Maybe beauty is only skin deep, but our memories of childhood can't always be made pretty and pink.

Reunions. Lor'. Nothing but trouble. Everyone in Mossy Creek was excited about the next fall's big celebration except me. I knew the truth. The secret of who caused the fire. And that secret would tangle my town's memories and sorrows worse than a cheap perm.

The mysterious gift Mossy Creek got on New Year's Eve haunted my dreams at night, driving out fond favorites where I'm doing Wynona Judd's hair backstage at the Grammy awards and Hank Williams, Junior, walks into the dressing room to introduce me to Elvis. Young Elvis, not Las Vegas Elvis.

No more good dreams like that, no. In the weeks since New Year's, the 'gift' had been all people could talk about in Mossy Creek, and all my nightmares were filled with it. Mayor Ida ordered the thing set inside the lobby of city hall. "The gift," Mayor Ida announced, "was sent to us as a taunt. It belongs to the town, and the town has to deal with it." Mayor Ida dares people to come forward and confess what they know about the night Mossy Creek High School burned to the ground twenty years ago. I agree with the mayor's plan in principle. That night represented one of the darkest unsolved mysteries of our town's history, and, some would say, the darkest secrets of our own hearts.

Including mine.

Early this morning, I bundled up in my favorite pink ski jacket and my pink jeans and set out to look the past square in its dark, plastic eyes. Thirty-four years old and scared of a fake fortuneteller. Lor', the embarrassment. I put on pink blush and pink lipstick and even did my nails pink. Pink is a happy color, and though people often think I'm just a good ol' girl with tacky taste, I considered myself a sophisticated pink good ol' girl. With tacky pink taste.

I trudged up Main Street on that cold January morning, blowing frosty breaths and keeping my head down. I even waved off Jayne Reynolds at The Naked Bean when she appeared in the coffee shop doorway and held out my favorite pink mug full of latte. I just shook my head. Jayne looked at me kind of funny. Everyone was looking at me kind of funny since I'd blurted out that "I only mixed the perm, I didn't put it on her," comment at the New Year's Eve party, when we opened the crate and saw the Gypsy inside.

For the past two weeks, I'd laughed off the moment and told everyone I was just drunk on Irish Ringers, a hot whiskey-and-cranberry drink Michael Conners invented at the pub. But no one has forgotten what I said.

"Are you feeling all right?" Jayne called out, wrapping her pregnant self in one of Ingrid Beechum's baby blankets. "You look pale, Rainey."

Pale? I whipped out my compact and added a dab more pink powder to each cheek. Lor', even my pinkness was failing me.

"I'm not pale," I called. "I'm chilly."

I made myself keep walking. Mossy Creek Town Hall loomed ahead of me like a temple of doom, though it was the friendliest government building you can imagine, with a lot of natural stonework and warm oak timbers. The Mossy Creek Garden Club kept up the front terrace, so even in the cold dead of winter there was a neat bed of pinebark mulch around the big mountain laurels and a few dozen pansy seedlings poking their tough green leaves out from under dwarf azaleas that would bloom a soft watermelon color in springtime. I brushed a hand over one of those bare azaleas for courage just before I opened the lobby door. I thought of all the good intentions Mother Nature hides inside a plain wood stem. I tried to think of my innocence that way, too.

No sooner had the glass door swung shut behind me than I saw the object of my misery. It sat in the middle of the lobby, which is ordinarily a sweet and inviting place. Creekites go into the lobby of town hall to read the community bulletin boards. Not to be confronted with the guilty mistakes of their pasts.

I stopped like a squirrel trapped in front of an oncoming truck. Just stopped, my heart pounding in my throat the same way it did that night at the Hamilton House Inn, when Dan MacNeil opened the crate.

The Ten Cent Gypsy looked back at me.

She hadn't had an easy life, wherever she'd been stored over the past twenty years. Her metal carnival booth was all dented up and a little rusted. The gypsy herself stared back at me through a windowless opening in the booth's top half. I told myself she was still just a mannequin, hell, not even a full-length mannequin, because her waist disappeared in an apron of ratty, fake-red silk bunched up on a rusty metal shelf. Her paint was old, and her plastic face needed a good makeover. Fuzzy-curly black synthetic hair hung in tangles from beneath a dusty scarf tied around her forehead. Somebody had spilled something greasy on her puffy red blouse, and half the beads in her flashy arm bracelets were missing. She was missing a forefinger on her card hand, and she needed a manicure.

