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Had he seen it, too?

The fire that forever engulfed hi It licked over hts of the being fell away as a tendril of desire coiled inside ranite hard It bit into ed at my overheated core His burnished irises dropped to my mouth, and he took a minuscule step closer If Bobert hadn’t interrupted, I would have juerous place for Reyes to be

"Are you okay, pu fantasies and melted into Bobert’s embrace Cookie joined us for a threeso we’d just survived an earthquake

"Yes, it was"

I pulled back "Have you ever been in an earthquake before?"

They exchanged glances, hedged a little, and then Bobert said, "Yeah, in a way"

Cookie nodded "A couple You know, little ones here and there Nothing major"

"Well, screw that" I took the carafe and headed for the coffeepot "I, for one, a to California"

Erin and Cookie swept up broken glass as several of the custoe there Fire trucks pulled up, but there didn’t seem to be any smoke Francie cashed out a couple of customers, then went to help Dixie with a stack of files that had fallen over in her office

Stepping out of the circle of warmth created by Reyes’s presence, I started for the kitchen to see if I could help with anything there A departed wo me up short The top of her head barely reached ray sweater Her graying hair was rooves lined her soft brown eyes I looked back to see if Reyes saw her, too He gave no indication that he did His unwavering focus was still on ht," she said In Portuguese! I knew another language What were the odds?

I nodded toward the restroo there in hopes that she would follow o through me I didn’t have time to tell her she couldn’t do that I was solid to the departed, and they were solid to me Or they had been up until thatback, she passed right through That was new

I’d assuh any one else She would just pass through h I weren’t there But that didn’t happen When she stepped forward, soht s her just before she disappeared And then I saw… everything

Her childhood Her death I saw everything I felt everything All at once All of the emotion All of the heartbreak and triumph All of the joys and sorrow They hit me like a tidal wave

Air disappeared The world fell away And Ana’s life literally flashed before e that lay on the border between Portugal and Spain, where they had their own language, Barranquenho She knew five languages, in fact, even though she grew up very poor

Her mother was a seamstress, and Ana followed in her footsteps It was how she hter, Benito Matias He’d been knifed in a bar fight in her sht When they found the ed her to stitch him up so his father wouldn’t find out

She did, and it was her memory of him that drownedshe’d ever seen And judging froht, Benito felt much the same way They fell in love, and she found herself in the middle of a real-life Cinderella story