Sketching standing up had never been natural for him, and in impatience, he gripped his pad and climbed onto the window ledge, the sill providing a narrow seat for him. He dangled his feet over the side of the brick house and spread his legs to make a surface for his sketchbook. And went back to work, satisfied with the progress he was making, entranced by the quiet of the courtyard, no sound but the rustle of leaves in the trees and bushes and the sound of Sara flipping through the pages in her lap.

She tugged her skirt up higher, exposing a delicious expanse of thigh on the leg that was still stretched across the chair.

He wanted to touch her, to slid his hand up that warm, firm limb and move underneath her skirt and stroke her intimately, watching her face to see her relax, capitulate, accept pleasure at his hand. He wanted to hear her sigh for him. See the full extent of her beauty.

Outline of her form down on his pad, he studied his raw sketch in comparison to the living, breathing woman below him. It was good, and he was pleased with it.

It had been worth the risk, worth breaking a personal rule.

This was his, to keep.

He was smoothing out the line of her shoulder with his thumb when he heard her scream.

Sara was soaking up the sun, enjoying the feel of it on her face, her arms, even as it heated up her skin and made her start to perspire. The courtyard was peaceful and it had beckoned to her. The table and chairs were a little rickety, or maybe it was that the ground was uneven, mossy bricks that had settled and crumbled. But it felt good to sit enclosed by the vine-covered brick walls and read the remaining stack of police reports from the Donovan investigation in solitude.

She was nervous about seeing Gabriel again. She had been weird on Saturday and she knew it. But sleeping in the same bed with him, overreacting both on the street and then again in his apartment when she’d thought he might be dead, plus getting that random e-mail suggesting her guilt—it had all been too much. Embarrassing. So after lunch she had ditched out, and now she was a little nervous about seeing him.