Forbidden Temptation

me.”

Iris sniffled. “That doesn’t make a damned bit of sense.”

Rose chuckled through her tears. “I know.”

Iris put her arm around Rose’s shoulders. “The true-love veils still haven’t come back, huh?”

Rose rested her head on her sister’s shoulder, tears spilling down her cheeks. Iris’s strong arm reminded her of how much she’d given up by isolating herself from her family. Iris’s empathic energy radiated down Rose’s arm and into her aching chest, drawing out her pain like a magnet.

Iris took in a swift breath, tightening her hold on Rose. “Rose, my God-what’s happened to you?”

Rose withdrew from her sister’s embrace before Iris could feel the full brunt of her tortured emotions. “Everything’s gone so wrong, and I don’t know how to fix it.”

“Maybe I can fix it.” Iris reached for Rose again, but Rose dodged her touch, not wanting to inflict more pain on her sister. Iris dropped her hand to her lap but held Rose’s gaze. “Tell me, Rosie. I promise it’ll be better if you share it.”

Rose haltingly explained about the death veils, from the first appearance on Dillon Granville’s face to her recent experiences. Iris’s gaze revealed equal parts compassion and horror, tears sliding over her cheeks and reddening her eyes.

When Rose subsided into soft sniffles, Iris straightened her back. “Okay. You have a different gift now, that’s all.”

“A terrible gift,” Rose muttered. “I don’t want it.”

Iris brushed Rose’s hair away from her face. “I don’t blame you, but it is what it is.”

“I hate that phrase.”

“You were spoiled, you know. Having such a happy gift.”

Rose nodded, wiping her eyes with the heels of her palms. “I know you and Lily didn’t always like your gifts.”

“Lily ran away from hers for years.” Iris looked down at her hands. “I never ran from mine, but there’ve been lots of times I’ve wanted to. Feeling other people’s pain isn’t fun.”

“But you’ve been able to help a lot of people.”

“And maybe you can help people, too,” Iris pointed out. “Like with that meeting.”

“A lot of good that did.” Rose told Iris about seeing the death veils on the women in the audience. “What if I paraded the killer’s next victim right in front of him?”

“You may never know how many women’s lives you saved by helping them know how to avoid danger and protect themselves,” Iris countered. “Organizing that meeting and informing women what they’re up against was the right thing to do.”

“That’s what Daniel says, too.”

“Daniel?”

Rose flushed. “Daniel Hartman.”

Iris looked taken aback. “The criminologist?”

Rose quirked one eyebrow. “You’ve heard of him?”

“Uh, yeah.” Iris looked at her as if she were dumb as a stump. “Daniel Hartman, wonderboy profiler.”

He would hate that characterization, Rose thought.

“You’ve met him?” Iris asked, her voice tinged with awe.

The heat rising up Rose’s neck intensified. She’d done a bit more than just meet him, much to her embarrassment. “Yeah.”

“Is he as cute in person as he is on TV?”

“I guess.” Rose tried to sound noncommittal.

Iris’s eyes narrowed. “Just how well do you know him?”

“We’ve met a few times.”

“Met.”

“Stop it, Iris.” She couldn’t deny that she found Daniel attractive. But his rebuff after she’d kissed him left her with little indication he returned her feelings. She’d tried to convince herself that he’d kissed her back, that maybe the glitter she’d seen in his eyes had been desire.

But the sad fact was, for all her expertise in bringing couples together, her own experiences with romance were limited. She’d been waiting for the true-love veils to tell her when she’d met the man who would own her heart.

What came easily to other women was a puzzle to her.

“Rosie, do you have feelings for him?” Iris asked.

“I can’t see the true-love veils anymore,” Rose blurted.

Iris’s dark eyes narrowed. “Not what I asked.”

“How can I know any man is my one true love?”

Iris’s lips tightened into a thin line. “What makes you think you ever could?”

Rose glared at her sister. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Iris held her gaze, her expression serious. “Dillon and Carrie Granville were true loves. Soul mates. And he ended up killing her and himself because she was going to leave him.”

Rose bit her lip. “I must have made a mistake-”

“What if you didn’t?” Iris asked. “What if you saw exactly what you always see? What if they were soul mates? True loves? What if all that was true, but they still weren’t supposed to be together because Dillon wasn’t stable enough to handle it?”

Rose shook her head. “That’s not how it works.”

Iris laughed, though there was little humor in the sound. “We don’t know how our gifts work. Lily doesn’t really know how her visions work. I don’t know why I feel other people’s pain when I touch them, and why sometimes it’s stronger than other times. And maybe all you ever knew about true-love veils was that they were signposts, pointing to people with the capacity for a forever kind of love. A signpost, not a guarantee.”

Rose shook her head again, her sister’s words clanging like chaos in her head. That’s not the way things were. It couldn’t be. From childhood, she’d known with utter certainty that the true-love veils were signs that two people were destined for lifetime happiness with each other. And she’d never been wrong, not in all the years she’d been seeing them.

Not until Carrie and Dillon Granville.

“I kept you from doing something stupid with Paul Abernathy,” she reminded Iris. “I saw the true-love veil of Ann Curtis on his face, and I saved you a heart-ache. And I was right about Lily and McBride, too-”

“There’s a difference between probabilities and certainties,” Iris said. “The true-love veils told you about probabilities-these two people have what it takes to be happy together if they play their cards right. But it can’t promise a good outcome. That’s up to the people involved, isn’t it?”

Rose pressed her face in her hands. “Then, what was the point of even having that gift, if it was only a maybe?”

Iris touched Rose’s cheek. “I guess, that’s what you have to find out now that it’s gone.”

Rose stood, pulled her keys from her pocket and let them in the back door. She led her sister into the living room, crossing to the mirror above the fireplace mantel. She gazed at her haunted reflection and asked the question she dreaded most. “Why do you think I’m seeing death veils now?”

Iris crossed to stand just behind her. Their eyes met in the mirror. “Maybe you’re meant to stop the murders.”

Rose closed her eyes. “How?”

“I wish I could tell you.” Iris put her hands on Rose’s shoulders, the touch electric. Tension flowed out of Rose’s arms, pouring through the connection between them. Rose opened her eyes and saw the hollows that seemed to form, like dreadful magic, under her sister’s dark eyes.

Rose pulled away from Iris’s touch, turning to face her. “You can’t heal this. You’ll hurt yourself trying.”

“I wish I could take it all away from you.”

Rose caught Iris’s hand in hers, enfolding it between her palms. “Just being here helped. I didn’t know just how much I needed to tell you about this.”