Nobody does romance—or mystery—like New York Times Bestselling Author Nora Roberts…

An isolated adventure in the Catskills leads to unexpected romance. A Hollywood agent is left reeling when the director she’s working with will stop at nothing to uncover her secrets. A dive shop owner’s life in Cozumel is forever changed when her murdered tenant’s brother storms into town with revenge in his heart. A woman falls for an enigmatic stranger, even as her suspicions about his true identity grow. An inherited map to sunken treasure brings romance and peril to an island paradise.

This full collection of captivating beach reads has never been more travel-ready.

A WILL AND A WAY

MIND OVER MATTER

RISKY BUSINESS

THE ART OF DECEPTION

TREASURES LOST, TREASURES FOUND

Five classic tales of romance and intrigue, all for one great price.

Mystery Box Set

A Will and a Way

Mind Over Matter

Risky Business

The Art of Deception

Treasures Lost, Treasures Found

Nora Roberts

Table of Contents

A Will and a Way

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Mind Over Matter

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

Risky Business

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

The Art of Deception

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Treasures Lost, Treasures Found

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

A Will and a Way

Nora Roberts

Chapter One

One hundred fifty million dollars was nothing to sneeze at. No one in the vast, echoing library of Jolley’s Folley would have dared. Except Pandora. She did so with more enthusiasm than delicacy into a tattered tissue. After blowing her nose, she sat back, wishing the antihistamine she had taken would live up to its promise of fast relief. She wished she’d never caught the wretched cold in the first place. More, she wished she were anywhere else in the world.

Surrounding her were dozens of books she’d read and hundreds more she’d never given a thought to, though she’d spent hours and hours in the library. The scent of the leather-bound volumes mixed with the lighter, homier scent of dust. Pandora preferred either to the strangling fragrance of lilies that filled three stocky vases.

In one corner of the room was a marble-and-ivory chess set, where she’d lost a great many highly disputed matches. Uncle Jolley, bless his round, innocent face and pudgy fingers, had been a compulsive and skilled cheat. Pandora had never taken a loss in stride. Maybe that’s why he’d so loved to beat her, by fair means or foul.

Through the three arching windows the light shone dull and a little gloomy. It suited her mood and, she thought, the proceedings. Uncle Jolley had loved to set scenes.

When she loved—and she felt this emotion for a select few who’d touched her life—she put everything she had into it. She’d been born with boundless energy. She’d developed iron-jawed stubbornness. She’d loved Uncle Jolley in her uninhibited, expansive fashion, acknowledging then accepting all of his oddites. He might have been ninety-three, but he’d never been dull or fussy.

A month before his death, they’d gone fishing—poaching actually—in the lake that was owned and stocked by his neighbor. When they’d caught more than they could eat, they’d sent a half-dozen trout back to the owner, cleaned and chilled.

She was going to miss Uncle Jolley with his round cherub’s face, high, melodious voice and wicked humors. From his ten-foot, extravagantly framed portrait, he looked down at her with the same little smirk he’d worn whether he’d been making a million-dollar merger or handing an unsuspecting vice-president a drink in a dribble glass. She missed him already. No one else in her far-flung, contrasting family understood and accepted her with the same ease. It had been one more reason she’d adored him.

Miserable with grief, aggravated by a head cold, Pandora listened to Edmund Fitzhugh drone on, and on, with the preliminary technicalities of Uncle Jolley’s will. Maximillian Jolley McVie had never been one for brevity. He’d always said if you were going to do something, do it until the steam ran out. His last will and testament bore his style.

Not bothering to hide her disinterest in the proceedings, Pandora took a comprehensive survey of the other occupants of the library.

To have called them mourners would have been just the sort of bad joke Jolley would have appreciated.

There was Jolley’s only surviving son, Uncle Carlson, and his wife. What was her name? Lona—Mona? Did it matter? Pandora saw them sitting stiff backed and alert in matching shades of black. They made her think of crows on a telephone wire just waiting for something to fall at their feet.

Cousin Ginger—sweet and pretty and harmless, if rather vacuous. Her hair was Jean Harlow blond this month. Good old Cousin Biff was there in his black Brooks Brothers suit. He sat back, one leg crossed over the other as if he were watching a polo match. Pandora was certain he wasn’t missing a word. His wife—was it Laurie?—had a prim, respectful look on her face. From experience, Pandora knew she wouldn’t utter a word unless it were to echo Biff. Uncle Jolley had called her a silly, boring fool. Hating to be cynical, Pandora had to agree.

There was Uncle Monroe looking plump and successful and smoking a big cigar despite the fact that his sister, Patience, waved a little white handkerchief in front of her nose. Probably because of it, Pandora corrected. Uncle Monroe liked nothing better than to make his ineffectual sister uncomfortable.

Cousin Hank looked macho and muscular, but hardly more than his tough athletic wife, Meg. They’d hiked the Appalachian Trail on their honeymoon. Uncle Jolley had wondered if they stretched and limbered up before lovemaking.

The thought caused Pandora to giggle. She stifled it halfheartedly with the tissue just before her gaze wandered over to cousin Michael. Or was it second cousin Michael? She’d never been able to get the technical business straight. It seemed a bit foolish when you weren’t talking blood relation anyway. His mother had been Uncle Jolley’s niece by Jolley’s son’s second marriage. It was a complicated state of affairs, Pandora thought. But then Michael Donahue was a complicated man.

They’d never gotten along, though she knew Uncle Jolley had favored him. As far as Pandora was concerned, anyone who made his living writing a silly television series that kept people glued to a box rather than doing something worthwhile was a materialistic parasite. She had a momentary flash of pleasure as she remembered telling him just that.

Then, of course, there were the women. When a man dated centerfolds and showgirls it was obvious he wasn’t interested in intellectual stimulation. Pandora smiled as she recalled stating her view quite clearly the last time Michael had visited Jolley’s Folley. Uncle Jolley had nearly fallen off his chair laughing.

Then her smile faded. Uncle Jolley was gone. And if she was honest, which she was often, she’d admit that of all the people in the room at that moment, Michael Donahue had cared for and enjoyed the old man more than anyone but herself.

You’d hardly know that to look at him now, she mused. He looked disinterested and slightly arrogant. She noticed the set, grim line around his lips. Pandora had always considered Donahue’s mouth his best feature, though he rarely smiled at her unless it was to bare his teeth and snarl.

Uncle Jolley had liked his looks, and had told Pandora so in his early stages of matchmaking. A hobby she’d made sure he’d given up quickly. Well, he hadn’t given it up precisely, but she’d ignored it all the same.

Being rather short and round himself, perhaps Jolley had appreciated Donahue’s long lean frame, and the narrow intense face. Pandora might have liked it herself, except that Michael’s eyes were often distant and detached.

At the moment he looked like one of the heroes in the action series he wrote—leaning negligently against the wall and looking just a bit out of place in the tidy suit and tie. His dark hair was casual and not altogether neat, as though he hadn’t thought to comb it into place after riding with the top down. He looked bored and ready for action. Any action.

It was too bad, Pandora thought, that they didn’t get along better. She’d have liked to have reminisced with someone about Uncle Jolley, someone who appreciated his whimsies as she had.

There was no use thinking along those lines. If they’d elected to sit together, they’d have been picking little pieces out of each other by now. Uncle Jolley, smirking down from his portrait, knew it very well.

With a half sigh she blew her nose again and tried to listen to Fitzhugh. There was something about a bequest to whales. Or maybe it was whalers.

Another hour of this, Michael thought, and he’d be ready to chew raw meat. If he heard one more whereas… On a long breath, Michael drew himself in. He was here for the duration because he’d loved the crazy old man. If the last thing he could do for Jolley was to stand in a room with a group of human vultures and listen to long rambling legalese, then he’d do it. Once it was over, he’d pour himself a long shot of brandy and toast the old man in private. Jolley had had a fondness for brandy.

When Michael had been young and full of imagination and his parents hadn’t understood, Uncle Jolley had listened to him ramble, encouraged him to dream. Invariably on a visit to the Folley, his uncle had demanded a story then had settled himself back, bright-eyed and eager, while Michael wove on. Michael hadn’t forgotten.

When he’d received his first Emmy for Logan’s Run, Michael had flown from L.A. to the Catskills and had given the statuette to his uncle. The Emmy was still in the old man’s bedroom, even if the old man wasn’t.

Michael listened to the dry impersonal attorney’s voice and wished for a cigarette. He’d only given them up two days before. Two days, four hours and thirty-five minutes. He’d have welcomed the raw meat.

He felt stifled in the room with all these people. Every one of them had thought old Jolley was half-mad and a bit of a nuisance. The one hundred fifty-million-dollar estate was different. Stocks and bonds were extremely sane. Michael had seen several assessing glances roaming over the library furniture. Big, ornate Georgian might not suit some of the streamlined life-styles, but it would liquidate into very tidy cash. The old man, Michael knew, had loved every clunky chair and oversize table in the house.

He doubted if any of them had been to the big echoing house in the past ten years. Except for Pandora, he admitted grudgingly. She might be an annoyance, but she’d adored Jolley.

At the moment she looked miserable. Michael didn’t believe he’d ever seen her look unhappy before—furious, disdainful, infuriating, but never unhappy. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have gone to sit beside her, offer some comfort, hold her hand. She’d probably chomp it off at the wrist.

Still, her shockingly blue eyes were red and puffy. Almost as red as her hair, he mused, as his gaze skimmed over the wild curly mane that tumbled, with little attention to discipline or style, around her shoulders. She was so pale that the sprinkling of freckles over her nose stood out. Normally her ivory-toned skin had a hint of rose in it—health or temperament, he’d never been sure.

Sitting among her solemn, black-clad family, she stood out like a parrot among crows. She’d worn a vivid blue dress. Michael approved of it, though he’d never say so to Pandora. She didn’t need black and crepe and lilies to mourn. That he understood, if he didn’t understand her.

She annoyed him, periodically, with her views on his life-style and career. When they clashed, it didn’t take long for him to hurl criticism back at her. After all, she was a bright, talented woman who was content to play around making outrageous jewelry for boutiques rather than taking advantage of her Master’s degree in education.

She called him materialistic, he called her idealistic. She labeled him a chauvinist, he labeled her a pseudo-intellectual. Jolley had sat with his hands folded and chuckled every time they argued. Now that he was gone, Michael mused, there wouldn’t be an opportunity for any more battles. Oddly enough, he found it another reason to miss his uncle.

The truth was, he’d never felt any strong family ties to anyone but Jolley. Michael didn’t think of his parents very often. His father was somewhere in Europe with his fourth wife, and his mother had settled placidly into Palm Springs society with husband number three. They’d never understood their son who’d opted to work for a living in something as bourgeois as television.

But Jolley had understood and appreciated. More, much more important to Michael, he’d enjoyed Michael’s work.

A grin spread over his face when he heard Fitzhugh drone out the bequest for whales. It was so typically Jolley. Several impatient relations hissed through their teeth. A hundred fifty thousand dollars had just spun out of their reach. Michael glanced up at the larger-than-life-size portrait of his uncle. You always said you’d have the last word, you old fool. The only trouble is you’re not here to laugh about it.

“To my son, Carlson…” All the quiet muttering and whispers died as Fitzhugh cleared his throat. Without much interest Pandora watched her relatives come to attention. The charities and servants had their bequests. Now it was time for the big guns. Fitzhugh glanced up briefly before he continued. “Whose—aaah—mediocrity was always a mystery to me, I leave my entire collection of magic tricks in hopes he can develop a sense of the ridiculous.”

Pandora choked into her tissue and watched her uncle turn beet red. First point Uncle Jolley, she thought and prepared to enjoy herself. Maybe he’d left the whole business to the A.S.P.C.A.

“To my grandson, Bradley, and my granddaughter by marriage, Lorraine, I leave my very best wishes. They need nothing more.”

Pandora swallowed and blinked back tears at the reference to her parents. She’d call them in Zanzibar that evening. They would appreciate the sentiment even as she did.

“To my nephew Monroe who has the first dollar he ever made, I leave the last dollar I made, frame included. To my niece, Patience, I leave my cottage in Key West without much hope she’ll have the gumption to use it.”

Monroe chomped on his cigar while Patience looked horrified.

“To my grand-nephew, Biff, I leave my collection of matches, with the hopes that he will, at last, set the world on fire. To my pretty grand-niece, Ginger, who likes equally pretty things, I leave the sterling silver mirror purported to have been owned by Marie Antoinette. To my grand-nephew, Hank, I leave the sum of 3528. Enough, I believe, for a lifetime supply of wheat germ.”

The grumbles that had begun with the first bequest continued and grew. Anger hovered on the edge of outrage. Jolley would have liked nothing better. Pandora made the mistake of glancing over at Michael. He didn’t seem so distant and detached now, but full of admiration. When their gazes met, the giggle she’d been holding back spilled out. It earned her several glares.

Carlson rose, giving new meaning to the phrase controlled outrage. “Mr. Fitzhugh, my father’s will is nothing more than a mockery. It’s quite obvious that he wasn’t in his right mind when he made it, nor do I have any doubt that a court will overturn it.”

“Mr. McVie.” Again Fitzhugh cleared his throat. The sun began to push its way through the clouds but no one seemed to notice. “I understand perfectly your sentiments in this matter. However, my client was perfectly well and lucid when this will was drawn. He may have worded it against my advice, but it is legal and binding. You are, of course, free to consult with your own counsel. Meanwhile, there’s more to be read.”

“Hogwash.” Monroe puffed on his cigar and glared at everyone. “Hogwash,” he repeated while Patience patted his arm and chirped ineffectually.

“Uncle Jolley liked hogwash,” Pandora said as she balled her tissue. She was ready to face them down, almost hoped she’d have to. It would take her mind off her grief. “If he wanted to leave his money to the Society for the Prevention of Stupidity, it was his right.”

“Easily said, my dear.” Biff polished his nails on his lapel. The gold band of his watch caught a bit of the sun and gleamed. “Perhaps the old lunatic left you a ball of twine so you can string more beads.”

“You haven’t got the matches yet, old boy.” Michael spoke lazily from his corner, but every eye turned his way. “Careful what you light.”

“Let him read, why don’t you?” Ginger piped up, quite pleased with her bequest. Marie Antoinette, she mused. Just imagine.

“The last two bequests are joint,” Fitzhugh began before there could be another interruption. “And, a bit unorthodox.”

“The entire document’s unorthodox,” Carlson tossed out, then harrumphed. Several heads nodded in agreement.

Pandora remembered why she always avoided family gatherings. They bored her to death. Quite deliberately, she waved a hand in front of her mouth and yawned. “Could we have the rest, Mr. Fitzhugh, before my family embarrasses themselves any further?”

She thought, but couldn’t be sure, that she saw a quick light of approval in the fusty attorney’s eyes. “Mr. McVie wrote this portion in his own words.” He paused a moment, either for effect or courage. “To Pandora McVie and Michael Donahue,” Fitzhugh read. “The two members of my family who have given me the most pleasure with their outlook on life, their enjoyment of an old man and old jokes, I leave the rest of my estate, in entirety, all accounts, all business interests, all stocks, bonds and trusts, all real and personal property, with all affection. Share and share alike.”

Pandora didn’t hear the half-dozen objections that sprang out. She rose, stunned and infuriated. “I can’t take his money.” Towering over the family who sat around her, she strode straight up to Fitzhugh. The lawyer, who’d anticipated attacks from other areas, braced for the unexpected. “I wouldn’t know what to do with it. It’d just clutter up my life.” She waved a hand at the papers on the desk as if they were a minor annoyance. “He should’ve asked me first.”

“Miss McVie…”

Before the lawyer could speak again, she whirled on Michael. “You can have it all. You’d know what to do with it, after all. Buy a hotel in New York, a condo in L.A., a club in Chicago and a plane to fly you back and forth, I don’t care.”

Deadly calm, Michael slipped his hands in his pockets. “I appreciate the offer, cousin. Before you pull the trigger, why don’t we wait until Mr. Fitzhugh finishes before you embarrass yourself any further?”

She stared at him a moment, nearly nose to nose with him in heels. Then, because she’d been taught to do so at an early age, she took a deep breath and waited for her temper to ebb. “I don’t want his money.”

“You’ve made your point.” He lifted a brow in the cynical, half-amused way that always infuriated her. “You’re fascinating the relatives by the little show you’re putting on.”

Nothing could have made her find control quicker. She angled her chin at him, hissed once, then subsided. “All right then.” She turned and stood her ground. “I apologize for the interruption. Please finish reading, Mr. Fitzhugh.”

The lawyer gave himself a moment by taking off his glasses and polishing them on a big white handkerchief. He’d known when Jolley had made the will the day would come when he’d be forced to face an enraged family. He’d argued with his client about it, cajoled, reasoned, pointed out the absurdities. Then he’d drawn up the will and closed the loopholes.

“I leave all of this,” he continued, “the money, which is a small thing, the stocks and bonds, which are necessary but boring, the business interests, which are interesting weights around the neck. And my home and all in it, which is everything important to me, the memories made there, to Pandora and Michael because they understood and cared. I leave this to them, though it may annoy them, because there is no one else in my family I can leave what is important to me. What was mine is Pandora and Michael’s now, because I know they’ll keep me alive. I ask only one thing of each of them in return.”

Michael’s grip relaxed, and he nearly smiled again. “Here comes the kicker,” he murmured.

“Beginning no more than a week after the reading of this document, Pandora and Michael will move into my home in the Catskills, known as Jolley’s Folley. They will live there together for a period of six months, neither one spending more than two nights in succession under another roof. After this six-month period, the estate reverts to them, entirely and without encumbrance, share and share alike.

“If one does not agree with this provision, or breaks the terms of this provision within the six-month period, the estate, in its entirety will be given over to all my surviving heirs and the Institute for the Study of Carnivorous Plants in joint shares.

“You have my blessing, children. Don’t let an old, dead man down.”

For a full thirty seconds there was silence. Taking advantage of it, Fitzhugh began straightening his papers.

“The old bastard,” Michael murmured. Pandora would’ve taken offense if she hadn’t agreed so completely. Because he judged the temperature in the room to be on the rise, Michael pulled Pandora out, down the hall and into one of the funny little parlors that could be found throughout the house. Just before he closed the door, the first explosion in the library erupted.

Pandora drew out a fresh tissue, sneezed into it, then plopped down on the arm of a chair. She was too flabbergasted and worn-out to be amused. “Well, what now?”

Michael reached for a cigarette before he remembered he’d quit. “Now we have to make a couple of decisions.”

Pandora gave him one of the long lingering stares she’d learned made most men stutter. Michael merely sat across from her and stared back. “I meant what I said. I don’t want his money. By the time it’s divided up and the taxes dealt with, it’s close to fifty million apiece. Fifty million,” she repeated, rolling her eyes. “It’s ridiculous.”

“Jolley always thought so,” Michael said, and watched the grief come and go in her eyes.

“He only had it to play with. The trouble was, every time he played, he made more.” Unable to sit, Pandora paced to the window. “Michael, I’d suffocate with that much money.”

“Cash isn’t as heavy as you think.”

With something close to a sneer, she turned and sat on the window ledge. “You don’t object to fifty million or so after taxes I take it.”

He’d have loved to have wiped that look off her face. “I haven’t your fine disregard for money, Pandora, probably because I was raised with the illusion of it rather than the reality.”

She shrugged, knowing his parents existed, and always had, mainly on credit and connections. “So, take it all then.”

Michael picked up a little blue glass egg and tossed it from palm to palm. It was cool and smooth and worth several thousand. “That’s not what Jolley wanted.”

With a sniff, she snatched the egg from his hand. “He wanted us to get married and live happily ever after. I’d like to humor him….” She tossed the egg back again. “But I’m not that much of a martyr. Besides, aren’t you engaged to some little blond dancer?”

He set the egg down before he could heave it at her. “For someone who turns their pampered nose up at television, you don’t have the same intellectual snobbery about gossip rags.”

“I adore gossip,” Pandora said with such magnificent exaggeration Michael laughed.

“All right, Pandora, let’s put down the swords a minute.” He tucked his thumbs in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. Maybe they could, if they concentrated, talk civilly with each other for a few minutes. “I’m not engaged to anyone, but marriage wasn’t a term of the will in any case. All we have to do is live together for six months under the same roof.”

As she studied him a sense of disappointment ran through her. Perhaps they’d never gotten along, but she’d respected him if for nothing more than what she’d seen as his pure affection for Uncle Jolley. “So, you really want the money?”

He took two furious steps forward before he caught himself. Pandora never flinched. “Think whatever you like.” He said it softly, as though it didn’t matter. Oddly enough, it made her shudder. “You don’t want the money, fine. Put that aside a moment. Are you going to stand by and watch this house go to the clan out there or a bunch of scientists studying Venus’s flytraps? Jolley loved this place and everything in it. I always thought you did, too.”

“I do.” The others would sell it, she admitted. There wasn’t one person in the library who wouldn’t put the house on the market and run with the cash. It would be lost to her. All the foolish, ostentatious rooms, the ridiculous archways. Jolley might be gone, but he’d left the house like a dangling carrot. And he still held the stick.

“He’s trying to run our lives still.”

Michael lifted a brow. “Surprised?”

With a half laugh, Pandora glanced over. “No.”

* * *

Slowly she walked around the room while the sun shot through the diamond panes of glass and lit her hair. Michael watched her with a sense of detached admiration. She’d look magnificent on the screen. He’d always thought so. Her coloring, her posture. Her arrogance. The five or ten pounds the camera would add couldn’t hurt that too angular, beanpole body, either. And the fire-engine-red hair would make a statement on the screen while it was simply outrageous in reality. He’d often wondered why she didn’t do something to tone it down.

At the moment he wasn’t interested in any of that—just in what was in her brain. He didn’t give a damn about the money, but he wasn’t going to sit idly by and watch everything Jolley had had and built go to the vultures. If he had to play rough with Pandora, he would. He might even enjoy it.

Millions. Pandora cringed at the outrageousness of it. That much money could be nothing but a headache, she was certain. Stocks, bonds, accountants, trusts, tax shelters. She preferred a simpler kind of living. Though no one would call her apartment in Manhattan primitive.

She’d never had to worry about money and that was just the way she liked it. Above or below a certain income level, there were nothing but worries. But if you found a nice, comfortable plateau, you could just cruise. She’d nearly found it.

It was true enough that a share of this would help her tremendously professionally. With a buffer sturdy enough, she could have the artistic freedom she wanted and continue the life-style that now caused a bit of a strain on her bank account. Her work was artistic and critically acclaimed but reviews didn’t pay the rent. Outside of Manhattan, her work was usually considered too unconventional. The fact that she often had to create more mainstream designs to keep her head above water grated constantly. With fifty or sixty thousand to back her, she could…

Furious with herself, she blocked it off. She was thinking like Michael, she decided. She’d rather die. He’d sold out, turned whatever talent he had to the main chance, just as he was ready to turn these circumstances to his own financial advantage. She would think of other areas. She would think first of Jolley.

As she saw it, the entire scheme was a maze of problems. How like her uncle. Now, like a chess match, she’d have to consider her moves.

She’d never lived with a man. Purposely. Pandora liked running by her own clock. It wasn’t so much that she minded sharing things, she minded sharing space. If she agreed, that would be the first concession.

Then there was the fact that Michael was attractive, attractive enough to be unsettling if he hadn’t been so annoying. Annoying and easily annoyed, she recalled with a flash of amusement. She knew what buttons to push. Hadn’t she always prided herself on the fact that she could handle him? It wasn’t always easy; he was too sharp. But that made their altercations interesting. Still, they’d never been together for more than a week at a time.

But there was one clear, inarguable fact. She’d loved her uncle. How could she live with herself if she denied him a last wish? Or a last joke.

Six months. Stopping, she studied Michael as he studied her. Six months could be a very long time, especially when you weren’t pleased with what you were doing. There was only one way to speed things up. She’d enjoy herself.

“Tell me, cousin, how can we live under the same roof for six months without coming to blows?”

“We can’t.”

He’d answered without a second’s hesitation, so she laughed again. “I suppose I’d be bored if we did. I can tidy up loose ends and move in in three days. Four at the most.”

“That’s fine.” When his shoulders relaxed, he realized he’d been tensed for her refusal. At the moment he didn’t want to question why it mattered so much. Instead he held out a hand. “Deal.”

Pandora inclined her head just before her palm met his. “Deal,” she agreed, surprised that his hand was hard and a bit callused. She’d expected it to be rather soft and limp. After all, all he did was type. Perhaps the next six months would have some surprises.

“Shall we go tell the others?”

“They’ll want to murder us.”

Her smile came slowly, subtly shifting the angles of her face. It was, Michael thought, at once wicked and alluring. “I know. Try not to gloat.”

When they stepped out, several griping relatives had spilled out into the hallway. They did what they did best together. They argued.

“You’d blow your share on barbells and carrot juice,” Biff said spitefully to Hank. “At least I know what to do with money.”

“Lose it on horses,” Monroe said, and blew out a stream of choking cigar smoke. “Invest. Tax deferred.”

“You could use yours to take a course in how to speak in complete sentences.” Carlson stepped out of the smoke and straightened his tie. “I’m the old man’s only living son. It’s up to me to prove he was incompetent.”

“Uncle Jolley had more competence than the lot of you put together.” Feeling equal parts frustration and disgust, Pandora stepped forward. “He gave you each exactly what he wanted you to have.”

Biff drew out a flat gold cigarette case as he glanced over at his cousin. “It appears our Pandora’s changed her mind about the money. Well, you worked for it, didn’t you, darling?”

Michael put his hand on Pandora’s shoulder and squeezed lightly before she could spring. “You’d like to keep your profile, wouldn’t you, cousin?”

“It appears writing for television’s given you a taste for violence.” Biff lit his cigarette and smiled. If he’d thought he could get in a blow below the belt… “I think I’ll decline a brawl,” he decided.

“Well, I think it’s fair.” Hank’s wife came forward, stretching out her hand. She gave both Pandora and Michael a hearty shake. “You should put a gym in this place. Build yourself up a little. Come on, Hank.”

Silent, and his shoulders straining the material of his suit, Hank followed her out.

“Nothing but muscles between the head,” Carlson mumbled. “Come, Mona.” He strode ahead of his wife, pausing long enough to level a glare at Pandora and Michael. The inevitable line ran though Michael’s mind before Carlson opened his mouth and echoed it. “You haven’t heard the last of this.”

Pandora gave him her sweetest smile. “Have a nice trip home, Uncle Carlson.”

“Probate,” Monroe said with a grunt, and waddled his way out behind them.

Patience fluttered her hands. “Key West, for heaven’s sake. I’ve never been south of Palm Beach. My, oh my.”

“Oh, Michael.” Fluttering her lashes, Ginger placed a hand on his arm. “When do you think I might have my mirror?”

He glanced down into her perfectly lovely, heart-shaped face. Her eyes were as pure a blue as tropical waters. He thanked God Jolley hadn’t asked that he spend six months with Cousin Ginger. “I’m sure Mr. Fitzhugh will have it shipped to you as soon as possible.”

“Come along, Ginger, we’ll give you a ride to the airport.” Biff pulled Ginger’s hand through his arm, patted it and smiled down at Pandora. “I’d be worried if I didn’t know you better. You won’t last six days with Michael much less six months. Beastly temper,” he said confidentially to Michael. “The two of you’ll murder each other before a week’s out.”

“Don’t spend the old man’s money yet,” Michael warned. “We’ll make the six months if for no other reason than to spite you.” He smiled when he said it, a chummy, well-meaning smile that took the arrogance from Biff’s face.

“We’ll see who wins the game.” Straight backed, Biff turned toward the door. His wife walked out behind him without having said a word since she’d walked in.

“Biff,” Ginger began as they walked out. “What are you going to do with all those matches?”

“Burn his bridges, I hope,” Pandora muttered. “Well, Michael, though I can’t say there was a lot of love before, there’s nearly none lost now.”

“Are you worried about alienating them?”

With a shrug of her shoulders, she walked toward a bowl of roses, then gave him a considering look. “Well, I’ve never had any trouble alienating you. Why is that, do you suppose?”

“Jolley always said we were too much alike.”

“Really?” Haughty, she lifted a brow. “I find myself disagreeing with him again. You and I, Michael Donahue, have almost nothing in common.”

“If that’s so we have six months to prove it.” On impulse he moved closer and put a finger under her chin. “You know, darling, you might’ve been stuck with Biff.”

“I’d’ve given the place to the plants first.”

He grinned. “I’m flattered.”

“Don’t be.” But she didn’t move away from him. Not yet. It was an interesting feeling to be this close without snarling. “The only difference is you don’t bore me.”

“That’s enough,” he said with a hint of a smile. “I’m easily flattered.” Intrigued, he flicked a finger down her cheek. It was still pale, but her eyes were direct and steady. “No, we won’t bore each other Pandora. In six months we might experience a lot of things, but boredom won’t be one of them.”

It might be an interesting feeling, she discovered, but it wasn’t quite a safe one. It was best to remember that he didn’t find her appealing as a woman but would, for the sake of his own ego, string her along if she permitted it. “I don’t flatter easily. I haven’t decided exactly what your reasons are for going through with this farce, but I’m doing it only for Uncle Jolley. I can set up my equipment here quite easily.”

“And I can write here quite easily.”

Pandora plucked a rose from the bowl. “If you can call those implausible scripts writing.”

“The same way you call the bangles you string together art.”

Color came back to her cheeks and that pleased him. “You wouldn’t know art if it reached up and bit you on the nose. My jewelry expresses emotion.”

His smile showed pleasant interest. “How much is lust going for these days?”

“I would have guessed you’d be very familiar with the cost.” Pandora fumbled for a tissue, sneezed into it, then shut her bag with a click. “Most of the women you date have price tags.”

It amused him, and it showed. “I thought we were talking about work.”

“My profession is a time-honored one, while yours—yours stops for commercial breaks. And furthermore—”

“I beg your pardon.”

Fitzhugh paused at the doorway of the library. He wanted nothing more than to be shed of the McVie clan and have a quiet, soothing drink. “Am I to assume that you’ve both decided to accept the terms of the will?”

Six months, she thought. It was going to be a long, long winter.

Six months, he thought. He was going to have the first daffodil he found in April bronzed.

“You can start counting the days at the end of the week,” he told Fitzhugh. “Agreed, cousin?”

Pandora set her chin. “Agreed.”

Chapter Two

It was a pleasant trip from Manhattan along the Hudson River toward the Catskills. Pandora had always enjoyed it. The drive gave her time to clear her mind and relax. But then, she’d always taken it at her own whim, her own pace, her own convenience. Pandora made it a habit to do everything just that way. This time, however, there was more involved than her own wants and wishes. Uncle Jolley had boxed her in.

He’d known she’d have to go along with the terms of the will. Not for the money. He’d been too smart to think she could be lured into such a ridiculous scheme with money. But the house, her ties to it, her need for the continuity of family. That’s what he’d hooked her with.

Now she had to leave Manhattan behind for six months. Oh, she’d run into the city for a few hours here and there, but it was hardly the same as living in the center of things. She’d always liked that—being in the center, surrounded by movement, being able to watch and become involved whenever she liked. Just as she’d always liked long weekends in the solitude of Jolley’s Folley.

She’d been raised that way, to enjoy and make the most of whatever environment she was in. Her parents were gypsies. Wealth had meant they’d traveled first class instead of in covered wagons. If there’d been campfires, there had also been a servant to gather kindling, but the spirit was the same.

Before she’d been fifteen, Pandora had been to more than thirty countries. She’d eaten sushi in Tokyo, roamed the moors in Cornwall, bargained in Turkish markets. A succession of tutors had traveled with them so that by her calculations, she’d spent just under two years in a classroom environment before college.

The exotic, vagabond childhood had given her a taste for variety—in people, in foods, in styles. And oddly enough the exposure to widely diverse cultures and mores had formed in her an unshakable desire for a home and a sense of belonging.

Though her parents liked to meander through countries, recording everything with pen and film, Pandora had missed a central point. Where was home? This year in Mexico, next year in Athens. Her parents made a name for themselves with their books and articles on the unusual, but Pandora wanted roots. She’d discovered she’d have to find them for herself.

She’d chosen New York, and in her way, Uncle Jolley.

Now, because her uncle and his home had become her central point, she was agreeing to spend six months living with a man she could hardly tolerate so that she could inherit a fortune she didn’t want or need. Life, she’d discovered long ago, never moved in straight lines.

Jolley McVie’s ultimate joke, she thought as she turned up the long drive toward his Folley. Well, he could throw them together, but he couldn’t make them stick.

Still, she’d have felt better if she’d been sure of Michael. Was it the lure of the millions of dollars, or an affection for an old man that would bring him to the Catskills? She knew his Logan’s Run was in its very successful fourth year, and that he’d had other lucrative ventures in television. But money was a seduction itself. After all, her Uncle Carlson had more than he could ever spend, yet he was already taking the steps for a probate of the will.

That didn’t worry her. Uncle Jolley had believed in hiring the best. If Fitzhugh had drawn up the will, it was air-tight. What worried her was Michael Donahue.

Because of the trap she’d fallen into, she’d found herself thinking of him a great deal too much over the past couple of days. Ally or enemy, she wasn’t sure. Either way, she was going to have to live with him. Or around him. She hoped the house was big enough.

By the time she arrived, she was worn-out from the drive and the lingering head cold. Though her equipment and supplies had been shipped the day before, she still had three cases in the car. Deciding to take one at a time, Pandora popped the trunk, then simply looked at Jolley’s Folley.

He’d built it when he’d been forty, so the house was already over a half century old. It went in all directions at once, as if he’d never been able to decide where he wanted to start and where he wanted to finish. The truth about Jolley, she admitted, was that he’d never wanted to finish. The project, the game, the puzzle, was always more interesting to him before the last pieces were in place.

Without the wings, it might have been a rather somber and sedate late-nineteenth-century mansion. With them, it was a mass of walls and corners, heights and widths. There was no symmetry, yet to Pandora it had always seemed as sturdy as the rock it had been built on.

Some of the windows were long, some were wide, some of them were leaded and some sheer. Jolley had made up his mind then changed it again as he’d gone along.

The stone had come from one of his quarries, the wood from one of his lumberyards. When he’d decided to build a house, he’d started his own construction firm. McVie Construction, Incorporated was one of the five biggest companies in the country.

It struck her suddenly that she owned half of Jolley’s share in the company and her mind spun at how many others. She had interests in baby oil, steel mills, rocket engines and cake mix. Pandora lifted the case and set her teeth. What on earth had she let herself in for?

* * *

From the upstairs window, Michael watched her. The jacket she wore was big and baggy with three vivid colors, blue, yellow and pink patched in. The wind caught at her slacks and rippled them from thigh to ankle. She wasn’t looking teary-eyed and pale this time, but grim and resigned. So much the better. He’d been tempted to comfort her during their uncle’s funeral. Only the knowledge that too much sympathy for a woman like Pandora was fatal had prevented him.

He’d known her since childhood and had considered her a spoiled brat from the word go. Though she’d often been off for months at a time on one of her parents’ journalistic safaris, they’d seen enough of each other to feed a mutual dislike. Only the fact that she had cared for Jolley had given Michael some tolerance for her. And the fact, he was forced to admit, that she had more honesty and humanity in her than any of their other relations.

There had been a time, he recalled, a brief time, during late adolescence that he’d felt a certain…stirring for her. A purely shallow and physical teenage hunger, Michael assured himself. She’d always had an intriguing face; it could be unrelentingly plain one moment and striking the next, and when she’d hit her teens…well, that had been a natural enough reaction. And it had passed without incident. He now preferred a woman with more subtlety, more gloss and femininity—and shorter fangs.

Whatever he preferred, Michael left the arranging of his own office to wander downstairs.

“Charles, did my shipment come?” Pandora pulled off her leather driving gloves and dropped them on a little round table in the hall. Since Charles was there, the ancient butler who had served her uncle since before she was born, she felt a certain pleasure in coming.

“Everything arrived this morning, miss.” The old man would have taken her suitcase if she hadn’t waved him away.

“No, don’t fuss with that. Where did you have them put everything?”

“In the garden shed in the east yard, as you instructed.”

She gave him a smile and a peck on the cheek, both of which pleased him. His square bulldog’s face grew slightly pink. “I knew I could count on you. I didn’t tell you before how happy I was that you and Sweeney are staying. The place wouldn’t be the same without you serving tea and Sweeney baking cakes.”

Charles managed to pull his back a bit straighter. “We wouldn’t think about going anywhere else, miss. The master would have wanted us to stay.”

But made it possible for them to go, Pandora mused. Leaving each of them three thousand dollars for every year of service. Charles had been with Jolley since the house was built, and Sweeney had come some ten years later. The bequest would have been more than enough for each to retire on. Pandora smiled. Some weren’t made for retirement.

“Charles, I’d love some tea,” she began, knowing if she didn’t distract him, he’d insist on carrying her bags up the long staircase.

“In the drawing room, miss?”

“Perfect. And if Sweeney has any of those little cakes…”

“She’s been baking all morning.” With only the slightest of creaks, he made his way toward the kitchen.

Pandora thought of rich icing loaded with sugar. “I wonder how much weight a person can gain in six months.”

“A steady diet of Sweeney’s cakes wouldn’t hurt you,” Michael said from above her head. “Men are generally more attracted to flesh than bone.”

Pandora spun around, then found herself in the awkward position of having to arch her neck back to see Michael at the top of the stairs. “I don’t center my life around attracting men.”

“I’d be the last one to argue with that.”

He looked quite comfortable, she thought, feeling the first stirrings of resentment. And negligently, arrogantly attractive. From several feet above her head, he leaned against a post and looked down on her as though he was the master. She’d soon put an end to that. Uncle Jolley’s will had been very clear. Share and share alike.

“Since you’re already here and settled in, you can come help me with the rest of my bags.”

He didn’t budge. “I always thought the one point we were in perfect agreement on was feminism.”

Pandora paused at the door to toss a look over her shoulder. “Social and political views aside, if you don’t help me up with them before Charles comes back, he’ll insist on doing it himself. He’s too old to do it and too proud to be told he can’t.” She walked back out and wasn’t surprised when she heard his footsteps on the gravel behind her.

She took a deep breath of crisp autumn air. All in all, it was a lovely day. “Drive up early?”

“Actually, I drove up late last night.”

Pandora turned at the open trunk of her car. “So eager to start the game, Michael?”

If he hadn’t been determined to start off peacefully, he’d have found fault with the tone of her voice, with the look in her eyes. Instead he let it pass. “I wanted to get my office set up today. I was just finishing it when you drove in.”

“Work, work, work,” she said with a long sigh. “You must put in slavish hours to come up with an hour of chase scenes and steam a week.”

Peace wasn’t all that important. As she reached for a suitcase, he closed a hand over her wrist. Later he’d think about how slim it was, how soft. Now he could only think how much he wished she were a man. Then he could’ve belted her. “The amount of work I do and what I produce is of absolutely no concern to you.”

It occurred to Pandora, oddly, she thought, just how much she enjoyed seeing him on the edge of temper. All of her other relatives were so bland, so outwardly civilized. Michael had always been a contrast, and therefore of more interest. Smiling, she allowed her wrist to stay limp.

“Did I indicate that it was? Nothing, I promise you, could be further from the truth. Shall we get these in and have that tea? It’s a bit chilly.”

He’d always admired, grudgingly, how smoothly she could slip into the lady-of-the-manor routine. As a writer who wrote for actors and for viewers, he appreciated natural talent. He also knew how to set a scene to his best advantage. “Tea’s a perfect idea.” He hauled one case out and left the second for her. “We’ll establish some guidelines.”

“Will we?” Pandora pulled out the case, then let the trunk shut quietly. Without another word, she started back toward the house, holding the front door open for him, then breezing by the suitcase she’d left in the main hall. Because she knew Michael was fond of Charles, she hadn’t a doubt he’d pick it up and follow.

The room she always took was on the second floor in the east wing. Jolley had let her decorate it herself, and she’d chosen white on white with a few startling splashes of color. Chartreuse and blazing blue in throw pillows, a long horizontal oil painting, jarring in its colors of sunset, a crimson waist-high urn stuffed with ostrich plumes.

Pandora set her case by the bed, noted with satisfaction that a fire had been laid in the small marble fireplace, then tossed her jacket over a chair.

“I always feel like I’m walking into Better Homes,” he commented as he let her cases drop.

Pandora glanced down at them briefly, then at him. “I’m sure you’re more at home in your own room. It’s more—Field and Stream. I expect tea’s ready.”

He gave her a long, steady survey. Her jacket had concealed the trim cashmere sweater tucked into the narrow waist of her slacks. It reminded Michael quite forcibly just what had begun to attract him all those teenage years ago. For the second time he found himself wishing she were a man.

Though they walked abreast down the stairs, they didn’t speak. In the drawing room, amid the Mideast opulence Jolley had chosen there, Charles was setting up the tea service.

“Oh, you lit the fire. How lovely.” Pandora walked over and began warming her hands. She wanted a moment, just a moment, because for an instant in her room she thought she’d seen something in Michael’s eyes. And she thought she’d felt the same something in response. “I’ll pour, Charles. I’m sure Michael and I won’t need another thing until dinner.”

Casually she glanced around the room, at the flowing drapes, the curvy brocade sofas, the plump pillows and brass urns. “You know, this has always been one of my favorite rooms.” Going to the tea set, she began to fill cups. “I was only twelve when we visited Turkey, but this room always makes me remember it vividly. Right down to the smells in the markets. Sugar?”

“No.” He took the cup from her, plopped a generous slice of cake on a dish, then chose a seat. He preferred the little parlor next door with its tidy English country air. This was the beginning, he thought, with the old butler and plump cook as witnesses. Six months from today, they’d all sign a document swearing that the terms of the will had been adhered to and that would be that. It was the time in between that concerned him.

“Rule number one,” Michael began without preamble. “We’re both in the east wing because it makes it easier for Charles and Sweeney. But—” he paused, hoping to emphasize his point “—both of us will, at all times, respect the other’s area.”

“By all means.” Pandora crossed her legs and sipped her tea.

“Again, because of the staff, it seems fair that we eat at the same time. Therefore, in the interest of survival, we’ll keep the conversations away from professional matters.”

Pandora smiled at him and nibbled on cake. “Oh yes, let’s do keep things personal.”

“You’re a nasty little package—”

“See, we’re off to a perfect start. Rule number two. Neither of us, no matter how bored or restless, will disturb the other during his or her set working hours. I generally work between ten and one, then again between three and six.”

“Rule number three. If one of us is entertaining, the other will make him or herself scarce.”

Pandora’s eyes narrowed, only for a moment. “Oh, and I so wanted to meet your dancer. Rule number four. The first floor is neutral ground and to be shared equally unless specific prior arrangements are made and agreed upon.” She tapped her finger against the arm of the chair. “If we both play fair, we should manage.”

“I don’t have any trouble playing fair. As I recall, you’re the one who cheats.”

Her voice became very cool, her tone very rounded. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Canasta, poker, gin.”

“That’s absurd and you have absolutely no proof.” Rising, she helped herself to another cup of tea. “Besides, cards are entirely different.” Warmed by the fire, soothed by the tea, she smiled at him. As Michael recalled, that particular smile was lethal. And stunning. “Are you still holding a grudge over that five hundred I won from you?”

“I wouldn’t if you’d won it fairly.”

“I won it,” she countered. “That’s what counts. If I cheated and you didn’t catch me, then it follows that I cheated well enough for it to be legal.”

“You always had a crooked sense of logic.” He rose as well and came close. She had to admire the way he moved. It wasn’t quite a swagger because he didn’t put the effort into it. But it was very close. “If we play again, whatever we play, you won’t cheat me.”

Confident, she smiled at him. “Michael, we’ve known each other too long for you to intimidate me.” She reached a hand up to pat his cheek and found her wrist captured a second time. And a second time she saw and felt that same dangerous something she’d experienced upstairs.

There was no Uncle Jolley as a buffer between them now. Perhaps they’d both just begun to realize it. Whatever was between them that made them snarl and snap would have a long, cold winter to surface.

Perhaps neither one of them wanted to face it, but both were too stubborn to back down.

“Perhaps we’re just beginning to know each other,” Michael murmured.

She believed it. And didn’t like it. He wasn’t a posturing fool like Biff nor a harmless hulk like Hank. He might be a cousin by marriage only, but the blood between them had always run hot. There was violence in him. It showed sometimes in a look in his eyes, in the way he held himself. As though he wouldn’t ward off a blow but counter it. Pandora recognized it because there was violence in her, as well. Perhaps that was why she always felt compelled to shoot darts at him, just to see how many he could boomerang back at her.

They stood as they were a moment, gauging each other, reassessing. The wise thing to do was for each to acknowledge a hit and step aside. Pandora threw up her chin. Michael set for the volley. “We’ll go to the mat another time, Michael. At the moment, I’m a bit tired from the drive. If you’ll excuse me?”

“Rule number five,” he said without releasing her. “If one of us takes potshots at the other, they’ll damn well pay the consequences.” When he freed her arm, he went back for his cup. “See you at dinner, cousin.”

* * *

Pandora awoke just past dawn fully awake, rested and bursting with energy. Whether it had been the air in the mountains or the six hours of deep sleep, she was ready and eager to work. Breakfast could wait, she decided as she showered and dressed. She was going out to the garden shed, organizing her equipment and diving in.

The house was perfectly quiet and still dim as she made her way downstairs. The servants would sleep another hour or two, she thought as she stuck her head in the pantry and chose a muffin. As she recalled, Michael might sleep until noon.

They had made it through dinner without incident. Perhaps they’d been polite to each other because of Charles and Sweeney or perhaps because both of them had been too tired to snipe. Pandora wasn’t sure herself.

They’d dined under the cheerful lights of the big chandelier and had talked, when they’d talked, about the weather and the food.

By nine they’d gone their separate ways. Pandora to read until her eyes closed and Michael to work. Or so he’d said.

Outside the air was chill enough to cause Pandora’s skin to prickle. She hunched up the collar of her jacket and started across the lawn. It crunched underfoot with the early thin frost. She liked it—the absolute solitude, the lightness of the air, the incredible smell of mountain and river.

In Tibet she’d once come close to frostbite because she hadn’t been able to resist the snow and the swoop of rock. She didn’t find this slice of the Catskills any less fascinating. The winter was best, she’d always thought, when the snow skimmed the top of your boots and your voice came out in puffs of smoke.

Winter in the mountains was a time for the basics. Heat, food, work. There were times Pandora wanted only the basics. There were times in New York she’d argue for hours over unions, politics, civil rights because the fact was, she loved an argument. She wanted the stimulation of an opposing view over broad issues or niggling ones. She wanted the challenge, the heat and the exercise for her brain. But…

There were times she wanted nothing more than a quiet sunrise over frost-crisped ground and the promise of a warm drink by a hot fire. And there were times, though she’d rarely admit it even to herself, that she wanted a shoulder to lay her head against and a hand to hold. She’d been raised to see independence as a duty, not a choice. Her parents had the most balanced of relationships, equal to equal. Pandora saw them as something rare in a world where the scales tipped this way or that too often. At age eighteen, Pandora had decided she’d never settle for less than a full partnership. At age twenty, she decided marriage wasn’t for her. Instead she put all her passion, her energy and imagination into her work.

Straight-line dedication had paid off. She was successful, even prominent, and creatively she was fulfilled. It was more than many people ever achieved.

Now she pulled open the door of the utility shed. It was a big square building, as wide as the average barn, with hardwood floors and paneled walls. Uncle Jolley hadn’t believed in the primitive. Hitting the switch, she flooded the building with light.

As per her instructions, the crates and boxes she’d shipped had been stacked along one wall. The shelves where Uncle Jolley had kept his gardening tools during his brief, torrid gardening stage had been packed away. The plumbing was good, with a full-size stainless-steel sink and a small but more than adequate bath with shower enclosed in the rear. She counted five workbenches. The light and ventilation were excellent.

It wouldn’t take her long, Pandora figured, to turn the shed into an organized, productive workroom.

It took three hours.

Along one shelf were boxes of beads in various sizes—jet, amethyst, gold, polished wood, coral, ivory. She had trays of stones, precious and semiprecious, square cut, brilliants, teardrops and chips. In New York, they were kept in a safe. Here, she never considered it. She had gold, silver, bronze, copper. There were solid and hollow drills, hammers, tongs, pliers, nippers, files and clamps. One might have thought she did carpentry. Then there were scribes and drawplates, bottles of chemicals, and miles of string and fiber cord.

The money she’d invested in these materials had cost her every penny of an inheritance from her grandmother, and a good chunk of savings she’d earned as an apprentice. It had been worth it. Pandora picked up a file and tapped it against her palm. Well worth it.

She could forge gold and silver, cast alloys and string impossibly complex designs with the use of a few beads or shells. Metals could be worked into thin, threadlike strands or built into big bold chunks. Pandora could do as she chose, with tools that had hardly changed from those used by artists two centuries earlier.

It was and always had been, both the sense of continuity and the endless variety that appealed to her. She never made two identical pieces. That, to her, would have been manufacturing rather than creating. At times, her pieces were elegantly simple, classic in design. Those pieces sold well and allowed her a bit of artistic freedom. At other times, they were bold and brash and exaggerated. Mood guided Pandora, not trends. Rarely, very rarely, she would agree to create a piece along specified lines. If the lines, or the client, interested her.

She turned down a president because she’d found his ideas too pedestrian but had made a ring at a new father’s request because his idea had been unique. Pandora had been told that the new mother had never taken the braided gold links off. Three links, one for each of the triplets she’d given birth to.

At the moment, Pandora had just completed drafting the design for a three-tiered necklace commissioned to her by the husband of a popular singer. Emerald. That was her name and the only requirement given to Pandora. The man wanted lots of them. And he’d pay, Pandora mused, for the dozen she’d chosen just before leaving New York. They were square, three karats apiece and of the sharp, sharp green that emeralds are valued for.

This was, she knew, her big chance, professionally and, most importantly, artistically. If the necklace was a success, there’d not only be reviews for her scrapbook, but acceptance. She’d be freer to do more of what she wanted without compromise.

The trick would be to fashion the chain so that it held like steel and looked like a cobweb. The stones would hang from each tier as if they’d dripped there.

For the next two hours, she worked in gold.

Between the two heaters at each end of the shed and the flame from her tools, the air became sultry. Sweat rolled down under her sweater, but she didn’t mind. In fact, she barely noticed as the gold became pliable. Again and again, she drew the wire through the drawplate, smoothing out the kinks and subtly, slowly, changing the shape and size. When the wire looked like angel hair she began working it with her fingers, twisting and braiding until she matched the design in her head and on her drawing paper.

It would be simple—elegantly, richly simple. The emeralds would bring their own flash when she attached them.

Time passed. After careful, meticulous use of drawplate, flame and her own hands, the first thin, gold tier formed.

She’d just begun to stretch out the muscles in her back when the door of the shed opened and cool air poured in. Her face glowing with sweat and concentration, she glared at Michael.

“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Following orders.” He had his hands stuffed in his jacket pockets for warmth, but hadn’t buttoned the front. Nor, she noticed, had he bothered to shave. “This place smells like an oven.”

“I’m working.” She lifted the hem of the big apron she wore and wiped at her brow. It was being interrupted that annoyed her, Pandora told herself. Not the fact that he’d walked in on her when she looked like a steelworker. “Remember rule number three?”

“Tell that to Sweeney.” Leaving the door ajar, he wandered in. “She said it was bad enough that you skipped breakfast, but you’re not getting away with missing lunch.” Curious, he poked his finger into a tray that held brilliant colored stones. “I have orders to bring you back.”

“I’m not ready.”

He picked up a tiny sapphire and held it to the light. “I had to stop her from tramping out here herself. If I go back alone, she’s going to come for you. Her arthritis is acting up again.”

Pandora swore under her breath. “Put that down,” she ordered, then yanked the apron off.

“Some of this stuff looks real,” he commented. Though he put the sapphire back, he picked up a round, winking diamond.

“Some of this stuff is real.” Pandora crouched to turn the first heater down.

The diamond was in his hand as he scowled down at her head. “Why in hell do you have it sitting out like candy? It should be locked up.”

Pandora adjusted the second heater. “Why?”

“Don’t be any more foolish than necessary. Someone could steal it.”

“Someone?” Straightening, Pandora smiled at him. “There aren’t many someones around. I don’t think Charles and Sweeney are a problem, but maybe I should worry about you.”

He cursed her and dropped the diamond back. “They’re your little bag of tricks, cousin, but if I had several thousand dollars sitting around that could slip into a pocket, I’d be more careful.”

Though under most circumstances she fully agreed, Pandora merely picked up her jacket. After all, they weren’t in Manhattan but miles away from anyone or anything. If she locked everything up, she’d just have to unlock it again every time she wanted to work. “Just one of the differences between you and me, Michael. I suppose it’s because you write about so many dirty deeds.”

“I also write about human nature.” He picked up the sketch of the emerald necklace she had drawn. It had the sense of scale that would have pleased an architect and the flare and flow that would appeal to an artist. “If you’re so into making bangles and baubles, why aren’t you wearing any?”

“They get in the way when I’m working. If you write about human nature, how come the bad guy gets caught every week?”

“Because I’m writing for people, and people need heroes.”

Pandora opened her mouth to argue, then found she agreed with the essence of the statement. “Hmm,” was all she said as she turned out the lights and went out ahead of him.

“At least lock the door,” Michael told her.

“I haven’t a key.”

“Then we’ll get one.”

“We don’t need one.”

He shut the door with a snap. “You do.”

Pandora only shrugged as she started across the lawn. “Michael, have I mentioned that you’ve been more crabby than usual?”

He pulled a piece of hard candy out of his pocket and popped it into his mouth. “Quit smoking.”

The candy was lemon. She caught just a whiff. “So I noticed. How long?”

He scowled at some leaves that skimmed across the lawn. They were brown and dry and seemed to have a life of their own. “Couple weeks. I’m going crazy.”

She laughed sympathetically before she tucked her arm into his. “You’ll live, darling. The first month’s the toughest.”

Now he scowled at her. “How would you know? You never smoked.”

“The first month of anything’s the toughest. You just have to keep your mind occupied. Exercise. We’ll jog after lunch.”

“We?”

“And we can play canasta after dinner.”

He gave a quick snort but brushed the hair back from her cheek. “You’ll cheat.”

“See, your mind’s already occupied.” With a laugh, she turned her face up to his. He looked a bit surly, but on him, oddly, it was attractive. Placid, good-natured good looks had always bored her. “It won’t hurt you to give up one of your vices, Michael. You have so many.”

“I like my vices,” he grumbled, then turned his head to look down at her. She was giving him her easy, friendly smile, one she sent his way rarely. It always made him forget just how much trouble she caused him. It made him forget he wasn’t attracted to dramatically bohemian women with wild red hair and sharp bones. “A woman who looks like you should have several of her own.”

Her mouth was solemn, her eyes wicked. “I’m much too busy. Vices take up a great deal of time.”

“When Pandora opened the box, vices popped out.”

She stopped at the back stoop. “Among other miseries. I suppose that’s why I’m careful about opening boxes.”

Michael ran a finger down her cheek. It was the sort of gesture he realized could easily become a habit. She was right, his mind was occupied. “You have to lift off the lid sooner or later.”

She didn’t move back, though she’d felt the little tingle of tension, of attraction, of need. Pandora didn’t believe in moving back, but in plowing through. “Some things are better off locked up.”

He nodded. He didn’t want to release what was in their private box any more than she did. “Some locks aren’t as strong as they need to be.”

They were standing close, the wind whistling lightly between them. Pandora felt the sun on her back and the chill on her face. If she took a step nearer, there’d be heat. That she’d never doubted and had always avoided. He’d use whatever was available to him, she reminded herself. At the moment, it just happened to be her. She let her breath come calmly and easily before she reached for the doorknob.

“We’d better not keep Sweeney waiting.”

Chapter Three

The streets are almost deserted. A car turns a corner and disappears. It’s drizzling. Neon flashes off puddles. It’s garish rather than festive. There’s a gray, miserable feel to this part of the city. Alleyways, cheap clubs, dented cars. The small, neatly dressed blonde walks quickly. She’s nervous, out of her element, but not lost. Close-up on the envelope in her hands. It’s damp from the rain. Her fingers open and close on it. Tires squeal off screen and she jolts. The blue lights of the club blink off and on in her face as she stands outside. Hesitates. Shifts the envelope from hand to hand. She goes in. Slow pan of the street. Three shots and freeze.

Three knocks sounded at the door of Michael’s office. Before he could answer, Pandora swirled in. “Happy anniversary, darling.”

Michael looked up from his typewriter. He’d been up most of the night working the story line out in his mind. It was nine in the morning, and he’d only had one cup of coffee to prime him for the day. Coffee and cigarettes together were too precious a memory. The scene that had just jelled in his mind dissolved.

“What the hell are you talking about?” He reached his hand into a bowl of peanuts and discovered he’d already eaten all but two.

“Two full weeks without any broken bones.” Pandora swooped over to him, clucked her tongue at the disorder, then chose the arm of a chair. It was virtually the only free space. She brushed at the dust on the edge of the table beside her and left a smear. “And they said it wouldn’t last.”

She looked fresh with her wild mane of red pulled back from her face, comfortable in sweater and slacks that were too big for her. Michael felt like he’d just crawled out of a cave. His sweatshirt had ripped at the shoulder seam two years before, but he still favored it. A few weeks before, he’d helped paint a friend’s apartment. The paint smears on his jeans showed her preference for baby pink. His eyes felt as though he’d slept facedown in the sand.

Pandora smiled at him like some bright, enthusiastic kindergarten teacher. She had a fresh, clean, almost woodsy scent. “We have a rule about respecting the other’s work space,” he reminded her.

“Oh, don’t be cranky.” It was said with the same positive smile. “Besides, you never gave me any schedule. From what I’ve noticed in the past couple of weeks, this is early for you.”

“I’m just starting the treatment for a new episode.”

“Really?” Pandora walked over and leaned over his shoulder. “Hmm,” she said, though she wondered who had shot whom. “Well, I don’t suppose that’ll take long.”

“Why don’t you go play with your beads?”

“Now you’re being rude when I came up here to invite you to go with me into town.” After brushing off the sleeve of her sweater, she sat on the edge of the desk. She didn’t know exactly why she was so determined to be friendly. Maybe it was because the emerald necklace was nearly finished and was exceeding even her standards. Maybe it was because in the past two weeks she’d found a certain enjoyment in Michael’s company. Mild enjoyment, Pandora reminded herself. Nothing to shout about.

Suspicious, Michael narrowed his eyes. “What for?”

“I’m going in for some supplies Sweeney needs.” She found the turtle shell that was his lampshade intriguing, and ran her fingers over it. “I thought you might like to get out for a while.”

He would. It had been two weeks since he’d seen anything but the house and grounds. He glanced back at the page in his typewriter. “How long will you be?”

“Oh, two, three hours I suppose.” She moved her shoulders. “It’s an hour’s round trip to begin with.”

He was tempted. Free time and a change of scene. But the half-blank sheet remained in his typewriter. “Can’t. I have to get this fleshed out.”

“All right.” Pandora rose from the desk a bit surprised by the degree of disappointment she felt. Silly, she thought. She loved to drive alone with the radio blaring. “Don’t strain your fingers.”

He started to growl something at her back, then because his bowl of nuts was empty, thought better of it. “Pandora, how about picking me up a couple pounds of pistachios?”

As she stopped at the door, she lifted a brow. “Pistachios?”

“Real ones. No red dye.” He ran a hand over the bristle on his chin and wished for a pack of cigarettes. One cigarette. One long deep drag.

She glanced at the empty bowl and nearly smiled. The way he was nibbling, he’d lose that lean, rangy look quickly. “I suppose I could.”

“And a copy of the New York Times.”

Her brow rose. “Would you like to make me a list?”

“Be a sport, will you? Next time Sweeney needs supplies, I’ll go in.”

She thought about it a moment. “Very well then, nuts and news.”

“And some pencils,” he called out.

She slammed the door smartly.

Nearly two hours passed before Michael decided he deserved another cup of coffee. The story line was bumping along just as he’d planned, full of twists and turns. The fans of Logan’s Run expected the gritty with occasional bursts of color and magic. That’s just the way it was panning out.

Critics of the medium aside, Michael enjoyed writing for the small screen. He liked knowing his stories would reach literally millions of people every week and that for an hour, they could involve themselves with the character he had created.

The truth was, Michael liked Logan—the reluctant but steady heroism, the humor and the flaws. He’d made Logan human and fallible and reluctant because Michael had always imagined the best heroes were just that.

The ratings and the mail proved he was on target. His writing for Logan had won him critical acclaim and awards, just as the one-act play he’d written had won him critical acclaim and awards. But the play had reached a few thousand at best, the bulk of whom had been New Yorkers. Logan’s Run reached the family of four in Des Moines, the steelworkers in Chicago and the college crowd in Boston. Every week.

He didn’t see television as the vast wasteland but as the magic box. Michael figured everyone was entitled to a bit of magic.

Michael switched off the typewriter so that the humming died. For a moment he sat in silence. He’d known he could work at the Folley. He’d done so before, but never long-term. What he hadn’t known was that he’d work so well, so quickly or be so content. The truth was, he’d never expected to get along half so well with Pandora. Not that it was any picnic, Michael mused, absently running the stub of a pencil between his fingers.

They fought, certainly, but at least they weren’t taking chunks out of each other. Or not very big ones. All in all he enjoyed the evenings when they played cards if for no other reason than the challenge of trying to catch her cheating. So far he hadn’t.

Also true was the odd attraction he felt for her. That hadn’t been in the script. So far he’d been able to ignore, control or smother it. But there were times… There were times, Michael thought as he rose and stretched, when he’d like to close her smart-tongued mouth in a more satisfactory way. Just to see what it’d be like, he told himself. Curiosity about people was part of his makeup. He’d be interested to see how Pandora would react if he hauled her against him and kissed her until she went limp.

He let out a quick laugh as he wandered to the window. Limp? Pandora? Women like her never went soft. He might satisfy his curiosity, but he’d get a fist in the gut for his trouble. Even that might be worth it….

She wasn’t unmoved. He’d been sure of that since the first day they’d walked back together from her workshop. He’d seen it in her face, heard it, however briefly in her voice. They’d both been circling around it for two weeks. Or twenty years, Michael speculated.

He’d never felt about another woman exactly the way he felt about Pandora McVie. Uncomfortable, challenged, infuriated. The truth was that he was almost always at ease around women. He liked them—their femininity, their peculiar strengths and weaknesses, their style. Perhaps that was the reason for his success in relationships, though he’d carefully kept them short-term.

If he romanced a woman, it was because he was interested in her, not simply in the end result. True enough he was interested in Pandora, but he’d never considered romancing her. It surprised him that he’d caught himself once or twice considering seducing her.

Seducing, of course, was an entirely different matter than romancing. But all in all, he didn’t know if attempting a casual seduction of Pandora would be worth the risk.

If he offered her a candlelight dinner or a walk in the moonlight—or a mad night of passion—she’d come back with a sarcastic remark. Which would, inevitably, trigger some caustic rebuttal from him. The merry-go-round would begin again.

In any case, it wasn’t romance he wanted with Pandora. It was simply curiosity. In certain instances, it was best to remember what had happened to the intrepid cat. But as he thought of her, his gaze was drawn toward her workshop.

They weren’t so very different really, Michael mused. Pandora could insist from dawn to dusk that they had nothing in common, but Jolley had been closer to the mark. They were both quick-tempered, opinionated and passionately protective of their professions. He closed himself up for hours at a time with a typewriter. She closed herself up with tools and torches. The end result of both of their work was entertainment. And after all, that was…

His thoughts broke off as he saw the shed door open. Odd, he hadn’t thought she was back yet. His rooms were on the opposite end of the house from the garage, so he wouldn’t have heard her car, but he thought she’d drop off what she’d picked up for him.

