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Syrie stared at her reflection in the mirror a moment longer before heading back into her bedroom and straight to the closet. Though both Ellen and Rosella had assured her the plaid miniskirt and white boots were perfect for the party, she just couldn’t make herself walk down those stairs wearing this outfit.

The young man from work she’d invited to the party had been acting strange enough since she’d extended the invitation. Some little voice in the back of her head told her that this particular outfit would definitely be sending the wrong message when he arrived, and that was a complication she could do without.

She slipped out of the tiny scrap of material and chose instead a pair of white pants with large, flowing legs. Perhaps not as festive as the skirt, but they made her feel much better about herself.

After one last check in the mirror, she headed downstairs to find Ellen waiting in the living room.

“What happened to the skirt and boots? You looked so good in them.”

“The boots are here,” Syrie said, lifting the hem of one pant leg. “The skirt just didn’t feel right for today.”

“You’re such a prude,” Ellen said, her grin taking any sting from the words. “But I do understand. You have to do what feels right for you. I would want nothing else.”

“Looks like our first arrivals are here,” Rosella said from her spot at the window. “Three cars all coming at once. But not my guys yet.” She turned from the window, chewing her bottom lip. “I’m so nervous about you guys meeting my cousin. How dumb is that?”

“Pretty dumb,” Ellen agreed. “Syrie, you get the door. Rosie, you hit the music. I’m going to start bringing the munchies out to the table.”

Syrie glanced out the window at the laughing people heading up their sidewalk. Most were people she’d met only once or twice. A few were totally new faces. Only one was someone she saw every day.

The guest she’d invited stood away from the others, at the curb, waiting.

Though his chin thrust out in his usual belligerent manner, Syrie saw more in his stance. Uncertainty? Definitely. Fear? Most likely. Her coworker broadcast a swagger, an indifference that never quite reached his eyes. It was these complex layers that had first drawn her attention to Gino Williams. Clearly, he was a man in need of a friend. And she was determined to be that friend, no matter how difficult he made it for her.

At this moment, how difficult he was making it was all too plain. He’d dressed in the most outlandish, garish clothing she could imagine. A tight, long-sleeved shirt adorned with a pattern of huge flowers in eye-piercingly unnatural shades of pink, green and yellow. The legs of his pants rivaled hers in their width, and in his bushy hair he’d stuck something that, from this distance, appeared to be a small leaf rake.

With a long-suffering sigh, she opened the door to greet their guests, and then made her way down the sidewalk to the spot where Eugene waited.

“Aren’t you coming in?” she asked when she reached his side.

Eugene’s mask of indifference slipped for a second as he turned wounded eyes in her direction. “Why did you ask me here? I saw those other people. You and I both know I’m not going to fit in with this crowd.”

“I asked you because I’m your friend,” she answered immediately. “And I want you to meet my friends. Come on.”

Looping her arm through his, she urged him forward toward the lovely old house she’d come to think of as home. As they stepped inside the door, she spotted Ellen and Rosella, and led her guest in their direction.

“Ellen, Rosella, this is the young man I told you about, Eugene—”

“Whoa, little mama,” her guest interrupted, his public face and loud, aggressive manner securely back in place like a suit of armor. “It’s Gino. Gino Williams.”

“Gino,” she repeated, adding emphasis to the name. How careless of her! She should have remembered how upset he’d become when their shift supervisor at the restaurant had used his real name.

“Eugene is a bummer, baby,” he told her as they walked away, his voice little more than an uncharacteristic whisper. “Totally brings me down.”

“Why is that?” she asked, sincerely at a loss to understand his dislike of his own name.

Once again, Gino lowered his defenses, allowing her to see behind the mask he wore. What she saw in his eyes was raw emotion.

“Because Gino is one cool badass. But Eugene? Eugene is some science-loving square.”

Again he’d lost her.

“But why do you want to be a badass?” She rolled the unfamiliar word off her tongue, having only a vague sense of what he meant in its use. “You told me you were studying science, didn’t you? I thought it was something you really enjoyed.”

For a fact, the one time she’d gotten him to open up about his studies, he’d gone on for longer than she’d ever heard him speak, on a topic about which she could understand only a little.

“Most people aren’t like you, Syrie. They don’t accept me in the way you do.” He shook his head and stared out the window. “There are maybe seven others like me at this university. Eight tops. I’ve learned that people respect what they understand and fear what they don’t. For the most part, they leave alone those they either respect or fear. I earned my way in here by working hard for grades, but people out in the world don’t have much respect for brains. So, if I can’t have their respect, I’ll settle for their fear. Whatever gets them to leave me alone.”

