Chapter 7

“WHAT GOOD IS an apology if you’re not going to stop doing the thing that you’re apologizing for?” Charles’s voice shook with anger. “That’s like saying you’re sorry for hitting me on the head with a two-by-four, while you continue to hit me on the head with a two-by-four!”

“But I’m not hitting you on the head,” Joe countered hotly. “If you want to use that analogy, then you have to picture yourself hitting me over the head with that same two-by-four since 1944! You’re the one who should apologize to me!”

As Tom came into the room, he saw Charles had stuck his fingers in his ears and was singing at the top of his lungs, “La, la, la, la, la!” to block out Joe’s words.

“What the hell is going on in here?” Tom had to raise his voice to a roar to be heard over them.

The two old men both fell silent, although they still stood, facing off like a pair of ancient boxers, in the middle of Charles’s vast living room.

Charles had his oxygen tank at hand, and he took a hit off it, covering his mouth and nose with the face mask, glaring at Joe.

“Why don’t you wear the nose clip?” Joe asked wearily. “If you need the oxygen—”

Charles picked up his walker and flung it as far as he could across the room—which wasn’t very far. “That’s why,” he said bitterly, trembling with anger. “I can’t walk by myself, I can’t breathe by myself. Why doesn’t God just strike me with lightning and kill me now?”

“Because there are things left undone,” Joe countered.

“Like telling stupid stories to stupid interviewers?” Charles had to sit down, and as he lowered himself onto the sofa, Tom stepped forward to help. Instead of a thanks, he got a dark look and a frown. “Stupid stories that mean nothing now? The past is the past, and the dead are dead, Guiseppe. Digging them up—”

“Guys,” Tom said. “Exactly what happened during the war?”

As he’d expected, they both shut up. Dead silence.

Tom waited. He was in no rush. He had Kelly’s permission to use her computer whenever he wanted. He could play referee for hours and still have plenty of time to scan his old files, to read his notes on the Merchant, to wade through his doubt.

Joe was the first to move, the first to speak. “I have to get back to work,” he said, heading for the door. “The roses—”

“Stop. The roses can wait,” Tom ordered in his toughest team-commander voice, and Joe actually obeyed him. What do you know? “Look, gentlemen, I’m not going to pry, so if you don’t want to talk about it—”

“We don’t,” Charles interrupted with another of his potent death-ray glares aimed at Joe.

“Fine,” Tom said easily. “Then I’m not going to ask about it again. But answer this for me instead. Joe, this one’s for you. How many days does Mr. Ashton have left to live?”

It was a cruel question, but letting his uncle walk away, to let the rift between these two old friends continue, would have been even more cruel.

Joe’s shoulders sagged and he turned so that Tom couldn’t see his face, so he could barely hear his reply. “I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do,” Tom told him. His stomach hurt for both of them, but this had to be said. “Kelly told me the doctors are saying three or four months, tops. I’m sure you both know this. And I’m certain neither of you are so old and decrepit that you can no longer do simple math.” He looked at Charles. “How many days does three months work out to be?”

Charles couldn’t stay angry in the face of Joe’s pain, and he turned his glare on Tom instead. His crackly voice was tinged with ice. “This isn’t necessary.”

“Yes, sir,” Tom said as mildly as he could manage, “I think it is. Please answer the question. How many days?”

Charles looked at Joe again. “Maybe ninety,” he finally said. “But probably fewer.”

“Ninety days,” Tom repeated. “How many perfect summer days like this, with a clear sky and low humidity, do you think we’ll have over the next ninety days?”

Neither of them said a word.

“Probably way fewer than ninety,” Tom answered for them. “In fact, we could well be into the single digits with that one, don’t you agree?”

Silence.

Again Tom answered his own question. “Yes, you agree. So the next obvious question, gentlemen, is: What the fuck are you doing wasting this gorgeous day fighting over some stupid-ass fifty-five-year-old disagreement, when you could be out on Mr. Ashton’s boat, fishing?”

Charles looked at Joe and Joe looked at Charles.

