Avalon answered the doorbell a half hour later to find Mac standing there, still wearing what he’d been wearing when he’d maneuvered her out of the attic.

“Do you have a bathing suit?” he said without preamble. “Oh, hello, Chick Pea. Down, girl. Whoa, easy there.”

Chick Pea was sitting sedately next to Avalon, smiling politely up at him, eyes agleam with bonhomie, fluffy tail switching a little.

“Why do I need a bathing suit? Do you know something about the plumbing that I don’t?”

“I know approximately a million things about this house that you don’t. But no, that’s not why.”

“You need to borrow one? Because yours is in the wash?”

“I usually go without one when I go swimming around here, since there’s no one around to care,” he said affably.

Dear God. What was he trying to do to her? Her knees went buttery.

He cleared his throat. “Listen, didn’t you say you were a little stiff from scraping wallpaper?”

“I did say that.”

“There’s an old natural hot springs about a fifteen-minute hike or so from here. Gets dark fast out there and we’ll want to be back before then. We’ve got about an hour and a half, maybe two, before sunset. You in?”

Delight pierced so abruptly it stole her breath.

It immediately warred with wariness. Getting half-naked with the very hot man who had broken her heart wasn’t quite equivalent to sticking her big toe up the faucet, but no one would have called it a wise decision.

But then, no one was holding her to a particular standard of wisdom but herself.

And maybe she just needed to prove to herself that he no longer had the power to shape her life, even if he once had.

Finally, pure curiosity tipped the vote. She wanted to see the damn springs.

“Give me five minutes.”

The sunset was going to be a pretty good one. A few of the fluffy oblong clouds overhead were already limned in golden light, and with luck they’d go gold or tangerine or aubergine.

While in San Francisco, she’d desperately missed the surprise and variations of sunsets and sunrises. The light of the computer and phone screens and the neon lights over the takeout places never really varied.

She ducked to her knees, which was none too easy, given how stiff her muscles were, and touched a finger to the water. And watched the ripples waver out. River water warmed by the earth and cycled out again. Ceaselessly fresh. She could see her reflection in it; she could see Mac behind her smiling. Behind him was a tall cluster of old boulders.

“It’s about three and a half feet at its deepest. You going in?”

It was the first thing he’d said in about fifteen minutes. He’d clearly been so full of thoughts on the fifteen or so minute walk that he couldn’t say any of them. Or maybe he was even nervous. Maybe they both were.

The bathing suit her mom had stuffed into her gym bag was olive green and fashioned of fabric that was probably considered space-age at the time; it featured dramatic darts in the boob area and a flouncy little skirt. If her own willpower collapsed on her, this suit might very well keep Mac Coltrane at arm’s length, should he make the proverbial move. Her mom must have kept it out of nostalgic reasons; Avalon thought she recognized it from a few old family photos. It fit like a charm, though. She did have her mom’s curves.

She shucked her sweatshirt and kicked off her thongs, then hesitated for a moment before setting about peeling off the jeans.

Which gripped onto the exotic fabric of her bathing suit the way her feet gripped the adhesive ducks in the bathtub in the bathroom she and Eden had shared growing up. It was a wonder there wasn’t a little suctiony pop when she finally got them loose.

Mac watched this whole little dance in rapt, entertained silence.

She was fit even if her own abs weren’t quite drum-tight. She was comfortably certain his silence was a tribute to the fact that she was well worth looking at, suit or no suit.

“Wow, that’s some bathing suit, Avalon. Speaking of tightropes and things you might wear to walk on them.”

His voice was a little bit lulled, though. A man a little bit drugged by his own hormones.

“It’s an heirloom,” she said mildly. “Passed down through my family for generations.”

He gave a short laugh.

She touched a toe into the hot springs. And the rest of her body sort of reflexively oozed in after it as if she were literally melting.

“Ohhhhhhh . . .” It felt like the best thing that had ever happened to her.

“Good, huh?”

“Holy Mother,” she sighed. She closed her eyes for a few seconds. She opened her eyes.

He was still standing near the largest stone, motionless, watching with satisfaction, as if her enjoyment was something he’d personally accomplished.

“So is your plan that you are going to guard me like I’m Cleopatra and you’re a centurion? You look like you should be holding a spear.”

“Aren’t you mixing up your cultures and centuries?”

“Probably,” she murmured.

