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helper for Aldo’s construction company.
    She’d stuck with it. The hard physical work suited her.
    Sera remembered conversations with her mother in which Maria fretted over Gemma’s doing construction work. “I know all this stuff about female equality, but it’s too hard on a woman’s body, and it’s dangerous,” she’d told Sera.
    Her mother’s concerns seemed prophetic now.
    “Your father’s told her a hundred times he’ll send her to school to do accounting or business administration, but no, she refuses.” Then Maria said what everyone in the family always said when there was a problem with Gemma.
    “You talk to her, Sera. She’ll listen to you.”
    And Sera had tried to convince Gemma to get training, she remembered now. She’d asked why Gemma didn’t accept their father’s offer, take up something less strenuous.
    “I happen to like what I do,” Gemma had insisted belligerently. “It’s a no-brainer, it pays better than anything else I’ve tried and there’re some spectacular bods on these macho construction guys.”
    There was no point thinking she should have been more insistent, Sera acknowledged with a sigh. If Gemma’s mind was made up, nobody could change it. And neither could anyone change what had happened today.
    Although the tea was calming, and it was very late and she was exhausted, Sera knew she wouldn’t sleep. She had work to do on the set for morning, so she made her way into the bedroom, which she’d turned into her work area, outfitting it with a long table and the materials she needed for models. She slept on the pullout couch in the living room. It was a good thing there was no man in her life; making up a bed every night wasn’t conducive to romance.
    The light was blinking on her answering machine, and she pushed the button, then clamped a hand over her mouth when the first voice on the tape was Gemma’s.
    “Sera, it’s me, I need to borrow that white silk suit of yours, you know, the one you wore to Valerie’s wedding in April? Give me a call and maybe drop it off at my place in the morning. I need it for Saturday. Hot date.”
    Sera’s face crumpled, and a sob caught in her throat. Weeks went by, sometimes a month, and she didn’t hear from Gemma. There was something uncanny about the sound of that deep-throated eager voice now, when Gemma was lying in the hospital voiceless and unconscious, far from those who loved her.
    The last thing Gemma would need for a while was a white silk suit, and the knowledge brought a new flood of tears.
    But her sister was alive, Sera reminded herself, and that was the thing that mattered. They all realized only too well that she could easily have died today.
    Dr. Duncan, the ER physician, had told them how fortunate it was that the accident had happened right on hospital grounds; transporting a patient with Gemma’s injuries was always problematic, she’d said. And they were also fortunate, she’d added, to have a reconstructive surgeon of Dr. Halsey’s caliber immediately available.
    It took a few moments for Sera to pull herself together and concentrate on the work she had to do. She reached for the scale model she’d designed to represent the pub scene. In the script the bar was owned by Louie, a regular character on the show, and Maisie had wanted the bar to reflect his doggedly glum personality.
    The show was filmed rather than taped, which was good because nuances of shade were lost in taping, even though the technology had improved over the past five years. Contrast was still a problem, though. Maybe if she painted a subtly lighter shade on one wall, Sera decided, and then went two shades darker on the other, she’d achieve the desired effect.
    She picked up her paints and began, and as the challenge of her work slowly forced her mind to focus, the gnawing worry about Gemma receded. Gradually, for the first time all day, she relaxed.
     
     
    In his spacious rooftop loft in Gastown, the oldest area in Vancouver and