"You don't scare me," I lied loudly. "Just you do your job and provoke somebody to tell the truth about that fire, so me and Hank Blackshear and Rob Walker can finally clear our consciences. We didn't cause the fire." I paused, feeling sick at my stomach with doubts that had gnawed at me for twenty years. "And even if we did, we didn't mean to. You hear?"

She stared back like the silent dead. My eyes went to the little slot below the window. The instructions were still simple:

Put in 10 cents and pull the lever.

If you dare.

"You're all brag and bad eye shadow. Haven't got a single card left in your system, I bet."

I jabbed a dime into the slot, grabbed the rusty lever on the booth's right side, and jerked it down. The mechanical innards whirred and clicked, and suddenly the gypsy's dusty card hand began to rise. I took a step back. The gypsy's stiff arm went up and up until the hand with its missing forefinger was pointing right at me, or sort of, anyway, considering the pointing finger was busted off. It was like she was shaking her fist at me, instead. I looked at the slot in the hand's palm, and, Lor'! A little card popped out.

I couldn't move. I didn't want to touch that card. Finally, I thrust out a hand and snatched the card by my fingertips.

I jammed the card in my pocket then made myself walk out of the building with a calm face. My knees were weak. I trembled. When I got back to my salon, I locked the door and sat stiffly in one of my styling chairs. In the mirrors parading down one faux-pink-marble wall, I saw my scared and guilty and sad face from a dozen angles.

It was going to be a long year in Mossy Creek, with a lot of nail-biting and second-guessing and gossiping and maneuvering for answers to a question that had haunted us for twenty years. Who had burned down Mossy Creek High School?

I still didn't have the courage to admit what I knew.

Rainey came to me with her survey answers, but to tell you the truth, they weren't worth reading--she'd just written a lot cute little pleasantries that weren't the least bit revealing. So I said, casually, "I heard you went to see the Ten Cent Gypsy. Sandy Crane spotted you coming out of town hall with one of the cards in your hand. Anything interesting on it?"

And Rainey jumped. Aha.

Rainey's the kind of woman who's never quite gotten past things that happened to her as a kid, so she rushes back to her childhood friends when she's upset. I could go into specifics, but I won't, other than to mention that I'm one of the few people who know she's been in love with Rob Walker, the mayor's son, for over twenty years.

"I didn't get any card from the Gypsy," she lied. "Sandy's mistaken."

"Oh, well, I was just curious." I filed her little lie for future consideration. "It'll be interesting to see how that gypsy provokes people's attitudes around here. The effect's already noticeable, you know."

"How do you mean?" she asked in a nervous voice.

"The examination of personal secrets and truths has begun. You'll see. Roots are coming to the surface."

Rainey touched her hair as if calculating her next dye job. "Not mine."

I smiled. Everyone has to take care of his or her roots, and sometimes that means burying them too deep for the world to touch.

On that terrible night in Mossy Creek twenty years ago, I watched the fire destroy my alma mater and cried like everyone else in town.

Did you know that the Miss Mossy Creek Pageant was discontinued the year after the school burned? The only contest left for our girls was the Miss Bigelow County Pageant. The last holder of the Miss Mossy Creek title was LuLynn Lipscomb, now married and known as LuLynn McClure. Her nineteen-year-old daughter, Josie, competed gallantly in last year's Miss Bigelow pageant, trying to uphold her family's honor and Mossy Creek's, too. Poor Josie. I don't think napkin arranging qualifies as a talent, even in Mossy Creek.

But that's an observation I'll just keep to myself.

It's always the quiet girls who are up to something secret and shocking. But what do you do when you've fallen in love, and everybody needs to know it?

I saw Katie Bell's survey in the paper. I even wrote out some answers. I just never sent them in. Nobody would've expected me to, anyway, if they'd thought about it. I'm not expected to do anything well. Not anymore. But here are my answers.

What do reunions mean to you?

Reunions? I guess Katie Bell means family reunions. I only graduated from Bigelow High School two years ago, so my class certainly wouldn't have had a reunion yet.

