{"product_id":"your-heart-belongs-to-me-isbn-9780553591712","title":"Your Heart Belongs to Me","description":"\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor one man, they are the five most terrifying words of all . . .\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne year after the heart transplant that saved his life, thirty-five-year-old Ryan Perry has never felt better. He’s getting back everything he nearly lost forever—his business, his his life, and, with luck, his beloved girlfriend. Miracles do happen. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen the unmarked gifts begin to arrive—a box of candy hearts, a heart pendant. Most disturbing of all is a graphic heart-surgery video and its chilling message: \u003ci\u003eYour heart belongs to me.\u003c\/i\u003e Ryan is being stalked by someone who feels entitled to everything he has. She’s the spitting image of the twenty-six-year-old donor of the heart beating steadily in Ryan’s own chest. And she’s come to take it back.“Koontz is a master of the edge-of-your-seat, paranoid thriller—and perhaps the leading American practitioner of the form.” —\u003ci\u003eNewark Star-Ledger\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Koontz is a superb plotter and wordsmith. He chronicles the hopes and fears of our time in broad strokes and fine detail, using popular fiction to explore the human condition.”—\u003ci\u003eUSA Today\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Koontz gives readers a fable containing moral ambiguity and musings about the nature of good and evil that exists within us all.... [This] puts \u003cb\u003eYour Heart Belongs to Me\u003c\/b\u003e squarely in the column of must- reads.\"—\u003ci\u003eDenver Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A fast and entertaining read.\"—\u003ci\u003eChicago Sun-Times \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“[A] neat literary conjuring trick . . . a stylish little act of deception—a serious, topical, even polemical, thriller.”—\u003ci\u003eDaily Telegraph\u003c\/i\u003e, London\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Koontz takes readers down the twisted and torturous path of paranoia [and] keeps readers guessing every step of the way, building the suspense until the plot seems ready to burst. . . . Another gem from a master of suspense.”—\u003ci\u003eThe \u003c\/i\u003eToledo \u003ci\u003eBlade\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eDean Koontz,\u003c\/b\u003e the author of many #1 \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestsellers, lives in Southern California with his wife, Gerda, their golden retriever, Elsa, and the enduring spirit of their goldens, Trixie and Anna.\u003ci\u003eChapter One\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Ryan Perry did not know that something in him was broken. At thirty-four,  he appeared to be more physically fit than he had been at twenty-four. His home gym  was well equipped. A personal trainer came to his house three times a week.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e On that  Wednesday morning in September, in his bedroom, when he drew open the draperies and  saw blue sky as polished as a plate, and the sea blue with the celestial reflection,  he wanted surf and sand more than he wanted breakfast.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He went on-line, consulted  a surfcast site, and called Samantha. She must have glanced at the caller-ID readout,  because she said, “Good morning, Winky.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She occasionally called him Winky because  on the afternoon that she met him, thirteen months previously, he had been afflicted  with a stubborn case of myokymia, uncontrollable twitching of an eyelid.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Sometimes,  when Ryan became so obsessed with writing software that he went thirty-six hours  without sleep, a sudden-onset tic in his right eye forced him to leave the keyboard  and made him appear to be blinking out a frantic distress signal in Morse code. In  that myokymic moment, Samantha had come to his office to\u003cbr\u003e interview him for an article  that she had been writing for Vanity Fair. For a moment, she had thought he was flirting  with her–and flirting clumsily.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e During that first meeting, Ryan wanted to ask for  a date, but he perceived in her a seriousness of purpose that would cause her to  reject him as long as she was writing about him. He called her only after he knew  that she had delivered the article.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “When Vanity Fair appears, what if I’ve savaged  you?” she had asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “You haven’t.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “How do you know?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I don’t deserve to be  savaged, and you’re a fair person.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “You don’t know me well enough to be sure of  that.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “From your interviewing style,” he said, “I know you’re smart, clear-thinking,  free of political dogma, and without envy. If I’m not safe with you, then I’m safe  nowhere except alone in a room.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He had not sought to flatter her. He merely spoke  his mind.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Having an ear for deception, Samantha recognized his sincerity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Of the  qualities that draw a bright woman to a man, truthfulness is equaled only by kindness,  courage, and a sense of humor. She had accepted his invitation to dinner, and the  months since then had been the happiest of his life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Now, on this Wednesday morning,  he said, “Pumping six-footers, glassy and epic, sunshine that feels its way deep  into your bones.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I’ve got a deadline to meet.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “You’re too young for all this  talk about death.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Are you riding another train of manic insomnia?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Slept like  a baby. And I don’t mean in a wet diaper.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “When you’re sleep-deprived, you’re treacherous  on a board.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I may be radical, but never treacherous.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Totally insane, like with  the shark.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “That again. That was nothing.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Just a great white.