He started to shrug and turn away when he saw the figure emerge from the shed. It was bundled deep in a coat and hat, but he knew immediately it wasn’t Pandora. She moved fluidly, unselfconsciously. This person walked with speed and wariness. Wariness, he thought again, that was evident in the way the head swiveled back and forth before the door was closed again. Without stopping to think, Michael dashed out of the room and down the stairs.

He nearly rammed into Charles at the bottom. “Pandora back?” he demanded.

“No, sir.” Relieved that he hadn’t been plowed down, Charles rested a hand on the rail. “She said she might stay in town and do some shopping. We shouldn’t worry if—”

But Michael was already halfway down the hall.

With a sigh for the agility he hadn’t had in thirty years, Charles creaked his way into the drawing room to lay a fire.

The wind hit Michael the moment he stepped outside, reminding him he hadn’t stopped for a coat. As he began to race toward the shed, his face chilled and his muscles warmed. There was no one in sight on the grounds. Not surprising, he mused as he slowed his pace just a bit. The woods were close at the edge, and there were a half a dozen easy paths through them.

Some kid poking around? he wondered. Pandora would be lucky if he hadn’t pocketed half her pretty stones. It would serve her right.

But he changed his mind the minute he stood in the doorway of her workshop.

Boxes were turned over so that gems and stones and beads were scattered everywhere. Balls of string and twine had been unraveled and twisted and knotted from wall to wall. He had to push some out of his way to step inside. What was usually almost pristine in its order was utter chaos. Gold and silver wire had been bent and snapped, tools lay where they’d been carelessly tossed to the floor.

Michael bent down and picked up an emerald. It glinted sharp and green in his palm. If it had been a thief, he decided, it had been a clumsy and shortsighted one.

“Oh, God!” Pandora dropped her purse with a thud and stared.

When Michael turned, he saw her standing in the doorway, ice pale and rigid. He swore, wishing he’d had a moment to prepare her. “Take it easy,” he began as he reached for her arm.

She shoved him aside forcibly and fought her way into the shed. Beads rolled and bounced at her feet. For a moment there was pure shock, disbelief. Then came a white wall of fury. “How could you?” When she turned back to him she was no longer pale. Her color was vivid, her eyes as sharp as the emerald he still held.

Because he was off guard, she nearly landed the first blow. The air whistled by his face as her fist passed. He caught her arms before she tried again. “Just a minute,” he began, but she threw herself bodily into him and knocked them both against the wall. Whatever had been left on the shelves shuddered or fell off. It took several moments, and a few bruises on both ends, before he managed to pin her arms back and hold her still.

“Stop it.” He pressed her back until she glared up at him, dry-eyed and furious. “You’ve a right to be upset, but putting a hole in me won’t accomplish anything.”

“I knew you could be low,” she said between her teeth. “But I’d never have believed you could do something so filthy.”

“Believe whatever the hell you want,” he began, but he felt her body shudder as she fought for control. “Pandora,” and his voice softened. “I didn’t do this. Look at me,” he demanded with a little shake. “Why would I?”

Because she wanted to cry, her voice, her eyes were hard. “You tell me.”

Patience wasn’t one of his strong points, but he tried again. “Pandora, listen to me. Try for common sense a minute and just listen. I got here a few minutes before you. I saw someone coming out of the shed from my window and came down. When I got here, this is what I found.”

She was going to disgrace herself. She felt the tears backing up and hated them. It was better to hate him. “Let go of me.”

Perhaps he could handle her anger better than her despair. Cautiously Michael released her arms and stepped back. “It hasn’t been more than ten minutes since I saw someone coming out of here. I figured they cut through the woods.”

She tried to think, tried to clear the fury out of her head. “You can go,” she said with deadly calm. “I have to clean up and take inventory.”

Something hot backed up in his throat at the casual dismissal. Remembering his own reaction when he’d opened the shed door, he swallowed it. “I’ll call the police if you like, but I don’t know if anything was stolen.” He opened his palm and showed her the emerald. “I can’t imagine any thief leaving stones like this behind.”

Pandora snatched it out of his hand. When her fingers closed over it, she felt the slight prick of the hoop she’d fastened onto it only the day before. The emerald seemed to grow out of the braided wire.

Her heart was thudding against her ribs as she walked to her worktable. There was what was left of the necklace she’d been fashioning for two weeks. The deceptively delicate tiers were in pieces, the emeralds that had hung gracefully from them, scattered. Her own nippers had been used to destroy it. She gathered up the pieces in her hands and fought back the urge to scream.

“It was this, wasn’t it?” Michael picked up the sketch from the floor. It was stunning on paper—at once fanciful and bold. He supposed what she had drawn had some claim to art. He imagined how he’d feel if someone took scissors to one of his scripts. “You’d nearly finished.”

Pandora dropped the pieces back on the table. “Leave me alone.” She crouched and began to gather up stones and beads.

“Pandora.” When she ignored him, Michael grabbed her by the shoulders and shook. “Dammit, Pandora, I want to help.”

She sent him a long, cold look. “You’ve done enough, Michael. Now leave me alone.”

“All right, fine.” He released her and stormed out. Anger and frustration carried him halfway across the lawn. Michael stopped, swore and wished bitterly for a cigarette. She had no right to accuse him. Worse, she had no right to make him feel responsible. The guilt he was experiencing was nearly as strong as it would have been if he’d actually vandalized her shop. Hands in his pockets, he stood staring back at the shed and cursing her.

She really thought he’d done that to her. That he was capable of such meaningless, bitter destruction. He’d tried to talk to her, soothe her. Every offer of help had been thrown back at him. Just like her, he thought with his teeth gritted. She deserved to be left alone.

He nearly started back to the house again when he remembered just how shocked and ill she’d looked in the doorway of the shed. Calling himself a fool, he went back.

When he opened the door of the shed again, the chaos was just as it had been. Sitting in the middle of it on the floor by her workbench was Pandora. She was weeping quietly.

He felt the initial male panic at being confronted with feminine tears and surprise that they came from Pandora who never shed them. Yet he felt sympathy for someone who’d been dealt a bull’s-eye blow. Without saying a word, he went to her and slipped his arms around her.

She stiffened, but he’d expected it. “I told you to go away.”

“Yeah. Why should I listen to you?” He stroked her hair.

She wanted to crawl into his lap and weep for hours. “I don’t want you here.”

“I know. Just pretend I’m someone else.” He drew her against his chest.

“I’m only crying because I’m angry.” With a sniff, she turned her face into his shirt.

“Sure.” He kissed the top of her head. “Go ahead and be angry for a while. I’m used to it.”

She told herself it was because she was weakened by shock and grief, but she relaxed against him. The tears came in floods. When she cried, she cried wholeheartedly. When she was finished, she was done.

Tears dry, she sat cushioned against him. Secure. She wouldn’t question it now. Along with the anger came a sense of shame she was unaccustomed to. She’d been filthy to him. But he’d come back and held her. Who’d have expected him to be patient, or caring? Or strong enough to make her accept both. Pandora let out a long breath and kept her eyes shut for just a moment. He smelled of soap and nothing else.

“I’m sorry, Michael.”

She was soft. Hadn’t he just told himself she wouldn’t be? He let his cheek brush against her hair. “Okay.”

“No, I mean it.” When she turned her head her lips skimmed across his cheek. It surprised them both. That kind of contact was for friends—or lovers. “I couldn’t think after I walked in here. I—” She broke off a moment, fascinated by his eyes. Wasn’t it strange how small the world could become if you looked into someone’s eyes? Why hadn’t she ever noticed that before? “I need to sort all this out.”

“Yeah.” He ran a fingertip down her cheek. She was soft. Softer than he’d let himself believe. “We both do.”

It was so easy to settle herself in the crook of his arm. “I can’t think.”

“No?” Her lips were only an inch from his—too close to ignore, too far to taste. “Let’s both not think for a minute.”

When he touched his mouth to hers, she didn’t draw away but accepted, experimented with the same sense of curiosity that moved through him. It wasn’t an explosion or a shock, but a test for both of them. One they’d both known would come sooner or later.

She tasted warm, and her sweetness had a bite. He’d known her so long, shouldn’t he have known that? Her body felt primed to move, to act, to race. Soft, yes, she was soft, but not pliant. Perhaps he’d have found pliancy too easy. When he slipped his tongue into her mouth hers met it teasingly, playfully. His stomach knotted. She made him want more, much more of that unapologetically earthy scent, the taut body. His fingers tangled in her hair and tightened.

He was as mysterious and bold as she’d always thought he would be. His hands were firm, his mouth giving. Sometimes she’d wondered what it would be like to meet him on these terms. But she’d always closed her mind before any of the answers could slip through. Michael Donahue was dangerous simply because he was Michael Donahue. By turns he’d attracted and alienated her since they’d been children. It was more than any other man had been able to do for more than a week.

Now, as her mouth explored his, she began to understand why. He was different, for her. She didn’t feel altogether safe in his arms, and not completely in control. Pandora had always made certain she was both those things when it came to a man. The scrape of his unshaved cheek didn’t annoy her as she’d thought it would. It aroused. The discomfort of the hard floor seemed suitable, as was the quick rush of cold air through the still-open door.

She felt quietly and completely at home. Then the quick nip of his teeth against her lip made her feel as though she’d just stepped on uncharted land. New territory was what she’d been raised on, and yet, in all her experience, she’d never explored anything so unique, so exotic or so comfortable.

She wanted to go on and knew she had to stop.

Together they drew away.

“Well.” She scrambled for composure as she folded her hands in her lap. Be casual, she ordered herself while her pulse thudded at her wrists. Be careless. She couldn’t afford to say anything that might make him laugh at her. “That’s been coming for a while, I suppose.”

He felt as though he’d just slid down a roller coaster without a cart. “I suppose.” He studied her a moment, curious and a bit unnerved. When he saw her fingers twist together he felt a small sense of satisfaction. “It wasn’t altogether what I’d expected.”

“Things rarely are.” Too many surprises for one day, Pandora decided, and rose unsteadily to her feet. She made the mistake of looking around and nearly sunk to the floor again.

“Pandora—”

“No, don’t worry.” She shook her head as he rose. “I’m not going to fall apart again.” Concentrating on breathing evenly, she took one long look at her workshop. “It looks like you were right about the locks. I suppose I should be grateful you haven’t said I told you so.”

“Maybe I would if it applied.” Michael picked up the emeralds scattered on her table. “I’m no expert, cousin, but I’d say these are worth a few thousand.”

“So?” She frowned as her train of thought began to march with his. “No thief would’ve left them behind.” Reaching down, she picked up a handful of stones. Among them were two top-grade diamonds. “Or these.”

As was his habit, he began to put the steps together in a sort of mental scenario. Action and reaction, motive and result. “I’d wager once you’ve inventoried, you won’t be missing anything. Whoever did this didn’t want to risk more than breaking and entering and vandalism.”

With a huff, she sat down on her table. “You think it was one of the family.”

“‘They said it wouldn’t last,’” he quoted, and stuck his hands in his pockets. “You may’ve had something there, Pandora. Something neither of us considered when we were setting out the guidelines. None of them believed we’d be able to get through six months together. The fact is, we’ve gotten through the first two weeks without a hitch. It could make one of them nervous enough to want to throw in a complication. What was your first reaction when you saw all this?”

She dragged her hand through her hair. “That you’d done it for spite. Exactly what our kith and kin would expect me to think. Dammit, I hate to be predictable.”

“You outsmarted them once your mind cleared.”

She sent him a quick look, not certain if she should thank him or apologize again. It was best to do neither. “Biff,” Pandora decided with relish. “This sort of low-minded trick would be just up his alley.”

“I’d only vote for Biff if you find a few rocks missing.” Michael rocked back on his heels. “He’d never be able to resist picking up a few glitters that could be liquidated into nice clean cash.”

“True enough.” Uncle Carlson—no, it seemed a bit crude for his style. Ginger would’ve been too fascinated with the sparkles to have done any more than fondle. Pulling a hand through her hair, she tried to picture one of her bland, civilized relations wielding a pair of nippers. “Well, I don’t suppose it matters a great deal which one of them did it. They’ve put me two weeks behind on my commission.” Again she picked up pieces of thin gold. “It’ll never be quite the same,” she murmured. “Nothing is when it’s done over.”

“Sometimes it’s better.”

With a shake of her head, she walked over to a heater. If he gave her any more sympathy now, she wouldn’t be able to trust herself. “One way or the other I’ve got to get started. Tell Sweeney I won’t make it in for lunch.”

“I’ll help you clean this up.”

“No.” She turned back when he started to frown. “No, really, Michael, I appreciate it. I need to be busy. And alone.”

He didn’t like it, but understood. “All right. I’ll see you at dinner.”

“Michael…” He paused at the doorway and looked back. Amid the confusion she looked strong and vivid. He nearly closed the door and went back to her. “Maybe Uncle Jolley was right.”

“About what?”

“You may have one or two redeeming qualities.”

He smiled at her then, quick and dashing. “Uncle Jolley was always right, cousin. That’s why he’s still pulling the strings.”

Pandora waited until the door shut again. Pulling the strings he was, she mused. “But you’re not playing matchmaker with my life,” she mumbled. “I’m staying free, single and unattached. Just get that through your head.”

She wasn’t superstitious, but Pandora almost thought she heard her uncle’s high, cackling laugh. She rolled up her sleeves and got to work.

Chapter Four

Because after a long, tedious inventory Pandora discovered nothing missing, she vetoed Michael’s notion of calling in the police. If something had been stolen, she’d have seen the call as a logical step. As it was, she decided the police would poke and prod around and lecture on the lack of locks. If the vandal had been one of the family—and she had to agree with Michael’s conclusion there—a noisy, official investigation would give the break-in too much importance and undoubtedly too much publicity.

Yes, the press would have a field day. Pandora had already imagined the headlines. “Family vs. family in the battle of eccentric’s will.” There was, under her independent and straightforward nature, a prim part of her that felt family business was private business.

If one or more of the members of the family were keeping an eye on Jolley’s Folley and the goings-on there, Pandora wanted them to think that she’d brushed off the vandalism as petty and foolish. As a matter of pride, she didn’t want anyone to believe she’d been dealt a stunning blow. As a matter of practicality, she didn’t want anyone to know that she had her eyes open. She was determined to find out who had broken into her shop and how they’d managed to pick such a perfect time for it.

Michael hadn’t insisted on calling the police because his thoughts had run along the same lines as Pandora’s. He’d managed, through a lot of maneuvering and silence, to keep his career totally separate from his family. In his business, he was known as Michael Donahue, award-winning writer, not Michael Donahue, relative of Jolley McVie, multimillionaire. He wanted to keep it that way.

Stubbornly, each had refused to tell the other of their reasons or their plans for some personal detective work. It wasn’t so much a matter of trust, but more the fact that neither of them felt the other could do the job competently. So instead, they kept the conversation light through one of Sweeney’s four-star meals and let the vandalism rest. More important, they carefully avoided any reference that might trigger some remark about what had happened on a more personal level in Pandora’s workshop.

After two glasses of wine and a generous portion of chicken fricassee, Pandora felt more optimistic. It would have been much worse if any of her stock or tools had been taken. That would have meant a trip into Manhattan and days, perhaps weeks of delay. As it was, the worst crime that she could see was the fact that she’d been spied on. Surely that was the only explanation for the break-in coinciding so perfectly with her trip to town. And that would be her first order of business.

“I wonder,” Pandora began, probing lightly, “if the Saundersons are in residence for the winter.”

“The neighbors with the pond.” Michael had thought of the Saunderson place himself. There were certain points on that property where, with a good set of binoculars, someone could watch the Folley easily. “They spend a lot of time in Europe, don’t they?”

“Hmm.” Pandora toyed with her chicken. “He’s in hotels, you know. They tend to pop off here or there for weeks at a time.”

“Do they ever rent the place out?”

“Oh, not that I know of. I’m under the impression that they leave a skeleton staff there even when they fly off. Now that I think of it, they were home a few months ago.” The memory made her smile. “Uncle Jolley and I went fishing and Saunderson nearly caught us. If we hadn’t scrambled back to the cabin—” She broke off as the thought formed.

“Cabin.” Michael picked up where she’d left off. “That old two-room wreck Jolley was going to use as a hunting lodge during his eat-off-the-land stage? I’d forgotten all about it.”

Pandora shrugged as though it meant nothing while her mind raced ahead. “He ended up eating more beans than game. In any case, we caught a bundle of trout, ate like pigs and sent the rest along to Saunderson. He never sent a thank-you note.”

“Poor manners.”

“Well, I’ve heard his grandmother was a barmaid in Chelsea. More wine?”

“No, thanks.” He thought it best to keep a clear head if he was going to carry out the plans that were just beginning to form. “Help yourself.”

Pandora set the bottle down and sent him a sweet smile. “No, I’m fine. Just a bit tired really.”

“You’re entitled.” It would clear his path beautifully if he could ship her off to bed early. “What you need is a good night’s sleep.”

“I’m sure you’re right.” Both of them were too involved with their own moves to notice how excruciatingly polite the conversation had become. “I’ll just skip coffee tonight and go have a bath.” She feigned a little yawn. “What about you? Planning to work late?”

“No—no, I think I’ll get a fresh start in the morning.”

“Well then.” Pandora rose, still smiling. She’d give it an hour, she calculated, then she’d be out and gone. “I’m going up. Good night, Michael.”

“Good night.” Once the light in her room was off, he decided, he’d be on his way.

* * *

Pandora sat in her darkened room for exactly fifteen minutes and just listened. All she had to do was get outside without being spotted. The rest would be easy. Opening her door a crack, she held her breath, waited and listened a little longer. Not a sound. It was now or never, she decided and bundled into her coat. Into the deep pockets, she shoved a flashlight, two books of matches and a small can of hair spray. As good as mace, Pandora figured, if you ran into something unfriendly. She crept out into the hall and started slowly down the stairs, her back to the wall.

An adventure, she thought, feeling the familiar pulse of excitement and anxiety. She hadn’t had one since Uncle Jolley died. As she let herself out one of the side doors, she thought how much he’d have enjoyed this one. The moon was only a sliver, but the sky was full of stars. The few clouds that spread over them were hardly more than transparent wisps. And the air—she took a deep breath—was cool and crisp as an apple. With a quick glance over her shoulder at Michael’s window, she started toward the woods.

The starlight couldn’t help her there. Though the trees were bare, the branches were thick enough to block out big chunks of sky. She dug out her flashlight and, turning it side to side, found the edges of the path. She didn’t hurry. If she rushed, the adventure would be over too soon. She walked slowly, listened and imagined.

There were sounds—the breeze blew through pine needles and scattered the dry leaves. Now and again there was a skuddle in the woods to the right or left. A fox, a raccoon, a bear not quite settled down to hibernate? Pandora liked not being quite certain. If you walked through the woods alone, in the dark, and didn’t have some sense of wonder, it was hardly worth the trip.

She liked the smells—pine, earth, the hint of frost that would settle on the ground before morning. She liked the sense of being alone, and more, of having something up ahead that warranted her attention.

The path forked, and she swung to the left. The cabin wasn’t much farther. She stopped once, certain she’d heard something move up ahead that was too big to be considered a fox. For a moment she had a few uncomfortable thoughts about bears and bobcats. It was one thing to speculate and another to have to deal with them. Then there was nothing. Shaking her head, Pandora went on.

What would she do if she got to the cabin, and it wasn’t dusty and deserted? What would she do if she actually found one of her dear, devoted relatives had set up housekeeping? Uncle Carlson reading the Wall Street Journal by the fire? Aunt Patience fussing around the rocky wooden table with a dust cloth? The thought was almost laughable. Almost, until Pandora remembered her workshop.

Drawing her brows together, she walked forward. If someone was there, they were going to answer to her. In moments, the shadow of the cabin loomed up before her. It looked as it was supposed to look, desolate, deserted, eerie. She kept her flashlight low as she crept toward the porch, then nearly let out a scream when her own weight caused the narrow wooden stair to creak. She held a hand to her heart until it no longer felt as though it would break her ribs. Then slowly, quietly, stealthily, she reached for the doorknob and twisted it.

The door moaned itself open. Wincing at the sound, Pandora counted off ten seconds before she took the next step. With a quick sweep of her light, she stepped in.

When the arm came around her neck, she dropped the flashlight with a clatter. It rolled over the floor, sending an erratic beam over the log walls and brick fireplace. Even as she drew the breath to scream, she reached in her pocket for the hair spray. After she was whirled around, she found herself face-to-face with Michael. His fist was poised inches from her face, her can inches from his. Both of them stood just as they were.

“Dammit!” Michael dropped his arm. “What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” she tossed back. “And what do you mean by grabbing me that way? You may’ve broken my flashlight.”

“I almost broke your nose.”

Pandora shook back her hair and walked over to retrieve her light. She didn’t want him to see her hands tremble. “Well, I certainly think you should find out who someone is before you throw a headlock on them.”

“You followed me.”

She sent him a cool, amused look. It helped to be able to do so when her stomach was still quaking. “Don’t flatter yourself. I simply wanted to see if something was going on out here, and I didn’t want you to interfere.”

“Interfere.” He shone his own light directly in her face so that she had to throw up a hand in defense. “And what the hell were you going to do if something was going on? Overpower them?”

She thought of how easily he’d taken her by surprise. It only made her lift her chin higher. “I can take care of myself.”

“Sure.” He glanced down at the can she still held. “What have you got there?”

Having forgotten it, Pandora looked down herself, then had to stifle a chuckle. Oh, how Uncle Jolley would’ve appreciated the absurdity. “Hair spray,” she said very precisely. “Right between the eyes.”

He swore, then laughed. He couldn’t have written a scene so implausible. “I guess I should be glad you didn’t get a shot off at me.”

“I look before I pounce.” Pandora dropped the can back into her pocket. “Well, since we’re here, we might as well look around.”

“I was doing just that when I heard your catlike approach.” She wrinkled her nose at him, but he ignored her. “It looks like someone’s been making themselves at home.” To prove his point, Michael shone his light at the fireplace. Half-burnt logs still smoldered.

“Well, well.” With her own light, Pandora began to walk around the cabin. The last time she’d been there, the chair with the broken rung had been by the window. Jolley had sat there himself, keeping a lookout for Saunderson while she’d opened a tin of sardines to ward off starvation. Now the chair was pulled up near the fire. “A vagrant, perhaps.”

Watching her, Michael nodded. “Perhaps.”

“But not likely. Suppose they’ll be back?”

“Hard to say.” The casual glance showed nothing out of place. The cabin was neat and tidy. Too tidy. The floor and table surfaces should have had a film of dust. Everything had been wiped clean. “It could be they’ve done all the damage they intend to do.”

Disgruntled, Pandora plopped down on the bunk and dropped her chin in her hands. “I’d hoped to catch them.”

“And what? Zap them with environmentally safe hair spray?”

She glared up at him. “I suppose you had a better plan.”

“I think I might’ve made them a bit more uncomfortable.”

“Black eyes and broken noses.” She made an impatient sound. “Really, Michael, you should try to get your mind out of your fists.”

“I suppose you just wanted to talk reasonably with whichever member of our cozy family played search and destroy with your workshop.”

She started to snap, caught herself, then smiled. It was the slow, wicked smile Michael could never help admiring. “No,” she admitted. “Reason wasn’t high on my list. Still, it appears we’ve both missed our chance for brute force. Well, you write the detective stories—so to speak—shouldn’t we look for clues?”

His lips curved in something close to a sneer. “I didn’t think to bring my magnifying glass.”

“You can almost be amusing when you put your mind to it.” Rising, Pandora began to shine her light here and there. “They might’ve dropped something.”

“A name tag?”

“Something,” she muttered, and dropped to her knees to look under the bunk. “Aha!” Hunkering down, she grabbed at something.

“What is it?” Michael was beside her before she’d straightened up.

“A shoe.” Feeling foolish and sentimental, she held it in both hands. “It’s nothing. It was Uncle Jolley’s.”

Because she looked lost, and more vulnerable than he’d expected, Michael offered the only comfort he knew. “I miss him, too.”

She sat a moment, the worn sneaker in her lap. “You know, sometimes it’s as though I can almost feel him. As though he’s around the next corner, in the next room, waiting to pop up and laugh at the incredible joke he’s played.”

With a quick laugh, Michael rubbed a hand over her back. “I know what you mean.”

Pandora looked at him, steady, measuring. “Maybe you do,” she murmured. Briskly she set the sneaker on the bunk and rose. “I’ll have a look in the cupboards.”

“Let me know if you find any cookies.” He met the look she tossed over her shoulder with a shrug. “In the early stages of nonsmoking, you need a lot of oral satisfaction.”

“You ought to try chewing gum.” Pandora opened a cupboard and shone her light over jars and cans. There was peanut butter, chunky, and caviar, Russian. Two of Jolley’s favorite snacks. She passed over taco sauce and jumbo fruit cocktail, remembering that her ninety-three-year-old uncle had had the appetite of a teenager. Then reaching in, she plucked out a can and held it up. “Aha!”

“Again?”

“Tuna fish,” Pandora announced waving the can at Michael. “It’s a can of tuna.”

“Right you are. Any mayo to go with it?”

“Don’t be dense, Michael. Uncle Jolley hated tuna.”

Michael started to say something sarcastic, then stopped. “He did, didn’t he?” he said slowly. “And he never kept anything around he didn’t like.”

“Exactly.”

“Congratulations, Sherlock. Now which of the suspects has an affection for canned fish?”

“You’re just jealous because I found a clue and you didn’t.”

“It’s only a clue,” Michael pointed out, a little annoyed at being outdone by an amateur. “if you can do something with it.”

He’d never give her credit, she thought, for anything, not her craft, her intelligence and never her womanhood. There was an edge to her voice when she spoke again. “If you’re so pessimistic, why did you come out here?”

“I was hoping to find someone.” Restless, Michael moved his light from wall to wall. “As it is all we’ve done is prove someone was here and gone.”

Pandora dropped the can of tuna in disgust. “A waste of time.”

“You shouldn’t’ve followed me out.”

“I didn’t follow you out.” She shone her light back at him. He looked too male, too dangerous in the shadows. She wished, only briefly, that she had the spectacular build and stunning style that would bring him whimpering to his knees. Their breath came in clouds and merged together. “For all I know, you followed me.”

“Oh, I see. That’s why I was here first.”

“Beside the point. If you’d planned to come out here tonight, why didn’t you tell me?”

He came closer. But if he came too close to her, he discovered, he began to feel something, something like an itch along the skin. Try to scratch it, he reminded himself, and she’d rub you raw in seconds. “For the same reason you didn’t tell me. I don’t trust you, cousin. You don’t trust me.”

“At least we can agree on something.” She started to brush by him and found her arm captured. In one icy movement, she tilted her head down to look at his hand, then up to look at his face. “That’s a habit you should try to break, Michael.”

“They say when you break one habit, you pick up another.”

The ice in Pandora’s voice never changed, but her blood was warming. “Do they?”

“You’re easier to touch than I’d once thought, Pandora.”

“Don’t be too sure, Michael.” She took a step back, not in retreat, she told herself. It was a purely offensive move. Still, he moved with her.

“Some women have trouble dealing with physical attraction.”

The temper that flared in her eyes appealed to him as much as the passion he’d seen there briefly that afternoon. “Your ego’s showing again. This dominant routine might work very well with your centerfolds, but—”

“You’ve always had an odd fascination with my sex life.” Michael grinned at her, pleased to see frustration flit over her face.

“The same kind of educated fascination one has with the sex lives of lower mammals.” It infuriated her that her heart was racing. And not from anger. She was too honest to pretend it was anger. She’d come looking for an adventure, and she’d found one. “It’s getting late,” she said, using the tone of a parochial schoolteacher to a disruptive student. “You’ll have to excuse me.”

“I’ve never asked about your sex life.” When she took another step away, he boxed her neatly into a corner. Pandora’s hand slipped into her pocket and rested on the can of hair spray. “Let me guess. You prefer a man with a string of initials after his name who philosophizes about sex more than he acts on it.”

“Why you pompous, arrogant—”

Michael shut her mouth the way he’d once fantasized. With his own.

The kiss was no test this time, but torrid, hot, edging toward desperate. Whatever she might feel, she’d dissect later. Now she’d accept the experience. His mouth was warm, firm, and he used it with the same cocky male confidence that would have infuriated her at any other time. Now she met it with her own.

He was strong, insistent. For the first time Pandora felt herself body to body with a man who wouldn’t treat her delicately. He demanded, expected and gave a completely uninhibited physicality. Pandora didn’t have to think her way through the kiss. She didn’t have to think at all.

He’d expected her to rear back and take a swing at him. Her instant and full response left him reeling. Later Michael would recall that nothing as basic and simple as a kiss had made his head spin for years.

She packed a punch, but she did it with soft lips. If she knew just how quickly she’d knocked him out, would she gloat? He wouldn’t think of it now. He wouldn’t think of anything now. Without a moment’s hesitation, he buried his consciousness in her and let the senses rule.

The cabin was cold and dark without even a single stream of moonlight for romance. It smelled of dying smoke and settling dust. The wind had kicked up enough to moan grumpily at the windows. Neither of them noticed. Even when they broke apart, neither of them noticed.

He wasn’t steady. That was something else he’d think about later. At least he had the satisfaction of seeing she wasn’t steady, either. She looked as he felt, stunned, off balance and unable to set for the next blow. Needing some equilibrium, he grinned at her.

“You were saying?”

She wanted to slug him. She wanted to kiss him again until he didn’t have the strength to grin. He’d expect her to fall at his feet as other women probably did. He’d expect her to sigh and smile and surrender so he’d have one more victory. Instead she snapped, “Idiot.”

“I love it when you’re succinct.”

“Rule number six,” Pandora stated, aiming a killing look. “No physical contact.”

“No physical contact,” Michael agreed as she stomped toward the doorway. “unless both parties enjoy it.”

She slammed the door and left him grinning.

* * *

When two people are totally involved in their own projects, they can live under the same roof for days at a time and rarely see each other. Especially if the roof is enormous and the people very stubborn. Pandora and Michael brushed together at meals and otherwise left each other alone. This wasn’t out of any sense of politeness or consideration. It was simply because each of them was too busy to heckle the other.

Separately, however, each felt a smug satisfaction when the first month passed. One down, five to go.

When they were into their second month, Michael drove into New York for a day to handle a problem with a script that had to be dealt with personally. He left, cross as a bear and muttering about imbeciles. Pandora prepared to enjoy herself tremendously in his absence. She wouldn’t have to keep up her guard or share the Folley for hours. She could do anything she wanted without worrying about anyone coming to look over her shoulder or make a caustic remark. It would be wonderful.

She ended up picking at her dinner, then watching for his car through the heavy brocade drapes. Not because she missed him, she assured herself. It was just that she’d become used to having someone in the house.

Wasn’t that one of the reasons she’d never lived with anyone before? She wanted to avoid any sense of dependence. And dependence, she decided, was natural when you shared the same space—even when it was with a two-legged snake.

So she waited, and she watched. Long after Charles and Sweeney had gone to bed, she continued to wait and watch. She wasn’t concerned, and certainly not lonely. Only restless. She told herself she didn’t go to bed herself because she wasn’t tired. Wandering the first floor, she walked into Jolley’s den. Game room would have been a more appropriate name. The decor was a cross between video arcade and disco lounge with its state-of-the-art components and low, curved-back sofas.

She turned on the huge, fifty-four-inch television, then left it on the first show that appeared. She wasn’t going to watch it. She just wanted the company.

There were two pinball tables where she passed nearly an hour trying to beat the high scores Jolley had left behind. Another legacy. Then there was an arcade-size video game that simulated an attack on the planet Zarbo. Under her haphazard defense system, the planet blew up three times before she moved on. There was computerized chess, but she thought her mind too sluggish to take it on. In the end she stretched out on the six-foot sofa in front of the television. Just to rest, not to watch.

Within moments, she was hooked on the late-night syndication of a cop show. Squealing tires and blasting bullets. Head pillowed on her arms, one leg thrown over the top of the sofa, she relaxed and let herself be entertained.

When Michael came to the doorway, she didn’t notice him. He’d had a grueling day and had hit some nasty traffic on the drive back. The fact was he’d considered staying in the city overnight—the sensible thing to do. He’d found himself making a dozen weak excuses why he had to go back instead of accepting the invitation of the assistant producer—a tidily built brunette with big brown eyes.

He’d intended to crawl upstairs, fall into his bed and sleep until noon, but he’d seen the lights and heard the racket. Now, here was Pandora, self-proclaimed critic of the small screen, sprawled on a sofa watching reruns at one in the morning. She looked suspiciously as though she were enjoying herself.

Not a bad show, Michael mused, recognizing the series. In fact, he’d written a couple of scripts for it in his early days. The central character had a sly sort of wit and a fumbling manner that caused the perpetrator to spill out enough information for an arrest by the end of the show.

Michael watched Pandora as she shifted comfortably on the couch. He waited until the commercial break. “Well, how the mighty have fallen.”

She nearly did, rolling quickly to look back toward the doorway. She sat up, scowled and searched her mind for a plausible excuse. “I couldn’t sleep,” she told him, which was true enough. She wouldn’t add it was because he hadn’t been home. “I suppose television is made for the insomniac. Valium for the mind.”

He was tired, bone tired, but he realized how glad he was she’d had a comeback. He came over, plopped down beside her and propped his feet on a coffee table made out of a fat log. “Who done it?” he asked, and sighed. It was good to be home.

“The greedy business partner.” She was too pleased to have him back to be embarrassed. “There’s really very little challenge in figuring out the answers.”

“This show wasn’t based on the premise of figuring out who did the crime, but in how the hero maneuvers them into betraying themselves.”

She pretended she wasn’t interested, but shifted so that she could still see the screen. “So, how did things go in New York?”

“They went.” Michael pried off one shoe with the toe of the other. “After several hours of hair tearing and blame casting, the script’s intact.”

He looked tired. Really tired, she realized, and unbent enough to take off his other shoe. He merely let out a quick grunt of appreciation. “I don’t understand why people would get all worked up about one silly hour a week.”

He opened one eye to stare at her. “It’s the American way.”

“What’s there to get so excited about? You have a crime, the good guys chase the bad guys and catch them before the final credits. Seems simple enough.”

“I can’t thank you enough for clearing that up. I’ll point it out at the next production meeting.”

“Really, Michael, it seems to me things should run fairly smoothly, especially since you’ve been on the air with this thing for years.”

“Know anything about ego and paranoia?”

She smiled a little. “I’ve heard of them.”

“Well, multiply that with artistic temperament, the ratings race and an escalating budget. Don’t forget to drop in a good dose of network executives. Things haven’t run smoothly for four years. If Logan goes another four, it still won’t run smoothly. That’s show biz.”

Pandora moved her shoulders. “It seems a foolish way to make a living.”

“Ain’t it just,” Michael agreed, and fell sound asleep.

She let him doze for the next twenty minutes while she watched the sly, fumbling cop tighten the ropes on the greedy business partner. Satisfied that justice had been done, Pandora rose to switch off the set and dim the lights.

She could leave him here, she considered as she watched Michael sleep. He looked comfortable enough at the moment. She thought about it as she walked over to brush his hair from his forehead. But he’d probably wake up with a stiff neck and a nasty disposition. Better get him upstairs into bed, she decided, and shook his shoulder.

“Michael.”

“Mmm?”

“Let’s go to bed.”

“Thought you’d never ask,” he mumbled, and reached halfheartedly for her.

Amused, she shook him harder. “Never let your reach exceed your grasp. Come on, cousin, I’ll help you upstairs.”

“The director’s a posturing idiot,” he grumbled as she dragged him to his feet.

“I’m sure he is. Now, see if you can put one foot in front of the other. That’s the way. Here we go.” With an arm around his waist, she began to lead him from the room.

“He kept screwing around with my script.”

“Of all the nerve. Here come the steps.”

“Said he wanted more emotional impact in the second act. Bleaches his hair,” Michael muttered as she half pulled him up the steps. “Lot he knows about emotional impact.”

“Obviously a mental midget.” Breathlessly she steered him toward his room. He was heavier than he looked. “Here we are now, home again.” With a little strategy and a final burst of will, she shoved him onto the bed. “There now, isn’t that cozy?” Leaving him fully dressed, she spread an afghan over him.

“Aren’t you going to take my pants off?”

She patted his head. “Not a chance.”

“Spoilsport.”

“If I helped you undress this late at night, I’d probably have nightmares.”

“You know you’re crazy about me.” The bed felt like heaven. He could’ve burrowed in it for a week.

“You’re getting delirious, Michael. I’ll have Charles bring you some warm tea and honey in the morning.”

“Not if you want to live.” He roused himself to open his eyes and smile at her. “Why don’t you crawl in beside me? With a little encouragement, I could show you the time of your life.”

Pandora leaned closer, closer, until her mouth was inches from his. Their breath mixed quickly, intimately. She hovered there a moment while her hair fell forward and brushed his cheek. “In a pig’s eye,” she whispered.

Michael shrugged, yawned and rolled over. “’Kay.”

In the dark, Pandora stood for a moment with her hands on her hips. At least he could’ve acted insulted. Chin up, she walked out—making sure she slammed the door at her back.

Chapter Five

Tier by painstaking tier, Pandora had completed the emerald necklace. When it was finished, she was pleased to judge it perfect. This judgment pleased her particularly because she was her own toughest critic. Pandora didn’t feel emotionally attached or creatively satisfied by every piece she made. With the necklace, she felt both. She examined it under a magnifying glass, held it up in harsh light, went over the filigree inch by inch and found no flaws. Out of her own imagination she’d conceived it, then with her own skill created it. With a kind of regret, she boxed the necklace in a bed of cotton. It wasn’t hers any longer.

With the necklace done, she looked around her workshop without inspiration. She’d put so much into that one piece, all her concentration, her emotion, her skill. She hadn’t made a single plan for the next project. Restless, wanting to work, she picked up her pad and began to sketch.

Earrings perhaps, she mused. Something bold and chunky and ornate. She wanted a change after the fine, elegant work she’d devoted so much time to. Circles and triangles, she thought. Something geometric and blatantly modern. Nothing romantic like the necklace.

Romantic, she mused, and sketched strong, definite lines. She’d been working with a romantic piece; perhaps that’s why she’d nearly made a fool of herself with Michael. Her emotions were involved with her work, and her work had been light and feminine and romantic. It made sense, she decided, satisfied. Now, she’d work with something strong and brash and arrogant. That should solve the problem.

There shouldn’t be a problem in the first place. Teeth gritted, she flipped a page and started over. Her feelings for Michael had always been very definite. Intolerance. If you were intolerant of someone, it went against the grain to be attracted to him.

It wasn’t real attraction in any case. It was more some sort of twisted…curiosity. Yes, curiosity. The word satisfied her completely. She’d been curious, naturally enough, to touch on the sexuality of a man she’d known since childhood. Curious, again naturally, to find out what it was about Michael Donahue that attracted all those poster girls. She’d found out.

So he had a way of making a woman feel utterly a woman, utterly involved, utterly willing. It wasn’t something that had happened to her before nor something she’d looked for. As Pandora saw it, it was a kind of skill. She decided he’d certainly honed it as meticulously as any craftsman. Though she found it difficult to fault him for that, she wasn’t about to fall in with the horde. If he knew, if he even suspected, that she’d had the same reaction to him that she imagined dozens of other women had, he’d gloat for a month. If he guessed that from time to time she’d wished—just for a moment—that he’d think of her the way he thought of those dozens of other women, he’d gloat for twice as long. She wouldn’t give him the pleasure.

Individuality was part of her makeup. She didn’t want to be one of his women, even if she could. Now that her curiosity had been satisfied, they’d get through the next five months without any more…complications.

Just because she’d found him marginally acceptable as a human being, almost tolerable as a companion wouldn’t get in the way. It would, if anything, make the winter pass a bit easier.

And when she caught herself putting the finishing touches on a sketch of Michael’s face, she was appalled. The lines were true enough, though rough. She’d had no trouble capturing the arrogance around the eyes or the sensitivity around the mouth. Odd, she realized; she’d sketched him to look intelligent. She ripped the sheet from her pad, crumpled it up in a ball and tossed it into the trash. Her mind had wandered, that was all. Pandora picked up her pencil again, put it down, then dug the sketch out again. Art was art, after all, she told herself as she smoothed out Michael’s face.

* * *

He wasn’t having a great deal of success with his own work. Michael sat at his desk and typed like a maniac for five minutes. Then he stared into space for fifteen. It wasn’t like him. When he worked, he worked steadily, competently, smoothly until the scene was set.

Leaning back in his chair, he picked up a pencil and ran his fingers from end to end. Whatever the statistics said, he should never have given up smoking. That’s what had him so edgy. Restless, he pushed away from the desk and wandered over to the window. He stared down at Pandora’s workshop. It looked cheerful under a light layer of snow that was hardly more than a dusting. The windows were blank.

That’s what had him so edgy.

She wasn’t what he’d expected. She was softer, sweeter. Warmer. She was fun to talk to, whether she was arguing and snipping and keeping you on the edge of temper, or whether she was being easy and companionable. There wasn’t an overflow of small talk with Pandora. There weren’t any trite conversations. She kept your mind working, even if it was in defense of her next barb.

It wasn’t easy to admit that he actually enjoyed her company. But the weeks they’d been together at the Folley had gone quickly. No, it wasn’t easy to admit he liked being with her, but he’d turned down an interesting invitation from his assistant producer because… Because, Michael admitted on a long breath, he hadn’t wanted to spend the night with one woman when he’d known his thoughts would have been on another.

Just how was he going to handle this unwanted and unexpected attraction to a woman who’d rather put on the gloves and go a few rounds than walk in the moonlight?

Romantic women had always appealed to him because he was, unashamedly, a romantic himself. He enjoyed candlelight, quiet music, long, lonely walks. Michael courted women in old-fashioned ways because he felt comfortable with old-fashioned ways. It didn’t interfere with the fact that he was, and had been since college, a staunch feminist. Romance and sociopolitical views were worlds apart. He had no trouble balancing equal pay for equal work against offering a woman a carriage ride through the park.

And he knew if he sent Pandora a dozen white roses, she’d complain about the thorns.

He wanted her. Michael was too much a creature of the senses to pretend otherwise. When he wanted something, he worked toward it in one of two ways. First, he planned out the best approach, then took the steps one at a time, maneuvering subtly. If that didn’t work, he tossed out subtlety and went after it with both hands. He’d had just as much success the first way as the second.

As he saw it, Pandora wouldn’t respond to patience and posies. She wouldn’t go for being swept off her feet, either. With Pandora, he might just have to toss his two usual approaches and come up with a whole new third.

An interesting challenge, Michael decided with a slow smile. He liked nothing better than arranging and rearranging plot lines and shifting angles. And hadn’t he always thought Pandora would make a fascinating character? So, he’d work it like a screenplay.

Hero and heroine living as housemates, he began. Attracted to each other but reluctant. Hero is intelligent, charming. Has tremendous willpower. Hadn’t he given up smoking—five weeks, three days and fourteen hours ago? Heroine is stubborn and opinionated, often mistakes arrogance for independence. Hero gradually cracks through her brittle shield to their mutual satisfaction.

Michael leaned back in his chair and grinned. He might just make it a play. A great deal of the action would be ad-lib, of course, but he had the general theme. Satisfied, and looking forward to the opening scene, Michael went back to work with a vengeance.

Two hours breezed by with Michael working steadily. He answered the knock at his door with a grunt.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Donahue.” Charles, slightly out of breath from the climb up the stairs, stood in the doorway.

Michael gave another grunt and finished typing the paragraph. “Yes, Charles?”

“Telegram for you, sir.”

“Telegram?” Scowling, he swiveled around in the chair. If there was a problem in New York—as there was at least once a week—the phone was the quickest way to solve it. “Thanks.” He took the telegram, but only flapped it against his palm. “Pandora still out in her shop?”

“Yes, sir.” Grateful for the chance to rest, Charles expanded a bit. “Sweeney is a bit upset that Miss McVie missed lunch. She intends to serve dinner in an hour. I hope that suits your schedule.”

Michael knew better than to make waves where Sweeney was concerned. “I’ll be down.”

“Thank you, sir, and if I may say, I enjoy your television show tremendously. This week’s episode was particularly exciting.”

“I appreciate that, Charles.”

“It was Mr. McVie’s habit to watch it every week in my company. He never missed an episode.”

“There probably wouldn’t have been a Logan’s Run without Jolley,” Michael mused. “I miss him.”

“We all do. The house seems so quiet. But I—” Charles reddened a bit at the thought of overstepping his bounds.

“Go ahead, Charles.”

“I’d like you to know that both Sweeney and I are pleased to remain in your service, yours and Miss McVie’s. We were glad when Mr. McVie left you the house. The others…” He straightened his back and plunged on. “They wouldn’t have been suitable, sir. Sweeney and I had both discussed resigning if Mr. McVie had chosen to leave the Folley to one of his other heirs.” Charles folded his bony hands. “Will there be anything else before dinner, sir?”

“No, Charles. Thank you.”

Telegram in hand, Michael leaned back as Charles went out. The old butler had known him since childhood. Michael could remember distinctly when Charles had stopped calling him Master Donahue. He’d been sixteen and visiting the Folley during the summer months. Charles had called him Mr. Donahue and Michael had felt as though he’d just stepped from childhood, over adolescence and into adulthood.

Strange how much of his life had been involved with the Folley and the people who were a part of it. Charles had served him his first whisky—with dignity if not approval on his eighteenth birthday. Years before that, Sweeney had given him his first ear boxing. His parents had never bothered to swat him and his tutors wouldn’t have dared. Michael still remembered that after the sting had eased, he’d felt like part of a family.

Pandora had been both bane and fantasy during his adolescence. Apparently that hadn’t changed as much as Michael had thought. And Jolley. Jolley had been father, grandfather, friend, son and brother.

Jolley had been Jolley, and Michael had spoken no less than the truth when he’d told Charles he missed the old man. In some part of himself, he always would. Thinking of other things, Michael tore open the telegram.

Your mother gravely ill. Doctors not hopeful. Make arrangements to fly to Palm Springs immediately. L. J. KEYSER.

Michael stared at the telegram for nearly a minute. It wasn’t possible; his mother was never ill. She considered it something of a social flaw. He felt a moment’s disbelief, a moment’s shock. He was reaching for the phone before either had worn off.

When Pandora walked by his room fifteen minutes later, she saw him tossing clothes into a bag. She lifted a brow, leaned against the jamb and cleared her throat. “Going somewhere?”

“Palm Springs.” He tossed in his shaving kit.

“Really?” Now she folded her arms. “Looking for a sunnier climate?”

“It’s my mother. Her husband sent me a telegram.”

Instantly she dropped her cool, sarcastic pose and came into the room. “Is she ill?”

“The telegram didn’t say much, but it doesn’t sound good.”

“Oh, Michael, I’m sorry. Can I do anything? Call the airport?”

“I’ve already done it. I’ve got a flight in a couple of hours. They’re routing me through half a dozen cities, but it was the best I could do.”

Feeling helpless, she watched him zip up his bag. “I’ll drive you to the airport if you like.”

“No, thanks anyway.” He dragged a hand through his hair as he turned to face her. The concern was there, though he realized she’d only met his mother once, ten, perhaps fifteen years before. The concern was for him and unexpectedly solid. “Pandora, it’s going to take me half the night to get to the coast. And then I don’t know—” He broke off, not able to imagine his mother seriously ill. “I might not be able to make it back in time—not in forty-eight hours.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want you to think about it. I’ll call Fitzhugh and explain. Maybe he’ll be able to do something. After all, it’s an emergency. If he can’t, he can’t.”

He was taking a step that could pull millions of dollars out from under her. Millions of dollars and the home she loved. Torn, Michael went to her and rested his hands on her shoulders. She was so slender. He’d forgotten just how fragile a strong woman could be. “I’m sorry, Pandora. If there was any other way…”

“Michael, I told you I didn’t want the money. I meant it.”

He studied her a moment. Yes, the strength was there, the stubbornness and the basic goodness he often overlooked. “I believe you did,” he murmured.

“As for the rest, well, we’ll see. Now go ahead before you miss your plane.” She waited until he’d grabbed his bag then walked with him to the hall. “Call me if you get the chance and let me know how your mother is.”

He nodded, started for the stairs, then stopped. Setting his bag down, he came back and pulled her against him. The kiss was hard and long, with hints of a fire barely banked. He drew her away just as abruptly. “See you.”

“Yeah.” Pandora swallowed. “See you.”

She stood where she was until she heard the front door slam.

* * *

She had a long time to think about the kiss, through a solitary dinner, during the hours when she tried to read by the cheery fire in the parlor. It seemed to Pandora that there’d been more passion concentrated in that brief contact than she’d experienced in any of her carefully structured relationships. Was it because she’d always been able to restrict passion to her temper, or her work?

It might have been because she’d been sympathetic, and Michael had been distraught. Emotions had a way of feeding emotions. But for the second time she found herself alone in the house, and to her astonishment, lonely. It was foolish because the fire was bright, the book entertaining and the brandy she sipped warming.

But lonely she was. After little more than a month, she’d come to depend on Michael’s company. Even to look forward to it, as strange as that may have been. She liked sitting across from him at meals, arguing with him. She especially liked watching the way he fought, exploding when she poked pins in his work. Perverse? she wondered with a sigh. Perhaps she was, but life was so boring without a bit of friction. No one seemed to provide it more satisfactorily than Michael Donahue.

She wondered when she’d see him again. And she wondered if now they’d have to forgo spending the winter together. If the terms of the will were broken, there would be no reason for them to stay on together. In fact, they’d have no right to stay at the Folley at all. They’d both go back to New York where, due to separate life-styles, they never saw one another. Not until now, when it was a possibility, did Pandora fully realize how much she didn’t want it to happen.

She didn’t want to lose the Folley. There were so many memories, so many important ones. Wouldn’t they begin to fade if she couldn’t walk into a room and bring them back? She didn’t want to lose Michael. His companionship, she amended quickly. It was more satisfying than she’d imagined to have someone near who could meet you head to head. If she lost that daily challenge, life would be terribly flat. Since it was Michael who was adding that certain spark to the days, it was only natural to want him around. Wasn’t it?

With a sigh, Pandora shut the book and decided an early night would be more productive than idle speculation. Just as she reached over to shut out the lamp, it went out on its own. She was left with the glow of the fire.

Odd, she thought and reached for the switch. After turning it back and forth, she rose, blaming a defective bulb. But when she walked into the hall she found it in darkness. The light she’d left burning was out, along with the one always left on at the top of the stairs. Again Pandora reached for a switch and again she found it useless.

Power failure, she decided but found herself hesitating in the dark. There was no storm. Electricity at the Folley went out regularly during snow and thunderstorms, but the back-up generator took over with in minutes. Pandora waited, but the house remained dark. It occurred to her as he stood there hoping for the best, that she’d never really considered how dark dark could be. She was already making her way back into the parlor for a candle when the rest occurred to her. The house was heated with electricity, as well. If she didn’t see about the power soon, the house was going to be very cold as well as very dark before too long. With two people in their seventies in the house, she couldn’t let it go.

Annoyed, she found three candles in a silver holder and lit them. It wasn’t any use disturbing Charles’s sleep and dragging him down to the basement. It was probably only a faulty fuse or two. Holding the candles ahead of her, Pandora wound her way through the curving halls to the cellar door.

She wasn’t bothered about going down into the cellar in the dark. So she told herself as she stood with her hand on the knob. It was, after all, just another room. And one, if memory served, which was full of the remains of several of Uncle Jolley’s rejected hobbies. The fuse box was down there. She’d seen it when she’d helped her uncle cart down several boxes of photographic equipment after he’d decided to give up the idea of becoming a portrait photographer. She’d go down, check for faulty fuses and replace them. After the lights and heat were taken care of, she’d have a hot bath and go to bed.

But she drew in a deep breath before she opened the door.

The stairs creaked. It was to be expected. And they were steep and narrow as stairs were in any self-respecting cellar. The light from her candles set the shadows dancing over the crates and boxes her uncle had stored there. She’d have to see if she could talk Michael into helping her sort through them. On some bright afternoon. She was humming nervously to herself before she reached the bottom stair.

Pandora held the candles high and scanned the floor as far as the light circled. She knew mice had an affection for dark, dank cellars and she had no affection for them. When nothing rushed across the floor, she skirted around two six-foot crates and headed for the fuse box. There was the motorized exercise bike that Uncle Jolley had decided took the fun out of staying fit. There was a floor-to-ceiling shelf of old bottles. He’d once been fascinated by a ten-dollar bottle cutter. And there, she saw with a sigh of relief, was the fuse box. Setting the candles on a stack of boxes, she opened the big metal door and stared inside. There wasn’t a single fuse in place.

“What the hell’s this?” she muttered. Then as she shifted to look closer, her foot sent something rattling over the concrete floor. Jolting, she stifled a scream and the urge to run. Holding her breath, she waited in the silence. When she thought she could manage it, she picked up the candles again and crouched. Scattered at her feet were a dozen fuses. She picked one up and let it lay in her palm. The cellar might have its quota of mice, but they weren’t handy enough to empty a fuse box.

She felt a little shudder, which she ignored as she began to gather up the fuses. Tricks, she told herself. Just silly tricks. Annoying, but not as destructive as the one played in her workshop. It wasn’t even a very clever trick, she decided, as it was as simple to put fuses back as it had been to take them out.

Working quickly, and trying not to look over her shoulder, Pandora put the fuses back in place. Whoever had managed to get into the basement and play games had wasted her time, nothing more.

Finished, she went over to the stairs, and though she hated herself, ran up them. But her sigh of relief was premature. The door she’d carefully left open was closed tightly. For a few moments she simply refused to believe it. She twisted the knob, pushed, shoved and twisted again. Then she forgot everything but the fear of being closed in a dark place. Pandora beat on the door, shouted, pleaded, then collapsed half sobbing on the top step. No one would hear her. Charles and Sweeney were on the other side of the house.

For five minutes she gave in to fear and self-pity. She was alone, all alone, locked in a dark cellar where no one would hear her until morning. It was already cold and getting colder. By morning…her candles would go out by then, and she’d have no light at all. That was the worst, the very worst, to have no light.

Light, she thought, and called herself an idiot as she wiped away tears. Hadn’t she just fixed the lights? Scrambling up, Pandora hit the switch at the top of the stairs. Nothing happened. Holding back a scream, she held the candles up. The socket over the stairs was empty.

So, they’d thought to take out the bulbs. It had been a clever trick after all. She swallowed fresh panic and tried to think. They wanted her to be incoherent, and she refused to give them the satisfaction. When she found out which one of her loving family was playing nasty games…

That was for later, Pandora told herself. Now she was going to find a way out. She was shivering, but she told herself it was anger. There were times it paid to lie to yourself. Holding the candles aloft, she forced herself to go down the steps again when cowering at the top seemed so much easier.

The cellar was twice the size of her apartment in New York, open and barnlike without any of the ornate decorating Uncle Jolley had been prone to. It was just dark and slightly damp with concrete floors and stone walls that echoed. She wouldn’t think about spiders or things that scurried into corners right now. Slowly, trying to keep calm, she searched for an exit.

There were no doors, but then she was standing several feet underground. Like a tomb. That particular thought didn’t soothe her nerves so she concentrated on other things. She’d only been down in the cellar a handful of times and hadn’t given a great deal of thought to the setup. Now she had to think about it—and pretend her palms weren’t clammy.

She eased by a pile of boxes as high as her shoulders, then let out a scream when she ran into a maze of cobwebs. More disgusted than frightened, she brushed and dragged at them. It didn’t sit well with her to make a fool out of herself, even if no one was around to see it. Someone was going to pay, she told herself as she fought her way clear.

Then she saw the window, four feet above her head and tiny. Though it was hardly the size of a transom, Pandora nearly collapsed in relief. After setting the candles on a shelf, she began dragging boxes over. Her muscles strained and her back protested, but she hauled and stacked against the wall. The first splinter had her swearing. After the third, she stopped counting. Out of breath, streaming with sweat, she leaned against her makeshift ladder. Now all she had to do was climb it. With the candles in one hand, she used the other to haul herself up. The light shivered and swayed. The boxes groaned and teetered a bit. The thought passed through her mind that if she fell, she could lie there on the frigid concrete with broken bones until morning. She pulled herself high and refused to think at all.

When she reached the window, she found the little latch rusted and stubborn. Swearing, praying, she balanced the candles on the box under her and used both hands. She felt the latch give, then stick again. If she’d only thought to find a tool before she’d climbed up. She considered climbing back down and finding one, then made the mistake of looking behind her. The stack of boxes looked even more rickety from up there.

Turning back to the window, she tugged with all the strength she had. The latch gave with a grind of metal against metal, the boxes swayed from the movement. She saw her candles start to tip and grabbed for them. Out of reach, they slid from the box and clattered to the concrete, their tiny flames extinguished as they hit the ground. She almost followed them, but managed to fight for balance. Pandora found herself perched nine feet off the floor in pitch-darkness.

She wouldn’t fall, she promised herself as she gripped the little window ledge with both hands. Using her touch to guide her, she pulled the window out and open, then began to ease herself through. The first blast of cold air made her almost giddy. After she’d pushed her shoulders through she gave herself a moment to breathe and adjust to the lesser dark of starlight. From somewhere to the west, she heard a hardy night bird call twice and fall silent. She’d never heard anything more beautiful.

Grabbing the base of a rhododendron, she pulled herself through to the waist. When she heard the crash of boxes behind her, she laid her cheek against the cold grass. Inch by inch, she wiggled her way out, ignoring the occasional rip and scratch. At last, she was flat on her back, looking up at the stars. Cold, bruised and exhausted, she lay there, just breathing. When she was able, Pandora dragged herself up and walked around to the east terrace doors.

She wanted revenge, but first, she wanted a bath.

* * *

After three layovers and two plane changes, Michael arrived in Palm Springs. Nothing, as far as he could see, had changed. He never came to the exclusive little community but that he came reluctantly. Now, thinking of his mother lying ill, he was swamped with guilt.

He rarely saw her. True, she was no more interested in seeing him than he was her. Yet, she was still his mother. They had been on a different wavelength since the day he’d been born, but she’d taken care of him. At least, she’d hired people to take care of him. Affection, Michael realized, didn’t have to enter into a child’s feelings for his parent. The bond was there whether or not understanding followed it.

With no more than a flight bag, he bypassed the crowd at baggage claim and hailed a cab. After giving his mother’s address, he sat back and checked his watch, subtracting time zones. Even with the hours he’d gained, it was probably past visiting hours. He’d get around that, but first he had to know what hospital his mother was in. If he’d been thinking straight, he would have called ahead and checked.

If his mother’s husband wasn’t in, one of the servants could tell him. It might not be as bad as the telegram made it sound. After all his mother was still young. Then it struck Michael that he didn’t have the vaguest idea how old his mother was. He doubted his father knew, and certainly not her current husband. At another time, it might have struck him as funny.

Impatient, he watched as the cab glided by the gates and pillars of the elite. His career had caused him to stay in California for extended lengths of time, but he preferred L.A. to Palm Springs. There, at least, was some action, some movement, some edge. But he liked New York best of all; the pace matched his own and the streets were tougher.

He thought of Pandora. Both of them lived in New York, but they never saw each other unless it was miles north of the city at the Folley. The city could swallow you. Or hide you. It was another aspect Michael appreciated.

Didn’t he often use it to hide—from his stifling upbringing, from his recurring lack of faith in the human race? It was at the Folley that he felt the easiest, but it was in New York that he felt the safest. He could be anonymous there if he chose to be. There were times he wanted nothing more. He wrote about heroes and justice, sometimes rough but always human. He wrote, in his own fashion, about basic values and simple rights.

He’d been raised with the illusions and hypocrisy of wealth and with values that were just as unstable. He’d broken away from that, started on his own. New York had helped make it possible because in the city backgrounds were easily erased. So easily erased, Michael mused, that he rarely thought of his.

The cab cruised up the long semicircle of macadam, under the swaying palms, toward the towering white house where his mother had chosen to live. Michael remembered there was a lily pond in the back with goldfish the size of groupers. His mother refused to call them carp.

“Wait,” he told the driver, then dashed up two levels of stairs to the door. The butler who answered was new. It was his mother’s habit to change the staff regularly, before, as she put it, they got too familiar. “I’m Michael Donahue, Mrs. Keyser’s son.”

The butler glanced over his shoulder at the waiting cab, then back at Michael’s disheveled sweater and unshaven face. “Good evening, sir. Are you expected?”

“Where’s my mother? I want to go to the hospital directly.”

“Your mother isn’t in this evening, Mr. Donahue. If you’ll wait, I’ll see if Mr. Keyser’s available.”

Intolerant, as always, of cardboard manners, he stepped inside. “I know she’s not in. I want to go see her tonight. What’s the name of the hospital?”

The butler gave a polite nod. “What hospital, Mr. Donahue?”

“Jackson, where did that cab come from?” Wrapped in a deep-rose smoking jacket, Lawrence Keyser strolled downstairs. He had a thick cigar between the fingers of one hand and a snifter of brandy in the other.

“Well, Lawrence,” Michael began over a wave of fury. “You look comfortable. Where’s my mother?”

“Well, well, it’s—ah, it’s Matthew.”

“It’s Michael.”

“Michael, of course. Jackson, pay off Mr. ah, Mr. Donavan’s cab.”

“No, thanks, Jackson.” Michael held up a hand. Another time, he’d have been amused at his stepfather’s groping for his name. “I’ll use it to get to the hospital. Wouldn’t want to put you out.”

“No trouble at all, not at all.” Big, round and only partially balding, Keyser gave Michael a friendly grin. “Veronica will be pleased to see you, though we didn’t know you were coming. How long are you in town?”

“As long as I’m needed. I left the minute I got the telegram. You didn’t mention the name of the hospital. Since you’re home and relaxing,” he said with only the slightest trace of venom, “should I assume that my mother’s condition’s improved?”

“Condition?” Keyser gave a jovial laugh. “Well now, I don’t know how she’d take to that term, but you can ask her yourself.”

“I intend to. Where is she?”

“Playing bridge at the Bradleys’. She’ll be coming along in about an hour. How about a brandy?”

“Playing bridge!” Michael stepped forward and grabbed his surprised stepfather by the lapels. “What the hell do you mean she’s playing bridge?”

“Can’t stomach the game myself,” Keyser began warily. “But Veronica’s fond of it.”

It came to Michael, clear as a bell. “You didn’t send me a telegram about Mother?”

“A telegram?” Keyser patted Michael’s arm, and hoped Jackson stayed close. “No need to send you a telegram about a bridge game, boy.”

“Mother’s not ill?”

“Strong as a horse, though I wouldn’t let her hear me say so just that way.”

Michael swore and whirled around. “Someone’s going to pay,” he muttered.

“Where are you going?”

“Back to New York,” Michael tossed over his shoulder as he ran down the steps.

Relieved, Keyser opted against the usual protests about his departure. “Is there a message for your mother?”

“Yeah.” Michael stopped with a hand on the door of the cab. “Yeah, tell her I’m glad she’s well. And I hope she wins—in spades.” Michael slammed the door shut behind him.

Keyser waited until the cab shot out of sight. “Odd boy,” Keyser grumbled to his butler. “Writes for television.”

Chapter Six

Pandora, sleeping soundly, was awakened at seven in the morning when Michael dropped on her bed. The mattress bounced. He snuggled his head into the pillow beside her and shut his eyes.

“Sonofabitch,” he grumbled.

Pandora sat up, remembered she was naked and grabbed for the sheets. “Michael! You’re supposed to be in California. What are you doing in my bed?”

“Getting horizontal for the first time in twenty-four hours.”

“Well, do that in your own bed,” she ordered, then saw the lines of strain and fatigue. “Your mother.” Pandora grabbed for his hand. “Oh, Michael, is your mother—”

“Playing bridge.” He rubbed his free hand over his face. Even to him it felt rough and seedy. “I bounced across country, once in a tuna can with propellers, to find out she was sipping sherry and trumping her partner’s ace.”

