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12 |                                   NEIL MAVRICK

Ridiculous of course. There was nothing he could possibly do about it—at least, that is what he thought at the time.

However, he mused, coming back to the present, that was over fifty years ago.

He glanced down at the woman, now sleeping peacefully at his side, and watched her face for a while. Perhaps she was dreaming. Certainly her expressions were changing—for the most part sublime contentment, sometimes fleeting looks of apprehension interspersed with brief touches of irritation.

Then, just the once, that oh-so-familiar signal: her turned-up nose.

She gave yet another of her glorious smiles, although he may have been imagining that, and he couldn’t help smiling himself. God, she was beautiful without the smile. Simply radiant with it! On this occasion, he had to close his eyes, fearful that his feelings would erupt into some audible expression that might awaken her. There was no way of knowing, of course, but he was as certain as he could be that her dreams were, to some extent, a parallel of his own recent reminiscences.

And why not, after all she’d been through? Hell, they’d both shared lives that few would imagine possible and even fewer would believe— himself included, he had to admit—were it not for his three overwhelming obsessions.