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again what he was thinking. How would she respond if he told her she was beautiful? Would she believe it if he said the words?
    He glanced away. She swallowed her disappointment.
    “ While you were getting dressed, I took a look at your library,” he said, picking up his knife and spreading sweet butter on a chunk of crusty sourdough bread. “Very impressive.”
    “ My library?” She let go a short laugh. “You mean the books piled on the coffee table, or the ones stacked three-deep on the shelves?”
    “ Both. I saw quite a few of my favorite contemporary authors and titles. And you have all the classics that I love and re-read all the time: Shakespeare, Austen, Dumas, Dickens, Twain, and Carroll.”
    She smiled with delight as she took a spoonful of chowder. “I ran out of shelf space long ago, but books are like best friends. I can’t stand to part with any of them.”
    “ Me neither. My whole living room’s lined with bookshelves. Reading’s the best kind of company for someone living on their own.”
    “ I know what you mean. Reading keeps me from noticing how lonely I am. I read while I eat, before I go to sleep—”
    “ It does get lonely, doesn’t it?”
    She froze, her spoon halfway to her mouth. His eyes locked with hers across the table.
    “ Do you like living alone?” he asked softly.
    A current of awareness seemed to travel across the space between them. She lowered her eyes, toyed with the blue linen napkin in her lap. “I don’t mind it. I’ve been alone for five years. I guess I’m used to it by now.” She laughed lightly. “I’d better be used to it, anyway. I tried marriage once. It didn’t even last a year. I’ll never try it again.”
    “ Never say never . Maybe you just married the wrong man.”
    “ I don’t think so. The divorce was inevitable, no matter who I’d married.” She hoped he wouldn’t pursue the subject further. She considered the last months before the divorce to be the lowest point in her life. She preferred to forget them.
    “ How about you?” she asked. “Have you ever been married?”
    “ No.”
    “ Really? Thirty years old and never been hitched?”
    A smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “Thirty-five. But thanks for the compliment.”
    She expected him to add more, to explain that he, too, was against the idea of marriage. After all, she reasoned, a man this handsome, this charming and successful, could hardly have escaped marriage unless he had an aversion to the institution in general. But he said nothing for several heartbeats, just continued to look at her over the rim of his wineglass.
    She felt her skin grow hot under his gaze and she glanced out the window beside them, where the setting sun painted a watercolor wash of purple, pink, and gold across the sky. A few hardy surfers still sat astride their boards, rising and failing on the water’s dark surface like bobbing ducks.
    “ I guess we can’t get married, anyway,” he said.
    Her eyes flew up to meet his, astonished by the stab of disappointment those words had brought.
    “ We’d have two copies of every book in the house,” he teased.
    She laughed. “True. It’d be so...redundant. And since I can’t throw anything away, it’d create quite a storage problem.”
    He grinned in response but didn’t comment. She had no idea what to say next. To her relief, the waiter chose that moment to arrive with their dinners. For Desiree: a platter of mesquite-broiled halibut, with wild rice, French-cut green beans, and honeyed carrots on the side. When the waiter placed Kyle’s meal before him, she felt a pang of envy rise in her chest. He’d ordered lobster. Fresh American lobster, flown in that morning from Maine.
    “ Ahh. Look at this beauty.” Kyle spread his cloth napkin across his lap. The lobster reclined on a bed of rice in reddish-orange splendor, head and tail intact, arched shell up. The detached claws, already cracked, were arranged beside a cup of melted butter. She