For a long moment, the doorway was empty. And then Shawn saw a flash of chrome and he relaxed again. There was a wheelchair coming up the ramp, carrying a woman who looked like she was born when her father was still fighting in the trenches of the Western Front. That was why the gate agent had rushed in-after all the walking passengers had gotten off the plane, he’d brought down a wheelchair for her.

Fighting the urge to whistle a merry tune, Shawn headed down the terminal toward his own homeward gate. If it hadn’t been for the bakery case at the Emporio Rulli Gran Caffe, he might have made it back to Santa Barbara in the same good mood.

But as he passed the case his feet came to an involuntary stop. It wasn’t that he was hungry. The first lunch had left him full, and the second had had to squeeze into whatever room remained in the odd corners of his stomach. But when he approached the cafe, it was as if he’d been hit by a tractor beam.

As far as he could tell, the beam was emanating from a slice of cake the label called “Honore” and described as allbutter puff pastry with Italian pastry cream filling, layered with sponge cake brushed with rum, decorated with chocolate whipped cream and pastry cream and pastry cream- filled cream puffs.

Shawn would be ill if he ate another bite, and while something as spectacular as the Honore might have been worth a spot of nausea, he didn’t want to spend his flight home in one of those tiny airplane lavatories.

Mustering all the strength in his body, Shawn stopped his foot midstride as it was about to take another step toward the bakery case. Then he commanded it to turn ninety degrees back toward the way he had come. Pressing his eyelids shut, he brought his other foot around and when he opened his eyes again the cafe was gone from his sight.