I think I'd better not answer that question. It'd hurt Daddy's feelings for sure. The McClure family reunion, held at a state park just north of Mossy Creek every year, has always been pure torture for me. The McClure relatives feel sorry for poor, plain little Josie. They think I don't hear them talk while I'm helping Mama set out the food, but I do. I don't like going to reunions. I wish I never had to go to another one.

When you look at the empty spot where the high school stood, what person comes to mind, and why?

Mama, of course. She's told me the story of how the homecoming queen crown was stolen from her so many times, I know it by heart. Mama was about to be crowned queen of Mossy Creek High when the school mascot, a ram--which in my opinion is just a fancy name for a boy sheep--shot out of the stands with sparklers tied to its wool. That sheep left a path of mayhem and destruction that's affected Mossy Creek to this very day.

What is the most hurtful and publicly humiliating thing that ever happened to you in high school?

That one's easy to answer. It was when Derk Bigelow asked me to the Christmas dance my junior year at Bigelow High, and I stupidly believed he meant it. He'd just broken up with his girlfriend, Marjorie Tutmeir, after all, and even though Derk is from the richest family in Bigelow County--he's a second cousin of Governor Ham Bigelow--he's not the cutest puppy in the litter, if you know what I mean.

Mama proudly bought me the most beautiful green velvet dress in Miss Martin's Boutique in Mossy Creek. I would rather have kept my business to myself, but of course Mama had to brag to everyone that I needed the dress because I was going to the Christmas dance with a Bigelow--though I have to admit I secretly enjoyed their reactions. They were shocked that Josie McClure, of all people, could manage such a feat. A girl they considered such a wallflower that surely I must've taken root by then. Unfortunately, that publicity meant that everyone in Mossy Creek found out about my ultimate humiliation as well.

The night of the dance, I waited at the double doors of the high school gym like Derk had suggested since he didn't want to drive all the way up into the mountainous northern end of Bigelow County at night to get me. I noticed other kids staring at me, some snickering together, but they'd always done that if I happened to show up at an extracurricular school function, which was as rare an occurrence as roses in January.

When Derk showed up at seven on the dot, Marjorie was on his arm. He hadn't broken up with her at all. Turns out I was the victim of a bet he'd made with a couple of other boys, members of the cruel Fang and Claw Society, no doubt. Would I be stupid enough to dress up and wait for him at the gym door?

I was. Derk made his buddies pay him right there in front of me.

If I'd only known then that Derk was a Scorpio-Rat ... and what that means. After Derk, I started studying astrology so I could recognize people when I saw them coming. Astrology is just another of my peculiar interests. I guess it doesn't matter now, but I never went to another school event after that.

What is the one thing that happened to you in high school that made you the person you are today?

That's an easy one, too. My tenth grade Home Ec class. That was where I discovered the zen of decorating.

I fold napkins.

Like me, that's more special than it sounds.

When you live in the mountains, you grow up hearing tales of Bigfoot. Any mountains. From California to Maine, from Ohio to Georgia, Bigfoot or Sasquatch has made an appearance. I'd long suspected he was made up by mothers who used the legend to keep their children from wandering the steep terrain and getting lost.

Once I realized that Bigfoot was simply the Appalachian version of the boogie man, and that the biggest dangers I faced in the wooded coves were black bears and the elements, I was out the door of my parents' house and climbing the ridges up Mount Colchik to my playground, my freedom, my sanctuary. Colchik made a wild green hummock against the northern horizon of Mossy Creek. Up on Colchik, I was queen.

When I began studying feng shui--led to it by an article about the Eastern philosophy of decorating in an issue of Martha Stewart Living--I learned that mountains are really sleeping dragons, and the peaks, the humps of their backs. Not only is dragon's breath the best chi--or energy--there is, but Snakes and Dragons get along extremely well. That's important because I'm a Snake, astrologically speaking. Blending the Western and Eastern astrologies--which I always do--I'm a Cancer-Snake. A shy, secretive, home-loving recluse. A wallflower, in other words, though I prefer to think of myself more as a mountain laurel, perhaps, that blooms high up on the cold slopes, mostly unseen.

