“You’re frighteningly well adjusted. Or maybe just compared to me.”

“You seem pretty steady from where I sit.”

“I have abandonment issues.” She gestured with a dripping forkful of pancakes. “I have a drug phobia due to a family history of drug abuse that has me sweating taking an aspirin. I suffer from acute stage fright that escalated in my teens to the point that I could barely cope with being in the same room with three people at a time. The only way I can cope with my mother, sanely, is to stay away from her, and I spent the majority of my life alternately blaming myself or my father for the fact that we didn’t-don’t, really-know each other.”

He made a pfft sound. “Is that all?”

“Want more?” She ate pancakes, stabbed more. “I got more. I have dreams where I engage in detailed conversations with my dead grandmother, whom I never met, and to whom I feel closer than I do to any living member of my family. My best friend is my ex-husband. I’ve had four stepfathers, and countless ‘uncles,’ and being not stupid, understandthat is part of the reason that I’ve never had a long-term, healthy relationship with a man other than Steve. I expect to be exploited and used, or I expect the attempt, and, as a result, have successfully sabotaged any potentially long-term, healthy relationship I might have had. Fair warning.”

He forked more pancakes, ate them. “Is that the best you can do?”

With a laugh, she shoved her plate away, picked up her coffee. “That’s probably enough over breakfast.” She rose, held out a hand. “Let’s take a walk in the rain. Then we can come back and dive in your Jacuzzi.”

They left the mess, took a long walk with the dog. Was there anything more romantic than being kissed in the rain? Cilla wondered. Anything more lovely than the mountains, shrouded in clouds and mist? Anything more liberating than strolling hand in hand through the summer rain while all the world huddled inside, behind closed doors and windows?

Drenched, they raced back to the house to strip off dripping clothes. In the hot, bubbling water, they took each other slowly.

Drained, they went upstairs to curl together like puppies to sleep on Ford’s bed.

She woke him with love, the sleepy joy of it, the warm tangle of limbs and soft press of lips. When they dozed again, the rain slowed to a quiet patter.

Later, Cilla slipped out of bed. Tiptoeing to Ford’s closet, she found a shirt. Pulling it on, she eased out of the room. She intended to go down to search out a bottle of water-preferably ice cold-but detoured to his studio. Thirst could wait for curiosity.

When she switched on the light, the drawings pinned to his display board pulled her forward. So odd to see her face, she thought, on the warrior’s body. Well, her body, she admitted.

He’d added her tattoo, but as she’d once suggested, it rode on Brid’s biceps.

Wandering over to his workstation, she frowned at the papers on his drawing board. Small sketches covered them-sparse sketches, she mused, all in separate boxes, and each with a dotted vertical line running top to bottom. Some of them had what she thought she recognized as speech balloons, with numbers inside. She spread them out for a better look.

It was like a storyboard, she realized. The characters, the action, some staging. Blocking. And if she wasn’t mistaken, the sizes and shapes of the boxes had been calculated mathematically as well as artistically. Balance, she mused, and impact.

Who knew so much went into a comic?

On the other side of the board, a larger sheet lay on the counter. More squares and rectangles, she noted, holding detailed drawings, shaded and… inked. Yes, that was the word. Though no dialogue had been added, the setup, the art, drew the eye across, just as words in a book would do.

In the center, Dr. Cass Murphy stood in what Cilla thought of as her professor suit. Conservative, acceptable. Bland. The clothes, the dark-framed glasses and the posture defined personality in one shot. That was a kind of brilliance, wasn’t it? she thought. To capture and depict in one single image the character. The person.

Without thinking, she picked up the panel, took it to the display board to hold it against the sketch of Brid.

The same woman, yes, of course the same woman. And yet the change was both remarkable and complete. Repression to liberation, hesitation to purpose. Shadow to light.

When she started to walk back to replace the panel, she saw another stack of pages. Typewritten pages. She scanned the first few lines.

FORD WOKE HUNGRY, and deeply disappointed Cilla wasn’t beside him to slake one area of appetite. Apparently, he decided, he couldn’t get enough of her.

She was all beautiful and sexy and wounded and smart. She knew how to use power tools, and had a laugh that made his mouth water. He’d watched her hang tough, and fall to pieces. He’d witnessed her absolute devotion to a friend, watched her handle acute embarrassment and lash out with temper.

She knew how to work, and oh boy, she knew how to play.

She might be, he mused, pretty damn close to perfect.

So where the hell was she?

He rolled out of bed, snagged a pair of pants and stepped into them on his way to hunt her down.

He was just about to call her name when he spotted her. She sat at his work counter, legs tucked up and crossed, shoulders hunched, one elbow propped. He had the quick and fleeting thought that if he sat like that for more than ten minutes, his neck and shoulders would lock up for days.

Walking over, he set his hands on her shoulders to rub what he imagined would be knotted muscles. And she jumped as if he’d swung an ax at her head.

She pitched forward, caught herself, reared back as her legs scissored out. Then, spinning around in his chair, she clutched her hands at her chest as her laughter bubbled out.

“God! You scared me!”

“Yeah, I picked that up when you nearly bashed your head on my drawing board. What’re you up to?”

“I was… Oh God. Oh shit!” She shoved the chair back, dropped her hands into her lap. “I’m sorry. I completely breached your privacy. I was looking at the sketches you had sitting out, and I saw the book. I just meant to skim the first page. I got caught up. I shouldn’t have-”

“Whoa, whoa, save the self-flagellation. I told you before you could read it sometime. I just hadn’t written it yet. If you got caught up, that’s a plus.”

“I moved things around.” She picked up the panel, held it out. “I hate when people move my things around.”

“I know where it goes. Obviously, you’re lucky I’m not as temperamental and touchy as you are.” He lay the panel back in its place. “So, what do you think?”

“I think the story is fun, exciting and entertaining, with a sharp thread of humor, and with strong underpinnings of feminism.”

He lifted his brows. “All that?”

“You know damn well. The character of Cass behaves in certain ways, and expects certain behavior and attitudes toward her because she was raised by a domineering, unsympathetic father. She’s sexually repressed and emotionally clogged, has been reared to accept the superiority of men and accept a certain lack of respect in her male-dominated field. You see a great deal of that in the single portrait. The one you just put back.

“She’s betrayed, and left for dead, because she’s so indoctrinated to taking orders from male authority figures. To subverting her own intellect and desires. And by facing death, by fighting against it, she becomes a leader. Everything that’s been trapped inside her, and more, is released in the form of Brid. A warrior. Empowerment, through power.”

Fascinating, he thought, and flattering, to listen to her synopsize his story, and his character. “I’m going to interpret that as you like it.”

“I really do, and not just due to the recent sexual haze. It’s like a screenplay, a very strong screenplay. You even have camera angles and direction.”