“What did he do?”

“Betrayed a woman, killed a man.” He ate more chips, listened to the rain drum and patter—outside the window, and in the forest in his mind. “He thought he had reasons for both. Maybe he did. But were they the right reasons?”

“You’re writing it, you ought to know.”

“No, he has to know. That’s part of the price of redemption. The not-knowing haunts him, hunts him as much as what’s with him in the woods.”

“What is with him in the woods?”

He chuckled. “Read the book.”

She bit into the apple again. “That’s a very underhanded method of making a sale.”

“A guy’s gotta make a living. Even if it is with ‘mundane and predictable commercial fiction.’ One of your pithy reviews of my work.”

She felt a twang of guilt, but shrugged it off. “I’m a librarian. Former librarian,” she corrected. “And I’m about to become a bookstore owner. I value all books.”

“Some more than others.”

“That would be a matter of personal taste rather than a professional outlook.” Now she wanted to squirm. “Certainly your commercial success indicates you write books that satisfy the masses.”

He shook his head and abruptly craved a cigarette. “Nobody damns with faint praise better than you, Dana.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.” She was, she realized, digging a hole for herself. But she could hardly confess to being a fan of his work when she was sitting in his bed naked and eating corn chips. It was a sure way to make both of them feel ridiculous.

And would make any honest praise seem like pandering.

“You’re doing what you always wanted to do, Jordan, and successfully. You should be proud of yourself.”

“No argument there.” He polished off the Coke, set the can aside. Wrapped his fingers around her ankle. “Still hungry?”

Relieved that the topic had been tabled, she rolled up the bag of chips, tossed it on the floor beside the bed. “As a matter of fact,” she began, then jumped him.

IT shouldn’t bother him so much, and it irritated the hell out of him that it did. He didn’t expect everyone to like his work. He’d long ago stopped being bruised or deflated by a poor review or a disgruntled comment from a reader.

He wasn’t some high-strung, temperamental artist who fell into funks at the slightest criticism.

But damn it, Dana’s dismissal of his work dug holes in him.

It was worse now, Jordan thought as he gazed out the bedroom window and brooded. Worse that she’d been kind about it. It had been easier to take her scathing and unsolicited opinions of his talent, her snotty, elitist dismissal of his field than her gentle and kindly meant pat on the head.

He wrote thrillers, often with a whiff of something other, and she dismissed them as hackneyed commercialism that appealed to the lowest common denominator.

He could handle that, if she was an elitist book snob, but she was far from it. She simply loved books. Her apartment was crammed with them and there was plenty of genre fiction on her shelves.

Though he’d noted there was nothing on them by Jordan Hawke.

And, yeah, he thought, it stung more than a little.

He’d been ridiculously pleased to come back into the bedroom and see her bent over his laptop, to see what he’d believed had been avid interest in the story he was building.

Curiosity, as she’d said. Nothing more.

Best to put that one away, he told himself. Lock it away in a box before it dug in too deep and started to fester.

They were lovers again, and thank God for it. They were, he hoped, halfway to being friends again as well. He didn’t want to lose her, lover and friend, because he couldn’t get past her disinterest or disapproval of his work.

She didn’t know what it meant to him to be a writer. How could she? Oh, she knew it was what he’d wanted and hoped for. But she didn’t know why it was so vital to him. He’d never shared that with her.

There was a great deal that he hadn’t shared with her, he admitted.

His work, yes. He’d often asked her to read something he’d done, and naturally had been pleased and satisfied when she’d praised it—intrigued and interested when she’d discussed the story and offered her opinions.

The fact was, on a purely practical level, hers was one of the opinions he valued most.

But he’d never told her how much he’d needed to make something of himself. As a man, as a writer. For himself, certainly. And for his mother. It was, for Jordan, the only way he knew to pay his mother back for all she’d done for him, all she’d given up for him, all she’d worked for.

But he’d never shared that with Dana, or anyone else. Never shared with anyone that private grief, the drowning guilt or the desperate need.

So, he would put it away again and concentrate on rebuilding what he could and starting fresh with what he couldn’t rebuild.

His current hero wasn’t the only one looking for redemption.

DANA waited until she’d painted an entire wall in what was to be Zoe’s main salon area. She’d bitten her tongue half a dozen times that morning, had talked herself out of saying anything, then had taken the internal debate full circle again.

In the end she convinced herself that it was an insult to friendship not to speak.

“I slept with Jordan.” She blurted it out, kept her eyes trained on the wall she was painting, and waited for her friends to burst out with comments and questions.

When five long seconds ran by in silence, she turned her head and caught the look passing between Malory and Zoe.

“You knew? You already knew? You mean to tell me that arrogant, self-satisfied son of a bitch ran right to Flynn to brag that he’d banged me?”

“No.” Malory barely swallowed a laugh. “At least not that I know of. And I’m sure if Jordan had said anything about it to Flynn, Flynn would’ve told me. Anyway, we didn’t know. We just . . .” She trailed off, then studied the ceiling.

“We were wondering how long it would take before the two of you jumped each other,” Zoe put in. “Actually, we thought about starting a pool on it, but decided that would be a little crass. I’d’ve won,” she added. “I had today as spontaneous combustion day. Malory figured you’d hold out another week.”