Grand Passion

the kitchen. As Jason had once observed, there was no substitute for close supervision in a small operation such as the Robbins' Nest Inn.
    Cleo felt a twist of sorrow at the memory of her friend. She eased it aside as she stepped into a pair of jeans and put on a blue oxford cloth shirt. Jason would not have wanted her to dwell too long on his passing, she reminded herself as she laced up her gold sneakers. Jason Curzon had believed in living for the future, not the past.
    She grabbed her hunter green down parka on the way out the door. She made her way downstairs and walked through the still slumbering inn. Gentle snores from the vicinity of the office told her George was still on duty and as alert as ever.
    She let herself out through the door at the back of the kitchen. Andromeda, Daystar, and the morning crew from Cosmic Harmony had not yet arrived. And the guests would certainly not be stirring for a while.
    The chilled air hit her like a tonic when she stepped outside. The night was giving way slowly to the gray light of the new day. The biting cold made Cleo abruptly aware of the fact that she had forgotten her gloves. She stuffed her hands into her jacket pockets and started off along the bluff overlooking the sea.
    She wanted to think about a lot of things this morning: the dream, Benjy's disappearance, Trisha's problems. She needed to deal with all of them. But her mind resisted her efforts to concentrate on any of those issues. No matter what she did, it kept spinning back to the one, single event that had dominated her thoughts for most of the night: Max's kiss.
    It was the first time she had kissed a man since her parents' death and not felt the subtle sense of wrongness that had tainted every other relationship she'd had.
    All she had experienced with Max last night was a wondrous sensation of exultant joy. She had wanted him, really wanted him.
    The passion that she had known lay buried inside her had awakened and responded to the touch of a real man at last. Relief soared through her at the realization that she had found the one who could help her free herself.
    The man in the mirror had finally walked into her life.
    But to Cleo's chagrin, things were not as clear as she had expected them to be if and when she found the right man. There were so many unknowns about Max Fortune, so many uncertainties.
    One of the factors that troubled her the most was that he did not seem to be responding to her in the same way that she was responding to him. She had been so sure that if she ever encountered the man in the mirror in the real world, she would not only recognize him immediately; he would also recognize her. She knew from the things her mother and father had said that they had known they were meant for each other from the first moment they met.
    But when Cleo had looked into Max's eyes last night, she had seen not just sexual desire, but a disturbing element of calculating control. She sighed unhappily at the thought. She had to face the fact that although her response to him had been instantaneous, pure and unfettered, Max Fortune apparently had his own agenda.
    That made him dangerous. Theoretically it should have set off her finely tuned alarm system.
    So why wasn't she getting that old, familiar feeling of wrongness about him? she wondered.
    She recalled the way he had put the red satin ribbon around her throat and drawn her to him in a perfect imitation of a scene in chapter three of The Mirror .
    A little too perfect, she thought wryly. She'd be willing to bet that Max actually had read that chapter before seeking her out last night.
    The feeling that she no longer had the dawn to herself made Cleo turn her head and glance back over her shoulder. She managed a polite smile of greeting for Herbert T. Valence, who was striding briskly along behind her.
    Valence was nattily dressed as always in an expensive-looking camel coat, paisley print silk scarf, and a pair of taupe leather shoes. Whatever brand of mousse or spray he had used to anchor his silver locks into place was impervious to the snapping breeze. Not a single hair was moving in the brisk breeze. The diamond on his pinky sparkled in the early light.
    She appeared to be inundated with spiffy dressers these days, Cleo reflected, amused. The combined sartorial elegance of Max and Herbert T. Valence was definitely elevating the inn's image this weekend.
    “Good morning, Ms. Robbins.” Valence bobbed his head with birdlike speed.
    “Good