“Here’s the deal,” Tom said. “This thing you’re fighting about? You don’t talk about it, you don’t think about it. You go down to the marina, you pick up some bait, and you spend this day doing something you both love. You sit there in silence if you have to, but you take advantage of this beautiful, precious, God’s gift of a day.”

More silence. But Tom stood there, feigning patience, waiting.

Joe finally cleared his throat. “Shall I call ahead to the harbormaster’s office?” he asked Charles stiffly. “Have them ready the Lady Luck?”

For a minute Tom was afraid Charles was too much of a bastard to make this easy for either of them. He didn’t answer for way too long.

But when Tom raised his eyebrows and said, “Mr. Ashton? . . .” the old man finally gave in.

“Oh, all right.” It was by no means gracious, but it was good enough for now.

“Listen up,” Tom said to the pair of them. “Whatever this problem is, you need to work it out. Not today, but soon.”

“We can solve this in an instant,” Charles said crankily. “Joe just has to promise to keep his big mouth shut.”

Joe’s big mouth was set in a straight, grim line. “So I’m just supposed to stand there on that stage and accept that Medal of Honor all over again?” he asked. “I’m supposed to stand there, in front of national news cameras, and shake the hands of all those dignitaries who’ve come all the way from England and France, and pretend—”

“Whoa,” Tom said. “Wait. Dignitaries from where? What are you talking about?”

“The ceremony honoring the Fighting Fifty-fifth,” Joe told him. “I don’t even want to go.”

“You have to,” Charles said.

Joe bristled. “I don’t have to do anything.”

“Wait,” Tom said. “Rewind. Did you just say there’re going to be dignitaries from England?”

“Some distant cousin of the royal family no one’s ever heard of,” Charles said grumpily. “You’d think they’d send Winston Churchill’s great-grandson. Now there’s someone whose hand I’d be honored to shake.”

“You don’t even know if Churchill had a great-grandson,” Joe countered.

“Well, you’d think the organizers of this celebration would at least try to find that out. And who are they sending from France? Some politicians, probably descended from Nazi collaborators.”

“Kelly told me several U.S. senators would be attending, too,” Tom realized. The United States, England, and France. The three countries that had worked together to catch the Merchant back in 1996. The three countries responsible for taking out most of the Merchant’s team—including his beloved wife. Baldwin’s Bridge would be packed with revered war heroes and crowds of spectators. CNN cameras would surely be there.

“Holy shit,” Tom said. “I’ve got to make a phone call.”

“So it’s possible the Merchant’s target isn’t going to be Boston after all,” Tom told Jazz. “It could be right here in Baldwin’s Bridge. If you can believe that.”

“You’re thinking car bomb,” Jazz said.

“You bet. It’s been this bastard’s MO in the past,” Tom told his longtime XO and friend over the phone in the Ashtons’ kitchen.

“What kind of security they gonna have for this shindig?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ve got my uncle making a call to the local police to try to find that out.” Charles and Joe had snapped to. They’d stopped their arguing in the face of this immediate situation.

Tom had told them about spotting the Merchant in the airport, leaving out the part about his recent injury and Admiral Crowley’s intense skepticism. Joe and Charles had gone into Charles’s home office to try to find out as much as they could about the security planned for the celebration’s opening ceremony. It was amazing, actually. As they’d headed down the hall, Tom had heard them speaking entire sentences to each other without flinging a single accusation or petty insult.

“Crowley know yet?” Jazz asked.

“I called, but he wasn’t in,” Tom reported. “I didn’t want to leave a message.” No, this was definitely not the kind of thing he wanted to tell the admiral through voice mail. He took a deep breath. This wasn’t going to be easy to say, but Jazz had to be told. “You need to know, he’s not behind me a hundred percent on this one, Jacquette.”

“It does sound nuts, sir.” Jazz laughed, a low rumble of distant thunder.

“He’s not behind me at all,” Tom admitted.

His XO wasn’t fazed. “So when do you want me out there?”

“Jazz—straightforward, no shit, I could be completely wrong about this. There’s a real chance I’ve lost touch, that this goddamned head injury has made it so I can’t tell fantasy from reality.”

“Just give me a day or two to tie up some loose ends,” Jazz told him, “and I’ll be there. I’ll call the rest of the squad, too. See who can arrange for leave.”

