"Kismet, the last time they saw me, I was a celibate. I'm bringing home a sex goddess, and I can't stop smiling. I think they're gonna figure it out."

"So what if they do?"

"Pestilence, flood, famine, even locusts, or so my mother will predict, only because it would be a sin for her to throw herself off the roof."

Chapter Twenty-seven.

DESTINY scowled. "Hey, I came out here all excited about meeting your parents."

"That's what worries me. I like you, Kismet. I shouldn't have asked you to come."

"They can't be that bad."

He got into the driver's seat. "You'd think so, wouldn't you?"

"I hope she's at least a good cook. We never did have breakfast."

He pulled into traffic. "I ate an ice cream cone with Jake."

"Before lunch? Reggie's gonna love you."

"Oh, she already does. I took him to a pet store."

"Jake told me. He also told me the difference between girl dogs and boy dogs then he asked me if I wished I had a peanut. Speaking of which, I'm starved."

Morgan did a double take. "For peanuts, or my peanut?"

"Both."

He shook his head. "Do you want to find a light bite to hold you over?"

"Nah, I raided my candy stash and ate a few gummy penises."

Morgan swerved and nearly drove off the road. "Pardon?"

"What? You never ate a candy tit?"

"Oh sure, we ate them all the time at the seminary and rectory."

She fished in her purse and pulled out her candy bag. "Here, want a couple of penises to hold you over?"

He shuddered. "My balls are shrinking just hearing about them. Geez, don't show them to me."

She made sure he watched as she bit one in half.

"Cannibal!" he snapped. "Such a beautiful sense of humor, Kismet. Too bad it's about to be extracted, without Novocain."

"I doubt it." For fun, she showed him the pink penis lollipop she planned to torture him with, later. "Maybe if I suck on this along the way," she suggested, "you'll calm down?"

Morgan did a double take. "You're enjoying this."

Destiny scooted over and rubbed his thigh, higher and higher. "It's called seduction by association."

"I never heard the term, but I can tell you that it works."

"I made it up."

"No, Kismet, you stood it up. But it damned well better behave at my parents' house, and that goes for you, too."

"What could go wrong?"

He nearly missed a right turn. "You cannot bring phallic candy into my mother's house. Empty your purse into the glove compartment."

"What, you think she's gonna smell sin in my purse? She can't be that strict."

"My mother is certifiably devout. I come from the 'buried bathtub shrine in the front yard' persuasion. She calls it a grotto. My father isn't as kind. He adds 'plucking' to the shrine with the original spelling."

"I've seen those. They're not so bad."

"My mother has worn black since the day I left the priesthood. She's in mourning for my vocation."

"Sounds like she needs to get a shrink and a life."

"She needs my father to-"

"What?"

"Grow a pair. I'd think they never had sex, but I know they had it at least once, about thirty-one years ago, or I wouldn't be here, unless Meggie and I were adopted?"

Morgan and Meghan. The babies from her nightmare being christened together. "The priest uncle who baptized you. He was your mother's brother, wasn't he?"

Morgan said nothing as they drove through the Endicott College campus, and she caught peeks of the ocean on the right. "I love New England in the fall. So, he was scary, that uncle, right?"

Morgan shook his head. "So, you came to the lighthouse to keep from spending time with me in Scotland. Why?"

"Change of subject noted. How about that? We went to the same place to escape being paired with each other socially, and we ended up paired sexually, instead. You think maybe we would have ended up having sex in Scotland?"

"I don't think so. Not with all our relatives around to watch and comment."

Destiny sifted through her purse. "You're right. I'm convinced that our being at the lighthouse together was meant to be, in more ways than one, especially with Meggie there. You were furious the night I got there. Are you still?"

"Hades, no. I got laid. I've been waiting all my life for y-for sex."

"You're such a romantic." Destiny stuffed her X-rated candy into his glove compartment. "You're right, though. In Scotland, we'd still be looking daggers at each other, with our family shaking their heads in disappointment."

"They can't know. We'd never live it down if they knew. Swear you won't tell your sisters."

"None of our family can know, except for Reggie and Jake, who already know."

"Slam it." Morgan made another turn along the coast-line. "Technically, they're your family, not mine, I realize, but when you meet my parents, you'll see why I joined yours, and made the lighthouse my getaway."

They passed a cemetery that made Destiny's heart pound. The way Morgan glanced at it, out of the corner of his eye, confirmed her suspicion. "A family is never the same after the loss of a child," she said.

"Mine wasn't normal before Meggie passed."

"Died is difficult to say, but that's all right, because passed is a truer description anyway. Her body is gone, but her spirit isn't, and though she's passed to another realm, she's with us still-"

Destiny placed her palm on Morgan's heart. "Meggie's right here. Losing her must have been like losing half of yourself. I'm a triplet, and I can't imagine losing one of my sisters; I just can't."

"You and I do have the multiple birth thing in common," Morgan said.

