She gave him a punch on the arm. "I thought about writing songs once. If it hadn't been for the fact I can't read music, and didn't have any song ideas, I'd've been great."

"So you turn to acupuncture."

She grinned at Eli. "It's an interest and, since you brought it up, something I was going to talk to you about. I need to practice, and you'd be perfect."

"That's a terrible idea."

"I could work on a release of tension, and an opening of creativity and concentration."

"Could you? In that case, let me think about it. No."

She leaned toward him. "You're entirely too close-minded."

"And needle-puncture free."

She smelled heady, he realized, and she'd done something dark and dramatic to her eyes. When her lips curved, all he could think of was the way they'd felt against his.

Yeah, one big, greedy bite should do it.

"We'll talk." Abra stood, took her tray and walked over to a neighboring table to take an order.

"Don't be surprised to find yourself lying on a table with needles sticking out of your bare flesh," Mike warned him.

The h.e.l.l of it was, he wouldn't be surprised. At all.

He stayed more than an hour, enjoyed the company. It occurred to him he wouldn't have to argue with himself the next time he considered dropping into the bar.

Progress, he decided, as he said good night to Maureen and Mike, and headed out.

"Hey!" Abra bolted out after him. "You don't say good night to your friendly waitress?"

"You were busy. Jesus, get inside. It's cold out here."

"I've got heat to spare after running around in there for the last three hours. You looked like you enjoyed yourself."

"It was a nice break. I like your friends."

"Maureen was your friend before she was mine, but yeah, they're the best. I'll see you on Sunday."

"On Sunday?"

"Your ma.s.sage. It remains therapeutic," she said when she caught the look on his face. "Even if you stop stalling and kiss me good night."

"I already left you a tip."

She had an irresistible laugh, a sense of happy his system wanted to absorb like water. To prove he could, he moved in, taking his time, this time. He laid his hands on her shoulders, then slid them down her, feeling the warmth she still held from all the body heat pulsing inside the bar.

Then he leaned down, took her mouth.

Slow and smooth this time, she thought, soft and dreamy. A lovely contrast to the earlier shock and urgency. She slid her arms around his waist, let herself drift.

He had more to give than he believed, more wounds than he could admit. Both sides of him pulled at her.

When he eased back, she sighed. "Well, well, Eli, Maureen's absolutely right. You have skills."

"A little rusty."

"Me, too. Won't this be interesting?"

"Why are you rusty?"

"That's a story that calls for a bottle of wine and a warm room. I have to get back in there."

"I want to know the story. Your story."

The words pleased her as much as a bouquet of roses. "Then I'll tell you. Good night, Eli."

She slipped back inside, to the music, the voices. And left him stirred, and wanting. Wanting her, he realized, more than he'd wanted anything but peace for much too long.

Eli worked through a rain-drenched Sat.u.r.day. He let the story absorb him until, before he realized the connection, he'd written an entire scene with wind-driven rain splatting against the windows where the protagonist found the key, metaphorically and literally, to his dilemma while wandering his dead brother's empty house.

Pleased with his progress, he ordered himself away from the keyboard and into his grandmother's gym. He thought of the hours spent in his Boston fitness center, with its sleek machines, all those hard bodies, the pumping music.

Those days were done, he reminded himself.

It didn't have to mean he was.

Maybe the jelly bean colors of his grandmother's free weights struck him as mildly embarra.s.sing. But ten pounds remained ten pounds. He was tired of feeling weak and thin and soft, tired of allowing himself to coast, or worse, just tread water.

If he could write-and he was proving that every day-he could pump and sweat and find the man he used to be. Maybe better, he mused as he picked up a set of purple dumbbells, he'd find the man he was meant to be.

He wasn't ready to face the mirror, so he started his first set of biceps curls standing at the window, studying the storm-churned waves battering the sh.o.r.e. Watched water spume up against the rocks below the circling light of the white tower. Wondered what direction his hero might take now that he'd turned an important corner. Then wondered if he'd written his hero around that corner because he felt he'd turned, or at least approached a turn of his own.

Christ, he hoped so.

He switched from weights to cardio, managed twenty minutes before his lungs burned and his legs trembled. He stretched, guzzled water, then went back to another round of weights before he flopped, panting, onto the floor.

Better, he told himself. Maybe he hadn't made it a full hour and felt as if he'd just completed a triathlon, but he'd done better this time.

And this time he made it to the shower without limping.

Very much.

He congratulated himself again on the way downstairs on a hunt for food. He actually wanted food. In fact, he was d.a.m.n near starving, and that had to be a good sign.

Maybe he should start writing these small progressions down. Like daily invocations.