“Pain, fear, anxiety. The mind game is everything in life.”

“What about joy, love, happiness? Are they just in the mind, too?”

“Yup, exactly. It’s all an illusion, I’m afraid. Made manifest by a fruit salad of sensory receptors and bundles of neurons firing under your skull.”

“Wow, that is remarkably …”

“Biological,” he pointed out.

“Cynical.”

Daniel shrugged and finished undoing his saddlebags. “It’s the truth and you know it. You’re a behaviorist. Just because an emotion is felt deeply doesn’t mean it’s any more powerful than what it actually is—which is ephemeral. Intensity doesn’t change its nature, and all feelings fade over time.”

There was a length of silence.

“You know”—she looked at the sky—“I might be inclined to see your argument. If I hadn’t walked in on a good man just moments after he’d shot himself in the face this morning.”

Daniel swung the saddlebags up on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I don’t need to be spouting my shit right now.”

“It’s okay.” She got to her feet. “Besides, you either don’t really believe your theory or you’re not as good at detachment as you think you are. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have taken up your old habit again today, would you.”

YOU ’RE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. The ketchup is everything.”

As Daniel Heinz’d his full plate of suomen makaronilaatikko, Lydia nodded at her houseguest across her little kitchen table.

“My grandfather always had it with lingonberry sauce, but ketchup works for me. And it freezes beautifully. Just like in Steel Magnolias.”

“Huh?” he said as he recapped the bottle.

“Yeah, that movie’s probably not in your collection. Annelle wants to give Maline’s family something that ‘freezes beautifully’ before the kidney transplant. I always think of that line when I make a big batch of this.”

“Classic comfort food.”

They fell silent, nothing but forks on plates making any sound. And then he was getting himself another mug of coffee and helping with the almost nonexistent cleanup.

“I can’t keep my eyes open.” She covered a yawn with the back of her hand. “I need to lie down.”

“Let’s go upstairs.”

He went across and checked the locks, and then as they walked around to the stairwell, he made sure the front dead bolt was engaged—and something about the care he took made her realize how much she’d been doing on her own.

Her legs were wobbly on the ascend, and when she got to the top landing, she said something to him about fresh sheets being on the guest bed, and her needing to take a shower, and that she hoped she didn’t snore. Chatter, chatter, chatter.

Then again, he was the first man she’d had in this house.

In any house she’d lived in, actually. Well, apart from her grandfather and he didn’t count in this situation.

“You’re going to be okay,” Daniel murmured. “It’s just going to take some time. If you need me, I’m here.”

He brushed her cheek, and then he went into the guest room and shut the door halfway.

Down in her bedroom, she undressed over the laundry basket, dumping everything she had on in it, and then she got her robe. When she reemerged into the hallway, she looked both ways like it was a busy intersection, and tiptoed over the bare wood to the loo. Just before she pushed her way in, she told herself not to look over to Daniel’s—

But of course she glanced in.

He had put his saddlebags down on the floor on the far side of the bed, and he was bending over them, getting something out that he tossed behind himself to the comforter. As he straightened and faced the far wall, he unzipped his windbreaker and removed it—and then he peeled off his T-shirt, taking it up and over his head.

His back was … spectacular.

He was so muscular, but also lean, as if he were an athlete: From his bulking shoulders to the strong line of his spine, muscles fanned out in a series of peaks and valleys that tapered to a tight waist. And below that? Well, those jeans were hanging low, but not because his butt wasn’t—

Daniel glanced over his shoulder.

As she flushed and looked away, he said, “Did you need something?”

“Sorry, I’m just taking a shower,” she said.

A freezing cold one.

“Okay.”

Shutting herself in the bathroom, Lydia leaned back against the door. All she could see on the insides of her lids was a bumper sticker she’d noticed on a car once: “Save Water, Shower w/a Friend.”

“Friends,” she reminded herself. And like she could handle anything else given all the damn drama?

The shower filled an alcove and was the only new thing in the house—as if an old Victorian claw-foot’er had bit the farm and required replacing. The glass enclosure with its tub looked great when it was clean, but keeping the soap scum at bay was a bitch. She’d finally resorted to a squeegee and a spray bottle of OxiClean down on the tile floor—

Wow, she was actually trying to distract herself with lame conversation.

In contrast to the cold wash her libido needed, she made sure the water was hot before she stepped in—and oh, God, it felt wonderful. Slumping under the spray, she hung her head and just let the warmth rush over her. When she started to worry about how much was in the hot water tank down in the cellar—you know, in case Daniel wanted one of these miracles—she got to the shampooing and a stiff-brushed wash, as her grandfather had called it. By the time she stepped out onto the bath mat, she was partially revived. No doubt it wouldn’t last, but she’d take the improvement for as long as it did.

Back in her robe, she wrapped her hair up in a towel, brushed her teeth, and told herself that she had shaved her legs because it was just time to.

And not because she was thinking about being naked with anybody—

Bullcrap she wasn’t thinking that.

Using a hand towel, she cleared the condensation off the mirror over the sink. Her face was drawn and the bags under her eyes were so pronounced, it was like she had hay fever. Not exactly sexy personified, and she had a thought that she needed to step off from this fantasy stuff.

Besides, even if things had been otherwise normal in her life, there were rules: Her grandfather’s traditions were a heavy weight on her, as they always had been. And the two times she’d broken them, she couldn’t say that the night of so-called passion had been worth the guilt afterward.

Although with Daniel? She had a feeling it would be a more than fair exchange …

Staring at her reflection, it was as if there were a mist between her and what she was seeing. Had she changed somehow, as a result of what she’d witnessed today? Of what she’d done?

It was like walking into her kitchen, she supposed, and finding that everything seemed off even though on the surface nothing was different.

With hands that shook, she reached up behind her neck and found the clasp to her gold chain. Freeing the claw hook, she removed the medallion her grandfather had given her and put it in the basket that held her hairbrush, her tweezers, her scissors, and her nail files.

She couldn’t wear that right now. Not with what she was thinking about Daniel.