He knew her well and understood that there was no moving her, for the moment, from the position she’d taken. He understood, too, that from birth her life had been ribboned with the stuff of fantasies—and of nightmares. Perhaps she did need to compensate, for a time.

“I’ve got a plane to catch,” he grumbled. “As long as you insist on staying here, I want you to call me every day.”

Maggie kissed him again. “Once a week,” she countered. “You’ll have the completed score for Heat Dance in ten days.” With her arm around his waist, she led him to the end of the uneven, overgrown path where his Mercedes sat in incongruous splendor. “I love the film, C.J. It’s even better than I thought it would be when I first read the script. The music’s all but writing itself.”

He only grunted and cast one look behind him at the house. “If you get lonely—”

“I won’t.” With a quick laugh, Maggie nudged him into the car. “It’s been enlightening discovering how self-sufficient I can be. Now, have a nice trip back and stop worrying about me.”

Fat chance, he thought, automatically reaching in his briefcase to make certain his Dramamine was there. “Send me the score, and if it’s sensational, I might stop worrying … a little.”

“It is sensational.” She backed off from the car to give him room to turn around. “I’m sensational!” she shouted as the Mercedes began to inch around. “Tell everyone back on the Coast that I’ve decided to buy some goats and chickens.”

The Mercedes stopped dead. “Maggie…”

Laughing, she waved at him and backed down the path. “Not yet … but maybe in the fall.” She decided it was best to reassure him, or else he might get out and start again. “Oh, and send me some Godiva chocolates.”

That was more like it, C.J. thought, and put the car in gear again. She’d be back in L.A. in six weeks. He glanced in his rearview mirror as he started to drive away. He could see her, small and slender, still laughing, against the backdrop of the overgrown land, greening trees and dilapidated house. Once again he shuddered, but this time it wasn’t from an offense of his sensibilities. This time it was from something like fear. He had a sudden flash of certainty that she wasn’t safe there.

Shaking his head, C.J. reached in his pocket for his antacids as the car bumped noisily over a rock. Everyone told him he worried too much.

Lonely, Maggie thought as she watched the Mercedes bump and wind its way down her excuse for a lane. No, she wasn’t lonely. She was as certain as she’d ever been about anything that she’d never be lonely here. She felt an unexpected sense of foreboding that she shrugged off as ridiculous.

Wrapping her arms around herself, she turned in two slow circles. Trees rose up out of the rocky hillside. The leaves were hardly more than buds now, but in a few weeks they would grow and spread, turning the woods into a lush cover of green. She liked to imagine it that way and to try to picture it in the dead of winter—white, all white and black with ice clinging to the branches and shimmering on the rocks. In the fall there’d be a tapestry outside every window. She was far from lonely.