“But you don’t want to be left alone, really,” she said, as perplexed as ever. “You want friends. That’s why you agreed to come with me today, isn’t it?”

“You are one crazy-assed little white mama, for sure. With one rose-colored view of the world. That’s a fact.”

The man seemed obsessed with asses.

“As far as I know, I am mother to no one,” she said. “Little or otherwise.”

Gino’s laughter was authentic, but his emotional mask was back in place and Syrie doubted she’d have another opportunity to see on the other side of it any time soon.

It was a discussion Syrie wanted to continue anyway, to try to understand this odd man. But Rosella called out her name, and when she turned in her friend’s direction, all thoughts of her curiosity to learn more about what motivated Gino fled her mind.

Rosella stood just inside the front door, her hand clasped within the grasp of a man who could only be her beloved Clint. That alone, though interesting, wouldn’t have kept Syrie from her pursuit of information about Gino. No. It was the man standing just behind Clint. A stranger. A stranger with eyes so blue they seemed to fix upon Syrie and draw her toward their owner.

“Syrie, I have someone I want you to meet. This is my Clint,” Rosella said, a smile spreading over her face. “And this is Patrick MacDowylt. My cousin. From Scotland. The one I was talking about earlier who’s going to be staying here with us.”

Nothing in the world could have torn her gaze from Patrick’s. Without conscious thought, she lifted her hand and he clasped it within his own, bending his head until his lips brushed lightly against her skin, sending a frisson of electricity tingling up her arm and down her spine.

“Do I know you?” she asked, her voice as breathless as if she’d been running.

He straightened back up to his full height, his gaze keeping her pinned to the spot, her hand still held by his. “I canna say, my lady. Do you know me?”

His voice, deep and smooth, rolled over her like a blanket of soft, fuzzy wool, his accent at once foreign and familiar and completely captivating.

“I don’t…” She paused, words failing her as she continued to stare into his eyes.

“Hey, man,” Gino said, arriving at her side to physically disentangle her hand from Patrick’s grip before casually draping his own arm around her shoulders. “What’s your bag, anyway? You some longhair, draft-dodging peacenik or what?”

“He’s asking what you do,” Clint said quietly as if translating from a foreign language. “He wants to know what your occupation is.”

“My occupation,” Patrick repeated thoughtfully. “I’m a warrior.”

He made the statement as if what he said should have been clear to anyone without their having to ask. For some reason, Syrie wasn’t the least bit surprised.

Gino snorted, a sound unmistakably filled with contempt. “You don’t look like any soldier I ever saw. Not with all that hair. The army buzzes you short, man. They don’t go for that look.”

Her gaze freed with the release of her hand, Syrie allowed herself the luxury of studying Rosella’s cousin. The hair that Gino mentioned was definitely something most people would notice right away.

Right after they were able to get past his eyes, that is.

Long, straight and black, it would likely have hung to the middle of his back if it hadn’t been caught up with a tie at his neck. As it was, his leaning over her hand had brought the whole of it cascading over his shoulder, where it lay now, caressing his chest in a way she found herself wanting to emulate.

“You’ve a piece of something caught in yer hair,” Patrick said, his voice lowered as if he hoped to avoid attracting attention when he spoke to Gino.

“What is with you?” Gino asked, his face crinkled in disbelief. “That’s my comb, man. You don’t know that? You just land on this planet or something?”

“Patrick isn’t from around here.” Clint didn’t make a move physically, but something in his voice made him appear closer, larger than he had a moment before, almost protective of the man standing at his side. “You might be surprised at the differences you can find around the world, if you take the time to look.”

“I don’t find too many real surprises in the world. Or in its people,” Gino replied, his arm tightening on Syrie’s shoulder.

“I should introduce my friend,” Syrie began, hoping to fill the uncomfortable silence that followed the initial exchange. “Gino Williams.”

“Nice to meet you, Gino. This is Clint Coryell and Patrick MacDowylt,” Rosella said, finishing the introduction as she lifted a hand to indicate each man. “Syrie told us that you work with her and that you’re a student at the university. Clint’s also going to school there.”

“You at one of the houses on campus?” Gino asked.

“Could you help me in the kitchen, Syrie?” Ellen leaned in close to ask her question, having arrived silently sometime during the earlier introductions. “They’re eating us out of house and home over there. Everything needs refilling and I’m short a couple of hands.”

