"That's your idea of a celebration-not going out?"

"Hey, this will be my first night as a Santa Fe property owner. I want to stay home and admire what I bought."

"I'll bring the red wine."

"And champagne," Beth added. "I feel as if I should crack a bottle of champagne against the front gate, sort of like launching a ship."

"Would Dom Perignon be good enough?"

3.

When Decker arrived at six as they had agreed, he was surprised to see an unfamiliar car in Beth's driveway. a.s.suming that a maintenance person would have used a truck or a car with a business name on it, and wondering who would be visiting at this hour, he parked beside the unmarked car, got out, and noted that the blue Chevrolet Cavalier had an Avis rental-car folder on its front pa.s.senger seat. As he walked along the gravel driveway toward the front gate, the carved door beyond it came open and Beth appeared beneath the portal with a man whom Decker had never seen before.

The man was slender and wore a business suit. Of medium height, with soft features, he had thinning partially gray hair and looked to be in his early fifties. His suit was blue, decently cut, but not expensive. His shirt was white and emphasized the pallor of his skin. Not that the man looked sick. It was just that his suit and his lack of a tan were a good indication that he wasn't from Santa Fe. In the year and a quarter that Decker had been living in the area, he hadn't seen more than a dozen men wearing suits, and half of them had been on business from out of town.

The man stopped talking in the middle of a sentence- "... would cost too much for ..."-and turned toward Decker, raising his narrow eyebrows in curiosity as Decker opened the front gate and approached them beneath the portal.

"Steve." Buoyant, Beth kissed him on the cheek. "This is Dale Hawkins. He works for the gallery that sells my paintings in New York. Dale, this is the good friend I told you about-Steve Decker."

Hawkins smiled. "To hear Beth tell it, she couldn't have survived here without you. Hi." He held out his hand. "How are you?"

"If Beth's been saying good things about me, I'm definitely in an excellent mood."

Hawkins chuckled, and Decker shook hands with him. "Dale was supposed to be here yesterday, but some business in New York held him up," Beth said. "In all the excitement about closing the deal on the house, I forgot to tell you he was coming."

"I've never been here before," Hawkins said. "But already I realize that the visit is long overdue. The play of sunlight is amazing. The mountains must have changed color a half dozen times while I was driving up from Albuquerque." Beth looked terribly pleased. "Dale came with good news. He managed to sell three of my paintings."

"To the same buyer," Hawkins said. "The client is very enthusiastic about Beth's work. He wants to have a first look at anything new she does."

"And he paid five thousand dollars for the first-look privilege," Beth said excitedly, "not to mention a hundred thousand for the group of three paintings."

"A hundred ... thousand?" Decker grinned. "But that's fantastic." Impulsively, he hugged her.

Beth's eyes glistened. "First the house, now this." She returned Decker's hug. "I have plenty to celebrate." Hawkins looked as if he felt out of place. "Well." He cleared his throat. "I ought to be going. Beth, I'll see you tomorrow morning at nine."

"Yes, at Pasqual's for breakfast. You remember my instructions how to get there?"

"If I forget, I'll ask someone at the hotel."

"Then I'll show you around the galleries," Beth said. "I hope you like walking. There are over two hundred of them."

Decker felt obligated to make the offer. "Would you like to stay and have dinner with us?"

Hawkins raised his hands in amus.e.m.e.nt. "Lord no. I can tell when I'm in the way."

"If you're sure."

"Positive."

"I'll go out with you to your car," Beth said.

Decker waited under the portal while Beth went and spoke briefly to Hawkins in the driveway. Hawkins got in his car, waved, and drove away.

Beth made a little skipping motion, beaming as she returned to Decker. She pointed toward the paper bag he was holding. "Is that what I think it is?"

"The red wine and the Dom Perignon. The champagne's been chilling all afternoon."

"I can't wait to open it."

4.

Beth twitched her nose as champagne bubbles tickled it. "Would you like to see a surprise?"

"Another one?" The Dom Perignon trickled brightly over Decker's tongue. "This is turning into quite a day."

"I'm a little nervous about showing you, though." Decker wasn't sure what she meant. "Nervous?"

"It's very private."

Now Decker really didn't know what she meant. "If you want to show me."

Beth seemed to make a decision, nodding firmly. "I do. Follow me."

They left the handsomely tiled kitchen, crossed a colorful cotton dhurrie rug in the living room, and went down a skylit corridor at the front of the house. It led past a door to the laundry room and took them to another door. That door was closed. Whenever Decker had visited Beth, she had kept what was in there a secret.

Now she hesitated, looked deeply into Decker's aquamarine eyes, and let out a long deep breath. "Here goes."

When she opened the door, Decker's first impression was of color-splotches of red and green, blue and yellow. A brilliant rainbow seemed to have burst, its myriad parts spread before him. His second impression was of shape, of images and textures that blended together as if they shared a common life force.