But I knew before I'd ever heard about feng shui, or even astrology, for that matter, that there was no danger for me in my mountains. Every time I disappeared into the primal forests, I felt as if my friend the Dragon were folding safe, warm arms around me. I feared neither black bears--which I occasionally spotted--or Bigfoot, whom I never saw.

Until..."

I began seeing the footprints last spring, just before the dreaded Miss Bigelow Contest, which Mama forced me to enter. I needed the Dragon's strength quite a bit then and visited Mount Colchik every day. The sun's warmth had penetrated the thick hardwood foliage enough by May to keep the earth thawed.

The first footprint was in the mud beside the pool beneath a waterfall so deep in the mountains it had no name as far as I knew. I swam in the pool during the summer months. I passed the footprint off as a freak incident. Animal tracks falling together in a familiar pattern. Sort of like seeing shapes in the clouds.

By the time I found the fifth print several months later, I suspected some children were playing pranks. My pool was several hours hike from the nearest road or farm, and I'd never seen anyone else--child or grownup--wandering my mountain. Still, I'd found the pool when I was ten years old. Other children could've found it, too.

The possibility depressed me. Not that children might be clowning around. Children did those kinds of things. But I felt as if my privacy had been violated. Colchik was my mountain. This was my pool. I didn't want to share my space with anyone. The possibility of a real Bigfoot existing never occurred to me, not in any serious way. How many humans had bare footprints that measured close to eighteen inches?

None of the explanations frightened me, and none could keep me from finding solace in my mountains. Especially after the Miss Bigelow Contest when Mama railed night and day about me losing. The forest was the only place I felt welcome, the only place I felt part of the world around me. Nature didn't care where you placed in any kind of contest. It treated you with the same nonchalance with which it treated every other creature. Mama, however, was another matter.

As I've said, Mama was Mossy Creek High School's last homecoming queen ... but she was never crowned. The high school burned down that night, dooming Mama's glorious reign. She's never gotten over it. So for the last nineteen years she's been trying to make me into the beauty queen she never got to be.

There's only one problem. Me. Wallflowers get crowned only in fairy tales.

Mama, however, didn't find it easy to face reality. She groomed me for the Miss Bigelow Pageant from the day I was born, though I cringed every time she mentioned it. She was determined that her daughter would be queen of the entire county, and she dedicated her life to this end. I had every kind of grooming, etiquette, and dancing lesson she could find within a day's drive. She was constantly telling me how to walk, how to stand, how to wave, how to smile. Nothing I did was ever good enough. It certainly wasn't good enough to win the Miss Bigelow crown. When I came in dead last, the entire reason for Mama's existence fell in like a house of cards. She blamed me, of course. She'd done her part.

I was the one who wouldn't do mine.

Mama began sipping Daddy's best whiskey. Mama hated winter, hated the cold weather that was coming. She made me feel like she hated me, too. I'd never felt so depressed. Never felt so ugly, so totally worthless. So I escaped up on Colchik even more. That's where I finally met Bigfoot.

I sat on the edge of the pool under Josie Falls--as I'd named them--and pondered what to do. I didn't want to go back home--ever. Why should I? I was a grown woman. Nineteen years old. Graduated from high school. Mama didn't want me. Every time she looked at me, she started crying, cursing, or drinking. On the other hand, I couldn't leave home because I had no way to support myself. No skills beyond textbook Martha Stewart decorating, and decorating jobs required at least some college education. I'd checked the Internet on the library computer.

As I stared into water so clear I could see trout swimming six feet down, so cold it formed a crust of ice around the edges at night, the water seemed to whisper to me, inviting me in. You're needed here, Josie. The mountain loves you. Stay here and stop fighting your loneliness.

The falls had never lied to me, so I listened, even though I knew I was depressed and should back away. As the afternoon began to wane, I became convinced the whispers were right. I wanted to merge with my mountains, to melt into the tears that spewed from its side.

I rose stiffly, my muscles cramped from inactivity and the cold rock I sat on. Slowly, I undressed. I'd always swum nude, though never in weather cold enough to hurt me. I'd never been embarrassed or ashamed of my nakedness here. I was down to my underwear when out the corner of my eyes, I saw movement in a shrub nearby. Looking up--way up--I saw a man's face.