“She’s better then?”

“She was always better. The telegram was a hoax.” He yawned, stretched and settled. “God, what a night.”

“You mean…” Pandora tugged on the sheets and glowered. “Well, the rats.”

“Yeah. I plotted out several forms of revenge when I was laid over in Cleveland. Maybe our friend who stomped through your workshop figured it was my turn. Now we each owe them one.”

“I owe ’em two.” Pandora leaned back against the headboard with the sheets tucked under her arms. Her hair fell luxuriously over her naked shoulders. “Last night while you were off on your wild-goose chase, I was locked in the cellar.”

Michael’s attention shot away from the thin sheet that barely covered her. “Locked in? How?”

Crossing one ankle over the other, Pandora told him what happened from the time the lights went out.

“Climbed up on boxes? To that little window? It’s nearly ten feet.”

“Yes, I believe I noticed that at the time.”

Michael scowled at her. The anger he’d felt at being treated to a sleepless night doubled. He could picture her groping her way around in the dank cellar all too well. Worse, he could see her very clearly climbing on shaky boxes and crates. “You could’ve broken your neck.”

“I didn’t. What I did do was rip my favorite pair of slacks, scratch both knees and bruise my shoulder.”

Michael managed to hold back his fury. He’d let it go, he promised himself, when the time was right. “It could’ve been worse,” he said lightly, and thought of what he’d do to whoever had locked her in.

“It was worse,” Pandora tossed back, insulted. “While you were sipping Scotch at thirty thousand feet, I was locked in a cold, damp cellar with mice and spiders.”

“We might reconsider calling the police.”

“And do what with them? We can’t prove anything. We don’t even know whom we can’t prove anything against.”

“New rule,” Michael decided. “We stick together. Neither of us leaves the house overnight without the other. At least until we find out which of our devoted relations is playing games.”

Pandora started to protest, then remembered how frightened she’d been, and before the cellar, before the fear, how lonely. “Agreed. Now…” With one hand hanging onto the sheet, she shifted toward him. “I vote for Uncle Carlson on this one. After all, he knows the house better than any of the others. He lived here.”

“It’s as good a guess as any. But it’s only a guess.” Michael stared up at the ceiling. “I want to know. Biff stayed here for six weeks one summer when we were kids.”

“That’s right.” Pandora frowned at the ceiling herself. The mirror across the room reflected them lying companionably, hip to hip. “I’d forgotten about that. He hated it.”

“He’s never had a sense of humor.”

“True enough. As I recall he certainly didn’t like you.”

“Probably because I gave him a black eye.”

Pandora’s brow lifted. “You would.” Then, because the image of Biff with a shiner wasn’t so unappealing, she added: “Why did you? You never said.”

“Remember the frogs in your dresser?”

Pandora sniffed and smoothed at the sheets. “I certainly do. It was quite immature of you.”

“Not me. Biff.”

“Biff?” Astonished, she turned toward him again. “You mean that little creep put the frogs in my underwear?” The next thought came, surprisingly pleasing. “And you punched him for it?”

“It wasn’t hard.”

“Why didn’t you deny it when I accused you?”

“It was more satisfying to punch Biff. In any case, he knows the house well enough. And I imagine if we checked up, we’d find most of our happy clan has stayed here, at least for a few days at a time. Finding a fuse box in the cellar doesn’t take a lot of cunning. Think it through, Pandora. There are six of them, seven with the charity added on. Split a hundred fifty million seven ways and you end up with plenty of motive. Every one of them has a reason for wanting us to break the terms of the will. None of them, as far as I’m concerned, is above adding a little pressure to help us along.”

“Another reason the money never appealed to me,” she mused. “They haven’t done anything but vandalize and annoy, but, dammit, Michael, I want to pay them back.”

“The ultimate payback comes in just under five months.” Without thinking about it, Michael put his arm around her shoulders. Without thinking about it, Pandora settled against him. A light fragrance clung to her skin. “Can’t you see Carlson’s face when the will holds up and he gets nothing but a magic wand and a trick hat?”

His shoulder felt more solid than she’d imagined. “And Biff with three cartons of matchbooks.” Comfortable, she chuckled. “Uncle Jolley’s still having the last laugh.”

“We’ll have it with him in a few months.”

“It’s a date. And you’ve got your shoes on my sheets.”

“Sorry.” With two economical movements, he pried them off.

“That’s not exactly what I meant. Don’t you want to wander off to your own room now?”

“Not particularly. Your bed’s nicer than mine. Do you always sleep naked?”

“No.”

“My luck must be turning then.” He shifted to press his lips to a bruise on her shoulder. “Hurt?”

She shrugged and prayed it came off as negligent. “A little.”

“Poor little Pandora. And to think I always thought you were tough-skinned.”

“I am—”

“Soft,” he interrupted, and skimmed his fingers down her arm. “Very soft. Any more bruises?” He brushed his lips over the curve of her neck. They both felt her quick, involuntary shudder.

“Not so you’d notice.”

“I’m very observant.” He rolled, smoothly, so that his body pressed more intimately into hers as he looked down on her. He was tired. Yes, he was tired and more than a little punchy with jet lag, but he hadn’t forgotten he wanted her. Even if he had, the way her body yielded, the way her face looked rosy and soft with sleep, would’ve jogged his memory. “Why don’t I look for myself?” He ran his fingers down to where the sheet lay, neat, prim and arousing, at her breast.

She sucked in her breath, incredibly moved by his lightest touch. She couldn’t let it show…could she? She couldn’t reach out for something that was only an illusion. He wasn’t stable. He wasn’t real. He was with her now because she was here and no one else was. Why was it becoming so hard to remember that?

His face was close, filling her vision. She saw the little things she’d tried not to notice over the years. The way a thin ring of gray outlined his irises, the straight, almost aristocratic line of his nose that had remained miraculously unbroken through countless fistfights. The soft, sculpted, somehow poetic shape of his mouth. A mouth, she remembered, that was hot and strong and inventive when pressed against hers.

“Michael…” The fact that she hesitated, then fumbled before she reached down to take his hand both pleased and unnerved him. She wasn’t as cool and self-contained as she’d always appeared. And because she wasn’t, he could slip his way under her skin. But he might not slip out again so easily.

Be practical, she told herself. Be realistic. “Michael, we have almost five months more to get through.”

“Good point.” He needed the warmth. He needed the woman. Maybe it was time to risk the consequences. He lowered his head and nibbled at her mouth. “Why waste it?”

She let herself enjoy him. For just a moment, she promised herself. For only a moment. He was warm and his hands were easy. The night had been long and cold and frightening. No matter how much she hated to admit it, she’d needed him. Now, with the sun pouring through the tiny square panes in the windows, falling bright and hard on the bed, she had him. Close, secure, comforting.

Her lips opened against his.

He’d had no plan when he’d come into her room. He’d simply been drawn to her; he’d wanted to lie beside her and talk to her. Passion hadn’t guided him. Desire hadn’t pushed him. There’d only been the basic need to be home, to be home with her. When she’d snuggled against him, hair tousled, eyes heavy, it had been so natural that the longing had snuck up on him. He wanted nothing more than to stay where he was, wrapped around her, slowly heating.

And for her, passion didn’t bubble wildly, but easily, like a brew that had been left to simmer through the day while spices were added. One sample, then another, and the taste changed, enriched, deepened. With Michael, there the flavors were only hinted at, an aroma to draw in and savor. She could have gone on, and on, hour after hour, until what they made between them was perfected. She wanted to give in to the need, the beginnings of greed. If she did, everything would change. It was a change she couldn’t predict, couldn’t see clearly, could only anticipate. So she resisted him and herself and what could happen between them.

“Michael…” But she let her fingers linger in his hair for just a minute more. “This isn’t smart.”

He kissed her eyes closed. It was something no one had done before. “It’s the smartest thing either of us has done in years.”

She wanted to agree, felt herself on the edge of agreeing. “Michael, things are complicated enough. If we were lovers and things went wrong, how could we manage to go on here together? We’ve made a commitment to Uncle Jolley.”

“The will doesn’t have a damn thing to do with you and me in this bed.”

How could she have forgotten just how intense he could look when he was bent on something? How was it she’d never noticed how attractive it made him? She’d have to make a stand now or go under. “The will has everything to do with you and me in this house. If we go to bed together and our relationship changes, then we’ll have to deal with all the problems and complications that go with it.”

“Name some.”

“Don’t be amusing, Michael.”

“Giving you a laugh wasn’t my intention.” He liked the way she looked against the pillow—hair spread out like wildfire, cheeks a bit flushed, her mouth on the edge of forming a pout. Strange he’d never pictured her this way before. It didn’t take any thought to know he’d picture her like this again and again. “I want you, Pandora. There’s nothing amusing about it.”

No, that wasn’t something she could laugh or shrug off, not when the words brushed over her skin and made her muscles limp. He didn’t mean it. He couldn’t mean it. But she wanted to believe it. If she couldn’t laugh it off, she had to throw up a guard and block it. “Becoming lovers is something that takes a lot of thought. If we’re going to discuss it—”

“I don’t want to discuss it.” He pressed his lips against hers until he felt her body soften. “We’re not making a corporate merger, Pandora, we’re making love.”

“That’s just it.” She fought back an avalanche of longing. Be practical. It was her cardinal rule. “We’re business partners. Worse, we’re family business partners, at least for the next few months. If we change that now it could—”

“If,” he interrupted. “It could. Do you always need guarantees?”

Her brows drew together as annoyance competed with desire. “It’s a matter of common sense to look at all the angles.”

“I suppose you have any prospective lover fill out an application form.”

Her voice chilled. It was, in a distorted way, close to the truth. “Don’t be crude, Michael.”

Pushed to the limit, he glared down at her. “I’d rather be crude than have your brand of common sense.”

“You’ve never had any brand of common sense,” she tossed back. “Why else would every busty little blonde you’ve winked at be public knowledge? You don’t even have the decency to be discreet.”

“So that’s it.” Shifting, Michael drew her into a sitting position. There was no soft yielding now. She faced him with fire in her eyes. “Don’t forget the brunettes and the redheads.”

She hadn’t. She promised herself she wouldn’t. “I don’t want to discuss it.”

“You brought it up, and we’ll finish it. I’ve gone to bed with women. So put me in irons. I’ve even enjoyed it.”

She tossed her hair behind her shoulder. “I’m sure you have.”

“And I haven’t had a debate with every one of them beforehand. Some women prefer romance and mutual enjoyment.”

“Romance?” Her brows shot up under her tousled hair. “I’ve always had another word for it.”

“You wouldn’t recognize romance if it dropped on your head. Do you consider it discreet to take lovers and pretend you don’t? To pledge undying fidelity to one person while you’re looking for another? What you want to call discretion, I call hypocrisy. I’m not ashamed of any of the women I’ve known, in bed or out.”

“I’m not interested in what you are or aren’t ashamed of. I’m not going to be your next mutual enjoyment. Keep your passion for your dancers and starlets and chorus girls.”

“You’re as big a snob as the rest of them.”

That hit home and had her shoulders stiffening. “That’s not true. I’ve simply no intention of joining a crowd.”

“You flatter me, cousin.”

“There’s another word for that, too.”

“Think about this.” He gave her a shake, harder than he’d intended. “I’ve never made love with a woman I didn’t care for and respect.” Before he cut loose and did more than shake her, he got up and walked to the door while she sat in the middle of the bed clutching sheets and looking furious.

“It appears you give respect easily.”

He turned back to study her. “No,” he said slowly. “But I don’t make people jump through hoops for it.”

* * *

A cold war might not be as stimulating as an active battle, but with the right participants, it could be equally destructive. For days Pandora and Michael circled around each other. If one made a sarcastic comment, the other reached into the stockpile and used equal sarcasm. Neither drew out the red flag for full-scale attack, instead they picked and prodded at each other while the servants rolled their eyes and waited for bloodshed.

“Foolishness,” Sweeney declared as she rolled out the crust for two apple pies. “Plain foolishness.” She was a sturdy, red-faced woman, as round as Charles was thin. In her pragmatic, no-nonsense way, she’d married and buried two husbands, then made her way in the world by cooking for others. Her kitchen was always neat and tidy, all the while smelling of the sinfully rich food she prepared. “Spoiled children,” she told Charles. “That’s what they are. Spoiled children need the back of the hand.”

“They’ve over four months to go.” Charles sat gloomily at the kitchen table, hunched over a cup of tea. “They’ll never make it.”

“Hah!” Sweeney slammed the rolling pin onto a fresh ball of dough. “They’ll make it. Too stubborn not to. But it’s not enough.”

“The master wanted them to have the house. As long as they do, we won’t lose it.”

“What’ll we be doing in this big empty house when both of them go back to the city? How often will either of them be visiting with the master gone?” Sweeney turned the crust into a pan and trimmed it expertly. “The master wanted them to have the house, true enough. And he wanted them to have each other. The house needs a family. It’s up to us to see it gets one.”

“You didn’t hear them over breakfast.” Charles sipped his tea and watched Sweeney pour a moist apple mixture into the crust.

“That has nothing to do with it. I’ve seen the way they look at each other when they think the other one’s not noticing. All they need’s a push.”

With quick, economic movements, she filled the second crust. “We’re going to give ’em one.”

Charles stretched out his legs. “We’re too old to push young people.”

Sweeney gave a quick grunt as she turned. Her hands were thick, and she set them on her hips. “Being old’s the whole trick. You’ve been feeling poorly lately.”

“No, to tell you the truth, I’ve been feeling much better this week.”

“You’ve been feeling poorly,” Sweeney repeated, scowling at him. “Now here’s our Pandora coming in for lunch. Just follow my lead. Look a little peaked.”

Snow had come during the night, big fat flakes that piled on the ground and hung in the pines. As she walked, Pandora kicked it up, pleased with herself. Her work couldn’t have been going better. The earrings she’d finally fashioned had been unique, so unique, she’d designed a necklace to complement them. It was chunky and oversize with geometric shapes of copper and gold. Not every woman could wear it, but the one who could wouldn’t go unnoticed.

It was, to Pandora, a statement of the strong, disciplined woman. She was just as pleased with the shoulder-brushing earrings she was making with jet and silver beads. They had been painstakingly strung together and when finished would be elegantly flirtatious. Another aspect of woman. If her pace kept steady, she’d have a solid inventory to ship off to the boutique she supplied. In time for the Christmas rush, she reminded herself smugly.

When she opened the kitchen door, she was ravenously hungry and in the best of moods.

“…if you’re feeling better in a day or two,” Sweeney said briskly, then turned as if surprised to see Pandora inside. “Oh, time must’ve got away from me. Lunch already and I’m just finishing up the pies.”

“Apple pies?” Grinning, Pandora moved closer. But Sweeney saw with satisfaction that Pandora was already studying Charles. “Any filling left?” she began, and started to dip her fingers into the bowl. Sweeney smacked them smartly.

“You’ve been working with those hands. Wash them up in the sink, and you’ll have your lunch as soon as I can manage it.”

Obediently, Pandora turned on a rush of water. Under the noise, she murmured to Sweeney. “Is Charles not feeling well?”

“Bursitis is acting up. Cold weather’s a problem. Just being old’s a problem in itself.” She pushed a hand at the small of her back as though she had a pain. “Guess we’re both slowing down a bit. Aches and pains,” Sweeney sighed and cast a sidelong look at Pandora. “Just part of being old.”

“Nonsense.” Concerned, Pandora scrubbed her hands harder. She told herself she should have been keeping a closer eye on Charles. “You just try to do too much.”

“With the holidays coming…” Sweeney trailed off and made a business out of arranging a top crust. “Well, decorating the house is a lot of work, but it’s its own reward. Charles and I’ll deal with the boxes in the attic this afternoon.”

“Don’t be silly.” Pandora shut off the water and reached for a towel. “I’ll bring the decorations down.”

“No, now, missy, there’re too many boxes and most of them are too heavy for a little girl like you. That’s for us to see to. Isn’t that right, Charles?”

Thinking of climbing the attic stairs a half-dozen times, Charles started to sigh. A look from Sweeney stopped him. “Don’t worry, Miss McVie, Sweeney and I will see to it.”

“You certainly will not.” Pandora hung the towel back on the hook. “Michael and I will bring everything down this afternoon, and that’s that. Now I’ll go tell him to come to lunch.”

Sweeney waited until the door swung shut behind Pandora before she grinned.

Upstairs, Pandora knocked twice on Michael’s office door, then walked in. He kept on typing. Putting her pride on hold, Pandora walked over to his desk and folded her arms. “I need to talk to you.”

“Come back later. I’m busy.”

Abuse rose up in her throat. Remembering Sweeney’s tired voice, she swallowed it. “It’s important.” She ground her teeth on the word, but said it. “Please.”

Surprised, Michael stopped typing in midword. “What? Has one of the family been playing games again?”

“No, it’s not that. Michael, we have to decorate the house for Christmas.”

He stared at her a moment, swore and turned back to his machine. “I’ve got a twelve-year-old boy kidnapped and being held for a million-dollar ransom. That’s important.”

“Michael, will you put away fantasyland for a moment? This is real.”

“So’s this. Just ask my producer.”

“Michael!” Before he could stop her, Pandora pulled the sheet from the typewriter. He was halfway out of his chair to retaliate. “It’s Sweeney and Charles.”

It stopped him, though he snatched the paper back from her. “What about them?”

“Charles’s bursitis is acting up again, and I’m sure Sweeney’s not feeling well. She sounded, well, old.”

“She is old.” But Michael tossed the paper on the desk. “Think we should call in a doctor?”

“No, they’d be furious.” She swung around his desk, trying to pretend she wasn’t reading part of his script. “I’d rather just keep an eye on them for a few days and make sure they don’t overdo. That’s where the Christmas decorations come in.”

“I figured you’d get to them. Look, if you want to deck the halls, go ahead. I haven’t got time to fool with it today.”

“Neither do I.” She folded her arms in a manner that amused him. “Sweeney and Charles have it in their heads that it has to be done. Unless we want them dragging up and down the attic stairs, we have to take care of it.”

“Christmas is three weeks away.”

“I know the date.” Frustrated, she strode to the window then back. “They’re old and they’re set on it. You know Uncle Jolley would’ve had them up the day after Thanksgiving. It’s traditional.”

“All right, all right.” Trapped, Michael rose. “Let’s get started.”

“Right after lunch.” Satisfied she’d gotten her way, Pandora swept out.

Forty-five minutes later, she and Michael were pushing open the attic door. The attic was, in Jolley’s tradition, big enough to house a family of five. “Oh, I’d forgotten what a marvelous place this is.” Forgetting herself, Pandora grabbed Michael’s hand and pulled him in. “Look at this table, isn’t it horrible?”

It was. Old and ornate with curlicues and cupids, it had been shoved into a corner to hold other paraphernalia Jolley had discarded. “And the bird cage out of Popsicle sticks. Uncle Jolley said it took him six months to finish it, then he didn’t have the heart to put a bird inside.”

“Lucky for the bird,” Michael muttered, but found himself, as always, drawn to the dusty charm of the place. “Spats,” he said, and lifted a pair from a box. “Can’t you see him in them?”

“And this hat.” Pandora found a huge circular straw with a garden of flowers along the brim. “Aunt Katie’s. I’ve always wished I’d met her. My father said she was just as much fun as Uncle Jolley.”

Michael watched Pandora tip the brim over her eyes. “If that was her hat, I believe it. How about this?” He found a black derby and tilted it rakishly.

“It’s you,” Pandora told him with her first easy laugh in days. “All you need’s a high white collar and a walking stick. Look.” She pulled him in front of a tall cheval mirror that needed re-silvering. Together, they studied themselves.

“An elegant pair,” Michael decided, though his sweater bagged over his hips, and she already had dust on her nose. “All you need is one of those slim little skirts that sweep the floor and a lace blouse with padded shoulders.”

“And a cameo on a ribbon,” she added as she tried to visualize herself. “No, I probably would’ve worn bloomers and picketed for women’s rights.”

“The hat still suits you.” He turned to adjust it just a bit. “Especially with your hair long and loose. I’ve always liked it long, though you looked appealingly lost and big-eyed when you had it all chopped short.”

“I was fifteen.”

“And you’d just come back from the Canary Islands with the longest, brownest legs I’d ever seen in my life. I nearly ate my saucer when you walked into the parlor.”

“You were in college and had some cheerleader hanging on your arm.”

Michael grinned. “You had better legs.”

Pandora pretended little interest. She remembered the visit perfectly, but was surprised, and pleased, that he did. “I’m surprised you noticed or remembered.”

“I told you I was observant.”

She acknowledged the thrust with a slight nod. There were times when it was best to pad quietly over dangerous ground. “We’d better start digging out the decorations. Sweeney said the boxes were back along the left and clearly marked.” Without waiting for agreement, she turned and began to look. “Oh good grief.” She stopped again when she saw the stacks of boxes, twenty, perhaps twenty-five of them. Michael stood at her shoulder and stuck his hands in his pockets.

“Think we can hire some teamsters?”

Pandora blew out a breath. “Roll up your sleeves.”

On some trips, they could pile two or three boxes apiece and maneuver downstairs. On others, it took both of them to haul one. Somewhere along the way they’d stopped arguing. It was just too much effort.

Grimy and sweaty, they dropped the last boxes in the parlor. Ignoring the dust on her slacks, Pandora collapsed in the nearest chair. “Won’t it be great fun hauling them all up again after New Year’s?”

“Couldn’t we’ve settled on a plastic Santa?”

“It’ll be worth it.” Drumming up the energy, she knelt on the floor and opened the first box. “Let’s get started.”

Once they did, they went at it with a vengeance. Boxes were opened, garland strewed and bulbs tested. They squabbled good-naturedly about what looked best where and the proper way to drape lights at the windows. When the parlor, the main hall and the staircase were finished, Pandora stood at the front door and took a long look.

The garland was white and silver, twisting and twining down the banister. There were bright red bells, lush green ribbon and tiny lights just waiting for evening.

“It looks good,” she decided. “Really good. Of course, Sweeney and Charles will want to decorate the servants’ quarters and that entire box goes into the dining room, but it’s a wonderful start.”

“Start?” Michael sat on the stairs. “We’re not entering a contest, cousin.”

“These things have to be done right. I wonder if my parents will make it home for Christmas. Well…” She brushed that off. They always considered wherever they were home. “I’d say we’re ready for the tree. Let’s go find one.”

“You want to drive into town now?”

“Of course not.” Pandora was already pulling coats out of the hall closet. “We’ll go right out in the woods and dig one up.”

“We?”

“Certainly. I hate it when people cut trees down and then toss them aside after the new year. The woods are loaded with nice little pines. We’ll dig one up, then replant it after the holidays.”

“How handy are you with a shovel?”

“Don’t be a spoilsport.” Pandora tossed his coat to him, then pulled on her own. “Besides, it’ll be nice to spend some time outside after being in that stuffy attic. We can have some hot buttered rum when we’re finished.”

“Heavy on the rum.”

They stopped at the toolshed for a shovel. Michael picked two and handed one to Pandora. She took it without a blink, then together they walked through the ankle-high snow to the woods. The air had a bite and the scent of pine was somehow stronger in the snow.

“I love it when it’s like this.” Pandora balanced the shovel on her shoulder and plowed through the woods. “It’s so quiet, so—separated. You know, sometimes I think I’d rather live here and visit the city than the other way around.”

He’d had the same thought, but was surprised to hear it from her. “I always thought you liked the bright lights and confusion.”

“I do. But I like this, too. How about this one?” She paused in front of a spruce. “No, the trunk’s too crooked.” She walked on. “Besides, I wonder if it wouldn’t be more exciting to go into the city for a week now and again and know you had someplace like this to come back to. I seem to work better here. Here’s one.”

“Too tall. We’re better off digging up a young one. Wouldn’t it put a crimp in your social life?”

“What?” She studied the tree in question and was forced to agree with him. “Oh. My social life isn’t a priority, my work is. In any case, I could entertain here.”

He had a picture of her spending long, cozy weekends with flamboyant, artsy types who read Keats aloud. “You don’t have to come all the way to the Catskills to play house.”

Pandora merely lifted a brow. “No, I don’t. This one looks good.” She stopped again and took a long study of a four-and-a-half-foot spruce. Behind her, Michael worked hard to keep his mouth shut. “It’s just the right size for the parlor.”

“Fine.” Michael stuck his shovel into the ground. “Put your back into it.”

As he bent over to dig, Pandora scooped up a shovelful of snow and tossed it into his face. “Oh, sorry.” She smiled and batted her eyes. “Looks like my aim’s off.” Digging with more effort, she began to hum.

He let it go, probably because he appreciated the move and wished he’d thought of it himself. Within fifteen minutes, they had the hole dug.

“There now.” Only a little out of breath, Pandora leaned on her shovel. “The satisfaction of a job well done.”

“We only have to carry it back to the house, set it up and…damn, we need something to wrap the roots and dirt in. There was burlap in the shed.”

They eyed each other blandly.

“All right,” he said after a moment. “I’ll go get it, then you have to sweep up the needles and dirt we trail on the floor.”

“Deal.”

Content, Pandora turned away to watch a cardinal when a snowball slapped into the back of her head. “Sorry.” Michael gave her a companionable smile. “Aim must be off.” He whistled as he walked back to the shed.

Pandora waited until he was out of sight, then smiling smugly, knelt down to ball snow. By the time he got back, she calculated, she could have an arsenal at hand. He wouldn’t have a chance. She took her time, forming and smoothing each ball into a sophisticated weapon. Secure in her advantage, she nearly fell on her face when she heard a sound behind her. She had the ball in her hand and was already set to throw as she whirled. No one was there. Narrowing her eyes, she waited. Hadn’t she seen a movement back in the trees? It would be just like him to skirt around and try to sneak up on her. She saw the cardinal fly up again as if startled and heard the quiet plop of snow hitting snow as it was shaken from branches.

“All right, Michael, don’t be a coward.” She picked up a ball in her left hand, prepared to bombard.

“Guarding your flank?” Michael asked so that this time when she whirled back around, she slid onto her bottom. He grinned at her and dropped the burlap sack in her lap.

“But weren’t you…” She trailed off and looked behind her again. How could he be here if he was there? “Did you circle around?”

“No, but from the looks of that mound of balls, I should’ve. Want to play war?”

“It’s just a defense system,” she began, then looked over her shoulder again. “I thought I heard you. I would’ve sworn there was someone just beyond the trees there.”

“I went straight to the shed and back.” He looked beyond her. “You saw something out there?”

“Michael, if you’re playing tricks—”

“No.” He cut her off and reached down to pull her to her feet. “No tricks. Let’s have a look.”

She moved her shoulders but didn’t remove her hand from his as they walked deeper into the trees. “Maybe I was a bit jumpy.”

“Or expecting me to be sneaky?”

“That, too. It was probably just a rabbit.”

“A rabbit with big feet,” he murmured as he looked down at the tracks. They were clear enough in the snow, tracks leading to and away from the spot ten yards behind where they’d dug up the tree. “Rabbits don’t wear boots.”

“So, we still have company. I was beginning to think they’d given the whole business up.” She kept her voice light, but felt the uneasiness of anyone who’d been watched. “Maybe it’s time we talked to Fitzhugh, Michael.”

“Maybe, in the meantime—” The sound of an engine cut him off. He was off in a sprint with Pandora at his heels. After a five-minute dash, they came, clammy and out of breath, to what was hardly more than a logging trail. Tire tracks had churned up the snow and blackened it. “A Jeep, I’d guess.” Swearing, Michael stuck his hands in his pockets. If he’d started out right away, he might have caught someone or at least have caught a glimpse of someone.

Pandora let out an annoyed breath. Racing after someone was one thing, being outmaneuvered another. “Whoever it is is only wasting his time.”

“I don’t like being spied on.” He wanted physical contact. Longed for it. Frustrated, he stared at the tracks that led back to the main road. “I’m not playing cat and mouse for the next four months.”

“What are we going to do?”

His smile spread as he looked at the tracks. “We’ll spread the word through Fitzhugh that we’ve been bothered by trespassers. Being as there’s any number of valuables on the premises, we’ve decided to haul out one of Jolley’s old .30-.30’s.”

“Michael! They may be a nuisance, but they’re still family.” Unsure, she studied him. “You wouldn’t really shoot at anyone.”

“I’d rather shoot at family than strangers,” he countered, then shrugged. “They’re also fond of their own skin. I can’t think of one of them who wouldn’t hesitate to play around if they thought they might be picking buckshot out of embarrassing places.”

“I don’t like it. Guns, even the threat of guns, are trouble.”

“Got a better idea?”

“Let’s buy a dog. A really big, mean dog.”

“Great, then we can let him loose and have him sink his teeth into one of our favorite relatives. They’d like that a lot better than buckshot.”

“He doesn’t have to be that mean.”

“We’ll compromise and do both.”

“Michael—”

“Let’s call Fitzhugh.”

“And take his advice?” Pandora demanded.

“Sure…if I like it.”

Pandora started to object, then laughed. It was all as silly as a plot of one of his shows. “Sounds reasonable,” she decided, then tucked her arm through his. “Let’s get the tree inside first.”

Chapter Seven

“I know it’s Christmas Eve, Darla.” Michael picked up his coffee cup, found it empty and lifted the pot from his hot plate. Dregs. He bit off a sigh. The trouble with the Folley was that you had to hike a half a mile to the kitchen whenever the pot ran dry. “I know it’ll be a great party, but I can’t get away.”

That wasn’t precisely true, Michael mused as he listened to Darla’s rambles about a celebration in Manhattan. Everyone, according to her estimate, was going to be there. That meant a loud, elbow-to-elbow party with plenty of booze. He could have taken a day and driven into the city to raise a glass or two with friends. He was well ahead of schedule. So far ahead, he could have taken off a week and not felt the strain. The precise truth was, he didn’t want to get away.

“I appreciate that…you’ll just have to tell everyone Merry Christmas for me. No, I like living in the country, Darla. Weird? Yeah, maybe.” He had to laugh. Darla was a top-notch dancer and a barrel of laughs, but she didn’t believe life went on outside of the island of Manhattan. “New Year’s if I can manage it. Okay, babe. Yeah, yeah, ciao.”

More than a little relieved, Michael hung up. Darla was a lot of fun, but he wasn’t used to being clung to by a woman, especially one he’d only dated casually. The truth was, she was just as attracted to the influence he had with certain casting agents as she was interested in him. He didn’t hold it against her. She had ambition and talent, a combination that could work in the tough-edged business of entertaining if a dash of luck was added. After the holidays he’d make a few calls and see what he could do.

From the doorway, Pandora watched as Michael ran a hand along the back of his neck. Darla, she repeated silently. She imagined the women his taste leaned toward had names like Darla, or Robin and Candy. Sleek, smooth, sophisticated and preferably empty-headed.

“Popularity’s such a strain, isn’t it, darling?”

Michael turned in his chair to give her a long, narrowed look. “Eavesdropping’s so rude, isn’t it, darling?”

She shrugged but didn’t come in. “If you’d wanted privacy, you should’ve closed your door.”

“Around here you have to nail it shut for privacy.”

One brow raised, head slightly inclined, Pandora looked as aloof as royalty. “Your phone conversations have absolutely no interest for me. I only came up as a favor to Charles. You’ve a package downstairs.”

“Thanks.” He didn’t bother to hide amusement at her tone. If he knew Pandora, and he did, she’d listened to every word. “I thought these were your sacred working hours.”

“Some of us schedule our work well enough that we can take some time off during the holidays. No, no, let’s not bicker,” she decided abruptly before he could retaliate. “It is nearly Christmas after all, and we’ve had three weeks of peace from our familial practical jokers. Truce,” Pandora offered with a smile Michael wasn’t sure he should trust. “Or a moratorium if you prefer.”

“Why?”

“Let’s just say I’m a sucker for holly and ivy. Besides, I’m relieved we didn’t have to buy a big drooling dog or a supply of buckshot.”

“For now.” Not completely satisfied, Michael tipped back in his chair. “Fitzhugh’s notion of notifying the local police of trespassers and spreading the rumor of an official investigation might be working temporarily. Or maybe our friends and family are just taking a holiday break themselves. Either way I’m not ready to relax.”

“You’d rather break someone’s nose than solve things peaceably,” Pandora began, then waved a hand. “Never mind. I, for one, am going to enjoy the holidays and not give any of our dear family a thought.” She paused a moment, toying with her braided chain of gold and amethyst. “I suppose Darla was disappointed.”

Michael watched the way the stones caught the thin winter light and made sparks from it. “She’ll pull through.”

Pandora twisted the chain one way, twisted it back, then let it go. It was the sort of nervous gesture Michael hadn’t expected from her. “Michael, you know you don’t have to stay. I really will be fine if you want to run into New York for the holiday.”

“Rule number six,” he reminded her. “We stick together, and you’ve turned down a half-dozen invitations for the holidays yourself.”

“My choice.” She reached for the chain again, then dropped her hands. “I don’t want you to feel obligated—”

“My choice,” he interrupted. “Or have you suddenly decided I’m chivalrous and unselfish?”

“Certainly not,” she tossed back, but smiled. “I prefer thinking you’re just too lazy to make the trip.”

He shook his head, but his lips curved in response. “I’m sure you would.”

She hesitated in the doorway until he lifted a brow in question. “Michael, would you become totally obnoxious if I told you I’m glad you’re staying?”

He studied her as she stood, looking slim and neat in the doorway, her hair a riotous contrast to the trim sweater and stovepipe pants. “I might.”

“Then I won’t tell you.” Without another word, she slipped out of the doorway and disappeared.

Contrary woman, Michael thought. He was close to being crazy about her. And crazy was the perfect word. She baited him or, he admitted, he baited her at every possible opportunity. He could imagine no two people less inclined to peaceful coexistence, much less harmony. And yet…and yet he was close to being crazy about her. Knowing better than to try to go back to work, he rose and followed her downstairs.

He found her in the parlor, rearranging packages under the tree. “How many have you shaken?”

“All of them,” she said easily. But she didn’t turn because he might have seen how pleased she was he’d come downstairs with her. “I don’t want to show any preference. Thing is,” she added, poking at an elegantly wrapped box, “I seem to have missed my present from you.”

Michael gave her a bland smile. “Who says I got you anything?”

“You would have been terribly rude and insensitive otherwise.”

“Yep. In any case, you seem to’ve done well enough.” He crouched down to study the stacks of boxes under the tree. “Who’s Boris?” Idly he picked up a small silver box with flowing white ribbon.

“A Russian cellist who defected. He admires my…gold links.”

“I bet. And Roger?”

“Roger Madison.”

His mouth dropped open, but only for a moment. “The Yankee shortstop who batted .304 last year?”

“That’s right. You may’ve noticed the silver band he wears on his right wrist. I made that for him last March. He seems to think it straightened out his bat or something.” She lifted the blue-and-gold box and shook it gently. “He tends to be very generous.”

“I see.” Michael took a comprehensive study of the boxes. “There don’t seem to be a great many packages here for you from women.”

“Really?” Pandora took a scan herself. “It appears you make up for that with your pile. Chi-Chi?” she asked as she picked up a box with a big pink bow.

“She’s a marine biologist,” Michael said with his tongue in his cheek.

“Fascinating. And I imagine Magda’s a librarian.”

“Corporate attorney,” he said blandly.

“Hmm. Well, whoever sent this one’s obviously shy.” She picked up a magnum of champagne with a glittering red ribbon. The tag read “Happy Holidays, Michael,” and nothing more.

Michael scanned the label with approval. “Some people don’t want to advertise their generosity.”

“How about you?” She tilted her head. “After all, it is a magnum. Are you going to share?”

“With whom?”

“I should’ve known you’d be greedy.” She picked up a box with her name on it. “Just for that I’m eating this entire box of imported chocolates myself.”

Michael eyed the box. “How do you know they’re chocolates?”

She only smiled. “Henri always gives me chocolate.”

“Imported?”

“Swiss.”

Michael put out a hand. “Share and share alike.”

Pandora accepted it. “I’ll chill the wine.”

* * *

Hours later when there was starlight on the snow and a fire in the hearth, Pandora lit the tree. Like Michael, she didn’t miss any of the crowded, frenzied parties in the city. She was where she wanted to be. It had taken Pandora only a matter of weeks to discover she wasn’t as attached to the rush of the city as she’d once thought. The Folley was home. Hadn’t it always been? No, she no longer thought of going back to Manhattan in the spring. But what would it be like to live in the Folley alone?

Michael wouldn’t stay. True, he’d own half of the Folley in a few months, but his life—including his active social life—was in the city. He wouldn’t stay, she thought again, and found herself annoyed with her own sense of regret. Why should he stay? she asked herself as she wandered over to poke at the already crackling fire. How could he stay? They couldn’t go on living together indefinitely. Sooner or later she’d have to approach him about her decision to remain there. To do so, she’d have to explain herself. It wouldn’t be easy.

Still, she was grateful to Jolley for doing something she’d once resented. Boxing her in. She may have been forced into dealing with Michael on a day-to-day level, but in the few months she’d done so, her life had had more energy and interest than in the many months before. It was that, Pandora told herself, that she hated to give up.

She’d dealt with her attraction to him semisuccessfully. The fact was, he was no more her type than she was his. She jammed hard at a log. From all the many reports, Michael preferred a more flamboyant, exotic sort of woman. Actresses, dancers, models. And he preferred them in droves. She, on the other hand, looked for more intellectual men. The men she spent time with could discuss obscure French novelists and appreciate small, esoteric plays. Most of them wouldn’t have known if Logan’s Run was a television show or a restaurant in SoHo.

The fact that she had a sort of primitive desire for Michael was only a tempest in a teapot. Pandora smiled as she replaced the poker. She couldn’t deny she enjoyed a tempest now and again.

When a small one erupted behind her, Pandora turned in disbelief. A little white dog with oversize feet scrambled into the room, slid on the Aubusson carpet and rammed smartly into a table. Barking madly, it rolled over twice, righted itself, then dashed at Pandora to leap halfheartedly and loll its tongue. Entertained, Pandora crouched down and was rewarded when the puppy sprang onto her lap and licked her face.

“Where’d you come from?” Laughing, and defending herself as best she could, Pandora found the card attached to the red bow around the puppy’s neck. It read:

My name is Bruno. I’m a mean, ugly dog looking for a lady to defend.

“Bruno, huh?” Laughing again, Pandora stroked his unfortunately long ears. “How mean are you?” she asked as he contented himself with licking her chin.

“He especially likes to attack discontented relatives,” Michael announced as he wheeled in a tray carrying an ice bucket and champagne. “He’s been trained to go after anyone wearing a Brooks Brothers suit.”

“We might add Italian loafers.”

“That’s next.”

Moved, incredibly moved, she concentrated on the puppy. She hadn’t the least idea how to thank Michael without making a fool of herself. “He isn’t really ugly,” she murmured.

“They promised me he would be.”

“They?” She buried her face in the puppy’s fur a moment. “Where did you get him?”

“Pound.” Watching her, Michael ripped the foil from the champagne. “When we went into town for supplies last week and I deserted you in the supermarket.”

“And I thought you’d gone off somewhere to buy pornographic magazines.”

“My reputation precedes me,” he said half to himself. “In any case, I went to the pound and walked through the kennels. Bruno bit another dog on the—on a sensitive area in order to get to the bars first. Then he grinned at me with absolutely no dignity. I knew he was the one.”

The cork came out with a bang and champagne sprayed up and dripped onto the floor. Bruno scrambled out of Pandora’s lap and greedily licked it up. “Perhaps his manners are lacking a bit,” Pandora observed. “But his taste is first class.” She rose, but waited until Michael had poured two glasses. “It was a lovely thing to do, dammit.”

He grinned and handed her a glass. “You’re welcome.”

“It’s easier for me when you’re rude and intolerable.”

“I do the best I can.” He touched his glass to hers.

“When you’re sweet, it’s harder for me to stop myself from doing something foolish.”

He started to lift his glass, then stopped. “Such as?”

“Such as.” Pandora set down her champagne, then took Michael’s and set it on the table as well. Watching him, only him, she put her arms around his neck. Very slowly—unwise acts done slowly often take on a wisdom of their own—she touched her mouth to his.

It was, as she’d known it would be, warm and waiting. His hands came to her shoulders, holding her without pressure. Perhaps they’d both come to understand that pressure would never hold her. When she softened, when she gave, she gave through her own volition, not through seduction, not through demand. So it was Pandora who moved closer, Pandora who pressed body to body, offering hints of intimacy with no submission.

It wasn’t submission he wanted. It wasn’t submission he looked for, though it was often given to him. He didn’t look for matching strength, but strength that meshed. In Pandora, where he’d never thought to search for it, he found it. Her scent twisted around him, heightening emotions her taste had just begun to stir. Under his hands, her body was firm with the underlying softness women could exploit or be exploited by. He thought she’d do neither, but would simply be. By being alone, she drew him in.

She didn’t resist his touch, not when his hands slipped down to her hips or skimmed up again. It seemed he’d done so before, though only in dreams she’d refused to acknowledge. If this was the time for acceptance, she’d accept. If this was the time for pleasure, she’d take it. If she found both with him, she wouldn’t refuse. Even questions could come later. Maybe tonight was a night without questions.

She drew back, but only to smile at him. “You know, I don’t think of you as a cousin when I’m kissing you.”

“Really?” He nipped at her lips. She had an incredibly alluring mouth—full and pouty. “What do you think of me as?”

She cocked a brow. His arms surrounded her, but didn’t imprison. Pandora knew she’d have to analyze the difference later. “I haven’t figured that out yet.”

“Then maybe we should keep working it out.” He started to pull her back, but she resisted.

“Since you’ve broken tradition to give me my Christmas present a few hours early, I’ll do the same.” Going to the tree, Pandora reached down and found the square, flat box. “Happy Christmas, Michael.”

He sat down on the arm of a chair to open it while Pandora picked up her glass of champagne. She sipped, watching a bit nervously for his reaction. It was only a token after all, she told herself, as she played with the stem of her glass. When he ripped off the paper then said nothing, she shrugged. “It’s not as inventive as a guard dog.”

Michael stared down at the pencil sketch of their uncle without any idea what to say. The frame she’d made herself, he knew. It was silver and busily ornate in a style Jolley would have appreciated. But it was the sketch that held him silent. She’d drawn Jolley as Michael remembered him best, standing, a bit bent forward from the waist as though he were ready to pop off on a new tangent. What thin hair he’d had left was mussed. His cheeks were stretched out in a big, wide-open grin. It had been drawn with love, talent and humor, three qualities Jolley had possessed and admired. When Michael looked up, Pandora was still twisting the stem of the glass in her hands.

Why she’s nervous, he realized. He’d never expected her to be anything but arrogantly confident about her work. About herself. The secrets he was uncovering were just as unnerving to him as they were to her. A man tended to get pulled into a woman who had soft spots in unexpected places. If he was pulled in, how would he work his way out again? But she was waiting, twisting the stem of her glass in her hand.

“Pandora. No one’s ever given me anything that’s meant more.”

The line between her brows smoothed out as her smile bloomed. The ridiculous sense of pleasure was difficult to mask. “Really?”

He held a hand out to her. “Really.” He glanced down at the sketch again and smiled. “It looks just like him.”

“It looks like I remember him.” She let her fingers link with Michael’s. Pandora could tell herself it was Jolley who drew them together, and nothing else. She could nearly believe it. “I thought you might remember him that way, too. The frame’s a bit gaudy.”

“And suitable.” He studied it with more care. The silver shone dully, set off with the deep curls and lines she’d etched. It could, he realized, be put in an antique shop and pass for an heirloom. “I didn’t know you did this sort of thing.”

“Now and again. The boutique carries a few of them.”

“Doesn’t fit in the same category as bangles and beads,” he mused.

“Doesn’t it?” Her chin tilted. “I thought about making you a big gold collar with rhinestones just to annoy you.”

“It would have.”

“Maybe next year then. Or perhaps I’ll make one for Bruno.” She glanced around. “Where’d he go?”

“He’s probably behind the tree gnawing on presents. During his brief stay in the garage, he ate a pair of golf shoes.”

“We’ll put a stop to that,” Pandora declared, and went to find him.

“You know, Pandora, I’d no idea you could draw like this.” Michael settled against the back of the chair to study the sketch again. “Why aren’t you painting?”

“Why aren’t you writing the Great American Novel?”

“Because I enjoy what I’m doing.”

“Exactly.” Finding no sign of the puppy around the tree, Pandora began to search under the furniture. “Though certainly a number of painters have toyed with jewelry design successfully enough—Dali for one—I feel…Michael!”

He set his untouched champagne back down and hurried over to where she knelt by a divan. “What is it?” he demanded, then saw for himself. Eyes closed, breathing fast and heavy, the puppy lay half under the divan. Even as Pandora reached for him, Bruno whimpered and struggled to stand.

“Oh, Michael, he’s sick. We should get him to a vet.”

“It’ll be midnight before we get to town. We won’t find a vet at midnight on Christmas Eve.” Gently Michael laid a hand on Bruno’s belly and heard him moan. “Maybe I can get someone on the phone.”

“Do you think it’s something he ate?”

“Sweeney’s been supervising his feeding like a new mother.” On cue Bruno struggled and shuddered and relieved himself of what offended his stomach. Exhausted from the effort, he lay back and dozed fitfully. “Something he drank,” Michael murmured.

Pampering and soothing, Pandora stroked the dog. “That little bit of champagne shouldn’t have made him ill.” Because the dog was already resting easier, she relaxed a bit. “Charles isn’t going to be pleased Bruno cast up his accounts on the carpet. Maybe I should—” She broke off as Michael grabbed her arm.

“How much champagne did you drink?”

“Only a sip. Why—” She broke off again to stare. “The champagne. You think something’s wrong with it?”

“I think I’m an idiot for not suspecting an anonymous present.” He grabbed her by the chin. “Only a sip. You’re sure? How do you feel?”

Her skin had gone cold, but she answered calmly enough. “I’m fine. Look at my glass, it’s still full.” She turned her head to look at it herself. “You—you think it was poisoned?”

“We’ll find out.”

Logic seeped through, making her shake her head. “But, Michael, the wine was corked. How could it have been tampered with?”

“The first season on Logan I used a device like this.” He thought back, remembering how he’d tested the theory by adding food coloring to a bottle of Dom Perignon. “The killer poisoned champagne by shooting cyanide through the cork with a hypodermic.”

“Fiction,” Pandora claimed, and fought a shiver. “That’s just fiction.”

“Until we find out differently, we’re going to treat it as fact. The rest of the bottle’s going into New York to Sanfield Labs for testing.”

Shaky, Pandora swallowed. “For testing,” she said on an unsteady breath. “All right, I suppose we’ll both be easier when we’re sure. Do you know someone who works there?”

“We own Sanfield.” He looked down at the sleeping puppy. “Or we will own it in a matter of months. That’s just one of the reasons someone might’ve sent us some doctored champagne.”

“Michael, if it was poisoned…” She tried to imagine it and found it nearly impossible. “If it was poisoned,” she repeated, “this wouldn’t just be a game anymore.”

He thought of what might have happened if they hadn’t been distracted from the wine. “No, it wouldn’t be a game.”

“It doesn’t make any sense.” Uneasy and fighting to calm herself, Pandora rose. “Vandalism I can see, petty annoyances I can understand, but I just can’t attribute something like this to one of the family. We’re probably over reacting. Bruno’s had too much excitement. He could very well have picked up something in the pound.”

“I had him sent to the vet for his shots before he was delivered here yesterday.” Michael’s voice was calm, but his eyes were hot. “He was healthy, Pandora, until he lapped up some spilled champagne.”

One look at him told her rationalizing was useless. “All right. The wine should be tested in any case so we can stop speculating. We can’t do anything about it until day after tomorrow. In the meantime, I don’t want to dwell on it.”

“Pulling the blinds down, Pandora?”

“No.” She picked up Bruno, who whimpered and burrowed into her breast. “But until it’s proven, I don’t want to consider that a member of my family tried to kill me. I’ll fix him something warm to drink, then I’m going to take him upstairs. I’ll keep an eye on him tonight.”

“All right.” Fighting a combination of frustration and fury, Michael stood by the fire.

* * *

Long after midnight when he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t work, Michael looked in on her. She’d left a light burning low across the room so that the white spreads and covers took on a rosy hue. Outside snow was falling again in big, festive flakes. Michael could see her, curled in the wide bed, the blankets up to her chin. The fire was nearly out. On the rug in front of it, the puppy snored. She’d put a mohair throw over him and had set a shallow bowl filled with what looked like tea nearby. Michael crouched beside the dog.

“Poor fella,” he murmured. As he stroked, Bruno stirred, whimpered, then settled again.

“I think he’s better.”

Glancing over, Michael saw the light reflected in Pandora’s eyes. Her hair was tousled, her skin pale and soft. Her shoulders, gently sloped, rose just above the covers pooled around her. She looked beautiful, desirable, arousing. He told himself he was mad. Pandora didn’t fit into his carefully detailed notion of beauty. Michael looked back at the dog.

“Just needs to sleep it off. You could use another log on this fire.” Needing to keep busy, Michael dug in the woodbox, then added a log to the coals.

“Thanks. Can’t sleep?”

“No.”

“Me, either.” They sat in silence a moment, Pandora in the big bed, Michael on the hearth rug. The fire crackled greedily at the fresh log and flickered light and shadow. At length, she drew her knees up to her chest. “Michael, I’m frightened.”

It wasn’t an easy admission. He knew it cost her to tell him. He stirred at the fire a moment, then spoke lightly as he replaced the screen. “We can leave. We can drive into New York tomorrow and stay there. Forget this whole business and enjoy the holidays.”

She didn’t speak for a minute, but she watched him carefully. His face was turned away toward the fire so that she had to judge his feelings by the way he held himself. “Is that what you want to do?”

He thought of Jolley, then he thought of Pandora. Every muscle in his body tightened. “Sure.” He tossed it off like a shrug. “I’ve got to think about myself.” He said it as if to remind himself it had once been true.

“For someone who earns his living by making up stories, you’re a lousy liar.” She waited until he turned to face her. “You don’t want to go back. What you want is to gather all our relatives together and beat them up.”

“Can you see me pounding Aunt Patience?”

“With a few exceptions,” Pandora temporized. “But the last thing you want is to give up.”

“All right, that’s me.” He rose and, hands in pockets, paced back and forth in front of the fire. He could smell the wood-smoke mixed with some light scent from one of the bottles on Pandora’s dresser. “What about you? You didn’t want to hassle with this whole business from the beginning. I talked you into it. I feel responsible.”

For the first time in hours she felt her humor return. “I hate to dent your ego, Michael, but you didn’t talk me into anything. No one does. And I’m completely responsible for myself. I don’t want to quit,” she added before he could speak. “I said I didn’t want the money, and that was true. I also said I didn’t need it, and that’s not precisely true. Over and above that, there’s pride. I’m frightened, yes, but I don’t want to quit. Oh, stop pacing around and come sit down.” The order was cross and impatient, nearly making him smile. He came over and sat on the bed.

“Better?”

She gave him a long, steady look that had the hint of a smile fading. “Yes. Michael, I’ve been lying here for hours thinking this thing through. I’ve realized a few things. You called me a snob once, and perhaps you were right in a way. I’ve never thought much about money. Never allowed myself to. When Uncle Jolley cut everyone out, I thought of it as a cross between a joke and a slap on the wrist. I figured they’d grumble and complain certainly, but that was all.” She lifted her hand palm up. “It was only money, and every one of them has their own.”

“Ever heard of greed or the lust for power?”

“That’s just it, I didn’t think. How much do I know about any of those people? They bore or annoy me from time to time, but I’ve never thought about them as individuals.” Now she ran the hand through her hair so that the blankets fell to her waist. “Ginger must be about the same age as I am, and I can’t think of two things we have in common. I’d probably pass Biff’s wife on the street without recognizing her.”

“I have a hard time remembering her name,” Michael put in, and earned a sigh from Pandora.

“That’s my point. We don’t really know them. The family, in a group, is a kind of parlor joke. Separately, who are they and what are they capable of? I’ve just begun to consider it. It’s not a joke, Michael.”

“No, it’s not.”

“I want to fight back, but I don’t know how.”

“The surest way is by staying. And maybe,” he added, and took her hand. It was cool and soft. “Add a little psychological warfare.”

“Such as?”

“What if we sent each one of our relatives a nice bottle of champagne?”

Her smile came slowly. “A magnum.”

“Naturally. It’d be interesting to see what sort of reaction we get.”

“It would be a nasty gesture, wouldn’t it?”

“Uh-hmm.”

“Maybe I haven’t given your creative brain enough credit.” She fell silent as he wound her hair around his finger. “I suppose we should get some sleep.”

“I suppose.” But his fingers skimmed down her shoulders.

“I’m not very tired.”

“We could play canasta.”

“We could.” But she made no move to stop him when he nudged the thin straps of her chemise from her shoulders. “There’s always cribbage.”

“That, too.”

“Or…” It was her decision, they both understood that. “We might finish playing out the hand we started downstairs earlier.”

He lifted her hand and pressed his lips to the palm. “Always best to finish what you start before going on. As I recall, we were…here.” He lowered his mouth to hers. Slowly, on a sigh, she wound her arms around his neck.

“That seems about right.”

Holding fast, they sunk into the bed together.

Perhaps it was because they knew each other well. Perhaps it was because they’d already waited a lifetime, but each moved slowly. Desire, for the moment, was comfortable, easy to satisfy with a touch, a taste. Passion curled inside him then unwound with a sigh. There was inch after inch of her to explore with his fingertips, with his lips. He’d waited too long, wanted too long, to miss any part of what they could give to each other.

She was more generous than he’d imagined, less inhibited, more open. She didn’t ask to be coaxed, she didn’t pretend to need persuasion. She ran her hands over him with equal curiosity. Her mouth took from him and gave again. When his lips parted from hers, her eyes were on him, clouded with desire, dark with amusement of a shared joke. They were together, Michael thought as he buried his face in her hair. About to become lovers. The joke was on both of them.

Her hands were steady when she pulled his sweatshirt over his head, steady still as she ran them over his chest. Her pulse wasn’t. She’d avoided this, refused this. Now she was accepting it though she knew there would be consequences she couldn’t anticipate.

The fire crackled steadily. The soft light glowed. Consequences were for more practical times.

Her skin slid over his with each movement. Each movement enticed. With his heartbeat beginning to hammer in his head, he journeyed lower. With openmouthed kisses he learned her body in a way he’d only been able to imagine. Her scent was everywhere, subtle at the curve of her waist, stronger at the gentle underside of her breasts. He drew it in and let it swim in his head.

He felt the instant her lazy enjoyment darkened with power. When her breath caught on a moan, he took her deeper. They reached a point where he no longer knew what they did to each other, only that strength met need and need became desperation.

His skin was damp. She tasted the moistness of it and craved more. So this was passion. This was the trembling, churning hunger men and women longed for. She’d never wanted it. That’s what she told herself as her body shuddered. Pleasure and pain mixed, needs and fears tangled. Her mind was as swamped with sensations as her flesh—heat and light, ecstasy and terror. The vulnerability overwhelmed her though her body arched taut and her hands clung. No one had ever brushed back her defenses so effortlessly and taken. Taken and taken.

Breathless and desperate, she dragged his mouth back to hers. They rolled over the bed, rough, racing. Neither had had enough. While she tugged and pulled at his jeans, Michael drove her higher. He’d wanted the madness, for himself and for her. Now he felt the wild strength pouring out of her. No thought here, no logic. He rolled on top of her again, reveling in her frantic breathing.

She curled around him, legs and arms. When he plunged into her, they watched the astonishment on each other’s faces. Not like this—it had never been like this. They’d come home. But home, each discovered, wasn’t always a peaceful place.

* * *

There was silence, stunned, awkward silence. They lay tangled in the covers as the log Michael had set to fire broke apart and showered sparks against the screen. They knew each other well, too well to speak of what had happened just yet. So they lay in silence as their skin cooled and their pulses leveled. Michael shifted to pull the spread up over them both.

“Merry Christmas,” he murmured.

With a sound that was both sigh and laugh, Pandora settled beside him.

Chapter Eight

They left the Folley in the hard morning light the day after Christmas. Sun glared off snow, melting it at the edges and forming icicles down branches and eaves. It was a postcard with biting wind.

After a short tussle they’d agreed that Pandora would drive into the city and Michael would drive back. He pushed his seat back to the limit and managed to stretch out his legs. She maneuvered carefully down the slushy mountain road that led from the Folley. They didn’t speak until she’d reached clear highway.

“What if they don’t let us in?”

“Why shouldn’t they?” Preferring driving to sitting, Michael shifted in his seat. For the first time he was impatient with the miles of road between the Folley and New York.

“Isn’t that like counting your chickens?” Pandora turned the heat down a notch and loosened the buttons of her coat. “We don’t own the place yet.”

“Just a technicality.”

“Always cocky.”

“You always look at the negative angles.”

“Someone has to.”

“Look…” He started to toss back something critical, then noticed how tightly she gripped the wheel. All nerves, he mused. Though the scenery was a print by Currier and Ives, it wasn’t entirely possible to pretend they were off on a holiday jaunt. He was running on nerves himself, and they didn’t all have to do with doctored champagne. How would he have guessed he’d wake up beside her in the cool light of dawn and feel so involved? So responsible. So hungry.

He took a deep breath and watched the scenery for another moment. “Look,” he began again in a lighter tone. “We may not own the lab or anything else at the moment, but we’re still Jolley’s family. Why should a lab technician refuse to do a little analysis?”

“I suppose we’ll find out when we get there.” She drove another ten miles in silence. “Michael, what difference is an analysis going to make?”

“I have this odd sort of curiosity. I like to know if someone’s tried to poison me.”

“So we’ll know if, and we’ll know why. We still won’t know who.”

“That’s the next step.” He glanced over. “We can invite them all to Folley for New Year’s and take turns grilling them.”

“Now you’re making fun of me.”

“No, actually, I’d thought of it. I just figure the time’s not quite right.” He waited a few minutes. In thin leather gloves, her fingers curled and uncurled on the wheel. “Pandora, why don’t you tell me what’s really bothering you?”

“Nothing is.” Everything was. She hadn’t been able to think straight for twenty-four hours.

“Nothing?”

“Nothing other than wondering if someone wants to kill me.” She tossed it off arrogantly. “Isn’t that enough?”

He heard the edge under the sarcasm. “Is that why you hid in your room all day yesterday.”

“I wasn’t hiding.” She had enough pride to sound brittle. “I was tending to Bruno. And I was tired.”

“You hardly ate any of that enormous goose Sweeney slaved over.”

“I’m not terribly fond of goose.”

“I’ve had Christmas dinner with you before,” he corrected. “You eat like a horse.”

“How gallant of you to point it out.” For no particular reason, she switched lanes, pumped the gas and passed another car. “Let’s just say I wasn’t in the mood.”

“How did you manage to talk yourself into disliking what happened between us so quickly?” It hurt. He felt the hurt, but it didn’t mean he had to let it show. His voice, as hers had been, was cool and hard.

“I haven’t. That’s absurd.” Dislike? She hadn’t been able to think of anything else, feel anything else. It scared her to death. “We slept together.” She managed to toss it off with a shrug. “I suppose we both knew we would sooner or later.”

He’d told himself precisely the same thing. He’d lost count of the number of times. He’d yet to figure out when he’d stopped believing. For himself. “And that’s it?”

The question was deadly calm, but she was too preoccupied with her own nerves to notice. “What else?” She had to stop dwelling on a moment of impulse. Didn’t she? She couldn’t go on letting her common sense be overrun by an attraction that would lead nowhere. Could she? “Michael, there’s no use blowing what happened out of proportion.”

“Just what is that proportion?”

The car felt stuffy and close. Pandora switched off the heat and concentrated on the road. “We’re two adults,” she began, but had to swallow twice.

“And?”

“Dammit, Michael, I don’t have to spell it out.”

“Yes, you do.”

“We’re two adults,” she said again, but with temper replacing nerves. “We have normal adult needs. We slept together and satisfied them.”

“How practical.”

“I am practical.” Abruptly, and very badly, she wanted to weep. “Much too practical to weave fantasies about a man who likes his women in six packs. Too practical,” she went on, voice rising, “to picture myself emotionally involved with a man I spent one night with. And too practical to romanticize what was no more than an exchange of normal and basic lust.”

“Pull over.”

“I will not.”

“Pull over to the shoulder, Pandora, or I’ll do it for you.”

She gritted her teeth and debated calling his bluff. There was just enough traffic on the road to force her hand. With only a slight squeal of tires, Pandora pulled off to the side of the road. Michael turned off the key then grabbed her by the lapels and pulled her half into his seat. Before she could struggle away, he closed his mouth over hers.

Heat, anger, passion. They seemed to twist together into one emotion. He held her there as cars whizzed by, shaking the windows. She infuriated him, she aroused him, she hurt him. In Michael’s opinion, it was too much for one man to take from one woman. As abruptly as he’d grabbed her, he released her.

“Make something practical out of that,” he challenged.

Breathless, Pandora struggled back into her own seat. In a furious gesture, she turned the key, gunning the motor. “Idiot.”

“Yeah.” He sat back as she pulled back onto the highway. “We finally agree on something.”

* * *

It was a long ride into the city. Longer still when you sat in a car in tense silence. Once they entered Manhattan, Pandora was forced to follow Michael’s directions to the lab.

“How do you know where it is?” she demanded after they left the car in a parking garage. The sidewalk was mobbed with people hurrying to exchange what had been brightly boxed and wrapped the day before. As they walked, Pandora held her coat closed against the wind.

“I looked the address up in Jolley’s files yesterday.” Michael walked the half block hatless, his coat flapping open, clutching the box with the champagne under one arm. He wasn’t immune to the cold but found it a relief after the hot tension of the drive. With a brisk gesture to Pandora, he pushed through revolving doors and entered the lobby of a steel-and-glass building. “He owned the whole place.”

Pandora looked across the marble floor. It sloped upward and widened into a crowded, bustling area with men and women carrying briefcases. “This whole place?”

“All seventy-two floors.”

It hit her again just how complicated the estate was. How many companies operated in the building? How many people worked there? How could she possibly crowd her life with this kind of responsibility? If she could get her hands on Uncle Jolley—Pandora broke off, almost amused. How he must be enjoying this, she thought.

“What am I supposed to do with seventy-two floors in midtown?”

“There are plenty of people to do it for you.” Michael gave their names to the guard at the elevators. With no delay, they were riding to the fortieth floor.

“So there are people to do it for us. Who keeps track of them?”

“Accountants, lawyers, managers. It’s a matter of hiring people to look after people you hire.”

“That certainly clears that up.”

“If you’re worried, think about Jolley. Having a fortune didn’t seem to keep him from enjoying himself. For the most part, he looked at the whole business as a kind of hobby.”

Pandora watched the numbers above the door. “A hobby.”

“Everyone should have a hobby.”

“Tennis is a hobby,” she muttered.

“The trick is to keep the ball moving. Jolley tossed it in our court, Pandora.”

She folded her arms. “I’m not ready to be grateful for that.”

“Look at it this way then.” He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed lightly. “You don’t have to know how to build a car to own one. You just have to drive steady and follow the signs. If Jolley didn’t think we could follow the signs, he wouldn’t have given us the keys.”

It helped to look at it that way. Still it was odd to consider she was riding on an elevator she would own when the six months were up. “Do we know whom to go to?” Pandora glanced at the box Michael held, which contained the bottle of champagne.

“A man named Silas Lockworth seems to be in charge.”

“You did your homework.”

“Let’s hope it pays off.”

When the elevator stopped, they walked into the reception area for Sanfield Laboratories. The carpet was pale rose, the walls lacquered in cream. Two huge split-leaf philodendrons flanked the wide glass doors that slid open at their approach. A woman behind a gleaming desk folded her hands and smiled.

“Good morning. May I help you?”

Michael glanced at the computer terminal resting on an extension of her desk. Top of the line. “We’d like to see Mr. Lockworth.”

