Bobbi's face was lit up with pride and excitement as Adrian flipped back the dust cover from her portrait.

Evan had promised that Adrian would do a painting that would knock our eyes out and he hadn't exaggerated one bit. Bobbi's vibrancy, beauty, and sensuality crackled off the canvas like electricity from a summer storm. It was the kind of painting that made you realize why people loved art for its own sake, but then it was by Alex Adrian, and I had expected nothing less than a masterpiece.

The one thing I didn't expect to see was myself in the painting as well.

"What gives?"Bobbi laughed at my puzzlement, and now I understood all her suppressed excitement. "Merry Christmas, Jack."

Jeez, I never know what to say at happy surprises and started mumbling I don't know what idiocies.

"I think words are not necessary at this point, old man," Escort chided.

He was right, so I grabbed Bobbi and lifted her high and spun her until she shrieked for me to stop. Then I gave her a kiss and we looked at the painting again.

As in his original sketch, Adrian had her reclining on a low couch, loosely wrapped in some timeless white garment that clung to her figure. She looked like a slightly worldly angel about to become more worldly than heaven might want to allow. One hand rested along the top back of the couch and was covered by one of my own. I loomed over her in sober black, but he'd somehow managed to make me look ghostly and ethereal in comparison.

The background was dark, neutral chaos with my figure emerging out of the swirling non-pattern. Where my hand touched Bobbi's I was quite solid and real. It should have looked ominous and threatening, but did not. This was what he'd seen that night months back in the garage when I dived out of thin air to save his life.

He'd said it had been beautiful and here he'd found a place to record his vision.

I held my hand out to him. He seemed surprised at the gesture, but shook it and finally smiled again. This one had more confidence.

"How do you do it?" I asked.

He decided to answer with more than a deprecatory shrug. "We're artists. We see and understand more than most because we've had to look at ourselves first-and accept what we find there whether we like it or not."

"It still doesn't make us any easier to live with," added Evan. He stood back a little from the painting and compared it to the models. "I'm not sure I understand your symbolism, Alex, but it's certainly one of your best."

"There's no symbolism," Adrian a.s.sured him, keeping his face supremely deadpan. "I only ever paint what I see."