If this had been one of his films, Ren could have swung up onto a balcony, then dropped into the car as she drove beneath. But this was real life, and she had all the power.

She kept the car on the grass, racing between the rows of shrubbery toward the road. Branches lashed the sides, and turf flew. A limb took off the outside mirror as she shot between the cypresses to reach the drive. The tires spit gravel. She shifted gears, and the Maserati fishtailed as she turned out onto the road, leaving them all behind on her way to the mountaintop.

EMBRACE THE CHAOS. The wind tore at her hair. She glanced over at the statue next to her and laughed.

A wooden sign splintered against her fender as she took the first turn. On her next she destroyed an abandoned henhouse. The dark clouds swirled lower in the sky. She remembered the way to the castle ruins from the day she and Ren had driven there to spy, but she overshot the road she was looking for and had to make a U-turn through someone’s vineyard. When she found the right road, the deep ruts jarred the car. She pushed hard as she climbed. For a while the Maserati lurched along, then bottomed out just before she reached the top. She turned off the engine, grabbed the statue, and jumped out.

As she hit the trail, her sandals slipped on the stones. The wind blew stronger at the higher elevation, but the trees protected her from the worst of it. She gripped the statue tighter and kept climbing.

When she reached the end of the trail, she stepped out into the clearing. A gust caught her, and she stumbled but didn’t fall. Ahead of her the ruins loomed against the stormy sky, and the dark clouds swirled so close overhead she wanted to sink her fingers into them.

She bent into the wind and made her way through the crumbling archways and fallen watchtowers to the wall at the very edge. She clutched the stones with one hand, the statue with the other, and climbed on top. Fighting the gusts, she rose to her feet.

A sense of ecstasy gripped her. Wind ripped at her skirt, clouds boiled above her, the world lay at her feet below. Finally she understood what had escaped her before. She had never thought too small. No, she had thought too big and lost sight of everything she wanted her life to be about. Now she knew what she had to do.

With her face turned to the sky, she surrendered to the mystery of life. The mess, the uproar, the glorious turmoil. Bracing her feet, she lifted the statue high above her head and offered herself to the gods of chaos.

The confusion after the canopy’s collapse had slowed Ren down, and Isabel was already climbing into his Maserati by the time he reached the front of the villa. Bernardo had been on his heels, but since he wasn’t on duty, he was driving his own Renault instead of the town’s police car. They threw themselves inside and set off after her.

It hadn’t taken Ren long to figure out where she was heading, but the Renault was no match for his Maserati. When they finally reached the base of the trail, he was in a cold sweat.

He managed to convince Bernardo to stay with the cars and went after her himself, racing from the mouth of the trail out into the castle’s ruins. The hair rose on the back of his neck as he saw her in the distance. She stood on top of the crumbling wall, silhouetted against a sea of furious clouds. The wind battered her body, and the jagged hem of her dress flew around her like orange flames. Her face was turned to the heavens, and she had both arms raised, the statue held aloft in one hand.

In the distance a bolt of lightning split the sky, but from where he was standing it seemed to come from her fingertips. She was a female Moses receiving God’s second set of Commandments.

He could no longer remember a single one of his well-reasoned arguments for walking away from her. She was a gift-a gift he nearly hadn’t found the guts to claim. Now, as he watched her standing fearless against the elements, her power stole his breath. Cutting her out of his life would be like surrendering his soul. She was everything to him-his friend, his lover, his conscience, his passion. She was the answer to all the prayers he’d never had enough sense to pray. And if he wasn’t as perfect for her as he wanted to be, she’d just have to work harder to improve him.

He watched as another bolt of lightning shot from her fingertips. Drops of rain began to pelt him, and the wind cut through his shirt. He began to run. Over the aged stones. Across the graves of the ancients. Across time itself to become part of her tempest.

He pulled himself up next to her on the wall. The wind was making too much noise for her to hear his approach, but only mortals were caught unprepared, and she didn’t jump when she realized she was no longer alone. She simply lowered her arms and turned to him.