“Mr. Lockworth’s in a meeting. If I could have your names, perhaps his assistant can help you.”

“I’m Michael Donahue. This is Pandora McVie.”

“McVie?”

Pandora saw the receptionist’s eyebrows raise. “Yes, Maximillian McVie was our uncle.”

Already polite and efficient, the receptionist became gracious. “I’m sure Mr. Lockworth would have greeted you himself if we’d known you were coming. Please have a seat. I’ll ring through.”

It took under five minutes.

The man who strode out into reception didn’t look like Pandora’s conception of a technician or scientist. He was six-three, lean as a gymnast with blond hair brushed back from a tanned, lantern-jawed face. He looked, Pandora thought, more like a man who’d be at home on the range than in a lab with test tubes.

“Ms. McVie.” He walked with an easy rolling gait, hand outstretched. “Mr. Donahue. I’m Silas Lockworth. Your uncle was a good friend.”

“Thank you.” Michael accepted the handshake. “I apologize for dropping in unannounced.”

“No need for that.” Lockworth’s smile seemed to mean it. “We never knew when Jolley was going to drop in on us. Let’s go back to my office.”

He led them down the corridor. Lockworth’s office was the next surprise. It was plush enough, with curvy chairs and clever lithographs, to make you think of a corporate executive. The desk was piled high with enough files and papers to make you think of a harried clerk. It carried the scent from the dozens of leather-bound books on a floor-to-ceiling shelf. Built into one wall was a round aquarium teeming with exotic fish.

“Would you like coffee? I can guarantee it’s hot and strong.”

“No.” Pandora was already twisting her gloves in her hands. “Thank you. We don’t want to take too much of your time.”

“It’s my pleasure,” Lockworth assured her. “Jolley certainly spoke often of both of you,” Lockworth went on as he gestured to chairs. “There was never a doubt you were his favorites.”

“And he was ours,” Pandora returned.

“Still you didn’t come to pass the time.” Lockworth leaned back on his desk. “What can I do for you?”

“We have something we’d like analyzed,” Michael began. “Quickly and quietly.”

“I see.” Silas stopped there, brow raised. Lockworth was a man who picked up impressions of people right away. In Pandora he saw nerves under a sheen of politeness. In Michael he saw violence, not so much buried as thinly coated. He thought he detected a bond between them though they hadn’t so much as looked at each other since entering the room.

Lockworth could have refused. His staff was slimmed down during the holidays, and work was backlogged. He was under no obligation to either of them yet. But he never forgot his obligation to Jolley McVie. “We’ll try to accommodate you.”

In silence, Michael opened the box and drew out the bottle of champagne. “We need a report on the contents of this bottle. A confidential report. Today.”

Lockworth took it and examined the label. His lips curved slightly. “Seventy-two. A good year. Were you thinking of starting a vineyard?”

“We need to know what’s in there other than champagne.”

Rather than showing surprise, Lockworth leaned back on the desk again. “You’ve reason to think there is?”

Michael met the look. “We wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

Lockworth only inclined his head. “All right. I’ll run it through the lab myself.”

With a quick scowl for Michael’s manners, Pandora rose and offered her hand. “We appreciate the trouble, Mr. Lockworth. I’m sure you have a great many other things to do, but the results are important to Michael and me.”

“No problem.” He decided he’d find out why it was important after he’d analyzed the wine. “There’s a coffee shop for the staff. I’ll show you where it is. You can wait for me there.”

* * *

“There was absolutely no reason to be rude.” Pandora settled herself at a table and looked at a surprisingly varied menu.

“I wasn’t rude.”

“Of course you were. Mr. Lockworth was going out of his way to be friendly, and you had a chip on your shoulder. I think I’m going to have the shrimp salad.”

“I don’t have a chip on my shoulder. I was being cautious. Or maybe you think we should spill everything to a total stranger.”

Pandora folded her hands and smiled at the waitress. “I’d like the shrimp salad and coffee.”

“Two coffees,” Michael muttered. “And the turkey platter.”

“I’ve no intention of spilling, as you put it, everything to a total stranger.” Pandora picked up her napkin. “However, if we weren’t going to trust Lockworth, we’d have been better off to buy a chemistry set and try to handle it ourselves.”

“Drink your coffee,” Michael muttered, and picked up his own the moment the waitress served it.

Pandora frowned as she added cream. “How long do you think it’ll take?”

“I don’t know. I’m not a scientist.”

“He didn’t look like one, either, did he?”

“Bronc rider.” Michael sipped his black coffee and found it as strong as Lockworth had promised.

“What?”

“Looks like a bronc rider. I wonder if Carlson or any of the others have any interest in this building.”

Pandora set her coffee down before she tasted it. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“As I remember, Jolley turned over Tristar Corporation to Monroe about twenty-five years ago. I remember my parents talking about it.”

“Tristar. Which one is that?”

“Plastics. I know he gave little pieces of the pie out here and there. He told me once he wanted to give all his relatives a chance before he crossed them off the list.”

After a moment’s thought, she shrugged and picked up her coffee again. “Well, if he did give a few shares of Sanfield to one of them, what difference does it make?”

“I don’t know how much we should trust Lockworth.”

“You’d have felt better if he’d been bald and short with Coke-bottle glasses and a faint German accent.”

“Maybe.”

“See?” Pandora smiled. “You’re just jealous because he has great shoulders.” She fluttered her lashes. “Here’s your turkey.”

They ate slowly, drank more coffee, then passed more time with pie. After an hour and a half, both of them were restless and edgy. When Lockworth came in, Pandora forgot to be nervous about the results.

“Thank God, here he comes.”

After maneuvering around chairs and employees on lunch break, Lockworth set a computer printout on the table and handed the box back to Michael. “I thought you’d want a copy.” He took a seat and signaled for coffee. “Though it’s technical.”

Pandora frowned down at the long, chemical terms printed out on the paper. It meant little more than nothing to her, but she doubted trichloroethanol or any of the other multisyllabic words belonged in French champagne. “What does it mean?”

“I wondered that myself.” Lockworth reached in his pocket and drew out a pack of cigarettes. Michael looked at it for a moment with longing. “I wondered why anyone would put rose dust in vintage champagne.”

“Rose dust?” Michael repeated. “Pesticide. So it was poisoned.”

“Technically, yes. Though there wasn’t enough in the wine to do any more than make you miserably ill for a day or two. I take it neither one of you had any?”

“No.” Pandora looked up from the report. “My puppy did,” she explained. “When we opened the bottle, some spilled and he lapped it up. Before we’d gotten around to drinking it, he was ill.”

“Luckily for you, though I find it curious that you’d jumped to the conclusion that the champagne had been poisoned because a puppy was sick.”

“Luckily for us, we did.” Michael folded the report and slipped it into his pocket.

“You’ll have to pardon my cousin,” Pandora said. “He has no manners. We appreciate you taking time out to do this for us, Mr. Lockworth. I’m afraid it isn’t possible to fully explain ourselves at this point, but I can tell you that we had good reason to suspect the wine.”

Lockworth nodded. As a scientist he knew how to theorize. “If you find you need a more comprehensive report, let me know. Jolley was an important person in my life. We’ll call it a favor to him.”

As he rose, Michael stood with him. “I’ll apologize for myself this time.” He held out a hand.

“I’d be a bit edgy myself if someone gave me pesticide disguised as Moët et Chandon. Let me know if I can do anything else.”

“Well,” Pandora began when they were alone. “What next?”

“A little trip to the liquor store. We’ve some presents to buy.”

They sent, first-class, a bottle of the same to each of Jolley’s erstwhile heirs. Michael signed the cards simply, “One good turn deserves another.” After it was done and they walked outside in the frigid wind, Pandora huffed and pulled on her gloves.

“An expensive gesture.”

“Look at it as an investment,” Michael suggested.

It wasn’t the money, she thought, but the sudden futility she felt. “What good will it do really?”

“Several bottles’ll be wondered over, then appreciated. But one,” Michael said with relish. “One makes a statement, even a threat.”

“An empty threat,” Pandora returned. “It’s not as if we’ll be there when everyone gets one to gauge reactions.”

“You’re thinking like an amateur.”

Michael was halfway across the street when Pandora grabbed his arm. “Just what does that mean?”

“When an amateur plays a practical joke, he thinks he has to be in on the kill.”

Ignoring the people who brushed by them, Pandora held her ground. “Since when is pesticide poisoning a practical joke?”

“Revenge follows the same principle.”

“Oh, I see. And you’re an expert.”

The light changed. Cars started for them, horns blaring. Gritting his teeth, Michael grabbed her arm and pulled her to the curb. “Maybe I am. It’s enough for me to know someone’s going to look at the bottle and be very nervous. Someone’s going to look at it and know we intend to give as good as we get. Your trouble is you don’t like to let your emotions loose long enough to appreciate revenge.”

“Leave my emotions alone.”

“That’s the plan,” he said evenly, and started walking again.

In three strides she’d caught up with him. Her face was pink from the wind, the anger in her voice came out in thin wisps. “You’re not annoyed with Lockworth or about the champagne or over differing views on revenge. You’re mad because I defined our relationship in practical terms.”

He stared at her as her phrasing worked on both his temper and his humor. “Okay,” he declared, turning to walk on. Patience straining, he turned back when Pandora grabbed his arm. “You want to hash this out right here?”

“I won’t let you make me feel inadequate just because I broke things off before you had a chance to.”

“Before I had a chance to?” He took her by the coat. With the added height from the heels on her boots, she looked straight into his eyes. Another time, another place, he might have considered her magnificent. “I barely had the chance to recover from what happened before you were shoving me out. I wanted you. Dammit, I still want you. God knows why.”

“Well, I want you, too, and I don’t like it, either.”

“Looks like that puts us in the same fix, doesn’t it?”

“So what’re we going to do about it?”

He looked at her and saw the anger. But he looked closely enough to see confusion, as well. One of them had to make the first move. He decided it was going to be him. Taking her hand, he dragged her across the street.

“Where are we going?”

“The Plaza.”

“The Plaza Hotel? Why?”

“We’re going to get a room, put the chain on the door and make love for the next twenty-four hours. After that, we’ll decide how we want to handle it.”

There were times, Pandora decided, when it was best to go along for the ride. “We don’t have any luggage.”

“Yeah. My reputation’s about to be shattered.”

She made a sound that might have been a laugh. When they walked into the elegant lobby, the heat warmed her skin and stirred up her nerves. It was all impulse, she told herself. She knew better than to make any important decision on impulse. He could change everything. That was something she hadn’t wanted to admit but had known for years. When she started to draw away, his hand locked on her arm.

“Coward,” he murmured. He couldn’t have said anything more perfectly designed to make her march forward.

“Good afternoon.” Michael smiled at the desk clerk. Pandora wondered briefly if the smile would have been so charming if the clerk had been a man. “Checking in.”

“You have a reservation?”

“Donahue. Michael Donahue.”

The clerk punched some buttons and stared at her computer screen. “I’m afraid I don’t show anything under Donahue for the twenty-sixth.”

“Katie,” Michael said on a breath of impatience. He sent Pandora a long suffering look. “I should never have trusted her to handle this.”

Catching the drift, Pandora patted his hand. “You’re going to have to let her go, Michael. I know she’s worked for your family for forty years, but when a person gets into their seventies…” She trailed off and let Michael take the ball.

“We’ll decide when we get home.” He turned back to the desk clerk. “Apparently there’s been a mix-up between my secretary and the hotel. We’ll only be in town overnight. Is anything available?”

The clerk went back to her buttons. Most people in her experience raised the roof when there was a mix-up in reservations. Michael’s quiet request touched her sympathies. “You understand there’s a problem because of the holiday.” She punched more buttons, wanting to help. “We do have a suite available.”

“Fine.” Michael took the registration form and filled it out. With the key in his hand, he sent the clerk another smile. “I appreciate the trouble.” Noting the bellhop hovering at his elbow, he handed him a bill. “We’ll handle it, thanks.”

The clerk looked at the twenty in his palm and the lack of luggage. “Yes, sir!”

“He thinks we’re having an illicit affair,” Pandora murmured as they stepped onto the elevator.

“We are.” Before the doors had closed again, Michael grabbed her to him and locked her in a kiss that lasted twelve floors. “We don’t know each other,” he told her as they stepped into the hallway. “We’ve just met. We don’t have mutual childhood memories or share the same family.” He put the key in the lock. “We don’t give a damn what the other does for a living nor do we have any long-standing opinions about each other.”

“Is that supposed to simplify things?”

Michael drew her inside. “Let’s find out.”

He didn’t give her a chance to wonder, a chance to debate. The moment the door was shut behind them, he had her in his arms. He took questions away. He took choice away. For once, she wanted him to. In a fury of passions, of hungers, of cravings, they came together. Each fought to draw more, still more out of the other, to touch faster, to possess more quickly. They forgot what they knew, what they thought and reveled in what they felt.

Coats, still chill from the wind, were pushed to the floor. Sweaters and shirts followed. Hardly more than a foot inside the door, they slid to the carpet.

“Damn winter,” Michael muttered as he fought with her boots.

Laughing, Pandora struggled with his, then moaned when he pressed his lips to her breast.

It was a race, part warring, part loving. Neither gave the other respite. When their clothes were shed, they sprinted ahead, hands reaching, lips arousing. There was none of the dreamy déjà vu they’d experienced the first time. This was new. The fingers tracing her skin had never been felt before. The lips, hot and searing, had never been tasted. Fresh, erotically fresh, their mouths met and clung.

Her heart had never beat so fast. She was sure of it. Her body had never ached and pulsed so desperately. She’d never wanted it to. Now she wanted more, everything. Him. She rolled so that she could press quick, hungry kisses over his face, his neck, his chest. Everywhere.

His mind was teeming with her, with every part of her that he could touch or taste or smell. She was wild in a way he’d never imagined. She was demanding in a way any man would desire. His body seemed to fascinate her, every curve, every angle. She exploited it until he was half mad, then he groped for her.

She’d never known a man could give so much. Racked with sensations, she arched under him. Hot and ready, she offered. But he was far from through. The taste of her thighs was subtle, luring him toward the heat. He found her, drove her and kept her helplessly trapped in passion. Helplessly. The sensation shivered over her. She’d never known what it had meant to be truly vulnerable to another. He could have taken anything from her then, asked anything and she couldn’t have refused. But he didn’t ask, he gave.

She crested wave after wave. Between heights and depths she pinwheeled, delighting in the spin. On the rug with the afternoon light streaming through the windows, she was locked in blinding darkness without any wish to see. Make me feel, her mind seemed to shout. More. Again. Still.

And he was inside her, joined, melded. She found there was more. Impossibly more.

* * *

They stayed where they were, sprawled on scattered clothes. Gradually Pandora found her mind swimming back to reality. She could see the pastel walls, the sunlight. She could smell the body heat that was a mix of hers and his. She could feel Michael’s hair brushing over her cheek, the beat of his heart, still fast, against her breast.

It happened so fast, she thought. Or had it taken hours? All she was certain of was that she’d never experienced anything like it. Never permitted herself to, she amended. Strange things could happen to a woman who lifted the lid from her passion. Other things could sneak in before the top closed again. Things like affection, understanding. Even love.

She caught herself stroking Michael’s hair and let her hand fall to the carpet. She couldn’t let love in, not even briefly. Love took as well as gave. That she’d always known. And it didn’t always give and take in equal shares. Michael wasn’t a man a woman could love practically, and certainly not wisely. That she understood. He wouldn’t follow the rules.

She’d be his lover, but she wouldn’t love him. Though there would be no pretending they could live with each other for the next three months platonically, she wouldn’t risk her heart. For an instant Pandora thought she felt it break, just a little. Foolishness, she told herself. Her heart was strong and unimpaired. What she and Michael had together was a very basic, very uncomplicated arrangement. Arrangement, she thought, sounded so much more practical than romance.

But her sigh was quiet, and a little wistful.

“Figure it all out?” He shifted a little as he spoke, just enough so that he could brush his lips down her throat.

“What do you mean?”

“Have you figured out the guidelines for our relationship?” Lifting his head, he looked down at her. He wasn’t smiling, but Pandora thought he was amused.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I can almost hear the wheels turning. Pandora, I can see just what’s going on in your head.”

Annoyed that he probably could, she lifted a brow. “I thought we’d just met.”

“I’m psychic. You’re thinking….” He trailed off to nibble at her lips. “That there should be a way to keep our…relationship on a practical level. You’re wondering how you’ll keep an emotional distance when we’re sleeping together. You’ve decided that there’ll be absolutely no romantic overtones to any arrangement between us.”

“All right.” He made her feel foolish. Then he ran a hand over her hip and made her tremble. “Since you’re so smart, you’ll see that I’ve only been using common sense.”

“I like it better when your skin gets hot, and you haven’t any sense at all. But—” he kissed her before she could answer “—we can’t stay in bed all the time. I don’t believe in practical affairs, Pandora. I don’t believe in emotional distance between lovers.”

“You’ve had a great deal of experience there.”

“That’s right.” He sat up, drawing her with him. “And I’ll tell you this. You can wall up your emotions all you want. You can call whatever we have here by any practical term you can dream up. You can turn up your nose at candlelight dinners and quiet music. It’s not going to make any difference.” He gathered her hair in his hand and pulled her head back. “I’m going to get to you, cousin. I’m going to get to you until you can’t think of anything, anyone but me. If you wake up in the middle of the night and I’m not there, you’ll wish I were. And when I touch you, any time I touch you, you’re going to want me.”

She had to fight the shudder. She knew, as well as she’d ever known anything, that he was right. And she knew, perhaps they both did, that she’d fight it right down to the end. “You’re arrogant, egocentric and simpleminded.”

“True enough. And you’re stubborn, willful and perverse. The only thing we can be sure of at this point is that one of us is going to win.”

Sitting on the pile of discarded clothes, they studied each other. “Another game?” Pandora murmured.

“Maybe. Maybe it’s the only game.” With that, he stood and lifted her into his arms.

“Michael, I don’t need to be carried.”

“Yes, you do.”

He walked across the suite toward the bedroom. Pandora started to struggle, then subsided. Maybe just this once, she decided, and relaxed in his arms.

Chapter Nine

January was a month of freezing wind, pelting snow and gray skies. Each day was as bitterly cold as the last, with tomorrow waiting frigidly in the wings. It was a month of frozen pipes, burst pipes, overworked furnaces and stalled engines. Pandora loved it. The frost built up on the windows of her shop, and the inside temperature always remained cool even with the heaters turned up. She worked until her fingers were numb and enjoyed every moment.

Throughout the month, the road to the Folley was often inaccessible. Pandora didn’t mind not being able to get out. It meant no one could get in. The pantry and freezer were stocked, and there was over a cord of wood stacked beside the kitchen door. The way she looked at it, they had everything they needed. The days were short and productive, the nights long and relaxing. Since the incident of the champagne, it had been a quiet, uneventful winter.

Uneventful, Pandora mused, wasn’t precisely the right term. With quick, careful strokes, she filed the edges of a thick copper bracelet. It certainly wasn’t as though nothing had happened. There’d been no trouble from outside sources, but… Trouble, as she’d always known, was definitely one of Michael Donahue’s greatest talents.

Just what was he trying to pull by leaving a bunch of violets on her pillow? She was certain a magic wand would have been needed to produce the little purple flowers in January. When she’d questioned him about them, he’d simply smiled and told her violets didn’t have thorns. What kind of an answer was that? Pandora wondered, and examined the clasp of the bracelet through a magnifying glass. She was satisfied with the way she’d designed it to blend with the design.

Then, there’d been the time she’d come out of the bath to find the bedroom lit with a dozen candles. When she’d asked if there’d been a power failure, Michael had just laughed and pulled her into bed.

He did things like reaching for her hand at dinner and whispering in her ear just before dawn. Once he’d joined her in the shower uninvited and silenced her protests by washing every inch of her body himself. She’d been right. Michael Donahue didn’t follow the rules. He’d been right. He was getting to her.

Pandora removed the bracelet from the vise, then absently began to polish it. She’d made a half a dozen others in the last two weeks. Big chunky bracelets, some had gaudy stones, some had ornate engraving. They suited her mood—daring, opinionated and a bit silly. She’d learned to trust her instincts, and her instincts told her they’d sell faster than she could possibly make them—and be copied just as quickly.

She didn’t mind the imitations. After all, there was only one of each type that was truly a Pandora McVie. Copies would be recognized as copies because they lacked that something special, that individuality of the genuine.

Pleased, she turned the bracelet over in her hand. No one would mistake any of her work for an imitation. She might often use glass instead of precious or semiprecious stones because glass expressed her mood at the time. But each piece she created carried her mark, her opinion and her honesty. She never gave a thought to the price of a piece when she crafted it or its market value. She created what she needed to create first, then after it was done, her practical side calculated the profit margin. Her art varied from piece to piece, but it never lied.

Looking down at the bracelet, Pandora sighed. No, her art never lied, but did she? Could she be certain her emotions were as genuine as the jewelry she made? A feeling could be imitated. An emotion could be fraudulent. How many times in the past few weeks had she pretended? Not pretended to feel, Pandora thought, but pretended not to feel. She was a woman who’d always prided herself on her honesty. Truth and independence went hand in hand with Pandora’s set of values. But she’d lied—over and over again—to herself, the worst form of deception.

It was time to stop, Pandora told herself. Time to face the truth of her feelings if only in the privacy of her own heart and mind.

How long had she been in love with Michael? She had to stand and move around the shop as the question formed in her mind. Weeks? Months? Years? It wasn’t something she could answer because she would never be sure. But she was certain of the emotion. She loved. Pandora understood it because she loved only a few people, and when she did, she loved boundlessly. Perhaps that was the biggest problem. Wasn’t it a sort of suicide to love Michael boundlessly?

Better to face it, she told herself. No problem resolved itself without being faced first and examined second. However much a fool it made her, she loved Michael. Pandora rubbed at the steam on the windows and looked out at the snow. Strange, she’d really believed once she accepted it she’d feel better. She didn’t.

What options did she have? She could tell him. And have him gloat, Pandora thought with a scowl. He would, too, before he trotted off to his next conquest. She certainly wasn’t fool enough to think he’d be interested in a long-term relationship. Of course, she wasn’t interested in one either, Pandora told herself as she began to noisily pack her tools.

Another option was to cut and run. What the relatives hadn’t been able to accomplish with their malice and mischief, her own heart would succeed in doing. She could get in the car, drive to the airport and fly to anywhere. Escape was the honest word. Then, she’d not only be a coward, she’d be a traitor. No, she wouldn’t let Uncle Jolley down; she wouldn’t run. That left her, as Pandora saw it, with one option.

She’d go on as she was. She’d stay with Michael, sleep with Michael, share with Michael—share with him everything but what was in her heart. She’d take the two months they had left together and prepare herself to walk away with no regrets.

He’d gotten to her, Pandora admitted. Gotten to her in places no other man had touched. She loved him for it. She hated him for it. With her mood as turbulent as her thoughts, she locked the shop and stomped across the lawn.

“Here she comes now.” With a new plan ready to spring, Sweeney turned away from the kitchen window and signaled to Charles.

“It’s never going to work.”

“Of course it is. We’re going to push those children together for their own good. Any two people who spat as much as they do should be married.”

“We’re interfering where it’s not our place.”

“What malarkey!” Sweeney took her seat at the kitchen table. “Whose place is it to interfere if not ours, I’d like to know? Who’ll be knocking around this big empty house if they go back to the city if not us? Now pick up that cloth and fan me. Stoop over a bit and look feeble.”

“I am feeble,” Charles muttered, but picked up the cloth.

When Pandora walked into the kitchen she saw Sweeney sprawled back in a chair, eyes closed, with Charles standing over her waving a dishcloth at her face.

“God, what’s wrong? Charles, did she faint?” Before he could answer, Pandora had dashed across the room. “Call Michael,” she ordered. “Call Michael quickly.” She brushed Charles away and crouched. “Sweeney, it’s Pandora. Are you in pain?”

Barely suppressing a sigh of satisfaction, Sweeney let her eyes flutter open and hoped she looked pale. “Oh, missy, don’t you worry now. Just one of my spells is all. Now and then my heart starts to flutter so that I feel it’s coming right out of my head.”

“I’m going to call the doctor.” Pandora had taken only one step when her hand was caught in a surprisingly strong grip.

“No need for that.” Sweeney made her voice thin and weary. “Saw him just a few months past and he told me I’d have to expect one of these now and again.”

“I don’t believe that,” Pandora said fiercely. “You’re just plain working too hard, and it’s going to stop.”

A little trickle of guilt worked its way in as Sweeney saw the concern. “Now, now, don’t fret.”

“What is it?” Michael swung through the kitchen door. “Sweeney?” He knelt down beside her and took her other hand.

“Now look at all this commotion.” Mentally she leaped up and kicked her heels. “It’s nothing but one of my little spells. The doctor said I’d have to watch for them. Just a nuisance, that’s all.” She looked hard at Charles when he came in. Eventually she looked hard enough so that he remembered his cue.

“And you know what he said.”

“Now, Charles—”

“You’re to have two or three days of bed rest.”

Pleased that he’d remembered his lines, Sweeney pretended to huff. “Pack of nonsense. I’ll be right as rain in a few minutes. I’ve dinner to cook.”

“You won’t be cooking anything.” In a way Sweeney considered properly masterful, Michael picked her up. “Into bed with you.”

“Just who’ll take care of things?” Sweeney demanded. “I’ll not have Charles spreading his germs around my kitchen.”

Michael was nearly out of the room with Sweeney before Charles remembered the next step. He coughed into his hand, looked apologetic and coughed again.

“Listen to that!” Pleased, Sweeney let her head rest against Michael’s shoulder. “I won’t go to bed and let him infect my kitchen.”

“How long have you had that cough?” Pandora demanded. When Charles began to mutter, she stood up. “That’s enough. Both of you into bed. Michael and I will take care of everything.” Taking Charles’s arm, she began to lead him into the servant’s wing. “Into bed and no nonsense. I’ll make both of you some tea. Michael, see that Charles gets settled, I’ll look after Sweeney.”

Within a half hour, Sweeney had them both where she wanted them. Together.

“Well, they’re all settled in and there’s no fever.” Satisfied, Pandora poured herself a cup of tea. “I suppose all they need is a few days’ rest and some pampering. Tea?”

He made a face at the idea and switched on the coffee. “Since the days of house calls are over, I’d think they’d be better off here in bed than being dragged into town. We can take turns keeping an eye on them.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Pandora opened the refrigerator and studied. “What about meals? Can you cook?”

“Sure.” Michael rattled cups in the cupboard. “Badly, but I can cook. Meat loaf’s my specialty.” When this was met with no enthusiasm, he turned his head. “Do you?”

“Cook?” Pandora lifted a plastic lid hopefully. “I can broil a steak and scramble eggs. Anything else is chancy.”

“Life’s nothing without a risk.” Michael joined her in her rummage through the refrigerator. “Here’s almost half an apple cobbler.”

“That’s hardly a meal.”

“It’ll do for me.” He took it out and went for a spoon. Pandora watched as he sat down at the table and dug in. “Want some?”

She started to refuse on principle, then decided not to cut off her nose. Going to the cupboard, she found a bowl. “What about the bedridden?” she asked as she scooped out cobbler.

“Soup,” Michael said between bites. “Nothing better than hot soup. Though I’d let them rest awhile first.”

With a nod of agreement, she sat across from him. “Michael…” She trailed off as she played with her cobbler. The steam from her tea rose up between them. She’d been thinking about how to broach the subject for days. It seemed the time had come. “I’ve been thinking. In two months, the will should be final. When Fitzhugh wrote us last week, he said Uncle Carlson’s lawyers were advising him to drop the probate.”

“So?”

“The house, along with everything else, will be half yours, half mine.”

“That’s right.”

She took a bite of cobbler, then set down her spoon. “What’re you smiling at?”

“You’re nice to look at. I find it relaxing to sit here alone in the kitchen, in the quiet, and look at you.”

It was that sort of thing, just that sort of thing, that left her light-headed and foolish. She stared at him a moment, then dropped her gaze to her bowl. “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that.”

“No, you don’t. So you’ve been thinking,” he prompted.

“Yes.” She gave herself a moment, carefully spooning out another bite of cobbler. “We’ll have the house between us, but we won’t be living here together any longer. Sweeney and Charles will be here alone. I’ve worried about that for a while. Now, after this, I’m more concerned than ever. They can’t stay here alone.”

“No, I think you’re right. Ideas?”

“I mentioned before that I was considering moving here on a semipermanent basis.” She found she had no appetite after all and switched back to her tea. “I think I’m going to make it permanent all around.”

He heard a trace of nervousness in her voice. “Because of Charles and Sweeney?”

“Only partly.” She drank more tea, set the cup down and toyed with her cobbler again. She wasn’t accustomed to discussing her decisions with anyone. Though she found it difficult, Pandora had already resolved that she had an obligation to do so. More, she’d realized she needed to talk to him, to be, as she couldn’t be on other levels, honest. “I always felt the Folley was home, but I didn’t realize just how much of a home. I need it, for myself. You see, I never had one.” She lifted her gaze and met his. “Only here.”

To say her words surprised him was to say too little. All his life he’d seen her as the pampered pet, the golden girl with every advantage. “But your parents—”

“Are wonderful,” Pandora said quickly. “I adore them. There’s nothing about them I’d change. But…” How could she explain? How could she not? “We never had a kitchen like this—a place you could come back to day after day and know it’d be the same. Even if you changed the wallpaper and the paint, it would be the same. It sounds silly.” She shifted restlessly. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Maybe I would.” He caught her hand before she could rise. “Maybe I’d like to.”

“I want a home,” she said simply. “The Folley’s been that to me. I want to stay here after the term’s up.”

He kept her hand in his, palm to palm. “Why are you telling me this, Pandora?”

Reasons. Too many reasons. She chose the only one she could give him safely. “In two months, the house belongs to you as much as to me. According to the terms of the will—”

He swore and released her hand. Rising, he stuck his hands in his back pockets and strode to the window. He’d thought for a moment, just for a moment, she’d been ready to give him more. By God, he’d waited long enough for only a few drops more. There’d been something in her voice, something soft and giving. Perhap she’d just imagined it because he’d wanted to hear it. Terms of the will, he thought. It was so like her to see nothing else.

“What do you want, my permission?”

Disturbed, Pandora stayed at the table. “I suppose I wanted you to understand and agree.”

“Fine.”

“You needn’t be so curt about it. After all, you haven’t any plans to use the house on a regular basis.”

“I haven’t made any plans,” he murmured. “Perhaps it’s time I did.”

“I didn’t mean to annoy you.”

He turned slowly, then just as slowly smiled. “No, I’m sure you didn’t. There’s never any doubt when you annoy me intentionally.”

There was something wrong here, something she couldn’t quite pinpoint. So she groped. “Would you mind so much if I were to live here?”

It surprised him when she rose to come to him, offering a hand. She didn’t make such gestures often or casually. “No, why should it?”

“It would be half yours.”

“We could draw a line down the middle.”

“That might be awkward. I could buy you out.”

“No.”

He said it so fiercely, her brows shot up. “It was only an offer.”

“Forget it.” He turned to look for soup.

Pandora stood back a moment, watching his back, the tension in the muscles. “Michael…” With a sigh, she wrapped her arms around his waist. She felt him stiffen, but didn’t realize it was from surprise. “I seem to be saying all the wrong things. Maybe I have an easier time when we snap at each other than when I try to be considerate.”

“Maybe we both do.” He turned to frame her face with his hands. For a moment they looked like friends, like lovers. “Pandora….” Could he tell her he found it impossible to think about leaving her or her leaving him? Would she understand if he told her he wanted to go on living with her, being with her? How could she possibly take in the fact that he’d been in love with her for years when he was just becoming able to accept it himself? Instead he kissed her forehead. “Let’s make soup.”

* * *

They couldn’t work together without friction, but they discovered over the next few days that they could work together. They cooked meals, washed up, dusted furniture while the servants stayed in bed or sat, bundled up, on sofas drinking tea. True, there were times when Sweeney itched to get up and be about her business, or when Charles suffered pangs of conscience, but they were convinced they were doing their duty. Both servants felt justified when they heard laughter drift through the house.

Michael wasn’t sure there had been another time in his life when he’d been so content. He was, in essence, playing house, something he’d never had the time or inclination for. He would write for hours, closed off in his office, wrapped up in plots and characters and what-ifs. Then he could break away and reality was the scent of cooking or furniture polish. He had a home, a woman, and was determined to keep them.

Late in the afternoon, he always laid a fire in the parlor. After dinner they had coffee there, sometimes quietly, sometimes during a hard-fought game of rummy. It seemed ordinary, Michael admitted. It was ordinary, unless you added Pandora. He was just setting fire to the kindling when Bruno raced into the room and upset a table. Knickknacks went flying.

“We’re going to have to send you to charm school,” Michael declared as he rose to deal with the rubble. Though it had been just over a month, Bruno had nearly doubled in size already. He was, without a doubt, going to grow into his paws. After righting the table, he saw the dog wiggling its way under a sofa. “What’ve you got there?”

Besides being large, Bruno had already earned a reputation as a clever thief. Just the day before, they’d lost a slab of pork chops. “All right, you devil, if that’s tonight’s chicken, you’re going into solitary confinement in the garage.” Getting down on all fours, Michael looked under the couch. It wasn’t chicken the dog was gnawing noisily on, but Michael’s shoe.

“Damn!” Michael made a grab but the dog backed out of reach and kept on chewing. “That shoe’s worth five times what you are, you overgrown mutt. Give it here.” Flattening, Michael scooted halfway under the sofa. Bruno merely dragged the shoe away again, enjoying the game.

“Oh, how sweet.” Pandora walked into the parlor and eyed Michael from the waist down. He did, she decided, indeed have some redeeming qualities. “Are you playing with the dog, Michael, or dusting under the sofa?”

“I’m going to make a rug out of him.”

“Dear, dear, we sound a little cross this evening. Bruno, here baby.” Carrying the shoe like a trophy, Bruno squirmed out from under the couch and pranced over to her. “Is this what you were after?” Pandora held up the shoe while petting Bruno with her other hand. “How clever of you to teach Bruno to fetch.”

Michael pulled himself up, then yanked the shoe out of her hand. It was unfortunately wet and covered with teeth marks. “That’s the second shoe he’s ruined. And he didn’t even have the courtesy to take both from one pair.”

She looked down at what had been creamy Italian leather. “You never wear anything but tennis shoes or boots anyway.”

Michael slapped the shoe against his palm. Bruno, tongue lolling, grinned up at him. “Obedience school.”

“Oh, Michael, we can’t send our child away.” She patted his cheek. “It’s just a phase.”

“This phase has cost me two pairs of shoes, my dinner and we never did find that sweater he dragged off.”

“You shouldn’t drop your clothes on the floor,” Pandora said easily. “And that sweater was already ratty. I’m sure Bruno thought it was a rag.”

“He never chews up anything of yours.”

Pandora smiled. “No, he doesn’t, does he?”

Michael gave her a long look. “Just what’re you so happy about?”

“I had a phone call this afternoon.”

Michael saw the excitement in her eyes and decided the issue of the shoe could wait. “And?”

“From Jacob Morison.”

“The producer?”

“The producer,” Pandora repeated. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t overreact, but the excitement threatened to burst inside her. “He’s going to be filming a new movie. Jessica Wainwright’s starring.”

Jessica Wainwright, Michael mused. Grande dame of the theater and the screen. Eccentric and brilliant, her career had spanned two generations. “She’s retired. Wainwright hasn’t made a film in five years.”

“She’s making this one. Billy Mitchell’s directing.”

Michael tilted his head in consideration as he studied Pandora’s face. It made him think of the cat and the canary. “Sounds like they’re pulling out all the stops.”

“She plays a half-mad reclusive countess who’s dragged back to reality by a visit from her granddaughter. Cass Barkley’s on the point of signing for the part of the granddaughter.”

“Oscar material. Now, are you going to tell me why Morison called you?”

“Wainwright’s an admirer of my work. She wants me to design all her jewelry for the movie. All!” After an attempt to sound businesslike, Pandora laughed and did a quick spin. “Morison said the only way he could talk her out of retirement was to promise her the best. She wants me.”

Michael grabbed her close and spun her around. Bruno raced around the room barking and shaking tables. “We’ll celebrate,” he decided. “Champagne with our fried chicken.”

Pandora held on tight. “I feel like an idiot.”

“Why?”

“I’ve always thought I was, well, beyond star adoration. I’m a professional.” Bubbling with excitement, she clung to Michael. “While I was talking to Morison I told myself it was a great career opportunity, a wonderful chance to express myself in a large way. Then I hung up and all I could think was Jessica Wainwright! A Morison production! I felt as silly as any bubble-headed fan.”

“Proves you’re not half the snob you think you are.” Michael cut off her retort with a kiss. “I’m proud of you,” he murmured.

That threw her off. All of her pleasure in the assignment was dwarfed by that one sentence. No one but Jolley had ever been proud of her. Her parents loved her, patted her head and told her to do what she wanted. Pride was a valued addition to affection. “Really?”

Surprised, Michael drew her back and kissed her again. “Of course I am.”

“But you’ve never thought much of my work.”

“No, that’s not true. I’ve never understood why people feel the need to deck themselves out in bangles, or why you seemed content to design on such a small scale. But as far as your work goes I’m not blind, Pandora. Some of it’s beautiful, some of it’s extraordinary and some of it’s incomprehensible. But it’s all imaginative and expertly crafted.”

“Well.” She let out a long breath. “This is a red-letter day. I always thought you felt I was playing with beads because I didn’t want to face a real job. You even said so once.”

He grinned. “Only because it made you furious. You’re spectacular to look at when you’re furious.”

She thought about it a moment, then let out a sigh. “I suppose this is the best time to tell you.”

He tensed, but forced his voice to come calmly. “To tell me what?”

“I watch the Emmy Awards every time you’re nominated.”

Tension flowed out in a laugh. There’d been guilt in every syllable. “What?”

“Every time,” Pandora repeated, amazed that her cheeks were warm. “It made me feel good to watch you win. And…” She paused to clear her throat. “I’ve watched a few episodes of Logan’s Run.”

Michael wondered if she realized she sounded as though she was confessing a major social flaw. “Why?”

“Uncle Jolley was always going on about it; I’d even hear it discussed at parties. So I thought I’d see for myself. Naturally, it was just a matter of intellectual curiosity.”

“Naturally. And?”

She moved her shoulders. “Of its kind—”

He stopped that line of response by twisting her ear. “Some people only tell the truth under duress.”

“All right.” Half laughing, she reached to free herself. “It’s good!” she shouted when he held on. “I liked it.”

“Why?”

“Michael, that hurts!”

“We have ways of making you talk.”

“I liked it because the characters are genuine, the plots are intelligent. And—” she had to swallow hard on this one “—it has style.”

When he let go of her ear to kiss her soundly, she gave him a halfhearted shove. “If you repeat that to anyone, I’ll deny it.”

“It’ll be our little secret.” He kissed her again, not so playfully.

Pandora was almost becoming used to the sensation of having her muscles loosen and feeling as if her bones were dissolving. She moved closer, delighting in the feeling of having her body mold against his. When his heart thudded, she felt the pulse inside herself. When his tiny moan escaped, she tasted it on her tongue. When the need leaped forward, she saw it in his eyes.

She pressed her mouth to his again and let her own hunger rule. There would be consequences. Hadn’t she already accepted it? There would be pain. She was already braced for it. She couldn’t stop what would happen in the weeks ahead, but she could direct what would happen tonight and perhaps tomorrow. It had to be enough. Everything she felt, wanted, feared, went into the kiss.

It left him reeling. She was often passionate, wildly so. She was often demanding, erotically so. But he’d never felt such pure emotion from her. There was a softness under the strength, a request under the urgency. He drew her closer, more gently than was his habit, and let her take what she wanted.

Her head tilted back, inviting, luring. His grip tightened. His fingers wound into her hair and were lost in the richness of it. He felt the need catapult through his body so that he was tense against her sudden, unexpected yielding. She never submitted, and until that moment he hadn’t known how stirring it could be to have her do so. Without a thought to time and place, they lowered to the sofa.

Because she was pliant, he was tender. Because he was gentle, she was patient. In a way they’d never experienced, they made love without rush, without fire, without the whirlwind. Thoroughly, they gave to each other. A touch, a taste, a murmured request, a whispered answer. The fire sizzled gently behind them as night fell outside the windows. Fingers brushed, lips skimmed so that they learned the power of quiet arousal. Though they’d been lovers for weeks, they brought love to passion for the first time.

The room was quiet, the light dim. If she’d never looked for romance, it found her there, wrapped easily in Michael’s arms. Closer they came, but comfortably. Deeper they dived, but lazily. As they came together, Pandora felt her firm line of independence crack to let him in. But the weakness she’d expected didn’t follow. Only contentment.

It was contentment that followed her into that quick and final burst of pleasure.

They were still wrapped together, half dozing, when the phone rang. With a murmur of complaint, Michael reached over his head to the table and lifted the receiver.

“Hello.”

“Michael Donahue, please.”

“Yeah, this is Michael.”

“Michael, it’s Penny.”

He rubbed a hand over his eyes as he tried to put a face with the name. Penny—the little blonde in the apartment next to his. Wanted to be a model. He remembered vaguely leaving her the number of the Folley in case something important was delivered to his apartment. “Hi.” He watched Pandora’s eyes flutter open.

“Michael, I hate to do this, but I had to call. I’ve already phoned the police. They’re on their way.”

“Police?” He struggled into a half-sitting position. “What’s going on?”

“You’ve been robbed.”

“What?” He sat bolt upright, nearly dumping Pandora on the floor. “When?”

“I’m not sure. I got home a few minutes ago and noticed your door wasn’t closed all the way. I thought maybe you’d come back so I knocked. Anyway, I pushed the door open a bit. The place was turned upside down. I came right over here and called the cops. They asked me to contact you and told me not to go back over.”

“Thanks.” Dozens of questions ran through his mind but there was no one to answer them. “Look, I’ll try to come in tonight.”

“Okay. Hey, Michael, I’m really sorry.”

“Yeah. I’ll see you.”

“Michael?” Pandora grabbed his hand as soon as he hung up the receiver.

“Somebody broke into my apartment.”

“Oh no.” She’d known the peace couldn’t last. “Do you think it was—”

“I don’t know.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “Maybe. Or maybe it was someone who noticed no one had been home for a while.”

She felt the anger in him but knew she couldn’t soothe it. “You’ve got to go.”

Nodding, he took her hand. “Come with me.”

“Michael, one of us has to be here with Sweeney and Charles.”

“I’m not leaving you alone.”

“You have to go,” she repeated. “If it was one of the family, maybe you can find something to prove it. In any case, you have to see to this. I’ll be fine.”

“Just like the last time I was away.”

Pandora lifted a brow. “I’m not incompetent, Michael.”

“But you’ll be alone.”

“I have Bruno. Don’t give me that look,” she ordered. “He may not be ferocious, but he certainly knows how to bark. I’ll lock every door and window.”

He shook his head. “Not good enough.”

“All right, we’ll call the local police. They have Fitzhugh’s report about trespassers. We’ll explain that I’m going to be alone for the night and ask them to keep an eye on the place.”

“Better.” But he rose to pace. “If this is a setup…”

“Then we’re prepared for it this time.”

Michael hesitated, thought it through, then nodded. “I’ll call the police.”

Chapter Ten

The moment Michael left, Pandora turned the heavy bolt on the main door. Though it had taken them the better part of an hour, she was grateful he’d insisted on checking all the doors and windows with her. The house, with Pandora safely in it, was locked up tight.

It was entirely too quiet.

In defense, Pandora went to the kitchen and began rattling pots and pans. She had to be alone, but she didn’t have to be idle. She wanted to be with Michael, to stand by him when he faced the break-in of his apartment. Was it as frustrating for him to go on alone, she wondered, as it was for her to stay behind? It couldn’t be helped. There were two old people in the house who couldn’t be left. And they needed to eat.

The chicken was to have been a joint effort and a respite from the haphazard meals they’d managed to date. Michael had claimed to know at least the basics of deep frying. While he’d volunteered to deal with the chicken, she’d been assigned to try her hand at mashing potatoes. She’d thought competition if nothing else would have improved the end result.

Pandora resigned herself to a solo and decided the effort of cooking would keep her mind off fresh trouble. Needing company, she switched on the tuner on the kitchen wall unit and fiddled with the dial until she found a country-music station. Dolly Parton bubbled out brightly. Satisfied, she pulled one of Sweeney’s cookbooks from the shelf and began to search the index. Fried chicken went on picnics, she mused. How much trouble could it be?

She had two counters crowded and splattered, and flour up to her wrists when the phone rang. Using a dishcloth, Pandora plucked the receiver from the kitchen extension. Her foot was tapping to a catchy rendition of “On the Road Again.”

“Hello.”

“Pandora McVie?”

Her mind on more immediate matters, Pandora stretched the cord to the counter and picked up a drumstick. “Yes.”

“Listen carefully.”

“Can you speak up?” Tongue caught between her teeth, Pandora dipped the drumstick in her flour mixture. “I can’t hear you very well.”

“I have to warn you and there’s not much time. You’re in danger. You’re not safe in that house, not alone.”

The cookbook slid to the floor and landed on her foot. “What? Who is this?”

“Just listen. You’re alone because it was arranged. Someone’s going to try to break in tonight.”

“Someone?” She shifted the phone and listened hard. It wasn’t malice she detected, but nervousness. Whoever was on the other end was as shaky as she was. She was certain—almost certain—it was a man’s voice. “If you’re trying to frighten me—”

“I’m trying to warn you. When I found out…” Already low and indistinct, the voice became hesitant. “You shouldn’t have sent the champagne. I don’t like what’s going on, but it won’t stop. No one was going to be hurt, do you understand? But I’m afraid of what might happen next.”

Pandora felt fear curl in her stomach. Outside the kitchen windows it was dark, pitch-dark. She was alone in the house with two old, sick servants. “If you’re afraid, tell me who you are. Help me stop what’s going on.”

“I’m already risking everything by warning you. You don’t understand. Get out, just get out of the house.”

It was a ploy, she told herself. A ploy to make her leave. Pandora straightened her shoulders, but her gaze shifted from blank window to blank window. “I’m not going anywhere. If you want to help, tell me who I should be afraid of.”

“Just get out,” the voice repeated before the line went dead.

Pandora stood holding the silent receiver. The oil in the fryer had begun to sizzle, competing with the radio. Watching the windows, listening, she hung up the phone. It was a trick, she told herself. It was only a trick to get her out of the house in hopes she’d be frightened enough to stay out. She wouldn’t be shooed away by a quivering voice on the telephone.

Besides, Michael had already called the police. They knew she was alone in the house. At the first sign of trouble, she only had to pick up the phone.

Her hands weren’t completely steady, but she went back to cooking with a vengeance. She slipped coated chicken into the fryer, tested the potatoes she had cooking, then decided a little glass of wine while she worked was an excellent idea. She was pouring it when Bruno raced into the room to run around her feet.

“Bruno.” Pandora crouched and gathered the dog close. He felt warm, solid. “I’m glad you’re here,” she murmured. But for a moment, she allowed herself to wish desperately for Michael.

Bruno licked her face, made a couple of clumsy leaps toward the counter, then dashed to the door. Jumping up against it, he began to bark.

“Now?” Pandora demanded. “I don’t suppose you could wait until morning.”

Bruno raced back to Pandora, circled her then raced back to the door. When he’d gone through the routine three times, she relented. The phone call had been no more than a trick, a clumsy one at that. Besides, she told herself as she turned the lock, it wouldn’t hurt to open the door and take a good look outside.

The moment she opened it, Bruno jumped out and tumbled into the snow. He began to sniff busily while Pandora stood shivering in the opening and straining her eyes against the dark. Music and the smells of cooking poured out behind her.

There was nothing. She hugged herself against the cold and decided she hadn’t expected to see anything. The snow was settled, the stars bright and the woods quiet. It was as it should have been; a very ordinary evening in the country. She took a deep breath of winter air and started to call the dog back. They saw the movement at the edge of the woods at the same time.

Just a shadow, it seemed to separate slowly from a tree and take on its own shape. A human shape. Before Pandora could react, Bruno began to bark and plow through the snow.

“No, Bruno! Come back.” Without giving herself a chance to think, Pandora grabbed the old pea coat that hung beside the door and threw it on. As an afterthought, she reached for a cast-iron skillet before bolting through the door after her dog. “Bruno!”

He was already at the edge of the woods and hot on the trail. Picking up confidence as she went, Pandora raced in pursuit. Whoever had been watching the house had run at the sight of the clumsy, overgrown puppy. She’d found she was susceptible to fear, but she refused to be frightened by a coward. With as much enthusiasm as Bruno, Pandora sprinted into the woods. Out of breath and feeling indestructible, she paused long enough to look around and listen. For a moment there was nothing, then off to the right, she heard barking and thrashing.

“Get ’em, Bruno!” she shouted, and headed toward the chaos. Excited by the chase, she called encouragement to the dog, changing direction when she heard his answering bark. As she ran, snow dropped from the branches to slide cold and wet down the back of her neck. The barking grew wilder, and in her rush, Pandora fell headlong over a downed tree. Spitting out snow and swearing, she struggled to her knees. Bruno bounded out of the woods and sent her sprawling again.

“Not me.” Flat on her back, Pandora shoved at the dog. “Dammit, Bruno, if you don’t—” She broke off when the dog stiffened and began to growl. Sprawled on the snow, Pandora looked up and saw the shadow move through the trees. She forgot she was too proud to fear a coward.

Though her hands were numb from cold, she gripped the handle of the skillet and, standing, inched her way along toward the nearest tree. Struggling to keep her breathing quiet, she braced herself for attack and defense. Relative or stranger, she’d hold her own. But her knees were shaking. Bruno tensed and hurled himself forward. The moment he did, Pandora lifted the skillet high and prepared to swing.

“What the hell’s going on?”

“Michael!” The skillet landed in the snow with a plop as she followed Bruno’s lead and hurled herself forward. Giddy with relief, she plastered kisses over Michael’s face. “Oh, Michael, I’m so glad it’s you.”

“Yeah. You sure looked pleased when you were hefting that skillet. Run out of hair spray?”

“It was handy.” Abruptly she drew back and glared at him. “Dammit, Michael, you scared me to death. You’re supposed to be halfway to New York, not skulking around the woods.”

“And you’re supposed to be locked in the house.”

“I would’ve been if you hadn’t been skulking in the woods. Why?”

In an offhanded gesture, he brushed snow from her face. “I got ten miles away, and I couldn’t get rid of this bad feeling. It was too pat. I decided to stop at a gas station and phone my neighbor.”

“But your apartment.”

“I talked to the police, gave them a list of my valuables. We’ll both run into New York in a day or two.” Snow was scattered through her hair and matted to her coat. He thought of what might have happened and resisted the urge to shake her. “I couldn’t leave you alone.”

“I’m going to start believing you’re chivalrous after all.” She kissed him. “That explains why you’re not in New York, but what were you doing in the woods?”

“Just a hunch.” He bent to retrieve the frying pan. A good whack with that, he discovered, and he’d have been down for the count.

“The next time you have a hunch, don’t stand at the edge of the woods and stare at the house.”

“I wasn’t.” Michael took her arm and headed back toward the house. He wanted her inside again, behind locked doors.

“I saw you.”

“I don’t know who you saw.” Disgusted, Michael looked back at the dog. “But if you hadn’t let the dog out we’d both know. I decided to check around outside before coming in, and I saw footprints. I followed them around, then cut into the woods.” He glanced over his shoulder, still tight with tension. “I was just coming up behind whoever made them when Bruno tried his attack. I started chasing.” He swore and slapped a palm against the skillet. “I was gaining when this hound ran between my legs and sent me face first into the snow. About that time, you started yelling at the dog. Whoever I was chasing had enough time to disappear.”

Pandora swore and kicked at the snow. “If you’d let me know what was going on, we could’ve worked together.”

“I didn’t know what was going on until it was already happening. In any case, the deal was you’d stay inside with the doors locked.”

“The dog had to go out,” Pandora muttered. “And I had this phone call.” She looked back over her shoulder and sighed. “Someone called to warn me.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. I thought it was a man’s voice, but—I’m just not sure.”

Michael’s hand tightened on her arm. “Did he threaten you?”

“No, no it wasn’t like a threat. Whoever it was certainly seemed to know what’s been going on and isn’t happy about it. That much was clear. He—she said someone was going to try to break into the Folley, and I should get out.”

“And, of course, you handled that by running into the woods with a skillet. Pandora.” This time he did shake her. “Why didn’t you call the police?”

“Because I thought it was another trick and it made me mad.” She sent Michael a stubborn look. “Yes, it frightened me at first, then it just plain made me mad. I don’t like intimidation. When I looked out and saw someone near the woods, I only wanted to fight back.”

“Admirable,” he said but took her shoulders. “Stupid.”

“You were doing the same thing.”

“It’s not the same thing. You’ve got brains, you’ve got style. I’ll even give you guts. But, cousin, you’re not a heavyweight. What if you’d caught up with whoever was out there and they wanted to play rough?”

“I can play rough, too,” Pandora muttered.

“Fine.” With a quick move, he hooked a foot behind hers and sent her bottom first into the snow. She didn’t have the opportunity to complain before he was standing over her, gesturing with the skillet. Bruno decided it was a game and leaped on top of her. “I might’ve come back tomorrow and found you half-buried in the snow.” Before she could speak, he hauled her to her feet again. “I’m not risking that.”

“You caught me off balance,” she began.

“Shut up.” He had her by the shoulders again, and this time his grip wasn’t gentle. “You’re too important, Pandora, I’m through taking chances. We’re going inside and calling the cops. We’re going to tell them everything.”

“What can they do?”

“We’ll find out.”

She let out a long breath, then leaned against him. The chase might have been exciting, but her knees had yet to stop shaking. “Okay, maybe you’re right. We’re no farther along now than when we started.”

“Calling the police isn’t giving up, it’s just changing the odds. I might not have come back here tonight, Pandora. The dog may not have frightened anyone off. You’d have been alone.” He took both her hands, pressing them to his lips and warming them. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

Confused by the sense of pleasure his words gave her, she tried to draw her hands away. “I can take care of myself, Michael.”

He smiled but didn’t let go. “Maybe. But you’re not going to have the chance to find out. Let’s go home. I’m hungry.”

“Typical,” she began, needing to lighten the mood. “You’d think of your stomach—oh my God, the chicken!” Breaking away, Pandora loped toward the house.

“I’m not that hungry.” Michael sprinted after her. The relief came again when he scooped her up into his arms. When he’d heard her shout in the woods, had realized she was outside and vulnerable, his blood had simply stopped flowing. “In fact,” he said as he scooped her up, “I can think of more pressing matters than eating.”

“Michael.” She struggled, but laughed. “If you don’t put me down, there won’t be a kitchen to eat in.”

“We’ll eat somewhere else.”

“I left the pan on. There’s probably nothing left of the chicken but charred bones.”

“There’s always soup.” With that, he pushed open the kitchen door.

Rather than a smoky, splattered mess, they found a platter piled high with crisp, brown chicken. Sweeney had wiped up the spills, and had the pans soaking in the sink.

“Sweeney.” From her perch in Michael’s arms, Pandora surveyed the room. “What are you doing out of bed?”

“My job,” she said briskly, but gave them a quick sidelong look. As far as she was concerned, her plans were working perfectly. She imagined Pandora and Michael had decided to take a little air while dinner was cooking, and, as young people would, had forgotten the time.

“You’re supposed to be in bed,” Pandora reminded her.

“Posh. I’ve been in bed long enough.” And the days of little or no activity had nearly bored her to tears. It was worth it, however, to see Pandora snug in Michael’s arms. “Feeling fit as a fiddle now, I promise you. Wash up for dinner.”

Michael and Pandora each took separate and careful studies. Sweeney’s cheeks were pink and round, her eyes bright. She bustled from counter to counter in her old businesslike fashion. “We still want you to take it easy,” Michael decided. “No heavy work.”

“That’s right. Michael and I’ll take care of the washing up.” She saw him scowl, just a little, and patted his shoulder. “We like to do it.”

At Michael and Pandora’s insistence, all four ate in the kitchen. Charles, sitting next to Sweeney, was left uncertain how much he should cough and settled on a middle road, clearing his throat every so often. In an unspoken agreement, Pandora and Michael decided to keep the matter of trespassers to themselves. Both of them felt the announcement that someone was watching the house would be too upsetting for the two old people while they were recuperating.

On the surface, dinner was an easy meal, but Pandora kept wondering how soon they could nudge the servants along to bed and contact the police. More than once, Pandora caught Sweeney looking from her to Michael with a smug smile. Sweet old lady, Pandora mused, innocently believing the cook to be pleased to have her kitchen back. It made Pandora only more determined to protect her and Charles from any unpleasantness. She concentrated on cleaning up and packing them off to bed, and it was nearly nine before she was able to meet Michael in the parlor.

“Settled?”

She heard the familiar restlessness in his voice and merely nodded, pouring a brandy. “It’s a bit like cajoling children, but I managed to find a Cary Grant movie that interested them.” She sipped the brandy, waiting for her muscles to relax with it. “I’d rather be watching it myself.”

“Another time.” Michael took a sip from her snifter. “I’ve called the police. They’ll be here shortly.”

She took the glass back. “It still bothers me to take the business to outsiders. After all, anything beyond simple trespass is speculation.”

“We’ll let the police speculate.”

She managed to smile. “Your Logan always handles things on his own.”

“Someone told me once that that was just fiction.” He poured himself a brandy and toasted her. “I discovered I don’t like having you in the middle of a story line.”

The brandy and firelight gave the evening an illusion of normalcy. Pandora took his statement with a shrug. “You seem to have developed a protect-the-woman syndrome, Michael. It’s not like you.”

“Maybe not.” He tossed back a gulp. “It’s different when it’s my woman.”

She turned, brow lifted. It was ridiculous to feel pleasure at such a foolish and possessive term. “Yours?”

“Mine.” He cupped the back of her neck with his hand. “Got a problem with that?”

Her heart beat steadily in her throat until she managed to swallow. Maybe he meant it—now. In a few months when he was back moving in his own world, with his own people, she’d be no more than his somewhat annoying cousin. But for now, just for now, maybe he meant it. “I’m not sure.”

“Give it some thought,” he advised before he lowered his mouth to hers. “We’ll come back to it.”

He left her flustered and went to answer the door.

When he returned, Pandora was sitting calmly enough in a high-backed chair near the fire. “Lieutenant Randall, Pandora McVie.”

“How d’you do?” The lieutenant pulled off a wool muffler and stuck it in his coat pocket. He looked, Pandora thought, like someone’s grandfather. Comfy, round and balding. “Miserable night,” he announced, and situated himself near the fire.

“Would you like some coffee, Lieutenant?”

Randall gave Pandora a grateful look. “Love it.”

“Please, have a seat. I’ll be back in a minute.”

She took her time heating coffee and arranging cups and saucers on a tray. Not putting off, Pandora insisted, just preparing. She’d never had occasion to talk to a policeman on any subject more complex than a parking ticket. She’d come out on the short end on that one. Now, she was about to discuss her family and her relationship with Michael.

Her relationship with Michael, she thought again as she fussed with the sugar bowl. That’s what really had her hiding in the kitchen. She hadn’t yet been able to dull the feeling that had raced through her when he’d called her his woman. Adolescent, Pandora told herself. It was absolutely absurd to feel giddy and self-satisfied and unnerved because a man had looked at her with passion in his eyes.

But they’d been Michael’s eyes.

She found linen napkins and folded them into triangles. She didn’t want to be anyone’s woman but her own. It had been the strain and excitement of the evening that had made her react like a sixteen-year-old being offered a school ring. She was an adult; she was self-sustaining. She was in love. Talk yourself out of that one, Pandora challenged herself. Taking a long breath, she hefted the tray and went back to the parlor.

“Gentlemen.” Pandora set the tray on a low table and stuck on a smile. “Cream and sugar, Lieutenant?”

“Thanks. A healthy dose of both.” He set a dog-eared notepad on his knee when Pandora handed him a cup. “Mr. Donahue’s been filling me in. Seems you’ve had a few annoyances.”

She smiled at the term. Like his looks, his voice was comfortable. “A few.”

“I’m not going to lecture.” But he gave them both a stern look. “Still, you should’ve notified the police after the first incident. Vandalism’s a crime.”

“We’d hoped by ignoring it, it would discourage repetition.” Pandora lifted her cup. “We were wrong.”

“I’ll need to take the champagne with me.” Again, he sent them a look of disapproval. “Even though you’ve had it analyzed, we’ll want to run it through our own lab.”

“I’ll get it for you.” Michael rose and left them alone.

“Miss McVie, from what your cousin tells me, the terms of Mr. McVie’s will were a bit unconventional.”

“A bit.”

“He also tells me he talked you into agreeing to them.”

“That’s Michael’s fantasy, Lieutenant.” She sipped her coffee. “I’m doing exactly what I chose to do.”

Randall nodded and noted. “You agree with Mr. Donahue’s idea that these incidents are connected and one of your relatives is responsible.”

“I can’t think of any reason to disagree.”

“Do you have any reason to suspect one more than another?”

Pandora thought it through as she’d thought it through before. “No. You see, we’re not at all a close family. The truth is I don’t know any of them very well.”

“Except Mr. Donahue.”

“That’s right. Michael and I often visited our uncle, and we ran into each other here at the Folley.” Whether we wanted to or not, she added to herself in her own private joke. “None of the others came by very often.”

“The champagne, Lieutenant.” Michael brought in the box. “And the report from Sanfield Laboratories.”

Randall skimmed the printout, then tucked the sheet into the box. “Your uncle’s attorney…” He referred quickly to his notes. “Fitzhugh reported trespassing several weeks ago. We’ve had a squad car cruise the area, but at this point you might agree to having a man patrol the grounds once a day.”

“I’d prefer it,” Michael told him.

“I’ll contact Fitzhugh.” Seeing his cup was empty, Pandora took it and filled it again. “I’ll also need a list of the relatives named in the will.”

Pandora frowned over her rim. Between her and Michael, they tried to fill in the lieutenant, as best as they could. When they had finished, Pandora sent Randall an apologetic look. “I told you we aren’t close.”

“I’ll get the lawyer to fill in the details.” Randall rose and tried not to think about the cold drive back to town. “We’ll keep the inquiries as quiet as possible. If anything else happens, call me. One of my men will be around to look things over.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Michael helped the pudgy man on with his coat.

Randall took another look around the room. “Ever think of installing a security system?”

“No.”

“Think again,” he advised, and made his way out.

“We’ve just been scolded,” Pandora murmured.

Michael wondered if Logan’s Run had room for a cranky, well padded cop. “Seems that way.”

“You know, Michael, I have two schools of thought on bringing in the police.”

“Which are?”

“It’s either going to calm things down or stir things up.”

“You pay your money and take your choice.”

She gave him a knowing look. “You’re counting on the second.”

“I came close tonight.” He bypassed the coffee and poured another brandy. “I nearly had my hands on something. Someone.” When he looked at her, the faint amusement in his eyes had faded. The recklessness was back. “I like my fights in the open, face-to-face.”

“It’s better if we look at it as a chess game rather than a boxing match.” She came close to wrap her arms around him and press her cheek to his shoulder. It was the kind of gesture he didn’t think he’d ever get used to from her. As he rested his head on her hair, he realized that the fact that he wouldn’t only added to the sweetness of the feeling. When had he stopped remembering that she didn’t fit into his long-established picture of the ideal woman? Her hair was too red, her body too thin, her tongue too sharp. Michael nuzzled against her and found they fit very well.

“I’ve never had the patience for chess.”

“Then we’ll just leave it to the police.” She held him tighter. The need to protect rose as sharply as the desire to be protected. “I’ve been thinking about what might have happened out there tonight. I don’t want you hurt, Michael.”

With two fingers under her chin, he lifted it. “Why not?”

