It was the first thing she’d bought for the new little Bentz—well, unless she counted the multiple pregnancy tests. Her appointment with her doctor wasn’t for another couple of weeks. That didn’t matter. She was going to quit being a wimp and tell Bentz that he was going to be a father again.

And he’d damned well better like it.

Unlike its Italian namesake, the city of Venice, California, still had just a few of its original canals. Most of the waterways built back in 1905 had since been paved over when the city of Los Angeles decided it needed more real streets for cars. However, the remaining canals and stretch of sandy beach were enough to lend character to the seaside community, which was packed on this sunny, warm day. Mild weather had brought out the bicyclers and skaters, along with an array of street performers who reminded Bentz of the musicians who peddled their talents in the squares of New Orleans. Like his home, this town boasted a carnival atmosphere, a sense of “anything goes.”

The art gallery where Fortuna Esperanzo worked was only a few blocks from the beach, tucked between a tourist shop that sold everything from T-shirts to cameras and an “authentic” Mexican restaurant with a sprinkling of outside tables. The panorama was much the same as it had been a dozen years earlier.

Bentz parked the rental, eyed his cane, left it on the floor of the backseat, and jaywalked across the wide street. The salty scent of the ocean wafted to him, reminding him of his dunk in Santa Monica Bay the previous night. When he’d lost Jennifer. Again.

He stepped under an awning and through the open door of a gallery filled with abstract and modern sculpture and seemed empty. Bentz hitched his way up a wide wooden staircase which led to an open second-floor loft. It was filled with paintings, mosaic work, and tapestries by local artists.

In one corner Fortuna Esperanzo stood on a ladder, replacing the bulb of a light that was trained on a huge, unframed canvas. Wild black strokes slashed across a field of orange and red. The painting was called simply Rage.

“Nice,” Bentz remarked sarcastically.

Startled, Fortuna dropped the lightbulb and it shattered. “Oh shit!” She glared down, eyeing him over the top of the ladder with small, dark eyes framed by perfectly plucked, pencil-thin eyebrows.

Her pink glazed lips pursing into a tight knot of dislike. “I figured you would take the hint when I didn’t call you back, Bentz.” Slowly she descended the rungs to stand on the floor, carefully avoiding the shards of thin glass. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I just wanted to talk to you.”