Truth or Dare (35 page)

Singleton chuckled. “So what? Ethan scored a whole bunch of points with the mayor of Whispering Springs. Got a feeling that's going to be a lot more useful to him in the long run than getting his name into the textbooks.”

“Just doing my civic duty,” Ethan said.

Zoe looked around the table. “Not to change the subject, but Treacher promised me this morning that his crew would be finished with the kitchen and the great room at Nightwinds by the end of the week. What do you say we all do Thanksgiving there this year?”

There was a chorus of cheerful agreement.

Ethan met Zoe's eyes across the table. He smiled at her. She smiled back and he was almost certain that he could feel the positive energy of happiness in the air.

 

After dinner, Singleton drove Bonnie, Jeff and Theo home. Arcadia and Harry announced that they were going to spend the evening at Last Exit.

Ethan got into the SUV and looked at Zoe. “What do you say we go out to Nightwinds and see how far the painters got today?”

“Okay.”

The big house was cloaked in moonlight. Ethan parked in the drive and got out.

Together he and Zoe went inside and made their way across a sea of drop cloths to the kitchen.

“Look,” Zoe said. “They finished in here.” She turned to him, eyes alight with pleasure. “What do you think about the color now?”

Ethan stood in the doorway and studied the kitchen with its newly painted walls.

An eerie tingle of awareness stirred the hair on the back of his neck. The sensation lasted only a couple of seconds but during that brief span of time he could have sworn that a scene shimmered in the air in front of him.

He saw himself sharing breakfast with Zoe at the table near the window. Two small children, a boy and a girl, sat with them, laughing at some unheard joke. Their crayon drawings were taped to the refrigerator. An unmistakable aura of love enveloped the kitchen.

The image dissolved in the next instant, but he knew deep inside that even though he wasn't psychic, he'd just had a tiny glimpse of the future.

“The color works just fine,” he said. “I knew it would. After all, you're an expert.”

“Hah.” She put her arms around his neck. “You had your doubts, admit it.”

“Okay, maybe I was a little worried about the paint color for a while.” He framed her face with his hands. “But I don't have any doubts at all about us.”

Her smile was filled with more than enough love to last a lifetime.

“Neither do I,” she said.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

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