“Do you mind if I get in there with you? Hot tubs are pretty seventies and you know what they got up to in the seventies.”

“Macramé. Heavy metal. Muscle cars.”

“Orgies,” he contributed.

She stared at him. The word was very conjuring of writhing bodies, always fairly sexy, but in her mind’s eye all the men had seventies mustaches very similar to her dad’s, and that, as far as she was concerned, wasn’t sexy.

“Don’t you need a crowd for that sort of thing?” She was way too relaxed to bat that innuendo back or to protest. Maybe that was his plan. She didn’t care about that, either.

“I don’t know. You’re the one who goes to, what was that, bondage farmers’ markets and all that stuff. But I can make a few calls.”

She gave a somnolent snort. “It was a fair. The Folsom Street Fair. A decadent celebration of . . . a lot of things, let’s just say. Not a farmers’ market. To tell you the honest-to-God truth, I feel about as sexy as a carrot floating in soup. A really happy carrot.”

It was a warning of sorts that if his plan was to seduce her, he had his work cut out for him.

And it was also a relief: the less sexy she felt, the less inclined she was to attempt to climb him like a tree. Because standing backlit by the sunset right now, no one had ever looked more tempting.

He yanked his boots off and peeled off his shirt. Maybe it was the fact that the world went slo-mo that made him resemble a sculptor unveiling a statue. She watched through slitted eyes. The casual undressing held an unexpected walloping intimacy, and her stomach muscles braced as her senses took the impact. There was no way he didn’t know the power of his own nearly bare self, because Mac was the sort who thought of all the angles.

He was brownish everywhere from the sun apart from a hint of paleness at his hipbones. An ordinary pair of red swimming trunks clung lovingly there. The rest of him looked like it had been turned on a lathe or cut by whatever tool they use to facet diamonds. She saw a scar across the lower part of his thigh. That was new.

And then all of that vanished under the water, and only his smooth brown shoulders remained above, like two enticing tropical islands.

She might actually be in dangerous territory here. She was literally in the soup!

All she could do was smile drowsily. The warm water resumed doing its business of soaking all the tension out; maybe it wouldn’t let any new tension back in.

“Is it yoga?” he asked, finally.

“Is what yoga?”

“Is that how you got thighs like anacondas? Thighs that can strangle a grown man?”

This was pretty funny. “I’ve never tested that particular application. But I suppose it could come in handy. Yeah, I do yoga. Not with a good deal of commitment, but I do it. San Francisco hills, you know. Good for the legs.”

“Sure, sure.”

The water lovingly lapped them and they were quiet.

“Big job, getting that wallpaper off,” he said idly.

“Yep.”

“That master bedroom’s thirty by thirty, I believe.”

“The length of a football field, if you ask my scapulas and trapezoids and the rest of the muscle gang.”

“Boy, there’s like five more rooms that size. And then you’re going to what, paint them?” He mimed big up-and-down paint roller motions.

“Yes. I’m going to paint them.”

All of those words—I’m and going and paint—made her want to sink deeper and deeper into the water.

“Wow. That’ll take you days. For just that one room.”

He was a sadist.

“Yes.”

“Where are you going to start painting?”

“I thought I’d go with the main room, downstairs.”

“Have you ever painted a room before all by yourself, Avalon?”

She hesitated. “There’s a first time for everything.”

That sentence was suddenly fraught.

He seemed to know it.

They both stopped talking.

Still, she had kind of the sense he was working up to something.

“You know that main room? The one you put the giant couch in? My mom used to play the grand piano and sing there.”

She widened her eyes. “Really?”

She remembered seeing the piano that day she’d been inside. It was pretty hard imagining Mac’s mom abandoning herself to song. She was like Mac’s dad: beautiful in an otherworldly way. She sounded as rehearsed and elegant as Jackie O giving a tour of the White House whenever she spoke. She seldom joined them out on Devil’s Leap, and when she did she was a politely remote figure arranged neatly on a towel, as if someone had brought their favorite doll out for an airing.

“Yeah. She liked the acoustics.”

“I remember thinking your mom was so pretty. Her hair was shiny and straight like my Barbie, and no other mothers I ever saw had hair like that. She never seemed like a mo . . .”

She stopped herself in time.

He shrugged with one shoulder; the water moved a little, rippling toward her. “It’s okay. You’re right, she wasn’t very mommish. Not like your mom was, with the snacks in her purse and the Band-Aids with Sponge Bob on them and the flip-flops shoved in the car door pocket so there was always a spare pair when someone broke one, and how she was just sort of part of everything you did. Momming really wasn’t my mom’s thing.”

