Gerald surveyed the parking lot, like a man discovering he'd stepped in animal waste. My God!  There was even a school bus parked amid the ocean of mini vans. When he'd decided to go along with Kim's game, he'd envisioned a more intimate destination. What the hell were they doing at a zoo?

     Kim took him by thee hand as if she could read his thoughts. "Would you just trust me?" she said.

     He shook his head. Every man had his limits and he could think of a hundred places more appropriate for what he had in mind. "I'm not in the mood for crowds and small children." Her choice of entertainment highlighted the differences between them and he wondered again if they both wouldn't be better off if he ended the day now.

     She tugged on his hand until he looked down at her. The stubborn expression was back on her face. "I won and this is where I choose to go. So, it up," she daid in a direct challenge.

     He straightened, an involuntary response to her tone, eyebrows shooting upward to his hairline and almost laughed but caught himself at the last second. She didn't always appreciate his humor.

     "Yes, ma'am," he joked and tucked her against his side, under his arm. Whenever he thought he had her figured out, she surprised him. It was becoming impossible to imagine himself with the perfectly groomed, nauseatingly dull, arm candy he usually went for. If just a piece of her daring nature spilled into her lovemaking, he wasn't sure he'd be able to let her leave in the morning.

     "Come on." She pulled him into a forward motion toward the entrance, not quite shaking him free of the images he'd thought of exactly how he was going to enjoy her that evening.

     After graciously allowing him to pay for their admission, she escorted him with a purposeful stride past small furred creatures he didn't have time to catch the name of. They breezed by a tortoise, some large caged birds, and, thankfully, the petting zoo. Her pace bagan to slow as they passed the plain area.

      They came to a stop before a double-gated enclosure labeled, "Deer Forest."  She pulled out several coins and a small plastic bag from her purse and beagn filling the bag with corn kernels from a dispenser.

     "For the right price, I bet they'd let us fee the lions," he suggested, seeing nothing tempting about her choice.

     "I'm sure they would," she said, pushing the first of the two gates open and passing through the second without waiting to see if he follwed her, which, of course, he did.

     About ten feet inside the enclosure, she stopped walking and waited for him to join her. Her eyes held a bit of a dreamy expression as she pointed to the area around her. "This is one of my favorite places to come when I need to think."

     Thinking was the last thing he wanted to do, but something about her love of these woods drew him. They walked in unison deeper into the park at a slow, comfortable pace.

      She sat down on a wooden bench, slightly off the main path. He sat beside her, completely at a loss for why she had brought him here. Their earlier passion way was put on a pause. She didn't say anything at first, so nor did he. For a man who continually, almost compulsively, charged ahead, he was amazed by the comfort he found in their shared silence and inactivity.

      Despite the fact that thry were both fully dressed and separated by a few inches, he had never felt closer to a woman. That this feeling of intimacy could come before scared him. She was supposed to be a distraction; enjoyable but brief. She wasn't supposed to make him wonder how he was going to return to his normal life without her and if returning there was what he really wanted to do at all.

     In the shades of the trees, he studied her content profile. Her makeup had begun to smudge. The hard work of her stylist was losing ground to her hair's natural curl. She sensed his scrunity and peered back at him from beneath her long eyelashes. He'd never seen anyone more beautiful, but wasn't the the type of man to spout flowery words. He settled for laying his hand lightly over hers on the bench.

     Their peace was broken by a wave of visitors who passed through the forest at breakneck speed; obviously thinking like he had that this was the least impressive part of the zoo. After the intrusion, Gerald was uncomfortable just sitting there and mooning over Kim like a boy stricken with his first crush.

     He said, "I don't see any deer. What are we doing here?"

     "Waiting," she said. "The deer will come."

     "Shouldn't you call them or something?" Gerald asked.

     Her warm brown eyes crinckled with amusement as she smiled up at him. "They wouldn't come if I call. That's what is amazing about this place. You can't force a deer to come to you. You can chase chase it, corner it, make all the threats you'd like, but a deer won't come until it wants to."

     And then it dawned on him. "If this is your attempt at an analogy between my sister and there timid creatures, you obviously missed her claws."

     Kim opened the bag of kernels and threw on the ground aound them. "I'm a good judge of people. Your sister was scared."

     He scoffed at that. "Pissed is more like it. Don't think you know her from one brief meeting. She's not a little deer who is going to come running just because I toss some corn down."

     "Why did come back to Manila?"

     Her question threw him He'd come back bacause Luke had implied that his sister's welfare depended on his presence at the reading. He'd thought that perhaps this time she'd see the reason and finally take his offer of money; therefore escaping whatever web of control his father had spun.

     Kim continued her cross examination. "You said you don't care about the money, so you came back for your sister."

     This woman saw too much.

     "A lot of good that did," he ground out. "Do these deer throw the corn right back in your face as my darling sister tosses any of my offers of assistance?"

     Kim didn't seem put off by his anger. "Maybe you've never made her the right offer."

     Ha, if only that were true. I've repeatedly offered to help her financially. You heard her. She doesn't want anything from me."

     "All I heard her say is that she didn't want your money."

     "And that I'm a lousy brother." Gerald added with self-disgust.

     "No, that maybe what you heared, but that's not what she was saying." Kim's confidence was grating.

     "And after meeting her once, you know her so well?"

     "After a lifetime of being a brother, do you know her at all?" she challenged. "I'm not saying I have all the answers, but my sister and I had a similarly strained relationship for years."

     Gerald remebered what he'd read in Kim's profile. She'd practically raised her sister. Their situations were nothing alike. "You and your sister still live together. You seem to be cloe. It's not the same at all. I haven't had a real converstation with my sister in years."

     Kim turned her hand under his to give him a supportive squeeze. "Neither had I, until last night. Sure, we lived together, but that just made it worse. I got to see up close and everyday how distant we had become."

     "And all of that changed last night?" He raised a doubting eyebrow.

     Kim's expression grew wistful. "We reconnected. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's better now - so much better. You and your sister could find that, too. Lara just needs time and maybe a softening in your approach."