Face the Fire Page 0,33

serenity, the stillness that was the Sisters on a lovely spring morning.

Her spread of forsythia was a golden fan of color through the morning fog, her daffodils a band of sunny trumpets. She could smell her hyacinths, damp and sweet. It seemed to her that the earth was waiting to awaken, to throw off all memories of winter and burst into life.

She could appreciate the sleepy before as much as she would the beauty of what was to come. She opened her car, her satchel of paperwork on the seat beside her, and started down the long and curving road to the village.

There were several routine chores to deal with before the store opened. She enjoyed that, too - the relative quiet, the repetition, the freshening of stock - as much as she did the business hours with customers breezing in and out, lingering, browsing. And, of course, buying. She loved being surrounded by books. Uncarting them, shelving them, designing displays. She loved the smell and the texture and the look of them. And the surprises uncovered when she flipped one open at random and saw the play of words on paper.

The bookstore was more than a business to her. It was a deep and steady love. But she never forgot it was a business, one she ran efficiently, and profitably.

She'd come from money, and as a result had never had to work for a living. She'd had to work for her own gratification, her own sense of ethics. Her financial base had allowed her to choose the course of her career and establish a business that reflected her interests. Those ethics, and her own skills, effort, and shrewdness had made the business flourish.

She was grateful, and always would be, for the Devlin money. But it was, to her mind, much more exciting and satisfying to make her own.

And to risk her own.

That was precisely what she would be doing by following through with Nell's idea. Expanding the cafe

would change things. As much as Mia trusted and respected tradition and continuity, she was also a proponent of change. As long as the change was smart. And this one, she thought as she wound her way through the mist, could be.

Expanding the cafe could mean tucking in a more appealing, and roomier, event area. Her monthly book club was popular on the island, and the new cooking club already showed potential. The trick would be to make the best use of space and still maintain the intimacy the store was known for. But since Nell had planted the seed in her mind, the idea had taken hold. Mia could see exactly what she wanted, and how it would be. When it came to Cafe Book, she knew precisely what she was doing. Too bad she wasn't quite as confident at the moment about the rest of her life. It was as if a curtain had been lowered, dead center of her vision. She could see peripherally, but straight ahead was blocked. It worried her more than she was willing to admit. Behind the curtain were choices, she understood that. But how could she make the right one if she didn't know the options waiting for her?

One of the choices was Sam Logan. But to what extent did she trust her instincts there, weighing them with logic and past history? Balancing them against a primal sexual attraction that tended to cloud logic. A misstep with him could crush her a second time. She might not survive it whole. More, the wrong choice could doom the island she loved and was sworn to protect.

Once another woman had chosen death rather than bear the pain of loneliness and heartbreak. She had flung herself into the sea, after the lover who had deserted her. And had woven the last threads of the web about Three Sisters.

Hadn't she herself, by choosing to live, to find contentment, even to flourish, already countered that act?

Nell had chosen courage, and Ripley true justice. And so their circle held. And she had chosen life. Perhaps the curse had already been broken, and the dark that hovered in wait around the island had already been banished.

Even as the thought, and the hope of it, ran through her mind, the mist boiled up from the roadbed. A jagged lance of lightning crashed beside her car with an explosion of dirty red light and the stink of ozone. In the center of the road, an enormous black wolf snarled.

Instinctively she slammed on the