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The living area had a futon couch, a desk with an elaborate array of computer equipment, a drafting table, and a bookshelf sagging with the weight of tomes. The only art on the walls was a series of black-and-white architectural photographs in lucite frames.

"These are fantastic pictures," he said, pausing to admire the light and shadow in an arched gallery.

"Thanks. I took them."

He turned, surprised. "You're a photographer, too?"

She shrugged and took the cellophane off the irises and started trimming their stems. "Not really. I only take them for myself, and they're only of things that I find beautiful. Patterns, mostly. Repetition. Symmetry. Angles and curves."

"The mathematics of beauty."

She looked up from filling a vase and smiled. "Yes. Exactly. Most people don't get that; that there is math in both the visual arts and music."

"You're talking to an engineer."

She laughed. "I guess that could explain it, but I've met plenty of math and science guys who lack an aesthetic sense. Look at the great flowers you chose: structural, and all one kind. I think it's the best way to display flowers."

Flattered, he made a faint noise that might be construed as thanks.

"So!" she said brightly. "Would you like to open the wine?" She put a bottle of red up on the breakfast bar, then bumped it when she reached up again to put down the corkscrew. She fumbled and just managed to catch it before it fell over, and before his own mad dash got him there. "Oops! Sometimes I think I'm all thumbs," she said, a quaver in her voice. She giggled, but not a happy giggle. More a verge-of-hysteria giggle.

He reached for the wine bottle and corkscrew and examined her surreptitiously as he went to work on the bottle.

Emma hopped about the small kitchen, prattling something about micro salad greens and vinegars, her hands moving as fast as birds' wings.

He pulled the cork and moved to her side of the breakfast bar, where the wineglasses were. He poured out two glasses, glad to see no cork bits, and paused to look at the wine label. It was a nice pi not noir from Oregon.

She bumped into him and bounced away, his closeness seeming to make her hummingbird nervousness go up a notch.

He reached out and touched her arm, to calm her, to tell her that she didn't have to do this. "It's okay," he said.

Her eyes went past him to the wine. "Is it? I was hoping so. I'm afraid I don't know as much as I'd like to about wine. The woman at the wine shop down the block chose it for me."

She snatched a glass and held it up. "Here's to new adventures!"

He took a glass as well, but when she clinked her glass with his he didn't drink. "Emma."

She lowered her glass. He saw faint tremors in the surface of her wine, revealing the shaking of her hand. "Yes?"

"You don't have to do this. We can stop right here. Forget the whole arrangement."

Her eyebrows went up in concern. "Stop? You've changed your mind? You don't want any of this?"

"It's not right."

"But I made a stuffed leg of lamb. And dessert." She looked helplessly around the kitchen, the signs of her efforts clear in the dirty bowls, pans, and utensils.

"We can still eat the di

Some of the light left her eyes. She looked hurt. "You don't want to sleep with me."

"Yes! I do! But you're so nervous, I wanted to give you a chance to reconsider." He was calling her nervous. Ha! What a joke! He was the one who was ready to die of nerves.

She set down her wineglass and played with its base, watching her own fingertips sliding around the circle of glass. Then she suddenly looked up, meeting his eyes with a steady gaze. "It's been a year and a half since I've had sex. They say it's like riding a bicycle and you never forget how, right? But that doesn't mean there isn't a part of me that's still a little nervous, no matter how much I'm looking forward to it."

He was surprised and pleased by her admissions of having been celibate for so long and of wanting to sleep with him. "It's been a while for me, too," he said quietly.