Syrie nodded, reluctant to leave Rosella’s fascinating cousin, but not willing to ignore her friend’s request. She dipped a shoulder to move out of Gino’s grasp and followed her friend.

They’d been in the kitchen pulling containers out of the refrigerator for only a few minutes before Ellen spoke again.

“I have to admit, Syrie, I’m a little surprised you’d bring someone like Gino to the party as your date,” Ellen said, arching her eyebrow as she spoke. “He’s not at all what I expected.”

“Why is that?” Syrie asked. “Because his skin is a different color?”

It was something she had heard Gino claim repeatedly after confrontations at the restaurant. Though she hadn’t noticed it, apparently people always judged him differently because of his skin color.

“Not at all,” Ellen denied quickly before she paused, tipping her head to one side as if lost in thought for a second. “Okay, if I’m being completely honest, that might play a small part in my surprise. But only a small part. I don’t really care about that. Mostly I question him being your choice because he’s so loud and confrontational. It’s as if he’s daring us not to like him. Those are not at all the traits I’d expect to see in a man you’d end up romantically involved with.”

“Romantically involved?” Syrie echoed. “I have no romantic feelings for Gino. For a fact, I’ve not met a single man since my arrival here to whom I feel the least bit of physical attraction.”

There’d been no one. Not one single man who left her as weak-kneed and wanting as the mystery man in her dream. A mystery man whose face she couldn’t even recall.

With the possible exception of the man who she’d just met, Rosella’s cousin.

Ellen stopped piling little pastries on the platter and turned toward her, a confused expression wrinkling her brow.

“Then why on Earth would you ask that man to be your date for our party?”

“Because you told me to ask someone I was interested in and, without a doubt, Gino is the most interesting person I’ve met here. From his manner of speech and the way he dresses, right down to the way he thinks. Though I’m continually at a loss to understand his perspective or reasoning, I never tire of watching and wondering what he’ll do next. He is quite interesting. Don’t you think so?”

Ellen stared at her for a moment longer, her expression one of a woman examining a never-before-seen insect on her counter. After a moment longer, she began to chuckle, finally turning back to the business of filling the platter.

“What is so funny?” Syrie asked, not at all sure she was comfortable with her friend’s reaction.

“Oh, Syrie. I keep forgetting that your understanding of the words I say to you is frequently nowhere close to what I meant when I uttered those words.” Ellen sighed and handed the now-filled platter to Syrie. “And I still find it surprising that you’d be interested in a character like Gino simply because he behaves so differently from everyone else.”

Syrie accepted the platter and started to leave but stopped. For some odd reason it was important to her that her friend understand.

“It’s not just that his behavior is different. He’s struggling to find his place in the world, much as I am. There’s something about him, Ellen. Something I see deep in his eyes. It’s almost as if I’ve known him before.”

Though she knew her reasoning sounded foolish, she wasn’t at all prepared for her friend’s shocked response.

Ellen gasped, her fingers flying to cover her lips as her eyes rounded. “Are you remembering things? Remembering him? Can he tell you anything about your old life? About who you really are?”

“No, I didn’t mean…” Syrie stopped speaking, shaking her head as she realized her mistake. “When I said I feel as though I’ve known him before, I didn’t mean that as if it were a returned memory. It’s more like he houses a familiar soul. A soul I’ve known in another lifetime.”

“Oh,” Ellen said, confusion coloring her expression. “In another lifetime, you say. Let me make sure I understand. You’re not talking about this particular lifetime, the one where you can’t remember anything but your name. Not this one here and now, but some other lifetime.” She shook her head, a little frown wrinkling her face. “Have you thought about how, since you can’t remember anything from before Danny found you, you can be so sure about that? I mean, maybe you did actually know this guy and that’s why he feels so familiar to you.”

“It’s not that kind of familiar.”

Not at all the kind of familiarity she felt when she’d been introduced to Rosella’s cousin. Being in his presence felt like coming home.

“Then what kind of familiar are you talking—”

Ellen’s questioning was cut short by a scream and angry shouts from the other room.

“And that’s without serving even a single drop of alcohol yet,” Ellen muttered as they both headed out toward the noise.

* * *

Patrick didn’t like this man, this friend of Syrie’s. Not one little bit. From the challenge of his jutting jaw to the possessive manner in which he draped his arm around Syrie’s shoulders, nothing about this Gino was endearing.

“Be cool,” Clint had whispered when the oaf had pulled Syrie’s hand from his. “Fit in.”

Fit in. Go with the flow. Do as you’re told.

All the advice Clint had given him for the past few hours warred in Patrick’s head with his instant and intense dislike for the man in front of him.

