"I'm sorry about Alex," Vari said as he got close to her. "He can be weird."

She was always startled at how short Vari was--at the fact that she had to look down at him. He had such a large presence. Sometimes she even thought he was taller than Blackstone.

"I guess today's the day for it." Even she had been weird today. "Are you still up for lunch? Or are you just going to take Munin home now?"

Vari studied her for a moment, his beautiful blue eyes serious. "How about lunch at my place?"

A shiver ran through her, a pleasant shiver that she was certain just came from the chill breeze.

"Lunch at your place would probably be best," she said, "considering we have a dog to settle."

He smiled as she said "we" as if the word had pleased him.

"Do you need to come back here?" she asked. "If you do, we can take one car."

He shook his head. "I'm done for the day. I'll meet you there."

He started across the parking lot.

"Mr. Vari," she shouted after him. "Where?"

"Andrew," he said.

He had told her that before, but the name just didn't suit him. She had trouble fitting her mouth around it. "Andrew. Where do you live?"

She knew the address from her Internet searches, but she didn't know where it was. She had never really stalked him. She had never gone to his house.

He gave her the address and the directions. Then he led Munin to the employee parking lot.

Ariel watched them go, man and dog. They had similar walks, slow and comfortable, as if they knew they weren't beautiful creatures but had enough personality to make up for it.

Personality was really what counted, wasn't it? After all, people grew older, put on weight, lost their hair or their teeth. The beauty never lasted. The personality did.

The kindness did.

She got into her car and started it up. It smelled of dog and dirty running clothes. Familiar scents. She felt an odd pang, wishing she could have kept Munin. But Munin's reaction to Vari proved that Munin was never meant to be Ariel's dog.

As she pulled into downtown traffic, she thought it strange that she was sad she wasn't going to have a dog. That morning, she had woken up with no idea of getting a pet. Munin had changed her as well--or perhaps opened up a part of her that she hadn't acknowledged before.

She was lonely. Deeply lonely. She had been thinking of Vari as lonely, but he had Blackstone, his work, and his friends of long-standing. She had no one. Her family saw her as an obligation, and she had never made close friends.

She had been in Portland for months, and the only people she knew were the people she worked with.

It was time to change that.

The drive to Vari's house was an easy one, but he lived quite a distance away from downtown. She was surprised, as she pulled up to the address he had given her, at the size of his house. Somehow she had expected him to live in an alpine cottage, complete with a gabled roof and an arched doorway.

Instead the house was Northwest Modern, somewhat conventional despite its size, with a manicured garden out front and large trees flanking its sides. The house blended with the other houses in the neighborhood. Somehow she would have thought that Andrew Vari's house would have been so distinctive she could have seen it from miles away.

So much for predictions.

She parked on the street, and as she got out of the car, Vari opened the front door. Ariel felt her mouth open in surprise. She had left before he had. She hadn't expected him to be there yet.

He leaned against the doorjamb as she came up the walk. Daffodils were blooming beside the sidewalk, and a camellia bush on the side of his house was ablaze in pink flowers, their soft scent coming toward her on the breeze.

"Where's Munin?" she asked.

"Investigating the dog food bowl in the kitchen, last I checked," Vari said.

"He's a puppy. You might not want to leave him alone. They chew, you know."

Vari grinned. "I'm sure he'll be fine."

"I had no idea you put such faith in the creatures around you." She walked past him inside the house.

The foyer was light. A short table, covered with flowers, stood against the wall, a mirror behind it adding size to the room. A staircase curved up the right side of the foyer. A skylight above the landing illuminated the entire area.

The living room, off to the right, had a wall of windows not visible from the street. The place obviously had a lot of light--perfect for a gray Oregon winter.

The furniture was all low, built more to Vari's specifications than hers. But that made sense. This was his house. What caught her eye, though, was that the furniture was all custom made, leather, and clearly expensive.

Apparently Blackstone paid Vari well.

Vari closed the door behind her. He led her through the hallway and into the kitchen. Munin was eating out of a large dish, his little puppy tail wagging ecstatically. A half empty bowl of water sat beside the dish. There were large puddles around the bowl.

The kitchen smelled of spaghetti sauce, and her stomach rumbled. A sense memory came to her--the spaghetti she'd had in the mountains. It was the best sauce she had ever tasted, and it smelled like this.

"How did you get here so fast?" she asked. "You even managed to put a meal on the stove."

For a brief moment, he looked guilty. Then he shrugged. "Back roads. I know all the shortcuts."

Portland was crisscrossed by rivers and limited by mountains. There weren't many shortcuts in the city. The distances remained constant.

"Someday you'll have to tell me what the shortcut is."

He nodded, but she could see that he had no intention of telling her.

She glanced at the stove. Water boiled on top, and the sauce was bubbling in another pot.

"And you managed to put on lunch."

"Freezers and microwaves," he said. "Modern miracles."

It was her turn to grin.

"It'll be ready a few minutes after I put the pasta in. What would you like to drink?"

