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nearly recoiled. In her preoccupation with her headache and her circumstances, she’d almost forgotten her injury. The left side of her face sported a small, purplish bruise, and a makeshift bandage cut from a strip of white fabric (one of his T-shirts?) was wrapped and tied around her throbbing forehead, holding a small compress in place. I look hideous , she mused. No wonder he can’t stand the sight of me.
    She glanced about for a glass so she could take the Tylenol, but couldn’t find one anywhere. Weird , she thought. Doesn’t everyone keep a glass in their bathroom? He must have taken it when he removed his stuff.
    Her stomach growled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. She’d planned to stop for lunch on the way to the airport. It wasn’t a good idea to take Tylenol on an empty stomach. Better to wait, Nicole decided, until she finished her phone calls, and then ask Michael for something to eat.
    Returning to the bedroom, Nicole mentally reviewed the people she needed to call: her boss, her neighbor, her mother, and the car rental company. She sat down on the edge of the bed and was about to make the first call, when she noticed a beautiful wooden box on the nightstand. It was about the size of a hardcover book but a couple of inches taller, and made from a polished hardwood. The lid was inlaid with an intricate design fashioned from different colors of wood. Nicole couldn’t resist picking it up and examining it more closely. The lid was hinged at the back and there was a small windup key on the bottom. When she lifted the lid, it began to play a snippet from Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik , a song she was very familiar with.
    Nicole smiled. A music box! It was truly lovely. The cylinder and all its workings were visible in a compartment beneath a glass window. It seemed like a whimsical thing for a man like Michael to own. And yet—was it? What did she know about him, really?

    MICHAEL COULD HEAR EVERY WORD she was saying on the phone, even though she was halfway across the house behind a closed door. It was an ability he had always found more aggravating than useful. Not that he didn’t like the sound of her voice; it was quite pleasant, in fact. But he didn’t like invading other people’s privacy anymore than he liked them invading his.
    It sounded like she was talking to her employer, and yet it could quite possibly be her boyfriend. A woman like that—attractive, charming, good sense of humor—was bound to have a boyfriend. He could envision the chap in his mind: a
    Michael caught himself with a laugh and shook his head. What was he doing? Where were these thoughts coming from? She seemed like a nice enough young woman, but why did he care whether or not she was involved with anyone? Admittedly, he was physically attracted to her— very physically attracted to her—and he’d enjoyed their short conversation. But it had been so long since he’d been alone with a woman, he no doubt would have started salivating over any female who was alive and breathing and was dropped on his doorstep. The less he knew about her—and the less contact he had with her while she was here—the better.
    Michael strode into the kitchen. When he built this house, he’d thought it a waste of money to put in a kitchen at all, but he had to appease the architect, the contractor, and the building commission; he didn’t want to do anything that would call attention to himself. He kept the shelves stocked these days for the same reason—to keep up appearances for Jhania, his cleaning lady—buying a little bit of this or that whenever he went into town, even going so far as to leave empty cans in the trash and dirty dishes in the sink. Up to now, he’d always found the charade to be a nuisance. Now he was grateful for it. It meant there was enough food to keep his guest alive.
    And that was the whole trick, wasn’t it? To keep her alive?
    Michael quickly surveyed the contents of the refrigerator