“Because…” She looked into his eyes and felt her heart melt. But she wouldn’t be a fool; she wouldn’t risk her pride. “Because then I’d have to do the dishes by myself.”

He smiled. No, he didn’t have a great deal of patience, but he could call on it when circumstances warranted. He brushed a kiss on either side of her mouth. Sooner or later, he’d have more out of her. Then he’d just have to decide what to do with it. “Any other reason?”

Absorbing the sensations, Pandora searched her mind for another easy answer. “If you were hurt, you couldn’t work. I’d have to live with your foul temper.”

“I thought you were already living with it.”

“I’ve seen it fouler.”

He kissed her eyes closed in his slow, sensuous way. “Try one more time.”

“I care.” She opened her eyes, and her look was tense and defiant. “Got a problem with that?”

“No.” His kiss wasn’t gentle this time, it wasn’t patient. He had her caught close and reeling within moments. If there was tension in her still, he couldn’t feel it. “The only problem’s been dragging it out of you.”

“You’re family after all—”

With a laugh, he nipped the lobe of her ear. “Don’t try to back out.”

Indignant, she stiffened. “I never back out.”

“Unless you can rationalize it. Just remember this.” He had her molded against him again. “The family connection’s distant.” Their lips met, urgently, then parted. “This connection isn’t.”

“I don’t know what you want from me,” she whispered.

“You’re usually so quick.”

“Don’t joke, Michael.”

“It’s no joke.” He drew her away, holding her by the shoulders. Briefly, firmly, he ran his hands down to her elbows, then back. “No, I’m not going to spell it out for you, Pandora. I’m not going to make it easy on you. You have to be willing to admit we both want the same thing. And you will.”

“Arrogant,” she warned.

“Confident,” he corrected. He had to be, or he’d be on his knees begging. There’d come a time, he’d promised himself, when she’d drop the last of her restrictions. “I want you.”

A tremor skipped up her spine. “I know.”

“Yeah.” He linked his fingers with hers. “I think you do.”

Chapter Eleven

Winter raged its way through February. There came a point when Pandora had to shovel her way from the house to her workshop. She found herself grateful for the physical labor. Winter was a long quiet time that provided too many hours to think.

In using this time, Pandora came to several uncomfortable realizations. Her life, as she’d known it, as she’d guided it, would never be the same. As far as her art was concerned, she felt the months of concentrated effort with dashes of excitement had only improved her crafting. In truth, she often used her jewelry to take her mind off what was happening to and around her. When that didn’t work, she used what was happening to and around her in her work.

The sudden blunt understanding that her health, even her life, had been endangered made her take a step away from her usual practical outlook. It caused her to appreciate little things she’d always taken for granted. Waking up in a warm bed, watching snow fall while a fire crackled beside her. She’d learned that every second in life was vital.

Already she was considering taking a day to drive back to New York and pack what was important to her. More than packing, it would be a time of decision making. What she kept, what she didn’t, would in some ways reflect the changes she’d accepted in herself.

Both the lease on her apartment and the lease on the shop over the boutique were coming up for renewal. She’d let them lapse. Rather than living alone, she’d have the company and the responsibility of her uncle’s old servants. Though she’d once been determined to be responsible only to herself and her art, Pandora made the choice without a qualm. Though she had lived in the city, in the rush, in the crowds, she’d isolated herself. No more.

Through it all wove Michael.

In a few short weeks, what they had now would be over. The long winter they’d shared would be something to think of during other winters. As she prepared for a new and different life, Pandora promised herself she’d have no regrets. But she couldn’t stop herself from having wishes. Things were already changing.

The police had come, and with their arrival had been more questions. Everything in her shop had to be locked up tightly after dark, and there were no more solitary walks in the woods after a snowfall. It had become a nightly ritual to go through the Folley and check doors and windows that had once been casually ignored. Often when she walked back to the house from her shop, she’d see Michael watching from the window of his room. It should have given her a warm, comfortable feeling, but she knew he was waiting for something else to happen. She knew, as she knew him, that he wanted it. Inactivity was sitting uneasily on him.

Since they’d driven into New York to deal with the break-in at his apartment, he’d been distant, with a restlessness roiling underneath. Though they both understood the wisdom of having the grounds patrolled, she thought they felt intruded upon.

They had no sense of satisfaction from the police investigation. Each one of their relatives had alibis for one or more of the incidents. So far the investigation seemed to have twin results. Since the police had been called in, nothing else had happened. There’d been no anonymous phone calls, no shadows in the woods, no bogus telegrams. It had, as Pandora had also predicted, stirred things up. She’d dealt with an irate phone call from Carlson who insisted they were using the investigation in an attempt to undermine his case against the will.

On the heels of that had come a disjointed letter from Ginger who’d had the idea that the Folley was haunted. Michael had had a two-minute phone conversation with Morgan who’d muttered about private family business, overreacting and hogwash. Biff, in his usual style, had wired a short message:

Cops and robbers? Looks like you two are playing games with each other.

From Hank they heard nothing.

The police lab had confirmed the private analysis of the champagne; Randall was plodding through the investigation in his precise, quiet way. Michael and Pandora were exactly where they’d been weeks before: waiting.

He didn’t know how she could stand it. As Michael made his way down the narrow path Pandora had shoveled, he wondered how she could remain so calm when he was ready to chew glass. It had only taken him a few days of hanging in limbo to realize it was worse when nothing happened. Waiting for someone else to make the next move was the most racking kind of torture. Until he was sure Pandora was safe, he couldn’t relax. Until he had his hands around someone’s throat, he wouldn’t be satisfied. He was caught in a trap of inactivity that was slowly driving him mad. Pausing just outside her shop, he glanced around.

The house looked big and foolish with icicles hanging and dripping from eaves, gutters and shutters. It belonged in a book, he thought, some moody, misty gothic. A fairy tale—the grim sort. Perhaps one day he’d weave a story around it himself, but for now, it was just home.

With his hands in his pockets he watched smoke puff out of chimneys. Foolish it might be, but he’d always loved it. The longer he lived in it, the surer he was that he was meant to. He was far from certain how Pandora would take his decision to remain after the term was over.

His last script for the season was done. It was the only episode to be filmed before the show wrapped until fall. He could, as he often did, take a few weeks in the early spring and find a hot, noisy beach. He could fish, relax and enjoy watching women in undersize bikinis. Michael knew he wasn’t going anywhere.

For the past few days, he’d been toying with a screenplay for a feature film. He’d given it some thought before, but somehow something had always interfered. He could write it here, he knew. He could perfect it here with Pandora wielding her art nearby, criticizing his work so that he was only more determined to make it better. But he was waiting. Waiting for something else to happen, waiting to find who it was who’d used fear and intimidation to try to drive them out. And most of all, he was waiting for Pandora. Until she gave him her complete trust, willingly, until she gave him her heart unrestrictedly, he had to go on waiting.

His hands curled into fists and released. He wanted action.

He tried the door and satisfied himself that she’d kept her word and locked it from the inside. “Pandora?” He knocked with the side of his fist. She opened the door with a drill in her hand. After giving her flushed face and tousled hair a quick look, Michael lifted his hands, palms out. “I’m unarmed.”

“And I’m busy.” But her lips curved. There was a light of pleasure in her eyes. He found it easy to notice such small things.

“I know, I’ve invaded scheduled working hours, but I have a valid excuse.”

“You’re letting in the cold,” she complained. Once, she might have shut the door in his face without a second thought. This time she shut it behind him.

“Not a hell of a lot warmer in here.”

“It’s fine when I’m working. Which I am.”

“Blame Sweeney. She’s sending me in for supplies, and she insisted I take you.” He sent Pandora a bland look. “‘That girl holes herself up in that shed too much. Needs some sun.’”

“I get plenty of sun,” Pandora countered. Still, the idea of a drive into town appealed. It wouldn’t hurt to talk to the jeweler in the little shopping center. She was beginning to think her work should spread out a bit, beyond the big cities. “I suppose we should humor her, but I want to finish up here first.”

“I’m in no hurry.”

“Good. Half an hour then.” She went to exchange the drill for a jeweler’s torch. Because she didn’t hear the door open or shut, she turned and saw Michael examining her rolling mill. “Michael,” she said with more than a trace of exasperation.

“Go ahead, take your time.”

“Don’t you have anything to do?”

“Not a thing,” he said cheerfully.

“Not one car chase to write?”

“No. Besides, I’ve never seen you work.”

“Audiences make me cranky.”

“Broaden your horizons, love. Pretend I’m an apprentice.”

“I’m not sure they can get that broad.”

Undaunted, he pointed to her worktable. “What is that thing?”

“This thing,” she began tightly, “is a pendant. A waterfall effect made with brass wire and some scraps of silver I had left over from a bracelet.”

“No waste,” he murmured. “Practical as ever. So what’s the next step?”

With a long breath, she decided it would be simpler to play along than to throw him out. “I’ve just finished adjusting the curves of the wires. I’ve used different thicknesses and lengths to give it a free-flowing effect. The silver scraps I’ve cut and filed into elongated teardrops. Now I solder them onto the ends of the wires.”

She applied the flux, shifting a bit so that he could watch. After she’d put a square of solder beside each wire, she used the torch to apply heat until the solder melted. Patient, competent, she repeated the procedure until all twelve teardrops were attached.

“Looks easy enough,” he mused.

“A child of five could do it.”

He heard the sarcasm and laughed as he took her hands. “You want flattery? A few minutes ago I saw a pile of metal. Now I see an intriguing ornament. Ornate and exotic.”

“It’s supposed to be exotic,” Pandora replied. “Jessica Wainwright will wear it in the film. It’s to have been a gift from an old lover. The countess claims he was a Turkish prince.”

Michael studied the necklace again. “Very appropriate.”

“It’ll droop down from brass and silver wires twisted together. The lowest teardrop should hang nearly to her waist.” Pleased, but knowing better than to touch the metal before the solder cooled, Pandora held up her sketch. “Ms. Wainwright was very specific. She wants nothing ordinary, nothing even classic. Everything she wears should add to the character’s mystique.”

She set the sketch down and tidied her tools. She’d solder on the hoop and fashion the neck wire when they returned from town. Then if there was time, she’d begin the next project. The gold-plated peacock pin with its three-inch filigree tail would take her the better part of two weeks.

“This thing has potential as a murder weapon,” Michael mused, picking up a burnisher to examine the curved, steel tip.

“I beg your pardon?”

He liked the way she said it, so that even with her back turned she was looking down her nose. “For a story line.”

“Leave my tools out of your stories.” Pandora took the burnisher from him and packed it away. “Going to buy me lunch in town?” She stripped off her apron then grabbed her coat.

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“I asked first.” She locked the shop and welcomed the cold. “The snow’s beginning to melt.”

“In a few weeks, the five dozen bulbs Jolley planted during his gardening stage will be starting to bloom.”

“Daffodils,” she murmured. It didn’t seem possible when you felt the air, saw the mounds of snow, but spring was closing in. “The winter hasn’t seemed so long.”

“No, it hasn’t.” He slipped an arm around her shoulders. “I never expected six months to go so quickly. I figured one of us would’ve attempted murder by this time.”

With a laugh, Pandora matched her step to his. “We’ve still got a month to go.”

“Now we have to behave ourselves,” he reminded her. “Lieutenant Randall has his eye on us.”

“I guess we blew our chance.” She turned to wind her arms around his neck. “There have been times I’ve wanted to hit you with a blunt instrument.”

“Feeling’s mutual,” he told her as he lowered his mouth. Her lips were cool and curved.

At the side window, Sweeney drew back the drape. “Look at this!” Cackling, she gestured to Charles. “I told you it would work. In a few more weeks, I’ll be putting bells on a wedding cake.”

As Charles joined Sweeney at the window, Pandora scooped a hand into the snow and tossed it in Michael’s face. “Don’t count your chickens,” he muttered.

In a desperate move to avoid retaliation, Pandora raced to the garage. She ducked seconds before snow splattered against the door. “Your aim’s still off, cousin.” Hefting the door, she sprinted inside and jumped into his car. Smug, she settled into the seat. He wouldn’t, she was sure, mar his spotless interior with a snowball. Michael opened the door, slid in beside her and dumped snow over her head. She was still squealing when he turned the key.

“I’m better at close range.”

Pandora sputtered as she wiped at the snow. Because she’d appreciated the move, it was difficult to sound indignant. “One would have thought that a man who drives an ostentatious car would be more particular with it.”

“It’s only ostentatious if you buy it for status purposes.”

“And, of course, you didn’t.”

“I bought it because it gets terrific gas mileage.” When she snorted, he turned to grin at her. “And because it looks great wrapped around redheads.”

“And blondes and brunettes.”

“Redheads,” he corrected, twining her hair around his finger. “I’ve developed a preference.”

It shouldn’t have made her smile, but it did. She was still smiling when they started down the long, curvy road. “We can’t complain about the road crews,” she said idly. “Except for those two weeks last month, the roads’ve been fairly clear.” She glanced toward the mounds of snow the plows had pushed to the side of the road.

“Too bad they won’t do the driveway.”

“You know you loved riding that little tractor. Uncle Jolley always said it made him feel tough and macho.”

“So much so he’d race it like a madman over the yard.”

As they came to a curve, Michael eased on the brake and downshifted. Pandora leaned forward and fiddled with the stereo. “Most people have equipment like this in their den.”

“I don’t have a den.”

“You don’t have a stereo to put in one, either,” she remembered. “Or a television.”

He shrugged, but mentally listed what he’d lost from his apartment. “Insurance’ll cover it.”

“The police are handling that as though it were a normal break-in.” She switched channels. “It might’ve been.”

“Or it might’ve been a smoke screen. I wish we—” He broke off as they approached another curve. He’d pressed the brake again, but this time, the pedal had gone uselessly to the floor.

“Michael, if you’re trying to impress me with your skill as a driver, it’s not working.” Instinctively Pandora grabbed the door handle as the car careered down the curve.

Whipping the steering wheel with one hand, Michael yanked on the emergency brake. The car continued to barrel down. He gripped the wheel in both hands and fought the next curve. “No brakes.” As he told her, Michael glanced down to see the speedometer hover at seventy.

Pandora’s knuckles turned white on the handle. “We won’t make it to the bottom without them.”

He never considered lying. “No.” Tires squealed as he rounded the next curve. Gravel spit under the wheels as the car went wide. There was the scrape and scream of metal as the fender kissed the guardrail.

She looked at the winding road spinning in front of her. Her vision blurred then cleared. The sign before the S-turn cautioned for a safe speed of thirty. Michael took it at seventy-five. Pandora shut her eyes. When she opened them and saw the snowbank dead ahead, she screamed. With seconds to spare, Michael yanked the car around. Snow flew skyward as the car skidded along the bank.

Eyes intense, Michael stared at the road ahead and struggled to anticipate each curve. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He knew the road, that’s what terrified him. In less than three miles, the already sharp incline steepened. At high speed, the car would ram straight through the guardrail and crash on the cliffs below. The game Jolley had begun would end violently.

Michael tasted his own fear, then swallowed it. “There’s only one chance; we’ve got to turn off on the lane leading into the old inn. It’s coming up after that curve.” He couldn’t take his eyes from the road to look at her. His fingers dug into the wheel. “Hang on.”

She was going to die. Her mind was numb from the thought of it. She heard the tires scream as Michael dragged at the wheel. The car tilted, nearly going over. She saw trees rush by as the car slid on the slippery edge of the lane. Almost, for an instant, the rubber seemed to grip the gravel beneath. But the turn was too sharp, the speed too fast. Out of control, the car spiraled toward the trees.

“I love you,” she whispered, and grabbed for him before the world went black.

He came to slowly. He hurt, and for a time didn’t understand why. There was noise. Eventually he turned his head toward it. When he opened his eyes, Michael saw a boy with wide eyes and black hair gawking through the window.

“Mister, hey, mister. You okay?”

Dazed, Michael pushed open the door. “Get help,” he managed, fighting against blacking out again. He took deep gulps of air to clear his head as the boy dashed off through the woods. “Pandora.” Fear broke through the fog. In seconds, he was leaning over her.

His fingers shook as he reached for the pulse of her neck, but he found it. Blood from a cut on her forehead ran down her face and onto his hands. With his fingers pressed against the wound, he fumbled in the glove compartment for the first-aid kit. He’d stopped the bleeding and was checking her for broken bones when she moaned. He had to stop himself from dragging her against him and holding on.

“Take it easy,” he murmured when she began to stir. “Don’t move around.” When she opened her eyes, he saw they were glazed and unfocused. “You’re all right.” Gently he cupped her face in his hands and continued to reassure her. Her eyes focused gradually. As they did, she reached for his hand.

“The brakes….”

“Yeah.” He rested his cheek against hers a moment. “It was a hell of a trip, but it looks like we made it.”

Confused, she looked around. The car was stopped, leaning drunkenly against a tree. It had been the deep, slushy snow that had slowed them down enough to prevent the crash from being fatal. “We—you’re all right?” The tears started when she reached out and took his face in her hands as he had with hers. “You’re all right.”

“Terrific.” His wrist throbbed like a jackhammer and his head ached unbelievably, but he was alive. When she started to move, he held her still. “No, don’t move around. I don’t know how badly you’re hurt. There was a kid. He’s gone for help.”

“It’s just my head.” She started to take his hand, and saw the blood. “Oh God, you’re bleeding. Where?” Before she could begin her frantic search, he gripped her hands together.

“It’s not me. It’s you. Your head’s cut. You probably have a concussion.”

Shaky, she lifted her hand and touched the bandage. The wound beneath it hurt, but she drew on that. If she hurt, she was alive. “I thought I was dead.” She closed her eyes but tears slipped through the lashes. “I thought we were both dead.”

“We’re both fine.” They heard the siren wail up the mountain road. He was silent until she opened her eyes again. “You know what happened?”

Her head ached badly, but it was clear. “Attempted murder.”

He nodded, not turning when the ambulance pulled into the slushy lane. “I’m through waiting, Pandora. I’m through waiting all around.”

* * *

Lieutenant Randall found Michael in the emergency-room lounge. He unwrapped his muffler, unbuttoned his coat and sat down on the hard wooden bench. “Looks like you’ve had some trouble.”

“Big time.”

Randall nodded toward the Ace bandage on Michael’s wrist. “Bad?”

“Just a sprain. Few cuts and bruises and a hell of a headache. Last time I saw it, my car looked something like an accordion.”

“We’re taking it in. Anything we should look for?”

“Brake lines. It seemed I didn’t have any when I started the trip down the mountain.”

“When’s the last time you used your car?” Randall had his notepad in hand.

“Ten days, two weeks.” Wearily, Michael rubbed a temple. “I drove into New York to talk to police about the robbery in my apartment.”

“Where do you keep your car?”

“In the garage.”

“Locked?”

“The garage?” Michael kept his eye on the hallway where Pandora had been wheeled away. “No. My uncle had installed one of those remote control devices a few years back. Never worked unless you turned on the television. Anyway, he took it out again and never replaced the lock. Pandora’s car’s in there,” he remembered suddenly. “If—”

“We’ll check it out,” Randall said easily. “Miss McVie was with you?”

“Yeah, she’s with a doctor.” For the first time in weeks, Michael found himself craving a cigarette. “Her head was cut.” He looked down at his hands and remembered her blood on them. “I’m going to find out who did this, Lieutenant, and then I’m going to—”

“Don’t say anything to me I might have to use later,” Randall warned. There were some people who threatened as a means to let off steam or relieve tension. Randall didn’t think Michael Donahue was one of them. “Let me do my job, Mr. Donahue.”

Michael gave him a long, steady look. “Someone’s been playing games, deadly ones, with someone very important to me. If you were in my place, would you twiddle your thumbs and wait?”

Randall smiled, just a little. “You know, Donahue, I never miss your show. Great entertainment. Some of this business sounds just like one of your shows.”

“Like one of my shows,” Michael repeated slowly.

“Problem is, things don’t work the same way out here in the world as they do on television. But it sure is a pleasure to watch. Here comes your lady.”

Michael sprang up and headed for her.

“I’m fine,” she told him before he could ask.

“Not entirely.” Behind her a young, white coated doctor stood impatiently. “Miss McVie has a concussion.”

“He put a few stitches in my head and wants to hold me prisoner.” She gave the doctor a sweet smile and linked arms with Michael. “Let’s go home.”

“Just a minute.” Keeping her beside him, Michael turned to the doctor. “You want her in the hospital?”

“Michael—”

“Shut up.”

“Anyone suffering from a concussion should be routinely checked. Miss McVie would be wise to remain overnight with professional care.”

“I’m not staying in the hospital because I have a bump on the head. Good afternoon, Lieutenant.”

“Miss McVie.”

Lifting her chin, she looked back at the doctor. “Now, Doctor…”

“Barnhouse.”

“Dr. Barnhouse,” she began. “I will take your advice to a point. I’ll rest, avoid stress. At the first sign of nausea or dizziness, I’ll be on your doorstep. I can assure you, now that you’ve convinced Michael I’m an invalid, I’ll be properly smothered and hovered over. You’ll have to be satisfied with that.”

Far from satisfied, the doctor directed himself to Michael. “I can’t force her to stay, of course.”

Michael lifted a brow. “If you think I can, you’ve got a lot to learn about women.”

Resigned, Barnhouse turned back to Pandora. “I want to see you in a week, sooner if any of the symptoms we discussed show up. You’re to rest for twenty-four hours. That means horizontally.”

“Yes, Doctor.” She offered a hand, which he took grudgingly. “You were very gentle. Thank you.”

His lips twitched. “A week,” he repeated and strode back down the hall.

“If I didn’t know better,” Michael mused, “I’d say he wanted to keep you here just to look at you.”

“Of course. I look stunning with blood running down my face and a hole in my head.”

“I thought so.” He kissed her cheek, but used the gesture to get a closer look at her wound. The stitches were small and neat, disappearing into her hairline. After counting six of them, his determination iced. “Come on, we’ll go home so I can start pampering you.”

“I’ll take you myself.” Randall gestured toward the door. “I might as well look around a bit while I’m there.”

* * *

Sweeney clucked like a mother hen and had Pandora bundled into bed five minutes after she’d walked in the door. If she’d had the strength, Pandora would have argued for form’s sake. Instead she let herself be tucked under a comforter, fed soup and sweet tea, and fussed over. Though the doctor had assured her it was perfectly safe to sleep, she thought of the old wives’ tale and struggled to stay awake. Armed with a sketch pad and pencil, she whiled away the time designing. But when she began to tire of that, she began to think.

Murder. It would have been nothing less than murder. Murder for gain, she mused, an impossible thing for her to understand. She’d told herself before that her life was threatened, but somehow it had seemed remote. She had only to touch her own forehead now to prove just how direct it had become.

An uncle, a cousin, an aunt? Which one wanted Jolley’s fortune so badly to murder for it? Not for the first time, Pandora wished she knew them better, understood them better. She realized she’d simply followed Jolley’s lead and dismissed them as boring.

And that was true enough, Pandora assured herself. She’d been to a party or two with all of them. Monroe would huff, Biff would preen, Ginger would prattle, and so on. But boring or not, one of them had slipped over the line of civilized behavior. And they were willing to step over her to do it. Slowly, from memory, she began to sketch each of her relatives. Perhaps that way, she’d see something that was buried in her subconscious.

When Michael came in, she had sketches lined in rows over her spread. “Quite a rogues’ gallery.”

He’d come straight from the garage, where he and Randall had found the still-wet brake fluid on the concrete. Not all of it, Michael mused. Whoever had tampered with the brakes had left enough fluid in so that the car would react normally for the first few miles. And then, nothing. Michael had already concluded that the police would find a hole in the lines. Just as they’d find one in the lines of Pandora’s, to match the dark puddle beneath her car. It had been every bit as lethal as his.

He wasn’t ready to tell Pandora that whoever had tried to kill them had been as close as the garage a day, perhaps two, before. Instead he looked at her sketches.

“What do you see?” she demanded.

“That you have tremendous talent and should give serious thought to painting.”

“I mean in their faces.” Impatient with herself, she drew her legs up Indian style. “There’s just nothing there. No spark, no streak of anything that tells me this one’s capable of killing.”

“Anyone’s capable of killing. Oh yes,” Michael added when she opened her mouth to disagree. “Anyone. It’s simply that the motive has to fit the personality, the circumstances, the need. When a person’s threatened, he kills. For some it’s only when their lives or the lives of someone they love are threatened.”

“That’s entirely different.”

“No.” He sat on the bed. “It’s a matter of different degrees. Some people kill because their home is threatened, their possessions. Some kill because a desire is threatened. Wealth, power, those are very strong desires.

“So a very ordinary, even conventional person might kill to achieve that desire.”

He gestured to her sketches. “One of them tried. Aunt Patience with her round little face and myopic eyes.”

“You can’t seriously believe—”

“She’s devoted to Morgan, obsessively so. She’s never married. Why? Because she’s always taken care of him.”

He picked up the next sketch. “Or there’s Morgan himself, stout, blunt, hard-nosed. He thought Jolley was mad and a nuisance.”

“They all did.”

“Exactly. Carlson, straitlaced, humorless, and Jolley’s only surviving son.”

“He tried contesting the will.”

“Going the conventional route. Still, he knew his father was shrewd, perhaps better than anyone. Who’s to say he wouldn’t cover his bases in a more direct way? Biff…” He had a laugh as he looked at the sketch. Pandora had drawn him precisely as he was. Self-absorbed.

“I can’t see him getting his hands dirty.”

“For a slice of a hundred fifty million? I can. Pretty little Ginger. One wonders if she can possibly be as sweet and spacey as she appears. And Hank.” Pandora had drawn him with his arm muscle flexed. “Would he settle for a couple of thousand when he could have millions?”

“I don’t know—that’s just the point.” Pandora shuffled the sketches. “Even when I have them all lined up in front of me, I don’t know.”

“Lined up,” Michael murmured. “Maybe that is the answer. I think it’s time we had a nice, family party.”

“Party? You don’t mean actually invite them all here.”

“It’s perfect.”

“They won’t come.”

“Oh yes, they will.” He was already thinking ahead. “You can bank on it. A little hint that things aren’t going well around here, and they’ll jump at the chance to give us an extra push. You see the doctor in a week. If he gives you a clean bill of health, we’re going to start a little game of our own.”

“What game?”

“In a week,” he repeated, and took her face in his hands. It was narrow, dominated by the mop of hair and sharp eyes. Not beautiful, but special. It had taken him a long time to admit it. “A bit pale.”

“I’m always pale with a concussion. Are you going to pamper me?”

“At least.” But his smile faded as he gathered her close. “Oh God, I thought I’d lost you.”

The trace of desperation in his voice urged her to soothe. “We’d both have been lost if you hadn’t handled the car so well.” She snuggled into his shoulder. It was real and solid, like the one she’d sometimes imagined leaning on. It wouldn’t hurt, just this once, to pretend it would always be there. “I never thought we’d walk away from that one.”

“But we did.” He drew back to look at her. She looked tired and drawn, but he knew her will was as strong as ever. “And now we’re going to talk about what you said to me right before we crashed.”

“Wasn’t I screaming?”

“No.”

“If I criticized your driving, I apologize.”

He tightened his grip on her chin. “You told me you loved me.” He watched her mouth fall open in genuine surprise. Some men might have been insulted. Michael could bless his sense of humor. “It could technically be called a deathbed confession.”

Had she? She could only remember reaching for him in those last seconds, knowing they were about to die together. “I was hysterical,” she began, and tried to draw back.

“It didn’t sound like raving to me.”

“Michael, you heard Dr. Barnhouse. I’m not supposed to have any stress. If you want to be helpful, see about some more tea.”

“I’ve something better for relaxing the muscles and soothing the nerves.” He laid her back against the pillows, sliding down with her. Sweetly, tenderly, he ran his lips down the lines of her cheekbones. “I want to hear you tell me again, here.”

“Michael—”

“No, lie back.” And his hands, gentle and calm, stilled her. “I need to touch you, just touch you. There’s plenty of time for the rest.”

He was so kind, so patient. More than once she’d wondered how such a restive, volatile man could have such comforting hands. Taking off only his shoes, he slipped into bed with her. He held her in the crook of his arm and stroked until he felt her sigh of relief. “I’m going to take care of you,” he murmured. “When you’re well, we’ll take care of each other.”

“I’ll be fine tomorrow.” But her voice was thick and sleepy.

“Sure you will.” He’d keep her in bed another twenty-four hours if he had to chain her. “You haven’t told me again. Are you in love with me, Pandora?”

She was so tired, so drained. It seemed she’d reached a point where she could fight nothing. “What if I am?” She managed to tilt her head back to stare at him. His fingers rubbed gently at her temple, easing even the dull echo of pain. “People fall in and out of love all the time.”

“People.” He lowered his head so that he could just skim her lips with his. “Not Pandora. It infuriates you, doesn’t it?”

She wanted to glare but closed her eyes instead. “Yes. I’m doing my best to reverse the situation.”

He snuggled down beside her, content for now. She loved him. He still had time to make her like the idea. “Let me know how it works out,” he said, and lulled her to sleep.

Chapter Twelve

Michael studied the dark stains on the garage floor with a kind of grim fascination. Draining the brake fluid from an intended victim’s car was a hackneyed device, one expected from time to time on any self-respecting action-adventure show. Viewers and readers alike developed a certain fondness for old, reliable angles in the same way they appreciated the new and different. Though it took on a different picture when it became personal, the car careering out of control down a steep mountain road was as old as the Model T.

He’d used it himself, just as he’d used the anonymous gift of champagne. And the bogus-telegram routine, he mused as an idea began to stir. Just last season one of Logan’s heroines of the week had been locked in a cellar—left in the dark after going to investigate a window slamming in the wind. It too was a classic. Each and every one of the ploys used against himself and Pandora could have been lifted from one of his own plots. Randall had pointed it out, though he’d been joking. It didn’t seem very funny.

Michael cursed himself, knowing he should have seen the pattern before. Perhaps he hadn’t simply because it had been a pattern, a trite one by Hollywood standards. Whether it was accidental or planned, Michael decided he wasn’t about to be outplotted. He’d make his next move taking a page from the classic mystery novels. Going into the house, Michael went to the phone and began to structure his scene.

He was just completing his last call when Pandora came down the hall toward him. “Michael, you’ve got to do something about Sweeney.”

Michael leaned back against the newel post and studied her. She looked wonderful—rested, healthy and annoyed. “Isn’t it time for your afternoon nap?”

“That’s just what I’m talking about.” The annoyance deepened between her brows and pleased him. “I don’t need an afternoon nap. It’s been over a week since the accident.” She pulled a leather thong out of her hair and began to run it through her fingers. “I’ve seen the doctor, and he said I was fine.”

“I thought it was more something along the lines of you having a head like a rock.”

She narrowed her eyes. “He was annoyed because I healed perfectly without him. The point is, I am healed, but if Sweeney keeps nagging and hovering, I’ll have a relapse.” It came out as a declaration as she stood straight in front of him, chin lifted, looking as though she’d never been ill a day in her life.

“What would you like me to do?”

“She’ll listen to you. For some reason she has the idea that you’re infallible. Mr. Donahue this, Mr. Donahue that.” She slapped the leather against her palm. “For the past week all I’ve heard is how charming, handsome and strong you are. It’s a wonder I recovered at all.”

His lips twitched, but he understood Sweeney’s flattery could undo any progress he’d made. “The woman’s perceptive. However…” He stopped Pandora’s retort by holding up a hand. “Because I’d never refuse you anything—” when she snorted he ignored it “—and because she’s been driving me crazy fussing over my wrist, I’m going to take care of it.”

Pandora tilted her head. “How?”

“Sweeney’s going to be too busy over the next few days to fuss over us. She’ll have the dinner party to fuss over.”

“What dinner party?”

“The dinner party we’re going to give next week for all our relatives.”

She glanced at the phone, remembering he’d been using it when she’d come down the hall. “What have you been up to?”

“Just setting the scene, cousin.” He rocked back on his heels, already imagining. “I think we’ll have Sweeney dig out the best china, though I doubt we’ll have time to use it.”

“Michael.” She didn’t want to seem a coward, but the accident had taught her something about caution and self-preservation. “We won’t just be inviting relatives. One of them tried to kill us.”

“And failed.” He took her chin in his hand. “Don’t you think he’ll try again, Pandora, and again? The police can’t patrol the grounds indefinitely. And,” he added with his fingers tightening, “I’m not willing to let bygones be bygones.” His gaze skimmed up to where her hair just covered the scar on her forehead. The doctor had said it would fade, but Michael’s memory of it never would. “We’re going to settle this, my way.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Pandora.” He gave her a charming smile and pinched her cheek. “Trust me.”

The fact that she did only made her more nervous. With a sigh, she took his hand. “Let’s tell Sweeney to kill the fatted calf.”

* * *

Right down to the moment the first car arrived, Pandora was certain no one would come. She’d sat through a discussion of Michael’s plan, argued, disagreed, admired and ultimately she’d given up. Theatrics, she’d decided. But there was enough Jolley in her to look forward to the show, especially when she was one of the leads. And she had, as they said in the business, her part cold.

She’d dressed for the role in a slim, strapless black dress. For flair, she’d added a sterling silver necklace she’d fashioned in an exaggerated star burst. Matching earrings dripped nearly to her chin. If Michael wanted drama, who was she to argue? As the night of the dinner party had grown closer, her nerves had steeled into determination.

When he saw her at the top of the stairs, he was speechless. Had he really convinced himself all these years she had no real beauty? At the moment, poised, defiant and enjoying herself, she made every other woman he’d known look like a shadow. And if he told her so, she wouldn’t believe it for a moment. Instead he merely nodded and rocked back on his heels.

“Perfect,” he told her as she walked down the main stairs. Standing at the base in a dark suit, Michael looked invincible, and ruthless. “The sophisticated heroine.” He took her hand. “Cool and sexy. Hitchcock would’ve made you a star.”

“Don’t forget what happened to Janet Leigh.”

He laughed and sent one of her earrings spinning. “Nervous?”

“Not as much as I’d thought I’d be. If this doesn’t work—”

“Then we’re no worse off than we are now. You know what to do.”

“We’ve rehearsed it a half-dozen times. I still have the bruises.”

He leaned closer to kiss both bare shoulders. “I always thought you’d be a natural. When this is over, we have a scene of our own to finish. No, don’t pull back,” he warned as she attempted to. “It’s too late to pull back.” They stood close, nearly mouth to mouth. “It’s been too late all along.”

Nerves she’d managed to quell came racing back, but they had nothing to do with plots or plans. “You’re being dramatic.”

With a nod, he tangled his fingers in her hair. “My sense of drama, your streak of practicality. An interesting combination.”

“An uneasy one.”

“If life’s too easy you sleep through it,” Michael decided. “It sounds like the first of our guests are arriving,” he murmured as they heard the sound of a car. He kissed her briefly. “Break a leg.”

She wrinkled her nose at his back. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Within a half hour, everyone who had been at the reading of the will, except Fitzhugh, was again in the library. No one seemed any more relaxed than they’d been almost six months before. Jolley beamed down on them from the oil painting. From time to time Pandora glanced up at it almost expecting him to wink. To give everyone what they’d come for, Pandora and Michael kept arguing about whatever came to mind. Time for the game to begin, she decided.

Carlson stood with his wife near a bookshelf. He looked cross and impatient and glowered when Pandora approached.

“Uncle Carlson, I’m so glad you could make it. We don’t see nearly enough of each other.”

“Don’t soft-soap me.” He swirled his scotch but didn’t drink. “If you’ve got the idea you can talk me out of contesting this absurd will, you’re mistaken.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. Fitzhugh tells me you don’t have a chance.” She smiled beautifully. “But I have to agree the will’s absurd, especially after being forced to live in the same house with Michael all these months.” She ran a finger down one of the long, flattened prongs of her necklace. “I’ll tell you, Uncle Carlson, there have been times I’ve seriously considered throwing in the towel. He’s done everything possible to make the six months unbearable. Once he pretended his mother was ill, and he had to go to California. Next thing I knew I was locked in the basement. Childish games,” she muttered sending Michael a look of utter dislike. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Carlson take a quick, nervous drink. “Well, the sentence is nearly up.” She turned back with a fresh smile. “I’m so glad we could have this little celebration. Michael’s finally going to open a bottle of champagne he’s been hoarding since Christmas.”

Pandora watched Carlson’s wife drop her glass on the Turkish carpet. “Dear me,” Pandora said softly. “We’ll have to get something to mop that up. Freshen your drink?”

“No, she’s fine.” Carlson took his wife by the elbow. “Excuse me.”

As they moved away, Pandora felt a quick thrill of excitement. So, it had been Carlson.

“I quit smoking about six months ago,” Michael told Hank and his wife, earning healthy approval.

“You’ll never regret it,” Hank stated in his slow, deliberate way. “You’re responsible for your own body.”

“I’ve been giving that a lot of thought lately,” Michael said dryly. “But living with Pandora the past few months hasn’t made it easy. She’s made this past winter miserable. She had someone send me a fake telegram so I’d go flying off to California thinking my mother was ill.” He glanced over his shoulder and scowled at Pandora’s back.

“If you’ve gotten through six months without smoking…” Meg began, guiding the conversation back to Michael’s health.

“It’s a miracle I have living with that woman. But it’s almost over.” He grinned at Hank. “We’re having champagne instead of carrot juice for dinner. I’ve been saving this bottle since Christmas for just the right occasion.”

He saw Hank’s fingers whiten around his glass of Perrier and Meg’s color drain. “We don’t—” Hank looked helplessly at Meg. “We don’t drink.”

“Champagne isn’t drinking,” Michael said jovially. “It’s celebrating. Excuse me.” He moved to the bar as if to freshen his drink and waited for Pandora to join him. “It’s Hank.”

“No.” She added a splash of vermouth to her glass. “It’s Carlson.” Following the script, she glared at him. “You’re an insufferable bore, Michael. Putting up with you isn’t worth any amount of money.”

“Intellectual snob.” He toasted her. “I’m counting the days.”

With a sweep of her skirts, Pandora walked over to Ginger. “I don’t know how I manage to hold my temper with that man.”

Ginger checked her face in a pretty silver compact. “I’ve always thought he was kind of cute.”

“You haven’t had to live with him. We were hardly together a week when he broke into my workshop and vandalized it. Then he tried to pass the whole thing off as the work of a vagrant.”

Ginger frowned and touched a bit of powder to her nose. “It didn’t seem like something he’d do to me. I told—” She caught herself and looked back at Pandora with a vague smile. “Those are pretty earrings.”

Michael steeled himself to listen to Morgan’s terse opinion on the stock market. The moment he found an opening, he broke in. “Once everything’s settled, I’ll have to come to you for advice. I’ve been thinking about getting more actively involved with one of Jolley’s chemical firms. There’s a lot of money in fertilizer—and pesticides.” He watched Patience flutter her hands and subside at a glare from Morgan.

“Software,” Morgan said briefly.

Michael only smiled. “I’ll look into it.”

Pandora tried unsuccessfully to pump Ginger. The five-minute conversation left her suspicious, confused and with the beginnings of a headache. She decided to try her luck on Biff.

“You’re looking well.” She smiled at him and nodded at his wife.

“You’re looking a bit pale, cousin.”

“The past six months haven’t been a picnic.” She cast a look at Michael. “Of course, you’ve always detested him.”

“Of course,” Biff said amiably.

“I’ve yet to discover why Uncle Jolley was fond of him. Besides being a bore, Michael has an affection for odd practical jokes. He got a tremendous kick out of locking me in the cellar.”

Biff smiled into his glass. “He’s never quite been in our class.”

Pandora bit her tongue, then agreed. “Do you know, he even called me one night, disguising his voice. He tried to frighten me by saying someone was trying to kill me.”

Biff’s brows drew together as he stared into Pandora’s eyes. “Odd.”

“Well, things are almost settled. By the way, did you enjoy the champagne I sent you?”

Biff’s fingers froze on his glass. “Champagne?”

“Right after Christmas.”

“Oh yes.” He lifted his glass again, studying her as he drank. “So it was you.”

“I got the idea when someone sent Michael a bottle at Christmastime. He promises to finally open it tonight. Excuse me, I want to check on dinner.”

Her eyes met Michael’s briefly as she slipped from the room. They’d set his scene, she thought. Now she had to move the action along. In the kitchen she found Sweeney finishing up the final preparation for the meal.

“If they’re hungry,” Sweeney began. “they’ll just have to wait ten minutes.”

“Sweeney, it’s time to turn off the main power switch.”

“I know, I know. I was just finishing this ham.”

Sweeney had been instructed to, at Pandora’s signal, go down to the cellar, turn off the power, then wait exactly one minute and turn it on again. She had been skeptical about the whole of Michael and Pandora’s plan but had finally agreed to participate in it. Wiping her hands on her apron, the cook went to the cellar door. Pandora took a deep breath and walked back to the library.

Michael had positioned himself near the desk. He gave Pandora the slightest of nods when she entered. “Dinner in ten minutes,” she announced brightly as she swept across the room.

“That gives us just enough time.” Michael took the stage and couldn’t resist starting with a tried and true line. He didn’t have to see Pandora to know she was taking her position. “You all must be wondering why we brought you here tonight.” He lifted his glass and looked from one face to the next. “One of you is a murderer.”

On cue, the lights went out and pandemonium struck. Glasses shattered, women screamed, a table was overturned. When the lights blinked on, everyone froze. Lying half under the desk, facedown, was Pandora. Beside her was a letter opener with a curved, ornate hilt and blood on the blade. In an instant Michael was beside her, lifting her into his arms before anyone had a chance to react. Silently, he carried her from the room. Several minutes passed before he returned, alone. He gazed, hot and hard, at every face in the room.

“A murderer,” he repeated. “She’s dead.”

“What do you mean she’s dead?” Carlson pushed his way forward. “What kind of game is this? Let’s have a look at her.”

“No one’s touching her.” Michael effectively blocked his way. “No one’s touching anything or leaving this room until the police get here.”

“Police?” Pale and shaken, Carlson glanced around. “We don’t want that. We’ll have to handle this ourselves. She’s just fainted.”

“Her blood’s all over this,” Michael commented gesturing to the bloodstained letter opener.

“No!” Meg pushed forward until she’d broken through the crowd around the desk. “No one was supposed to be hurt. Only frightened. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Hank.” She reached out, then buried her face against his chest.

“We were only going to play some tricks,” he murmured.

“First degree murder isn’t a trick.”

“We never—” He looked at Michael in shock. “Not murder,” he managed, holding Meg as tightly as she was holding him.

“You didn’t want to drink the champagne, either, did you, Hank?”

“That’s when I wanted to stop.” Still sobbing, Meg turned in her husband’s arms. “I even called and tried to warn her. I thought it was wrong all along, just a mean trick, but we needed money. The gym’s drained everything we have. We thought if we could make the two of you angry enough with each other, you’d break the terms of the will. But that’s all. Hank and I stayed in the cabin and waited. Then he went into Pandora’s shop and turned things upside down. If she thought you did it—”

“I never thought she would,” Ginger piped up. Two tears rolled down her cheeks. “Really, it all seemed silly and—exciting.”

Michael looked at his pretty, weeping cousin. “So you were part of it.”

“Well, I didn’t really do anything. But when Aunt Patience explained it to me…”

“Patience?” There were patterns and patterns. A new one emerged.

“Morgan deserved his share.” The old woman wrung her hands and looked everywhere but at the bloodstained letter opener. She’d thought she’d done the right thing. It all sounded so simple. “We thought we could make one of you leave, then it would all be the way it should be.”

“Telegram,” Morgan said, puffing wide-eyed on his cigar. “Not murder.” He turned to Carlson. “Your idea.”

“It’s preposterous.” Carlson mopped his brow with a white silk handkerchief. “The lawyers were incompetent. They haven’t been able to do a thing. I was merely protecting my rights.”

“With murder.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He nearly sounded staid and stuffy again. “The plan was to get you out of the house. I did nothing more than lock—her—in the cellar. When I heard about the champagne, I had a doubt or two, but after all, it wasn’t fatal.”

“Heard about the champagne.” It was what Michael had waited for. “From whom?”

“It was Biff,” Meg told him. “Biff set it all up, promised nothing would go wrong.”

“Just an organizer.” Biff gauged the odds, then shrugged. “All’s fair, cousin. Everyone in this room had their hand in.” He held his up, examining it. “There’s no blood on mine. I’d vote for you.” He gave Michael a cool smile. “After all, it’s no secret you couldn’t abide each other.”

“You set it up.” Michael took a step closer. “There’s also a matter of tampering with my car.”

Biff moved his shoulders again, but Michael saw the sweat bead above his lips. “Everyone in this room had a part in it. Any of you willing to turn yourselves in?” His breath came faster as he backed away. “One of them panicked and did this. You won’t find my fingerprints on that letter opener.”

“When someone’s attempted murder once,” Michael said calmly. “it’s easier to prove he tried again.”

“You won’t prove anything. Any of us might have drained the brake lines in your car. You can’t prove I did.”

“I don’t need to.” In a quick move, Michael caught him cleanly on the jaw and sent him reeling. Before he could fall, Michael had him by the collar. “I never said anything about draining the lines.”

Feeling the trap close, Biff struck out blindly. Fists swinging, they tumbled to the floor. A Tiffany lamp shattered in a pile of color. They rolled, locked together, into a Belker table that shook from the impact. Shocked and ineffective, the rest stepped back and gave them room.

“Michael, that’s quite enough.” Pandora entered the room, her hair mussed and her clothes disheveled. “We have company.”

Panting, he dragged Biff to his feet. His wrist sang a bit, but he considered it a pleasure. Charles, looking dignified in his best suit, opened the library doors. “Dinner is served.”

* * *

Two hours later, Pandora and Michael shared a small feast in the library. “I never thought it would work,” Pandora said over a mouthful of ham. “It shouldn’t have.”

“The more predictable the moves, the more predictable the end.”

“Lieutenant Randall didn’t seem too pleased.”

“He wanted to do it his way.” Michael moved his shoulders. “Since he’d already discovered Biff had been visiting other members of the family and making calls to them, he was bound to find out something eventually.”

“The easy way.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “Do you know how uncomfortable it is to play dead?”

“You were great.” He leaned over to kiss her. “A star.”

“The letter opener with the stage blood was a nice touch. Still, if they’d all stuck together…”

“We already knew someone was weakening because of the warning call. Turned out that Meg had had enough.”

“I’ve been thinking about investing in their gym.”

“It wouldn’t hurt.”

“What do you think’s going to happen?”

“Oh, Carlson’ll get off more or less along with the rest of them, excluding Biff. I don’t think we have to worry about going to court over the will. As for our dear cousin—” Michael lifted a glass of champagne “—he’s going to be facing tougher charges than malicious mischief or burglary. I may never get my television back, but he isn’t going to be wearing any Brooks Brothers suits for a while. Only prison blues.”

“You gave him another black eye,” Pandora mused.

“Yeah.” With a grin, Michael drank the wine. “Now you and I only have to cruise through the next two weeks.”

“Then it’s over.”

“No.” He took her hand before she could rise. “Then it begins.” He slipped the glass from her other hand and pressed her back against the cushions. “How long?”

Pandora struggled to keep the tension from showing. “How long what?”

“Have you been in love with me?”

She jerked, then was frustrated when he held her back. “I’m not sitting here feeding your ego.”

“All right, we’ll start with me.” He leaned back companionably and boxed her in. “I think I fell in love with you when you came back from the Canary Islands and walked into the parlor. You had legs all the way to your waist and you looked down your nose at me. I’ve never been the same.”

“I’ve had enough games, Michael,” she said stiffly.

“So’ve I.” He traced a finger down her cheek. “You said you loved me, Pandora.”

“Under duress.”

“Then I’ll just have to keep you under duress because I’m not giving you up now. Why don’t we get married right here?”

She’d started to give him a hefty shove and stopped with her hands pressed against his chest. “What?”

“Right here in the library.” He glanced around, ignoring the overturned tables and broken china. “It’d be a nice touch.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s very simple. Here’s the plot. You love me, I love you.”

“That’s not simple,” she managed. “I’ve just been accessible. Once you get back to your blond dancers and busty starlets, you’ll—”

“What blond dancers? I can’t stand blond dancers.”

“Michael, this isn’t anything I can joke about.”

“Just wait. You buy a nice white dress, maybe a veil. A veil would suit you. We get a minister, lots of flowers and have a very traditional marriage ceremony. After that, we settle into the Folley, each pursuing our respective careers. In a year, two at the most, we give Charles and Sweeney a baby to fuss over. See?” He kissed her ear.

“People’s lives aren’t screenplays,” she began.

“I’m crazy about you, Pandora. Look at me.” He took her chin and held it so that their faces were close. “As an artist, you’re supposed to be able to see below the surface. That should be easy since you’ve always told me I’m shallow.”

“I was wrong.” She wanted to believe. Her heart already did. “Michael, if you’re playing games with me, I’ll kill you myself.”

“Games are over. I love you, it’s that simple.”

“Simple,” she murmured, surprised she could speak at all. “You want to get married?”

“Living together’s too easy.”

She was more surprised that she could laugh. “Easy?”

“That’s right.” He shifted her until she was lying flat on the sofa, his body pressed into hers. When his mouth came down, it wasn’t patient, wasn’t gentle, and everything he thought, everything he felt, communicated itself through that one contact. As she did rarely, as he asked rarely, she went limp and pliant. Her arms went around him. Perhaps it was easy after all.

“I love you, Michael.”

“We’re getting married.”

“It looks that way.”

His eyes were intense when he lifted his head. “I’m going to make life tough on you, Pandora. That’s just to pay you back for the fact that you’ll be the most exasperating wife on record. Do we understand each other?”

Her smile bloomed slowly. “I suppose we always have.”

Michael pressed a kiss to her forehead, to the tip of her nose, then to her lips. “He understood both of us.”

She followed his gaze to Jolley’s portrait. “Crazy old goat has us right where he wants us. I imagine he’s having a good laugh.” She rubbed her cheek against Michael’s. “I just wish he could be here to see us married.”

Michael lifted a brow. “Who says he won’t be?” He pulled her up and picked up both glasses. “To Maximillian Jolley McVie.”

“To Uncle Jolley.” Pandora clinked her glass to Michael’s. “To us.”

Mind Over Matter

Nora Roberts

1

He’d expected a crystal ball, pentagrams and a few tea leaves. Burning candles and incense wouldn’t have surprised him. Though he wouldn’t admit it to anyone, he’d actually looked forward to it. As a producer of documentaries for public television, David Brady dealt in hard facts and meticulous research. Anything and everything that went into one of his productions was checked and rechecked, most often personally. The truth was, he’d thought an afternoon with a fortune teller would bring him a refreshing, even comic, relief from the daily pressure of scripts, storyboards and budgets. She didn’t even wear a turban.

The woman who opened the door of the comfortable suburban home in Newport Beach looked as though she would more likely be found at a bridge table than a séance. She smelled of lilacs and dusting powder, not musk and mystery. David’s impression that she was housekeeper or companion to the renowned psychic was immediately disabused.

“Hello.” She offered a small, attractive hand and a smile. “I’m Clarissa DeBasse. Please come in, Mr. Brady. You’re right on time.”

“Miss DeBasse.” David adjusted his thinking and accepted her hand. He’d done enough research so far to be prepared for the normalcy of people involved in the paranormal. “I appreciate your seeing me. Should I wonder how you know who I am?”

As their hands linked, she let impressions of him come and go, to be sorted out later. Intuitively she felt he was a man she could trust and rely on. It was enough for the moment. “I could claim precognition, but I’m afraid it’s simple logic. You were expected at one-thirty.” Her agent had called to remind her, or Clarissa would still be knee-deep in her vegetable garden. “I suppose it’s possible you’re carrying brushes and samples in that briefcase, but I have the feeling it’s papers and contracts. Now I’m sure you’d like some coffee after your drive down from L.A.”

“Right again.” He stepped into a cozy living room with pretty blue curtains and a wide couch that sagged noticeably in the middle.

“Sit down, Mr. Brady. I just brought the tray out, so the coffee’s hot.”

Deciding the couch was unreliable, David chose a chair and waited while Clarissa sat across from him and poured coffee into two mismatched cups and saucers. It took him only a moment to study and analyze. He was a man who leaned heavily on first impressions. She looked, as she offered cream and sugar, like anyone’s favorite aunt—rounded without being really plump, neat without being stiff. Her face was soft and pretty and had lined little in fifty-odd years. Her pale blond hair was cut stylishly and showed no gray, which David attributed to her hairdresser. She was entitled to her vanity, he thought. When she offered the cup, he noted the symphony of rings on her hands. That, at least, was in keeping with the image he had projected.

“Thank you. Miss DeBasse, I have to tell you, you’re not at all what I expected.”

Comfortable with herself, she settled back. “You were expecting me to greet you at the door with a crystal ball in my hands and a raven on my shoulder.”

The amusement in her eyes would have had some men shifting in their chairs. David only lifted a brow. “Something like that.” He sipped his coffee. The fact that it was hot was the only thing going for it. “I’ve read quite a bit about you in the past few weeks. I also saw a tape of your appearance on The Barrow Show.” He probed gently for the right phrasing. “You have a different image on camera.”

“That’s showbiz,” she said so casually he wondered if she was being sarcastic. Her eyes remained clear and friendly. “I don’t generally discuss business, particularly at home, but since it seemed important that you see me, I thought we’d be more comfortable this way.” She smiled again, showing the faintest of dimples in her cheeks. “I’ve disappointed you.”

“No.” And he meant it. “No, you haven’t.” Because his manners went only so far, he put the coffee down. “Miss DeBasse—”

“Clarissa.” She beamed such a bright smile at him he had no trouble returning it.

“Clarissa, I want to be honest with you.”

“Oh, that’s always best.” Her voice was soft and sincere as she folded her hands on her lap.

“Yeah.” The childlike trust in her eyes threw him for a moment. If she was a hard-edged, money-oriented con, she was doing a good job disguising it. “I’m a very practical man. Psychic phenomena, clairvoyance, telepathy and that sort of thing, don’t fit into my day-to-day life.”

She only smiled at him, understanding. Whatever thoughts came into her head remained there. This time David did shift in his chair.

“I decided to do this series on parapsychology mainly for its entertainment value.”

“You don’t have to apologize.” She lifted her hand just as a large black cat leaped into her lap. Without looking at it, Clarissa stroked it from head to tail. “You see, David, someone in my position understands perfectly the doubts and the fascination people have for…such things. I’m not a radical.” As the cat curled up in her lap, she continued to pet it, looking calm and content. “I’m simply a person who’s been given a gift, and a certain responsibility.”

“A responsibility?” He started to reach in his pocket for his cigarettes, then noticed there were no ashtrays.

“Oh, yes.” As she spoke, Clarissa opened the drawer of the coffee table and took out a small blue dish. “You can use this,” she said in passing, then settled back again. “A young boy might receive a toolbox for his birthday. It’s a gift. He has choices to make. He can use his new tools to learn, to build, to repair. He can also use them to saw the legs off tables. He could also put the toolbox in his closet and forget about it. A great many of us do the last, because the tools are too complicated or simply too overwhelming. Have you ever had a psychic experience, David?”

He lit a cigarette. “No.”

“No?” There weren’t many people who would give such a definitive no. “Never a sense of déjà vu, perhaps?”

He paused a moment, interested. “I suppose everyone’s had a sense of doing something before, being somewhere before. A feeling of mixed signals.”

“Perhaps. Intuition, then.”

“You consider intuition a psychic gift?”

“Oh, yes.” Enthusiasm lit her face and made her eyes young. “Of course it depends entirely on how it’s developed, how it’s channeled, how it’s used. Most of us use only a fraction of what we have because our minds are so crowded with other things.”

“Was it impulse that led you to Matthew Van Camp?”

A shutter seemed to come down over her eyes. “No.”

Again he found her puzzling. The Van Camp case was the one that had brought her prominently into the public eye. He would have thought she would have been anxious to speak of it, elaborate, yet she seemed to close down at the mention of the name. David blew out smoke and noticed that the cat was watching him with bored but steady eyes. “Clarissa, the Van Camp case is ten years old, but it’s still one of the most celebrated and controversial of your successes.”

“That’s true. Matthew is twenty now. A very handsome young man.”

“There are some who believe he’d be dead if Mrs. Van Camp hadn’t fought both her husband and the police to have you brought in on the kidnapping.”

“And there are some who believe the entire thing was staged for publicity,” she said so calmly as she sipped from her cup. “Alice Van Camp’s next movie was quite a box-office success. Did you see the film? It was wonderful.”

He wasn’t a man to be eased off-track when he’d already decided on a destination. “Clarissa, if you agree to be part of this documentary, I’d like you to talk about the Van Camp case.”

She frowned a bit, pouted almost, as she petted her cat. “I don’t know if I can help you there, David. It was a very traumatic experience for the Van Camps, very traumatic. Bringing it all up again could be painful for them.”

He hadn’t reached his level of success without knowing how and when to negotiate. “If the Van Camps agreed?”

“Oh, then that’s entirely different.” While she considered, the cat stirred in her lap, then began to purr loudly. “Yes, entirely different. You know, David, I admire your work. I saw your documentary on child abuse. It was gripping and very upsetting.”

“It was meant to be.”

“Yes, exactly.” She could have told him a great deal of the world was upsetting, but didn’t think he was ready to understand how she knew, and how she dealt with it. “What is it you’re looking for with this?”

“A good show.” When she smiled he was sure he’d been right not to try to con her. “One that’ll make people think and question.”

“Will you?”

He tapped out his cigarette. “I produce. How much I question I suppose depends on you.”

It seemed like not only the proper answer, but the truest one. “I like you, David. I think I’d like to help you.”

“I’m glad to hear that. You’ll want to look over the contract and—”

“No.” She cut him off as he reached for his briefcase. “Details.” She explained them away with a gesture of her hand. “I let my agent bother with those things.”

“Fine.” He’d feel more comfortable discussing terms with an agent. “I’ll send them over if you give me a name.”

“The Fields Agency in Los Angeles.”

She’d surprised him again. The comfortable auntlike lady had one of the most influential and prestigious agencies on the Coast. “I’ll have them sent over this afternoon. I’d enjoy working with you, Clarissa.”

“May I see your palm?”

Every time he thought he had her cataloged, she shifted on him. Still, humoring her was easy. David offered his hand. “Am I going to take an ocean voyage?”

She was neither amused nor offended. Though she took his hand, palm up, she barely glanced at it. Instead she studied him with eyes that seemed abruptly cool. She saw a man in his early thirties, attractive in a dark, almost brooding way despite the well-styled black hair and casually elegant clothes. The bones in his face were strong, angular enough to warrant a second glance. His brows were thick, as black as his hair, and dominated surprisingly quiet eyes. Or their cool, pale green appeared quiet at first glance. She saw a mouth that was firm, full enough to gain a woman’s attention. The hand in hers was wide, long fingered, artistic. It vied with a rangy, athletic build. But she saw beyond that.

“You’re a very strong man, physically, emotionally, intellectually.”

“Thank you.”

“Oh, I don’t flatter, David.” It was a gentle, almost maternal reproof. “You haven’t yet learned how to temper this strength with tenderness in your relationships. I suppose that’s why you’ve never married.”

She had his attention now, reluctantly. But he wasn’t wearing a ring, he reminded himself. And anyone who cared to find out about his marital status had only to make a few inquiries. “The standard response is I’ve never met the right woman.”

“In this case it’s perfectly true. You need to find someone every bit as strong as you are. You will, sooner than you think. It won’t be easy, of course, and it will only work between you if you both remember the tenderness I just spoke of.”

“So I’m going to meet the right woman, marry and live happily ever after?”

“I don’t tell the future, ever.” Her expression changed again, becoming placid. “And I only read palms of people who interest me. Shall I tell you what my intuition tells me, David?”

“Please.”

“That you and I are going to have an interesting and long-term relationship.” She patted his hand before she released it. “I’m going to enjoy that.”

“So am I.” He rose. “I’ll see you again, Clarissa.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.” She rose and nudged the cat onto the floor. “Run along now, Mordred.”

“Mordred?” David repeated as the cat jumped up to settle himself on the sagging sofa cushion.

“Such a sad figure in folklore,” Clarissa explained. “I always felt he got a bad deal. After all, we can’t escape our destiny, can we?”

For the second time David felt her cool, oddly intimate gaze on him. “I suppose not,” he murmured, and let her lead him to the door.

“I’ve so enjoyed our chat, David. Please come back again.”

David stepped out into the warm spring air and wondered why he felt certain he would.

* * *

“Of course he’s an excellent producer, Abe. I’m just not sure he’s right for Clarissa.”

A. J. Fields paced around her office in the long, fluid gait that always masked an overflow of nervous energy. She stopped to straighten a picture that was slightly tilted before she turned back to her associate. Abe Ebbitt was sitting with his hands folded on his round belly, as was his habit. He didn’t bother to push back the glasses that had fallen down his nose. He watched A.J. patiently before he reached up to scratch one of the two clumps of hair on either side of his head.

“A.J., the offer is very generous.”

“She doesn’t need the money.”

His agent’s blood shivered at the phrase, but he continued to speak calmly. “The exposure.”

“Is it the right kind of exposure?”

“You’re too protective of Clarissa, A.J.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” she countered. Abruptly she stopped, and sat on the corner of her desk. When Abe saw her brows draw together, he fell silent. He might speak to her when she was in this mood, but she wouldn’t answer. He respected and admired her. Those were the reasons he, a veteran Hollywood agent, was working for the Fields Agency, instead of carving up the town on his own. He was old enough to be her father, and realized that a decade before their roles would have been reversed. The fact that he worked for her didn’t bother him in the least. The best, he was fond of saying, never minded answering to the best. A minute passed, then two.

“She’s made up her mind to do it,” A.J. muttered, but again Abe remained silent. “I just—” Have a feeling, she thought. She hated to use that phrase. “I just hope it isn’t a mistake. The wrong director, the wrong format, and she could be made to look like a fool. I won’t have that, Abe.”

“You’re not giving Clarissa enough credit. You know better than to let your emotions color a business deal, A.J.”

“Yeah, I know better.” That’s why she was the best. A.J. folded her arms and reminded herself of it. She’d learned at a very young age how to channel emotion. It had been more than necessary; it had been vital. When you grew up in a house where your widowed mother often forgot little details like the mortgage payment, you learned how to deal with business in a businesslike way or you went under. She was an agent because she enjoyed the wheeling and dealing. And because she was damn good at it. Her Century City office with its lofty view of Los Angeles was proof of just how good. Still, she hadn’t gotten there by making deals blindly.

“I’ll decide after I meet with Brady this afternoon.”

Abe grinned at her, recognizing the look. “How much more are you going to ask for?”

“I think another ten percent.” She picked up a pencil and tapped it against her palm. “But first I intend to find out exactly what’s going into this documentary and what angles he’s going for.”

“Word is Brady’s tough.”

She sent him a deceptively sweet smile that had fire around the edges. “Word is so am I.”

“He hasn’t got a prayer.” He rose, tugging at his belt. “I’ve got a meeting. Let me know how it goes.”

“Sure.” She was already frowning at the wall when he closed the door.

David Brady. The fact that she personally admired his work would naturally influence her decision. Still, at the right time and for the right fee, she would sign a client to play a tea bag in a thirty-second local commercial. Clarissa was a different matter. Clarissa DeBasse had been her first client. Her only client, A.J. remembered, during those first lean years. If she was protective of her, as Abe had said, A.J. felt she had a right to be. David Brady might be a successful producer of quality documentaries for public television, but he had to prove himself to A. J. Fields before Clarissa signed on the dotted line.

There’d been a time when A.J. had had to prove herself. She hadn’t started out with a staff of fifteen in an exclusive suite of offices. Ten years before, she’d been scrambling for clients and hustling deals from an office that had consisted of a phone booth outside a corner deli. She’d lied about her age. Not too many people had been willing to trust their careers to an eighteen-year-old. Clarissa had.