"Just some water." She glanced at the floor. "I've been inspired by Munin."

"He's nothing if not enthusiastic." Vari grabbed a gla.s.s from a nearby cupboard. He didn't have to reach very high. Even the kitchen had been built to his specifications. The stove was lower than most, and the cupboards and counters were at his waist level. Only the refrigerator was normal-sized. It had ice and water in the door.

He filled the gla.s.s and handed it to her.

"I've never been in a house like this one. You had it custom-built?"

"Naw," he said. "I got it from the leprechaun who did promotions for O'Hallerans. He was only here for the two weeks around St. Patrick's Day, so he felt that he didn't get enough use out of the place."

She chuckled and sank into one of the kitchen chairs.

He shook his head. "Sorry. That just came out."

"Small wonder," she said.

He raised his eyebrows. "Was that a slight?"

"The puns are flying thick around here," she said, and hoped he wouldn't be offended.

"Fortunately they're short puns," he said, and sat down beside her.

"Not to mention redundant."

He leaned his head back and laughed. It was a hearty sound, one that seemed almost too big for him. The sound startled Munin, who scrambled under the table.

Vari reached down and patted the dog, comforting him.

"Most people hate it when I joke about these things," he said. "They don't know whether they should laugh or not."

"You do," she said, "so I figured I could."

"Took me a long time to be able to laugh at myself." He picked up Munin, who licked his face, and then wriggled to get down. "It's not a skill I'm going to give up just because it's no longer politically correct."

"It's no longer politically correct to laugh at yourself?"

"Short jokes, personal jokes, jokes about character," he said. "Somewhere along the way they became as verboten as the truly ugly racist jokes that were popular fifty years ago."

"You don't think they're the same." She sipped the water. "After all, they're about how a person looks."

"Or thinks or acts." He leaned back in his chair. "If we can't laugh at ourselves, what's the point of living?"

"I always think there's a point in living," she said.

He gave her a sideways glance. She got a sense that at one time, he might have questioned that.

"You've been through a lot, haven't you?" she asked.

"No more than some," he said.

"But more than most."

"You could say that." He sighed, then bowed his head. "Look, Ariel, I'm not--"

Munin barked. The sound was small and deep, rather like a six-year-old boy with a ba.s.s voice and no way to project it.

Vari shook his head, clearly startled. "You're starting in already, aren't you, buddy?"

He was speaking to the dog, although Ariel wasn't sure why. "What do you mean?"

"Pets protect you," he said.

"What was he protecting you from?" she asked.

"Making an a.s.s of myself." He stood and walked to the refrigerator. He opened it and took out a package of fresh pasta, dumping it into the boiling water. "Lunch in two minutes."

She frowned at Munin, wishing the dog hadn't barked. Until that point, Munin had seemed very well behaved. Now he was licking the spilled water off the tiled floor, just like any dog would do.

Vari moved around his kitchen with the grace of a dancer. He got out a colander and put it in the sink, then grabbed dishes from a cupboard and set the table.

"You don't have to worry about making an a.s.s of yourself with me," she said. "I've been a.s.s-like enough for both of us."

He paused and looked over at her. Those blue eyes of his made her breath catch. She could see all the way through them. And she had been wrong about beauty and personality. He had both. His beauty was just hidden, something that only a person who really looked for it would see.

"I never thought you were an a.s.s," he said. "Just a bit obsessed."

"Stalkeresque behavior?" she said. "Not a.s.s-like at all, huh?"

His cheeks colored. "I was trying to p.i.s.s you off so you wouldn't ask more questions about Darius."

"I didn't get mad," she said. "Just embarra.s.sed."

Munin had stretched out on the tile, his head between his paws, his long ears flopped over them like rags. His eyes were closed and his breathing was heavy.

Vari stepped over him on his way to the stove. The puppy didn't even wake up. Like all puppies, he slept suddenly and hard.

Vari stirred the sauce, then stirred the pasta, shutting off the burner. The muscles in his back rippled as he moved. Even his body, compact as it was, was beautiful.

She had just been trained not to look at men like him too closely. It was all over the culture. Never look at someone who is different--you might draw attention to them. You might embarra.s.s them. You might become like them yourself.

He picked up the pot of boiling water and carried it around the dog, careful not to trip. Then he poured the contents into the colander.

Maybe the problems had always been hers. Her parents had died and her aunt had seen her as an obligation, so Ariel had remained distant from everyone else, afraid that they'd see her as one as well.

But she wasn't anyone's obligation. She was her own person. And she could remain like that even if she spent time with someone.

For the first time since the mountains, she had found someone she wanted to spend time with. And she wouldn't mind touching him, either, to see what the look in his blue eyes would be as her hand caressed his skin, her fingers ma.s.saged those muscles in his back, moving down- She shook herself out of that thought.

He turned and apparently saw the movement, because he smiled. "Penny for them," he said. "Or has inflation hit that too?"

She didn't smile. Instead, she took a deep breath. If sports had taught her anything, it was this: The only person who really failed was the person who never tried.