She flipped to a page of her sitting in a cafe on one of her breaks, sipping a cup of coffee all alone in a corner booth. She turned to another picture, this one of her outside, with her coat on and her scarf around her throat. She was looking up at the sky for some reason. The wind whipped dark tendrils of her hair across her pale face. Her eyes were closed and a slight smile played on her lips. He loved that picture of her. It was one of his favorites.

"Why did you need such intimate shots of me for surveillance, Jack?" she asked softly. "These don't seem like business to me. These seem personal.”

He stood at a loss for words. They were personal. They were pictures of the daughter of the woman who'd haunted him for the last twenty-five years.

Or that's who Mira had been at first.

As he'd watched her at work, at the grocery store, going to old film festivals by herself, Mira had begun to emerge as a person independent of what she'd originally represented to him. A gorgeous woman, adrift in the world around her, alone and looking for pieces of herself she wasn't even aware were missing.

Jack had found reflections of himself in her.

After that he'd wanted to take pictures of Mira for her own sake, because her soul had been on display and he'd been able to capture the truth of her life so easily in those vulnerable moments when she'd thought no one had been looking.

"I took them because you're beautiful, Mira, and my hobby is photography. That's the only reason.”

Mira snorted. "Beautiful? Now I know you're lying.”

He blew out a breath of frustration. "Yeah, beautiful. I think you're fucking gorgeous actually. I'm sorry you don't see that when you look in the mirror, but I see it every time I look at you.”

She closed the album and stared down at it, quiet. He wished he could guess what she was thinking, but he had no idea.

"It was an invasion," she said almost inaudibly.

"I know. It was wrong. I'm sorry." He seemed to be making mistake after mistake with her. Why did it feel like more were on the way? Why couldn't he just stop, just leave her alone? She was irresistible to him and he'd never dealt well with temptation.

Silence.

"I guess we're even then, as far as invasions go, considering I broke into this room," she said finally.

"Okay.”

She turned to face him. Scowling, she blew a tendril of dark hair out of her face and crossed her arms over her chest. "What were you dreaming about, anyway?”

"You," he answered. "And my mother." He glanced away, not wanting to reveal with his eyes that he wasn't telling the whole truth. "I dreamt my mother wanted to take you with her into her grave.”

Mira shuddered. "Your mother is dead?”

He nodded.