Bo rushed the giant man and threw her arms around him. Then, peering over her shoulder at Dyson, she said loud enough for him to hear, ”Finally, someone with brawn and brains.”

The Mediterranean Sea, sailing west

Something bothered Kenzi all afternoon and her tone the last hour had been irksome and mildly acidic, and Lauren felt as if every word spoken was a worm wriggling on a hook. ”Who is it tonight?” Kenzi asked her, ”an apple, an olive, a peach?

Lauren fought to stay neutral, aware of Kenzi’s irritation but not the cause of it. ”She is a doctor and she has a name…and I so wish you’d stop referring to my dates as food.”

“That’s what they are, aren’t they?”

Lauren peered at Kenzi’s reflection in the mirror, her friend’s teasing smirk bouncing right back at her. Lauren accepted the invitation for dinner in—where were they now exactly, Mykonos, Santorini? Malta?

Kenzi concentrated on a sheaf of black and white photographs fanned across the top of Lauren’s bed. ”Remember this?” she held one out for Lauren. In it, she’d snapped Lauren’s profile, elegant and slender, half in and out of darkness, at peace and lost in her own world in the middle of the chaos of the Grand Bazaar. Her head was bowed, contemplating a slender volume Lauren plucked seemingly at random from an antiques seller in the market. They’d almost missed it as the bookseller’s stall was pinched between one that sold fake Aladdin’s lamps and Fezzes to tourists and another that spread out spices and beans by the bushel, filling that little space with scents of cumin and dry grass. Lauren studied the image and remembered the stickiness in the air—it had just finished raining—and the stream of steady complaints Kenzi flung about like peanut shells.

”Everything smelled like fish and armpits.” Kenzi scooted up the bed on her knees until she was able to prop her chin over Lauren’s shoulder.

”Yeah, but someone didn’t want to get her hair wet…your one rule as I recall. So it was either catch rain or stay dry in the market.” Lauren pointed at the photo. ”I like how you caught that.” A lone tunnel of light broke through a vent in the ceiling and struck her like a beacon, capturing the slight tenderness that had crept upon Lauren’s lips, visible in profile even in the half-light.