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wall behind St. Jerome. “This indicates that he was a cardinal.”
    “And the skull? Kind of a weird thing for a saint to have lying around, don’t you think?”
    She smiled, surprised and flattered by his curiosity. “If you’ll notice, St. Jerome’s head appears to be at one end of a line that passes through a cross to the human skull. Many scholars think this is how Dürer contrasted death and the resurrection.”
    “You know a lot about this stuff.” He glanced up at her.
    She suddenly became aware of his proximity, in a not-altogether comfortable way. He leaned against her seat, his denim-clad hip nearly touching her shoulder. She could see the worn threads of his inseam running down to his high-top sneakers. She could reach out and touch the seam if she wanted...but of course she didn’t. Want to.
    She cleared her throat as a pretext for swallowing the saliva that had suddenly pooled in her mouth. She’d never really met a man like Joe Dunham—so rough around the edges, yet still smart. He had a certain kind of appeal she couldn’t explain.
    “I should know something about it,” she said. “I’ve spent years studying it.”
    “You a professor or something?”
    “No.” The single word answer didn’t seem to suffice. “My father has been kind enough to provide both my sister and myself with an allowance,” she said stiffly. How had she let herself be maneuvered into this discussion? “It’s allowed me to focus full-time on my studies without the distractions of having to teach or write.”
    One of his dark brow’s lifted. “Your father is supporting you while you get your degree, huh? He must approve.” His comment had an edge to it, and she felt her defenses rise again. Their civil conversation had lulled her into a false sense of security, obviously.
    “I didn’t take my father’s opinion into consideration when I chose to study Dürer’s work,” she said, lifting her chin.
    “Maybe not, but I’ll bet you would have thought twice if, say, your life’s dream had been to elope with a martial arts fighter.”
    She closed the laptop with a snap, a bit more firmly than she’d intended. “And what is that supposed to mean? I would never be interested in someone like Pock.”
    “Maybe not, but I bet somewhere, at sometime, you wanted to do something daddy didn’t approve of.”
    “And who is to say I didn’t do it?”
    “I’d say that the fact that you’re willing to fly across the country to help bend your sister to your father’s will is a pretty good indicator that you haven’t exactly been the rebellious one.”
    Her head snapped back. How dare he judge her? “I’m not ‘bending my sister’ to anyone’s will,” she snapped. “If you knew Daisy, you would realize that’s impossible. I’m simply trying to get her out of a jam she’s found herself in.”
    “A jam she wants to be in.”
    Ivy fumbled for a response as the steward came back into the cabin to ask them to take their seats for landing. Joe complied, and their conversation ended, for now, at least. Ivy fumed over his words in silence as the plane sank into Las Vegas airspace.
    Anger simmered in her as she stared out at the desert. She wished she could have thought up some clever remark to put him in his place, but nothing had come to mind. Why could she always think of stinging rebukes hours later, as she lay in bed, but never in the moment, when they might actually do her some good? She wanted to deny what he said, but his words had more than a grain of truth in them. He had implied that she was somehow lacking, compared to her sister.
    All her life she’d been the responsible, smart one, cleaning up Daisy’s messes. She’d always thought of herself as a bit of a martyr to her younger sister’s wildness, but Joe Dunham clearly admired Daisy, not her.
    She shook off the thought. Why did she care what Joe Dunham thought? She didn’t. How could he imply that she was overly subservient to her father? He took