"Good. Everyone should have a hobby."

"Is that sarcasm?"

"Not really. You're not a cop or an investigator, but you are a legitimately interested party. And now, so am I. We have a hobby to share. Full disclosure. I saw your notes in the library."

"Okay."

"If you have something you don't want me to see-such as that fabulous sketch of Mermaid Me, which I'd love if you replicated on good paper so I could have it-you need to put it away. I have a key, and I intend to keep using it. I was looking around for you."

"Okay." He did feel a little weird about the sketch. "Sometimes doodling helps me think."

"That wasn't doodling, it was drawing. Doodling's what I do, and it looks like half-a.s.s balloon animals. I liked Devil Vampire Wolfe, too."

"That one had some potential."

"I thought so, and drawing did help you think. The cast of characters, the connections between them, or among them, the timelines and factors, all there, all logical. That all seems like a good start. I think I'm going to make notes of my own."

He considered a moment. "He'll look at you. Wolfe will. And when he does he won't be able to find any contact between us before I moved in here. He also won't be able to find anything that weighs on the side of you being a lying, murdering, s.k.a.n.ky ho."

"How do you know?" She smiled at him. "I haven't told you my story yet. Maybe I'm a recovering s.k.a.n.ky ho with murderous tendencies."

"Tell me your story and I'll be the judge."

"I will. Later. Now it's time for your ma.s.sage."

He gave the table an uneasy glance.

"Your honor is safe with me," she said as she rose. "This isn't foreplay."

"I keep thinking about sleeping with you." Actually, he kept thinking about tearing her clothes off and riding her like a h.o.r.n.y stallion, but that seemed ... indelicate.

"I'd be disappointed if you didn't, but that's not going to happen during the next hour. Strip it off, get on the table-faceup. I'm going to go wash up."

"You're bossy."

"I can be, and while that's a flaw and I do work on it, I wouldn't want to be perfect. I'd bore myself." She trailed a hand over his arm as she walked out of the room.

Since it didn't seem time to tear her clothes off, he took off his own.

It was weird, being naked under the sheet. And weirder yet when she came back, turned on her nature music, lit candles.

Then those magic fingers started on his neck, the top of his shoulders, and he had to ask himself if it was weird when s.e.x slid to the back of his mind.

"Stop thinking so hard," she told him. "Let it go."

He thought about not thinking. He thought about thinking about something else. He tried using his book, but the problems of his characters oozed away along with his muscle aches.

While he tried not to think, or to think about something else or use his book as an escape, she released knots, soothed aches, melted away hot little pockets of tension.

He rolled over when she told him to, and decided she could solve all the problems of wars, economy, bitter battles, by just getting the key players on her table for an hour.

"You've been working out."

Her voice stroked as expertly as her hands.

"Yeah, some."

"I can feel it. But your back's a maze of tension, sweetie."

He tried to think of the last time anyone, including his mother, had called him sweetie.

"It's been an interesting few days."

"Mmm. I'm going to show you some stretches, some tension relievers. You can take a couple of minutes to do them whenever you get up from the keyboard."

She pulled, pressed, twisted, tugged, ground, then rubbed every little shock away until he lay limp as water.

"How're you doing?" she asked when she smoothed the sheet over him.

"I think I saw G.o.d."

"How did she look?"

He let out a m.u.f.fled laugh. "Pretty hot, actually."

"I always suspected that. Take your time getting up. I'll be back in a couple minutes."

He'd managed to sit up, mostly wrap the sheet around the important parts, when she walked back in with a gla.s.s of water.

"Drink it all." She cupped his hands around it, then brushed his hair away from his forehead. "You look relaxed."

"There's a word between 'relaxed' and 'unconscious.' I can't think of it now, but that's where I am."

"It's a good place. I'll be in the kitchen."

"Abra." He took her hand. "It sounds weak and cliched, but I'm going to say it anyway. You have a gift."

She smiled, beautifully. "It doesn't sound weak and cliched to me. Take your time."

When he came in she had the soup warming on the stove, and a gla.s.s of wine in her hand. "Hungry?"

"I wasn't, but that smells pretty d.a.m.n good."

"Are you up for another walk on the beach first?"

"I could be."

"Good. The light's so soft and pretty this time of day. We'll work up an appet.i.te." She led the way into the laundry for jackets, zipped up her own hoodie.