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Well, the bastard  bit a huge chunk out of my board.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “And–what?–you were determined to get it back?” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I wiped out,” Ryan said, “I’m under the wave, in the murk, grabbin’ for air, my  hand closes around what I think is the skeg.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The skeg, a fixed fin on the bottom  of a surfboard, holds the stern of the board in the wave and allows the rider to  steer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e What Ryan actually grabbed was the shark’s dorsal fin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Samantha said, “What  kind of kamikaze rides a shark?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I wasn’t riding. I was taken for a ride.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “He  surfaced, tried to shake you off, you rode him back down.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Afraid to let go. Anyway,  it lasted like only twenty seconds.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Insomnia makes most people sluggish. It makes  you hyper.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I hibernated last night. I’m as rested as a bear in spring.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She said,  “In a circus once, I saw a bear riding a tricycle.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “What’s that got to do with  anything?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “It was funnier than watching an idiot ride a shark.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I’m Pooh Bear.  I’m rested and cuddly. If a shark knocked on the door right now, asked me to go for  a ride, I’d say no.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I had nightmares about you wrestling that shark.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Not wrestling.  It was more like ballet. Meet you at the place?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I’ll never finish writing this  book.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Leave the computer on when you go to bed each night. The elves will finish  it for you. At the place?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She sighed in happy resignation. “Half an hour.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Wear  the red one,” he said, and hung up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The water would be warm, the day warmer. He  wouldn’t need a wet suit.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He pulled on a pair of baggies with a palm-tree motif.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e His collection included a pair with a shark pattern. If he wore them, she would  kick his ass. Figuratively speaking.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e For later, he took a change of clothes on a  hanger, and a pair of loafers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Of the five vehicles in his garage, the customized  ‘51 Ford Woodie Wagon–anthracite-black with bird’s-eye maple panels–seemed to be  best suited to the day. Already stowed in the back, his board protruded past the  lifted tailgate windows, skeg up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e At the end of the cobblestone driveway, as he  turned left into the street, he paused to look back at the house: gracefully sloping  roofs of red barrel tile, limestone-clad walls, bronze windows with panes of beveled  glass refracting the sun as if they were jewels.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A maid in a crisp white uniform  opened a pair of second-floor balcony doors to air the master bedroom.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e One of the  landscapers trimmed the jasmine vines that were espaliered on the walls flanking  the carved-limestone surround at the main entrance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In less than a decade, Ryan  had gone from a cramped apartment in Anaheim to the hills of Newport Coast, high  above the Pacific.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Samantha could take the day off on a whim because she was a writer  who, though struggling, could set her own hours. Ryan could take it off because he  was rich.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Quick wits and hard work had brought him from nothing to the pinnacle.  Sometimes when he considered his origins from his current perch, the distance dizzied  him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As he drove out of the gate-guarded community and descended the hills toward  Newport Harbor, where thousands of pleasure boats were docked and moored in the glimmering  sun-gilded water, he placed a few business calls.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A year previously, he had stepped  down as the chief executive officer of Be2Do, which he had built into the most successful  social-networking site on the Internet. As the principal stockholder, he remained  on the board of directors but declined to be the chairman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e These days, he devoted  himself largely to creative development, envisioning and designing new services to  be provided by the company. And he tried to persuade Samantha to marry him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He knew  that she loved him, yet something constrained her from committing to marriage. He  suspected pride.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The shadow of his wealth was deep, and she did not want to be lost  in it. Although she had not expressed this concern, he knew that she hoped to be  able to count herself a success as a writer, as a novelist, so that she could enter  the marriage as a creative–if not a financial–equal.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Ryan was patient. And persistent.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Phone calls completed, he transitioned from Pacific Coast Highway by bridge to Balboa  Peninsula, which separated the harbor from the sea. Cruising toward the peninsula  point, he listened to classic doo-wop, music younger than the Woodie Wagon but a  quarter of a century older than he was.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He parked on a tree-lined street of charming  homes and carried his board half a block to Newport’s main beach.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The sea poured  rhythmic thunder onto the shore.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She waited at “the place,” which was where they  had first surfed together, midway between the harbor entrance and the pier.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Her  above-garage apartment was a three-minute walk from here. She had come with her board,  a beach towel, and a small cooler.