I turned to run. My feet caught in the clothes I'd just removed. With a cry, my arms flailing for support, I fell into the ice-cold water. Needles stabbed into every part of my body, disorienting me so much I couldn't tell which way was up. I tried to surface but sank like a lead doll. I couldn't move. I couldn't feel my hands or feet.

Then the world turned black.

The next thing I knew, I awoke to blessed warmth. Maybe this is a dream, I murmured. I sighed and snuggled into my blanket cocoon.

"Did you say something?"

The deep voice directly above me made my eyes spring open. A mountain of a man leaned over me. The biggest, longest-bearded man I'd ever seen. His large hand probed my face. "You're not running a fever, thank God. Can you hear me? Do you understand what I'm saying?" His voice rumbled more than spoke, so deep it came from his belly instead of his throat. A dark red, puckered scar covered his forehead and left eye. There was probably more to it, but that's all I could see above his beard.

"Are you an angel?" I asked.

His eyes narrowed. "Very funny."

He certainly didn't look like the traditional representation of an angel, but since I'd studied feng shui and the philosophies it was based on, my spiritual path had meandered along many nontraditional trails. "I'm not trying to be funny," I whispered. "Am I alive?"

"Of course you're alive." He straightened. His head seemed to brush the raw plank ceiling of his cabin. "Though it's a miracle. If I hadn't fished you out when I did.... "He heaved a sigh and moved away from the bed.

I rolled over in my cocoon of warm blankets so my gaze could follow him. Three strides of his long legs took him clear across to the other side of the room to a stone fireplace. A roaring fire blazed in the natural stone hearth under a black cauldron suspended from an iron bar running across the top. He stirred whatever simmered in the pot. It smelled wonderful.

"You saved me?" My mind felt as if it, too, were wrapped in a cocoon.

"Somebody had to."

"Where am I?"

"My cabin."

"I mean where is that, in relation to Josie Falls?"

He straightened from the hearth. "Josie Falls?"

"I named them. Do they have a name already?"

"Not that I know of."

"Then I officially name them Josie Falls."

"What made you decide to take a swim today? You haven't been in the pool since early September."

"How do you know that?" But the idea that he'd been watching me didn't alarm me. Rather, it felt ... warm ... intriguing.

"Well, I'm not a stalker. When people start dropping their clothes by a pool, I assume they're about to go swimming. I don't stay around to watch."

"Who are you?" I tried to sit up, but weakness and the tight cocoon hampered me. He stepped over and easily lifted me against the bed's rough headboard. His head really did almost touch the ceiling, and his shoulders were as wide as a century-old hemlock. "Gracious, you're big."

He shoved both hands back through his thick black hair. "Good thing. A smaller man would never have been able to carry you two miles over rough terrain."

I leaned over to look at his feet. "Ohmigosh. You're the Bigfoot!"

He growled something and turned back to the hearth. I didn't know then that he'd been called the awful name ever since he'd grown into his size twenty-two shoes.

"I've seen footprints ever since April."

He scooped some of the cauldron's contents into a bowl. "Who are you?" I repeated. "Why are you living way up here alone?"

After pouring something from a brown bottle into a tin cup, he brought that and the bowl over to the bed. Looking from them to me, he finally sat down and lifted the spoon to my mouth.

I turned my head away. "I want answers."

"Eat. You put your body through a traumatic shock and you need nourishment."

I was alone with a mountain of a mountain man who spoke like a college professor. Whoever he was, even hidden behind the beard he was clearly no backwoodsman--and a good deal older than me. As a shy wallflower, I should've been frightened out of my wits, but somehow I knew he would never hurt me. My astrological instincts, you might say. Emboldened by my certainty, I glared at him. "Not until you tell me who you are." I struggled to free my arms from the blankets. "Let me out of this thing."

He sighed, put down the bowl, and loosened the coverings enough for me to fight my arms free. As I did, the blankets fell to my waist, and I looked down to see nothing but my thermal undershirt.

I yanked the blankets up. I wasn't feeling that bold.

Hot blood stung my cheeks.

He coughed and stood up. Yanking open a chest of drawers, he grabbed a flannel shirt and tossed it on the bed. "Awfully big, but you can wear it."

