Zander might be shy, but he liked people. Though most of his photography was nature themed, he’d done one chapter in his Alaskan book on the people he’d worked with at the fisheries in Ketchikan. She could see it in the verbal sketches he drew of the people who lived in Wild Sign. She found out that Emily—who must have been Mommy Hellion—loved to cook and never went out without something purple on. Deaf from birth, Jack made signs to spread joy.

Charles liked very few people.

If she had met Zander before she’d been Changed, she might have fallen for him. Not just because she loved his art but because he was sexy and sweet. He reminded her of one of Wellesley’s paintings—deep and rich with meaning. Every time she looked, she saw something new. Something that made her think.

But she wasn’t that woman anymore. It was Charles, with his darkness, his violence and contrasting gentleness, whom she wanted to take to her bed, to share her life with.

She had gone through some truly awful times, but without them, she would not have had the courage to love someone like Charles. Charles, who had reached out of his own darkness to catch her. She had the strong feeling that Charles’s act had taken even greater courage on his part, though he had never told her so.

“Sounds like you knew some of the people in Wild Sign before you went up?” Anna asked, focusing once more on Zander’s words instead of his person.

“Sure,” he said easily. “The world’s wildernesses are finite, you know? There aren’t many of us who are driven to explore them. After a while, some faces are familiar. Emily and her family—the Tottlefords—I met a few years ago in Alaska. But they’re not the only ones I knew. I stayed a couple of weeks with Jenny and her husband at the time in the Andes.”

Anna was pretty sure that Jenny had been Dr. Connors Senior’s “Opera Singer” from the stories that Zander had shared. But she didn’t want Zander to know that they had another source for information about Wild Sign, so she didn’t try to confirm that.

“The Andes?” Anna asked. “In South America?”

He nodded. “Peru.” But something about the music he was playing had caught her ear.

“What is that song?” she asked.

He smiled. “Do you like it?” He played a few more measures before he spoke. “It’s something I’ve been working on. My only problem is that it sounds familiar to me. I don’t want to take credit for someone else’s work.”