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Although he had asked her to wear the red bikini,  Samantha wore yellow. He had hoped for the yellow, but if he had asked for it, she  would have worn red or blue, or green.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She was as perfect as a mirage, blond hair  and golden form, a quiver of light, an alluring oasis on the wide slope of sun-seared  sand.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “What’re those sandals?” she asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Stylin’, huh?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Are they made from  old tires?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Yeah. But they’re premium gear.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Did you also buy a hat made from  a hubcap?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “You don’t like these?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “If you have a blowout, does the auto club bring  you a new shoe?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Kicking off the sandals, he said, “Well, I like them.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “How often  do they need to be aligned and balanced?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Soft and hot, the sand shifted underfoot,  but then was compacted and cool where the purling surf worked it like a screed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As they waded into the sea, he said, “I’ll ditch the sandals if next time you’ll  wear the red bikini.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “You actually wanted this yellow one.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He repressed his surprise  at her perspicacity. “Then why would I ask for the red?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Because you only think  you can read me.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “But I’m an open book, huh?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Winky, compared to you, Dr. Seuss’ s simplest tale is as complex as Dostoyevsky.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e They launched their boards and, prone  upon them, paddled out toward the break.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Raising his voice above the swash of the  surf, he called to her:\u003cbr\u003e “Was that Seuss thing an insult?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Her silvery laughter stirred  in Ryan memories of mermaid tales awash with the mysteries of the deep.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She said,  “Not an insult, sweetie. That was a thirteen-word kiss.” Ryan did not bother to recall  and count her words from Winky to Dostoyevsky. Samantha noticed everything, forgot  nothing, and was able to recall entire conversations that had occurred months previously.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Sometimes he found her as daunting as she was appealing, which seemed to be a good  thing. Samantha would never be predictable or boring.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The consistently spaced waves  came like boxcars, four or five at a time. Between these sets were periods of relative  calm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e While the sea was slacking, Ryan and Samantha paddled out to the lineup. There,  they straddled their boards and watched the first swell of a new set roll toward  the break.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e From this more intimate perspective, the sea was not as placid and blue  as it had appeared from his house in the hills, but as dark as jade and challenging.  The approaching swell might have been the arching back of some scaly leviathan, larger  than a thousand sharks, born in the deep but rising now to feed upon the sunlit world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Sam looked at Ryan and grinned. The sun searched her eyes and revealed in them the  blue of sky, the green of sea, the delight of being in harmony with millions of tons  of water pushed shoreward by storms three thousand miles away and by the moon now  looming on the dark side of the earth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Sam caught the second swell: on two knees,  one knee, now standing, swift and clean, away. She rode the crest, then did a floater  off the curling lip.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As she slid out of view, down the face of the wave, Ryan thought  that the breaker–much bigger than anything in previous sets–had the size and the  energy to hollow out and put her in a tube. Good as it gets, Sam would ride it out  as smoothly as oil surging through a pipeline.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Ryan looked seaward, timing the next  swell, eager to rise and walk the board.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Something happened to his heart. Already  quick with anticipation of the ride, the beat suddenly accelerated and began to pound  with a force more suited to a moment of high terror than to one of pleasant excitement.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He could feel his pulse throbbing in his ankles, wrists, throat, temples. The tide  of blood within his arteries seemed to crescendo in sympathy with the sea that swelled  toward him, under him. The sibilant voice of the water became insistent, sinister.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Clutching the board, abandoning the attempt to rise and ride, Ryan saw the day dim,  losing brightness at the periphery. Along the horizon, the sky remained clear yet  faded to gray.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Inky clouds spread through the jade sea, as though the Pacific would  soon be as black in the morning light as it was on any moonless night.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He was breathing  fast and shallow. The very atmosphere seemed to be changing, as if half the oxygen  content had been bled out of it, perhaps explaining the graying of the sky.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Never  previously had he been afraid of the sea. He was afraid of it now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The water rose  as though with conscious intention, with malice. Clinging to his board, Ryan slid  down the hunchbacked swell into the wide trough between waves.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Irrationally, he  worried that the trough would become a trench, the trench a vortex. He feared that  he would be whirled down into drowning depths.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The board wallowed, bobbed, and Ryan  almost rolled off. His strength had left him. His grip had grown weak, as tremulous  as that of an old man.