Once he retreated to the other side of the cabin to stare into the fire, I let the blanket drop and quickly donned his shirt. The soft, thick material swallowed me, suffusing my brain with an unknown yet primordial and familiar scent--the musky warmth of a man. Rattled by my perception, I folded back the sleeve cuffs four times so I could find my hands, then fastened every button except the collar. Finally, I announced, "I'm decent."

He returned to the bed, picked up the bowl and once again lifted the spoon to my mouth. "Eat, and I'll tell you who I am."

I opened my mouth.

He slipped the spoon inside. "My name is Harold Rutherford. I bought this place two summers ago."

I swallowed the thick flavorful stew. "This is delicious."

"Thank you."

"Why?"

His lips, half-hidden by his beard, curved upward. "Why is it delicious?"

He had a sense of humor. I fell half in love with him at that moment. "No. Why did you move so far up into the mountains?"

He hesitated, then deliberately turned his scarred face toward the fire. "To hide."

"Those scars look like burns. Were you burned?" I reached out a hand. "When?"

At my first touch, he stood abruptly, upsetting the tin cup still sitting on the bed. I caught the cup before it could spill, then licked the drops that sloshed onto my fingers. "Whiskey. You're a real mountain man, I guess. From what I hear, they use whiskey to treat everything."

"I thought it might warm you up."

"You accomplished that without whiskey." I couldn't believe the huskiness of my voice. It sounded almost ... sultry. Me. Josie McClure.

He must've heard it, too, because he turned back to me. "Josie..."

"You know my name." It didn't surprise me.

The fire popped, drawing his attention. It took a moment before he looked at me again. "Look under the pillow beside you."

I reached under the feather pillow to find my navy blue sweater.

"You left it beside the falls about a month ago."

I didn't have to look at the tag to know my name was written there in indelible ink. Mama couldn't get over the fact that I wasn't in grade school anymore. "I remember. It grew warm that day, and I took it off before I waded in the pool. I was halfway home before I realized I'd forgotten it. Since it was so late, I decided to come back for it the next day. When it wasn't there, I figured some animal had stolen it to pad his den." I grinned. "I was right."

He was not amused.

I dropped my gaze to the sweater in my hands. "Were you ... watching me that day?"

He seemed to struggle with himself, then finally said, "Yes."

"I see." I lifted the sweater to my nose and inhaled. It smelled faintly like me, but mostly like warm wool, and mountains ... and Harry. I smiled. Harry. What an appropriate name. I didn't feel the least bit bad about shortening his name without his permission. Then I shivered, realizing I was already able to recognize his scent.

"What in the world are you thinking?" he asked.

"That you smell good."

He hesitated, then said firmly, "Stop joking."

"No joke." I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood. The tail of his shirt fell to my knees.

He took half a step toward me. "You need to stay in"

"No."

He watched, seemingly mesmerized, as I walked over to him. I wobbled the slightest bit, more from shyness than weakness. I'd never done anything so bold in my life, never approached a man without something to serve him in my hands. But instinct told me Harry wasn't going to come to me ... and I had an overwhelming need to touch him.

He flinched as I reached up, but he didn't move away.

I ran my fingers across his forehead. "You're just like me."

"What?" He shook his head. "No. You're beautiful."

Tears stung my eyes. "No one has ever said that to me."

"I can't believe..."

"You feel like a freak, don't you?" My harsh words made him blink, but I kept going. "You think no one wants you, so you hide high in the mountains."

"I'm doing the world a kindness, believe me. Children have actually run away when they've seen me. My four-year-old niece screamed..." His voice choked.

"I have the opposite effect. People look right through me. I blend into the walls." Hesitantly, I rested my hands on his broad chest. "So we are just alike. I'm your mirror image."

"No, we're not just alike," he said. "You won't eat, and I will."

"Try me."

We settled on opposite sides of a rough-planked table, which he told me he'd made. He'd fashioned everything in the cabin from wood he'd cut in the forest around him.

We talked the night through. There was no pretense, none of the silly games that men and women play as they get to know each other. Because we already knew each other's darkest secrets, all that remained was catching up on our lives until now. We did that with avid interest. I was not at all surprised when I discovered that my Harry was a Dragon. A Taurus-Dragon. Might and bite married together in two earth elements.

