Connecting the tiny hook and eye at the apex of the zipper, he told himself there could be no birthmark identical to Emily’s, for this wasn’t the woman he lost. To believe she’d returned without having aged a day, to think that somehow she was Emily preserved and resurrected . . . Well, it would have been a little creepy to make love to her. No matter how desirable she was, no matter how much he wanted to erase the past ten years, no matter how he had been taken off guard when she slipped into his bed, he wouldn’t have melted into her arms so easily if he genuinely embraced the possibility that she was the long-missing and thought-dead Emily.

Besides, no matter what the circumstances of her disappearance, Emily would not have made a mystery of her return to him, would not have toyed with him by claiming to be an assassin, or by leaving the flowers at the grave.

And what did it say about him that he would indulge Maddison’s deceits and game playing in the hope that with her he could have at least a semblance, a simulation, of the life he might have had with Emily? Did he see her as a medicine for grief? A cure for guilt? Those were questions he needed to answer, but at the moment could not address. The mere presence of this woman left him without the power of introspection.

Anyway, the mystery of Maddison Sutton was not whether she was Emily Carlino. Her mysteries were many. How could she be a dead ringer for Emily? Why had she contrived to come into his life? She had planned that first encounter in the restaurant; he had no doubt of that. How did she know things that only he or Emily could know—where he kept the spare key, Emily’s favorite color and flower and time of day, that a two-plot grave marker waited for names to be cut into the stone. How did she know the way that Emily kissed, as no other woman but Emily had ever kissed him like that?

To answer the questions related to his motives and the state of his heart, he first needed to resolve the mysteries of Maddison and understand with what intention she had come into his life.

When he’d fixed the eye to the hook at the neck of her dress, she turned to him and favored him with a deep and searching kiss.

Leaning back in his arms, she seemed to know his thoughts. “When you sat down next to me at the bar that first night and I realized who you were, I wanted to be part of your life because I’d read and reread your books. I lived in them, really, while I read them, and I loved the world you evoked, the way you saw life. I hoped you’d made a world for yourself like the one in your books, that you were what you write. And you are. You’re so humble in spite of your success, considerate, funny, tender. I feel not only as though I’m with David Thorne, but as if I’m in a David Thorne novel. It’s a wonderful place to be.” She kissed him again. “May I come here tonight and cook dinner for you? I’m a very good cook. I’ll bring everything I need. Six o’clock?”