“Did you, now?”

“You’re a player. Women are so not into players.”

Damn, he thought. He was surprised to feel a sharp sting where her words darted into him. He covered his disappointment with a laconic grin. “Let’s go on an un-date, then. You’re gonna love not-dating me.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ll treat you right. I’ll make sweet love to you and we won’t have to get all serious and involved, but it’ll still be awesome.”

Her cheeks flushed pink. “Very funny. I’m going now. Thanks for lunch.”

A week after her meeting with Finn, Camille still couldn’t stop thinking about him—the brush of his hands and his slow, sexy smile that melted her thoughts into incoherence. The timbre of his voice when he leaned in close to say something. The light in his eyes when he got excited about the found photos. And then the kiss. That kiss.

She kept catching herself gazing out the window, daydreaming, touching her lips. Finn had kissed her. She hadn’t wanted him to stop. It was the kind of kiss she wanted to deepen and explore, to see where it led, because it felt different from any other kiss. Too bad they’d been in a public place where they had to behave.

Actually, it was lucky they’d been in a public place because it saved her from doing something completely foolish. She had told him in no uncertain terms that it would be a bad idea to start something. Still, it didn’t stop her from thinking about him constantly.

She did something she’d never done before—stalked him on the Internet. He wasn’t much for social networking, but she found several articles he’d written and read them as if they contained the secret of life. One of the articles was particularly poignant. Working with a French crime lab, he had helped identify the remains of three American soldiers who had gone missing during World War II.

Sitting at her desk in the small office tucked in the back of Ooh-La-La, she could hear sounds from the adjacent coffee shop. Brew-La-La had been open since sunup, serving up their own signature local roast for early risers, commuters, and fisher folk heading out to the bay. The gurgle and hiss of the commercial espresso machine from Italy reminded her that it needed servicing. There was a meeting with a sales rep penciled in on her calendar.

Yet no matter how hard she tried to force herself to focus on work, it was too tempting to open a new search-and-follow on Professor Malcolm Finnemore around the World Wide Web. He was a bad influence, clearly. He’d already tempted her into Googling him. What else would he entice her to do?

She felt something strong and new, but wasn’t ready to admit it to anyone, least of all herself. His parting words haunted her: I’ll make sweet love to you and we won’t have to get all serious and involved, but it’ll still be awesome.

Just not as awesome as falling in love. Nothing is as awesome as that, she reflected.

She felt betrayed by her own thoughts. Falling in love was the last thing she wanted to do. Her failed dating track record was proof of that. Sometimes, when she couldn’t help herself, she thought about the things that were holding her back. Unlike a lot of single women, she hadn’t been burned by a bad relationship. On the contrary, her marriage had been wonderful. Maybe too wonderful. She never wanted to get that close to a man again, because the pain of loss was simply too high a price to pay.

When the phone rang, she jumped with a guilty start.

Bethany Bay High School appeared on the screen, and Camille snatched it up.

“This is Helen Gibbons, secretary to Mr. Larson,” said the voice on the other line.

Camille tensed, bracing herself. “Is Julie all right?”

“Yes, it’s not an emergency, Mrs. Adams. However, Mr. Larson would like to meet with you at your earliest convenience.”

Camille scanned her list of things to do, which was tacked on the wall next to the computer. It was a long list, one that she would need all day to accomplish. Rhonda had just opened the door and was setting a few key pieces out on the sidewalk to entice weekend browsers, and Camille had promised to help.

“I can be there in fifteen minutes,” she said.

Phone calls from Julie’s school didn’t use to cause concern. They would be happy messages from a teacher or coach, letting Camille know that Julie had earned honors student status, or had won a blue ribbon in a race, or was getting a good-helper award.

Lately, she’d been getting “What’s going on with Julie?” calls. Julie was in trouble again. She had skipped class. Her grades were slipping.

Adding to the discomfort of the meeting was the fact that Drake Larson was the reason she’d sworn off dating. Because even with a great guy like him, her emotions were flat. Feelings could not be plucked from thin air or manufactured out of whole cloth. If they didn’t develop from a slow burn, like a photo print in a chemical bath, or if they didn’t strike her with the force of a tsunami, they simply weren’t meant to be, and she couldn’t force them.

Could be that was the reason she kept thinking about Finn. He was a tsunami, for sure. What she needed to remember was what remained after the tidal wave passed—wreckage and destruction, and irretrievable loss.

The school secretary ushered her into Drake’s office. The space was as neat and organized as Drake himself. He was the opposite of a tsunami. His desk was a flawless landscape of order; there wasn’t even a power cord to mar the scene. On the wall behind him were his diplomas as well as a trio of iconic scenes from high school life—a varsity letter jacket hanging in a locker, the vintage bell that still summoned kids to school every day, and the surf rescue team in action.

Standing behind the desk was Drake himself—clean-cut, his pants and shirt pressed, his expression somberly professional. “Thanks for coming on such short notice,” he said.

“Of course. I’m glad you called. I’ve been so worried about Julie lately.”

He gestured to a chair in front of his desk. After the very difficult breakup conversation, he had promised her no hard feelings, but she knew she had hurt him, and she felt awful about it. The little wounds we inflict on each other, even inadvertently, cannot be ignored, thought Camille.

“Julie and Mrs. Marshall will be in shortly.”

Mrs. Marshall—the school counselor. “After that day in the ER, I thought you were done scaring me,” she said. “What’s going on?”

“Ah, here they are,” Drake said, aiming a look over her shoulder. “We need to have a conversation. And then all of us need to work together on a solution.”

Camille stood up and moved aside as Mrs. Marshall came into the office with Julie in tow. Camille’s daughter wore her usual “uniform” of baggy jeans and T-shirt, old sneakers, hair in a messy bun. Julie used to love putting together cute outfits and fixing herself up. “It’s because I’m one-quarter French,” she used to say, speaking nearly perfect French. “I am so dans le vent.”

So cool. But that had been over a year ago. Now it was as if Julie had stopped caring about her appearance. She didn’t look sullen or defiant as she took a seat on a folding metal chair against the wall. Just resigned. Camille scarcely recognized her.

Camille turned to her. “What’s up? Talk to me, Jules.”

“They say I did something to Jana Jacobs.”

“What do you mean, you ‘did something’?” Camille frowned. “I need a better explanation than that.”

“There was a pickup game of soccer this morning—you know, like every morning. And I knocked her purse in the mud.”

“On purpose, or by accident? And how was a purse involved in a soccer game?”

“Jana and her parents have already been in to see me,” Drake said.

Troy and Trudy Jacobs had never been Camille’s favorites. Both lawyers with a family law practice, they suffered from a superiority complex and disliked anything they deemed different. Trudy once told Camille that she couldn’t shop at Ooh-La-La anymore because the boutique’s small book section featured banned books. Camille didn’t miss her business.

“I told Jana I was sorry,” Julie said.

“The Jacobses agreed not to press charges so long as Julie keeps her distance from Jana.”