Although he was living like one, technically Harry hadn't made a career out of being a hermit. A Ph.D. in environmental botany had earned him a grant from the University of Georgia to study the effect of acid rain on the indigenous plants of the Appalachian Mountains. He lived up there alone in the mountains above Mossy Creek because he believed he didn't fit in anywhere else. From the time he was old enough to notice, Harry had been taller and smarter than everyone around him. He was six-two by the time he graduated from high school at sixteen, and had reached his full six-foot-eight by twenty-three when he'd earned his doctorate. A serious house fire at twenty-seven had left him badly burned. He'd spent nearly a year in the hospital, then three years being scarred inwardly by people's reactions to his appearance. Now he lived on Mount Colchik.

The next morning, Harry gave me my dry clothes and walked me down the mountain. He stopped a good mile from the edge of our farm, adamantly refusing to return to civilization. There, amid the falling leaves of a maple, he took me in his arms and kissed me.

When he drew back, we stared into each other's eyes. It felt wrong leaving him. "If you won't come down, I will go up."

"You're too young," he said, as if trying to convince himself. "You don't need to spend time with an old man."

I rolled my eyes. "Thirty-two is hardly old. Besides, I've found you now, and I'm not going to let you go."

I ran the rest of the way home. When I opened the door, I found my mother in hysterics.

"Where have you been?" she demanded.

"In a dragon's lair," I said, and nothing else.

Our relationship changed that day. She no longer intimidated me or made me desperately want to explain myself. I realized later that I didn't just awaken in Harry's cabin on that January day.

I'd been reborn.

I trekked up to the top of Colchik almost daily for the next two weeks, to visit Harry. I quickly found out why I'd never seen him all those months he watched me. He was stealthy as a mountain lion. I would walk into the forest and suddenly he would be walking beside me, or he would scoop me into his arms, or a sprig of holly would appear in front of my face, held by a large, callused hand.

I wanted him desperately, but he was determined that we keep our distance. He'd given up the world, and I would have to as well, if I admitted I'd fallen in love with him. At that point in my life, I would've given up everything to be with him. He made me feel special and beautiful and sexy--me, Josie the wallflower who finished dead last in the Miss Bigelow Beauty Contest--and I loved him with every cell in my body. But as winter wrapped a firm grip around the mountains, my life began to change even more.

It was as if change begat more change.

Yet Harry wouldn't come down from the mountain, wouldn't venture into my world. At the same time, my world began to expand as if the change in me showed.

I entered The Naked Bean coffee shop on Main Street and ordered a cup of amaretto-flavored cocoa and two shortbread cookies, then settled into a seat at a far corner table.

I'd nibbled halfway through one of the cookies, closing my eyes to savor the rich buttery taste, when the scrape of a chair made them pop open. Jayne smiled at me a little sadly as she sat down carefully. I barely knew her--she was new to town--but I'd heard all about her and her tragic story. Her husband had died of leukemia. Right after the funeral, she'd learned she was pregnant. Mired in grief and searching for comfort, she'd moved to Mossy Creek from Atlanta with nothing but her savings, her cat, Emma, and her unborn baby. She patted her large, pregnant stomach and began to ask questions ... about me.

No one except Harry had ever showed an interest in what I did--mainly because I didn't do anything--so I was leery at first. I've watched people for a long time, however, so I recognize false interest when I see it. Jayne's was sincere.

"I hear you have a talent for decorating," she said.

"I ... only fold napkins."

"Now, really? That's fascinating."

She mentioned how badly The Naked Bean needed a professional touch and asked how Martha Stewart would redecorate. I gave her a few suggestions--and I have to admit they weren't all Martha's. Jayne particularly liked one of mine. I suggested hanging the works of local artists on one wall.

"That's great," Jayne said. "Not only would it be something for people to talk about, it'd be a reason for them to visit the shop."

"I'm sure some of the local artists would love to use one of your walls as a gallery to sell their work." I got up enthusiastically and began measuring her front windows with the span of my arms. "I can picture blue toile curtains on these windows, and over there in that corner, a whitewashed antique cupboard full of tea cups, and a delicate little white lamp on a tiny shelf in that corner, and..." I stopped, embarrassed.

Her eyes sparkled. "You're hired."

"What?"

"How soon can you have a re-decorating plan outlined for me?"

The door chimes jingled. She got up to meet her neighbor, Ingrid Beechum, who entered carrying a carrot cake from her bakery. I sat there with my mouth open.

