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boutique had sent
Dorie running scared from Corrigan. That was all in the past, now.
"Corrigan explained everything to me. I
was uncertain of him then, that's all it really was. I'm not anymore." She
hesitated. "I'm sorry about you and Simon."
    Tira's face tautened. "You can't make people love you," she said with a poignant sadness in her eyes. She shrugged
fatalisti cally. "He has a life that suits
him. I'm trying to find one for myself."
    "Why don't you do a collection of sculptures and
have a show?" Corrigan suggested.
    She chuckled. "I haven't done sculpture in three
years. Any way, I'm not good enough for
that."
        "You certainly are, and you've got an art degree. Use it."
         She considered that. After a minute, she
smiled. "Well, I do enjoy sculpting. I
used to sell some of it occasionally."
    "See?" Corrigan said. "An idea presents
itself." He paused. "Of course,
there's always a course in biscuit-making...?"
    Knowing his other three brothers' absolute mania for that
particular bread, she held up both hands. "You can tell Leo and Cag and Rey that I have
no plans to become a biscuit chef."
    "I'll pass the message along. But Dorie's dying for a replace ment," he added with a grin at his wife. "They'd chain her to the stove if I didn't intervene." He eyed Tira . "They like you."
    "God forbid," she said with a mock shudder.
"For years, peo ple will be talking
about how they arranged your marriage."
    "They meant well," Dorie
defended them.
    "Baloney," Tira returned. "They had to have their biscuits. Fatal error, Dorie, telling them you could bake."
    "It worked out well, though, don't you think?"
she asked with a radiant smile at her husband.
    "It did, indeed."
    Tira fielded a few more comments about her withdrawal from the social scene, and then they were on their way to the
checkout stand. She deliberately held back
until they left, to avoid any more conversation.
They were a lovely couple, and she was fond of Corrigan, but he reminded her too much of Simon.
    In the following weeks, she signed up for a refresher
sculpting course at her local community college,
a course for no credit since she already had a
degree. In no time, she was sculpting recogniz able busts.
    "You've got a gift for this," her instructor
murmured as he walked around a fired head of her
favorite movie star. "There's money in this
sort of thing, you know. Big money."
    She almost groaned aloud. How could she tell this dear
man that she had too much money already? She only
smiled and thanked him for the compliment.
    But he put her sculpture in a showing of his students'
work. It was seen by a local art gallery owner,
who tracked Tira down and offered her an exclusive showing. She tried to dissuade him, but the offer was all too flattering to turn down. She
agreed, with the priviso that the proceeds would go to an outreach program from
the local hospital that worked in indigent neighborhoods.
    After that, there was no stopping her.
She spent hours at the

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    Beloved
    Diana Palmer
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task, building the strength in her hands and attuning her focus to more
detailed pieces.
    It wasn't until she finished one of Simon that she even
realized she'd been sculpting him. She stared at it with contained fury and was just about to bring both fists down on top of it when
the doorbell rang.
    Irritated at the interruption, she tossed a cloth over
the work in progress and went to answer it, wiping
the clay from her hands on the way. Her
hair was in a neat bun, to keep it from becoming clotted with
clay, but her pink smock was liberally smeared with it. She looked a total mess, without makeup, even without shoes, wearing faded jeans and a knit top.
    She opened the door without questioning who her visitor
might be, and froze in place when Simon came into
view on the porch. She noticed that he was wearing the
prosthesis he hated so much, and she noted with
interest that the hand at the end of it looked amazingly real.
    She lifted her eyes to his, but her face