I bite my lip and study his face. “Do you know what?” I ask. “We’re doing my favorite thing. Lying in the sand, talking through the night, and waiting for the sunrise. Everything wonderful in life is free, but most people never get that.”

His eyes fix on me intensely and too hard to meet for any length of time. OK, what stupid thing did I say now? He looks a touch irritated and a touch troubled again.

I turn my head and stare at the moon. “Sorry to get all serious on you,” I whisper. “I have a habit of doing that. My friends get really annoyed with it. Do you want to hear something stupid?”

A pause. Then laughter again, soft and textured. “Sure.”

I sit up and point at the ocean. “Jack hates the oil derricks. Don’t even mention the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969. He will go all Greenpeace on you. But I love the oil derricks. When I was a little girl and we’d drive home from Los Angeles along Highway 101, I couldn’t wait until we reached the coast so I could see them. They looked like pirate ships to me. It made me so happy to see them. It meant I was almost home. It still makes me happy to see their lights at night. It is the favorite part of my drive home from Los Angeles. The oil derricks that Jack hates. Isn’t that stupid?”

I am laughing when I look over to smile at him. I quiet and freeze. He is crying, not overtly, but there is moisture on his face and a shimmer in his eyes. I don’t know how to handle this, especially since I haven’t a clue what’s going on with him. His expression changes and he looks embarrassed.

“That is not a stupid story at all.”

I smile because there is no way to force the words through the lump in my throat. My hand moves toward him. I can’t stop it. I begin to touch his tears away. His eyes flash, and I am embarrassed and totally confused by what prompted me to do that. I lie back into the sand beside him.

He says nothing and I’m quiet as I silently debate with myself whether to ask. I stare at the fog, not brave enough to look at him. “I know this is rude of me to ask, but what happened? What happened to make you so sad? And that’s what you are. Underneath everything. Very sad.”

His eyes are harsh as he studies me and I tense, wishing I could slap my mouth and take back that question. I can feel those black eyes combing the taut lines of my face and when I peek at him from the corner of my eye, his expression softens and is no longer hostile.

“I lost someone important to me,” he says quietly. “It’s been just over a year.”

“I’m sorry. I thought it was something like that. Were you very close?”

That question Alan ignores. He seems surprised by his honesty and uncomfortable in it. I don’t press, but I still feel the need to say something.

“I’ve lost my mom and my brother. I’m not going to say anything cliché like ‘time heals all wounds.’ I used to hate it when people said crap like that. Do you know it’s been ten years since my brother died and people still say crap like that to me? It is worse when they think I can just snap out of it. This wretched girl said to me tonight ‘Don’t you think you need to move beyond your brother?’ How would she know? She’s never lost anyone. I think we heal when we heal and that’s the end of it. Cut yourself some slack. Be sad until you’re not. It’s allowed.”

Quiet again. Crap, maybe that was the wrong thing to say.

“You’re not like any eighteen year old girl I’ve ever met.” His face, even smiling, is so intense, half in shadow and half touched in moonlight. “Do you always talk this way?”

There is something in his voice that I can’t quite read. It makes me tense. “Unfortunately. People always say I need to lighten up. I think I’m worse than usual tonight because you started with that whole theatrical thing.”

He gazes down at me. “Then I’m glad I was theatrical. I didn’t plan to be. I had an entirely different scene in my head. It just seemed to fit the picture you made sitting in the dim light playing Bach. None of this is what I intended.”

Intended? I don’t know what to make of that.

I let out a ragged breath and search for something to say. “This is the weirdest date I’ve ever been on.”

His eyes are now angry and intense.

“Date? Is that what you think we’re doing?”

That was a stupid thing to say. The date comment is definitely a clunker. The adrenaline spike leaves my body making me feel cold and humiliated.

“Sorry. Stupid joke. But don’t think you need to explain the difference. I’m not a little girl. I know what this is. That’s an entirely different section of my journal.”

That kicks his anger up a notch. “Stop it. Stop with the playacting.”

I bite my lower lip. He is really pissed off and I don’t know why. “I can’t. It a nervous habit. I don’t do it intentionally.”

He stills. The emotion leaves his face. He stares down at me.

“Nervous with me. Why?” He is sitting above me, on bent knees, carefully watching my reaction. “Why are you nervous with me?”

“I don’t know. Everything got just a little too real.”

“Me or the mood?”

“Both.”

“Are you cold?”

“Why?”

“You’re shaking.” He holds the flannel long sleeve shirt out from his t-shirt. “Do you want my shirt?”

I shake my head. It is hard to keep up with the pitching conversation and the changing currents of the mood.

“May I kiss you?”

Every part of me freezes all at once. Oh my god, where did that come from?

My head spins as my eyes round so much it is painful. Alan’s long index finger lightly traces my jaw and he smiles. “I’m going to take your silence as a yes.”

I tense from head to toe in anticipation of his mouth and take a deep breath as he starts to lean toward me. I feel his fingers first, lightly on my cheek, nothing more, and my muscles start to calm. He is all around me, balanced on his arms, not touching, but the feel of him is like a ghost all across my flesh. The first touch of his lips is just a touch, gentle, a whispering hint of eroticism and tenderness. Everything about him is nerve-poppingly quiet. I’ve been kissed, and Neil is right, I don’t like to kiss, but I’ve never been kissed like this. Not in this sweetly gentle way that has instantly made me melt into his mouth.

“Don’t close your eyes,” he whispers.

I open them as his mouth comes back to me and now he is giving me the feel of him in slow degrees, inch by inch until I’m surrounded by all of him, until it feels as though there is nothing on this earth but him. His mouth leaves to touch my hair, the sensitive flesh beneath my ear, the slope of my cheek.

He traces the outline of my lips with his kiss, then across my brow to my temple before he slowly leaves me.

I find him staring down at me. He looks the same: cool, calm and in control. I feel like I’m about to melt within my skin.

“Why did you stop?” I whisper.

“I shouldn’t have done that.”

His expression betrays nothing. It’s hard to speak. “Why?”

“I owe Jack a lot.”

“Oh.”

He lies back in the sand. His face is tense. “After all the rotten things I’ve done this year I don’t need to do one more. But I wanted to meet you and I now get why Jack didn’t think that was a good idea.”

My head spins. This was no accidental encounter. Alan Manzone wanted to meet me. He searched me out in the house. He wanted to meet me. But why?

I stare at him. I don’t know what to say.

“Listen, it’s not you,” he says.

I blush.

“You’re a very lovely girl.”

I crinkle my nose. “Lovely? Is that the British equivalent of an American guy saying you have a nice personality?”

“I’m not sure. What’s nice personality a code for?”

“Friend material. Not attractive, but likeable.”

“Oh, it is definitely not a code for that.” He stands up. “If you weren’t Jack’s daughter I wouldn’t have stopped and you’d hate me in the morning. I don’t want you to ever hate me.”