Someone would actually hire me to decorate? I would do it for free, and I told Jayne so when she returned to the table.

"No, you won't," she insisted. "You'll never be a professional until you charge money."

And so I did. Not much, mind you. Just enough to satisfy her.

When I finally climbed Colchik a few days later, I saw Harry when I was still thirty yards away--which should've been my first clue something was wrong. I never saw Harry until he wanted me to see him.

He picked me up as I ran into his arms. "Where have you been? I was so worried."

"Don't squeeze so hard," I said. "I can't breathe."

He set me on the ground and pushed the hair off my face with trembling hands. "I thought something horrible had happened to you."

"My dearest Harry. Something wonderful happened."

I told him about my work for Jayne in vivid detail as we walked the mountain. I didn't notice until we reached Josie Falls that misery had settled in his dark eyes.

I stopped. "Why aren't you happy for me?"

"I am happy. It's just that you're finding your place in the world. Down the mountain--in Mossy Creek. I envy you. But it tells me you don't belong up here. With me."

I stood back from him and said simply, "There will never be a single moment in my life when I don't want you."

He touched my face very gently. "Stay tonight, Josie."

I didn't know what to do or say. I wanted him so much, but I was afraid I'd never go back down the mountain if I let myself fall more in love, and I owed him the truth. I bowed my head. "Swee Purla is a famous decorator down in Bigelow. She saw the work I did at The Naked Bean and offered me a job as her assistant. She did some mean things to an assistant named Geena Quill last year, but I've heard she's trying to be nicer to her employees, now."

He didn't move a muscle, didn't say a word.

I took a deep breath of cold mountain air. "I accepted."

"So you've come to say goodbye?"

"Of course not. It's just a part-time job. I'll only be working when she needs extra help. I'm sorry I haven't been to see you, I just got so involved in the project, and before I knew it, five days had passed. I've never had an opportunity like this, and I probably never will again. I have to see it through. I have to see if I'm any good at it. If I don't, I'll wonder all my life."

He stepped back. "It feels good to be appreciated, to be accepted. I know."

"Mossy Creek would accept you if you'd come down off this mountain. People are herd animals. We're meant to live together, not like hermits."

"Then live with me." His deep voice held a thin edge of pleading. "Decorate my cabin. Keep me from being a hermit."

"We'd just be two hermits, then." I took one of his hands and held it against my cheek. "Come to town and live with me, Harry. We could have a house at the edge of the forest. You wouldn't have to socialize often. The people in Mossy Creek are all a little weird themselves, anyway, so they would never say anything to"

He grabbed my hand and began dragging me toward his cabin.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going to show you exactly what they'd have to accept."

When we reached his cabin, he dug a mirror and razor out of his chest. He hung a small mirror on a nail in the wall, dipped soap in hot water from the cauldron he kept over coals, and shaved off his beard. After he wiped off the last trace of soap, he hesitated, then turned to me.

The burn scars curved around his face, half red, half white, crudely forming the shape of the classic symbol for yin and yang.

My eyes wide with wonder, I edged closer to him and ran my fingers along the scars, whispering reverently, "You've been kissed by the Dragon."

"A fire-breathing dragon." But his ire was uncertain now, as if he didn't know how to react to my reaction.

"Yin and yang represent perfect balance--dark and light, positive and negative, male and female. Opposites working together to create a balanced whole. Mirror images." I smiled. "Like us. Oh, Harry, you're the most beautiful man I've ever seen. I love who you are--here..." I placed a hand over his heart. "...And here." I put my other hand on his cheek. "Now I know why I developed a sudden interest in studying Eastern philosophy. I was getting ready for you."

"Josie..." His hands circled my wrists.

I met his gaze squarely. "I have to take this job, Harry."

He nodded. "I know."

"The only way you and I can spend more time together is for you to come down off this mountain."

His eyes were bleak. "I've been there, done that. It wasn't fun."

"But I wasn't there." When he was silent, I knew. "Then there's nothing else to say, is there?"

He searched my eyes. "Is this goodbye?"

"No. I don't know. Yes. You want me to give up the world." Tears blinded me. "I want to share it with to you. You don't know how long I've waited."

"Yeah, I do. That's why I won't stop you."