A.J. gave a little sigh as she worked out a kink in her shoulder. Clarissa didn’t really consider what she did, or what she had, a career as much as a calling. It was up to A.J. to haggle over the details.

She was used to it. Her mother had always been such a warm, generous woman. But details had never been her strong point. As a child, it had been up to A.J. to remember when the bills were due. She’d balanced the checkbook, discouraged door-to-door salesmen and juggled her schoolwork with the household budget. Not that her mother was a fool, or neglectful of her daughter. There had always been love, conversation and interest. But their roles had so often been reversed. It was the mother who would claim the stray puppy had followed her home and the daughter who had worried how to feed it.

Still, if her mother had been different, wouldn’t A.J. herself be different? That was a question that surfaced often. Destiny was something that couldn’t be outmaneuvered. With a laugh, A.J. rose. Clarissa would love that one, she mused.

Walking around her desk, she let herself sink into the deep, wide-armed chair her mother had given her. The chair, unlike the heavy, clean-lined desk, was extravagant and impractical. Who else would have had a chair made in cornflower-blue leather because it matched her daughter’s eyes?

A.J. realigned her thoughts and picked up the DeBasse contract. It was in the center of a desk that was meticulously in order. There were no photographs, no flowers, no cute paperweights. Everything on or in her desk had a purpose, and the purpose was business.

She had time to give the contract one more thorough going-over before her appointment with David Brady. Before she met with him, she would understand every phrase, every clause and every alternative. She was just making a note on the final clause, when her buzzer rang. Still writing, A.J. cradled the phone at her ear.

“Yes, Diane.”

“Mr. Brady’s here, A.J.”

“Okay. Any fresh coffee?”

“We have sludge at the moment. I can make some.”

“Only if I buzz you. Bring him back, Diane.”

She turned her notepad back to the first page, then rose as the door opened. “Mr. Brady.” A.J. extended her hand, but stayed behind her desk. It was, she’d learned, important to establish certain positions of power right from the start. Besides, the time it took him to cross the office gave her an opportunity to study and judge. He looked more like someone she might have for a client than a producer. Yes, she was certain she could have sold that hard, masculine look and rangy walk. The laconic, hard-boiled detective on a weekly series; the solitary, nomadic cowboy in a feature film. Pity.

David had his own chance for study. He hadn’t expected her to be so young. She was attractive in that streamlined, no-nonsense sort of way he could respect professionally and ignore personally. Her body seemed almost too slim in the sharply tailored suit that was rescued from dullness by a fire-engine-red blouse. Her pale blond hair was cut in a deceptively casual style that shagged around the ears, then angled back to sweep her collar. It suited the honey-toned skin that had been kissed by the sun—or a sunlamp. Her face was oval, her mouth just short of being too wide. Her eyes were a rich blue, accentuated by clever smudges of shadow and framed now with oversize glasses. Their hands met, held and released as hands in business do dozens of times every day.

“Please sit down, Mr. Brady. Would you like some coffee?”

“No, thank you.” He took a chair and waited until she settled behind the desk. He noticed that she folded her hands over the contract. No rings, no bracelets, he mused. Just a slender, black-banded watch. “It seems we have a number of mutual acquaintances, Ms. Fields. Odd that we haven’t met before.”

“Yes, isn’t it?” She gave him a small, noncommittal smile. “But, then, as an agent, I prefer staying in the background. You met Clarissa DeBasse.”

“Yes, I did.” So they’d play stroll around the bush for a while, he decided, and settled back. “She’s charming. I have to admit, I’d expected someone, let’s say, more eccentric.”

This time A.J.’s smile was both spontaneous and generous. If David had been thinking about her on a personal level, his opinion would have changed. “Clarissa is never quite what one expects. Your project sounds interesting, Mr. Brady, but the details I have are sketchy. I’d like you to tell me just what it is you plan to produce.”

“A documentary on psychic phenomena, or psi, as I’m told it’s called in studies, touching on clairvoyance, parapsychology, ESP, palmistry, telepathy and spiritualism.”

“Séances and haunted houses, Mr. Brady?”

He caught the faint disapproval in her tone and wondered about it. “For someone with a psychic for a client, you sound remarkably cynical.”

“My client doesn’t talk to departed souls or read tea leaves.” A.J. sat back in the chair in a way she knew registered confidence and position. “Miss DeBasse has proved herself many times over to be an extraordinarily sensitive woman. She’s never claimed to have supernatural powers.”

“Supernormal.”

She drew in a quiet breath. “You’ve done your homework. Yes, ‘supernormal’ is the correct term. Clarissa doesn’t believe in overstatements.”

“Which is one of the reasons I want Clarissa DeBasse for my program.”

A.J. noted the easy use of the possessive pronoun. Not the program, but my program. David Brady obviously took his work personally. So much the better, she decided. Then he wouldn’t care to look like a fool. “Go on.”

“I’ve talked to mediums, palmists, entertainers, scientists, parapsychologists and carnival gypsies. You’d be amazed at the range of personalities.”

A.J. stuck her tongue in her cheek. “I’m sure I would.”

Though he noticed her amusement, he let it pass. “They run from the obviously fake to the absolutely sincere. I’ve spoken with heads of parapsychology departments in several well-known institutions. Every one of them mentioned Clarissa’s name.”

“Clarissa’s been generous with herself.” Again he thought he detected slight disapproval. “Particularly in the areas of research and testing.”

And there would be no ten percent there. He decided that explained her attitude. “I intend to show possibilities, ask questions. The audience will come up with its own answers. In the five one-hour segments I have, I’ll have room to touch on everything from cold spots to tarot cards.”

In a gesture she’d thought she’d conquered long ago, she drummed her fingers on the desk. “And where does Miss DeBasse fit in?”

She was his ace in the hole. But he wasn’t ready to play her yet. “Clarissa is a recognizable name. A woman who’s ‘proved herself,’ to use your phrase, to be extraordinarily sensitive. Then there’s the Van Camp case.”

Frowning, A.J. picked up a pencil and began to run it through her fingers. “That was ten years ago.”

“The child of a Hollywood star is kidnapped, snatched from his devoted nanny as he plays in the park. The ransom call demands a half a million. The mother’s frantic—the police are baffled. Thirty-six hours pass without a clue as the boy’s parents desperately try to get the cash together. Over the father’s objection, the mother calls a friend, a woman who did her astrological chart and occasionally reads palms. The woman comes, of course, and sits for an hour holding some of the boy’s things—his baseball glove, a stuffed toy, the pajama top he’d worn to bed the night before. At the end of that hour, the woman gives the police a description of the boy’s kidnappers and the exact location of the house where he’s being held. She even describes the room where he’s being held, down to the chipped paint on the ceiling. The boy sleeps in his own bed that night.”

David pulled out a cigarette, lit it and blew out smoke, while A.J. remained silent. “Ten years doesn’t take away that kind of impact, Ms. Fields. The audience will be just as fascinated today as they were then.”

It shouldn’t have made her angry. It was sheer foolishness to respond that way. A.J. continued to sit silently as she worked back the surge of temper. “A great many people call the Van Camp case a fraud. Dredging that up after ten years will only dredge up more criticism.”

“A woman in Clarissa’s position must have to deal with criticism continually.” He saw the flare come into her eyes—fierce and fast.

“That may be, but I have no intention of allowing her to sign a contract that guarantees it. I have no intention of seeing my client on a televised trial.”

“Hold it.” He had a temper of his own and could respect hers—if he understood it. “Clarissa goes on trial every time she’s in the public eye. If her abilities can’t stand up to cameras and questions, she shouldn’t be doing what she does. As her agent, I’d think you’d have a stronger belief in her competence.”

“My beliefs aren’t your concern.” Intending to toss him and his contract out, A.J. started to rise, when the phone interrupted her. With an indistinguishable oath, she lifted the receiver. “No calls, Diane. No—oh.” A.J. set her teeth and composed herself. “Yes, put her on.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to bother you at work, dear.”

“That’s all right. I’m in a meeting, so—”

“Oh, yes, I know.” Clarissa’s calm, apologetic voice came quietly in her ear. “With that nice David Brady.”

“That’s a matter of opinion.”

“I had a feeling you wouldn’t hit it off the first time.” Clarissa sighed and stroked her cat. “I’ve been giving that contract business a great deal of thought.” She didn’t mention the dream, knowing her agent wouldn’t want to hear it. “I’ve decided I want to sign it right away. Now, now, I know what you’re going to say,” she continued before A.J. could say a word. “You’re the agent—you handle the business. You do whatever you think best about clauses and such, but I want to do this program.”

A.J. recognized the tone. Clarissa had a feeling. There was never any arguing with Clarissa’s feelings. “We need to talk about this.”

“Of course, dear, all you like. You and David iron out the details. You’re so good at that. I’ll leave all the terms up to you, but I will sign the contract.”

With David sitting across from her, A.J. couldn’t take the satisfaction of accepting defeat by kicking her desk. “All right. But I think you should know I have feelings of my own.”

“Of course you do. Come to dinner tonight.”

She nearly smiled. Clarissa loved to feed you to smooth things over. Pity she was such a dreadful cook. “I can’t. I have a dinner appointment.”

“Tomorrow.”

“All right. I’ll see you then.”

After hanging up, A.J. took a deep breath and faced David again. “I’m sorry for the interruption.”

“No problem.”

“As there’s nothing specific in the contract regarding the Van Camp case, including that in the program would be strictly up to Miss DeBasse.”

“Of course. I’ve already spoken to her about it.” A.J. very calmly, very deliberately bit her tongue. “I see. There’s also nothing specific about Miss DeBasse’s position in the documentary. That will have to be altered.”

“I’m sure we can work that out.” So she was going to sign, David mused, and listened to a few other minor changes A.J. requested. Before the phone rang, she’d been ready to pitch him out. He’d seen it in her eyes. He held back a smile as they negotiated another minor point. He was no clairvoyant, but he would bet his grant that Clarissa DeBasse had been on the other end of that phone. A.J. Fields had been caught right in the middle. Best place for agents, he thought, and settled back.

“We’ll redraft the contract and have it to you tomorrow.”

Everybody’s in a hurry, she thought, and settled back herself. “Then I’m sure we can do business, Mr. Brady, if we can settle one more point.”

“Which is?”

“Miss DeBasse’s fee.” A.J. flipped back the contract and adjusted the oversize glasses she wore for reading. “I’m afraid this is much less than Miss DeBasse is accustomed to accepting. We’ll need another twenty percent.”

David lifted a brow. He’d been expecting something along these lines, but he’d expected it sooner. Obviously A.J. Fields hadn’t become one of the top in her profession by doing the expected. “You understand we’re working in public television. Our budget can’t compete with network. As producer, I can offer another five percent, but twenty is out of reach.”

“And five is inadequate.” A.J. slipped off her glasses and dangled them by an earpiece. Her eyes seemed larger, richer, without them. “I understand public television, Mr. Brady, and I understand your grant.” She gave him a charming smile. “Fifteen percent.”

Typical agent, he thought, not so much annoyed as fatalistic. She wanted ten, and ten was precisely what his budget would allow. Still, there was a game to be played. “Miss DeBasse is already being paid more than anyone else on contract.”

“You’re willing to do that because she’ll be your biggest draw. I also understand ratings.”

“Seven.”

“Twelve.”

“Ten.”

“Done.” A.J. rose. Normally the deal would have left her fully satisfied. Because her temper wasn’t completely under control it was difficult to appreciate the fact that she’d gotten exactly what she’d intended to get. “I’ll look for the revised contracts.”

“I’ll send them by messenger tomorrow afternoon. That phone call…” He paused as he rose. “You wouldn’t be dealing with me without it, would you?”

She studied him a moment and cursed him for being sharp, intelligent and intuitive. All the things she needed for her client. “No, I wouldn’t.”

“Be sure to thank Clarissa for me.” With a smile smug enough to bring her temper back to boil he offered his hand.

“Goodbye, Mr….” When their hands met this time, her voice died. Feelings ran into her with the impact of a slap, leaving her weak and breathless. Apprehension, desire, fury and delight rolled through her at the touch of flesh to flesh. She had only a moment to berate herself for allowing temper to open the door.

“Ms. Fields?” She was staring at him, through him, as though he were an apparition just risen from the floorboards. In his, her hand was limp and icy. Automatically David took her arm. If he’d ever seen a woman about to faint, he was seeing one now. “You’d better sit down.”

“What?” Though shaken, A.J. willed herself back. “No, no, I’m fine. I’m sorry, I must have been thinking of something else.” But as she spoke, she broke all contact with him and stepped back. “Too much coffee, too little sleep.” And stay away from me, she said desperately to herself as she leaned back on the desk. Just stay away. “I’m glad we could do business, Mr. Brady. I’ll pass everything along to my client.”

Her color was back, her eyes were clear. Still David hesitated. A moment before she’d looked fragile enough to crumble in his hands. “Sit down.”

“I beg your—”

“Damn it, sit.” He took her by the elbow and nudged her into a chair. “Your hands are shaking.” Before she could do anything about it, he was kneeling in front of her. “I’d advise canceling that dinner appointment and getting a good night’s sleep.”

She curled her hands together on her lap to keep him from touching her again. “There’s no reason for you to be concerned.”

“I generally take a personal interest when a woman all but faints at my feet.”

The sarcastic tone settled the flutters in her stomach. “Oh, I’m sure you do.” But then he took her face in his hand and had her jerking. “Stop that.”

Her skin was as soft as it looked, but he would keep that thought for later. “Purely a clinical touch, Ms. Fields. You’re not my type.”

Her eyes chilled. “Where do I give thanks?”

He wondered why the cool outrage in her eyes made him want to laugh. To laugh, and to taste her. “Very good,” he murmured, and straightened. “Lay off the coffee,” he advised, and left her alone before he did something ridiculous.

And alone, A.J. brought her knees up to her chest and pressed her face to them. What was she going to do now? she demanded as she tried to squeeze herself into a ball. What in God’s name was she going to do?

2

A.J. seriously considered stopping for a hamburger before going on to dinner at Clarissa’s. She didn’t have the heart for it. Besides, if she was hungry enough she would be able to make a decent showing out of actually eating whatever Clarissa prepared.

With the sunroof open, she sat back and tried to enjoy the forty-minute drive from her office to the suburbs. Beside her was a slim leather portfolio that held the contracts David Brady’s office had delivered, as promised. Since the changes she’d requested had been made, she couldn’t grumble. There was absolutely no substantial reason for her to object to the deal, or to her client working with Brady. All she had was a feeling. She’d been working on that since the previous afternoon.

It had been overwork, she told herself. She hadn’t felt anything but a quick, momentary dizziness because she’d stood so fast. She hadn’t felt anything for or about David Brady.

But she had. A.J. cursed herself for the next ten miles before she brought herself under control.

She couldn’t afford to be the least bit upset when she arrived in Newport Beach. There was no hiding such things from a woman like Clarissa DeBasse. She would have to be able to discuss not only the contract terms, but David Brady himself with complete objectivity or Clarissa would home in like radar.

For the next ten miles she considered stopping at a phone booth and begging off. She didn’t have the heart for that, either.

Relax, A.J. ordered herself, and tried to imagine she was home in her apartment, doing long, soothing yoga exercises. It helped, and as the tension in her muscles eased, she turned up the radio. She kept it high until she turned the engine off in front of the tidy suburban home she’d helped pick out.

A.J. always felt a sense of self-satisfaction as she strolled up the walk. The house suited Clarissa, with its neat green lawn and pretty white shutters. It was true that with the success of her books and public appearances Clarissa could afford a house twice as big in Beverly Hills. But nothing would fit her as comfortably as this tidy brick ranch.

Shifting the brown bag that held wine under her arm, A.J. pushed open the door she knew was rarely locked. “Hello! I’m a six-foot-two, three-hundred-and-twenty-pound burglar come to steal all your jewelry. Care to give me a hand?”

“Oh, did I forget to lock it again?” Clarissa came bustling out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on an already smeared and splattered apron. Her cheeks were flushed from the heat of the stove, her lips already curved in greeting.

“Yes, you forgot to lock it again.” Even with an armload of wine, A.J. managed to hug her. Then she kissed both cheeks as she tried to unobtrusively sniff out what was going on in the kitchen.

“It’s meat loaf,” Clarissa told her. “I got a new recipe.”

“Oh.” A.J. might have managed the smile if she hadn’t remembered the last meat loaf so clearly. Instead she concentrated on the woman. “You look wonderful. I’d swear you were running into L.A. and sneaking into Elizabeth Arden’s once a week.”

“Oh, I can’t be bothered with all that. It’s too much worrying that causes lines and sags, anyway. You should remember that.”

“So I look like a hag, do I?” A.J. dropped her portfolio on the table and stepped out of her shoes.

“You know I didn’t mean that, but I can tell you’re worried about something.”

“Dinner,” A.J. told her, evading. “I only had time for a half a sandwich at lunch.”

“There, I’ve told you a dozen times you don’t eat properly. Come into the kitchen. I’m sure everything’s about ready.”

Satisfied that she’d distracted Clarissa, A.J. started to follow.

“Then you can tell me what’s really bothering you.”

“Doesn’t miss a trick,” A.J. muttered as the doorbell rang.

“Get that for me, will you?” Clarissa cast an anxious glance at the kitchen. “I really should check the brussels sprouts.”

“Brussels sprouts?” A.J. could only grimace as Clarissa disappeared into the kitchen. “Bad enough I have to eat the meat loaf, but brussels sprouts. I should have had the hamburger.” When she opened the door her brows were already lowered.

“You look thrilled to see me.”

One hand still on the knob, she stared at David. “What are you doing here?”

“Having dinner.” Without waiting for an invitation, David stepped forward and stood with her in the open doorway. “You’re tall. Even without your shoes.”

A.J. closed the door with a quiet snap. “Clarissa didn’t explain this was a business dinner.”

“I think she considers it purely social.” He hadn’t yet figured out why he hadn’t gotten the very professional Ms. Fields out of his mind. Maybe he’d get some answers before the evening was up. “Why don’t we think of it that way—A.J.?”

Manners had been ingrained in her by a quietly determined mother. Trapped, A.J. nodded. “All right, David. I hope you enjoy living dangerously.”

“I beg your pardon?”

She couldn’t resist the smile. “We’re having meat loaf.” She took the bottle of champagne he held and examined the label. “This should help. Did you happen to have a big lunch?”

There was a light in her eyes he’d never noticed before. It was a laugh, a joke, and very appealing. “What are you getting at?”

She patted his shoulder. “Sometimes it’s best to go into these things unprepared. Sit down and I’ll fix you a drink.”

“Aurora.”

“Yes?” A.J. answered automatically before she bit her tongue.

“Aurora?” David repeated, experimenting with the way it sounded in his voice. “That’s what the A stands for?”

When A.J. turned to him her eyes were narrowed. “If just one person in the business calls me that, I’ll know exactly where they got it from. You’ll pay.”

He ran a finger down the side of his nose, but didn’t quite hide the smile. “I never heard a thing.”

“Aurora, was that—” Clarissa stopped in the kitchen doorway and beamed. “Yes, it was David. How lovely.” She studied both of them, standing shoulder to shoulder just inside her front door. For the instant she concentrated, the aura around them was very clear and very bright. “Yes, how lovely,” she repeated. “I’m so glad you came.”

“I appreciate your asking me.” Finding Clarissa as charming as he had the first time, David crossed to her. He took her hand, but this time brought it to his lips. Pleasure flushed her cheeks.

“Champagne, how nice. We’ll open it after I sign the contracts.” She glanced over his shoulder to see A.J. frowning. “Why don’t you fix yourself and David a drink, dear? I won’t be much longer.”

A.J. thought of the contracts in her portfolio, and of her own doubts. Then she gave in. Clarissa would do precisely what Clarissa wanted to do. In order to protect her, she had to stop fighting it and accept. “I can guarantee the vodka—I bought it myself.”

“Fine—on the rocks.” David waited while she went to a cabinet and took out a decanter and glasses.

“She remembered the ice,” A.J. said, surprised when she opened the brass bucket and found it full.

“You seem to know Clarissa very well.”

“I do.” A.J. poured two glasses, then turned. “She’s much more than simply a client to me, David. That’s why I’m concerned about this program.”

He walked to her to take the glass. Strange, he thought, you only noticed her scent when you stood close, very close. He wondered if she used such a light touch to draw men to her or to block their way. “Why the concern?”

If they were going to deal with each other, honesty might help. A.J. glanced toward the kitchen and kept her voice low. “Clarissa has a tendency to be very open with certain people. Too open. She can expose too much of herself, and leave herself vulnerable to all manner of complications.”

“Are you protecting her from me?” A.J. sipped from her drink. “I’m trying to decide if I should.”

“I like her.” He reached out to twine a lock of A.J.’s hair around his finger, before either of them realized his intention. He dropped his hand again so quickly she didn’t have the chance to demand it. “She’s a very likable woman,” David continued as he turned to wander around the room. He wasn’t a man to touch a business associate, especially one he barely knew, in so casual a manner. To give himself distance, he walked to the window to watch birds flutter around a feeder in the side yard. The cat was out there, he noticed, sublimely disinterested as it sunned itself in a last patch of sunlight.

A.J. waited until she was certain her voice would be properly calm and professional. “I appreciate that, but your project comes first, I imagine. You want a good show, and you’ll do whatever it takes to produce one.”

“That’s right.” The problem was, he decided, that she wasn’t as tailored and streamlined as she’d been the day before. Her blouse was soft and silky, the color of poppies. If she’d had a jacket to match the snug white skirt, she’d left it in her car. She was shoeless and her hair had been tossed by the wind. He took another drink. She still wasn’t his type. “But I don’t believe I have a reputation for exploiting people in order to get it. I do my job, A.J., and expect the same from anyone who works with me.”

“Fair enough.” She finished the unwanted drink. “My job is to protect Clarissa in every way.”

“I don’t see that we have a problem.”

“There now, everything’s ready.” Clarissa came out to see her guests not shoulder to shoulder, but with the entire room between them. Sensitive to mood, she felt the tension, confusion and distrust. Quite normal, she decided, for two stubborn, self-willed people on opposing ends. She wondered how long it would take them to admit attraction, let alone accept it. “I hope you’re both hungry.”

A.J. set down her empty glass with an easy smile. “David tells me he’s starved. You’ll have to give him an extra portion.”

“Wonderful.” Delighted, she led the way into the dining area. “I love to eat by candlelight, don’t you?” She had a pair of candles burning on the table, and another half-dozen tapers on the sideboard. A.J. decided the romantic light definitely helped the looks of the meat loaf. “Aurora brought the wine, so I’m sure it’s lovely. You pour, David, and I’ll serve.”

“It looks wonderful,” he told her, and wondered why A.J. muffled a chuckle.

“Thank you. Are you from California originally, David?” Clarissa asked as she handed A.J. a platter.

“No, Washington State.” He tipped Beaujolais into Clarissa’s glass.

“Beautiful country.” She handed Aurora a heaping bowl of mashed potatoes. “But so cold.”

He could remember the long, windy winters with some nostalgia. “I didn’t have any trouble acclimating to L.A.”

“I grew up in the East and came out here with my husband nearly thirty years ago. In the fall I’m still the tiniest bit homesick for Vermont. You haven’t taken any vegetables, Aurora. You know how I worry that you don’t eat properly.”

A.J. added brussels sprouts to her plate and hoped she’d be able to ignore them. “You should take a trip back this year,” A.J. told Clarissa. One bite of the meat loaf was enough. She reached for the wine.

“I think about it. Do you have any family, David?”

He’d just had his first experience with Clarissa’s cooking and hadn’t recovered. He wondered what recipe she’d come across that called for leather. “Excuse me?”

“Any family?”

“Yes.” He glanced at A.J. and saw the knowing smirk. “Two brothers and a sister scattered around Washington and Oregon.”

“I came from a big family myself. I thoroughly enjoyed my childhood.” Reaching out, she patted A.J.’s hand. “Aurora was an only child.”

With a laugh A.J. gave Clarissa’s hand a quick squeeze. “And I thoroughly enjoyed my childhood.” Because she saw David politely making his way through a hill of lumpy potatoes, she felt a little tug on her conscience. A.J. waited until it passed. “What made you choose documentaries, David?”

“I’d always been fascinated by little films.” Picking up the salt, he used it liberally. “With a documentary, the plot’s already there, but it’s up to you to come up with the angles, to find a way to present it to an audience and make them care while they’re being entertained.”

“Isn’t it more of a learning experience?”

“I’m not a teacher.” Bravely he dipped back into the meat loaf. “You can entertain with truth and speculation just as satisfyingly as you can entertain with fiction.”

Somehow watching him struggle with the meal made it more palatable for her. “No urge to produce the big film?”

“I like television,” he said easily, and reached for the wine. They were all going to need it. “I happen to think there’s too much pap and not enough substance.”

A.J.’s brow lifted, to disappear under a thin fringe of bangs. “Pap?”

“Unfortunately network television’s rife with it. Shows like Empire, for instance, or ItTakesTwo.”

“Really.” A.J. leaned forward. “Empire has been a top-rated show for four years.” She didn’t add that it was a personal favorite.

“My point exactly. If a show like that retains consistently high ratings—a show that relies on steam, glitter and contrivance—it proves that the audience is being fed a steady stream of garbage.”

“Not everyone feels a show has to be educational or ‘good’ for it to be quality. The problem with public television is that it has its nose up in the air so often the average American ignores it. After working eight hours, fighting traffic, coping with children and dealing with car repair bills, a person’s entitled to relax.”

“Absolutely.” Amazing, he thought, how lovely she became when you lit a little fire under her. Maybe she was a woman who needed conflict in her life. “But that same person doesn’t have to shut off his or her intelligence to be entertained. That’s called escapism.”

“I’m afraid I don’t watch enough television to see the difference,” Clarissa commented, pleased to see her guests clearing their plates. “But don’t you represent that lovely woman who plays on Empire?”

“Audrey Cummings.” A.J. slipped her fingers under the cup of her wineglass and swirled it lightly. “A very accomplished actress, who’s also played Shakespeare. We’ve just made a deal to have her take the role of Maggie in a remake of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” The success of that deal was still sweet. Sipping her wine, she tilted her head at David. “For a play that deals in a lot of steam and sweat, it’s amazing what longevity it’s had. We can’t claim it’s a Verdi opera, can we?”

“There’s more to public television than Verdi.” He’d touched a nerve, he realized. But, then, so had she. “I don’t suppose you caught the profile on Taylor Brooks? I thought it was one of the most detailed and informative on a rock star I’d ever seen.” He picked up his wine in a half toast. “You don’t represent him, too, do you?”

“No.” She decided to play it to the hilt. “We dated casually a couple of years ago. I have a rule about keeping business and personal relationships separated.”

“Wise.” He lifted his wine and sipped. “Very wise.”

“Unlike you, I have no prejudices when it comes to television. If I did, you’d hardly be signing one of my top clients.”

“More meat loaf?” Clarissa asked.

“I couldn’t eat another bite.” A.J. smiled at David. “Perhaps David would like more.”

“As much as I appreciate the home cooking, I can’t.” He tried not to register too much relief as he stood. “Let me help you clear up.”

“Oh, no.” Rising, Clarissa brushed his offer aside. “It relaxes me. Aurora, I think David was just a bit disappointed with me the first time we met. Why don’t you show him my collection?”

“All right.” Picking up her wineglass, A.J. gestured to him to follow. “You’ve scored points,” she commented. “Clarissa doesn’t show her collection to everyone.”

“I’m flattered.” But he took her by the elbow to stop her as they started down a narrow hallway. “You’d prefer it if I kept things strictly business with Clarissa.”

A.J. lifted the glass to her lips and watched him over the rim. She’d prefer, for reasons she couldn’t name, that he stayed fifty miles from Clarissa. And double that from her. “Clarissa chooses her own friends.”

“And you make damn sure they don’t take advantage of her.”

“Exactly. This way.” Turning, she walked to a door on the left and pushed it open. “It’d be more effective by candlelight, even more with a full moon, but we’ll have to make do.” A.J. flicked on the light and stepped out of his view.

It was an average-size room, suitable to a modern ranch house. Here, the windows were heavily draped to block the view of the yard—or to block the view inside. It wasn’t difficult to see why Clarissa would use the veil to discourage the curious. The room belonged in a tower—or a dungeon.

Here was the crystal ball he’d expected. Unable to resist, David crossed to a tall, round-topped stand to examine it. The glass was smooth and perfect, reflecting only the faintest hint of the deep blue cloth beneath it. Tarot cards, obviously old and well used, were displayed in a locked case. At a closer look he saw they’d been hand painted. A bookshelf held everything from voodoo to telekinesis. On the shelf with them was a candle in the shape of a tall, slender woman with arms lifted to the sky.

A Ouija board was set out on a table carved with pentagrams. One wall was lined with masks of pottery, ceramic, wood, even papier-mâché. There were dowsing rods and pendulums. A glass cabinet held pyramids of varying sizes. There was more—an Indian rattle, worn and fragile with age, Oriental worry beads in jet, others in amethyst.

“More what you expected?” A.J. asked after a moment.

“No.” He picked up another crystal, this one small enough to rest in the palm of his hand. “I stopped expecting this after the first five minutes.”

It was the right thing for him to say. A.J. sipped her wine again and tried not to be too pleased. “It’s just a hobby with Clarissa, collecting the obvious trappings of the trade.”

“She doesn’t use them?”

“A hobby only. Actually, it started a long time ago. A friend found those tarot cards in a little shop in England and gave them to her. After that, things snowballed.”

The crystal was cool and smooth in his hand as he studied her. “You don’t approve?”

A.J. merely shrugged her shoulders. “I wouldn’t if she took it seriously.”

“Have you ever tried this?” He indicated the Ouija board.

“No.”

It was a lie. He wasn’t sure why she told it, or why he was certain of it. “So you don’t believe in any of this.”

“I believe in Clarissa. The rest of this is just showmanship.”

Still, he was intrigued with it, intrigued with the fascination it held for people through the ages. “You’ve never been tempted to ask her to look in the crystal for you?”

“Clarissa doesn’t need the crystal, and she doesn’t tell the future.”

He glanced into the clear glass in his hand. “Odd, you’d think if she can do the other things she’s reported to be able to do, she could do that.”

“I didn’t say she couldn’t—I said she doesn’t.”

David looked up from the crystal again. “Explain.”

“Clarissa feels very strongly about destiny, and the tampering with it. She’s refused, even for outrageous fees, to predict.”

“But you’re saying she could.”

“I’m saying she chooses not to. Clarissa considers her gift a responsibility. Rather than misuse it in any way, she’d push it out of her life.”

“Push it out.” He set the crystal down. “Do you mean she—a psychic—could just refuse to be one. Just block out the…let’s say power, for lack of a better term. Just turn it off?”

Her fingers had dampened on the glass. A.J. casually switched it to her other hand. “To a large extent, yes. You have to be open to it. You’re a receptacle, a transmitter—the extent to which you receive or transmit depends on you.”

“You seem to know a great deal about it.”

He was sharp, she remembered abruptly. Very sharp. A.J. smiled deliberately and moved her shoulders again. “I know a great deal about Clarissa. If you spend any amount of time with her over the next couple of months, you’ll know quite a bit yourself.”

David walked to her. He watched her carefully as he took the wineglass from her and sipped himself. It was warm now and seemed more potent. “Why do I get the impression that you’re uncomfortable in this room. Or is it that you’re uncomfortable with me?”

“Your intuition’s missing the mark. If you’d like, Clarissa can give you a few exercises to sharpen it.”

“Your palms are damp.” He took her hand, then ran his fingers down to the wrist. “Your pulse is fast. I don’t need intuition to know that.”

It was important—vital—that she keep calm. She met his eyes levelly and hoped she managed to look amused. “That probably has more to do with the meat loaf.”

“The first time we met you had a very strong, very strange reaction to me.”

She hadn’t forgotten. It had given her a very restless night. “I explained—”

“I didn’t buy it,” he interrupted. “I still don’t. That might be because I found myself doing a lot of thinking about you.”

She’d taught herself to hold her ground. She’d had to. A.J. made one last attempt to do so now, though his eyes seemed much too quiet and intrusive, his voice too firm. She took her wineglass back from him and drained it. She learned it was a mistake, because she could taste him as well as the wine. “David, try to remember I’m not your type.” Her voice was cool and faintly cutting. If she’d thought about it a few seconds longer, she would have realized it was the wrong tactic.

“No, you’re not.” His hand cupped her nape, then slid up into her hair. “But what the hell.”

When he leaned closer, A.J. saw two clear-cut choices. She could struggle away and run for cover, or she could meet him with absolute indifference. Because the second choice seemed the stronger, she went with it. It was her next mistake.

He knew how to tempt a woman. How to coax. When his lips lowered to hers they barely touched, while his hand continued to stroke her neck and hair. A.J.’s grip on the wineglass tightened, but she didn’t move, not forward, not away. His lips skimmed hers again, with just the hint of his tongue. The breath she’d been holding shuddered out.

As her eyes began to close, as her bones began to soften, he moved away from her mouth to trace his lips over her jaw. Neither of them noticed when the wineglass slipped out of her hand to land on the carpet.

He’d been right about how close you had to get to be tempted by her scent. It was strong and dark and private, as though it came through her pores to hover on her skin. As he brought his lips back to hers, he realized it wasn’t something he’d forget. Nor was she.

This time her lips were parted, ready, willing. Still he moved slowly, more for his own sake now. This wasn’t the cool man-crusher he’d expected, but a warm, soft woman who could draw you in with vulnerability alone. He needed time to adjust, time to think. When he backed away he still hadn’t touched her, and had given her only the merest hint of a kiss. They were both shaken.

“Maybe the reaction wasn’t so strange after all, Aurora,” he murmured. “Not for either of us.”

Her body was on fire; it was icy; it was weak. She couldn’t allow her mind to follow suit. Drawing all her reserves of strength, A.J. straightened. “If we’re going to be doing business—”

“And we are.”

She let out a long, patient breath at the interruption. “Then you’d better understand the ground rules. I don’t sleep around, not with clients, not with associates.”

It pleased him. He wasn’t willing to ask himself why. “Narrows the field, doesn’t it?”

“That’s my business,” she shot back. “My personal life is entirely separate from my profession.”

“Hard to do in this town, but admirable. However…” He couldn’t resist reaching up to play with a stray strand of hair at her ear. “I didn’t ask you to sleep with me.”

She caught his hand by the wrist to push it away. It both surprised and pleased her to discover his pulse wasn’t any steadier than hers. “Forewarned, you won’t embarrass yourself by doing so and being rejected.”

“Do you think I would?” He brought his hand back up to stroke a finger down her cheek. “Embarrass myself.”

“Stop it.”

He shook his head and studied her face again. Attractive, yes. Not beautiful, hardly glamorous. Too cool, too stubborn. So why was he already imagining her naked and wrapped around him? “What is it between us?”

“Animosity.”

He grinned, abruptly and completely charming her. She could have murdered him for it. “Maybe part, but even that’s too strong for such a short association. A minute ago I was wondering what it would be like to make love with you. Believe it or not, I don’t do that with every woman I meet.”

Her palms were damp again. “Am I supposed to be flattered?”

“No. I just figure we’ll deal better together if we understand each other.”

The need to turn and run was desperate. Too desperate. A.J. held her ground. “Understand this. I represent Clarissa DeBasse. I’ll look out for her interests, her welfare. If you try to do anything detrimental to her professionally or personally, I’ll cut you off at the knees. Other than that, we really don’t have anything to worry about.”

“Time will tell.”

For the first time she took a step away from him. A.J. didn’t consider it a retreat as she walked over and put her hand on the light switch. “I have a breakfast meeting in the morning. Let’s get the contracts signed, Brady, so we can both do our jobs.”

3

Preproduction meetings generally left his staff frazzled and out of sorts. David thrived on them. Lists of figures that insisted on being balanced appealed to the practical side of him. Translating those figures into lights, sets and props challenged his creativity. If he hadn’t enjoyed finding ways to merge the two, he never would have chosen to be a producer.

He was a man who had a reputation for knowing his own mind and altering circumstances to suit it. The reputation permeated his professional life and filtered through to the personal. As a producer he was tough and, according to many directors, not always fair. As a man he was generous and, according to many women, not always warm.

David would give a director creative freedom, but only to a point. When the creative freedom tempted the director to veer from David’s overall view of a project, he stopped him dead. He would discuss, listen and at times compromise. An astute director would realize that the compromise hadn’t affected the producer’s wishes in the least.

In a relationship he would give a woman an easy, attentive companion. If a woman preferred roses, there would be roses. If she enjoyed rides in the country, there would be rides in the country. But if she attempted to get beneath the skin, he stopped her dead. He would discuss, listen and at times compromise. An astute woman would realize the compromise hadn’t affected the man in the least.

Directors would call him tough, but would grudgingly admit they would work with him again. Women would call him cool, but would smile when they heard his voice over the phone.

Neither of these things came to him through carefully thought-out strategy, but simply because he was a man who was careful with his private thoughts—and private needs.

By the time the preproduction meetings were over, the location set and the format gelled, David was anxious for results. He’d picked his team individually, down to the last technician. Because he’d developed a personal interest in Clarissa DeBasse, he decided to begin with her. His choice, he was certain, had nothing to do with her agent.

His initial desire to have her interviewed in her own home was cut off quickly by a brief memo from A. J. Fields. Miss DeBasse was entitled to her privacy. Period. Unwilling to be hampered by a technicality, David arranged for the studio to be decorated in precisely the same homey, suburban atmosphere. He’d have her interviewed there by veteran journalist Alex Marshall. David wanted to thread credibility through speculation. A man of Marshall’s reputation could do it for him.

David kept in the background and let his crew take over. He’d had problems with this director before, but both projects they’d collaborated on had won awards. The end product, to David, was the bottom line.

“Put a filter on that light,” the director ordered. “We may have to look like we’re sitting in the furniture department in the mall, but I want atmosphere. Alex, if you’d run through your intro, I’d like to get a fix on the angle.”

“Fine.” Reluctantly Alex tapped out his two-dollar cigar and went to work. David checked his watch. Clarissa was late, but not late enough to cause alarm yet. In another ten minutes he’d have an assistant give her a call. He watched Alex run through the intro flawlessly, then wait while the director fussed with the lights. Deciding he wasn’t needed at the moment, David opted to make the call himself. Only he’d make it to A.J.’s office. No harm in giving her a hard time, he thought as he pushed through the studio doors. She seemed to be the better for it.

“Oh, David, I do apologize.”

He stopped as Clarissa hurried down the hallway. She wasn’t anyone’s aunt today, he thought, as she reached out to take his hands. Her hair was swept dramatically back, making her look both flamboyant and years younger. There was a necklace of silver links around her neck that held an amethyst the size of his thumb. Her makeup was artfully applied to accent clear blue eyes, just as her dress, deep and rich, accented them. This wasn’t the woman who’d fed him meat loaf.

“Clarissa, you look wonderful.”

“Thank you. I’m afraid I didn’t have much time to prepare. I got the days mixed, you see, and was right in the middle of weeding my petunias when Aurora came to pick me up.”

He caught himself looking over her shoulder and down the hall. “She’s here?”

“She’s parking the car.” Clarissa glanced back over her shoulder with a sigh. “I know I’m a trial to her, always have been.”

“She doesn’t seem to feel that way.”

“No, she doesn’t. Aurora’s so generous.”

He’d reserve judgment on that one. “Are you ready, or would you like some coffee or tea first?”

“No, no, I don’t like any stimulants when I’m working. They tend to cloud things.” Their hands were still linked when her gaze fastened on his. “You’re a bit restless, David.”

She said it the moment he’d looked back, and seen A.J. coming down the hall. “I’m always edgy on a shoot,” he said absently. Why was it he hadn’t noticed how she walked before? Fast and fluid.

“That’s not it,” Clarissa commented, and patted his hand. “But I won’t invade your privacy. Ah, here’s Aurora. Should we start?”

“We already have,” he murmured, still watching A.J.

“Good morning, David. I hope we haven’t thrown you off schedule.”

She was as sleek and professional as she’d been the first time he’d seen her. Why was it now that he noticed small details? The collar of her blouse rose high on what he knew was a long, slender neck. Her mouth was unpainted. He wanted to take a step closer to see if she wore the same scent. Instead he took Clarissa’s arm. “Not at all. I take it you want to watch.”

“Of course.”

“Just inside here, Clarissa.” He pushed open the door. “I’d like to introduce you to your director, Sam Cauldwell. Sam.” It didn’t appear to bother David that he was interrupting his director. A.J. noticed that he stood where he was and waited for Cauldwell to come to him. She could hardly censure him for it when she’d have used the same technique herself. “This is Clarissa DeBasse.”

Cauldwell stemmed obvious impatience to take her hand. “A pleasure, Miss DeBasse. I read both your books to give myself a feel for your segment of the program.”

“That’s very kind of you. I hope you enjoyed them.”

“I don’t know if ‘enjoyed’ is the right word.” He gave a quick shake of his head. “They certainly gave me something to think about.”

“Miss DeBasse is ready to start whenever you’re set.”

“Great. Would you mind taking a seat over here. We’ll take a voice test and recheck the lighting.”

As Cauldwell led her away, David saw A.J. watching him like a hawk. “You make a habit of hovering over your clients, A.J.?”

Satisfied that Clarissa was all right for the moment, A.J. turned to him. “Yes. Just the way I imagine you hover over your directors.”

“All in a day’s work, right? You can get a better view from over here.”

“Thanks.” She moved with him to the left of the studio, watching as Clarissa was introduced to Alex Marshall. The veteran newscaster was tall, lean and distinguished. Twenty-five years in the game had etched a few lines on his face, but the gray threading through his hair contrasted nicely with his deep tan. “A wise choice for your narrator,” she commented.

“The face America trusts.”

“There’s that, of course. Also, I can’t imagine him putting up with any nonsense. Bring in a palm reader from Sunset Boulevard and he’ll make her look like a fool regardless of the script.”

“That’s right.” A.J. sent him an even look. “He won’t make a fool out of Clarissa.”

He gave her a slow, acknowledging nod. “That’s what I’m counting on. I called your office last week.”

“Yes, I know.” A.J. saw Clarissa laugh at something Alex said. “Didn’t my assistant get back to you?”

“I didn’t want to talk to your assistant.”

“I’ve been tied up. You’ve very nearly recreated Clarissa’s living room, haven’t you?”

“That’s the idea. You’re trying to avoid me, A.J.” He shifted just enough to block her view, so that she was forced to look at him. Because he’d annoyed her, she made the look thorough, starting at his shoes, worn canvas high-tops, up the casual pleated slacks to the open collar of his shirt before she settled on his face.

“I’d hoped you catch on.”

“And you might succeed at it.” He ran his finger down her lapel, over a pin of a half-moon. “But she’s going to get in the way.” He glanced over his shoulder at Clarissa.

She schooled herself for this, lectured herself and rehearsed the right responses. Somehow it wasn’t as easy as she’d imagined. “David, you don’t seem to be one of those men who are attracted to rejection.”

“No.” His thumb continued to move over the pin as he looked back at her. “You don’t seem to be one of those women who pretend disinterest to attract.”

“I don’t pretend anything.” She looked directly into his eyes, determined not a flicker of her own unease would show. “I am disinterested. And you’re standing in my way.”

“That’s something that might get to be a habit.” But he moved aside.

It took nearly another forty-five minutes of discussion, changes and technical fine-tuning before they were ready to shoot. Because she was relieved David was busy elsewhere, A.J. waited patiently. Which meant she only checked her watch half a dozen times. Clarissa sat easily on the sofa and sipped water. But whenever she glanced up and looked in her direction, A.J. was glad she’d decided to come.

The shoot began well enough. Clarissa sat with Alex on the sofa. He asked questions; she answered. They touched on clairvoyance, precognition, Clarissa’s interest in astrology. Clarissa had a knack for taking long, confusing phrases and making them simple, understandable. One of the reasons she was often in demand on the lecture circuit was her ability to take the mysteries of psi and relate them to the average person. It was one area A.J. could be certain Clarissa DeBasse would handle herself. Relaxing, she took a piece of hard candy out of her briefcase in lieu of lunch.

They shot, reshot, altered angles and repeated themselves for the camera. Hours passed, but A.J. was content. Quality was the order of day. She wanted nothing less for Clarissa.

Then they brought out the cards.

She’d nearly taken a step forward, when the slightest signal from Clarissa had her fuming and staying where she was. She hated this, and always had.

“Problem?”

She hadn’t realized he’d come up beside her. A.J. sent David a killing look before she riveted her attention on the set again. “We didn’t discuss anything like this.”

“The cards?” Surprised by her response, David, too, watched the set. “We cleared it with Clarissa.”

A.J. set her teeth. “Next time, Brady, clear it with me.”

David decided that whatever nasty retort he could make would wait when Alex’s broadcaster’s voice rose rich and clear in the studio. “Miss DeBasse, using cards to test ESP is a rather standard device, isn’t it?”

“A rather limited test, yes. They’re also an aid in testing telepathy.”

“You’ve been involved in testing of this sort before, at Stanford, UCLA, Columbia, Duke, as well as institutions in England.”

“Yes, I have.”

“Would you mind explaining the process?”

“Of course. The cards used in laboratory tests are generally two colors, with perhaps five different shapes. Squares, circles, wavy lines, that sort of thing. Using these, it’s possible to determine chance and what goes beyond chance. That is, with two colors, it’s naturally a fifty-fifty proposition. If a subject hits the colors fifty percent of the time, it’s accepted as chance. If a subject hits sixty percent, then it’s ten percent over chance.”

“It sounds relatively simple.”

“With colors alone, yes. The shapes alter that. With, say, twenty-five cards in a run, the tester is able to determine by the number of hits, or correct answers, how much over chance the subject guessed. If the subject hits fifteen times out of twenty-five, it can be assumed the subject’s ESP abilities are highly tuned.”

“She’s very good,” David murmured.

“Damned right she is.” A.J. folded her arms and tried not to be annoyed. This was Clarissa’s business, and no one knew it better.

“Could you explain how it works—for you, that is?” Alex idly shuffled the pack of cards as he spoke to her. “Do you get a feeling when a card is held up?”

“A picture,” Clarissa corrected. “One gets a picture.”

“Are you saying you get an actual picture of the card?”

“An actual picture can be held in your hand.” She smiled at him patiently. “I’m sure you read a great deal, Mr. Marshall.”

“Yes, I do.”

“When you read, the words, the phrasings make pictures in your head. This is very similar to that.”

“I see.” His doubt was obvious, and to David, the perfect reaction. “That’s imagination.”

“ESP requires a control of the imagination and a sharpening of concentration.”

“Can anyone do this?”

“That’s something that’s still being researched. There are some who feel ESP can be learned. Others believe psychics are born. My own opinion falls in between.”

“Can you explain?”

“I think every one of us has certain talents or abilities, and the degree to which they’re developed and used depends on the individual. It’s possible to block these abilities. It’s more usual, I think, to simply ignore them so that they never come into question.”

“Your abilities have been documented. We’d like to give an impromptu demonstration here, with your cooperation.”

“Of course.”

“This is an ordinary deck of playing cards. One of the crew purchased them this morning, and you haven’t handled them. Is that right?”

“No, I haven’t. I’m not very clever with games.” She smiled, half apologetic, half amused, and delighted the director.

“Now if I pick a card and hold it like this.” Alex pulled one from the middle of the deck and held its back to her. “Can you tell me what it is?”

“No.” Her smile never faded as the director started to signal to stop the tape. “You’ll have to look at the card, Mr. Marshall, think of it, actually try to picture it in your mind.” As the tape continued to roll, Alex nodded and obliged her. “I’m afraid you’re not concentrating very hard, but it’s a red card. That’s better.” She beamed at him. “Nine of diamonds.”

The camera caught the surprise on his face before he turned the card over. Nine of diamonds. He pulled a second card and repeated the process. When they reached the third, Clarissa stopped, frowning.

“You’re trying to confuse me by thinking of a card other than the one in your hand. It blurs things a bit, but the ten of clubs comes through stronger.”

“Fascinating,” Alex murmured as he turned over the ten of clubs. “Really fascinating.”

“I’m afraid this sort of thing is often no more than a parlor game,” Clarissa corrected. “A clever mentalist can do nearly the same thing—in a different way, of course.”

“You’re saying it’s a trick.”

“I’m saying it can be. I’m not good at tricks myself, so I don’t try them, but I can appreciate a good show.”

“You started your career by reading palms.” Alex set down the cards, not entirely sure of himself.

“A long time ago. Technically anyone can read a palm, interpret the lines.” She held hers out to him. “Lines that represent finance, emotion, length of life. A good book out of the library will tell you exactly what to look for and how to find it. A sensitive doesn’t actually read a palm so much as absorb feelings.”

Charmed, but far from sold, Alex held out his. “I don’t quite see how you could absorb feelings by looking at the palm of my hand.”

“You transmit them,” she told him. “Just as you transmit everything else, your hopes, your sorrows, your joys. I can take your palm and at a glance tell you that you communicate well and have a solid financial base, but that would hardly be earth-shattering news. But…” She held her own out to him. “If you don’t mind,” she began, and cupped his hand in hers. “I can look again and say that—” She stopped, blinked and stared at him. “Oh.”

A.J. made a move forward, only to be blocked by David. “Let her be,” he muttered. “This is a documentary, remember. We can’t have it staged and tidy. If she’s uncomfortable with this part of the tape we can cut it.”

“If she’s uncomfortable you will cut it.”

Clarissa’s hand was smooth and firm under Alex’s, but her eyes were wide and stunned. “Should I be nervous?” he asked, only half joking.

“Oh, no.” With a little laugh, she cleared her throat. “No, not at all. You have very strong vibrations, Mr. Marshall.”

“Thank you. I think.”

“You’re a widower, fifteen, sixteen years now. You were a very good husband.” She smiled at him, relaxed again. “You can be proud of that. And a good father.”

“I appreciate that, Miss DeBasse, but again, it’s hardly news.”

She continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “Both your children are settled now, which eases your mind, as it does any parent’s. They never gave you a great deal of worry, though there was a period with your son, during his early twenties, when you had some rough spots. But some people take longer to find their niche, don’t they?”

He wasn’t smiling anymore, but staring at her as intensely as she stared at him. “I suppose.”

“You’re a perfectionist, in your work and in your private life. That made it a little difficult for your son. He couldn’t quite live up to your expectations. You shouldn’t have worried so much, but of course all parents do. Now that he’s going to be a father himself, you’re closer. The idea of grandchildren pleases you. At the same time it makes you think more about the future—your own mortality. But I wonder if you’re wise to be thinking of retiring. You’re in the prime of your life and too used to deadlines and rushing to be content with that fishing boat for very long. Now if you’d—” She stopped herself with a little shake of the head. “I’m sorry. I tend to ramble on when someone interests me. I’m always afraid of getting too personal.”

“Not at all.” He closed his hand into a loose fist. “Miss DeBasse, you’re quite amazing.”

“Cut!” Cauldwell could have gotten down on his knees and kissed Clarissa’s feet. Alex Marshall considering retirement. There hadn’t been so much as a murmur of it on the grapevine. “I want to see the playback in thirty minutes. Alex, thank you. It’s a great start. Miss DeBasse—” He’d have taken her hand again if he hadn’t been a little leery of giving off the wrong vibrations. “You were sensational. I can’t wait to start the next segment with you.”

Before he’d finished thanking her, A.J. was at her side. She knew what would happen, what invariably happened. One of the crew would come up and tell Clarissa about a “funny thing that happened to him.” Then there would be another asking for his palm to be read. Some would be smirking, others would be curious, but inside of ten minutes Clarissa would be surrounded.

“If you’re ready, I’ll drive you home,” A.J. began.

“Now I thought we’d settled that.” Clarissa looked idly around for her purse without any idea where she’d set it. “It’s too far for you to drive all the way to Newport Beach and back again.”

“Just part of the service.” A.J. handed her the purse she’d been holding throughout the shoot.

“Oh, thank you, dear. I couldn’t imagine what I’d done with it. I’ll take a cab.”

“We have a driver for you.” David didn’t have to look at A.J. to know she was steaming. He could all but feel the heat. “We wouldn’t dream of having you take a cab all the way back.”

“That’s very kind.”

“But it won’t be necessary,” A.J. put in.

“No, it won’t.” Smoothly Alex edged in and took Clarissa’s hand. “I’m hoping Miss DeBasse will allow me to drive her home—after she has dinner with me.”

“That would be lovely,” Clarissa told him before A.J. could say a word. “I hope I didn’t embarrass you, Mr. Marshall.”

“Not at all. In fact, I was fascinated.”

“How nice. Thank you for staying with me, dear.” She kissed A.J.’s cheek. “It always puts me at ease. Good night, David.”

“Good night, Clarissa. Alex.” He stood beside A.J. as they linked arms and strolled out of the studio. “A nice-looking couple.”

Before the words were out of his mouth, A.J. turned on him. If it had been possible to grow fangs, she’d have grown them. “You jerk.” She was halfway to the studio doors before he stopped her.

“And what’s eating you?”

If he hadn’t said it with a smile on his face, she might have controlled herself. “I want to see that last fifteen minutes of tape, Brady, and if I don’t like what I see, it’s out.”

“I don’t recall anything in the contract about you having editing rights, A.J.”

“There’s nothing in the contract saying that Clarissa would read palms, either.”

“Granted. Alex ad-libbed that, and it worked very well. What’s the problem?”

“You were watching, damn it.” Needing to turn her temper on something, she rammed through the studio doors.

“I was,” David agreed as he took her arm to slow her down. “But obviously I didn’t see what you did.”

“She was covering.” A.J. raked a hand through her hair. “She felt something as soon as she took his hand. When you look at the tape you’ll see five, ten seconds where she just stares.”

“So it adds to the mystique. It’s effective.”

“Damn your ‘effective’!” She swung around so quickly she nearly knocked him into a wall. “I don’t like to see her hit that way. I happen to care about her as a person, not just a commodity.”

“All right, hold it. Hold it!” He caught up to her again as she shoved through the outside door. “There didn’t seem to be a thing wrong with Clarissa when she left here.”

“I don’t like it.” A.J. stormed down the steps toward the parking lot. “First the lousy cards. I’m sick of seeing her tested that way.”

“A.J., the cards are a natural. She’s done that same test, in much greater intensity, for institutes all over the country.”

“I know. And it makes me furious that she has to prove herself over and over. Then that palm business. Something upset her.” She began to pace on the patch of lawn bordering the sidewalk. “There was something there and I didn’t even have the chance to talk to her about it before that six-foot reporter with the golden voice muscled in.”

“Alex?” Though he tried, for at least five seconds, to control himself, David roared with laughter. “God, you’re priceless.”

Her eyes narrowed, her face paled with rage, she stopped pacing. “So you think it’s funny, do you? A trusting, amazingly innocent woman goes off with a virtual stranger and you laugh. If anything happens to her—”

“Happens?” David rolled his eyes skyward. “Good God, A.J., Alex Marshall is hardly a maniac. He’s a highly respected member of the news media. And Clarissa is certainly old enough to make up her own mind—and make her own dates.”

“It’s not a date.”

“Looked that way to me.”

She opened her mouth, shut it again, then whirled around toward the parking lot.

“Now wait a minute. I said wait.” He took her by both arms and trapped her between himself and a parked car. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to chase you all over L.A.”

“Just go back inside and take a look at that take. I want to see it tomorrow.”

“I don’t take orders from paranoid agents or anyone else. We’re going to settle this right here. I don’t know what’s working on you, A.J., but I can’t believe you’re this upset because a client’s going out to dinner.”

“She’s not just a client,” A.J. hurled back at him. “She’s my mother.”

Her furious announcement left them both momentarily speechless. He continued to hold her by the shoulders while she fought to even her breathing. Of course he should have seen it, David realized. The shape of the face, the eyes. Especially the eyes. “I’ll be damned.”

“I can only second that,” she murmured, then let herself lean back against the car. “Look, that’s not for publication. Understand?”

“Why?”

“Because we both prefer it that way. Our relationship is private.”

“All right.” He rarely argued with privacy. “Okay, that explains why you take such a personal interest, but I think you carry it a bit too far.”

“I don’t care what you think.” Because her head was beginning to pound, she straightened. “Excuse me.”

“No.” Calmly David blocked her way. “Some people might say you interfere with your mother’s life because you don’t have enough to fill your own.”

Her eyes became very dark, her skin very pale. “My life is none of your business, Brady.”

“Not at the moment, but while this project’s going on, Clarissa’s is. Give her some room, A.J.”

Because it sounded so reasonable, her hackles rose. “You don’t understand.”

“No, maybe you should explain it to me.”

“What if Alex Marshall presses her for an interview over dinner? What if he wants to get her alone so he can hammer at her?”

“What if he simply wanted to have dinner with an interesting, attractive woman? You might give Clarissa more credit.”

She folded her arms. “I won’t have her hurt.”

He could argue with her. He could even try reason. Somehow he didn’t think either would work quite yet. “Let’s go for a drive.”

“What?”

“A drive. You and me.” He smiled at her. “It happens to be my car you’re leaning on.”

“Oh, sorry.” She straightened again. “I have to get back to the office. There’s some paperwork I let hang today.”

“Then it can hang until tomorrow.” Drawing out his keys, he unlocked the door. “I could use a ride along the beach.”

So could she. She’d overreacted—there was no question of it. She needed some air, some speed, something to clear her head. Maybe it wasn’t wise to take it with him, but… “Are you going to put the top down?”

“Absolutely.”

It helped—the drive, the air, the smell of the sea, the blare of the radio. He didn’t chat at her or try to ease her into conversation. A.J. did something she allowed herself to do rarely in the company of others. She relaxed.

How long had it been, she wondered, since she’d driven along the coast, no time frame, no destination? If she couldn’t remember, then it had been too long. A.J. closed her eyes, emptied her mind and enjoyed.

Just who was she? David asked himself as he watched her relax, degree by degree, beside him. Was she the tough, no-nonsense agent with an eye out for ten percent of a smooth deal? Was she the fiercely protective, obviously devoted daughter—who was raking in that same ten percent of her mother’s talent on one hand and raising the roof about exploitation the next. He couldn’t figure her.

He was a good judge of people. In his business he’d be producing home movies if he weren’t. Yet when he’d kissed her he hadn’t found the hard-edged, self-confident woman he’d expected, but a nervous, vulnerable one. For some reason, she didn’t entirely fit who she was, or what she’d chosen to be. It might be interesting to find out why.

“Hungry?”

Half dreaming, A.J. opened her eyes and looked at him. How was it he hadn’t seen it before? David asked himself. The eyes, the eyes were so like Clarissa’s, the shape, the color, the…depth, he decided for lack of a better word. It ran through his head that maybe she was like Clarissa in other ways. Then he dismissed it.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, “I wasn’t paying attention.” But she could have described his face in minute detail, from the hard cheekbones to the slight indentation in his chin. Letting out a long breath, she drew herself in. A wise woman controlled her thoughts as meticulously as her emotions.

“I asked if you were hungry.”

“Yes.” She stretched her shoulders. “How far have we gone?”

Not far enough. The thought ran unbidden through his mind. Not nearly far enough. “About twenty miles. Your choice.” He eased over to the shoulder of the road and indicated a restaurant on one side and a hamburger stand on the other.

“I’ll take the burger. If we can sit on the beach.”

“Nothing I like better than a cheap date.” A.J. let herself out. “This isn’t a date.”

“I forgot. You can pay for your own.” He’d never heard her laugh like that before. Easy, feminine, fresh. “Just for that I’ll spring.” But he didn’t touch her as they walked up to the stand. “What’ll it be?”

“The jumbo burger, large fries and the super shake. Chocolate.”

“Big talk.”

As they waited, they watched a few early-evening swimmers splash in the shallows. Gulls swooped around, chattering and loitering near the stand, waiting for handouts. David left them disappointed as he gathered up the paper bags. “Where to?”

“Down there. I like to watch.” A.J. walked out on the beach and, ignoring her linen skirt, dropped down on the sand. “I don’t get to the beach often enough.” Kicking off her shoes, she slid stockinged feet in the sand so that her skirt hiked up to her thighs. David took a good long look before he settled beside her.

“Neither do I,” he decided, wondering just how those legs—and the rest of her—might look in a bikini.

“I guess I made quite a scene.”

“I guess you did.” He pulled out her hamburger and handed it to her.

“I hate to,” she said, and took a fierce bite. “I don’t have a reputation as an abrasive or argumentative agent, just a tough one. I only lose objectivity with Clarissa.”

He screwed the paper cups into the sand. “Objectivity is shot to hell when we love somebody.”

“She’s so good. I don’t just mean at what she does, but inside.” A.J. took the fries he offered and nibbled one. “Good people can get hurt so much easier than others, you know. And she’s so willing to give of herself. If she gave everything she wanted, she’d have nothing left.”

“So you’re there to protect her.”

“That’s right.” She turned, challenging.

“I’m not arguing with you.” He held up a hand. “For some reason I’d like to understand.”

With a little laugh she looked back out to sea. “You had to be there.”

“Why don’t you tell me what it was like? Growing up.”

She never discussed it with anyone. Then again, she never sat on a beach eating hamburgers with associates. Maybe it was a day for firsts. “She was a wonderful mother. Is. Clarissa’s so loving, so generous.”

“Your father?”

“He died when I was eight. He was a salesman, so he was away a lot. He was a good salesman,” she added with the ghost of a smile. “We were lucky there. There were savings and a little bit of stock. Problem was the bills didn’t get paid. Not that the money wasn’t there. Clarissa just forgot. You’d pick up the phone and it would be dead because she’d misplaced the bill. I guess I just started taking care of her.”

“You’d have been awfully young for that.”

“I didn’t mind.” This time the smile bloomed fully. There were, as with her mother, the faintest of dimples in her cheeks. “I was so much better at managing than she. We had a little more coming in once she started reading palms and doing charts. She really just sort of blossomed then. She has a need to help people, to give them—I don’t know—reassurance. Hope. Still, it was an odd time. We lived in a nice neighborhood and people would come and go through our living room. The neighbors were fascinated, and some of them came in regularly for readings, but outside the house there was a kind of distance. It was as if they weren’t quite sure of Clarissa.”

“It would have been uncomfortable for you.”

“Now and then. She was doing what she had to do. Some people shied away from us, from the house, but she never seemed to notice. Anyway, the word spread and she became friends with the Van Camps. I guess I was around twelve or thirteen. The first time movie stars showed up at the house I was awestruck. Within a year it became a matter of course. I’ve known actors to call her before they’d accept a role. She’d always tell them the same thing. They had to rely on their own feelings. The one thing Clarissa will never do is make decisions for anyone else. But they still called. Then the little Van Camp boy was kidnapped. After that the press camped on the lawn, the phone never stopped. I ended up moving her out to Newport Beach. She can keep a low profile there, even when another case comes up.”

“There was the Ridehour murders.”

She stood up abruptly and walked closer to the sea. Rising, David walked with her. “You’ve no idea how she suffered through that.” Emotions trembled in her voice as she wrapped her arms around herself. “You can’t imagine what a toll something like that can take on a person like Clarissa. I wanted to stop her, but I knew I couldn’t.”

When she closed her eyes, David put a hand on her shoulder. “Why would you want to stop her if she could help?”

“She grieved. She hurt. God, she all but lived it, even before she was called in.” She opened her eyes and turned to him then. “Do you understand, even before she was called in, she was involved?”

“I’m not sure I do.”

“No, you can’t.” She gave an impatient shake of her head for expecting it. “I suppose you have to live it. In any case, they asked for help. It doesn’t take any more than that with Clarissa. Five young girls dead.” She closed her eyes again. “She never speaks of it, but I know she saw each one. I know.” Then she pushed the thought aside, as she knew she had to. “Clarissa thinks of her abilities as a gift…but you’ve no idea what a curse that can be.”

“You’d like her to stop. Shut down. Is that possible?” A.J. laughed again and drew both hands through hair the wind had tossed. “Oh, yes, but not for Clarissa. I’ve accepted that she needs to give. I just make damn sure the wrong person doesn’t take.”

