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saltboxes…and you own this
amazing modern house with walls of glass.”
    His smile vanished. “Why I bought the house
is irrelevant,” he said dryly. “All that matters is that I plan to
sell it, as soon as possible.”
    “Right. But I think Monica made a good point
about letting us stay in the house until you sell it.”
    He shook his head, then lifted his glass and
sipped his beer. “When I was a kid, my family rented an apartment.
Ugly little place. One bedroom. I slept on the couch in the living
room. There was a big water stain on the kitchen ceiling. But it
was in a gentrifying neighborhood, and the landlord decided to take
the building co-op. He said we could stay in the apartment until it
sold. Every time he brought in a potential buyer, one of my parents
or I would be sure to stare up at the kitchen ceiling. The buyer
would look up, notice the water stain, and leave. We wound up
living in that apartment an extra two years until the landlord
finally fixed the leak and repainted the ceiling.”
    She tried to imagine a pint-size version of
Max, all tousled dark curls and attitude, his piercing blue eyes
aimed at a water stain. “Your house doesn’t have any leaks,” she
noted. “Your ceilings look fine.”
    “I’m just saying, it wouldn’t be hard for you
to delay a potential sale. You’re smart. You’d find a way.”
    She shouldn’t have been so
pleased that he considered her smart. But she was smart—smart enough to change the
subject. “So, you’re in high tech. What are you, a computer
scientist?”
    He mulled over his reply. She didn’t think
she’d asked such a difficult question, but he seemed to feel he had
to weigh his answer carefully. Finally, he said, “My work isn’t
that interesting.”
    His evasiveness made it interesting. “Let me
guess,” she said. “You developed some amazing new app and became a
billionaire.”
    Another tenuous smile. “You found me out,” he
confessed.
    At least he had a sense of humor. A
begrudging one, but it made him seem a bit more human to her. She
visualized the Dream Portrait she’d do of him—his angular features,
his dazzling eyes, the thick, dark waves of his hair, and a
background of computers, code, tablets, graphics, gadgets and
gizmos. If he were a billionaire, he could certainly afford one of
her paintings. He could afford millions of them.
    She smiled back at him. Hell, she’d offer him
a discounted price on his portrait. She would have such a good time
painting it.
    The Rolling Stones song ended and the jukebox
pumped out a new song. An old song, really, but Emma recognized it.
It was one of the many songs her mother used to sing when she was
gardening or puttering around the house. Emma’s mother had an awful
voice; if she occasionally hit the right note, it was purely by
luck. She also had a habit of mangling the words. Yet those classic
rock and pop songs her mother used to torture had embedded
themselves in Emma’s memory.
    I see your true colors, shining through…
    When someone with a good voice sang it, it
was a beautiful ballad. Emma felt a lush warmth fill her as the
singer’s voice curled around the words, sweet and searing. It
vanquished the chill of her damp hair and the fear of homelessness
hanging over her. She felt enveloped in the song.
    Her gaze met Max’s across the table, and she
felt even warmer. He stared at her as if suddenly transfixed. By
the song? By Emma?
    She heard nothing but the music. The din of
conversation, the clink of glasses, the rhythm of footsteps and
scrapes of chairs against the floor—all the noise faded. Nothing
entered her but the song, and the sight of Max Tarloff watching her
intently, intensely.
    The bar disappeared. The other patrons. The
waitress. The tall, square-jawed, tawny-haired bartender. The beers
on the table, and the bowl of munchies. The entire universe
evaporated, leaving behind only a song.
    A song, and the man facing Emma.
    When the song ended, silence.
    And then