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sipped, inhaling smoke and listening to drum music and
     waiting for something to happen.
    But nothing did.
    Tuck thought of Aimee and how’d he’d promised to buy the lake house from her dad and renovate it. She believed the house held
     special spiritual powers. It had given her peace in her final days. She believed it could restore his inspiration, reignite
     the creative magic her illness had stolen from him if he’d give it the chance. But he’d lost his faith in magic.
    “Fix it up, Tuck. Fix up the house and you’ll see. It will come to full life again, just as you will in the process of rebuilding,”
     she whispered to him on the day she’d died. “Promise me, please.”
    He’d promised, but he hadn’t had the heart to follow through with it yet.
    Tuck thought of his rowboat still out on Salvation Lake. He thought about Evie and Ridley and how they spent too much time
     worrying about him. Hell, Evie had moved to Salvation because she’d been so worried about him, and then she’d met Ridley and
     married him. He thought of how easy life used to be for him—the Magic Man.
    But the magic was long gone. He’d used up his share.
    He took a deep breath and felt a slow, languid heat snake through his body. His muscles relaxed. His head spun.
    Dizzy. He felt dizzy.
    Dreamily, Tuck set aside the cup of soup. It was hot in here, steamy, and getting hotter all the time. Sweat beaded his brow.
     Smoke grew thicker in the room. He coughed, blinked, and then he could have sworn he saw someone step out of the smoke.
    It was a woman. High breasts, narrow waist, curvy hips, walking straight toward him, cloaked in shadows and smoke.
    “Aimee?” he croaked.
    She came closer and he could see it wasn’t Aimee. His Aimee had been petite, small-boned, blond.
    This woman was an Amazon. At least five-ten, maybe taller, black Cleopatra hair, chocolate brown eyes.
    “Who are you?” he whispered, but she didn’t answer.
    Instead, she started to perform a slow, deliberate striptease, and it was only then that he realized she was clothed in veils.
     White veils. Wedding veils. She twirled in time to the drumming, peeling off a veil with each turn. The music got faster and
     so did she, whisking off veil after veil until she was a whirling dervish, spinning around the sweat lodge.
    The music stopped.
    And she spun to a halt in front of him.
    All the veils were gone, strewn about the sweat lodge. She was totally naked.
    Instantly, he got an erection.
    God, she was a beauty. The cut of her shiny ebony hair accentuated her high cheekbones. Ivory skin smooth as glass. Full,
     crimson lips. The high thrust of her pert pink nipples. The flat of her belly. The springy dark triangle of hair above her
     thighs.
    Her gaze was bold, but her eyes … her eyes … they were
lonely
. As lonely as Tuck’s.
    The music started again. A slow, thumping beat. Like the heart of an athlete.
    Thud. Thud. Thud.
    She sauntered toward him; she was as leggy as a runway model.
    Was she real? Was he dreaming? It didn’t feel like a dream. Was he on a vision quest? Was this supposed to be happening?
    Let whatever happens be okay,
Ridley had said
.
    What did that mean? Was he just supposed to go with it no matter what transpired? Have sex with a stranger?
    She dropped to her knees in front of him, reached out, and walked her fingers up his forearm.
    Tuck gulped.
    If this was some kind of hallucination, it was a damned good one. She felt so real.
    “Who are you?” he asked again.
    A sly grin lifted her lips. “Don’t you know?”
    “No.”
    She laughed, a low sexy sound, and then she said the strangest thing. “Why, I’m the other side of you.”
    “Other side of me?’
    “Uh-huh. Mirror image.”
    Her answer made no sense. He was just about to tell her that, when she leaned in close and ran her tongue along his lips.
     She tasted like dark chocolate—rich and sinful.
    He hadn’t been with a woman since Aimee, and he didn’t want to be with this