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Something bristled in the water, alarming him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e When he realized  that those spiky forms were neither shark fins nor grasping tentacles, but were the  conceptacles of a knotted mass of seaweed, he was not relieved. If a shark were to  appear now, Ryan would be at the mercy of it, unable to evade it or resist.\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Chapter  Two\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As suddenly as the attack came, it passed. Ryan’s storming heart quieted. Blue  reclaimed the graying sky. The encroaching darkness in the water receded. His strength  returned to him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He did not realize how long the episode had lasted until he saw  that Samantha had ridden her wave to shore and, in the relative calm between sets,  had paddled out to him once more.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As she came closer, the concern that creased her  brow was also evident in her voice: “Ryan?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Just enjoying the moment,” he lied,  remaining prone on his board. “I’ll catch one in the next set.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Since when are  you a mallard?” she asked, by which she meant that he was floating around in the  lineup like a duck, like one of those gutless wannabes who soaked all day in the  swells just beyond the break point and called it surfing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “The last two in that  set were bigger,” he said. “I have a hunch the next batch might be double overhead,  worth waiting for.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Sam straddled her board and looked out to sea, scanning for  the first swell of the new set.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e If Ryan read her correctly, she sensed that he was  shining her on, and she wondered why.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e With his heart steady and his strength recovered,  he stopped hugging the board, straddled it, getting ready.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Waiting for the next  wave train, he told himself that he had not experienced a physical seizure, but instead  merely an anxiety attack. At self-deception, he was as skilled as anyone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He had  no reason to be anxious. His life was sweet, buttered, and sliced for easy consumption.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Focused on far water, Samantha said, “Winky.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I see it.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The sea rose to the  morning sun, dark jade and silver, a great shoulder of water shrugging up and rolling  smoothly toward the break.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Ryan smelled brine, smelled the iodine of bleeding seaweed,  and tasted salt.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Epic,” Sam called out, sizing the swell.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Monster,” he agreed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Instead of rising into a control position, she left the wave to him, her butt on  the board, her feet in the water, bait for sharks. A squadron of gulls streaked landward,  shrieking as if to warn those on shore that a behemoth was coming to smash sand castles  and swamp picnic hampers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As the moment of commitment neared, apprehension rose  in Ryan, concern that the thrill of the ride might trigger another...episode.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He  paddled to catch the wave, got to his feet on the pivot point, arms reaching for  balance, fingers spread, palms down, and he caught the break, a perfect peeler that  didn’t section on him but instead poured pavement as slick as ice. The moving wave  displaced air, and a cool wind rose up the curved wall, pressing against his flattened  palms.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Then he was in a tube, a glasshouse, behind the curtain of the breaking wave,  shooting the curl, and his apprehension burst like a bubble and was no more.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Using  every trick to goose momentum, he emerged from the tube before it collapsed, into  the sparkle of sun on water filigreed with foam. The day was so real, so right. He  admonished himself, No fear, which was the only way to live.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e All morning, into the  afternoon, the swells were monoliths. The offshore breeze strengthened, blowing liquid  smoke off the lips of the waves.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The beach blanket was not a place to tan. It was  for rehab, for massaging the quivers out of overtaxed muscles, for draining sinuses  flooded with seawater, for combing bits of kelp and crusted salt out of your hair,  for psyching each other into the next session. Usually, Ryan would want to stay until  late afternoon, when the offshore breeze died and the waves stopped hollowing out,  when the yearning for eternity–which the ocean represented–became a yearning for  burritos and tacos.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e By two-thirty, however, during a retreat to the blanket, a pleasant  weariness, the kind that follows work well done, overcame him. There was something  delicious about this fatigue, a sweetness that made him want to close his eyes and  let the sun melt him into sleep....\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As he was swimming effortlessly in an abyss  vaguely illuminated by clouds of luminescent plankton, a voice spoke to him out of  the deep: “Ryan?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Hmmmm?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Were you asleep?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He felt as though he were still  asleep when he opened his eyes and saw her face looming over him: beauty of a degree  that seemed mythological, radiant eyes the precise shade of a green sea patinaed  by the blue of a summer sky, golden hair crowned with a corona of sunlight, goddess  on a holiday from Olympus.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “You were asleep,” Samantha said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Too much big surf.  I’m quashed.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “You? When have you ever been quashed?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Sitting up on the blanket,  he said, “Had to be a first time.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “You really want to pack out?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I skipped breakfast.  We surfed through lunch.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “There’s chocolate-cherry granola bars in the cooler.