She only had the dawning realization that Nelson wasn't the love of her life. She'd been much happier when she believed such an entity didn't exist anyway.

"So where are the hot parties this weekend?" Chase asked Mason as he searched his toolbox for a pair of pliers.

Mason looked up from peering into Helen's filthy engine. "What would the mayor know about hot parties?"

"You've got to have some inside info."

Mason smiled. "You'd think, wouldn't you?" He took the pliers from Chase and started loosening a bolt

holding the air filter in place. "I think we're too old to go to hot parties anymore. I think we now run the risk of looking either pathetic or pervy. Or both."

Chase rummaged through the toolbox. "So nothing is going on this weekend?"

"Well, there's the CrabFest over in Boone's Harbor."

Chase looked skeptical. "I don't know. I think it's best to stay away from an event with that name. Far, far away."

"Don't knock it. They crown the Crab Queen," Mason said with a knowing look.

"I don't want to contemplate how a lady wins that tide." Chase chuckled. "This is Maine, anyway. Why isn't it a lobster festival?"

Mason shrugged. "I guess one crustacean is as good as another. Hey, do you know what they say about the beauty queens?"

Chase started to respond, but a silver sedan pulling into the driveway across the street captured his attention.

Abby got out of the car. She was dressed in a suit similar to the one Chester ruined the other day.

Except this one was light blue and accentuated the indentation of her waist and the gentle curve of her bottom to a T.

Chase looked down, and with guilty determination, began rifling through his tools.

Mason let out a low whistle, and Chase jerked his head back up to make sure Abby hadn't heard it.

She had disappeared into her house.

"So that's the notorious Abby Stepp. You're right-she doesn't wear her hair in a bun anymore."

Chase grunted and held up an air filter.

Mason took it and turned back to Helen. After a few loud bangs and a couple terse words, he asked, "So I take it things didn't go well after your kiss?"

"What?" Chase's asked, unable to keep the shock out of his voice.

"The kiss?"

Chase stared at his friend. Which one? Wait, how did Mason know about them kissing?

"I hear Abby wasn't wearing anything but your bathrobe and a smile."

"I don't recall the smile," Chase said wryly. "How on earth do you know about that?"

"You don't kiss and tell, do you?" Mason shook his head. "No, you don't. But Summer-Ann sure does. Or at least she tells about other people's kisses."

Chase groaned. "What did she say?"

"Well, I officially heard it from Ginny."

Mason's secretary was a disgrace to any phrase containing the word "secret."

"But the main gist was that you were supposed to be watching Willy, but instead, you were playing kissy-face with one of those awful Stepp sisters. Both Ginny and Summer-Ann thought it was appalling-and very bizarre."

Chase released an irritated sigh. "These are the times when I hate living in a small town."

"Imagine if you had to work with Ginny every day."

"I do have to work with Summer-Ann."

Mason cringed. "You win."

Chase flipped closed the lid of his toolbox and joined Mason to stare into the old truck's engine.

"So was the kiss hot or what?" Mason asked abruptly.

"It was pretty hot."

Mason nodded and looked back at the truck. "Then why are you looking for a party?"

"So I can forget how hot Abby's kiss was."

Mason nodded again and reached in to the motor to check the tightness of the air filter.

"So we're going to the CrabFest?"

Chase blew out a pent-up breath and said with little enthusiasm, "Yeah, we're going to the CrabFest."

"The entire lab attends each year. There's food and music. It's a wonderful way to enjoy each other's company and talk about things other than mouse genome sequencing or induced mutations or any other aspect of our work."

Abby nodded and smiled, and wondered why she was surprised by Dr. Keene's suggestion. He was different from so many of the scientists she'd worked with. He was brilliant and successful at his work, but he was interested in other aspects of life outside of his own research.

He loved his family and his friends. He enjoyed painting and reading. He collected stamps. And apparently he really liked a good crab festival.

"So can we count you in?" he asked, his eyes filled with anticipation.

"Of course," Abby said, with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. He was so excited, she hated to give the impression she didn't share in his eagerness.

"Wonderful. Wonderful! We'll meet at the Boone's Harbor Park at four on Saturday. The entertainment doesn't really get going until evening."

Abby nodded and watched her boss wander off to merrily invite all the other employees.

Abby returned to adjusting her microscope, but her mind wasn't on the cells magnified inthe lens. She was actually finding herself feeling relieved that she had something to do this weekend. With Nelson's curt refusal to visit, she was feeling restless and at loose ends.

And she was also feeling a bit like a stalker. Over the past week, she couldn't count how many times she had gone to the windows of her house, hoping to catch a glimpse of Chase.

She had seen him working on Helen a few days after the shower incident. She'd been coming home from work, but when she looked over to say hi, he'd been searching for something in his toolbox. So she'd gone inside without speaking.

Several days later, she saw him again from her bedroom window. He was in the yard, using a circular saw to cut a large sheet of wood braced on two sawhorses. He had his shirt off, and as he maneuvered the heavy tool through the wood, Abby could see the expansion and contraction of muscles across his back and broad shoulders. The sheen of sweat glistening on his tanned skin made him look like a gilded statue come to life.

