“Margot.” He dared to call to her again only once he’d entered the park, too, and followed the winding brick path to where the table and chairs were set up by the bench. She was there, of course, collapsed onto one of the hard chairs by the table with the Go board. Gasping for breath. Or crying. Or perhaps both. “Mi alma?”

She shook her head, shoulders heaving. “Don’t call me that. I’m not your soul.”

She knew the phrase? Always surprising him, this one. He eased down beside her chair and slid her handbag into her hands. “Why does it scare you so?”

Her hair was a ruin under her hat, those carefully measured waves flying every which way—and looking all the more charming for their disarray. He gave in to the urge to smooth them down and was rewarded by her meeting his gaze.

“I’m not scared.”

Part of him wanted to smirk, to call her on the obvious lie—point out, perhaps, that she didn’t deliver it with her usual mathematical precision. But what would that achieve? Instead he took a moment to think. To try to see down to the depths of her heart through those depthless eyes. “Sometimes running away does speak to courage instead of fear. To wisdom. Sometimes running away is necessary. Though I certainly hope not in this case.”

She gasped again and dashed a sleeve across her eyes with the look of someone who detested the tears she wiped away. “I don’t know.”

There was meaning there beyond the words. “What don’t you know?”

“What to do. What’s right. What’s wise. I don’t know whether to turn this way or that, whether to go or stay, whether to . . . to kiss you or to run away.”

“Do I get a vote?”

She sent him an exasperated look. But it eased her. Just a bit. “Drake.”

He caught her fingers in his. “You don’t have to know.”

“Don’t I?” She shook her head. “You want to change things. But I don’t know what changes are good and what are bad right now. I can’t . . . I can’t tell the right way to go.”

“Then don’t go anywhere.” He gave her fingers a squeeze and her eyes a small smile. “I’m not changing anything, mi alma. All I did was say the words I’d already been thinking. Kiss you like I’d been dreaming of doing. It was already there. Latent energy or whatever it’s called. Already factored into the equation.”

She almost, maybe smiled. Then turned her face away. “But it’s not just you. I’m not certain about anything anymore. He’s gone silent.”

“Who has? The Lord?”

She nodded, sniffed. But didn’t look at him again. “I could always hear Him. Ever since I was a child.”