Jazz was coming to help him. The relief was so intense, Tom had to sit down. “Be up front with them,” he ordered. “If they do come, if you come, it’s completely off record, two hundred percent covert, and totally volunteer. It’s got to be on your own time as well—and I know you’ve all got better things to do while you’re on leave, so—”

“I always wanted to meet your uncle Joe. ’Sides, isn’t there some kind of famous watercolor painting school in Baldwin’s Bridge?”

“Since when do you paint?” Tom asked.

“Since two or three days from now, L.T.,” Jazz told him. “Unless you think I’ll stand a better chance of blending with the white folk sunbathing on the beach?”

“Good point.” Tom looked up to see Joe standing in the doorway. He stepped into the room and handed a piece of paper to Tom, then disappeared again. There were several lines written in Charles’s spidery, shaky-looking hand.

“Ah, Christ,” Tom said to Jazz. “The complete security plan for the ceremony honoring the Fighting Fifty-fifth is the normal Baldwin’s Bridge PD weekday staff—five guys. Plus two local rent-a-cops for additional crowd control.”

“In that case, we’ll definitely need help. Hang on.”

Tom could hear Jazz rustling papers, heard him swear.

“WildCard’s out of the picture, sir,” Jazz reported. “He’s in California on special assignment. Senior Chief Wolchonok’s having knee surgery. And O’Leary won’t be back for another few weeks. He’s at a sharpshooter’s competition in Saudi Arabia.”

“Damn. I’m going to want a shooter of his caliber. I don’t want to assume car bomb and then have this turn out to be an assassination attempt.” He closed his eyes. Provided the Merchant was real. Provided Tom hadn’t simply imagined seeing the man who may or may not have been the terrorist. “I’m going to want a sniper of my own set up and ready, too.”

“That’s not going to be easy, sir. This competition has drawn all the best men in all the armed forces.”

All the best men.

“Find out if Alyssa Locke went to this competition,” Tom ordered. SO squadmember Frank O’Leary was only the second best marksman in the U.S. Navy. Lieutenant Junior Grade Locke had outscored him every single time they’d competed. She was a robot when it came to taking out a target.

“I know for a fact that she didn’t,” Jazz told him. “She wouldn’t have been invited. Not to Saudi Arabia. A woman? Not a chance.”

“Call her.”

Jazz paused delicately. “Sir. Do you think that’s . . . wise?”

Locke was outspoken in her desire to be allowed into the male-only ranks of the SEALs. She hounded Tom—and Jazz—every opportunity she got. All she wanted, she claimed, was a chance to prove herself.

“She’s pretty career driven,” Tom told him. “She may not want to take the leave—or the risk. Make sure she understands that this could well be a waste of time. Nothing may come of it at all. She may end up spending a few weeks at the beach, learning to paint with you.”

“With me? Oh, joy,” Jazz said with a complete lack of enthusiasm.

“Did you get a chance to download those files from my computer?” Tom asked.

“It’s all there, L.T., ready and waiting for you.”

“Look, Jacquette, I’ve got to say this again. I don’t want you to feel like I’m ordering you to—”

“Completely understood, sir. I’ll email you with my flight and arrival time as soon as I’ve got it.” Jazz cut the connection.

David cleared his throat. “Mind if I sit down?”

Mallory looked up at him, hostility flaring in her light brown eyes and in the tight line of her delicate lips.

Paoletti was her last name. She lived with her mother in a house on the other side of town. It hadn’t been hard for David to find out all about her from the kids who hung out down by the town beach.

All about her. More, in fact, than he’d wanted to hear.

Both she and her mother were well-known for putting out for money or drugs. They weren’t picky. They didn’t take credit cards, but a simple line of cocaine would do the trick. According to town legend, that would buy a guy a professional-quality blow job. A slightly larger amount would get that much more. Here in Baldwin’s Bridge, a man could have his pick of Paolettis—young or older. And apparently the mother was just as exotically, trashily beautiful as the daughter.

While David was far from the most experienced man in the world, he’d been around enough to know that when rumors came in gift-wrapped packages like that, complete with a ribbon around them, it was unlikely they were true. Mallory and her mother. Highly unlikely.

