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  She jumped up, threw her arms around my neck, and began kissing my face as though I were her father.

  Maybe she felt daughterly toward me, but I certainly didn’t feel fatherly toward her. Rather than make a fool of myself by showing her this, I kept my arms at my side and my lips closed—and moved them away when she got too near.

  After this moment of childish exuberance, she pulled her face away, but her arms were still around my neck. “I’m sorry about Rebecca,” she said softly.

  Part of me wanted her to get far away from me, and part of me wanted her to get much closer. If she didn’t move away soon, the closer part was going to win.

  “And your wife,” she said.

  That did it. I put my hands on her shoulders, moved her away, and got up. “Fix up the old building,” I said, “and give me the bill.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Jackie

  He was great about the building. Of course I had to work hard to lead him up to my idea, but it was worth it.

  It seemed that all my life I’d had an affinity for cameras, and my father once said that I was taking pictures by the time I was three. I’d taken some courses in photography, but with the way we moved around, I never got to complete any of them. And I’d never been able to take all the pictures I wanted because film and processing cost too much. Over the years I’d been tempted to apply for a job in a photography studio, but my vanity wouldn’t allow it. I was afraid that if I learned to take pictures from someone commercial I’d never develop my own style.

  That, and the fact that the only photography studio in the last three towns my dad and I lived in had been in the local mall.

  My plan had been to let Kirk support me while I used my savings and my inheritance to open a small photography studio. When I told Ford about Kirk, he was certainly interested! Ford asked me about fifty questions about who, where, and how much. I told him I never wanted anything to do with Kirk again, but Ford kept asking me questions, and since I was trying to get him to finance my new business, I couldn’t very well snap that it was none of his business.

  In the end Ford came through and said he’d pay for fixing up the building so I could use it. I didn’t mention that I would, of course, have to add a small powder room onto the back of the house. When kids have to go, they have to go, so you have to have a WC nearby. There was water in the house, but I’d have to hook onto the city sewage and that would cost.

  Nor did I mention that I’d also need money to buy equipment. I had my camera and a wonderful lens, but I’d also need lights and soft boxes, reflectors, tripods, flash brackets, a few backgrounds, and, well, some darkroom equipment and supplies, as I hadn’t—ha ha—seen a super photo processing shop in or around Cole Creek. And I’d need another lens or two. Or three.

  During our long conversation about my opening a business, he asked me why I’d changed my mind and no longer wanted to get out of Cole Creek as fast as possible. I think I lied well. Actually, it was more that I left out some things. I told the truth when I said the name “Harriet” had rung a big gong in my head—and Ford nearly knocked me over when he knew who Harriet Lane was.

  During the night, I’d decided that my overactive imagination had made me believe I knew more than I did about what did or did not happen in Cole Creek. By dinner—candlelight, seafood, chocolate cake—I was calmer since Ford had agreed to renovate the building, so we talked in depth about what we both knew and had found out. It was our first real heart-to-heart in days.

  I told him about my several déjà vu instances in Cole Creek, and about how I knew the house so well.

  “But you didn’t know that building was out there,” he said.

  “Maybe I did,” I answered, because I’d gone straight to it on the first morning I started cleaning up the garden.

  As always, he was an attentive listener. I told him I remembered so many things about the house that I even knew where the hidden room was—and until that moment I hadn’t remembered there even was a secret room. At that, we looked at each other in complete understanding.

  “Second floor,” I said. “Behind all those boxes.”

  We jumped up so quickly that both our chairs hit the floor, and we took off running, reaching the doorway at the same time. I was going to push ahead of him, but I remembered the camera equipment I wanted, so I stepped back. “You first,” I said politely.

  Ford looked at me as though he was going to be a gentleman and let me go ahead, but then he said, “Beat you up the stairs,” and took off running.

  What could I do after a challenge like that? What he didn’t know was that a little door in the kitchen, which looked like a broom closet, actually opened to a set of stairs so narrow I doubt if Ford could have climbed them. As he ran for the big front stairs, I slipped up the back and was waiting for him when he arrived.

  The look on his face! If I’d had my camera that photo would have won every prize given.

  I knew he was dying to ask me how I’d beaten him to the top, but he didn’t. Instead, we ran to the storage room and began flinging boxes into the hallway.

  It wasn’t much of a secret room. It was just a part of a room that had been made into a closet, then sealed off. Someone (me as a child?) had pulled the old wallpaper off so the door could open a few inches. We had to pull hard to open it wide enough to allow Ford to get inside.

  “Why would someone seal off a closet?” Ford asked.

  We were together inside the small space and it was absolutely dark.

  Ford rummaged around inside his pockets and withdrew a book of matches—the contents of his pockets rivaled a nine-year-old boy’s—and lit one. When he held the flame up, all I saw was old wallpaper behind him.

  But Ford’s eyes widened until I could see the whites. He blew out the match, then said in a voice of such exaggerated calm that it put fear into me, “Get out. Open the door and get out.”

  I did as he said—one obeys that tone—and left the closet, Ford close behind me. Once he was out, he closed the door and leaned against it.

  “What was it?” I whispered, and the word “devil” went through me. Was the devil in this house? Maybe as a kid I’d found this closet and I’d seen—

  “Bees,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The biggest beehive I’ve ever seen was behind you. The bees probably built in that closet, and instead of getting rid of it, some lazy so-and-so sealed the door shut.”

  “I thought—” I began, then started to laugh, and when I told Ford about my devil thoughts, he laughed, too.

  We laughed together but we didn’t touch. I’d decided to do no more touching of him. Earlier I’d spontaneously thrown my arms around his neck and kissed him, just as I would have done with my father. But suddenly I didn’t feel like I was with my father.

  When I’d pulled back from him, I thought that he didn’t look old at all. In fact, those lines at his eyes were more like character lines than old age wrinkles. And he had a very nice mouth. In fact, the more time I spent with him, the better looking he got. John Travolta, I thought. Even as out of shape as he was, Travolta was still sexy. And so was Ford.

  Abruptly, I’d dropped my arms from around his neck. First I was lusting after a gorgeous seventeen-year-old, and now I was drooling over a man old enough to be my…Well, too old for me, anyway.

  I decided I needed to start dating.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Ford

  Considering everything, I decided that the wisest thing to do was to change my priorities. I would stamp down my desperate need to know why and redirect my mind to something other than Jackie’s devil story. And Jackie’s passion for her photographic studio gave me my new direction. I’m sure that, long ago, I must have looked as she did. When I first started writing, I was driven, and writing was all I could think of—just as Jackie was driven to get her photography studio set up and find out whether or not she could make it in that world.

  We had over a week of peace and quiet, and, in spite