking over a power line. No one had been injured and it had little effect on the city except that many of the shops and businesses were forced to close for part of a day.
Diana set that paper aside and looked through the next one. Now that she was looking more closely, she saw that another article had been circled in a different paper...and another in the next paper, and then another, and so on. Each paper that Belinda saved had something circled—most often, items of little interest. Many times, it was the score of a sporting event or an obituary.
By the time she had waded through the first pile of papers, it was almost six. Her stomach growled, reminding her that lunch had been forgotten. She’d have to wait for the barbeque, for Ethan would be there in less than an hour to pick her up.
Her stomach tingled at the thought, and Diana frowned at herself. It wasn’t as if it were a date.
Of course it wasn’t a date. She was engaged to Jonathan. Wasn’t she?
With a start, she realized it was the first time she’d thought of him all day, and then in the next moment, realized that she and Ethan shared a similar experience—that of an unfaithful mate. She wondered if Ethan had had the choice whether he would have forgiven his wife and stayed married after finding out about her affair.
And whether she would ever be able to move on from her own experience.
Despite the fact that she shouldn’t be concerned about how she dressed, after her shower, it took much too long to decide what to wear. Finally, she chose a simple maxi-dress from a hanger. It was sea foam green with a halter tie that left her back bare. The skirt was long, just skimming the ground, but the dress flowed and fitted enough to more than hint at what it covered.
She’d barely finished dressing when she heard the front door open. “Hey, anyone in there? It’s me,” called a familiar voice.
Would the man ever learn to knock? But she felt only mild irritation at his presumption, along with a tingle of anticipation that she had no business feeling. “I’m coming,” she called.
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