It sounded like small-town pettiness and jealousy to David. He didn’t believe a single word.

He’d gone back to the Ice Cream Shoppe to see what time she got off work, and the manager there had told him she was doing an extra shift today. Mallory was working until eight, but right now she was taking her dinner break.

David had known exactly where to find her, and sure enough, she was back under the tree.

“Don’t you ever give up?” Mallory asked him. “Haven’t you gotten tired yet of me telling you to get the hell away from me?”

He sat down in the shade about four feet away from her, pretended to think about it. “Nope.”

She made a point of turning slightly away from him and continuing to read. She had another of those pathetic-looking, dried-up little peanut butter sandwiches for her dinner, and she ate it slowly as she devoted all her attention to the pages of her book.

David couldn’t keep from looking at the soft curve of her cheek, her delicate nose, the slightly exotic shape of her eyes, her flawless skin, and her mouth. God, Mallory Paoletti had a perfect mouth.

Her chin was perfect, too. She held it at a stubborn angle, unaware that the defiant pose exposed the soft, graceful lines of her throat and neck. She had a long, elegant neck, collarbones that could have inspired an entire epic poem, and truly magnificent breasts.

She was his Nightshade, come to life. Of course, dressed the way she was in wide-legged cargo pants and a tank top, she looked more like Nightshade’s human alter ego, Nicki Sheldon.

David pulled his day pack onto his lap, unzipping it and pulling out his own book—a copy of the same novel Mallory was reading. He’d managed to pick it up in the Super Stop & Shop at a discount.

Four feet away, Mallory changed her position. He didn’t look up, but he heard her put her empty sandwich Baggie back into the brown bag. He heard her crinkle that bag, heard her shift her position once again.

And then she spoke. To him. In a voice dripping with skepticism. “Oh, come on. You don’t expect me to believe you’re really reading that, do you?”

He looked at her over the top of his book. “Of course I’m reading it. I’m more than half done.”

The look on her face was so comical, he nearly pulled his camera out of his pack to get it down on film.

“You’re reading a romance.” She looked around. “Out here, in front of everyone?”

David looked around, too. There were about twenty people on the lawn in front of the hotel, more down by the marina. Not a single person was paying either of them the slightest bit of attention. He shrugged. “Yeah. You were right about it. It’s great stuff. Thanks for recommending it.”

“You’re really reading the whole thing?” she asked suspiciously. “You’re not just flipping through and reading only the sex scenes?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you’re a guy? . . .”

“I’m really reading the whole thing.” He smiled. “But I have to confess, when I get to them, I read the sex scenes twice.”

Her lips twitched, curving up into a very small smile. “Yeah, well, join the club,” she said. “So do I.”

She smiled at him. She smiled at him! It was a real, genuine we-have-something-in-common smile, not an I-want-to-put-your-eye-out-with-my-finger smile.

Mallory was nearly done with her book. “You read fast,” he said.

She looked at his book, at the place where he was using his finger as a bookmark. “You do, too.”

“I’ve always loved to read,” he told her. “As long as I’ve got a book, it doesn’t matter where I am. I can instantly be a million miles away, in a completely different place, on a different planet even. I can be someone else, you know? When it gets too complicated to be myself.”

Mallory nodded, but then she looked away, as if she were afraid she’d given too much away with that one little gesture of agreement. “God, I need a cigarette,” she breathed.

“It’s hard to quit, huh?”

“You wouldn’t happen to have one, would you?”

“I don’t smoke.”

“You wouldn’t.”

It was meant to be an insult, but David let it slide. Mallory Paoletti had created some pretty staunch defenses to keep people out of her world. If he wanted in—and he did—he was going to have to ignore the scratch of the verbal brambles and step lightly over the passive-aggressive minefields.

He unzipped his pack again and dug into it, searching for the book he’d put in this afternoon. He found it underneath his camera, and held it out to her. But she didn’t take it, and he ended up just setting it down in front of her, an offering to the goddess.

“I started reading this book—” He gestured to the one he was reading, the book she’d recommended. “—and it occurred to me that you might have never read anything by Heinlein. I thought you might want to borrow one of my favorites.”

