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Unlike the other shots, this one was carefully posed, with nothing but a piece of artfully draped cloth as a backdrop, obviously set up by a professional photographer

"They onderful," Ji "No kid ever had better folks than the sos firsthand They would’ve made wonderful schoolteachers, let me tell you"

"What work did they do?" "My dad was an accountant at Warner Brothers"

"The movie studio?" "Yeah" Jim smiled "We lived in LA Moot a lot of jobs So mostly she was a hostess at a restaurant on Melrose Avenue, not far from the Paramount lot"

"You were happy, weren’t you?" "Always"

She pointed to the photo in which the three of thelittery formality "Special occasion?" "Ti anniversaries, they insisted on including me

They always made me feel special, wanted, loved I was seven years old when that photo was taken, and I re to be married a hundred years, they said, and be happier each year than the one before, have lotshouse, see every corner of the world before they died together in their sleep But just three years later they weregone"

"I’o Twenty-five years" He looked at his atch "Coo It’ll take us four hours to reach the faruna Hills Motor Inn, Holly quickly changed into jeans and a blue-checkered blouse, then packed the rest of her belongings

Jim put her suitcase in the trunk of his car

While she returned her room key and paid her bill at the front desk in theher from behind the wheel of his Ford She would have been disappointed, of course, if he had not liked to watch her But every tilassat him, he was so motionless, so cool and expressionless behind his heavily tinted sunglasses, that his undivided attention was disconcert

She wondered if she was doing the right thing by going with him to the Santa Ynez Valley When she walked out of the office and got in the car with him, he would be the only person in the world who knehere she was All of her notes about him were in her suitcase; they could disappear with her Then she would be just a woman, alone, who had vanished while on vacation

As the clerk finished filling out the credit-card for her parents in Philadelphia to let the and hom But she would only alar to reassure the to be just fine

Besides, she had already decided that the darkness in Jiht, and she had made a commitment to him If he occasionally made her uneasywell, that was part of what had drawn her to hie of his appeal At heart, he was a good man

It was foolish to worry about her safety after she had already made love to him For a woman, in a way that could never be true for a ht of sexual surrender involved one of the , of course, that she had surrendered not solely because of physical need but because she loved him And Holly loved him

"I’m in love with him," she said aloud, surprised because she had convinced herself that his appeal was largely the result of his exceptional netiser than Holly and therefore more inclined to think that love was everywhere and inevitable, grinned at her "It’s great, isn’t it?" Signing the charge slip, Holly said, "Do you believe in love at first sight?" "Why not?" "Well, it’s not first sight, really I’ve known the guy since August twelfth, which issixteen days"

"And you’re not married yet?" the clerk joked

When Holly went out to the Ford and got in beside Ji, you won’t carve me up with a chainsaw and bury me under the windmill, will you?" Apparently he understood her sense of vulnerability and took no offense , for he said with mock solemnity, "Oh, no It’s full-up under the mill

I’ll have to bury pieces of you all over the far hi kiss

When they parted, he said, "I’ a risk as you are"

"Let me assure you, I’ve never hacked anyone to bits with an axe"

"I mean it I haven’t been lucky in love"

"Me neither"

"This tiave her another kiss, shorter and sweeter than the first one, then started the car and backed out of the parking space

In a deter cynic in her alive, Holly reminded herself that he had not actually said he loved her His coht be no more reliable than other men she had trusted over the years

On the other hand, she had not actually said that she loved him, either

Her commitment had been no more effusively stated than his

Perhaps because she still felt the need to protect herself to some extent, she had found it easier to reveal her heart to thedown blueberry muffins with black coffee, for which they had stopped at a convenience store, they traveled north on the San Diego Freeway The Tuesday- rush hour had passed, but at soed all lanes and ourer seat, Holly told Jihtmares, as promised She started with the initial dreaht’s spookshohich had been the most bizarre and fearful of all

He was clearly fascinated that she had drea of its existence And on Sunday night, after surviving the crash of Flight 246, she had dreamed of him at the mill as a ten year-old boy, when she could not yet have known either that the mill was a familiar place to him or that he had spent a lot of time there when he was ten

But the ht his eyes on the traffic ahead, he said, "Who was the woman in the dream if she wasn’t you?" "I don’t know," Holly said, finishing the final bite of the last muffin