“And what about you?” He would have sworn something in her froze at the casual question. “Did you become an agent to protect your mother?”

She relaxed again. “Partly. But I enjoy what I do.” Her eyes were clear again. “I’m good at it.”

“And what about Aurora?” He brought his hands up her arms to her shoulders.

A yearning rose up in her, just from the touch. She blocked it off. “Aurora’s only there for Clarissa.”

“Why?”

“Because I know how to protect myself as well as my mother.”

“From what?”

“It’s getting late, David.”

“Yeah.” One hand skimmed over to her throat. Her skin was soft there, sun kissed and soft. “I’m beginning to think the same thing. I never did finish kissing you, Aurora.”

His hands were strong. She’d noticed it before, but it seemed to matter more now. “It’s better that way.”

“I’m beginning to think that, too. Damn if I can figure out why I want to so much.”

“Give it a little time. It’ll pass.”

“Why don’t we test it out?” He lifted a brow as he looked down at her. “We’re on a public beach. The sun hasn’t set. If I kiss you here, it can’t go any further than that, and maybe we’ll figure out why we unnerve each other.” When he drew her closer, she stiffened. “Afraid?” Why would the fact that she might be, just a little, arouse him?

“No.” Because she’d prepared herself she almost believed it was true. He wouldn’t have the upper hand this time, she told herself. She wouldn’t allow it. Deliberately she lifted her arms and twined them around his neck. When he hesitated, she pressed her lips to his.

He’d have sworn the sand shifted under his feet. He was certain the crash of the waves grew in volume until it filled the air like thunder. He’d intended to control the situation like an experiment. But intentions changed as mouth met mouth. She tasted warm—cool, sweet—pungent. He had a desperate need to find out which of his senses could be trusted. Before either of them was prepared, he plunged himself into the kiss and dragged her with him.

Too fast. Her mind whirled with the thought. Too far. But her body ignored the warning and strained against him. She wanted, and the want was clearer and sharper than any want had ever been. She needed, and the need was deeper and more intense than any other need. As the feelings drummed into her, her fingers curled into his hair. Hunger for him rose so quickly she moaned with it. It wasn’t right. It couldn’t be right. Yet the feeling swirled through her that it was exactly right and had always been.

A gull swooped overhead and was gone, leaving only the flicker of a shadow, the echo of a sound.

When they drew apart, A.J. stepped back. With distance came a chill, but she welcomed it after the enervating heat. She would have turned then without a word, but his hands were on her again.

“Come home with me.”

She had to look at him then. Passion, barely controlled, darkened his eyes. Desire, edged with temptation, roughened his voice. And she felt…too much. If she went, she would give too much.

“No.” Her voice wasn’t quite steady, but it was final. “I don’t want this, David.”

“Neither do I.” He backed off then. He hadn’t meant for things to go so far. He hadn’t wanted to feel so much. “I’m not sure that’s going to make any difference.”

“We have control over our own lives.” When she looked out to sea again, the wind rushed her hair back, leaving her face unframed. “I know what I want and don’t want in mine.”

“Wants change.” Why was he arguing? She said nothing he hadn’t thought himself.

“Only if we let them.”

“And if I said I wanted you?”

The pulse in her throat beat quickly, so quickly she wasn’t sure she could get the words around it. “I’d say you were making a mistake. You were right, David, when you said I wasn’t your type. Go with your first impulse. It’s usually the best.”

“In this case I think I need more data.”

“Suit yourself,” she said as though it made no difference. “I have to get back. I want to call Clarissa and make sure she’s all right.”

He took her arm one last time. “You won’t always be able to use her, Aurora.”

She stopped and sent him the cool, intimate look so like her mother’s. “I don’t use her at all,” she murmured. “That’s the difference between us.” She turned and made her way back across the sand.

4

There was moonlight, shafts of it, glimmering. There was the scent of hyacinths—the faintest fragrance on the faintest of breezes. From somewhere came the sound of water, running, bubbling. On a wide-planked wood floor there were shadows, the shifting grace of an oak outside the window. A painting on the wall caught the eye and held it. It was no more than slashes of red and violet lines on a white, white canvas, but somehow it portrayed energy, movement, tensions with undercurrents of sex. There was a mirror, taller than most. A.J. saw herself reflected in it.

She looked indistinct, ethereal, lost. With shadows all around it seemed to her she could just step forward into the glass and be gone. The chill that went through her came not from without but from within. There was something to fear here, something as nebulous as her own reflection. Instinct told her to go, and to go quickly, before she learned what it was. But as she turned something blocked her way.

David stood between her and escape, his hands firm on her shoulders. When she looked at him she saw that his eyes were dark and impatient. Desire—his or hers—thickened the air until even breathing was an effort.

I don’t want this. Did she say it? Did she simply think it? Though she couldn’t be sure, she heard his response clearly enough, clipped and annoyed.

“You can’t keep running, Aurora. Not from me, not from yourself.”

Then she was sliding down into a dark, dark tunnel with soft edges just beginning to flame.

A.J. jerked up in bed, breathless and trembling. She didn’t see moonlight, but the first early shafts of sun coming through her own bedroom windows. Her bedroom, she repeated to herself as she pushed sleep-tousled hair from her eyes. There were no hyacinths here, no shadows, no disturbing painting.

A dream, she repeated over and over. It had just been a dream. But why did it have to be so real? She could almost feel the slight pressure on her shoulders where his hands had pressed. The turbulent, churning sensation through her system hadn’t faded. And why had she dreamed of David Brady?

There were several logical reasons she could comfort herself with. He’d been on her mind for the past couple of weeks. Clarissa and the documentary had been on her mind and they were all tangled together. She’d been working hard, maybe too hard, and the last true relaxation she’d had had been those few minutes with him on the beach.

Still, it was best not to think of that, of what had happened or nearly happened, of what had been said or left unsaid. It would be better, much better, to think of schedules, of work and of obligations.

There’d be no sleeping now. Though it was barely six, A.J. pushed the covers aside and rose. A couple of strong cups of black coffee and a cool shower would put her back in order. They had to. Her schedule was much too busy to allow her to waste time worrying over a dream.

Her kitchen was spacious and very organized. She allowed no clutter, even in a room she spent little time in. Counters and appliances gleamed in stark white, as much from the diligence of her housekeeper as from disuse. A.J. went down the two steps that separated the kitchen from the living area and headed for the appliance she knew best. The coffeemaker.

Turning off the automatic alarm, which would have begun the brewing at 7:05, A.J. switched it to Start. When she came out of the shower fifteen minutes later, the scent of coffee—of normalcy—was back. She drank the first cup black, for the caffeine rather than the taste. Though she was an hour ahead of schedule, A.J. stuck to routine. Nothing as foolish and insubstantial as a dream was going to throw her off. She downed a handful of vitamins, preferring them to hassling with breakfast, then took a second cup of coffee into the bedroom with her to dress. As she studied the contents of her closet, she reviewed her appointments for the day.

Brunch with a very successful, very nervous client who was being wooed for a prime-time series. It wouldn’t hurt to look over the script for the pilot once more before they discussed it. A prelunch staff meeting in her own conference room was next. Then there was a late business lunch with Bob Hopewell, who’d begun casting his new feature. She had two clients she felt were tailor-made for the leads. After mentally reviewing her appointments, A.J. decided what she needed was a touch of elegance.

She went with a raw silk suit in pale peach. Sticking to routine, she was dressed and standing in front of the full-length mirrors of her closet in twenty minutes. As an afterthought, she picked up the little half-moon she sometimes wore on her lapel. As she was fastening it, the dream came back to her. She hadn’t looked so confident, so—was it aloof?—in the dream. She’d been softer, hadn’t she? More vulnerable.

A.J. lifted a hand to touch it to the glass. It was cool and smooth, a reflection only. Just as it had only been a dream, she reminded herself with a shake of the head. In reality she couldn’t afford to be soft. Vulnerability was out of the question. An agent in this town would be eaten alive in five minutes if she allowed a soft spot to show. And a woman—a woman took terrifying chances if she let a man see that which was vulnerable. A. J. Fields wasn’t taking any chances.

Tugging down the hem of her jacket, she took a last survey before grabbing her briefcase. In less than twenty minutes, she was unlocking the door to her suite of offices.

It wasn’t an unusual occurrence for A.J. to open the offices herself. Ever since she’d rented her first one-room walk-up early in her career, she’d developed the habit of arriving ahead of her staff. In those days her staff had consisted of a part-time receptionist who’d dreamed of a modeling career. Now she had two receptionists, a secretary and an assistant, as well as a stable of agents. A.J. turned the switch so that light gleamed on brass pots and rose-colored walls. She’d never regretted calling in a decorator. There was class here, discreet, understated class with subtle hints of power. Left to herself, she knew she’d have settled for a couple of sturdy desks and gooseneck lamps.

A glance at her watch showed her she could get in several calls to the East Coast. She left the one light burning in the reception area and closeted herself in her own office. Within a half-hour she’d verbally agreed to have her nervous brunch appointment fly east to do a pilot for a weekly series, set out pre-negotiation feelers for a contract renewal for another client who worked on a daytime drama and lit a fire under a producer by refusing his offer on a projected mini-series.

A good morning’s work, A.J. decided, reflecting back on the producer’s assessment that she was a nearsighted, money-grubbing python. He would counteroffer. She leaned back in her chair and let her shoes drop to the floor. When he did, her client would get over-the-title billing and a cool quarter million. He’d work for it, A.J. thought with a long stretch. She’d read the script and understood that the part would be physically demanding and emotionally draining. She understood just how much blood and sweat a good actor put into a role. As far as she was concerned, they deserved every penny they could get, and it was up to her to squeeze it from the producer’s tightfisted hand.

Satisfied, she decided to delve into paperwork before her own phone started to ring. Then she heard the footsteps.

At first she simply glanced at her watch, wondering who was in early. Then it occurred to her that though her staff was certainly dedicated enough, she couldn’t think of anyone who’d come to work thirty minutes before they were due. A.J. rose, fully intending to see for herself, when the footsteps stopped. She should just call out, she thought, then found herself remembering every suspense movie she’d ever seen. The trusting heroine called out, then found herself trapped in a room with a maniac. Swallowing, she picked up a heavy metal paperweight.

The footsteps started again, coming closer. Still closer. Struggling to keep her breathing even and quiet, A.J. walked across the carpet and stood beside the door. The footsteps halted directly on the other side. With the paperweight held high, she put her hand on the knob, held her breath, then yanked it open. David managed to grab her wrist before she knocked him out cold.

“Always greet clients this way, A.J.?”

“Damn it!” She let the paperweight slip to the floor as relief flooded through her. “You scared me to death, Brady. What are you doing sneaking around here at this hour?”

“The same thing you’re doing sneaking around here at this hour. I got up early.”

Because her knees were shaking, she gave in to the urge to sit, heavily. “The difference is this is my office. I can sneak around anytime I like. What do you want?”

“I could claim I couldn’t stay away from your sparkling personality.”

“Cut it.”

“The truth is I have to fly to New York for a location shoot. I’ll be tied up for a couple of days and wanted you to pass a message on to Clarissa for me.” It wasn’t the truth at all, but he didn’t mind lying. It was easier to swallow than the fact that he’d needed to see her again. He’d woken up that morning knowing he had to see her before he left. Admit that to a woman like A.J. Fields and she’d either run like hell or toss you out.

“Fine.” She was already up and reaching for a pad. “I’ll be glad to pass on a message. But next time try to remember some people shoot other people who wander into places before hours.”

“The door was unlocked,” he pointed out. “There was no one at reception, so I decided to see if anyone was around before I just left a note.”

It sounded reasonable. Was reasonable. But it didn’t suit A.J. to be scared out of her wits before 9:00 a.m. “What’s the message, Brady?”

He didn’t have the vaguest idea. Tucking his hands in his pockets, he glanced around her meticulously ordered, pastel-toned office. “Nice place,” he commented. He noticed even the papers she’d obviously been working with on her desk were in neat piles. There wasn’t so much as a paper clip out of place. “You’re a tidy creature, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” She tapped the pencil impatiently on the pad. “The message for Clarissa?”

“How is she, by the way?”

“She’s fine.”

He took a moment to stroll over to study the single painting she had on the wall. A seascape, very tranquil and soothing. “I remember you were concerned about her—about her having dinner with Alex.”

“She had a lovely time,” A.J. mumbled. “She told me Alex Marshall was a complete gentleman with a fascinating mind.”

“Does that bother you?”

“Clarissa doesn’t see men. Not that way.” Feeling foolish, she dropped the pad on her desk and walked to her window.

“Is something wrong with her seeing men? That way?”

“No, no, of course not. It’s just…”

“Just what, Aurora?”

She shouldn’t be discussing her mother, but so few people knew of their relationship, A.J. opened up before she could stop herself. “She gets sort of breathy and vague whenever she mentions him. They spent the day together on Sunday. On his boat. I don’t remember Clarissa ever stepping foot on a boat.”

“So she’s trying something new.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said under her breath. “Have you any idea what it’s like to see your mother in the first stages of infatuation?”

“No.” He thought of his own mother’s comfortable relationship with his father. She cooked dinner and sewed his buttons. He took out the trash and fixed the toaster. “I can’t say I have.”

“Well, it’s not the most comfortable feeling, I can tell you. What do I know about this man, anyway? Oh, he’s smooth,” she muttered. “For all I know he’s been smooth with half the women in Southern California.”

“Do you hear yourself?” Half-amused, David joined her at the window. “You sound like a mother fussing over her teenage daughter. If Clarissa were an ordinary middle-aged woman there’d be little enough to worry about. Don’t you think the fact that she is what she is gives her an advantage? It seems she’d be an excellent judge of character.”

“You don’t understand. Emotions can block things, especially when it’s important.”

“If that’s true, maybe you should look to your own emotions.” He felt her freeze. He didn’t have to touch her; he didn’t have to move any closer. He simply felt it. “You’re letting your affection and concern for your mother cause you to over-react to a very simple thing. Maybe you should give some thought to targeting some of that emotion elsewhere.”

“Clarissa’s all I can afford to be emotional about.”

“An odd way of phrasing things. Do you ever give any thought to your own needs? Emotional,” he murmured, then ran a hand down her hair. “Physical.”

“That’s none of your business.” She would have turned away, but he kept his hand on her hair.

“You can cut a lot of people off.” He felt the first edge of her anger as she stared up at him. Oddly he enjoyed it. “I think you’d be extremely good at picking up the spear and jabbing men out of your way. But it won’t work with me.”

“I don’t know why I thought I could talk to you.”

“But you did. That should give you something to consider.”

“Why are you pushing me?” she demanded. Fire came into her eyes. She remembered the dream too clearly. The dream, the desire, the fears.

“Because I want you.” He stood close, close enough for her scent to twine around him. Close enough so that the doubts and distrust in her eyes were very clear. “I want to make love with you for a long, long time in a very quiet place. When we’re finished I might find out why I don’t seem to be able to sleep for dreaming of it.”

Her throat was dry enough to ache and her hands felt like ice. “I told you once I don’t sleep around.”

“That’s good,” he murmured. “That’s very good, because I don’t think either of us needs a lot of comparisons.” He heard the sound of the front door of the offices opening. “Sounds like you’re open for business, A.J. Just one more personal note. I’m willing to negotiate terms, times and places, but the bottom line is that I’m going to spend more than one night with you. Give it some thought.”

A.J. conquered the urge to pick up the paperweight and heave it at him as he walked to the door. Instead she reminded herself that she was a professional and it was business hours. “Brady.”

He turned, and with a hand on the knob smiled at her. “Yeah, Fields?”

“You never gave me the message for Clarissa.”

“Didn’t I?” The hell with the gingerbread, he decided. “Give her my best. See you around, lady.”

* * *

David didn’t even know what time it was when he unlocked the door of his hotel suite. The two-day shoot had stretched into three. Now all he had to do was figure out which threads to cut and remain in budget. Per instructions, the maid hadn’t touched the stacks and piles of paper on the table in the parlor. They were as he’d left them, a chaotic jumble of balance sheets, schedules and production notes.

After a twelve-hour day, he’d ordered his crew to hit the sheets. David buzzed room service and ordered a pot of coffee before he sat down and began to work. After two hours, he was satisfied enough with the figures to go back over the two and a half days of taping.

The Danjason Institute of Parapsychology itself had been impressive, and oddly stuffy, in the way of institutes. It was difficult to imagine that an organization devoted to the study of bending spoons by will and telepathy could be stuffy. The team of parapsychologists they’d worked with had been as dry and precise as any staff of scientists. So dry, in fact, David wondered whether they’d convince the audience or simply put them to sleep. He’d have to supervise the editing carefully.

The testing had been interesting enough, he decided. The fact that they used not only sensitives but people more or less off the street. The testing and conclusions were done in the strictest scientific manner. How had it been put? The application of math probability theory to massive accumulation of data. It sounded formal and supercilious. To David it was card guessing.

Still, put sophisticated equipment and intelligent, highly educated scientists together, and it was understood that psychic phenomena were being researched seriously and intensely. It was, as a science, just beginning to be recognized after decades of slow, exhaustive experimentation.

Then there had been the interview on Wall Street with the thirty-two-year-old stockbroker-psychic. David let out a stream of smoke and watched it float toward the ceiling as he let that particular segment play in his mind. The man had made no secret of the fact that he used his abilities to play the market and become many times a millionaire. It was a skill, he’d explained, much like reading, writing and calculating were skills. He’d also claimed that several top executives in some of the most powerful companies in the world had used psychic powers to get there and to stay there. He’d described ESP as a tool, as important in the business world as a computer system or a slide rule.

A science, a business and a performance.

It made David think of Clarissa. She hadn’t tossed around confusing technology or littered her speech with mathematical probabilities. She hadn’t discussed market trends or the Dow Jones Average. She’d simply talked, person to person. Whatever powers she had…

With a shake of his head, David cut himself off. Listen to this, he thought as he ran his hands over his face. He was beginning to buy the whole business himself, though he knew from his own research that for every lab-contained experiment there were dozens of card-wielding, bell-ringing charlatans bilking a gullible audience. He drew smoke down an already raw throat before he crushed out the cigarette. If he didn’t continue to look at the documentary objectively, he’d have a biased mess on his hands.

But even looking objectively, he could see Clarissa as the center of the work. She could be the hinge on which everything else hung. With his eyes half-closed, David could picture it—the interview with the somber-eyed, white-coated parapsychologists, with their no-nonsense laboratory conditions. Then a cut to Clarissa talking with Alex, covering more or less the same ground in her simpler style. Then there’d be the clip of the stockbroker in his sky-high Wall Street office, then back to Clarissa again, seated on the homey sofa. He’d have the tuxedoed mentalist they’d lined up in Vegas doing his flashy, fast-paced demonstration. Then Clarissa again, calmly identifying cards without looking at them. Contrasts, angles, information, but everything would lead back to Clarissa DeBasse. She was the hook—instinct, intuition or paranormal powers, she was the hook. He could all but see the finished product unfolding.

Still, he wanted the big pull, something with punch and drama. This brought him right back to Clarissa. He needed that interview with Alice Van Camp, and another with someone who’d been directly involved in the Ridehour case. A.J. might try to block his way. He’d just have to roll over her.

How many times had he thought of her in the past three days? Too many. How often did he catch his mind drifting back to those few moments on the beach? Too often. And how much did he want to hold her like that again, close and hard? Too much.

Aurora. He knew it was dangerous to think of her as Aurora. Aurora was soft and accessible. Aurora was passionate and giving and just a little unsure of herself. He’d be smarter to remember A. J. Fields, tough, uncompromising and prickly around the edges. But it was late and his rooms were quiet. It was Aurora he thought of. It was Aurora he wanted.

On impulse, David picked up the phone. He punched buttons quickly, without giving himself a chance to think the action through. The phone rang four times before she answered.

“Fields.”

“Good morning.”

“David?” A.J. reached up to grab the towel before it slipped from her dripping hair.

“Yeah. How are you?”

“Wet.” She switched the phone from hand to hand as she struggled into a robe. “I just stepped out of the shower. Is there a problem?”

The problem was, he mused, that he was three thousand miles away and was wondering what her skin would look like gleaming with water. He reached for another cigarette and found the pack empty. “No, should there be?”

“I don’t usually get calls at this hour unless there is. When did you get back?”

“I didn’t.”

“You didn’t? You mean you’re still in New York?”

He stretched back in his chair and closed his eyes. Funny, he hadn’t realized just how much he’d wanted to hear her voice. “Last time I looked.”

“It’s only ten your time. What are you doing up so early?”

“Haven’t been to bed yet.”

This time she wasn’t quick enough to snatch the towel before it landed on her bare feet. A.J. ignored it as she dragged her fingers through the tangle of wet hair. “I see. The night life in Manhattan’s very demanding, isn’t it?”

He opened his eyes to glance at his piles of papers, overflowing ashtrays and empty coffee cups. “Yeah, it’s all dancing till dawn.”

“I’m sure.” Scowling, she bent down to pick up her towel. “Well, you must have something important on your mind to break off the partying and call. What is it?”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“So I gathered.” She began, more roughly than necessary, to rub the towel over her hair. “About what?”

“Nothing.”

“Brady, have you been drinking?”

He gave a quick laugh as he settled back again. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d eaten. “No. Don’t you believe in friendly conversations, A.J.?”

“Sure, but not between agents and producers long-distance at dawn.”

“Try something new,” he suggested. “How are you?”

Cautious, she sat on the bed. “I’m fine. How are you?”

“That’s good. That’s a very good start.” With a yawn, he realized he could sleep in the chair without any trouble at all. “I’m a little tired, actually. We spent most of the day interviewing parapsychologists who use computers and mathematical equations. I talked to a woman who claims to have had a half a dozen out-of-body experiences. ‘OOBs.’”

She couldn’t prevent the smile. “Yes, I’ve heard the term.”

“Claimed she traveled to Europe that way.”

“Saves on airfare.”

“I suppose.”

She felt a little tug of sympathy, a small glimmer of amusement. “Having trouble separating the wheat from the chaff, Brady?”

“You could call it that. In any case, it looks like we’re going to be running around on the East Coast awhile. A palmist in the mountains of western Maryland, a house in Virginia that’s supposed to be haunted by a young girl and a cat. There’s a hypnotist in Pennsylvania who specializes in regression.”

“Fascinating. It sounds like you’re having just barrels of fun.”

“I don’t suppose you have any business that would bring you out this way.”

“No, why?”

“Let’s just say I wouldn’t mind seeing you.”

She tried to ignore the fact that the idea pleased her. “David, when you put things like that I get weak in the knees.”

“I’m not much on the poetic turn of phrase.” He wasn’t handling this exactly as planned, he thought with a scowl. Then again, he hadn’t given himself time to plan. Always a mistake. “Look, if I said I’d been thinking about you, that I wanted to see you, you’d just say something nasty. I’d end up paying for an argument instead of a conversation.”

“And you can’t afford to go over budget.”

“See?” Still, it amused him. “Let’s try a little experiment here. I’ve been watching experiments for days and I think I’ve got it down.”

A.J. lay back on the bed. The fact that she was already ten minutes behind schedule didn’t occur to her. “What sort of experiment?”

“You say something nice to me. Now that’ll be completely out of character, so we’ll start with that premise…. Go ahead,” he prompted after fifteen seconds of blank silence.

“I’m trying to think of something.”

“Don’t be cute, A.J.”

“All right, here. Your documentary on women in government was very informative and completely unbiased. I felt it showed a surprising lack of male, or female, chauvinism.”

“That’s a start, but why don’t you try something a little more personal?”

“More personal,” she mused, and smiled at the ceiling. When had she last lain on her bed and flirted over the phone? Had she ever? She supposed it didn’t hurt, with a distance of three thousand miles, to feel sixteen and giddy. “How about this? If you ever decide you want to try the other end of the camera, I can make you a star.”

“Too clichéd,” David decided, but found himself grinning.

“You’re very picky. How about if I said I think you might, just might, make an interesting companion. You’re not difficult to look at, and your mind isn’t really dull.”

“Very lukewarm, A.J.”

“Take it or leave it.”

“Why don’t we take the experiment to the next stage? Spend an evening with me and find out if your hypothesis is correct.”

“I’m afraid I can’t dump everything here and fly out to Pennsylvania or wherever to test a theory.”

“I’ll be back the middle of next week.”

She hesitated, lectured herself, then went with impulse. “Double Bluff is opening here next week. Friday. Hastings Reed is a client. He’s certain he’s going to cop the Oscar.”

“Back to business, A.J.?”

“I happen to have two tickets for the premiere. You buy the popcorn.”

She’d surprised him. Switching the phone to his other hand, David was careful to speak casually. “A date?”

“Don’t push your luck, Brady.”

“I’ll pick you up on Friday.”

“Eight,” she told him, already wondering if she was making a mistake. “Now go to bed. I have to get to work.”

“Aurora.”

“Yes?”

“Give me a thought now and then.”

“Good night, Brady.” A.J. hung up the phone, then sat with it cradled in her lap. What had possessed her to do that? She’d intended to give the tickets away and catch the film when the buzz had died down. She didn’t care for glittery premieres in the first place. And more important, she knew spending an evening with David Brady was foolish. And dangerous.

When was the last time she’d allowed herself to be charmed by a man? A million years ago, she remembered with a sigh. And where had that gotten her? Weepy and disgusted with herself. But she wasn’t a child anymore, she remembered. She was a successful, self-confident woman who could handle ten David Bradys at a negotiating table. The problem was she just wasn’t sure she could handle one of him anywhere else.

She let out a long lingering sigh before her gaze passed over her clock. With a muffled oath she was tumbling out of bed. Damn David Brady and her own foolishness. She was going to be late.

5

She bought a new dress. A.J. told herself that as the agent representing the lead in a major motion picture premiering in Hollywood, she was obligated to buy one. But she knew she had bought it for Aurora, not A.J.

At five minutes to eight on Friday night, she stood in front of her mirror and studied the results. No chic, professional suit this time. But perhaps she shouldn’t have gone so far in the other direction.

Still, it was black. Black was practical and always in vogue. She turned to the right profile, then the left. It certainly wasn’t flashy. But all in all, it might have been wiser to have chosen something more conservative than the pipeline strapless, nearly backless black silk. Straight on, it was provocative. From the side it was downright suggestive. Why hadn’t she noticed in the dressing room just how tightly the material clung? Maybe she had, A.J. admitted on a long breath. Maybe she’d been giddy enough, foolish enough, to buy it because it didn’t make her feel like an agent or any other sort of professional. It just made her feel like a woman. That was asking for trouble.

In any case, she could solve part of the problem with the little beaded jacket. Satisfied, she reached for a heavy silver locket clipped to thick links. Even as she was fastening it, A.J. heard the door. Taking her time, she slipped into the shoes that lay neatly at the foot of her bed, checked the contents of her purse and picked up the beaded jacket. Reminding herself to think of the entire process as an experiment, she opened the door to David.

She hadn’t expected him to bring her flowers. He didn’t seem the type for such time-honored romantic gestures. Because he appeared to be as off-balance as she, they just stood there a moment, staring.

She was stunning. He’d never considered her beautiful before. Attractive, yes, and sexy in the coolest, most aloof sort of way. But tonight she was breathtaking. Her dress didn’t glitter, it didn’t gleam, but simply flowed with the long, subtle lines of her body. It was enough. More than enough.

He took a step forward. Clearing her throat, A.J. took a step back.

“Right on time,” she commented, and worked on a smile.

“I’m already regretting I didn’t come early.” A.J. accepted the roses and struggled to be casual, when she wanted to bury her face in them. “Thank you. They’re lovely. Would you like a drink while I put them in water?”

“No.” It was enough just to look at her.

“I’ll just be a minute.”

As she walked away, his gaze passed down her nape over her shoulder blades and the smooth, generously exposed back to her waist, where the material of her dress again intruded. It nearly made him change his mind about the drink.

To keep his mind off tall blondes with smooth skin, he took a look around her apartment. She didn’t appear to have the same taste in decorating as Clarissa.

The room was cool, as cool as its tenant, and just as streamlined. He couldn’t fault the icy colors or the uncluttered lines, but he wondered just how much of herself Aurora Fields had put into the place she lived in. In the manner of her office, nothing was out of place. No frivolous mementos were set out for public viewing. The room had class and style, but none of the passion he’d found in the woman. And it told no secrets, not even in a whisper. He found himself more determined than ever to discover how many she had.

When A.J. came back she was steady. She’d arranged the roses in one of her rare extravagances, a tall, slim vase of Baccarat crystal. “Since you’re prompt, we can get there a bit early and ogle the celebrities. It’s different than dealing with them over a business lunch or watching a shoot.”

“You look like a witch,” he murmured. “White skin, black dress. You can almost smell the brimstone.”

Her hands were no longer steady as she reached for her jacket. “I had an ancestor who was burned as one.”

He took the jacket from her, regretting the fact that once it was on too much of her would be covered. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“In Salem, during the madness.” A.J. tried to ignore the way his fingers lingered as he slid the jacket over her. “Of course she was no more witch than Clarissa, but she was…special. According to the journals and documents that Clarissa gathered, she was twenty-five and very lovely. She made the mistake of warning her neighbors about a barn fire that didn’t happen for two days.”

“So she was tried and executed?”

“People usually have violent reactions to what they don’t understand.”

“We talked to a man in New York who’s making a killing in the stock market by ‘seeing’ things before they happen.”

“Times change.” A.J. picked up her bag, then paused at the door. “My ancestor died alone and penniless. Her name was Aurora.” She lifted a brow when he said nothing. “Shall we go?”

David slipped his hand over hers as the door shut at their backs. “I have a feeling that having an ancestor executed as a witch is very significant for you.”

After shrugging, A.J. drew her hand from his to push the button for the elevator. “Not everyone has one in his family tree.”

“And?”

“And let’s just say I have a good working knowledge of how different opinions can be. They range from everything from blind condemnation to blind faith. Both extremes are dangerous.”

As they stepped into the elevator he said consideringly, “And you work very hard to shield Clarissa from both ends.”

“Exactly.”

“What about you? Are you defending yourself by keeping your relationship with Clarissa quiet?”

“I don’t need defending from my mother.” She’d swung through the doors before she managed to bank the quick surge of temper. “It’s easier for me to work for her if we keep the family relationship out of it.”

“Logical. I find you consistently logical, A.J.”

She wasn’t entirely sure it was a compliment. “And there is the fact that I’m very accessible. I didn’t want clients rushing in to ask me to have my mother tell them where they lost their diamond ring. Is your car in the lot?”

“No, we’re right out front. And I wasn’t criticizing, Aurora, just asking.”

She felt the temper fade as quickly as it had risen. “It’s all right. I tend to be a little sensitive where Clarissa’s concerned. I don’t see a car,” she began, glancing idly past a gray limo before coming back to it with raised brows. “Well,” she murmured. “I’m impressed.”

“Good.” The driver was already opening the door. “That was the idea.”

A.J. snuggled in. She’d ridden in limos countless times, escorting clients, delivering or picking them up at airports. But she never took such cushy comfort for granted. As she let herself enjoy, she watched David take a bottle out of ice.

“Flowers, a limo and now champagne. I am impressed, Brady, but I’m also—”

“Going to spoil it,” he finished as he eased the cork expertly out. “Remember, we’re testing your theory that I’d make an interesting companion.” He offered a glass. “How’m I doing?”

“Fine so far.” She sipped and appreciated. If she’d had experience in anything, she reminded herself, it was in how to keep a relationship light and undemanding. “I’m afraid I’m more used to doing the pampering than being pampered.”

“How’s it feel to be on the other side?”

“A little too good.” She slipped out of her shoes and let her feet sink into the carpet. “I could just sit and ride for hours.”

“It’s okay with me.” He ran a finger down the side of her throat to the edge of her jacket. “Want to skip the movie?”

She felt the tremor start where his finger skimmed, then rush all the way to the pit of her stomach. It came home to her that she hadn’t had experience with David Brady. “I think not.” Draining her glass, she held it out for a refill. “I suppose you attend a lot of these.”

“Premieres?” He tilted wine into her glass until it fizzed to the rim. “No. Too Hollywood.”

“Oh.” With a gleam in her eye, A.J. glanced slowly around the limo. “I see.”

“Tonight seemed to be an exception.” He toasted her, appreciating the way she sat with such careless elegance in the plush corner of the limo. She belonged there. Now. With him. “As a representative of some of the top names in the business, you must drop in on these things a few times a year.”

“No.” A.J.’s lips curved as she sipped from her glass. “I hate them.”

“Are you serious?”

“Deadly.”

“Then what the hell are we doing?”

“Experimenting,” she reminded him, and set her glass down as the limo stopped at the curb. “Just experimenting.”

There were throngs of people crowded into the roped off sections by the theater’s entrance. Cameras were clicking, flashes popping. It didn’t seem to matter to the crowd that the couple alighting from the limo weren’t recognizable faces. It was Hollywood. It was opening night. The glitz was peaking. A.J. and David were cheered and applauded. She blinked twice as three paparazzi held cameras in her face.

“Incredible, isn’t it?” he muttered as he steered her toward the entrance.

“It reminds me why I agent instead of perform.” In an instinctive defense she wasn’t even aware of, she turned away from the cameras. “Let’s find a dark corner.”

“I’m for that.”

She had to laugh. “You never give up.”

“A.J. A.J., darling!”

Before she could react, she found herself crushed against a soft, generous bosom. “Merinda, how nice to see you.”

“Oh, I can’t tell you how thrilled I am you’re here.” Merinda MacBride, Hollywood’s current darling, drew her dramatically away. “A friendly face, you know. These things are such zoos.”

She glittered from head to foot, from the diamonds that hung at her ears to the sequined dress that appeared to have been painted on by a very appreciative artist. She sent A.J. a smile that would have melted chocolate at ten paces. “You look divine.”

“Thank you. You aren’t alone?”

“Oh, no. I’m with Brad….” After a moment’s hesitation, she smiled again. “Brad,” she repeated, as if she’d decided last names weren’t important. “He’s fetching me a drink.” Her gaze shifted and fastened on David. “You’re not alone, either.”

“Merinda MacBride, David Brady.”

“A pleasure.” He took her hand and, though she turned her knuckles up expectantly, didn’t bring it to his lips. “I’ve seen your work and admired it.”

“Why, thank you.” She studied, measured and rated him in a matter of seconds. “Are we mutual clients of A.J.’s?”

“David’s a producer.” A.J. watched Merinda’s baby-blue eyes sharpen. “Of documentaries,” she added, amused. “You might have seen some of his work on public television.”

“Of course.” She beamed at him, though she’d never watched public television in her life and had no intention of starting. “I desperately admire producers. Especially attractive ones.”

“I have a couple of scripts I think you’d be interested in,” A.J. put in to draw her off.

“Oh?” Instantly Merinda dropped the sex-bomb act. A. J. Fields didn’t recommend a script unless it had meat on it. “Have them sent over.”

“First thing Monday.”

“Well, I must find Brad before he forgets about me. David.” She gave him her patented smoldering look. Documentaries or not, he was a producer. And a very attractive one. “I hope we run into each other again. Ta, A.J.” She brushed cheeks. “Let’s do lunch.”

“Soon.”

David barely waited for her to walk out of earshot. “You deal with that all the time?”

“Ssh!”

“I mean all the time,” he continued, watching as Merinda’s tightly covered hips swished through the crowd. “Day after day. Why aren’t you crazy?”

“Merinda may be a bit overdramatic, but if you’ve seen any of her films, you’ll know just how talented she is.”

“The woman looked loaded with talent to me,” he began, but stopped to grin when A.J. scowled. “As an actress,” he continued. “I thought she was exceptional in Only One Day.”

A.J. couldn’t quite conquer the smile. She’d hustled for weeks to land Merinda that part. “So you have seen her films.”

“I don’t live in a cave. That film was the first one that didn’t—let’s say, focus on her anatomy.”

“It was the first one I represented her on.”

“She’s fortunate in her choice of agents.”

“Thank you, but it goes both ways. Merinda’s a very hot property.”

“If we’re going to make it through this evening, I’d better not touch that one.”

They were interrupted another half a dozen times before they could get into the theater. A.J. ran into clients, acquaintances and associates, greeted, kissed and complimented while turning down invitations to after-theater parties.

“You’re very good at this.” David took two seats on the aisle near the back of the theater.

“Part of the job.” A.J. settled back. There was nothing she enjoyed quite so much as a night at the movies.

“A bit jaded, A.J.?”

“Jaded?”

“Untouched by the glamour of it all, unaffected by the star system. You don’t get any particular thrill out of exchanging kisses and hugs with some of the biggest and most distinguished names in the business.”

“Business,” she repeated, as if that explained it all. “That’s not being jaded—it’s being sensible. And the only time I saw you awestruck was when you found yourself face-to-face with three inches of cleavage on a six-foot blonde. Ssh,” she muttered before he could comment. “It’s started and I hate to miss the opening credits.”

With the theater dark, the audience quiet, A.J. threw herself into the picture. Ever since childhood, she’d been able to transport herself with the big screen. She wouldn’t have called it “escape.” She didn’t like the word. A.J. called it “involvement.” The actor playing the lead was a client, a man she knew intimately and had comforted through two divorces. All three of his children’s birthdays were noted in her book. She’d listened to him rant; she’d heard his complaints, his doubts. That was all part of the job. But the moment she saw him on film, he was, to her, the part he played and nothing else.

Within five minutes, she was no longer in a crowded theater in Los Angeles, but in a rambling house in Connecticut. And there was murder afoot. When the lights went out and thunder boomed, she grabbed David’s arm and cringed in her seat. Not one to pass up an age-old opportunity, he slipped an arm around her.

When was the last time, he wondered, that he’d sat in a theater with his arm around his date? He decided it had been close to twenty years and he’d been missing a great deal. He turned his attention to the film, but was distracted by her scent. It was still light, barely discernible, but it filled his senses. He tried to concentrate on the action and drama racing across the screen. A.J. caught her breath and shifted an inch closer. The tension on the screen seemed very pedestrian compared to his own. When the lights came up he found himself regretting that there was no longer such a thing as the double feature.

“It was good, wasn’t it?” Eyes brilliant with pleasure, she turned to him. “It was really very good.”

“Very good,” he agreed, and lifted his hand to toy with her ear. “And if the applause is any indication, your client’s got himself a hit.”

“Thank God.” She breathed a sigh of relief before shifting away to break what was becoming a very unnerving contact. “I talked him into the part. If he’d flopped, it would have been my head.”

“And now that he can expect raves?”

“It’ll be because of his talent,” she said easily. “And that’s fair enough. Would you mind if we slipped out before it gets too crazy?”

“I’d prefer it.” He rose and steered her through the pockets of people that were already forming in the aisles. They hadn’t gone ten feet before A.J.’s name was called out three times.

“Where are you going? You running out?” Hastings Reed, six feet three inches of down-home sex and manhood, blocked the aisle. He was flushed with the victory of seeing himself triumph on the screen and nervous that he might have misjudged the audience reaction. “You didn’t like it?”

“It was wonderful.” Understanding his need for reassurance, A.J. stood on tiptoe to brush his cheek. “You were wonderful. Never better.”

He returned the compliment with a bone-crushing hug. “We have to wait for the reviews.”

“Prepare to accept praise humbly, and with good grace. Hastings, this is David Brady.”

“Brady?” As Hastings took David’s hand, his etched in bronze face creased into a frown. “Producer?”

“That’s right.”

“God, I love your work.” Already flying, Hastings pumped David’s hand six times before finally releasing it. “I’m an honorary chairman of Rights for Abused Children. Your documentary did an incredible job of bringing the issue home and making people aware. Actually, it’s what got me involved in the first place.”

“It’s good to hear that. We wanted to make people think.”

“Made me think. I’ve got kids of my own. Listen, keep me in mind if you ever do a follow-up. No fee.” He grinned down at A.J. “She didn’t hear that.”

“Hear what?”

He laughed and yanked her against him again. “This lady’s incredible. I don’t know what I’d have done without her. I wasn’t going to take this part, but she badgered me into it.”

“I never badger,” A.J. said mildly.

“Nags, badgers and browbeats. Thank God.” Grinning, he finally took a good look at her. “Damn if you don’t look like something a man could swallow right up. I’ve never seen you dressed like that.”

To cover a quick flush of embarrassment, she reached up to straighten his tie. “And as I recall, the last time I saw you, you were in jeans and smelled of horses.”

“Guess I did. You’re coming to Chasen’s?”

“Actually, I—”

“You’re coming. Look, I’ve got a couple of quick interviews, but I’ll see you there in a half hour.” He took two strides away and was swallowed up in the crowd.

“He’s got quite an…overwhelming personality,” David commented.

“To say the least.” A.J. glanced at her watch. It was still early. “I suppose I should at least put in an appearance, since he’ll count on it now. I can take a cab if you’d rather skip it.”

“Ever hear of the expression about leaving with the guy who brought you?”

“This isn’t a country dance,” A.J. pointed out as they wove through the lingering crowd.

“Same rules apply. I can handle Chasen’s.”

“Okay, but just for a little while.”

The “little while” lasted until after three.

Cases of champagne, mountains of caviar and piles of fascinating little canapés. Even someone as practical as A.J. found it difficult to resist a full-scale celebration. The music was loud, but it didn’t seem to matter. There were no quiet corners to escape to. Through her clientele and David’s contacts, they knew nearly everyone in the room between them. A few minutes of conversation here, another moment there, ate up hours of time. Caught up in her client’s success, A.J. didn’t mind.

On the crowded dance floor, she allowed herself to relax in David’s arms. “Incredible, isn’t it?”

“Nothing tastes so sweet as success, especially when you mix it with champagne.”

She glanced around. It was hard not to be fascinated with the faces, the names, the bodies. She was part of it, a very intricate part. But through her own choice, she wasn’t an intimate part. “I usually avoid this sort of thing.”

He let his fingers skim lightly up her back. “Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Weariness, wine and pleasure combined. Her cheek rested against his. “I guess I’m more of a background sort of person. You fit in.”

“And you don’t?”

“Ummm.” She shook her head. Why was it men smelled so wonderful—so wonderfully different? And felt so good when you held and were held by one. “You’re part of the talent. I just work with clauses and figures.”

“And that’s the way you want it?”

“Absolutely. Still, this is nice.” When his hand ran down her back again, she stretched into it. “Very nice.”

“I’d rather be alone with you,” he murmured. Every time he held her like this he thought he would go crazy. “In some dim little room where the music was low.”

“This is safer.” But she didn’t object when his lips brushed her temple.

“Who needs safe?”

“I do. I need safe and ordered and sensible.”

“Anyone who chooses to be involved in this business tosses safe, ordered and sensible out the window.”

“Not me.” She drew back to smile at him. It felt so good to relax, to flow with the evening, to let her steps match his without any conscious thought. “I just make the deals and leave the chances up to others.”

“Take ten percent and run?”

“That’s right.”

“I might have believed that a few weeks ago. The problem is I’ve seen you with Clarissa.”

“That’s entirely different.”

“True enough. I also saw you with Hastings tonight. You get wrapped up with your clients, A.J. You might be able to convince yourself they’re just signatures, but I know better. You’re a marshmallow.”

Her brows drew together. “Ridiculous. Marshmallows get swallowed.”

“They’re also resilient. I admire that in you.” He touched his lips to hers before she could move. “I’m beginning to realize I admire quite a bit in you.”

She would have pulled away then, but he kept her close easily enough and continued to sway. “I don’t mix business and personal feelings.”

“You lie.”

“I might play with the truth,” she said, abruptly dignified, “but I don’t lie.”

“You were ready to turn handsprings tonight when that movie hit.”

A.J. tossed her hair out of her face. He saw too much too easily. A man wasn’t supposed to. “Have you any idea how I can use that as a lever? I’ll get Hastings a million-five for his next movie.”

“You’ll ‘get Hastings,’” David repeated. “Even your phrasing gives you away.”

“You’re picking up things that aren’t there.”

“No, I think I’m finding things you’ve squirreled away. Have you got a problem with the fact that I’ve decided I like you?”

Off-balance, she missed a step and found herself pressed even closer. “I think I’d handle it better if we still got on each other nerves.”

“Believe me, you get on my nerves.” Until his blood was on slow boil, his muscles knotting and stretching and the need racing. “There are a hundred people in this room and my mind keeps coming back to the fact that I could have you out of what there is of that dress in thirty seconds flat.”

The chill arrowed down her back. “You know that’s not what I meant. You’d be smarter to keep your mind on business.”

“Smarter, safer. We’re looking for different things, A.J.”

“We can agree on that, anyway.”

“We might agree on more if we gave ourselves the chance.”

She didn’t know exactly why she smiled. Perhaps it was because it sounded like a fantasy. She enjoyed watching them, listening to them, without really believing in them. “David.” She rested her arms on his shoulders. “You’re a very nice man, on some levels.”

“I think I can return that compliment.”

“Let me spell things out for you in the way I understand best. Number one, we’re business associates at the moment. This precludes any possibility that we could be seriously involved. Number two, while this documentary is being made my first concern is, and will continue to be, Clarissa’s welfare. Number three, I’m very busy and what free time I have I use to relax in my own way—which is alone. And number four, I’m not equipped for relationships. I’m selfish, critical and disinterested.”

“Very well put.” He kissed her forehead in a friendly fashion. “Are you ready to go?”

“Yes.” A little nonplussed by his reaction, she walked off the dance floor to retrieve her jacket. They left the noise and crowd behind and stepped out into the cool early-morning air. “I forget sometimes that the glamour and glitz can be nice in small doses.”

He helped her into the waiting limo. “Moderation in all things.”

“Life’s more stable that way.” Cut off from the driver and the outside by thick smoked glass, A.J. settled back against the seat. Before she could let out the first contented sigh, David was close, his hand firm on her chin. “David—”

“Number one,” he began, “I’m the producer of this project, and you’re the agent for one, only one, of the talents. That means we’re business associates in the broadest sense and that doesn’t preclude an involvement. We’re already involved.”

There’d been no heat in his eyes on the dance floor, she thought quickly. Not like there was now. “David—”

“You had your say,” he reminded her. “Number two, while this documentary is being made, you can fuss over Clarissa all you want. That has nothing to do with us. Number three, we’re both busy, which means we don’t want to waste time with excuses and evasions that don’t hold water. And number four, whether you think you’re equipped for relationships or not, you’re in the middle of one right now. You’d better get used to it.”

Temper darkened her eyes and chilled her voice. “I don’t have to get used to anything.”

“The hell you don’t. Put a number on this.”

Frustrated desire, unrelieved passion, simmering anger. She felt them all as his mouth crushed down on hers. Her first reaction was pure self-preservation. She struggled against him, knowing if she didn’t free herself quickly, she’d be lost. But he seemed to know, somehow, that her struggle was against herself, not him.

He held her closer. His mouth demanded more, until, despite fears, despite doubts, despite everything, she gave.

With a muffled moan, her arms went around him. Her fingers slid up his back to lose themselves in his hair. Passion, still unrelieved, mounted until it threatened to consume. She could feel everything, the hard line of his body against hers, the soft give of the seat at her back. There was the heat of his lips as they pressed and rubbed on hers and the cool air blown in silently through the vents.

And she could taste—the lingering punch of champagne as their tongues tangled together. She could taste a darker flavor, a deeper flavor that was his flesh. Still wilder, less recognizable, was the taste of her own passion.

His mouth left hers only to search out other delights. Over the bare, vulnerable skin of her neck and shoulders he found them. His hands weren’t gentle as they moved over her. His mouth wasn’t tender. Her heart began to thud in a fast, chaotic rhythm at the thought of being taken with such hunger, such fury.

Driven by her own demons she let her hands move, explore and linger. When his breath was as uneven as hers their lips met again. The contact did nothing to soothe and everything to arouse. Desperate for more, she brought her teeth down to nip, to torment. With an oath, he swung her around until they were sprawled on the long, wide seat.

Her lips parted as she looked up at him. She could see the intermittent flash of streetlights as they passed overhead. Shadow and light. Shadow and light. Hypnotic. Erotic. A.J. reached up to touch his face.

She was all cream and silk as she lay beneath him. Her hair was tousled around a face flushed with arousal. The touch of her fingers on his cheek was light as a whisper and caused the need to thunder through him.

“This is crazy,” she murmured.

“I know.”

“It’s not supposed to happen.” But it was. She knew it. She had known it from the first meeting. “It can’t happen,” she corrected.

“Why?”

“Don’t ask me.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. She couldn’t resist letting her fingers play along his face even as she prepared herself to deny both of them. “I can’t explain. If I could you wouldn’t understand.”

“If there’s someone else I don’t give a damn.”

“No, there’s no one.” She closed her eyes a moment, then opened them again to stare at him. “There’s no one else.”

Why was he hesitating? She was here, aroused, inches away from total surrender. He had only to ignore the confused plea in her eyes and take. But even with his blood hot, the need pressing, he couldn’t ignore it. “It might not be now, it might not be here, but it will be, Aurora.”

It would be. Had to be. The part of her that knew it fought a frantic tug-of-war with the part that had to deny it. “Let me go, David.”

Trapped by his own feelings, churning with his own needs, he pulled her up. “What kind of game are you playing?”

She was cold. Freezing. She felt each separate chill run over her skin. “It’s called survival.”

“Damn it, Aurora.” She was so beautiful. Why did she suddenly have to be so beautiful? Why did she suddenly have to look so fragile? “What does being with me, making love with me, have to do with your survival?”

“Nothing.” She nearly laughed as she felt the limo cruise to a halt. “Nothing at all if it were just that simple.”

“Why complicate it? We want each other. We’re both adults. People become lovers every day without doing themselves any damage.”

“Some people.” She let out a shuddering breath. “I’m not some people. If it were so simple, I’d make love with you right here, in the back seat of this car. I won’t tell you I don’t want to.” She turned to look at him and the vulnerability in her eyes was haunted by regrets. “But it’s not simple. Making love with you would be easy. Falling in love with you wouldn’t.”

Before he could move, she’d pushed open the door and was on the street.

“Aurora.” He was beside her, a hand on her arm, but she shook him off. “You can’t expect to just walk off after a statement like that.”

“That’s just what I’m doing,” she corrected, and shook him off a second time.

“I’ll take you up.” With what willpower he had left, he held on to patience.

“No. Just go.”

“We have to talk.”

“No.” Neither of them was prepared for the desperation in her voice. “I want you to go. It’s late. I’m tired. I’m not thinking straight.”

“If we don’t talk this out now, we’ll just have to do it later.”

“Later, then.” She would have promised him anything for freedom at that moment. “I want you to go now, David.” When he continued to hold her, her voice quivered. “Please, I need you to go. I can’t handle this now.”

He could fight her anger, but he couldn’t fight her fragility. “All right.”

He waited until she had disappeared inside her building. Then he leaned back on the car and pulled out a cigarette. Later then, he promised himself. They’d talk. He stood where he was, waiting for his system to level. They’d talk, he assured himself again. But it was best to wait until they were both calmer and more reasonable.

Tossing away the cigarette, he climbed back into the limo. He hoped to God he could stop thinking of her long enough to sleep.

6

She wanted to pace. She wanted to walk up and down, pull at her hair and walk some more. She forced herself to sit quietly on the sofa and wait as Clarissa poured tea.

“I’m so glad you came by, dear. It’s so seldom you’re able to spend an afternoon with me.”

“Things are under control at the office. Abe’s covering for me.”

“Such a nice man. How’s his little grandson?”

“Spoiled rotten. Abe wants to buy him Dodger Stadium.”

“Grandparents are entitled to spoil the way parents are obliged to discipline.” She kept her eyes lowered, anxious not to show her own longings and apply pressure. “How’s your tea?”

“It’s…different.” Knowing the lukewarm compliment would satisfy Clarissa saved her from an outright lie. “What is it?”

“Rose hips. I find it very soothing in the afternoons. You seem to need a little soothing, Aurora.”

A.J. set down her cup and, giving in to the need for movement, rose. She’d known when she’d deliberately cleared her calendar that she would come to Clarissa. And she’d known that she would come for help, though she’d repeatedly told herself she didn’t need it.

“Momma.” A.J. sat on the sofa again as Clarissa sipped tea and waited patiently. “I think I’m in trouble.”

“You ask too much of yourself.” Clarissa reached out to touch her hand. “You always have.”

“What am I going to do?”

Clarissa sat back as she studied her daughter. She’d never heard that phrase from her before, and now that she had, she wanted to be certain to give the right answers. “You’re frightened.”

“Terrified.” She was up again, unable to sit. “It’s getting away from me. I’m losing the controls.”

“Aurora, it isn’t always necessary to hold on to them.”

“It is for me.” She looked back with a half smile. “You should understand.”

“I do. Of course I do.” But she’d wished so often that her daughter, her only child, would be at peace with herself. “You constantly defend yourself against being hurt because you were hurt once and decided it would never happen again. Aurora, are you in love with David?”

Clarissa would know he was at the core of it. Naturally she would know without a word being said. A.J. could accept that. “I might be if I don’t pull myself back now.”

“Would it be so bad to love someone?”

“David isn’t just someone. He’s too strong, too overwhelming. Besides…” She paused long enough to steady herself. “I thought I was in love once before.”

“You were young.” Clarissa came as close as she ever did to true anger. She set her cup in its saucer with a little snap. “Infatuation is a different matter. It demands more and gives less back than love.”

A.J. stood in the middle of the room. There was really no place to go. “Maybe this is just infatuation. Or lust.”

Clarissa lifted a brow and sipped tea calmly. “You’re the only one who can answer that. Somehow I don’t think you’d have cleared your calendar and come to see me in the middle of a workday if you were concerned about lust.”

Laughing, A.J. walked over to drop on the sofa beside her. “Oh, Momma, there’s no one like you. No one.”

“Things were never normal for you, were they?”

“No.” A.J. dropped her head on Clarissa’s shoulder. “They were better. You were better.”

“Aurora, your father loved me very much. He loved, and he accepted, without actually understanding. I can’t even comprehend what my life might have been like if I hadn’t given up the controls and loved him back.”

“He was special,” A.J. murmured. “Most men aren’t.”

Clarissa hesitated only a moment, then cleared her throat. “Alex accepts me, too.”

“Alex?” Uneasy, A.J. sat up again. There was no mistaking the blush of color in Clarissa’s cheeks. “Are you and Alex…” How did one put such a question to a mother? “Are you serious about Alex?”

“He asked me to marry him.”

“What?” Too stunned for reason, A.J. jerked back and gaped. “Marriage? You barely know him. You met only weeks ago. Momma, certainly you’re mature enough to realize something as important as marriage takes a great deal of thought.”

Clarissa beamed at her. “What an excellent mother you’ll make one day. I was never able to lecture quite like that.”

“I don’t mean to lecture.” Mumbling, A.J. picked up her tea. “I just don’t want you to jump into something like this without giving it the proper thought.”

“You see, that’s just what I mean. I’m sure you got that from your father’s side. My family’s always been just the tiniest bit flighty.”

“Momma—”

“Do you remember when Alex and I were discussing palm reading for the documentary?”

“Of course.” The uneasiness increased, along with a sense of inevitability. “You felt something.”

“It was very strong and very clear. I admit it flustered me a bit to realize a man could be attracted to me after all these years. And I wasn’t aware until that moment that I could feel like that about anyone.”

“But you need time. I don’t doubt anything you feel, anything you see. You know that. But—”

“Darling, I’m fifty-six.” Clarissa shook her head, wondering how it had happened so quickly. “I’ve been content to live alone. I think perhaps I was meant to live alone for a certain amount of time. Now I want to share the rest of life. You’re twenty-eight and content and very capable of living alone. Still, you mustn’t be afraid to share your life.”

“It’s different.”

“No.” She took A.J.’s hands again. “Love, affection, needs. They’re really very much the same for everyone. If David is the right man for you, you’ll know it. But after knowing, you have to accept.”

“He may not accept me.” Her fingers curled tightly around her mother’s. “I have trouble accepting myself.”

“And that’s the only worry you’ve ever given me. Aurora, I can’t tell you what to do. I can’t look into tomorrow for you, as much as part of me wants to.”

“I’m not asking that. I’d never ask you that.”

“No, you wouldn’t. Look into your heart, Aurora. Stop calculating risks and just look.”

“I might see something I don’t want to.”

“Oh, you probably will.” With a little laugh, Clarissa settled back on the sofa with an arm around A.J. “I can’t tell you what to do, but I can tell you what I feel. David Brady is a very good man. He has his flaws, of course, but he is a good man. It’s been a pleasure for me to be able to work with him. As a matter of fact, when he called this morning, I was delighted.”

“Called?” Immediately alert, A.J. sat up straight. “David called you? Why?”

“Oh, a few ideas he’d had about the documentary.” She fussed with the little lace napkin in her lap. “He’s in Rolling Hills today. Well, not exactly in, but outside. Do you remember hearing about that old mansion no one ever seems able to live in for long? The one a few miles off the beach?”

“It’s supposed to be haunted,” A.J. muttered.

“Of course there are differing opinions on that. I think David made an excellent choice for his project, though, from what he told me about the background.”

“What do you have to do with that?”

“That? Oh, nothing at all. We just chatted about the house. I suppose he thought I’d be interested.”

“Oh.” Mollified, A.J. began to relax. “That’s all right then.”

“We did set up a few other things. I’ll be going into the studio—Wednesday,” she decided. “Yes, I’m sure it’s Wednesday of next week, to discuss spontaneous phenomena. And then, oh, sometime the following week, I’m to go to the Van Camps’. We’ll tape in Alice’s living room.”

“The Van Camps’.” She felt the heat rising. “He set all this up with you.”

Clarissa folded her hands. “Yes, indeed. Did I do something wrong?”

“Not you.” Fired up, she rose. “He knew better than to change things without clearing it with me first. You can’t trust anyone. Especially a producer.” Snatching up her purse, she strode to the door. “You don’t go anywhere on Wednesday to discuss any kind of phenomena until I see just what he has up his sleeve.” She caught herself and came back to give Clarissa a hug. “Don’t worry, I’ll straighten it out.”

“I’m counting on it.” Clarissa watched her daughter storm out of the house before she sat back, content. She’d done everything she could—set energy in motion. The rest was up to fate.

* * *

“Tell him we’ll reschedule. Better yet, have Abe meet with him.” A.J. shouted into her car phone as she came up behind a tractor-trailer.

“Abe has a three-thirty. I don’t think he can squeeze Montgomery in at four.”

“Damn.” Impatient, A.J. zoomed around the tractor-trailer. “Who’s free at four?”

“Just Barbara.”

While keeping an eye peeled for her exit, A.J. turned that over in her mind. “No, they’d never jell. Reschedule, Diane. Tell Montgomery…tell him there was an emergency. A medical emergency.”

“Check. There isn’t, is there?”

Her smile was set and nothing to laugh about. “There might be.”

“Sounds promising. How can I reach you?”

“You can’t. Leave anything important on the machine. I’ll call in and check.”

“You got it. Hey, good luck.”

“Thanks.” Teeth gritted, A.J. replaced the receiver.

He wasn’t going to get away with playing power games. A.J. knew all the rules to that one, and had made up plenty of her own. David Brady was in for it. A.J. reached for her map again. If she could ever find him.

When the first raindrop hit the windshield she started to swear. By the time she’d taken the wrong exit, made three wrong turns and found herself driving down a decrepit gravel road in a full-fledged spring storm, she was cursing fluently. Every one of them was aimed directly at David Brady’s head.

One look at the house through driving rain and thunderclouds proved why he’d chosen so well. Braking viciously, A.J. decided he’d arranged the storm for effect. When she swung out of the car and stepped in a puddle of mud that slopped over her ankle, it was the last straw.

He saw her through the front window. Surprise turned to annoyance quickly at the thought of another interruption on a day that had seen everything go wrong. He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in a week, his work was going to hell and he itched just looking at her. When he pulled open the front door, he was as ready as A.J. for an altercation.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Her hair was plastered to her face; her suit was soaked. She’d just ruined half a pair of Italian shoes. “I want to talk to you, Brady.”

“Fine. Call my office and set up an appointment. I’m working.”

“I want to talk to you now!” Lifting a hand to his chest, she gave him a hefty shove back against the door. “Just where do you come off making arrangements with one of my clients without clearing it with me? If you want Clarissa in the studio next week, then you deal with me. Understand?”

He took her damp hand by the wrist and removed it from his shirt. “I have Clarissa under contract for the duration of filming. I don’t have to clear anything with you.”

“You’d better read it again, Brady. Dates and times are set up through her representative.”

“Fine. I’ll send you a schedule. Now if you’ll excuse me—”

He pushed open the door, but she stepped in ahead of him. Two electricians inside the foyer fell silent and listened. “I’m not finished.”

“I am. Get lost, Fields, before I have you tossed off the set.”

“Watch your step, or my client might develop a chronic case of laryngitis.”

“Don’t threaten me, A.J.” He gripped her lapels with both hands. “I’ve had about all I’m taking from you. You want to talk, fine. Your office or mine, tomorrow.”

“Mr. Brady, we need you upstairs.”

For a moment longer he held her. Her gaze was locked on his and the fury was fierce and very equal. He wanted, God, he wanted to drag her just a bit closer, wipe that maddening look off her face. He wanted to crush his mouth to hers until she couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t fight. He wanted, more than anything, to make her suffer the way he suffered. He released her so abruptly she took two stumbling steps back.

“Get lost,” he ordered, and turned to mount the stairs.

It took her a minute to catch her breath. She hadn’t known she could get this angry, hadn’t allowed herself to become this angry in too many years to count. Emotions flared up inside her, blinding her to everything else. She dashed up the stairs behind him.

“Ms. Fields, nice to see you again.” Alex stood on the top landing in front of a wall where the paint had peeled and cracked. He gave her an easy smile as he smoked his cigar and waited to be called back in front of the camera.

“And I want to talk to you, too,” she snapped at him. Leaving him staring, she strode down the hall after David.

It was narrow and dark. There were cobwebs clinging to corners, but she didn’t notice. In places there were squares of lighter paint where pictures had once hung. A.J. worked her way through technicians and walked into the room only steps behind David.

It hit her like a wall. No sooner had she drawn in the breath to shout at him again than she couldn’t speak at all. She was freezing. The chill whipped through her and to the bone in the matter of a heartbeat.

The room was lit for the shoot, but she didn’t see the cameras, the stands or the coils of cable. She saw wallpaper, pink roses on cream, and a four-poster draped in the same rose hue. There was a little mahogany stool beside the bed that was worn smooth in the center. She could smell the roses that stood fresh and a little damp in an exquisite crystal vase on a mahogany vanity that gleamed with beeswax and lemon. And she saw—much more. And she heard.

You betrayed me. You betrayed me with him, Jessica.

No! No, I swear it. Don’t. For God’s sake don’t do this. I love you. I—

Lies! All lies. You won’t tell any more.

There were screams. There was silence, a hundred times worse. A.J.’s purse hit the floor with a thud as she lifted her hands to her ears.

“A.J.” David was shaking her, hands firm on her shoulders, as everyone else in the room stopped to stare. “What’s wrong with you?”

She reached out to clutch his shirt. He could feel the iciness of her flesh right through the cotton. She looked at him, but her eyes didn’t focus. “That poor girl,” she murmured. “Oh, God, that poor girl.”

“A.J.” With an effort, he kept his voice calm. She was shuddering and pale, but the worst of it was her eyes, dark and glazed as they looked beyond him. She stared at the center of the room as if held in a trance. He took both of her hands in his. “A.J., what girl?”

“He killed her right here. There on the bed. He used his hands. She couldn’t scream anymore because his hands were on her throat, squeezing. And then…”

“A.J.” He took her chin and forced her to look at him. “There’s no bed in here. There’s nothing.”

“It—” She struggled for air, then lifted both hands to her face. The nausea came, a too-familiar sensation. “I have to get out of here.” Breaking away, she pushed through the technicians crowded in the doorway and ran. She stumbled out into the rain and down the porch steps before David caught her.