Mallory looked down at the book he’d put in front of her but she didn’t touch it. She just looked at the cover, looked back at him. “What do you want from me?”

The question was so point-blank that David didn’t quite know how to answer it. He couldn’t answer it, not caught the way he was in the intensity of her eyes.

“Do you really think that if you sign me up for some little private book club, I’ll let you slip me something besides a book every now and then? Is that what this is about? You want to do it with me, geek-boy?”

Geek-boy. Ouch. But David didn’t get a chance to respond. She was spitting mad and she wasn’t done yet. He found his voice but all he could get out was “N—”

She pushed herself to her feet, savagely kicking his book back toward him, gathering up her crumpled bag, her half-finished soda, and her own book.

David had envisioned himself taking days, weeks even, to make friends with Mallory. And only then, after they were friends, would he tell her about Nightshade. But he realized now it wasn’t going to happen that way. It was now or never.

And so he stood, too, fumbling in his pack for Wingmasters Two, pulling it free. “I do want something from you, Mallory. You’re right about that. But it’s not what you think. See, I want you to model for me, for my next project.”

He held it out and she stared down at the dark colors on the cover.

“Wingmasters Two?” she read. She looked up at him. “A comic book?”

“It’s a graphic novel. We try to make it higher quality than a comic book. But you better believe if we got an offer from D.C. or Marvel, we’d proudly become a comic book in an instant.” He pointed to names on the front. “By Renny Shimoda and David Sullivan. Artwork by David Sullivan. That’s me.”

She gave him a disbelieving look as she pulled the book from his hands to take a closer look.

“Wingmasters One and Two both had limited printings—a few thousand copies each. We started our own publishing company to distribute them,” he told her as she flipped through it. “We had to pay for the printing up front, but we’ve made back most of our initial investment. Unfortunately, the series didn’t catch on quite the way we’d hoped,” he continued, “even though it’s a cult favorite.”

She was standing there, flipping through the pages, probably only half listening.

“For the past two months, I’ve been developing a new series. Nightshade. This one’s all mine. The story’s mine, too, not just the artwork. It’s about this high school girl, Nicki Sheldon, who realizes she has these superpowers. Kind of Buffy meets the X-Men.”

Mallory frowned up at him. “So I’m just supposed to believe that you’re this David Sullivan. The one whose name is on the front of this thing, this graphic novel.”

David took out his wallet, took out his driver’s license.

She took it from him, squinted at his name and his parents’ address in Newton. “God, this picture sucks.” She looked up at him again. “Well, maybe it doesn’t.” She handed it back to him, still unconvinced. “David Sullivan’s a common enough name.”

David knew how to prove he was who he said he was. He sat down on the grass, searching through his pack for a pencil and his sketch pad. He opened to a clean page, balanced the pad on his leg, looked up at Mallory, and started to draw.

“Do me a favor and sit,” he ordered her. “My neck’s going to break.”

She was watching his pencil moving across the page, and she slowly lowered herself to the ground. She sat forward, on her knees, so she could watch him draw.

“Oh, my God,” she breathed. “That is so cool.”

It wasn’t that good. He could do a lot better when not under so much pressure. But it wasn’t bad, either—a rough comic-book version of Mallory’s face, complete with her trademark scowl. He added a body—an exaggerated, stylized, superhero type body, in a superhero pose. Hands on hips, legs slightly spread in a powerful stance, muscles rippling, chest out.

“Nightshade,” Mallory read aloud as he printed the name in block letters beneath his drawing. She looked at the similar drawings on the cover of Wingmasters Two, then up at him. “Holy shit, you did draw this, didn’t you?”

He turned his notebook around so that it faced her. “What I’d like to do,” he told her, “is take photos of you. All kinds of poses, from all angles. The hardest thing is drawing realistic-looking bodies—you know, anatomically correct bodies that move and bend and flex the way real people do. I took an anatomy class in school last year, and that’s helped a lot. But getting the right perspective is hard, too. Still, if I can have a few hundred photos of you pinned up around my drawing table, it makes it that much easier.”