Abby had forced herself to leave the window, but the memory haunted her dreams and added to her agitation.

Maybe a crab festival was just the thing to get her mind off both Nelson and Chase. Work certainly wasn't the refuge it usually was, she thought, with no small amount of derision as she realized she had been staring into an unfocused microscope for the last several minutes.

She could only hope that food, music and crabs got her brain back to its usual functioning state.

Abby discovered several things about the CrabFest that she had been reluctant to believe. First, the food was excellent. Second, the music was very good. And third, she was having a great time.

She stood among a crowd at the bandstand. A quartet of middle-aged musicians bopped on the stage, enjoying themselves and the classic rock they were playing. Abby watched them with a grin on her lips, from time to time taking bites of a crab roll. The sun had started to set. The sinking orb reflected off the harbor and cast the crowd in brilliant reds and oranges.

But even with the loss of light, the air was still unseasonably warm. "Aren't they great?" Leslie, one of Abby's colleagues, yelled to her over the music. The small woman looked like she belonged at Woodstock with her salt-and-pepper hair pulled into a long braid and her blue batik sundress swishing over the top of her brown Birkenstocks.

Abby nodded, her mouth full of sandwich.

"My husband is just so groovy," Leslie crowed, grinning from ear to ear and bouncing up and down to the beat. Leslie's "groovy" husband was one of the guitarists on the stage. He hopped in a similar fashion to his wife, plucking away at a bass guitar, which sat lopsidedly against his protruding belly. The last remnants of the fading light glowed scarlet off his balding head.

Abby grinned. Hewas pretty groovy. "Oh," Leslie breathed, once the song finished. "That was wonderful. I feel like I'm seventeen again." Shewagged her fingers coyly toward her husband.

Abby wasn't sure if it wasthe glinting light or not, but she could swear Leslie's husband blushed as he waved back. "Let's get some beer," Leslie said, grabbing Abby's arm and tugging her toward one of the stands. "Isn't this fabulous," Leslie stated, rather than asked, as they reached the line at the ale booth. Abby nodded and surveyed the animated crowd. "It's much better than I imagined." "You've never been before?" "No." Leslie looked stunned. "Really? Gosh, my family came every year, rain or shine."

Abby frowned. "I thought you grew up in New Jersey?"

"I did. But my aunt lived over in West Hill, so we spent a lot of time here." Leslie got a reminiscent look that Abby couldn't miss despite the narrowness of her tortoise-shell glasses. "When I was young, how I wished I lived here. I'd cry every summer when we had to go back to Jersey."

"I've heard New Jersey is pretty bad, but I had no idea," Abby said laughingly.

Leslie returned her chuckle. "No, Jersey isn't bad. It's just that nothing can compare to here. It's

Utopia."

Abby couldn't hide her disbelieving look. "I guess it's different if you grow up here." She stepped up and placed an order for the CrabFest Special, which was a huge, plastic tumbler of beer with a gummy crab bobbing in the bottom.

"Make that two," Leslie said and then turned back to Abby. "You didn't love living here? All this ocean air and natural beauty and friendly people."

Abby nearly choked on her beer. Millbrook and friendly-those weren't two words she'd ever thought to use together.

"Again, I think it's different when you grow up here."

Leslie's brow creased. She obviously didn't like having her nirvana tainted by Abby's censorious opinion. But she didn't say anything as she picked up her beer, and they headed back to the stage. They sipped their drinks and waited for the band to start again. Abby glanced at Leslie, noticing that the woman's earlier enthusiasm had waned.

"So, did you meet Herb here?" Abby hoped the change of subject would erase the tension.

It worked. Leslie grinned. "Oh, no, we met in junior high and actually dated for six months or some silly thing like that. We were all of twelve, so dating is a relative term. Then his family moved to New York. And would you believe that when I was registering for my freshman classes at NYU, he was standing behind me in line. We started dating a week later, and here we are today."

Abby smiled deeply. "Destiny."

"Destiny." Leslie nodded.

Abby took a sip of beer, the smile still not leaving her lips. She gazed over the milling people. But her relaxed perusal stopped when she encountered a pair of eyes watching her. Even in the disappearing light, she knew they were the pale blue of ice-cold aquamarines.

She swallowed her beer and her smile faded.

"You know," Leslie's voice caused Abby to return her attention to the petite woman, "the funny thing about destiny is that you can't predict it, and you can't prevent it."

When Abby looked back, Chase had vanished with the sunlight.

Chapter 10.

"No, no, no," Mason said emphatically, steering Chase to the other side of the bandstand. "We didn't come here to moon over the unobtainable neighbor. We're here to find ourselves some easy women who aren't our neighbors."

Chase raised an eyebrow in Mason's direction.

"Well, my neighbor is the Widow Peters." Mason shuddered. "Please let me never be that desperate."

Chase shook his head. "I don't think she'd be interested in you either. She's more concerned with her twenty-eight parakeets."

"Yeah, what is the deal with all those birds? It's creepy."

"She's actually very nice."

"She is," Mason agreed.

"Crab roll and beer?"

"Sounds good."