"Dropping off the layout for next week's insert."

"Those are some fancy threads for a messenger boy." Flynn fingered the sleeve of Brad's suit.

"I have to head into Pittsburgh later, for business." He dropped the file, on Flynn's desk. "And I wanted to talk to you about doing a ten-page, full-color pullout for the week before Thanksgiving. I want to hit Black Friday hard."

"I'm your man. You want my people to talk to your people. I like saying that," Flynn added. "It sounds so Hollywood."

"That's the idea. I'm generating this locally rather than out of corporate. It's specific to the Valley store, and I want it classy and convenient. Something the consumer can slide out and into a purse or pocket to bring along while shopping. And I want it exclusive. I want it in the Dispatch on a day without any other inserts, flyers, tip-ins."

"There's a flood of inserts the week before Black Friday," Flynn pointed out.

"Exactly. I don't want this one lost in the shuffle. It runs alone."

Flynn rubbed his palms together. "That's gonna cost you, bunky." "How much?"

"I'll talk to advertising, we'll work up a price. Ten-page, full-color?" Flynn confirmed as he made a note. "I'll get back to you on it tomorrow."

"Good."

"Wow, look at us, doing business. Want coffee to go with that?"

Brad looked at his watch, gauged the time. "Yeah. There's something else I want to talk to you about. Can I close this?"

Flynn jerked a shoulder as Brad gestured to the door. "Sure." He poured coffee, sat back on the desk. "Is this about the key?"

"I haven't heard anything for a couple of days. The last time I saw Zoe I got the impression she didn't want to talk about it. At least not to me."

"So, you're wondering if she talks to me, or more likely to Mal and then Mal talks to me. Not so much right now," Flynn told him. "Malory's take is that Zoe's waiting for the other shoe to drop, and she's on edge wondering when Kane might make a move."

"I've been working with the clue. The way I read it, it's Zoe who has to make a move. I'm going to see her Friday night, but we might want to brainstorm beforehand."

"Friday night?" Flynn sipped his coffee. "Is that a social event?"

"Simon's coming over to fool around." Restlessly, Brad wandered the office as he spoke. "He's bringing his mother."

"Sneaky."

"You do what you can. That's one great kid, and he's not as complicated as his mother is."

"My impression is she had a rough road, and blazed the trail out of it on her own. Which eases right into the theme of her clue."

"She's an amazing woman."

"How stuck on her are you?"

"All the way." Trying to settle, Brad leaned against the windowsill. "Problem is, she doesn't trust me. I'm making progress, though. At least she doesn't freeze up or go on the defensive every time I look at her these days. But sometimes she looks at me like I've just dropped in from another planet and I have not come in peace."

"She's a package deal. Women who are part of a package have to be more careful. If they're smart. Zoe's smart."

"I'm nuts about that kid. The more I'm around him, the more I want to be. I'd like to know the story on his father."

Flynn shook his head at Brad's questioning look. "Sorry, my sources are very closemouthed on that subject. You could try the direct approach and ask her yourself."

Brad nodded. "One more thing, then I've got to take off. Are you going to write the story?"

"The Daughters of Glass," Flynn said aloud, looking off into middle distance as if reading a headline written on air. "Dateline Pleasant Valley, Pennsylvania. Two Celtic gods visited the scenic Laurel Highlands to challenge three local women to locate the keys to the legendary Box of Souls."

He laughed a little, lifted his coffee again. "It'd be a hell of a story. Adventure, intrigue, romance, money, personal risk, personal triumph, and the power of the gods, all right here in our quiet hometown. Yeah. I thought about it—to write it, and do it right. When I first got into this, I thought, Jesus, Jesus , this could be the story of the century. Of course, I could just as easily be hauled off and put in a padded room, but that wouldn't have stopped me."

"What did?"

"It would put them on the spot, wouldn't it? Again. Some people would believe it, many wouldn't, but everybody would ask them questions, hammer at them for answers and statements. They—well, none of us—would ever be able to live a normal life after that."

He looked down into his coffee, gave another little shrug. "And that's what this is about, at the base. All of us being able to live the way we want to, the way we're entitled to. It's different if Jordan writes it, turns it into a book. Then it's fiction. But I won't be writing it up for the paper."

"You were always the best of us."

Flynn paused with his coffee mug halfway to his lips. "Huh?"

"The most clear-sighted, the most clear-hearted. That's why you stayed in the Valley, at the paper, when you wanted to go. Maybe that's why Jordan and I could leave. Because we knew you'd be here when we got back."

It was a rare thing for Flynn's tongue to tie itself in knots, but it did so now. "Well" was all he could manage.

"I've got to get to Pittsburgh." Brad set his coffee aside and rose. "Call me on the cell if anything comes up while I'm gone."

Still speechless, Flynn only nodded.

* * *

Zoe measured and mixed Mrs. Hanson's color. Her neighbor liked strong red highlights in the brown. Zoe had come up with a combination of toners that suited them both, and had been doing Mrs. Hanson's cut and color once a month for three years.

She was the only client Zoe serviced at home. Memories of growing up with hair on the floor and chemicals in the air had caused her to vow never to turn her home into a business.

But Mrs. Hanson was different, and the hour or so Zoe spent once a month doing her hair in the kitchen was more like a visit than a job.

