Despite the serious thoughts, she’d had fun. It was the youthful fun and her first taste of adventure that had fed her artistic side and made it so easy to bring out a feeling in a painting.
She’d come back again one year later but that trip had been very different. She’d been recovering from the tragic end to a relationship.
She should have broken up with Mark months before but he’d been persistent that they were made for each other. She’d never been too sure. Mark had been steady. He had liked to say he was her rock. But he was also dull and for the last months before the car crash that had killed him, she’d flirted with breaking up with him. When he’d died and the ring had been found, she’d known that he was about to propose and that only made the guilt of her true feelings that much more difficult to bear.
After his death, a trip to San Miguel de Allende had been an escape. In a way it had freed her from the guilt that plagued her. She’d met others like her, some she’d met the year before, all people involved in the arts in some way. It had been the best place to heal and to begin to celebrate life again.
She took a last swallow of coffee and got up, heading down the street to get a closer look at the vendors’ goods. She could almost trick herself into believing that this was a vacation, that she wasn’t here because she was afraid for her life. She wondered when it would be safe to return and how she would ever know if and when that was.
She pushed the thoughts away as she checked out a produce vendor and then a number of vendors with handicrafts. She admired a vividly hand-painted bag from another vendor. The vibrancy of the bag and the fact that it was hand done made it almost impossible to resist. But her money situation put that internal debate to rest. She still had a beautiful bag she’d purchased on that first trip four years ago. She left the vendor with a smile of admiration.
After an hour, she decided to head back to her room, but a block away she sensed something was off. Her intuition had been bang on since she was a child. It was something she’d inherited from her mother, or at least so her mother claimed. She could sense change.
She could only pray that what she was sensing was a change for the better. She wasn’t sure she could handle worse.
TRENT HUMMED A popular song he’d heard half a dozen times since he’d landed. Except for getting out of Mexico City’s chaos, it had been an easy drive to San Miguel de Allende. It was a relief to be on the open road without a lot of traffic. After the insanity of a city the size of Mexico’s capital, this was a balm to his soul. He’d bought a Coke midway at a dusty little store on the edges of a village whose name he’d already forgotten. He’d hit the outskirts of San Miguel de Allende shortly after lunch.
The city was gorgeous even from its outer edges, where the beauty of its historical architecture surpassed everything he could imagine. There wasn’t the usual ugly industrial area or bland box stores fringing the outskirts like one might see in other cities. That didn’t surprise him. He’d done his research on the flight from Denver. But even with a heads-up, the history of the city was amazing, not just preserved in a plethora of century’s old architecture, but vibrant, almost alive.
The red spires of a church seemed to push through the cluster of stone that, from what he could see from the outskirts, made up the center of the town. He passed a more modern inn with a waterslide and, just behind that, another heritage stone church. His plan was to get as close to the city center as possible before parking. That was what Enrique had recommended after stating that the streets were narrow and congested.
Twenty minutes later, Trent learned that Enrique knew what he was talking about. The streets were tight and crowded with an assortment of pedestrians and vendors. He’d already hiked past a half dozen vendors, a man with a donkey and a trio of stray dogs.
He needed to find people who fitted the profile in his head. People who might have spoken to Tara. He needed to ask them questions that would help him find her. But the vendors seemed too caught up in their transactions and he’d have to queue up to get near any of them.
He began his queries at the first outdoor café where a couple sat sipping coffee. Trent guessed he’d have better luck here, speaking to people like these, people like Tara. People who had more in common with her, as artists and foreigners. That group stuck together here in this town. There was a whole enclave and a new member to that group would be news. They’d be the ones who might be familiar with a beautiful young artist from Colorado.
With that in mind, he saw a woman with a pencil in her hand and a sketching pad in front of her. Her partner’s Hawaiian-themed T-shirt was only a bonus. They were as good a place to start as any.
It was on the sixth try that he hit the jackpot. The woman he asked had not only heard of Tara but she had spoken to her only an hour ago. Within minutes, he was heading toward the sun-faded red stone building where the woman had directed him.
He couldn’t believe it had been this easy. He always felt that easy meant trouble. He walked along the uneven and narrow cobblestone street. It was crowded with merchants, shoppers and even the occasional donkey. As he did, he worried that there was something he had missed.
Five minutes later, he stopped on the edge of a yellow brick building at the junction of two streets. He saw the long blond hair first. It streamed freely down her back. He headed in that direction, going up a short flight of stairs to a small courtyard with a half dozen white metal tables and chairs to where the blond-haired woman was wiping a table.
“Excuse me,” he said.
She turned but it wasn’t Tara and disappointment bit deep.
“I was looking for Tara Munroe,” he began.
“Tara,” the woman said with a bright lilt to her voice. She held out her hand, her eyes alight with an admiration that was impossible to miss. “Siobhan.”
He gave her the briefest of handshakes and didn’t offer his name.
“Is she here?”
The smile she gave him was slightly flirtatious, but her eyes went somewhere over his shoulder.
“Tara,” Siobhan called. “Someone to see you.”
He felt someone else, someone watching from behind. He turned as a door leading away from the common area swung open and another blonde stood there. But this one was familiar.
He knew those high cheekbones. He knew that slightly rounded face. And he knew the dark brown eyes that now held a combination of curiosity and fear. He’d know that face anywhere. He’d looked at it enough times during the flight here, and he’d remembered the girl she’d been, of course. Still, he was stunned by the woman she’d become.
She gave an air of both confidence and fragility. She had matured into a soulful combination of beauty and innocence. If he’d been able to paint at all, he’d paint her, he’d...
She’d been the one who painted, not him.
Siobhan moved around him, standing slightly to his left as she looked from one to the other.
“You know each other?”
He couldn’t take his eyes off Tara.
“Trent,” Tara murmured.
His name on her lips was like a seductive whisper. He felt frozen in time. He stared at her, noticing how her hair moved in the light breeze. She was staring back. She looked shocked, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. He couldn’t blame her. After all, he’d arrived on her doorstep, a memory of her past, without warning.
She looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. “Is it really you?”
“It is,” he said and only wanted to hug her, to touch her. To tell her how sorry he was to have left her the way he