Decker was silent a moment, so impressed that he couldn't move.

Beth studied him more intensely. "What do you think?"

"Think isn't the word. It's what I feel. I'm overwhelmed."

"Really?"

"They're beautiful." Decker stepped forward, glancing all around the room at paintings on easels, paintings leaning against the walls, other paintings hanging above them. "Stunning."

"I'm so relieved."

"But there must be"-Decker did a quick count- "over a dozen. And they're all about New Mexico. When did you ... ?"

"Every day since the day I moved in, whenever I wasn't with you."

"But you didn't tell me a word about them."

"I was too nervous. What if you hadn't liked them? What if you had said they were like every other local artist's work?"

"But they're not. They're very definitely not." Decker walked slowly from one to another, taking in their images, admiring them.

One in particular attracted his attention. It showed a dry creek bed with a juniper tree and red wildflowers on the rim. It appeared simple and unpretentious. But Decker couldn't help feeling that there was something beneath the surface. "What's your opinion?" Beth asked.

"I'm afraid I'm more comfortable looking at paintings than talking about them."

"It's not so hard. What do you notice first? What dominates?"

"The red wildflowers."

"Yes," Beth said. "I got interested in them the moment I found out what they were called: 'Indian paintbrush.' "

"You know, they do look like artist's brushes," Decker said. "Straight and slender, with red bristles on top." He thought a moment. "A painting about flowers called paintbrushes."

"You're getting it," Beth said. "Art critics describe this sort of thing as 'self-referential,' a painting about painting."

"Then that might explain something else I'm noticing," Decker said. "Your swirling brush strokes. The way everything blends together. What's the technique called? Impressionism? It reminds me of Cezanne and Monet."

"Not to mention Renoir, Degas, and especially van Gogh," Beth said. "Van Gogh was a genius at depicting sunlight, so I figured I could make the painting more self-referential if I used van Gogh's techniques to depict the uniqueness of New Mexico."

"'The land of the dancing sun.'"

"You're very quick. I'm trying to catch the peculiar quality of Santa Fe's light. But if you look closely, you can also see symbols hidden in the landscape."

"... Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned."

"Circles, ripples, sunburst patterns-the symbols the Navajo and other southwestern Indians use to represent nature."

"References within references," Decker said.

"All intended to make the viewer sense that even an apparently simple creek bed rimmed by a juniper tree and red wildflowers can be complicated."

"Beautiful."

"I was so nervous that you wouldn't like them."

"What did your art dealer say about them?" Decker asked. "Dale? He was certain he could sell them all."

"Then what does my opinion matter?"

"It matters, believe me."

Decker turned to stare at her. Pulse racing, he couldn't stop himself. "You're beautiful."

She blinked, startled. "What?"

The words rushed out of him. "I think about you all the time. I can't get you out of my mind."

Beth's tan turned pale.

"I'm sure this is the biggest mistake I ever made," Decker said. "You need to feel free. You need s.p.a.ce and ... You'll probably avoid me from now on. But I have to say it. I love you."

5.

Beth studied him for what seemed the longest while.

I've really messed this up, Decker thought. Why couldn't I have kept my mouth shut?

Beth's gaze was intense.

"Bad timing, I guess," Decker said.

Beth didn't answer.

"Can we go back?" Decker asked. "Can we pretend this never happened?"

"You can never go back."

"That's what I was afraid of."

"And it did happen."

"It certainly did."

"You'll regret it," Beth said.

"Do you want me to leave?"

"h.e.l.l no. I want you to kiss me."

The next thing Decker realized, he had his arms around her. The back of his neck tingled from the touch of her hands. When they kissed, he felt as if his breath had been taken away. At first, her lips were closed, their pressure against his tentative. Then her lips parted. Her tongue met his, and he had never felt so powerfully intimate a touch. The kiss lengthened and deepened. Decker began to tremble. He couldn't control the reaction. His heart pounded with chest-swelling speed. When he lowered his hands to cup her hips, he trembled harder. He pressed his lips against her neck, aroused by the lingering scent of delicate soap and of the deeper primal smell of salt and musk, earth and heat and sky. It filled his nostrils. It made him feel that he was suffocating. He unb.u.t.toned her blouse and slid his hands beneath her bra.s.siere, touching her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, her nipples growing, hardening to his touch. His legs would no longer support him. He sank to his knees, kissing the silken skin of her stomach. With a shudder, she sank lower, drawing him to the floor. They embraced and rolled, kissing more deeply. He seemed to float, feeling as if he had been taken out of his body. Simultaneously he was conscious only of his body, of Beth's body. He wanted to go on kissing and touching her forever, to touch more and more of her. Hurrying, needing, they undressed each other. When he entered her, he felt transported. He couldn't get far enough within her. He wanted to be totally one with her. When they came, he felt suspended in a moment between frenzied heartbeats that lengthened and swelled and erupted.