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Nothing but a slab of beef will revive me.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e They carried the cooler, the blanket,  and their boards to the station wagon, stowed everything in back.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Still sodden with  sunshine and loose-limbed from being so long in the water, Ryan almost asked Samantha  to drive.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e More than once, however, she glanced at him speculatively, as if she sensed  that his brief nap on the beach blanket was related to the episode at the beginning  of the day, when he floated like a mallard in the lineup, his heart exploding. He  didn‘t want to worry her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Besides, there was no reason to worry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Earlier, he’d  had an anxiety attack. But if truth were known, most people probably had them these  days, considering the events and the pessimistic predictions that constituted the  evening news.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Instead of passing the car keys to Sam, Ryan drove the two blocks  to her apartment.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Samantha showered first while Ryan brewed a pitcher of fresh iced  tea and sliced two lemons to marinate in it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Her cozy kitchen had a single large  window beyond which stood a massive California pepper tree. The elegant limbs, festooned  with weeping fernlike leaves divided into many glossy leaflets, appeared to fill  the entire world, creating the illusion that her apartment was a tree house.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The  pleasant weariness that had flooded through Ryan on the beach now drained away, and  a new vitality welled in him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He began to think of making love to Samantha. Once  the urge arose, it swelled into full-blooded desire.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Hair toweled but damp, she  returned to the kitchen, wearing turquoise slacks, a crisp white blouse, and white  tennies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e If she had been in the mood, she would have been barefoot, wearing only  a silk robe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e For weeks at a time, her libido matched his, and she wanted him frequently.  He had noticed that her desire was greater during those periods when she was busiest  with her writing and the least inclined to consider his proposal of marriage.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A  sudden spell of virtuous restraint was a sign that she was brooding about accepting  the engagement ring, as though the prospect of matrimony required that sex be regarded  as something too serious, perhaps too sacred, to be indulged in lightly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Ryan happily  accepted each turn toward abstinence when it seemed to indicate that she was on the  brink of making a commitment to him. At twenty-eight, she was six years younger than  he was, and they had a life of lovemaking ahead.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He poured a glass of iced tea for  her, and then he went to take a shower. He started with water nearly as cold as the  tea.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In the westering sun, the strawberry trees shed elongated leaf shadows on the  flagstone floor of the restaurant patio.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Ryan and Samantha shared a caprese salad  and lingered over their first glasses of wine, not in a hurry to order entrees. The  smooth peeling bark of the trees was red, especially so in the condensed light of  the slowly declining sun.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Teresa loved the flowers,” Sam said, referring to her  sister.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “What flowers?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “On these trees. They get panicles of little urn-shaped  flowers in the late spring.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “White and pink,” Ryan remembered.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Teresa said they  look like cascades of tiny bells, wind chimes hung out by fairies.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Six years previously,  Teresa had suffered serious head trauma in a traffic accident. Eventually she had  died.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Samantha seldom mentioned her sister. When she spoke of Teresa, she tended  to turn inward before much had been said, mummifying her memories in long windings  of silence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Now, as she gazed into the overhanging tree, the expression in her eyes  was reminiscent of that look of longing when, straddling her surfboard in the lineup,  she studied far water for the first sign of a new set of swells.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Ryan was comfortable  with Sam’s occasional silences, which he suspected were always related to thoughts  of her sister, even when she had not mentioned Teresa.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e They had been identical twins.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e To better understand Sam, Ryan had read about twins who had been separated by tragedy.  Apparently the survivor’s grief was often mixed with unjustified guilt.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Some said  the intense bond between identicals, especially between sisters, could not be broken  even by death. A few insisted they still felt the presence of the other, akin to  how an amputee often feels sensations in his phantom leg.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Samantha’s contemplative  silence gave Ryan an opportunity to study and admire her with a forthrightness that  was not possible when she was aware of his stare.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Watching her, he was nailed motionless  by admiration, unable to lift his wineglass, or at least disinterested in it, his  eyes alone in motion, traveling the contours of her face and the graceful line of  her throat.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e His life was a pursuit of perfection, of which perhaps the world held  none.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Sometimes he imagined that he came close to it when writing lines of code  for software. An exquisite digital creation, however, was as cold as a mathematical  equation. The most fastidious software architecture was an object of mere precision,  not of perfection, for it could not evoke an intense emotional response.