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was the only one who could evoke such feelings and responses.
            Will walked about his office and casually picked up a picture of Gina. He sat down on the edge of his desk and looked down into her sweet, smiling face. His heart lurched as he considered what it had taken to make him realize he had been neglecting her due to his misguided sense of priorities. Even though a little over a month had passed, it still shook him. He vowed never to let that happen again -- even if it meant getting up and leaving an important business meeting to be by her side if that’s what was needed.
            In the fall she would begin her first year at Stanford University. It had been her desire to attend this college in California and despite its distance, he made her, as well as himself, a promise to keep in close contact with her. He was proud of her, maybe a little protective of her, and he loved her as much as any father would love his own daughter.
            He replaced Gina’s picture to a prominent place on his large, mahogany desk and walked around to his leather chair. He was on the eighteenth floor of a building that overlooked Lake Michigan. Pemberleo Coffee owned five complete floors in addition to office buildings in Texas, Guatemala, and Columbia. He owned a private jet, a couple of limousines, several company and personal cars, a townhouse and two homes. Yet he had to admit that even with all these things, he was still not happy.
            He shuffled some papers as he looked down at his calendar. He had much to do before the weekend. He could not afford to idle his time away thinking of things that were not as he wished them to be.
    *~*~*
                Elyssa sat in her living room eyeing the ticket that would take her to Guatemala. She knew sorting through her sister’s things would be difficult. It had only been two months since their deaths and she was still frequently overcome with grief at some thought or reminder of her.
            She looked around her at her comfortable home. She had been renting it and hoped to someday buy it with her savings and little bit of money her father had left her when he died. An insurance policy had provided money for each of the girls, in addition to a larger sum left to her mother.
            She worked part-time at the public library while attending college and was now full-time. She thoroughly enjoyed her job and often wondered how they could pay her when she enjoyed reading as much as she did, but her great love and dream was to become a full-time interior designer.
            While still working on a degree in interior design with an emphasis on historical decor from the nineteenth century, she’d had several opportunities to exhibit her natural talent. While living in Los Angeles, she had been able to secure occasional work on movie and television sets that dealt with historical periods. Her good friend, Charlene Lukas, was a set director who had made a name for herself and often called Elyssa to help out when she worked on period movies. Knowing how talented Elyssa was, Charlene also freely handed out her friend’s business cards when someone was looking for an interior designer.
            Many people recognized Elyssa’s talent and she was tempted to forego college and work full time in the studios. But she disliked the traffic, crowds, and smog too much to want to stay there, so she moved up to the beautiful Santa Ynez Valley. Besides, she reasoned, she wanted to use her talents for people to enjoy, not just for a temporary set that would be torn down after the filming was complete.
            Here, she was close enough to LA so that if she were occasionally called to work on a movie set, she could easily drive down there and stay with family during the course of the time she was needed. She had done some small decorating jobs in and around where she