Her focus drifted back to the flowers in her teacup.

“I never thought I’d come back here.” Kaden’s words came out hushed. He ran a hand through his hair and held it there. The furrowed lines along his forehead deepened. The air in the car grew heavy.

Irene wondered what would make a man leave his family behind. But right then, she was more concerned with why the universe had seen fit to thrust another Bonner into her life.

Once the distillery was out of sight, Kaden shook his head, as if coming out of a spell. He turned toward her. “What did my brother do to you?”

One of the first things Irene had learned about her gift as a child was how to put a wall up around her heart to keep from getting overwhelmed by other people’s emotions. Now, she let it drop and took a quick look at Kaden, long enough to see dead leaves fluttering from his shoulders—sadness, disappointment. Behind his eyes were stalks of purple, bell-shaped flowers. Monkshood always indicated hatred.

If this man hated his brother, they might have more in common than Irene realized.

“We’re getting right into it, then,” she said.

“You tell me. I came in for a cup of tea and you kidnapped me.” His eyes on her skin warmed her in a way she hadn’t felt in a long time. “You could be taking me to the woods to kill me for all I know.”

She smiled.

“What’s all this about?” he pressed.

She wasn’t ready to tell him. Not until she knew if she could trust the reading. “Could be nothing.”

He crossed his arms and leaned back in his seat. “All this for nothing? At least tell me what my brother did.”

It was just like Nate to never have told Kaden what had happened between them.

When she didn’t answer, Kaden said, “He hurt you.” He turned around in his seat and looked back the way they came.

“I found him in his car with another woman and broke off our engagement.”

Kaden took a sharp breath. He opened his mouth, then closed it.

“It was years ago,” Irene said.

“I doubt that makes it hurt any less.”

She sighed. It didn’t.

“I hoped he’d turn out better than the rest of my family,” Kaden said.

Irene’s eyes cut to him. “You don’t like your family?”

“That’s putting it mildly,” he said as Irene pulled up the gravel drive of her mother’s old Victorian home. She let the truck idle and turned toward Kaden.

“Is that why you left?” Irene had very few memories of him, almost like he’d never been there at all.

“I didn’t want to be a Bonner anymore.”

“Simple as that?”