From Paul’s perch on a barstool at the breakfast bar in the caretaker house kitchen, he could observe the shenanigans playing out at the dining room table without appearing to be engaged. He was working his way through the second of the three cocktails Dallas had prepared for them to taste. She’d dubbed this one Love Potion, and with two shots of vodka and one of bourbon mixed with both cranberry and cherry juice, it packed a punch.
Despite being identical twins, with their mother’s blond hair and blue eyes, Dallas and Poppy had vastly distinct styles and temperaments. The oldest by ten minutes, Dallas had the Watts family head for business and more than her fair share of ambition. Since graduating college, she’d worked for some of the best restaurants in Charleston with the goal of opening her own place and currently worked as a private chef and caterer.
By contrast, Poppy was a stylist at a high-end salon in downtown Charleston and an active beauty blogger. She was free-spirited and headstrong, with striking pink hair and boundless energy, and whenever her family questioned her about doing something more serious than cutting hair, her quick answer was always a flippant one.
“Hey, Paul,” Poppy called, breaking into his musings. “It’s your turn.”
He blinked several times to reorient his thoughts and noticed that he was the center of attention. “I’m not interested.” He hoped his resolute tone would dissuade them from pestering him further, but their eager gazes remained fixed on him.
“Oh come on, we’ve both done it.” Dallas shot Lia a look. “What are you afraid of?”
“Besides,” Poppy chimed in. “It’s not fair that you’ve heard all our dark secrets without spilling a few of your own.”
“I don’t...” Paul trailed off. He’d been about to deny having any dark secrets, but then realized since Lia had arrived, he had more each day. “You know this isn’t my cup of tea.”
“Ladies, leave him alone,” Lia said, no disappointment or censure in her unruffled manner. She gathered up the cards from Poppy’s reading and returned them to the stack.
“Obviously he’s afraid to face the truth,” Dallas said, displaying relentless determination.
For the last hour, while Lia had made credible-sounding predictions for the twins, Paul had grown increasingly skeptical of her glib performance. While her expertise had appeared genuine enough to thoroughly engage his cousins, in Paul’s opinion the concept of being able to predict the future based on the turn of a card was nothing but nonsense. Still, as much as he’d wanted to scoff several times over the past hour, he’d held his tongue because Dallas and Poppy were thoroughly enjoying the experience. Or at least they were making a show of doing so. Some of Lia’s prognostications had rattled both girls, although they’d laughed and sipped their drinks to cover it up.
“There’s no truth I’m afraid to face,” Paul declared, his gaze clashing with both his cousins’ even as Lia kept her focus on the tarot deck. He was mesmerized by her small hands as she shuffled the deck to clear the energy. Why didn’t she chime in? Surely, she was dying to feed him a load of rubbish to get a rise out of him. “I just see all of this as a huge waste of time.”
“Since when is having fun a waste of time?” Poppy asked.
“When it comes to Paul,” Dallas piped up, “since always.”
“Come on, Paul.” Poppy got up from where she was sitting across from Lia and gestured for him to replace her. “What does it hurt to have Lia read for you?”
Seeing the two women weren’t going to let him escape without taking a turn in the hot seat as Lia had mockingly called it, Paul finished the Love Potion cocktail and made his way to the chair Poppy had vacated. Lia’s hazel eyes gleamed as she pushed the cards across the table toward him. From the first two rounds, he knew she wanted him to shuffle the cards. She explained that this would let the cards absorb his energy.
“While you shuffle, think about something you want to ask the cards about.” Lia had issued this instruction with both the earlier readings.
“Really,” he insisted. “There’s nothing.”
Lia nodded. “Then just let your mind drift.”
Paul handled the cards indifferently, demonstrating that he viewed the whole activity as a grand waste of time, yet while he shuffled the deck, mixing them thoroughly the way he’d watched his cousins do, he found himself besieged by memories of those delicious minutes with
Lia in his carriage house. The taste of her. The way she’d given herself over to him. His name on her lips as she’d come.
His body tightened at the vivid images and he shifted uncomfortably on the chair before setting the cards on the silk cloth she’d spread on the dining table. “You know I don’t buy into any of this stuff,” he muttered with barely restrained impatience.
“You don’t believe and that’s okay.” Lia had been staring at the cards in his hands, but now she lifted her gaze to meet his. The impact made his heart stumble. “But you never know. You might hear something interesting.”
A tiny ember of curiosity flared as he wondered what she might tell him. He suspected it would give him insight into her motives. No doubt she’d try to guide him into some sort of behavior the way she had his cousins, telling Dallas that she’d soon be confronted with a difficult decision involving two men in her life and Poppy that she would undergo a transformative period that would shake up her status quo and possibly harm those around her.
Both of these vague but somewhat ominous predictions had puzzled the twins, but they’d eagerly embraced the readings as if they were a road map to their futures.
“Go ahead and cut the cards,” Lia instructed. “Make three piles just like your cousins did.”
Paul did as she told him and made three similarly sized piles. The ritual of handling the tarot cards had given the process a solemnity that made a strong impression on his cousins.
“Now pick one pile,” Lia said.
His immediate instinct was to point to the one in the center, but as his finger was moving to indicate that stack, his gaze veered away.
“This one,” he said, indicating the one to the right, unable to explain why he’d changed course.