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out.
    “That never stopped us. Hi, Emma,” Jimmy said
belatedly, and rather coolly. She suspected that his opinion of her
matched her opinion of him. He shot Max a quizzical look, then
turned back to Monica. “Who’s this? Emma’s new squeeze?”
    Monica sent him a warning glance. “This is
Max Tarloff, our landlord.”
    “Oh.” Jimmy held up his hands in mock
surrender. “My bad. I keep telling you, Monica, move in with me and
you won’t have to deal with a landlord.”
    “She’d have to deal with you,” Emma muttered.
Someone must have stuffed some money into the jukebox, because it
suddenly began blasting an old Rolling Stones song, drowning out
Emma’s words. Just as well. She didn’t need Jimmy joining Mad Max
in the Let’s-Give-Emma-Shit club.
    “Jimmy.” Monica’s tone grew steely, even
though she was still smiling. “Can we talk for a minute?”
    Emma slid out of the booth without being
asked. Monica followed her out of the booth, apologized to Max,
clamped her hand around Jimmy’s elbow and hustled him away from the
table.
    Emma resumed her seat. Max gazed after Monica
for a moment, then shook his head. “I tried to talk to her in her
office this afternoon, but her phone kept ringing.”
    “She’s a busy lady,” Emma said. “Always in
demand.”
    Max regarded Emma in silence for a moment.
“That’s an old song,” he finally said. “Microsoft used it in an ad
for one of its operating systems a few years back.”
    “That jukebox is full of old songs. And
nobody knows what they are, according to Monica.”
    “What do you mean? Aren’t they listed on the
front of the jukebox?”
    “Nope. You put a quarter in—the price is as
ancient as the music—and you never know what songs will come out.
It’s supposed to be haunted, or magical, or something.”
    A faint smile whispered across Max’s lips. “I
don’t believe in magic.”
    “I do,” Emma said, meeting his gaze.
    His smile widened. “Really?”
    “I don’t believe you can
say abracadabra and wave a magic wand and make things happen. But I do believe
you can take a bunch of paint and spread it across a canvas in such
a way that it changes the world. It’s just colors and shapes, but
those colors and shapes can reveal the artist’s soul—and the
subject’s soul, too—and it can move people to tears. How can that
not be magic?”
    “Lots of things move people to tears. It
isn’t magic. It’s a matter of brain chemistry, reflexes,
psychological issues. If you fall and scrape your knee, you might
cry. That’s not magic. It’s the body’s neurological reaction to
pain.”
    Emma hadn’t expected to venture into a
scientific discussion with him, let alone a philosophical one. She
considered pointing out that if he evicted her from his house,
she’d probably wind up weeping hysterically, and that wouldn’t be
because she’d scraped her knee. That would be much more akin to
magic. Black magic. Bad magic.
    But she was too intrigued by the analytical
turn he’d taken. “Are you a scientist?” she asked. “I thought maybe
you were a lawyer, given how hung up you are on liability insurance
and clauses and all that.” She realized she knew nothing about Max,
other than that he lived in California and he was her landlord. And
that he was a hell of a lot younger than she’d expected. And that
if he’d been responsible for the décor of his house, he had no
taste.
    And that he had beautiful eyes. A beautiful
mouth, too. His lips were thin but distinct, anchored by his sharp
nose above and his strong chin below.
    “I work in the high-tech industry,” he
said.
    “High-tech is science. It’s magic, too, if
you ask me.”
    Another smile flickered across his face. His
mouth was even more beautiful when he was smiling.
    “How did you wind up with a
house in Brogan’s Point?” she asked. “Especially that house. It’s so
atypical for this area. Most houses around here are very
New-England style. Colonials, Cape Cods,