He yearned to touch her, to calm those furious wisps of hair that flew about her head, to draw her into his arms and kiss her and love her, but something had changed forever, and his blood ran cold at the thought that it might be her love for him.

Another bolt of lightning shattered the skies. She had no concern for her safety, but he did, and he pulled the statue from her stiff fingers. He began to toss it to the ground where it could no longer serve as a lightning rod. Instead, he found himself staring at it in his hand, feeling its power vibrating through him. She wasn’t the only one who could make a covenant, he understood. It was time for him to make one of his own, a covenant that went against every male instinct he possessed.

He turned as she had, faced outward, and lifted the statue back to the sky. First she belonged to God-he understood that. Next she belonged to herself, no doubt about that. Only afterward did she belong to him. This was the nature of the woman he’d fallen in love with. So be it.

He lowered the statue and turned back to her. She watched him, but her expression was unreadable. He didn’t know what to do. He had vast experience with mortal women, but goddesses were another matter, and he’d angered this particular deity beyond reason.

Her dress whipped the legs of his trousers, and the raindrops had turned into angry warheads. A terrible frenzy gripped him. Touching her would be the biggest risk of his life, but no power on earth could hold him back. If he didn’t act, he would lose her forever.

Before his courage deserted him, he pulled her hard against him. She didn’t turn to ash as he’d feared. Instead, she met his kiss with a punishing fire. Peace and love, he somehow understood, were currently the province of her tamer sisters. This goddess was driven by conquest, and her sharp teeth sank into his bottom lip. He’d never felt so close to death or life. With the wind and rain raging around them, he used his strength to pull her down from the wall and set her against the stones.

She could have resisted, she could have fought him-he expected her to-but she didn’t. Her fingers pulled at his clothes. He was the mortal she’d chosen to service her.

He pushed her skirt to her waist and ripped away her panties. The part of him that could still think wondered at the fate of one who tried to claim a goddess, but he no longer had a choice. Not even the threat of death could hold him back.

The stones bit into his arms and the backs of her legs, but she opened her thighs for him anyway. She was wet. Wet and fierce beneath his fingers. He spread her legs wider, and then he drove deep.

She tilted her face to the rain as he worked inside her. He kissed her neck, the column of her throat. She set her legs around his hips and drew his power deeper, using him as he was using her.

They struggled together, climbed together. The storm lashed their bodies, urged on by the ghosts of the ancients who themselves had once made love within these walls. I love you, he shouted, but he kept the words inside his head, because they were too small to express the immensity of what he felt.

She gripped him tighter and whispered against his hair: “Chaos.”

He waited until the very end, the last moment before they lost themselves, that sliver of time that separated them from eternity. Then he closed his hand around the statue and pulled it hard against her side.

A bolt of lightning split the sky, and they flung themselves into the fury of the storm.

She didn’t speak afterward. They moved away from the wall into the shelter of the trees. He straightened his clothes. They began walking through the ruins toward the trail. Not touching.

“The rain stopped.” His voice was hoarse with emotion. He had the statue in his hands.

“I thought too big,” she finally said.

“Did you, now?” He had no idea what she was talking about. He swallowed the lump in his throat. If he didn’t get this right the first time, there was no guarantee of a retake. “I love you. You know that, don’t you?”

She didn’t respond-didn’t even look at him. It was too little too late, exactly what he’d feared.

They made their way down the trail accompanied by the steady drip of rainwater from the trees. At the end Ren saw Bernardo standing by the Maserati. He’d gotten it out of the ruts, and he came forward, looking unhappy but determined. “Signora Favor, I regret to tell to you that you are under arrest.”

“Surely that’s not necessary,” Ren said.

“She has damaged property.”

“Hardly anything,” he pointed out. “I’ll take care of it.”

“But how do you take care of the lives she has endangered with her reckless driving?”

“This is Italy,” he said. “Everybody drives recklessly.”

But Bernardo knew his duty. “I do not make the laws. Signora, if you would come with me.”

If this had been a film, she would have clung to Ren’s arm, quivering in fear, but this was Isabel, and she merely nodded. “Of course.”