On the plane back to Niniltna, he'd said, "So we're not going to talk about it?" Silence had been her answer. Okay, fine. He probably would want conversation somewhere down the line, but just at the moment, all he wanted was a month in bed, just the two of them, and the rest of the world held at bay with a big red keep out sign. Surely that wasn't too much to ask.

He wondered if, in the course of a normal sexual relationship, she was a talker or the quiet, intense type. The first time, she had called him Jack. The second time, she hadn't said anything at all. Of course, he had not been spectacularly articulate himself.

He wondered what her favorite position was. He'd had some imaginative partners in his life. But face it, Chopin, he told himself. If acquiring Kate Shugak as a partner means the missionary position for the foreseeable future, you'll take it and love it.

He wondered how long and what it took to make her come. He wondered if she screamed when she did. Well, he kind of knew the answers to both those questions now.

He stifled a groan and rolled over on his back.

He wondered if he was ever going to get laid again in his lifetime.

Why her? he asked himself for what might have been the thousandth time. Why this one stubborn, independent, irritating, exasperating woman? She was certainly far too short, especially for him. They'd look like Mutt and Jeff. Where had all the tall blondes in his life suddenly gone? The tall, charming, amenable, accommodating blondes, the ones who were waiting for him when he got to their houses and who let him go again without question the morning after?

The ones who cared as much for him as he did for them.

He remembered again that day in September when he and George had flown into George's hunting lodge south of Denali and had found Kate Shugak, covered in blood and dirt, keening a dirge to the lifeless body of her lover clasped in her arms. No one had ever loved him that much.

Tell the truth, Chopin, he thought. You never knew it was possible until you saw Kate with Jack. You thought it was something you read in a book or saw at the movies. You never thought it could happen in real life.

He kicked free of the sleeping bag, feeling through his T-shirt the heat of the wood burning in the fireplace.

He was, he realized, circling perilously close to the L word. He'd stared down men with .357s with less fear. He thought of his parents, those two strangers in the split-level house in San Jose, one staring at the television, the other logged onto the Internet, looking for the next cruise they could take. They had been married for forty years, and he couldn't remember an outward sign of affection more passionate than a chaste kiss, usually on the cheek. He supposed they loved each other, but he had long since decided that if that was love, no thank you. If he'd caught them groping each other in the kitchen, just once, maybe he would have looked at life and relationships a little differently. He didn't know.