She still remembered the day she'd moved into this house, how Mrs. Hanson, whose hair had been an unfortunate boot-black color then—had come over to welcome her and Simon to the neighborhood.

She'd brought chocolate chip cookies, and after taking a long look at Simon, had nodded in approval. Then she'd offered her services as official sitter, claiming that with her own sons grown up she missed having a boy around the house.

She was the first friend Zoe made in the Valley, and had become not only a surrogate grandmother to Simon but a mother to Zoe as well.

"I saw your young man come by the other night." Mrs. Hanson's blue eyes twinkled in her pretty face as she perched on the stool in Zoe's kitchen.

"I don't have a man, young or old." Zoe parted hair, dabbed the gray roots with color.

"Handsome young man," Mrs. Hanson continued, undaunted. "Looks like his father some, who I knew a bit when he was the same age. Those roses he brought you are holding up well. Look how nice they've opened up."

"Zoe glanced at the table. "I've been trimming the stems and changing the water to keep them fresh."

"Just like having a sunbeam on the table. Yellow roses suit you. It takes a smart man to know that. Simon's full of Brad this and Brad that. Tells me he's good with the boy."

"He is. They get along like a house afire." As she worked, Zoe's brows knit. "Bradley seems very fond of Simon."

"I imagine he's very fond of Simon's mama, too."

"We're friends—or I'm working my way up to that. He makes me nervous." Mrs. Hanson gave a quick hoot of laughter. "Man looks like that, he's supposed to make a woman nervous."

"Not that way. Well, yes, that way." Zoe laughed and scooped more color onto her brush. "But just altogether nervous."

"He kiss you yet?" At Zoe's long silence, Mrs. Hanson let out a satisfied cackle. "Good. He didn't look slow to me. How was it?"

"I had to check after to make sure the top of my head was still there, because it felt like it'd blown clean off."

"About damn time. I was a little worried about you, sweetheart. Working day and night, seemed to me. Never taking time for yourself. Last little while, I see those nice girls you've taken up with, and handsome Brad Vane coming around, it does my heart good."

She reached back to give Zoe's hand a pat. "Still working night and day, especially now that you're putting that business together, but I like seeing it."

"I wouldn't be able to have this business without you watching Simon after school so many afternoons."

Mrs. Hanson made a dismissive sound and waved Zoe's words away. "You know very well I love having that boy around. He's like one of my own. I don't see nearly enough of my grandchildren what with Jack moving down to Baltimore and Deke off in California. I don't know what I'd do without Simon. He brightens up my day."

"He thinks of you and Mr. Hanson as his grandparents. It takes a weight off me."

"Tell me how things are coming with the salon. I just can't wait until you open up for business, put that tight-assed Carly's nose out of joint when you start stealing her customers. I heard from Sara Bennett that the new girl Carly hired to replace you isn't working out."

"That's too bad." But she said it with a snicker. "I wouldn't wish her bad luck, except for the way she fired me. Saying I took money out of the till," Zoe continued, firing up. "Calling me a thief."

"Easy there."

"Oh, sorry," Zoe apologized when she realized she'd given Mrs. Hanson's hair a tug. "I start seeing red whenever I think about it. I did good work for her."

"Too good. And too many of her regulars wanted you doing their hair, not her. Came down to jealousy, and that's that."

"You know Marcie? She does nails there? I called her up a couple days ago, just to feel her out. She's going to work for me."

"You don't say."

"We've got to keep it quiet until I'm all set up. I don't want Carly firing her, putting her out of work before I open. But she's ready to give her notice as soon as I say. And she's friends with a stylist working out at the mall who's getting married first of the year and wants to find something closer to town. So I said how about in town, and Marcie's going to have her come see me. She says she's really good."

"Sounds to me like you're putting it all together."

"It feels right, you know? I got Chris on board to do massages and some of the body treatments. And my friend Dana? She's hired this woman to work in her bookstore, and she has this friend who just moved back to the Valley and used to work at a spa out in Colorado. I'm going to be talking to her, too. It's so exciting—as long as I don't think about the payroll."

"You're going to do fine. Better than fine."

"The plumber was in today, setting things up for my shampoo sinks. I got the lights in, and I'm going to be working on the stations. Sometimes I just look around up there and think this has got to be a dream."

"You don't have to earn dreams, Zoe. And you've earned this."

She had earned it, Zoe thought later as she washed out the color brush and bowl. Or she was earning it. Still, so much of it was like a gift. She promised herself she would never take it for granted.

She would do good work. She would be a good partner, and a good employer. She knew what it was to work for someone who was more interested in filling up the spaces in the appointment book than in the basic needs of her operators. Someone who'd forgotten what it was to stand on your feet hour after hour until they burned, until the small of your back ached like a bad tooth.

But she wouldn't forget.

Maybe this wasn't the road she'd expected to take, all those years ago when she was a young girl who imagined having pretty things and a quiet life that she would earn by using her brain.

But it was the road she'd taken, and she was making it the right road.

"You could go back, change it all."

She turned from the sink and looked at Kane. Surprise, shock, even fear were buried under thick layers of fog. She knew they were there but couldn't quite feel them.

He was beautiful, with a dark beauty. The black hair and deep eyes, the sharp bones sculpted under pure white skin. He was taller than she'd pictured. Not powerfully built like Pitte, but with a graceful, elegant body that she imagined could move as swiftly as a snake.