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In Samantha  Reach, he’d found a beauty so close to perfection that he could convince himself  this was his quest fulfilled.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Gazing into the tree but focused on something far  beyond the red geometry of those branches, Sam said, “After the accident, she was  in a coma for a month. When she came out of it...she wasn’t the same.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Ryan was  kept silent by the smoothness of her skin. This was the first he had heard of Teresa’ s coma. Yet the radiance of Sam’s face, in the caress of the late sun, rendered him  incapable of comment.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “She still had to be fed through a tube in her stomach.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The only leaf shadows that touched Samantha’s face were braided across her golden  hair and brow, as though she wore the wreath of Nature’s approval.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “The doctors  said she was in a permanent vegetative state.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Her gaze lowered through the branches  and fixed on a cruciform of sunlight that, shimmering on the table, was projected  by a beam passing through her wineglass.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I never believed the doctors,” she said.  “Teresa was still complete inside her body, trapped but still Teresa. I didn’t want  them to take out the feeding tube.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She raised her eyes to meet his, and he had  to make of this a conversation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “But they took it out anyway?” he asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “And starved  her to death. They said she wouldn’t feel anything. Supposedly the brain damage assured  that she’d have no pain.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “But you think she suffered.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I know she did. During  the last day, the last night, I sat with her, holding her hand, and I could feel  her looking at me even though she never opened her eyes.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He did not know what to  say to that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Samantha picked up her glass of wine, causing the cross of light to  morph into an arrow that briefly quivered like a compass needle seeking true north  in Ryan’s eyes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I’ve forgiven my mother for a lot of things, but I’ll never forgive  her for what she did to Teresa.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As Samantha took a sip of wine, Ryan said, “But  I thought...your mother was in the same accident.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “She was.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I was under the  impression she died in the crash, too. Rebecca.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Was that her name?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “She is dead.  To me. Rebecca’s buried in an apartment in Las Vegas. She walks and talks and breathes,  but she’s dead all right.” Samantha’s father had abandoned the family before the  twins were two. She had no memory of him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Feeling that Sam should hold fast to what  little family she had, Ryan almost encouraged her to give her mother a chance to  earn redemption. But he kept silent on the issue, because Sam had his sympathy and  his understanding.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e His grandparents and hers–all long dead–were of the generation  that defeated Hitler and won the Cold War. Their fortitude and their rectitude had  been passed along, if at all, in a diluted form to the next generation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Ryan’s parents,  no less than Sam’s, were of that portion of the post-war generation that rejected  the responsibilities of tradition and embraced entitlement. Sometimes it seemed to  him that he was the parent, that his mother and father were the children. Regardless  of the consequences of their behavior and decisions, they would see no need for redemption.  Giving them the chance to earn it would only offend them. Sam’s mother was most likely  of that same mind-set.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Samantha put down her glass, but the sun made nothing of  it this time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e After a hesitation, as Ryan poured more wine for both of them, he  said, “Funny how something as lovely as strawberry-tree flowers can peel the scab  off a bad memory.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Sorry.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “No need to be.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Such a nice day. I didn’t mean to  bring it down. Are you as ferociously hungry as I am?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Bring me the whole steer,”  he said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In fact, they ordered just the filet mignon, no horns or hooves.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As the  descending sun set fire to the western sky, strings of miniature white lights came  on in the strawberry trees. On all the tables were candles in amber cups of faceted  glass, and busboys lit them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The ordinary patio had become a magical place, and  Samantha was the centerpiece of the enchantment.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e By the time the waiter served the  steaks, Sam had found the lighter mood that had characterized the rest of the day,  and Ryan joined her there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e After the first bite of beef, she raised her wineglass  in a toast.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Hey, Dotcom, this one’s to you.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Dotcom was another nickname that  she had for him, used mostly when she wanted to poke fun at his public image as a  business genius and tech wizard.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Why to me?” he asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Today you finally stepped  down from the pantheon and revealed that you’re at best a demigod.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Pretending","brand":"Bantam","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303640748261,"sku":"NP9780553591712","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780553591712.jpg?v=1767744802","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/your-heart-belongs-to-me-isbn-9780553591712","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}