.

empty air would not help this conversation.

      Mary raised a meaningful eyebrow. “As well you can,” she said. “But you won’t change him. We know better than to try, those of us who have been here all along. No good will coming of trying—not for you, and not for him.”

      Regan understood, then. Mary wasn’t worried about Regan and her safety—Mary was worried for Kai. She shook her head in befuddled protest. “I only just met him—”

      And Mary snorted. “He wears your favor.”

      “The bandanna?” Regan could only stare at her. “Mary, that’s just the only thing I had on hand, and he was bleeding—”

      “He still is,” Mary said shortly. “But you can bet he’d have lost that thing as soon as he was out of your sight if he didn’t want it there.”

      Regan couldn’t process it—not what Mary was saying, and not all the things she wasn’t. Finally, she threw her hands in the air. “I honestly don’t know what to say.”

      “Of course you don’t,” Mary told her matter-of-factly. “But it’ll all make sense eventually.” Then she lifted her chin, looking behind Regan—and Regan knew that she’d find Bill wheeling up the aisle behind her. “Anything else we can grab for you today?”

      Regan took a deep breath, reordering her thoughts. “As a matter of fact...” She dug Arshun’s business card from her back pocket. “You heard of this fellow? Or the office?”

      Mary glanced at it, shook her head and handed the card over the counter to Bill, who stretched to trade it off with a gallon-size zipper bag of jerky. As he shook his head, Mary slapped her hand down on the newspapers stacked up on the counter and thumbed one off the top for Regan. “Check in here,” she said. “If they’re trying to pick up business in this area, there’ll be an ad.” She gave Regan a wry and knowing look. “Along with all the others.”

      Bill grunted. “If your dad is trying to sell the cabin, he’d best go with someone who’s been here awhile.” But there was a question layered beneath his advice, and concern.

      “As far as I know, he’s not,” Regan reassured him. “But I’ll give him a call tonight.”

      “And let us know,” Mary said firmly.

      “And let you know,” Regan repeated dutifully, and then couldn’t help but smile. For all she’d run from this place, there had been things to miss, too.

      “Fine. Now go off and find Kai. From the look on his face when he left, he might just need someone’s ear to bend. Either way, he definitely needs that jacket. Soon as the sun starts down, it’s going to chill up out there.”

      “The library?”

      Bill grunted again. “Or Phillip’s dojo thing, or with Martin Sperry if he’s in town, or off doing something, somewhere, that needs to be done. But the library is always your first bet. If he’s not still there, Miss Laura will know where he’s gone.”

      Laura, the librarian. She’d been a vibrant young woman a decade ago, pouring over art and illustration books with an awkward teenager who couldn’t wait to get out of this town.

      Mary shoved the jerky an inch toward Regan, bringing her out of the past. “Now, take this, and welcome back. You can pay for the next batch.” And then, when Regan blinked against the sudden sting of tears, startled into emotion by the gesture, Mary smiled. “Welcome home, girl. Maybe you’ll stay a bit, eh?”

      Chapter 6

      Regan found the library as it had been a decade earlier—terraced up from the street, bordered by massive local boulders, and set apart from the smattering of homes by its redbrick and white trim.

      Kai sat on one of the boulders, legs crossed, a book in his lap and an envelope in his hand. Pensive and looking out over the town below them. She was surprised to see him in jeans—in shoes—and to find that glorious torso tucked away into a dark blue T-shirt. And though she thought at first that he was too immersed in his ponderings to notice her presence, she should have known better. As soon as she was close enough for casual conversation, he glanced her way, the smudge of darkness around his eyes making his deep blue eyes sharp and...

      Don’t stare, Regan.

      But she thought herself a lost cause.

      And she thought again that he wasn’t the kind of man who would smear kohl along his lids, and that somehow, in spite of his otherwise tanned but fair skin, that smoky effect was natural.

      She thought she’d probably never quite figure him out.

      Then she noticed the book in his lap. “Things that Sting,” she said. “You’re checking me out.”

      “The library has internet,” he said, as if that explained it all. In a way, it did. A simple search on her name would turn up her website, her gallery affiliations, her bibliography. Her paintings.

      She sat beside him, touching a finger to the glossy pages of the book. He’d been studying a full-page image in the middle-school book, a depiction of a cool desert morning with every possible stinging insect slyly inserted to be found by curious young eyes. Rich earth colors, subtle shifts of color, the luxurious smears of blues and reds so often hidden away in a desertscape, so seldom seen. And each creature, perched on cholla or hidden beside rock or climbing a pale prickly pear flower, subtly limned to make the search easier.

      She remembered painting this one—remembered what had been going on in her life at the moment, just as she always did. The ex-boyfriend who’d just learned she wouldn’t tolerate the emergence of his inner bully, the caress of wood flute piping in her ear while she wielded the brush, the pleasure of signing the contract to do the work...the faint feeling of familiar isolation as she buried herself in it.

      She remembered feeling young and free and just beginning to believe she would escape what had happened to her mother after all. Realizing that it hadn’t followed her north to Colorado.

      “Why painting?” Kai said, shifting the book slightly to share with her.

      She took a sharp breath, pulling herself out of those past moments. “Why do I paint?” she asked him. “Or why use paintings instead of photographs?”

      “The first is who you are,” Kai said, startlingly sure of himself. “I mean instead of photographs.”

      Safe ground. “Because of its illustrative nature.” She flipped to the next page, an Arizona giant hairy scorpion. “It would be hard to take a photo that shows the setae—those bristly hairs along the legs and tail—this clearly. And because we wanted to show the differences between this scorpion and the bark scorpion, I chose some key spots to exaggerate them. Not to be misleading, but to make it more obvious what to look for.”

      Kai ran his finger over the printed image—a big, bulky scorpion with a dark body and blunt head, stiff individual hairs bristling along its appendages. “It’s beautiful,” he said.

      She started slightly. “That’s not what I expect to hear when people look at this one.”

      He glanced at her. “The care you put into it makes it beautiful. It shows respect.”

      She hugged her arms, surprised at the tingle that ran along her shoulders and spine. “I think...that’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said about my work. Thank you.”

      “You’re cold?” He set the book aside, tugged his jacket from her grasp and shook it out to put over her shoulders. “Now I know how you found me.”

      “I haven’t been gone so long that I don’t still know the gossip hub for this town,” Regan agreed. She pulled another of her father’s bandannas from the jacket pocket, unrolling it to pick out a piece of thick, spiced jerky and offering it to him.

      He grinned and took it, biting off a chunk with efficiency. Regan had to work harder on hers, and