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Sa after her death She wasn’t her child, not like Jacob had been Edge’s son Perhaps it was no longer Maria she was hter A family

A home

She’d been pushing that wish away for a long ti Perhaps it was the realisation they were returning to England Or the unsettling encounter with Edge Whatever the case she couldn’t ignore it any longer

She wanted a ho as if she was drawing thereen eyed

She blinked theered like the halo of a bright light on the inside of her eyelids

The idea, once broached, would not be tucked away She would not have thought of it if Edge had not walked out of the desert and into her world, but he had She enty-six, ed and wealthy enough to buy herself a house and hire a proper coive her countenance, but she wanted more than that She wanted a hoypt and travel and freedom

So to believe Ricki when he’d said that there was so with her wo what others did Because in the fire of that kiss Edge had ignited on the hilltop she’d sensed a whole landscape awaiting her, accessible if she only reached for it

Someone she could trust Soe pushed back at her, she realised she had been more herself in the past three days than inyears

Herself In all her twenty-six years she’d been herself with fewer people than she could count on two hands

But even if she considered it, ould Edge? He had nothing at all to gain

It was madness

She tried to put the idea away, but as she watched the wo dates, herup brick upon brick of an idea, far faster than she could disic and objections and reality She needed to obliterate it—or have Edge do that for her Once she saw hiain it would become all too evident just how mad the idea was