She laughed as she gazed at the drawing. “That really looks like me. That’s so weird.”

“Here,” David said, moving closer to her. “Let me show you what I mean.”

He took his camera out of his pack and placed it gently on the grass as he dug for the pictures he’d just got back from the developers at the drugstore.

“Oh, man, that’s one huge camera.”

“The camera’s actually pretty small.” He picked it up again and handed it to her. “It’s the lens that’s big.” He pointed to the viewfinder. “Look through there. Check it out. And move this, here, to focus.”

Their fingers touched, and she didn’t pull away. He was close enough to smell the sweet scent of peanut butter on her breath.

She laughed. “This is one of those paparazzi lenses—the kind photographers from the National Enquirer use to get pictures of Fergie sunbathing topless from, like, five miles away.” She looked up from the viewfinder, and at this proximity, he could see flecks of green and gold mixed in with the light brown of her eyes. She was gorgeous from forty feet away, stunning from four feet. From four inches, she was heart stopping.

David felt his IQ drop into the single digits as he stared into her eyes.

“So who were you taking pictures of with this superlens?” she asked. “Prince William in town?”

“No,” he managed to say. “No one—I mean, not yet. I mean, I was going to take some pictures later this afternoon.”

Pictures. Right. He was going to show her his pictures. Come on, brain. Don’t fail now. She was sitting here, she was listening to him, she was interested in his project.

She handed the camera back to him, and again their fingers touched. “I was in media club in middle school,” she told him. “I loved it—I got to borrow this really cool camera and take all these freaky black-and-white pictures. Well, I did until Mark Fritz stole the camera from my locker. He told me he took it, but then he denied it when I told Mr. Marley. It was Mark against me, and he got straight As and was captain of the middle-school tennis team, so I was blamed. I wasn’t kicked out of media club, but I wasn’t allowed to borrow the equipment anymore, so what was the point? My mother bought me some little Instamatic piece of shit to try to make me feel better. She didn’t know the difference between that and a Nikon.”

Both Mark Fritz and Mr. Marley deserved a sound thrashing. “You can do a lot with an Instamatic,” he said. “Or even one of those disposable cameras you can pick up at the drugstore. Especially if you work with natural light. Do you still take pictures?”

She shrugged evasively. It was hard to say whether it was a yes shrug or a no shrug. She glanced at her watch. Damn, he was losing her.

“I have to head back to the Ice Cream Shoppe in about five minutes.”

David found the packets of photos in the front pocket of his pack. “Here, let me just show you these really quickly.”

Some of them were pictures he’d taken here in town. But most were from his recent photo session with Brandon.

“I took these in my apartment,” he told her. “This is my friend Brandon Crane. He’s a lifeguard over at the hotel. Basically, what I do is have him come in, he puts on a bathing suit—”

“Oh, is that what you call that?” Mallory asked. “It doesn’t leave a whole lot to the imagination, does it?”

David laughed. “It’s a Speedo. It’s legal. Guys wear ’em all the time.”

“Yeah, maybe in Provincetown.” She flipped through the photos. “God, what are you going to have me wear?”

His pulse kicked into gear. The way she’d asked that question, it was as if it was already a done deal, as if she was ready to sign on. But he couldn’t assume that. He had to play it cool, play it out.

“Do you have a bikini?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I burn so I don’t do much sunbathing.”

“I’ve got a costume box, with bikinis in just about every size. If you found one you liked, you could even keep it after.”

She went back through the pictures of Brandon, looking at them more closely. “I’m not sure I’d want to keep it after. Besides, what if it was the one you like to wear?”

Was that lighthearted teasing or was her comment intended to belittle, to cruelly mock him? David couldn’t tell.

“Personally, I’m fond of my pink ballerina tutu,” he said lightly, choosing to believe she was teasing. “That and the chicken suit. As long as you stay away from those . . .”

She laughed. And then she held up a particularly buff photo of Bran. “Is this guy really a lifeguard here in town? He looks like he belongs on a movie set in L.A. How’d you talk him into doing this, anyway?”

