“Damn, I was an idiot to bring you out here,” Rooke said gruffly.

“Don’t say that.” Adrian’s voice came out hollow and weak and she forced herself to straighten, even though it meant moving away from Rooke. “You are not responsible for me. I wanted to come.”

“I’m responsible for my own bad judgment.”

“Stop.”

“Come on,” Rooke muttered. “Before we get into another power struggle and freeze.”

Adrian didn’t argue, because Rooke was right. She was cold to the bone. Rooke kept an arm around her shoulder, putting herself between

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Adrian and the wind as they walked back to the house. Instead of taking her to the truck, Rooke turned up a path toward a big cement-block building that looked like a garage. Rooke unlocked the door and guided her to an overstuffed chair in front of a wood-burning stove.

“I’ll get the fire going and you’ll be warm in a few minutes.” Rooke quickly stacked logs from the pile next to the stove and lit them. Then she knelt in front of the chair where Adrian had kicked off her boots and curled up with her legs beneath her. Rooke reached out as if to rest her hand on Adrian’s knee and then moved it to the arm of the chair at the last moment. “How about hot chocolate? I don’t have tea here.”

“Where are we?” Adrian asked, looking around at the cement floor and counters covered with tools. “I thought you said your apartment was here. Tell me you don’t consider this an apartment.”

Rooke grinned. “My shop. I live upstairs, but the stove down here is better. So, hot chocolate?”

“That would be great. And you can stop looking so worried. I’m all right.”

“You’ll be even better in a few minutes.” Rooke straightened. “I’ll be right back.”

Adrian waited until she heard Rooke’s footsteps fade, then leaned her head back and closed her eyes. She didn’t want Rooke taking care of her, although Rooke’s tenderness made her feel special, something she’d never thought she’d wanted before. Still, she didn’t want to appear weak. Now that her head was clear, she needed to figure out what was going on. She’d always been open to heightened sensation, especially when she was emotionally vulnerable or intensely connected to someone. At odd times she would also pick up energy from strangers, but lately she seemed to be more susceptible than ever before. Maybe with Rooke it was because she wanted a connection between them, but she couldn’t offer the same explanation for Melinda. She’d be just as happy never to experience the disconcerting reactions Melinda stirred in her again.

Adrian sighed. Melinda was a question for later. She glanced at her watch. She owed Melinda a phone call too. It was almost ten. And before she made that call, she needed to decide what she was going to do about Melinda and Rooke.

v

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Rooke set the cup of hot chocolate down gently on the packing crate that she used for an end table next to the chair in which Adrian was sleeping. She checked the fire and added a log. When she turned, Adrian was awake and watching her. Adrian no longer looked pale, and it might have been the dim light in the room, but the bruises beneath her eyes seemed lighter too. She appeared relaxed and peaceful. Rooke liked the way she looked, curled up in the chair. Almost at home.

“How are you feeling?” Rooke asked.

“Well-done.”

Rooke grinned. “It’s not that warm in here yet.”

“Says you.” Adrian pulled off her sweater and stretched, feeling as rested as if she’d just awakened from a two-hour nap. In fact, she felt wonderful. When Rooke’s eyes narrowed and dropped to her breasts, she remembered that she hadn’t put a bra on under the T-shirt she’d layered beneath her sweater. The instant she realized Rooke was staring at her breasts, her nipples tightened. A breath later, she was wet and ready. She fought to keep anything from showing in her expression and picked up the hot chocolate.

“Thanks for this,” Adrian said.

“You’re welcome.”

Rooke sounded tight and strained and Adrian was afraid to look at her. If she saw that intense fascination in Rooke’s face again, she was likely to explode right there in the chair. She sipped the hot chocolate and ordered her body to behave.

“This is where you do all your work?” Adrian chanced a glance and was only halfway disappointed that Rooke appeared to be engrossed in something on the ceiling. At least one of them had some control.

Work ought to be a safe subject, and Rooke was clearly an expert in the subject she was currently absorbed in.

“Yes,” Rooke said.

“How do you carve the names if…”

Rooke met Adrian’s gaze. “If I can’t read them?”

“Yes.” Adrian kept her voice carefully neutral, as if they were discussing an everyday occurrence. She never wanted to see that defeated look in Rooke’s eyes again.

