“You want to be one of his lab rats?”

“I don’t feel that way. I’m not ashamed of what I am, and I’m not afraid of what I’ve been given. Not anymore.”

“You think I’m afraid?” Ripley’s temper flared. “That’s bullshit. As big a pile of bullshit as this idiotic project of his. I don’t want anything to do with it. I’ve got to get out of here.”

She turned on her heel and shoved out the back door.

She couldn’t think, but she knew she needed to walk off the anger before she said or did anything regrettable. Nell’s business was Nell’s business, she tried to tell herself as she jogged down the beach steps in the pearl glow of moonlight. And if Nell wanted to make an exhibition of herself, expose herself to gossip, to ridicule, to God knew what, she was entitled to do so.

“In a pig’s eye,” Ripley called out, kicking at sand as she hit the beach. What Nell said or did had a direct link to her. There was no avoiding it. Not only because they were related by marriage, but because they were connected.

And that son of a bitch MacAllister Booke knew it.

He was using her to get to Nell, using Nell to get to her. She’d been stupid to let her guard down these past few weeks. Stupid. And there was little she hated more than realizing she’d been a fool. At the barking behind her she turned, just as the big black shape leaped out of the dark. Lucy’s exuberance knocked Ripley on her butt.

“Damn it, Lucy!”

“Are you hurt? Are you okay?” Mac rushed up behind the dog, started to lift Ripley to her feet.

“Get off me.”

“You’re freezing. What the hell’s wrong with you, running out without a coat? Here.” Even as she slapped at his hands, he bundled her into the jacket Nell had given him.

“Fine. You’ve done your good deed. Now beat it.”

“Your brother and Nell are probably used to your spontaneous displays of rudeness.” He heard the scolding tone of his own voice, but the closed and stubborn look on her face told him that she deserved it. “However, I’d like an explanation.”

“Rude?” She used both hands to shove him back two full steps. “You’ve got the nerve to call me rude after that interrogation at dinner?”

“I recall a conversation at dinner, not an interrogation. Just hold on.” He grabbed her arms as Lucy, wanting to play, wiggled between them. “You don’t want to talk to me about my work, and I haven’t pressed you. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to talk to anybody else.”

“You hook Nell, and you know it’s going to involve me. You talked to Lulu, and you damn well asked her questions about me.”

“Ripley.” Patience, he warned himself. She wasn’t just angry, she was scared. “I never said I wouldn’t ask questions. I’m just not asking you. If you want control of what involves you, then talk to me. Otherwise, I have to use what I get secondhand.”

“All of this was just to corner me.”

He was a patient man by nature, but that patience had its limits. “You know better, just as you know saying that is an insult to both of us. So just can it.”

“Just—”

“I have feelings for you. It makes it complicated, but I’m dealing with it. And that aside, Ripley, you’re not the center of this. You’re only part of it. I’ll work around you or with you. It’s your choice.”

“I won’t be used.”

“Neither will I, as a target for your emotional storms.”

He was right, bull’s-eye right, and she wavered. “I won’t be ogled like a sideshow.”

“Ripley.” His voice gentled. “You’re not a freak. You’re a miracle.”

“I don’t want to be either. Can’t you understand that?”

“Yeah, I can. I know exactly what it’s like to be looked at as one or the other, or both at the same time. What can I tell you? All you can be is who and what you are.”

Temper was gone. She couldn’t even find the pieces of it. He’d talked her down not because he wanted something but because he got it. At the core, he got it.

“Maybe I didn’t think you’d understand, you’d know. Maybe I should have. I guess being the big brain is a kind of magic, and it’s not always comfortable. How do you do it?” she demanded. “How do you stay so goddamn balanced?”

“I’m not . . . Cut it out, Lucy.” Still gripping Ripley’s arms, he shifted as the dog barked and vibrated between them. Then he saw what had caught Lucy’s attention.

She stood on the beach, as she had before. And she watched them. Her face was pale in the moonlight, her hair dark as the wind teased it. Her eyes seemed to glow against the night. Deeply green, deeply sad. The surf foamed up, spilled over her feet and ankles, but she made no sign of feeling the cold or wet. She simply stood, watched, and wept.

“You see her,” Mac whispered.

“I’ve seen her all my life.” Tired now, Ripley stepped away from him because it would be too easy, frighteningly easy, to step toward him. “I’ll let you know what I decide when I decide it. And I want to apologize for being rude and swiping at you, for mucking things up. But right now . . . I need to be by myself.”

“I’ll walk you back.”

“No. Thanks, but no. Come on, Lucy.”

Mac stayed where he was, between two women. Both of them pulled at him. Ten

Nell found it strange to knock on the door of a house where she’d once lived. Part of her still thought of the yellow cottage as hers.

She had lived much longer in the white palace inCalifornia , and had never considered it hers. Unless it was to think of it as her prison, one she’d risked her own life to escape. But the little cottage by the wood had been hers for only a few months, and had given her some of the happiest moments of her life.

Her first home, the place where she had begun to feel safe, and strong. The place where she and Zack had fallen in love.

Even the terror she’d known there, the spilled blood, couldn’t spoil the sense of belonging that the little yellow cottage with its dollhouse rooms gave her.

Still, she knocked, and waited politely on the front stoop until Mac opened the door. He looked distracted. He was unshaven, his hair sticking up in wild spikes.