“We’ve been friends since fourth grade. He got this summer job for me as a breakfast waiter at the hotel. He poses for me for free—for something called deferred payment. We have an understanding that if I make it big, I’ll pay him lots of money down the road. But I could pay you up front, if you want. Fifty dollars an hour is about all I could afford, with a two hour guarantee.”

She was suddenly intently studying the photos again, as if she didn’t want to look him in the eye. “That seems like an awful lot of money just for standing around in a bathing suit.”

“Professional models get more than that,” he told her.

She was silent.

“What I’d really like,” David said, praying that he hadn’t just screwed this up by talking about money, “would be to schedule a shoot with both you and Brandon. I’m going to want a bunch of individual shots of you, of course, but it would be good to get some of the two of you together. He can show you how it’s done.” Maybe she’d be more comfortable knowing she wasn’t going to be alone with David in his apartment studio. “He’s going to be Julian, your love interest in the graphic novel.”

“Just how graphic is this graphic novel?” she asked suspiciously.

“No,” he said quickly. “Not that way. Not at all. I’m targeting as wide an audience as possible. Some of the artists like to be, um, well, explicit. And while I imply certain relationships . . . I don’t . . . I mean, sure, I’ll show the two characters kiss, but . . .”

She looked down at the pictures of Brandon again. “So . . . you want to take pictures of me kissing your friend.”

“Well, yeah, I mean, a few shots, sure. Kisses are hard to draw, so . . .”

“Is he, like, unattached?”

David’s stomach twisted as he gazed at her. The question was posed so casually. Too casually. Oh, damn. This had happened too many times before. He and Brandon would be out somewhere, he’d meet a girl he really liked—and Bran would take her home. It was inevitable.

It was a pain in his ass.

Still, this wasn’t about him liking this girl. This was about convincing her to pose for him. This was about Nightshade.

“Yeah,” he told her, pushing up his glasses with one finger. “He’s unattached. A word of warning, though—one look at you and he’ll be hitting on you.” He felt like some kind of backward pimp, trying to entice her to come to his studio with promises of a roll with his friend, Mr. Incredible Pecs.

Mallory shook her head. “No way. A guy like this only goes out with the Susan Thornridges and the Mary Beth Blacklys.” She put the photos back in the envelope. “And even if he did ask, I wouldn’t go anywhere with him. I don’t need his kind of shit messing up my life, no thanks.”

“Well, then I’ll make sure I tell him to back off.” David was ready to promise her anything. Whatever it took. Brandon or not. Of course he preferred or not, but she would probably change her mind with one face-to-face meeting with his charismatic friend.

She stood up, brushing off the seat of her jeans. “I’m late. I’ve got to go.”

“How’s tonight?” he asked, reaching into his pack for one of his cards. “I happen to know that Bran’s got the night off. He could be at my place by nine. What do you say? Nine to eleven?” He wanted to drop to his knees and plead, but he knew he’d get further by staying at least relatively cool.

She took her time taking his card from him, but this time she actually read it. He’d written his summer address and phone number on it in clean block letters.

“The bathing suit stays on?” she asked.

“Swear to God,” he said. “If you want, you can bring your father along as a chaperone.”

“How about I bring my uncle?” she said challengingly. “He’s a Navy SEAL, in town on leave.”

David fumbled his sketch pad, dropping it onto the grass. A SEAL . . . “Really?” His voice cracked. “That’s so cool. SEALs are built like gods. Definitely bring him. Do you think . . . wow, do you think he’d pose for me?”

Mallory laughed. “No,” she said. “But I will. You just convinced me you’re for real, Sullivan. God, your dork index is off the charts.”

Yes. Thank God for his dork index, whatever that meant. David grinned at her. “Then I’ll see you tonight.” Oh, man, he had to get home fast and clean his apartment.

She scowled at him. “If I turn out to be wrong about you, I will kick you so hard your balls will come out your nose. Do you understand?”

David couldn’t keep from laughing, the image was such an intense one. “Absolutely.”

She glared at him one more time as if to prove that she was dead serious, then turned and walked away, heading back to work, carefully tucking his card into the back pocket of her jeans.

David waited until she turned the corner onto South Street, and only then did he do a victory dance around the tree.

She was his. She was his.

Well, on paper, anyway.