Rooke’s stomach became leaden. No one had ever asked her to explain how she worked before. Everyone seemed to assume what she was capable of, or what she wasn’t. She had learned not to care what

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others thought of her, but she desperately wanted Adrian to understand.

Crossing to the counter, she picked up several sheets of paper and offered them to Adrian.

Wordlessly, Adrian took them and leafed through them. They were all drawings of gravestones. The designs were all different—some were completely plain, others ornate. Above each marker, a name was hand printed in simple letters. On the stones, the same name appeared several times in different styles, from block lettering to ornate script. Adrian frowned.

“You need to interpret for me,” Adrian said.

“When I carve a symbol, like a bird, on a marker, I don’t carve the same one every time,” Rooke said.

“Okay. That makes sense.”

“The letters are symbols, like the bird or a tree or a lantern. I can carve symbols, I just can’t…” Rooke sighed and she rubbed her forehead as if it hurt.

Rooke’s hand was shaking and Adrian heard the frustration in her voice. God, she wanted to understand, and she was making it worse.

“That’s okay. You don’t have to…”

“I want to,” Rooke said fiercely. She paced a few steps, her back to Adrian, then spun around. Her body was taut, her hands clenched. “I want to tell you.”

“Okay,” Adrian said softly. “Can I ask you a question?”

Rooke nodded.

“Why can’t you read?”

Rooke’s head jerked as if she were startled. Then some of the tension went out of her body. “I was in an accident when I was a baby.

Something happened to my brain. I can see the letters but my brain can’t make them into words.”

“No words at all?”

“No. Not numbers, either.”

“My God,” Adrian said quietly. “That must be so hard.”

Rooke smiled. “I don’t think about it all that much. It’s just the way it is for me.”

Adrian wanted to ask a thousand questions, starting with, Was that your mother who was killed in the accident in the Hudson? but she wanted to focus on Rooke, and what Rooke needed to tell her.

“Your grandfather prints the names for you?”

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“Yes. When he takes the order. Then I work up the samples and let the family choose. Sometimes they have specific things they want, and I work those in.”

“It all sounds highly personal.”

“Shouldn’t it be?”

Adrian smiled. “Yes. It should.” She put her cup aside and stood.

“Can you show me one you’re working on?”

“You want to see a gravestone?”

Rooke looked so surprised, and so immune to her own charm that Adrian had a hard time not touching her. But she was afraid if she did, with her feelings for Rooke so very close to the surface right now, she’d fall into her again, and she didn’t want this moment to be about her.

“Yes, please. I’d like you to show me.”

“All right.” Rooke held out her hand.

Adrian hesitated, then willed herself to close everything down.

Tentatively, she slid her hand into Rooke’s and Rooke squeezed gently.

Warmth flowed into her, the connection reestablished, and she breathed a sigh. They were holding hands, nothing more complicated than that.

“You have beautiful hands.”

Rooke stared down at their joined hands, then into Adrian’s eyes.

“They’re pretty rough and banged up. Your skin is so soft I’m not sure I should be touching you.”

“It’s fine,” Adrian said, her throat threatening to close. “Perfect.”

Then Rooke smiled as if she’d been given a gift, and Adrian felt herself falling and had no desire to stop. She wasn’t dizzy, she wasn’t disoriented. She knew exactly where she was and with whom. What terrified her was that she knew exactly how she was falling, and that wasn’t at all what she had planned.

“Over here,” Rooke said, leading Adrian into the far end of the room where several mounds were covered with tarps. A big exhaust fan occupied the space there the windows had been. “This one is actually part of a much bigger marker. This figure will be inset near the top.”

When Rooke pulled the tarp away, Adrian stared at the head of a lion emerging from the stone. It was so lifelike, the eyes so hypnotic, she would have sworn it was alive. “It’s incredible.”

“Thanks.”

Adrian thought of the picture in the newspaper of the mausoleum and the gargoyles. She remembered Melinda saying how lifelike they

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were. With a sinking sensation, she said, “I met someone coming up here who’s trying to find a sculptor. She saw a picture of a mausoleum in the newspaper with gargoyles at the four corners. You did that, didn’t you?”

Rooke stiffened and dropped Adrian’s hand. “Yes.”