He said it easily enough. But it was hard to hear that he’d been fully aware of what he lacked in the midst of all he had.

Even back then Avalon must have sensed that he’d needed to be loved. And she had loved him.

Even if he cared for things, it was entirely possible he just didn’t know how to love back.

“It could have been a lot worse, honestly. Hell, how many kids do you know who got an Audi convertible for their sixteenth birthday?”

He was being glib, but his voice was soft, soft as the water, soft as the muted colors of the sky.

She smiled, but didn’t want to. And she didn’t ask what had become of that convertible.

She had a hunch that it was among the things auctioned off when his dad had been hauled away to jail.

The loss of everything must have been terrifying; it must have felt like being sucked toward a drain.

She fought the urge to reach out and grip his hand. As if she could pull him out of the rubble the way he’d hoisted her out of the attic. Her heart was an amnesiac; it ached as if it was actually being pulled toward him, even though this guy had once made a fricassee of it.

But maybe . . . maybe he was working toward some truth, now. Maybe she was about to hear some explanation she’d longed nearly her entire life to hear. Something that explained that chasm between how things had felt when she was with him and the things he’d said.

And hope was like a glittering shard, shortening her breath. Hope . . . and fear.

“Mac . . . I’m—I’m sorry all of that happened to you.”

He nodded once. Quirked the corner of his mouth. And sighed.

“Those days at Devil’s Leap were the happiest I’ve ever been.” He almost whispered it. Confiding a secret.

Her heart was now pounding so hard it was a wonder it didn’t send ripples of water toward him.

“That’s why . . .” He gave a muffled little laugh. “That’s why I originally wanted to buy the house. If you do sell it to me, you can use the hot springs any time you want.”

His eyes were on her. Soft and dark. Mesmeric. Once so beloved.

But something about his last words struck her as just a little . . . odd.

A bolt of suspicion smote her.

She coughed a laugh. “Oh. My. God.”

Conviction violently uncoiled in her like a spring and practically shot her out of the water. She grabbed her towel and rubbed almost viciously over herself as if she could strip off whatever remained of her idiocy.

She’d startled him. “Avalon . . . what the . . . are you okay?”

She paused. “This whole . . . thing . . .” She gestured to him and the hot springs with a swoop of her hand. “. . . the abs, the voice, the hot springs . . . was a ploy, wasn’t it? To talk me out of the house?”

She could hear her voice stag-leaping octaves. She was aware her fury was all out of proportion to the circumstances. She was furious at herself for getting sucked in again.

She rammed her jeans on, which required a lot of rapid, dramatic hula-hooping, and jammed her feet into her flip-flops.

“I’M NOT GOING TO SELL YOU THE HOUSE,” she said, once dressed.

He was clearly shocked. “I swear to God, Avalon, that’s not what—”

He lifted himself out of the water.

Oh, that dripping, gleaming, lean muscle.

She would not look at it.

And then she did.

Turned and stared at him hard. If there was any luck, he’d turn to stone right there because that was the direction he was heading anyway.

“You . . . you . . . God, you really turned into a Coltrane, didn’t you, Mac?”

Mac froze. “Now wait a goddamn minute!”

What the hell had just happened? One moment he was sitting in the warm pool, wading into deeper emotional waters than he’d yet dared. And the next she was running away as though a scorpion had bit her on the ass.

It was almost funny how she knew what the cruelest insult would be. And only someone who really got him would understand how to hurt him that way.

Suddenly she bolted.

Yikes! In seconds she’d be out of view.

“Fuck fuck fuck.” He punctuated the grab of each article of clothing with that word. But he didn’t have time and he wasn’t about to let her head back by herself.

Her hair came down and flew out behind her in damp streamers.

And suddenly they were in his dream. He was chasing her; he couldn’t catch up.

He nearly tripped scrambling into his jeans, hopping on one foot and then the other. He swore fervently but there wasn’t time to tie himself into his boots. So he just grabbed them and ran barefoot, very inadvisable, but in a few seconds she’d be out of view, and at least this was mostly dirt and flattened scrub and fuck it, he could chance it. He was all but tippy-toeing on the balls of his feet like Wile E. Coyote sneaking up on the Road Runner.