“You at one of the houses on campus?” Gino asked.

“I am,” Clint answered. “ROTC,” he finished, a note of challenge in his tone.

“Figures,” Gino said. “You hawks all stick together. But you know what I always say?”

Patrick didn’t particularly care what this Gino had to say. He only cared that Syrie had slipped away from the man’s grasp and followed another woman out of the room.

“I say make love, not war,” Gino said.

As Gino lifted two fingers into the air, Patrick turned his full attention on the man, fighting an unreasonable need to plant his fist in Gino’s face. Perhaps not so unreasonable, in truth. The idea of this man with the strange comb stuck in his hair making love to Syrie was beyond unacceptable. Jealousy was a reasonable emotion. Not an attractive emotion, but completely reasonable and distinctly difficult to control.

“Fit in,” Clint hissed under his breath, apparently sensing the emotions that flowed through Patrick. “Just go with it.”

Patrick clenched his hands into tight fists and pressed them against his thighs to stave off the act that was his first and strongest instinct.

“You got something to say to me, warrior man?” Gino asked, moving closer. “I’m all ears. Sock it to me, man. I can handle it.”

Sock it to him? He obviously wasn’t talking about footwear, so it must be the other meaning. Although why someone would ask to be hit was beyond Patrick’s ability to reason. Also beyond his ability to care. It was what Syrie’s friend had asked him to do.

“Go with the flow,” Patrick said as his fist shot out to connect with Gino’s chin.

The world around them broke into a frenzy of squeals and activity as the young man’s eyes rounded before rolling up in his head. By the time his body hit the floor, Clint had pushed Rosella behind him and it seemed as if everyone in the room was shouting at him. And then, as if she’d appeared by Magic, Syrie was there, dropping to her knees at Gino’s side.

“Why would you do such a thing to the Dark Elf?” she demanded as she glared up at him, sounding so much like her old self, he was sure for an instant that her memory had returned. “Unarmed as he is, he’s obviously of little danger to you. You know they’re completely harmless in this realm.”

She froze the moment the words were out of her mouth, as if she’d just heard what she said and was momentarily stunned to silence.

Gino, on the other hand, had plenty to say.

“Dark Elf?” he asked, rolling up to sit while rubbing his jaw. “What kind of racist bullshit is that?”

Syrie reached out to help him, but he pushed her hands away and stood up on his own.

“I didn’t mean—” she began, but he cut her off.

“I think we all know what you meant. I do, anyway. Dark Elf, my ass. It’s been real, baby, but I’m outta here.”

Gino pushed through the people who had gathered around him and stormed out the door. From her spot on the floor, Syrie glared up at Patrick.

“This is all your fault,” she accused.

“I only did as he asked of me,” Patrick said, hoping to allay her obvious anger.

Her memory might be gone, but he sincerely doubted she’d lost her famously quick temper.

“I’m not having any bit of that garbage. You’re to blame and you know it.” She rose to her feet and strode toward him, stopping only when she was mere inches away. “You overgrown barbarian!” She punctuated each of her words with her index finger, poking it into his chest. “Your solution is always to use brawn first and brains later.”

Just like old times.

Only it wasn’t old times.

As if she’d caught herself again behaving in a way she simply couldn’t explain, Syrie turned and ran from him, disappearing up the staircase at the far end of the room.

“Hardly a normal, everyday little party scene,” Ellen said, her gaze traveling from Rosella to Patrick and back again. “I’m open to any and all explanations you’d care to give. The sooner the better, I’d say.”

“There might have been a thing or two I neglected to mention when we spoke about Patrick this morning,” Rosella said meekly, reaching for the other woman’s hand and leading her off in the direction of the kitchen. “Maybe I should fill you in on all of it.”

“What the hell was that all about?” Clint asked when people had drifted away from them. “Decking that guy like that. I thought we’d agreed you’d try to fit in.”

Patrick shook his head, confused by much that had just transpired. “You said I should follow along with what was asked of me, aye? He asked me to sock him and I did. I canna for the life of me understand why everyone would be so upset when I only did as the man himself asked me to do.”

Though he would be the first to admit, it had felt damn satisfying to do it.

Clint rubbed a hand over his face, a deep sigh coming from beneath the hand. “Well, I’ll say this much for you, Patrick. Completing your quest is in no way going to be a walk in the park. My Rosie has her work cut out for her.”

Indeed, she did. And as for the task that lay ahead of him, Patrick suspected that he’d gotten off to a very bad start.