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know. I’ve seen you around with your sketchbook.”
    He noticed. Hallelujah, he noticed.
    Michelle had been drawing ever since she was old enough to hold a crayon. It was all she ever wanted to do, and she excelled at it, blazing like a comet through high school classes and special courses she took outside of school. Her inspiration and talent had served her well when she went to Montana to spend that precollege year with her father. Montana seemed so huge and limitless that she got into the habit of drawing constantly just to feel a measure of control over something so overwhelmingly vast and wild. She drew everything: the placid bovine face of a cow; a line of trees along the creek with the stars coming out behind them; the silhouette of a mare and her foal on the slope behind the paddock; a common loon nesting in a marsh.
    “I never go anywhere without my sketchbook,” she said.
    “I’m Sam. Sam McPhee. I work for your dad.” He grinned, and her heart began to melt. If she looked down, she figured she’d see it in a puddle like hot fudge at her feet.
    “I know.” She grinned back, hoping her neck didn’t go all splotchy the way it usually did when she blushed.
    “So you’re an artist?” he asked. Not with the hefty skepticism a lot of people exhibited when she told them her ambition, but with genuine interest.
    “I want to be.” She gestured at the sketch. “This is practice. I want to paint for real.”
    “You mean like on an easel with brushes and a palette and a beret and stuff?”
    She laughed. “Exactly. Well, maybe not the beret.”
    “So do it.”
    “Do what?”
    “Paint for real. Don’t just say you’re going to. You can’t be an artist if you don’t paint, right?”
    “Guess not.” She scuffed her foot against the gazebo steps. “You ever heard of Joseph Rain?”
    “Sure,” Sam said. “He eats at the café where my mom works. I heard he lives out on the Flathead reservation, but he’s a recluse.”
    “Well, he’s just about the most famous painter in the West,” she explained. “I came here to study with him.” Her father had arranged it all. Though the artist rarely accepted students, Gavin had sent him a box of her sketches and attached a very large check. Mr. Rain had kept the sketches, returned the check, and agreed to work with her—for a fee, not a bribe.
    “Yeah? I’d heard he was an artist or something.”
    “He did a series of paintings for the National Trust.” In her mind’s eye she could picture them—deep burning emotional scenes that haunted her long after she had walked away from them. “I’m lucky he agreed to be my teacher.”
    “Is that the best offer you’ve had all summer?”
    “So far.” She dropped her sketchbook. Klutz, she thought.
    Both she and Sam reached for it, their hands touching. He gave an easy laugh, keeping her hand in his.
    The sound of Sam McPhee, laughing. The feel of his hand, touching her. These were the first things about him that she had loved. In the years that ensued, they were the things she remembered more vividly and more frequently than she wanted to.
    She wished she had never come back. How would she bear the beauty of this place with its pure light, its slashing cold, and now Sam McPhee? Gritting her teeth, she let herself into the main house. When she stepped inside, she remembered her first visit here, how grand and solid everything had looked. Back then, she’d had her own room upstairs. Now she and Cody occupied a guesthouse. Gavin thought Cody would feel more comfortable in his own space.
    “I’ll be right out,” Gavin called from somewhere upstairs. “Make yourself a drink.”
    She crossed the living room—a Ralph Lauren ad in 3-D—and stepped behind the wet bar. On a polished shelf, she found a heavy crystal highball glass and shook some ice from the undersized freezer. As she perused the bottles of exotic, expensive whiskey and liqueur, she tried to get her thoughts in some sort of order.
    She tended