"Did you and Meggie ever, like, talk to each other without using words?"

"I hate to admit it, but yes, we read each other's thoughts, it seemed. I still talk to her in my mind, but she doesn't answer anymore."

Destiny took his hand and squeezed. "Meggie answers, Morgan, but you've stopped listening."

Chapter Twenty-eight.

"THIS is my parents' house," Morgan said, which she instinctively knew. She turned his chin with her hand so he could see the house across the street. "Don't look now, but do, because that's the purple house I painted the other day with the It's a Boy flag out front."

Morgan blinked but showed little surprise. "Of course it is."

"Morgan Jarvis, are you mocking me? What will it take to prove to you that I'm psychic?"

"Please don't use the word psychic within hearing range of my parents."

"Why? Are they as hardheaded as you are about it?"

"Worse, and much worse. You may as well keep applying the word worse, whatever happens." He squeezed her hand and kissed her knuckles. "For the record, I'm sorry."

"For what?"

He put his hand on the back of the seat and leaned toward her. "For being so selfish as to bring you here. You'll understand soon enough."

She unbuttoned the top three buttons on his shirt. "I find it hard to believe that you haven't been exaggerating."

"You'll unfortunately find out." He came to open her door, and when she got out, he pulled her close, there in the open car door, for a long, hungry, openmouthed kiss.

"Why Mr. Jarvis, you're better at kissing today than you were yesterday. Such a fast learner."

"I intend to get better."

"Morgan!" a woman sniped-yep, snipe said it all. "You're making a spectacle of yourself in broad daylight!"

"And it starts," Morgan whispered, kissing her once more but quickly. "Mother," he said taking Destiny's hand and squeezing it, as if for her safety, as he led her toward the rigid-backed woman who looked as if she'd rather chew glass than look at her.

As stern as an army sergeant on the stoop of her white, New England Cape Cod, Morgan's mother stood about four foot nine, and she couldn't look less welcoming if she were about to meet a cobra.

Destiny stifled an urge to hiss.

Though the woman couldn't be more than fifty, she looked seventy. White hair, no makeup, lips so pursed, an onion would seem sweet by comparison. Even when Morgan kissed his mother's dry cheek, and her mouth relaxed for a beat, her lips held their deeply carved lines, probably from a lifetime of sucking lemons.

"Mother, this is Destiny Cartwright. We were spending the day together when I called you, so I invited her to come along."

"Thank you for having me, Mrs. Jarvis. You have a wonderful son, er, home, and son." Flipping frangipani, she was shaking in her bargain vintage Manolos.

Morgan's mother stepped aside, nearly knocking her off the stoop while blocking her entrance to the house. Uh-oh.

Morgan caught her around the waist, clearly ready for a fight. He pulled her tightly against him-each of their body parts met, even the most intimate-and the look he gave his mother offered a counter challenge.

Escorting her around his mother, Morgan let her precede him into the house. Maybe he hadn't been exaggerating.

"Behave yourself," Morgan snapped, and Destiny realized he'd been speaking to his mother. Had the woman called her a trollop?

"Aren't you the pretty one?" an ageless, white-haired man said as he ruffled his newspaper to fold it. He jumped to attention, a move he'd probably learned the hard way over the years.

"Hello, Mr. Jarvis," Destiny said extending her hand, while mother and son continued to bicker on the stoop. "I'm Destiny Cartwright, Morgan's friend."

Morgan hooked his left arm around her waist as he stepped up to shake his father's hand. "I see you've met my girl."

His mother hissed, but his father winked. "Good for you, son. I didn't know you had it in you."

"I'll take that as a compliment, Dad."

Hmm. He called them Mother and Dad. Formal and informal.

Either Morgan's father was twenty years younger than his mother, or the woman was not as old as she looked. Maybe she'd married a younger man late in life. "Oh, is this your wedding picture? It's beautiful." Nope, she'd married young and started out looking the same age as her husband. Life had been tough on her, or she'd been tough on herself.

Destiny examined the entire wall of pictures. Most of them were of Morgan in his priestly garb beside his mother. "Wow, there's actually an active association for mothers of priests, and you were the president, Mrs. Jarvis?" Yikes, talk about your own agenda. "But where's Meggie? There are no pictures of Meggie here? I wanted to see what she looked like when she was small."

A nut dish hit the floor and barfed cashews all over the rug. Mrs. Jarvis got on her knees to snap them up. Destiny tried to help and got her hand shoved aside so hard, the woman scratched her.

Destiny stood, patted the bloody scratch with a tissue, and thought about getting a tetanus shot. This was like Ward and June Cleaver's before the exorcist arrived. Either that or a reality show, Psycho Mothers of Suburbia, and she hadn't yet spotted the cameras.

Destiny took in the room: rust colored sofa, orange burlap lampshades on teak lamps on crocheted doilies, white milk glass hobnail vases and basket, kidney-shaped coffee table.