“Where are you going?” he demanded. A flash of lightning highlighted them both as the rain poured down.

“I’ve got to…” She trailed off and looked around blindly. “I’m going back to town. I have to get back.”

“I’ll take you.”

“No.” Panicked, she struggled, only to find herself held firmly. “I have my car.”

“You’re not driving anywhere like this.” Half leading, half dragging, he pulled her to his car. “Now stay here,” he ordered, and slammed the door on her.

Unable to gather the strength to do otherwise, A.J. huddled on the seat and shivered. She needed only a minute. She promised herself she needed only a minute to pull herself together. But however many it took David to come back, the shivering hadn’t stopped. He tossed her purse in the back, then tucked a blanket around her. “One of the crew’s taking your car back to town.” After starting the engine, he headed down the bumpy, potholed gravel road. For several moments there was silence as the rain drummed and she sat hunched under the blanket.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he said at length.

She was better now. She took a steady breath to prove she had control. “Tell you what?”

“That you were like your mother.” A.J. curled into a ball on the seat, cradled her head in her arms and wept.

What the hell was he supposed to say? David cursed her, then himself, as he drove through the rain with her sobbing beside him. She’d given him the scare of his life when he’d turned around and seen her standing there, gasping for air and white as a sheet. He’d never felt anything as cold as her hands had been. Never seen anything like what she must have seen.

Whatever doubts he had, whatever criticisms he could make about laboratory tests, five-dollar psychics and executive clairvoyants, he knew A.J. had seen something, felt something, none of the rest of them had.

So what did he do about it? What did he say?

She wept. She let herself empty. There was no use berating herself, no use being angry with what had happened. She’d long ago resigned herself to the fact that every now and again, no matter how careful she was, no matter how tightly controlled, she would slip and leave herself open.

The rain stopped. There was milky sunlight now. A.J. kept the blanket close around her as she straightened in her seat. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want an apology. I want an explanation.”

“I don’t have one.” She wiped her cheeks dry with her hand. “I’d appreciate it if you’d take me home.”

“We’re going to talk, and we’re going to do it where you can’t kick me out.”

She was too weak to argue, too weak to care. A.J. rested her head against the window and didn’t protest when they passed the turn for her apartment. They drove up into the hills, high above the city. The rain had left things fresh here, though a curling mist still hugged the ground.

He turned into a drive next to a house with cedar shakes and tall windows. The lawn was wide and trimmed with spring flowers bursting around the borders.

“I thought you’d have a place in town.”

“I used to, then I decided I had to breathe.” He took her purse and a briefcase from the back seat. A.J. pushed the blanket aside and stepped from the car. Saying nothing, they walked to the front door together.

Inside wasn’t rustic. He had paintings on the walls and thick Turkish carpets on the floors. She ran her hand along a polished rail and stepped down a short flight of steps into the living room. Still silent, David went to the fireplace and set kindling to blaze. “You’ll want to get out of those wet clothes,” he said matter-of-factly. “There’s a bath upstairs at the end of the hall. I keep a robe on the back of the door.”

“Thank you.” Her confidence was gone—that edge that helped her keep one step ahead. A.J. moistened her lips. “David, you don’t have to—”

“I’ll make coffee.” He walked through a doorway and left her alone.

She stood there while the flames from the kindling began to lick at split oak. The scent was woodsy, comfortable. She’d never felt more miserable in her life. The kind of rejection she felt now, from David, was the kind she’d expected. It was the kind she’d dealt with before.

She stood there while she battled back the need to weep again. She was strong, self-reliant. She wasn’t about to break her heart over David Brady, or any man. Lifting her chin, A.J. walked to the stairs and up. She’d shower, let her clothes dry, then dress and go home. A. J. Fields knew how to take care of herself.

The water helped. It soothed her puffy eyes and warmed her clammy skin. From the small bag of emergency cosmetics in her purse, she managed to repair the worst of the damage. She tried not to notice that the robe carried David’s scent as she slipped it on. It was better to remember that it was warm and covered her adequately.

When she went back downstairs, the living area was still empty. Clinging to the courage she’d managed to build back up, A.J. went to look for him.

The hallway twisted and turned at angles when least expected. If the situation had been different, A.J. would have appreciated the house for its uniqueness. She didn’t take much notice of polished paneling offset by stark white walls, or planked floors scattered with intricately patterned carpets. She followed the hallway into the kitchen. The scent of coffee eased the beginning of flutters in her stomach. She took a moment to brace herself, then walked into the light.

He was standing by the window. There was a cup of coffee in his hand, but he wasn’t drinking. Something was simmering on the stove. Perhaps he’d forgotten it. A.J. crossed her arms over her chest and rubbed her hands over the sleeves of the robe. She didn’t feel warm any longer.

“David?”

He turned the moment she said his name, but slowly. He wasn’t certain what he should say to her, what he could say. She looked so frail. He couldn’t have described his own feelings at the moment and hadn’t a clue to hers. “The coffee’s hot,” he told her. “Why don’t you sit down?”

“Thanks.” She willed herself to behave as normally as he and took a seat on a stool at the breakfast bar.

“I thought you could use some food.” He walked to the stove to pour coffee. “I heated up some soup.”

Tension began to beat behind her eyes. “You didn’t have to bother.”

Saying nothing, he ladled out the soup, then brought both it and the coffee to her. “It’s an old family recipe. My mother always says a bowl of soup cures anything.”

“It looks wonderful,” she managed, and wondered why she had to fight back the urge to cry again. “David…”

“Eat first.” Taking no food for himself, he drew up a stool across from her and cradled his coffee. He lit a cigarette and sat, sipping his coffee and smoking, while she toyed with her soup. “You’re supposed to eat it,” he pointed out. “Not just rearrange the noodles.”

“Why don’t you ask?” she blurted out. “I’d rather you just asked and got it over with.”

So much hurt there, he realized. So much pain. He wondered where it had its roots. “I don’t intend to start an interrogation, A.J.”

“Why not?” When she lifted her head, her face was defiant, her eyes strong. “You want to know what happened to me in that room.”

He blew out a stream of smoke before he crushed out his cigarette. “Of course I do. But I don’t think you’re ready to talk about what happened in that room. At least not in detail. A.J., why don’t you just talk to me?”

“Not ready?” She might have laughed if her stomach wasn’t tied up in knots. “You’re never ready. I can tell you what she looked like—black hair, blue eyes. She was wearing a cotton gown that buttoned all the way up to her throat, and her name was Jessica. She was barely eighteen when her husband killed her in a jealous rage, strangled her with his own hands, then killed himself in grief with the pistol in the table beside the bed. That’s what you want for your documentary, isn’t it?”

The details, and the cool, steady way she delivered them, left him shaken. Just who was this woman who sat across from him, this woman he’d held and desired? “What happened to you has nothing to do with the project. I think it has a great deal to do with the way you’re reacting now.”

“I can usually control it.” She shoved the soup aside so that it lapped over the edges of the bowl. “God knows I’ve had years of practice. If I hadn’t been so angry, so out of control when I walked in there—it probably wouldn’t have happened.”

“You can block it.”

“Usually, yes. To a large extent, anyway.”

“Why do you?”

“Do you really think this is a gift?” she demanded as she pushed away from the counter. “Oh, maybe for someone like Clarissa it is. She’s so unselfish, so basically good and content with herself.”

“And you?”

“I hate it.” Unable to remain still, she whirled away. “You’ve no idea what it can be like, having people stare at you, whisper. If you’re different, you’re a freak, and I—” She broke off, rubbing at her temple. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet. “I just wanted to be normal. When I was little, I’d have dreams.” She folded her hands together and pressed them to her lips. “They were so incredibly real, but I was just a child and thought everyone dreamed like that. I’d tell one of my friends—oh, your cat’s going to have kittens. Can I have the little white one? Then weeks later, the cat would have kittens and one of them would be white. Little things. Someone would lose a doll or a toy and I’d say, well, your mother put it on the top shelf in your closet. She forgot. When they looked it would be there. Kids didn’t think much of it, but it made some of the parents nervous. They thought it would be best if their children stayed away from me.”

“And that hurt,” he murmured.

“Yes, that hurt a lot. Clarissa understood. She was comforting and really wonderful about it, but it hurt. I still had the dreams, but I stopped talking about them. Then my father died.”

She stood, the heels of her hands pressed to her eyes as she struggled to rein in her emotions. “No, please.” She shook her head as she heard David shift on the stool as if to rise. “Just give me a minute.” On a long breath, she dropped her hands. “I knew he was dead. He was away on a selling trip, and I woke up in the middle of the night and knew. I got up and went into Clarissa. She was sitting up in bed, wide awake. I could see on her face that she was already grieving. We didn’t even say anything to each other, but I got into bed with her, and we just lay there together until the phone rang.”

“And you were eight,” he murmured, trying to get some grip on it.

“I was eight. After that, I started to block it off. Whenever I began to feel something, I’d just pull in. It got to the point where I could go for months—at one point, two years—without something touching it off. If I get angry or upset to the point where I lose control, I open myself up for it.”

He remembered the way she’d stormed into the house, strong and ready for a fight. And the way she’d run out again, pale and terrified. “And I make you angry.”

She turned to look at him for the first time since she’d begun to speak. “It seems that way.”

The guilt was there. David wasn’t certain how to deal with it, or his own confusion. “Should I apologize?”

“You can’t help being what you are any more than I can stop being what I am.”

“Aurora, I think I understand your need to keep a handle on this thing, not to let it interfere with the day-to-day. I don’t understand why you feel you have to lock it out of your life like a disease.”

She’d gone this far, she thought as she walked back to the counter. She’d finish. “When I was twenty, scrambling around and trying to get my business rolling, I met this man. He had this little shop on the beach, renting surfboards, selling lotion, that sort of thing. It was so, well, exciting, to see someone that free-spirited, that easygoing, when I was working ten hours a day just to scrape by. In any case, I’d never been involved seriously with a man before. There hadn’t been time. I fell flat on my face for this one. He was fun, not too demanding. Before I knew it we were on the point of being engaged. He bought me this little ring with the promise of diamonds and emeralds once we hit it big. I think he meant it.” She gave a little laugh as she slid onto the stool again. “In any case, I felt that if we were going to be married we shouldn’t have any secrets.”

“You hadn’t told him?”

“No.” She said it defiantly, as if waiting for disapproval. When none came, she lowered her gaze and went on. “I introduced him to Clarissa, and then I told him that I—I told him,” she said flatly. “He thought it was a joke, sort of dared me to prove it. Because I felt so strongly about having everything up front between us, well, I guess you could say I proved it. After—he looked at me as though…” She swallowed and struggled to keep the hurt buried.

“I’m sorry.”

“I suppose I should have expected it.” Though she shrugged it off, she picked up the spoon and began to run the handle through her fingers. “I didn’t see him for days after that. I went to him with some grand gesture in mind, like giving him back his ring. It’s almost funny, looking back on it now, the way he wouldn’t look at me, the way he kept his distance. Too weird.” She looked up again with a brittle smile. “I was just plain too weird.”

And she was still hurting. But he didn’t reach out to her. He wasn’t quite sure how. “The wrong man at the wrong time.”

A.J. gave an impatient shake of her head. “I was the wrong woman. Since then, I’ve learned that honesty isn’t always the most advantageous route. Do you have any idea what it would do to me professionally if my clients knew? Those I didn’t lose would ask me to tell them what role to audition for. People would start asking me to fly to Vegas with them so I could tell them what number to bet at the roulette table.”

“So you and Clarissa downplay your relationship and you block the rest off.”

“That’s right.” She picked up her cold coffee and downed it. “After today, I guess that goes to hell.”

“I told Sam I’d discussed what had happened in that room with you, that we’d talked about the murder and coming up there had upset you.” He rose to fetch the pot and freshen her coffee. “The crew may mumble about overimaginative women, but that’s all.”

She shut her eyes. She hadn’t expected sensitivity from him, much less understanding. “Thanks.”

“It’s your secret if you feel it’s necessary to keep it, A.J.”

“It’s very necessary. How did you feel when you realized?” she demanded. “Uncomfortable? Uneasy? Even now, you’re tiptoeing around me.”

“Maybe I am.” He started to pull out a cigarette, then shoved it back into the pack. “Yeah, it makes me uneasy. It’s not something I’ve ever had to deal with before. A man has to wonder if he’ll have any secrets from a woman who can look inside him.”

“Of course.” She rose, back straight. “And a man’s entitled to protect himself. I appreciate what you’ve done, David. I’m sure my clothes are dry now. I’ll change if you’ll call me a cab.”

“No.” He was up and blocking her way before she could walk out of the kitchen.

“Don’t make this any more difficult for me, or for yourself.”

“Damned if I want to,” he muttered, and found he’d already reached for her. “I can’t seem to help it. You make me uneasy,” he repeated. “You’ve made me uneasy all along. I still want you, Aurora. That’s all that seems to matter at the moment.”

“You’ll think differently later.”

He drew her closer. “Reading my mind?”

“Don’t joke.”

“Maybe it’s time someone did. If you want to look into my head now, you’ll see that all I can think about is taking you upstairs, to my bed.”

Her heart began to beat, in her chest, in her throat. “And tomorrow?”

“The hell with tomorrow.” He brought his lips down to hers with a violence that left her shaken. “The hell with everything but the fact that you and I have a need for each other. You’re not going home tonight, Aurora.”

She let herself go, let herself risk. “No, I’m not.”

7

There was moonlight, streaks of it, glimmering. She could smell the hyacinths, light and sweet, through the open windows. The murmur of a stream winding its way through the woods beside the house was quiet, soothing. Every muscle in A.J.’s body tensed as she stepped into David’s bedroom.

The painting hung on the wall as she had known it would, vivid, sensual streaks on a white canvas. The first shudder rolled through her as she turned her head and saw her own vague reflection, not in a mirror, but in a tall glass door.

“I dreamed this.” The words were barely audible as she took a step back. But was she stepping back into the dream or into reality? Were they somehow both the same? Panicked, she stood where she was. Didn’t she have a choice? she asked herself. Was she just following a pattern already set, a pattern that had begun the moment David Brady had walked into her office?

“This isn’t what I want,” she whispered, and turned—for escape, for freedom—in denial, she couldn’t have said. But he was there, blocking her way, drawing her closer, drawing her in just as she’d known he would be.

She looked up at him as she knew she had done before. His face was in shadows, as indistinct as hers had been in the glass. But his eyes were clear, highlighted by moonlight. His words were clear, highlighted by desire.

“You can’t keep running, Aurora, not from yourself, not from me.”

There was impatience in his voice, impatience that became all the sharper when his mouth closed over hers. He wanted, more desperately than he had allowed himself to believe. He needed, more intensely than he could afford to admit. Her uncertainty, her hesitation, aroused some deep, primitive part of him. Demand, take, possess. The thoughts twined together into one throbbing pulsebeat of desire. He didn’t feel the pleasant anticipation he had with other women, but a rage, burning, almost violent. As he tasted the first hint of surrender, he nearly went mad with it.

His mouth was so hungry, his hands were so strong. The pressure of his body against hers was insistent. He held her as though she were his to take with or without consent. Yet she knew, had always known, the choice was ultimately hers. She could give or deny. Like a stone tossed into clear water, her decision now would send ripples flowing out into her life. Where they ended, how they altered the flow, couldn’t be foretold. To give, she knew, was always a risk. And risk always held its own excitement, its own fear. With each second that passed, the pleasure grew more bold and ripe, until with a moan of acceptance, she brought her hands to his face and let herself go.

It was only passion, A.J. told herself while her body strained and ached. Passion followed no patterns, kept to no course. The need that grew inside her had nothing to do with dreams or hopes or wishes. It was her passion she couldn’t resist, his passion she couldn’t refuse. For tonight, this one night, she’d let herself be guided by it.

He knew the instant she was his. Her body didn’t weaken, but strengthened. The surrender he’d expected became a hunger as urgent as his. There would be no slow seduction for either of them, no gentle persuasion. Desire was a razor’s edge that promised as much pain as pleasure. They both understood it; they both acknowledged; they both accepted. Together they fell onto the bed and let the fire blaze.

His robe tangled around her. With an impatient oath, he yanked it down from her shoulder so that the tantalizing slope was exposed. His lips raced over her face, leaving hers unfulfilled while he stoked a line of heat down her throat. She felt the rasp of his cheek and moaned in approval. He sought to torment, he sought to dominate, but she met each move with equal strength. She felt the warm trace of his tongue and shivered in anticipation. Unwilling to leave the reins in his hands, she tugged at the buttons of his shirt, unfastening, tearing, until with her own patience ended, she ripped it from his back.

His flesh was taut under her palms, the muscles a tight ridge to be explored and exploited. Male, hard, strong. His scent wound its way into her senses, promising rough demands and frantic movement. She tasted furious demands, hot intentions, then her excitement bounded upward when she felt his first tremble. Painful, urgent, desperate needs poured from him into her. It was what she wanted. As ruthless as he, she sought to drag him away from his control.

The bed was like a battlefield, full of fire and smoke and passions. The spread was soft, smooth, the air touched with spring, but it meant nothing to them. Warm flesh and sharp needs, rippling muscle and rough hands. That was their world. Her breath caught, not in fear, not in protest, but in excitement, as he pulled the robe down her body. When her arms were pinned she used her mouth as a weapon to drive him beyond reason. Her hips arched, pressing against him, tormenting, tempting, thrilling. As his hands moved over her, her strength seemed to double to race with her needs.

But here in this fuming, incendiary world there would be no winner and no loser. The fire sprinted along her skin, leaving dull, tingling aches wherever his hands or lips had touched. She wanted it, reveled in it, even while she burned for more. Not content to leave the control in his hands for long, A.J. rolled on top of him and began her own siege.

He’d never known a woman could make him shudder. He’d never known a woman could make him hurt from desire alone. She was long and limber and as ravenous as he. She was naked but not vulnerable. She was passionate but not pliant. He could see her in the moonlight, her hair pale and tumbled around her face, her skin glowing from exhilaration and needs not yet met. Her hands were soft as they raked over him, but demanding enough, bold enough, to take his breath away. The lips that followed them did nothing to soothe. She yanked his slacks down with a wild impatience that had his mind spinning and his body pounding. Then before he could react, she was sprawled across him, tasting his flesh.

It was madness. He welcomed it. It was torment. He could have begged for more. Once he’d thought he had discovered a simmering, latent passion in her, but nothing had prepared him for this. She was seduction, she was lust, she was greed. With both hands in her hair, he dragged her mouth to his so that he could taste them all.

It wasn’t a dream, she thought dazedly as his mouth clung to hers and his hands again took possession. No dream had ever been so tempestuous. Reality had never been so mad. Tangled with her, he rolled her to her back. Even as she gasped for air, he plunged into her so that her body arched up, taut with the first uncontrollable climax. She reached up, too stunned to realize how badly she needed to hold on to him. Wrapped tight, their strengths fed each other as surely as their hungers did.

They lay together, weak, sated, both of them vanquished.

Gradually sanity returned. A.J. saw the moonlight again. His face was buried in her hair, but his breathing had steadied, as hers had. Her arms were still around him, her body locked tight to his. She told herself to let go, to reestablish distance, but lacked the will to obey.

It had only been passion, she reminded herself. It had only been need. Both had been satisfied. Now was the time to draw away, to move apart. But she wanted to nuzzle her cheek against his, to murmur something foolish and stay just as she was until the sun came up. With her eyes closed tight she fought the urge to soften, to give that which, once given, was lost.

No, he’d never known a woman could make him shudder. He’d never known a woman could make him weak. Yes, once he’d thought he’d discovered a simmering, latent passion in her, but he hadn’t expected this. He shouldn’t still feel so dazed. So involved.

He hadn’t been prepared for the intensity of feeling. He hadn’t planned on having the need grow and multiply even after it was satisfied. That was the reason he’d lost some part of himself to her. That was, had to be, the only reason.

But when she trembled, he drew her closer.

“Cold?”

“The air’s cooled.” It sounded reasonable. It sounded true. How could she explain that her body was still pumping with heat, and would be as long as he was there?

“I can shut the windows.”

“No.” She could hear the stream again, just smell the hyacinths. She didn’t want to lose the sensations.

“Here, then.” He drew away to untangle the sheets and pull them over her. It was then, in the dim light, that he noticed the pale line of smudges along her arm. Taking her elbow, he looked closer.

“Apparently I wasn’t careful enough with you.” A.J. glanced down. There was regret in his voice, and a trace of a kindness she would have little defense against. If she hadn’t been afraid, she would have longed to hear him speak just like that again, she would have rested her head on his shoulder. Instead, with a shrug she shifted and drew her arm away. “No permanent damage.” She hoped. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you found a few bruises on yourself.”

He looked at her again and grinned in a way that was completely unexpected and totally charming. “It seems we both play rough.”

It was too late to hold back a response to the grin. On impulse, A.J. leaned over and took a quick, none-too-gentle nip at his shoulder. “Complaining?”

She’d surprised him again. Maybe it was time for a few surprises in his life. And in hers. “I won’t if you won’t.” Then, in a move too abrupt to evade, he rolled over her again, pinning her arms above her head with one hand.

“Look, Brady—”

“I like the idea of going one-on-one with you, A.J.” He lowered his head just enough to nibble on her earlobe, until she squirmed under him.

“As long as you have the advantage.” Her voice was breathy, her cheeks flushed. With his hands on her wrists he could feel the gradual acceleration of her pulse. With his body stretched full length, he could feel the dips, the curves, the fluid lines of hers. Desire began to rise again as though it had never been quenched.

“Lady, I think I might enjoy taking advantage of you on a regular basis. I know I’m going to enjoy it for the rest of the night.”

She twisted one way, twisted the other, then let out a hissing breath, as he only stared down at her. Being outdone physically was nearly as bad as being outdone intellectually. “I can’t stay here tonight.”

“You are here,” he pointed out, then took his free hand in one long stroke from her hip to her breast.

“I can’t stay.”

“Why?”

Because relieving pent-up passion with him and spending the night with him were two entirely different things. “Because I have to work tomorrow,” she began lamely. “And—”

“I’ll drop you by your apartment in the morning so you can change.” The tip of her breast was already hard against his palm. He ran his thumb over it and watched passion darken her eyes.

“I have to be in the office by eight-thirty.”

“We’ll get up early.” He lowered his head to brush kisses at either side of her mouth. “I’m not planning on getting much sleep, anyway.”

Her body was a mass of nerve endings waiting to be exploited. Exploitation led to weakness, she reminded herself. And weakness to losses. “I don’t spend the night with men.”

“You do with this one.” He brought his hand up, tracing as he went until he cupped her throat.

If she was going to lose, she’d lose with her eyes open. “Why?”

He could have given her quiet, persuasive answers. And they might have been true. Perhaps that’s why he chose another way. “We haven’t nearly finished with each other yet, Aurora. Not nearly.”

He was right. The need was screaming through her. That she could accept. But she wouldn’t accept being pressured, being cajoled or being seduced. Her terms, A.J. told herself. Then she could justify this first concession. “Let go of my hands, Brady.”

Her chin was angled, her eyes direct, her voice firm. She wasn’t a woman, he decided, who could be anticipated. Lifting a brow, he released her hands and waited.

With her eyes on his, she brought them to his face. Slowly her lips curved. Whether it was challenge or surrender he didn’t care. “I wouldn’t plan to sleep at all tonight,” she warned just before she pulled his mouth to hers.

* * *

The room was still dark when A.J. roused from a light doze to draw the covers closer. There was an ache, more pleasant than annoying, in her muscles. She stretched, then shifted to glance at the luminous dial of her clock. It wasn’t there. With her mind fogged with sleep, she rubbed a hand over her eyes and looked again.

Of course it wasn’t there, she remembered. She wasn’t there. Her clock, her apartment and her own bed were miles away. Turning again, she saw that the bed beside her was empty. Where could he have gone? she wondered as she pushed herself up. And what time was it?

She’d lost time. Hours, days, weeks, it hadn’t mattered. But now she was alone, and it was time for reality again.

They’d exhausted each other, depleted each other and fed each other. She hadn’t known there could be anything like the night they’d shared. Nothing real had ever been so exciting, so wild or desperate. Yet it had been very real. Her body bore the marks his hands had made while he’d been lost in passion. His taste still lingered on her tongue, his scent on her skin. It had been real, but it hadn’t been reality. Reality was now, when she had to face the morning.

What she’d given, she’d given freely. She would have no regrets there. If she’d broken one of her own rules, she’d done so consciously and with deliberation. Not coolly, perhaps, but not carelessly. Neither could she be careless now. The night was over.

Because there was nothing else, A.J. picked his robe up off the floor and slipped into it. The important thing was not to be foolish, but mature. She wouldn’t cuddle and cling and pretend there had been anything more between them than sex. One night of passion and mutual need.

She turned her cheek into the collar of the robe and let it linger there for a moment where his scent had permeated the cloth. Then, securing the belt, she walked out of the bedroom and down the stairs.

The living room was in shadows, but the first tongues of light filtered through the wide glass windows. David stood there, looking out, while a fire, freshly kindled, crackled beside him. A.J. felt the distance between them was like a crater, deep, wide and jagged. It took her too long to remind herself that was what she’d expected and wanted. Rather than speak, she walked the rest of the way down the stairs and waited.

“I had the place built with this window facing east so I could watch the sun rise.” He lifted a cigarette and drew deep so that the tip glowed in the half-light. “No matter how many times I see it, it’s different.”

She wouldn’t have judged him as a man drawn to sunrises. She hadn’t judged him as a man who would choose a secluded house in the hills. Just how much, A.J. wondered, did she know about the man she’d spent the night with? Thrusting her hands into the pockets of the robe, her fingers brushed cardboard. A.J. curled them around the matchbook he’d stuck in there and forgotten. “I don’t take much time for sunrises.”

“If I happen to be right here at the right time, I usually find I can handle whatever crises the day has planned a little better.”

Her fingers closed and opened, opened and closed on the matchbook. “Are you expecting any particular crisis today?”

He turned then to look at her, standing barefoot and a bit hollow-eyed in his robe. It didn’t dwarf her; she was only inches shorter than he. Still, somehow it made her appear more feminine, more…accessible, he decided, than anything else he remembered. It wouldn’t be possible to tell her that it had just occurred to him that he was already in the middle of a crisis. Its name was Aurora J. Fields. “You know…” He tucked his hands in the back pockets of well-broken-in jeans before he took a step closer. “We didn’t spend too much time talking last night.”

“No.” She braced herself. “It didn’t seem that conversation was what either of us wanted.” Nor was it conversation she’d prepared herself to deal with. “I’m going to go up and change. I do have to be in the office early.”

“Aurora.” He didn’t reach out to stop her this time. He only had to speak. “What did you feel that first day with me in your office?”

After letting out a long breath, she faced him again. “David, I talked about that part of my life more than I cared to last night.”

He knew that was true. He’d spent some time wondering why without finding any answers. She had them. If he had to probe and prod until she gave them up, he would. “You talked about it in connection with other people, other things. This happens to involve me.”

“I’m going to be late for work,” she murmured, and started up the landing.

“You make a habit of running away, Aurora.”

“I’m not running.” She whirled back, both hands clenched into fists in the pockets. “I simply don’t see any reason to drag this all up again. It’s personal. It’s mine.”

“And it touches me,” he added calmly. “You walked into my bedroom last night and said you’d dreamed it. Had you?”

“I don’t—” She wanted to deny it, but she had never been comfortable with direct lies. The fact that she couldn’t use one had anger bubbling through. “Yes. Dreams aren’t as easily controlled as conscious thought.”

“Tell me what you dreamed.”

She wouldn’t give him all. A.J.’s nails dug into her palms. She’d be damned if she’d give him all. “I dreamed about your room. I could have described it for you before I’d ever gone in. Would you like to put me under a microscope now or later?”

“Self-pity isn’t attractive.” As her breath hissed out he stepped onto the landing with her. “You knew we were going to be lovers.”

Her expression became cool, almost disinterested. “Yes.”

“And you knew that day in your office when you were angry with me, frustrated with your mother, and our hands met, like this.” He reached out, uncurled her fist and pressed their hands palm to palm.

Her back was against the wall, her hand caught in his. She was tired, spitting tired, of finding herself in corners. “What are you trying to prove, a theory for your documentary?”

What would she say if he told her he’d come to understand she showed her fangs only where she was most vulnerable? “You knew,” he repeated, letting the venom spill off of him. “And it frightened you. Why was that?”

“I’d just had a strong, physical premonition that I was going to be the lover of a man I’d already decided was detestable. Is that reason enough?”

“For annoyance, even anger. Not for fear. You were afraid that night in the back of the limo, and again last night when you walked into the bedroom.”

She tried to jerk her arm aside. “You’re exaggerating.”

“Am I?” He stepped closer and touched a hand to her cheek. “You’re afraid now.”

“That’s not true.” Deliberately she unclenched her other hand. “I’m annoyed because you’re pressing me. We’re adults who spent the night together. That doesn’t give you the right to pry into my personal life or feelings.”

No, it didn’t. That was his own primary rule and he was breaking it. Somehow he’d forgotten that he had no rights, could expect none. “All right, that’s true. But I saw the condition you were in yesterday afternoon after walking into that room.”

“That’s done,” she said quickly, maybe too quickly. “There’s no need to get into it again.”

Though he was far from convinced, he let it ride. “And I listened to you last night. I don’t want to be responsible for anything like that happening to you again.”

“You’re not responsible—I am.” Her voice was calmer now. Emotions clouded things. She’d spent years discovering that. “You don’t cause anything, I do, or if you like, circumstances do. David, I’m twenty-eight, and I’ve managed to survive this—something extra all my life.”

“I understand that. You should understand that I’m thirty-six. I haven’t been personally exposed to any of this up until a few weeks ago.”

“I do understand.” Her voice chilled, just a little. “And I understand the natural reaction is to be wary, curious or skeptical. The same way one looks at a sideshow in the circus.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth.” His anger came as a surprise to both of them. So much of a surprise, that when he grabbed A.J. by the shoulders, she offered no protest at all. “I can’t help what reaction other people have had to you. They weren’t me. Damn it, I’ve just spent the night making love to you and I don’t even know who you are. I’m afraid to touch you, thinking I might set something off. I can’t keep my hands off you. I came down here this morning because if I’d lain beside you another minute I’d have taken you again while you were half-asleep.”

Before she’d had a chance to weigh her own reaction, she lifted her hands up to his. “I don’t know what you want.”

“Neither do I.” He caught himself and relaxed his grip on her. “And that’s a first. Maybe I need some time to figure it out.”

Time. Distance. She reminded herself that was for the best. With a nod, she dropped her hands again. “That’s reasonable.”

“But what isn’t is that I don’t want to spend that time away from you.”

Chills, anxiety or excitement, rushed up her spine. “David, I—”

“I’ve never had a night like the one I had with you.”

The weakness came quickly, to be just as quickly fought back. “You don’t have to say that.”

“I know I don’t.” With a half laugh he rubbed his hands over the shoulders he’d just clenched. “In fact, it isn’t very easy to admit it. It just happens to be true, for me. Sit down a minute.” He drew her down to sit on the step beside him. “I didn’t have a lot of time to think last night because I was too busy being…stunned,” he decided. She didn’t relax when he put his arm around her, but she didn’t draw away. “I’ve packed a lot of thinking into the past hour. There’s more to you, A.J., than there is to a lot of other women. Even without the something extra. I think what I want is to have a chance to get to know the woman I intend to spend a lot of time making love with.”

She turned to look at him. His face was close, his arm more gentle than she’d come to expect. He didn’t look like a man who had any gentleness in him, only power and confidence. “You’re taking a lot for granted.”

“Yeah, I am.”

“I don’t think you should.”

“Maybe not. I want you—you want me. We can start with that.”

That was simpler. “No promises.”

The protest sprang to his mind so quickly it stunned him. “No promises,” he agreed, reminding himself that had always been rule number two.

She knew she shouldn’t agree. The smart thing, the safe thing to do, was to cut things off now. One night, passion only. But she found herself relaxing against him. “Business and personal relationships completely separate.”

“Absolutely.”

“And when one of us becomes uncomfortable with the way things are going, we back off with no scenes or bad feelings.”

“Agreed. Want it in writing?”

Her lips curved slightly as she studied him. “I should. Producers are notoriously untrustworthy.”

“Agents are notoriously cynical.”

“Cautious,” she corrected, but lifted a hand to rub it along the stubble on his cheek. “We’re paid to be the bad guys, after all. And speaking of which, we never finished discussing Clarissa.”

“It isn’t business hours,” he reminded her, then turned her hand palm up and pressed his lips to it.

“Don’t try to change the subject. We need to iron this out. Today.”

“Between nine and five,” he agreed.

“Fine, call my office and… Oh, my God.”

“What?”

“My messages.” Dragging both hands through her hair, she sprang up. “I never called in for my messages.”

“Sounds like a national emergency,” he murmured as he stood beside her.

“I was barely in the office two hours. As it was I had to reschedule appointments. Where’s the phone?”

“Make it worth my while.”

“David, I’m not joking.”

“Neither am I.” Smiling down at her, he slipped his hand into the opening of the robe and parted it. She felt her legs liquefy from the knees down.

“David.” She turned her head to avoid his lips, then found herself in deeper trouble, as her throat was undefended. “It’ll only take me a minute.”

“You’re wrong.” He unfastened the belt. “It’s going to take longer than that.”

“For all I know I might have a breakfast meeting.”

“For all you know you don’t have an appointment until noon.” Her hands were moving down his back, under his shirt. He wondered if she was aware. “What we both know is that we should make love. Right now.”

“After,” she began, but sighed against his lips.

“Before.”

The robe fell to the floor at her feet. Negotiations ended.

8

A.J. should have been satisfied. She should have been relaxed. In the ten days following her first night with David, their relationship had run smoothly. When her schedule and his allowed, they spent the evening together. There were simple evenings walking the beach, elegant evenings dining out and quiet evenings dining in. The passion that had pulled them together didn’t fade. Rather, it built and intensified, driving them to quench it. He wanted her, as completely, as desperately, as a man could want a woman. Of the multitude of things she was uncertain of, she could be absolutely certain of that.

She should have been relaxed. She was tied up in knots.

Each day she had to rebuild a defense that had always been like a second skin. Each night David ripped it away again. She couldn’t afford to leave her emotions unprotected in what was, by her own description, a casual, physical affair. They would continue seeing each other as long as both of them enjoyed it. No promises, no commitments. When he decided to pull away, she needed to be ready.

It was, she discovered, like waiting for the other shoe to drop. He would undoubtedly break things off sooner or later. Passions that flamed too hot were bound to burn themselves out, and they had little else. He read thick, socially significant novels and informative nonfiction. A.J. leaned toward slim, gory mysteries and glitzy bestsellers. He took her to a foreign film festival full of symbolism and subtitles. She’d have chosen the Gene Kelly—Judy Garland classic on late-night TV.

The more they got to know each other, the more distance A.J. saw. Passion was the magnet that drew them together, but she was very aware its power would fade. For her own survival, she intended to be prepared when it did.

On a business level she had to be just as prepared to deal with David Brady, producer. A.J. was grateful that in this particular relationship she knew every step and every angle. After listening to David’s ideas for expanding Clarissa’s role in the documentary, she’d agreed to the extra shoots. For a price. It hadn’t been money she’d wanted to wheedle out of him, but the promise of promotion for Clarissa’s next book, due out in midsummer.

It had taken two days of heated negotiations, tossing the ball back and forth, refusals, agreements and compromises. Clarissa would have her promotion directly on the program, and a review on Book Talk, the intellectual PBS weekly. David would have his extra studio shoots and his interview with Clarissa and Alice Van Camp. Both had walked away from the negotiating table smug that they had outdone the other.

Clarissa couldn’t have cared less. She was busy with her plants, her recipes and, to A.J.’s mounting dismay, her wedding plans. She took the news of the promotions A.J. had sweated for with an absent “That’s nice, dear,” and wondered out loud if she should bake the wedding cake herself.

“Momma, a review on BookTalk isn’t just nice.” A.J. swung into the studio parking lot frustrated from the forty-minute drive during which she and Clarissa had talked at cross purposes.

“Oh, I’m sure it’s going to be lovely. The publisher said they were sending advance copies. Aurora, do you think a garden wedding would be suitable? I’m afraid my azaleas might fade.”

Brows lowered, she swung into a parking spot. “How many advance copies?”

“Oh, I’m really not sure. I probably wrote it down somewhere. And then it might rain. The weather’s so unpredictable in June.”

“Make sure they send at least three. One for the— June?” Her foot slipped off the clutch, so that the car bucked to a halt. “But that’s next month.”

“Yes, and I have dozens of things to do. Just dozens.” A.J.’s hands were very still on the wheel as she turned. “But didn’t you say something about a fall wedding?”

“I suppose I did. You know my mums are at their best in October, but Alex is…” She flushed and cleared her throat. “A bit impatient. Aurora, I know I don’t drive, but I think you’ve left your key on.”

Muttering, she pulled it out. “Momma, you’re talking about marrying a man you’ll have known for less than two months.”

“Do you really think time’s so important?” she asked with a sweet smile. “It’s more a matter of feelings.”

“Feelings can change.” She thought of David, of herself.

“There aren’t any guarantees in life, darling.” Clarissa reached over to cover her daughter’s hand with her own. “Not even for people like you and me.”

“That’s what worries me.” She was going to talk to Alex Marshall, A.J. promised herself as she pushed her door open. Her mother was acting like a teenager going steady with the football hero. Someone had to be sensible.

“You really don’t have to worry,” Clarissa told her as she stepped onto the curb. “I know what I’m doing—really, I do. But talk to Alex by all means.”

“Momma.” With a long sigh, A.J. linked arms. “I do have to worry. And mind reading’s not allowed.”

“I hardly have to when it’s written all over your face. Is my hair all right?”

A.J. turned to kiss her cheek. “You look beautiful.”

“Oh, I hope so.” Clarissa gave a nervous laugh as they approached the studio doors. “I’m afraid I’ve become very vain lately. But Alex is such a handsome man, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” A.J. agreed cautiously. He was handsome, polished smooth and personable. She wouldn’t be satisfied until she found the flaws.

“Clarissa.” They’d hardly stepped inside, when Alex came striding down the hall. He looked like a man approaching a lost and valued treasure. “You look beautiful.”

He had both of Clarissa’s hands and looked to A.J. as though he would scoop her mother up and carry her off. “Mr. Marshall.” She kept her voice cool and deliberately extended her own hand.

“Ms. Fields.” With obvious reluctance, he released one of Clarissa hands to take A.J.’s. “I have to say you’re more dedicated than my own agent. I was hoping to bring Clarissa down myself today.”

“Oh, she likes to fuss,” Clarissa put in, hoping to mollify them both. “And I’m afraid I’m so scatterbrained she has to remind me of all the little things about television interviews.”

“Just relax,” A.J. told her. “I’ll go see if everything’s set.” Checking her watch as she went, she reached out to push open the thick studio doors, when David walked through.

“Good morning, Ms. Fields.” The formal greeting was accompanied by the trail of his fingers over her wrist. “Sitting in again today?”

“Looking after my client, Brady. She’s…” When she glanced casually over her shoulder, the words slipped back down her throat. There in the middle of the hallway was her mother caught up in a close and very passionate embrace. Stunned, she stared while dozens of feelings she couldn’t identify ran through her.

“Your client appears to be well looked after,” David murmured. When she didn’t reply, he pulled her into a room off the hall. “Want to sit down?”

“No. No, I should—”

“Mind your own business.”

Anger replaced shock very quickly. “She happens to be my mother.”

“That’s right.” He walked to a coffee machine and poured two plastic cups. “Not your ward.”

“I’m not going to stand by while she, while she—”

“Enjoys herself?” he suggested, and handed her the coffee.

“She isn’t thinking.” A.J. downed half the coffee in one swallow. “She’s just riding on emotion, infatuation. And she’s—”

“In love.” A.J. drank the rest of the coffee, then heaved the cup in the direction of the trash. “I hate it when you interrupt me.”

“I know.” And he grinned at her. “Why don’t we have a quiet evening tonight, at your place? We can start making love in the living room, work our way through to the bedroom and back out again.”

“David, Clarissa is my mother and I’m very concerned about her. I should—”

“Be more concerned with yourself.” He had his hands on her hips. “And me.” They slid firm and strong up her back. “You should be very concerned with me.”

“I want you to—”

“I’m becoming an expert on what you want.” His mouth brushed hers, retreated, then brushed again. “Do you know your breath starts trembling whenever I do that.” His voice lowered, seductive, persuading. “Then your body begins to tremble.”

Weak, weaker than she should have been, she lifted both hands to his chest. “David, we have an agreement. It’s business hours.”

“Sue me.” He kissed her again, tempting, teasing as he slipped his hands under her jacket. “What are you wearing under here, A.J.?”

“Nothing important.” She caught herself swaying forward. “David, I mean it. We agreed.” His tongue traced her bottom lip. “No mixing—ah—no mixing business and…oh, damn.” She forgot business and agreements and responsibilities, dragging his mouth to hers.

They filled her, those wild, wanton cravings only he could bring. They tore at her, the needs, the longings, the wishes she knew could never be met. In a moment of abandon she tossed aside what should be and groped blindly for what might be.

His mouth was as hard, as ravenous, as if it were the first time. Desire hadn’t faded. His hands were as strong, as possessive and demanding, as ever. Passion hadn’t dimmed. It didn’t matter that the room was small and smelled of old coffee and stale cigarettes. Their senses were tangled around each other. Perfume was strong and sweet; tastes were dark and exotic.

Her arms were around his neck; her fingers were raking through his hair. Her mouth was hungry and open on his.

“Oh, excuse me.” Clarissa stood in the doorway, eyes lowered as she cleared her throat. It wouldn’t do to look too pleased, she knew. Just as it wouldn’t be wise to mention that the vibrations bouncing around in the little room might have melted lead. “I thought you’d like to know they’re ready for me.”

Fumbling for dignity, A.J. tugged at her jacket. “Good. I’ll be right in.” She waited until the door shut, then swore pungently.

“You’re even,” David said lightly. “You caught her—she caught you.”

Her eyes, when they met his, were hot enough to sear off a layer of skin. “It’s not a joke.”

“Do you know one thing I’ve discovered about you these past few days, A.J.? You take yourself too seriously.”

“Maybe I do.” She scooped her purse from the sofa, then stood there nervously working the clasp. “But has it occurred to you what would have happened if a member of the crew had opened that door?”

“They’d have seen their producer kissing a very attractive woman.”

“They would have seen you kissing me during a shoot. That’s totally unprofessional. Before the first coffee break, everyone in the studio would be passing around the gossip.”

“So?”

“So?” Exasperated, she could only stare at him. “David, that’s precisely what we agreed we didn’t want. We don’t want your crew or our associates speculating and gossiping about our personal relationship.”

Brow lifted, eyes narrowed attentively, he listened. “I don’t recall discussing that in detail.”

“Of course we did.” She tucked her purse under her arm, then wished she still had something in her hands. “Right at the beginning.”

“As I recall, the idea was to keep our personal and professional lives separate.”

“That’s just what I’ve said.”

“I didn’t take that to mean you wanted to keep the fact that we’re lovers a secret.”

“I don’t want an ad in Variety.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets. He couldn’t have said why he was angry, only that he was. “You don’t leave much middle ground, do you?”

She opened her mouth to spit at him, then subsided. “I guess not.” On a long breath, she took a step forward. “I want to avoid the speculation, just as I want to avoid the looks of sympathy when things change.”

It didn’t require telepathy to understand that she’d been waiting for the change—no, he corrected, for the end—since the beginning. Knowledge brought an unexpected, and very unwelcome, twinge of pain. “I see. All right, then, we’ll try it your way.” He walked to the door and held it open. “Let’s go punch in.”

No, he couldn’t have said why he was angry. In fact, he knew he shouldn’t have been. A.J.’s ground rules were logical, and if anything, they made things easier for him. Or should have made things easier for him. She made absolutely no demands and accepted none. In other relationships he’d insisted on the same thing. She refused to allow emotions to interfere with her business or his. In the past he’d felt precisely the same way.

The problem was, he didn’t feel that way now.

As the shoot ground to a halt because of two defective bulbs David reminded himself it was his problem. Once he accepted that, he could work on the solution. One was to go along with the terms. The other was to change them.

David watched A.J. cross the room toward Alex. Her stride was brisk, her eyes were cool. In the conservative suit she looked like precisely what she was—a successful businesswoman who knew where she was going and how to get there. He remembered the way she looked when they made love—slim, glowing and as dangerous as a neutron bomb.

David took out a cigarette then struck a match with a kind of restrained violence. He was going to have to plan out solution number two.

“Mr. Marshall.” A.J. had her speech prepared and her determination at its peak. With a friendly enough smile, she interrupted Alex’s conversation with one of the grips. “Could I speak with you for a minute?”

“Of course.” Because he’d been expecting it, Alex took her arm in his innate old-style manner. “Looks like we’ll have time for a cup of coffee.”

Together they walked back to the room where A.J. had stood with David a few hours before. This time she poured the coffee and offered the cup. But before she could start the prologue for the speech she’d been rehearsing, Alex began.

“You want to talk about Clarissa.” He pulled out one of his cigars, then held it out. “Do you mind?”

“No, go ahead. Actually, Mr. Marshall, I would very much like to talk to you about Clarissa.”

“She told me you were uneasy about our marriage plans.” He puffed comfortably on his cigar until he was satisfied it was well started. “I admit that puzzled me a bit, until she explained that besides being her agent, you happen to be her daughter. Shall we sit down?”

A.J. frowned at the sofa, then at him. It wasn’t going at all according to plan. She took her place on one end, while he settled himself on the other. “I’m glad that Clarissa explained things to you. It simplifies things. You’ll understand now why I’m concerned. My mother is very important to me.”

“And to me.” As he leaned back, A.J. studied his profile. It wasn’t difficult to see why her mother was infatuated. “You of all people can understand just how easy Clarissa is to love.”

“Yes.” A.J. sipped at her coffee. What was it she’d planned to say? Taking a deep breath, she moved back on track. “Clarissa is a wonderfully warm and very special person. The thing is, you’ve known each other for such a short time.”

“It only took five minutes.” He said it so simply, A.J. was left fumbling for words. “Ms. Fields,” he continued, then smiled at her. “A.J.,” he corrected. “It doesn’t seem right for me to call you ‘Ms. Fields.’ After all, I’m going to be your stepfather.”

Stepfather? Somehow that angle had bypassed her. She sat, coffee cup halfway to her lips, and stared at him.

“I have a son your age,” he began again. “And a daughter not far behind. I think I understand some of what you’re feeling.”

“It’s, ah, it’s not a matter of my feelings.”

“Of course it is. You’re as precious to Clarissa as my children are to me. Clarissa and I will be married, but she’d be happier if you were pleased about it.”

A.J. frowned at her coffee, then set it down. “I don’t know what to say. I thought I did. Mr. Marshall, Alex, you’ve been a journalist for over a quarter of a century. You’ve traveled all over the world, seen incredible things. Clarissa, for all her abilities, all her insights, is a very simple woman.”

“An amazingly comfortable woman, especially for a man who’s lived on the edge, perhaps too long. I had thought of retiring.” He laughed then, but comfortably, as he remembered his own shock when Clarissa had held his hand and commented on it. “That wasn’t something I’d discussed with anyone, not even my own children. I’d been looking for something more, something other than deadlines and breaking stories. In a matter of hours after being with Clarissa, I knew she was what I’d been looking for. I want to spend the rest of my life with her.”

A.J. sat in silence, looking down at her hands. What more could a woman ask for, she wondered, than for a man to love her with such straightforward devotion? Couldn’t a woman consider herself fortunate to have a man who accepted who she was, what she was, and loved her because of it, not in spite of?

Some of the tension dissolved and as she looked up at him she was able to smile. “Alex, has my mother fixed you dinner?”

“Why, yes.” Though his tone was very sober, she caught, and appreciated, the gleam in his eyes. “Several times. In fact, she told me she’s left a pot of spaghetti sauce simmering for tonight. I find Clarissa’s cooking as—unique as she is.”

With a laugh, A.J. held out her hand again. “I think Momma hit the jackpot.” He took her hand, then surprised her by leaning over to kiss her cheek.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t hurt her,” A.J. whispered. She clung to his hand a moment, then composing herself rose. “We’d better get back. She’ll wonder where we are.”

“Being Clarissa, I’m sure she has a pretty good idea.”

“That doesn’t bother you?” She stopped by the door to look up at him again. “The fact that she’s a sensitive?”

“Why should it? That’s part of what makes Clarissa who she is.”

“Yes.” She tried not to think of herself, but didn’t bite back the sigh in time. “Yes, it is.”

When they walked back into the studio Clarissa looked over immediately. It only took a moment before she smiled. In an old habit, A.J. kissed both her cheeks. “There is one thing I have to insist on,” she began without preamble.

“What is it?”

“That I give you the wedding.”

Pleasure bloomed on Clarissa’s cheeks even as she protested. “Oh, darling, how sweet, but it’s too much trouble.”

“It certainly is for a bride. You pick out your wedding dress and your trousseau and worry about looking terrific. I’ll handle the rest.” She kissed her again. “Please.”

“If you really want to.”

“I really want to. Give me a guest list and I’ll handle the details. That’s what I’m best at. I think they want you.” She gave Clarissa a last quick squeeze before urging her back on set. A.J. took her place in the background.

“Feeling better?” David murmured as he came up beside her.

“Some.” She couldn’t admit to him that she felt weepy and displaced. “As soon as the shoot’s finished, I start making wedding plans.”

“Tomorrow’s soon enough.” When she sent him a puzzled look, he only smiled. “I intend to keep you busy this evening.”

* * *

He was a man of his word. A.J. had barely arrived home, shed her jacket and opened the phone book to Caterers, when the bell rang. Taking the book with her, she went to answer. “David.” She hooked her finger in the page so as not to lose her place. “You told me you had some things to do.”

“I did them. What time is it?”

“It’s quarter to seven. I didn’t think you’d be by until around eight.”

“Well after business hours, then.” He toyed with, then loosened the top button of her blouse.

She had to smile. “Well after.”

“And if you don’t answer your phone, your service will pick it up after four rings?”

“Six. But I’m not expecting any calls.” She stepped closer to slide her arms up his chest. “Hungry?”

“Yeah.” He tested himself, seeing how long he could hold her at arm’s length. It appeared to be just over thirty seconds.

“There’s nothing in the kitchen except a frozen fish dinner.” She closed her eyes as his lips skimmed over her jaw.

“Then we’ll have to find another way to satisfy the appetite.” He unhooked her skirt and, as it fell to the floor, drew his hands down her hips.

She yanked his sweater over his head and tossed it aside. “I’m sure we’ll manage.”

His muscles were tight as she ran her hands over his. Taut, tense all the way from his neck to his waist. With her blouse half-open, her legs clad in sheer stockings that stopped just at her thighs, A.J. pressed against him. She wanted to make him burn with just the thought of loving her. Then she was gasping for air, her fingers digging into his back as his hands took quick and complete possession.

When her legs buckled and she went limp against him, he didn’t relent. For hours and hours he’d held back, watching her sit primly in the back of the studio, looking at her make her precise notes in her book. Now he had her, alone, hot, moist and, for the first time in their lovemaking, weak.

Holding her close, he slid with her to the floor.

Unprepared, she was helpless against a riot of sensation. He took her on a desperate ride, driving her up where the air was thin, plunging her down where it was heavy and dark. She tried to cling to him but lacked the strength.

She trembled for him. That alone was enough to drive him mad. His name came helplessly through her lips. He wanted to hear it, again and again, over and over. He wanted to know she thought of nothing else. And when he pulled the remaining clothes from both of them, when he entered her with a violence neither of them could fight, he knew he thought of nothing but her.

She shuddered again and again, but he held himself back from ultimate release. Even as he drove her, his hands continued to roam, bringing unspeakable pleasures to every inch of her body. The carpet was soft at her back, but even when her fingers curled into it she could only feel the hard thrust of her lover. She heard him say her name, once, then twice, until her eyes fluttered open. His body rose above hers, taut with muscle, gleaming from passion. His breath was heaving even as hers was. She heard it, then tasted it when his mouth crushed down to devour. Then she heard nothing but her own sobbing moan as they emptied themselves.

* * *

“I like you naked.” When he’d recovered enough, David propped himself on his elbow and took a long, long look. “But I have to admit, I’m fascinated by those little stockings you wear that stop right about here.” To demonstrate, he ran his fingertip along her upper thigh.

Still dazed, A.J. merely moved against his touch. “They’re very practical.”

With a muffled laugh, he nuzzled the side of her neck. “Yes, that’s what fascinates me. Your practicality.”

She opened her eyes but kept them narrowed. “That’s not what I meant.” Because she felt too good to make an issue of it, she curled into him.

It was one of the things that charmed him most. David wondered if he told her how soft, how warm and open to affection she was after loving, if she would pull back. Instead he held her close, stroking and pleasing them both. When he caught himself half dozing, he pulled her up.

“Come on, let’s have a shower before dinner.”

“A shower?” She let her head rest on his shoulder. “Why don’t we just go to bed?”

“Insatiable,” he decided, and scooped her up.

“David, you can’t carry me.”

“Why not?”

“Because.” She groped. “Because it’s silly.”

“I always feel silly carrying naked women.” In the bathroom, he stood her on her feet.

“I suppose you make a habit of it,” she commented dryly, and turned on the taps with a hard twist.

“I have been trying to cut down.” Smiling, he pulled her into the shower with him so that the water rained over her face.

“My hair!” She reached up once, ineffectually, to block the flow, then stopped to glare at him.

“What about it?”

“Never mind.” Resigned, she picked up the soap and began to rub it lazily over her body as she watched him. “You seem very cheerful tonight. I thought you were annoyed with me this morning.”

“Did you?” He’d given some thought to strangling her. “Why would I be?” He took the soap from her and began to do the job himself.

“When we were talking…” The soap was warm and slick, his touch very thorough. “It doesn’t matter. I’m glad you came by.”

That was more than he’d come to expect from her. “Really?”

She smiled, then wrapped her arms around him and kissed him under the hot, steamy spray. “Yes, really. I like you, David. When you’re not being a producer.”

That, too, was more than he’d come to expect from her. And less than he was beginning to need. “I like you, Aurora. When you’re not being an agent.”

When she stepped out of the shower and reached for towels, she heard the bell ring again. “Damn.” She gripped a towel at her breasts.

“I’ll get it.” David hooked a towel at his hips and strode out before A.J. could protest. She let out a huff of breath and snatched the robe from its hook on the door. If it was someone from the office, she’d have a lovely time explaining why David Brady, producer, was answering her door in a towel. She decided discretion was the better part of valor and stayed where she was.

Then she remembered the clothes. She closed her eyes on a moan as she imagined the carelessly strewn articles on her living room floor. Bracing herself, she walked down the hall back into the living room.

There was candlelight. On the ebony table she kept by the window, candles were already burning in silver holders on a white cloth. She saw the gleam of china, the sparkle of crystal, and stood where she was as David signed a paper handed to him by a man in a black suit.

“I hope everything is satisfactory, Mr. Brady.”

“I’m sure it will be.”

“We will, of course, be back for pickup at your convenience.” With a bow to David, then another to A.J., he let himself out the door.

“David…” A.J. walked forward as if she weren’t sure of her steps. “What is this?”

He lifted a silver cover from a plate. “It’s coq au vin.”

“But how did you—”

“I ordered it for eight o’clock.” He checked his watch before he walked over to retrieve his pants. “They’re very prompt.” With the ease of a totally unselfconscious man, he dropped the towel and drew on his slacks.

She took another few steps toward the table. “It’s lovely. Really lovely.” There was a single rose in a vase. Moved, she reached out to touch it, then immediately brought her hand back to link it with her other. “I never expected anything like this.”

He drew his sweater back over his head. “You said once you enjoyed being pampered.” She looked stunned, he realized. Had he been so unromantic? A little uncertain, he walked to her. “Maybe I enjoy doing the pampering now and then.”

She looked over, but her throat was closed and her eyes were filling. “I’ll get dressed.”

“No.” Her back was to him now, but he took her by the shoulders. “No, you look fine.”

She struggled with herself, pressing her lips together until she thought she could speak. “I’ll just be a minute.” But he was turning her around. His brows were already knit together before he saw her face.

“What’s this?” He lifted a fingertip and touched a tear that clung to her lashes.

“It’s nothing. I—I feel foolish. Just give me a minute.”

He brushed another tear away with his thumb. “No, I don’t think I should.” He’d seen her weep before, but that had been a torrent. There was something soft in these tears, something incredibly sweet that drew him. “Do you always cry when a man offers you a quiet dinner?”

“No, of course not. It’s just—I never expected you to do anything like this.”

He brought her hand to his lips and smiled as he kissed her fingers. “Just because I’m a producer doesn’t mean I can’t have some class.”

“That’s not what I meant.” She looked up at him, smiling down at her, her hands still close to his lips. She was losing. A.J. felt her heart weaken, her will weaken and her wishes grow. “That’s not what I meant,” she said again in a whisper, and tightened her fingers on his. “David, don’t make me want too much.”

It was what he thought he understood. If you wanted too much, you fell too hard. He’d avoided the same thing, maybe for the same reasons, until one late afternoon on a beach. “Do you really think either of us can stop now?”

She thought of how many times she’d been rejected, easily, coolly, nervously. Friendship, affection, love could be turned off by some as quickly as a faucet. He wanted her now, A.J. reminded herself. He cared now. It had to be enough. She touched a hand to his cheek.

“Maybe tonight we won’t think at all.”

9

“‘Item fifteen, clause B. I find the wording here too vague. As we discussed, my client feels very strongly about her rights and responsibilities as a new mother. The nanny will accompany the child to the set, at my client’s expense. However, she will require regular breaks in order to feed the infant. The trailer provided by you must be equipped with a portable crib and…’” For the third time during her dictation, A.J. lost her train of thought.

“Diapers?” Diane suggested.

“What?” A.J. turned from the window to look at her secretary.

“Just trying to help. Want me to read it back to you?”

“Yes, please.”

While Diane read the words back, A.J. frowned down at the contract in her hand. “‘And a playpen,’” A.J. finished, and managed to smile at her secretary. “I’ve never seen anyone so wrapped up in motherhood.”

“Doesn’t fit her image, does it? She always plays the heartless sex bomb.”

“This little movie of the week should change that. Okay, finish it up with ‘Once the above changes are made, the contract will be passed along to my client for signing.’”

“Do you want this out today?”

“Hmm?”

“Today, A.J.?” With a puzzled smile, Diane studied her employer. “You want the letter to go right out?”

“Oh. Yes, yes, it’d better go out.” She checked her watch. “I’m sorry, Diane, it’s nearly five. I hadn’t realized.”

“No problem.” Closing her notebook, Diane rose. “You seem a little distracted today. Big plans for the holiday weekend?”

“Holiday?”

“Memorial Day weekend, A.J.” With a shake of her head, Diane tucked her pencil behind her ear. “You know, three days off, the first weekend of summer. Sand, surf, sun.”

“No.” She began rearranging the papers on her desk. “I don’t have any plans.” Shaking off the mood, she looked up again. Distracted? What she was was a mess. She was bogged down in work she couldn’t concentrate on, tied up in knots she couldn’t loosen. With a shake of her head, she glanced at Diane again and remembered there were other people in the world beside herself. “I’m sure you do. Let the letter wait. There’s no mail delivery Monday, anyway. We’ll send it over by messenger Tuesday.”

“As a matter of fact, I do have an interesting three days planned.” Diane gave her own watch a check. “And he’s picking me up in an hour.”

“Go home.” A.J. waved her off as she shuffled through papers. “Don’t get sunburned.”

“A.J.—” Diane paused at the door and grinned “—I don’t plan to see the sun for three full days.”

When the door shut, A.J. slipped off her glasses and rubbed at the bridge of her nose. What was wrong with her? She couldn’t seem to concentrate for more than five minutes at a stretch before her attention started wandering.

Overwork? she wondered as she looked down at the papers in her hand. That was an evasion; she thrived on overwork. She wasn’t sleeping well. She was sleeping alone. One had virtually nothing to do with the other, A.J. assured herself as she unstacked and restacked papers. She was too much her own person to moon around because David Brady had been out of town for a few days.

But she did miss him. She picked up a pencil to work, then ended up merely running it through her fingers. There wasn’t any crime in missing him, was there? It wasn’t as though she were dependent on him. She’d just gotten used to his company. Wouldn’t he be smug and self-satisfied to know that she’d spent half her waking hours thinking about him? Disgusted with herself, A.J. began to work in earnest. For two minutes.

It was his fault, she thought as she tossed the pencil down again. That extravagantly romantic dinner for two, then that silly little bouquet of daisies he’d sent the day he’d left for Chicago. Though she tried not to, she reached out and stroked the petals that sat cheerful and out of place on her desk. He was trying to make a giddy, romantic fool out of her—and he was succeeding.

It just had to stop. A.J. adjusted her glasses, picked up her pencil and began to work again. She wasn’t going to give David Brady another thought. When the knock sounded at her door a few moments later, she was staring into space. She blinked herself out of the daydream, swore, then called out. “Come in.”

“Don’t you ever quit?” Abe asked her when he stuck his head in the door.

Quit? She’d barely made a dent. “I’ve got a couple of loose ends. Abe, the Forrester contract comes up for renewal the first of July. I think we should start prodding. His fan mail was two to one last season, so—”

“First thing Tuesday morning I’ll put the squeeze on. Right now I have to go marinate.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Big barbecue this weekend,” Abe told her with a wink. “It’s the only time my wife lets me cook. Want me to put a steak on for you?”

She smiled, grateful that he’d brought simpler things to her mind. Hickory smoke, freshly cut grass, burned meat. “No, thanks. The memory of the last one’s a little close.”

“The butcher gave me bad quality meat.” He hitched up his belt and thought about spending the whole weekend in bathing trunks.

“That’s what they all say. Have a good holiday, Abe. Just be prepared to squeeze hard on Tuesday.”

“No problem. Want me to lock up?”

“No, I’ll just be a few more minutes.”

“If you change your mind about that steak, just come by.”

“Thanks.” Alone again, A.J. turned her concentration back to her work. She heard the sounds of her staff leaving for the day. Doors closing, scattered laughter.

David stood in the doorway and watched her. The rest of her staff was pouring out of the door as fast as they could, but she sat, calm and efficient, behind her desk. The fatigue that had had him half dozing on the plane washed away. Her hair was tidy, her suit jacket trim and smooth over her shoulders. She held the pencil in long, ringless fingers and wrote in quick, static bursts. The daisies he’d sent her days before sat in a squat vase on her desk. It was the first, the only unbusinesslike accent he’d ever seen in her office. Seeing them made him smile. Seeing her made him want.

He could see himself taking her there in her prim, organized office. He could peel that tailored, successful suit from her and find something soft and lacy beneath. With the door locked and traffic rushing by far below, he could make love with her until all the needs, all the fantasies, that had built in the days he’d been away were satisfied.

A.J. continued to write, forcing her concentration back each time it threatened to ebb. It wasn’t right, she told herself, that her system would start to churn this way for no reason. The dry facts and figures she was reading shouldn’t leave room for hot imagination. She rubbed the back of her neck, annoyed that tension was building there out of nothing. She would have sworn she could feel passion in the air. But that was ridiculous.

Then she knew. As surely as if he’d spoken, as surely as if he’d already touched her. Slowly, her hand damp on the pencil, she looked up.

There was no surprise in her eyes. It should have made him uneasy that she’d sensed him there when he’d made no sound, no movement. The fact that it didn’t was something he would think of later. Now he could only think of how cool and proper she looked behind the desk. Of how wild and wanton she was in his arms.

She wanted to laugh, to spring up from the desk and rush across the room. She wanted to be held close and swung in dizzying circles while the pleasure of just seeing him again soared through her. Of course she couldn’t. That would be foolish. Instead she lifted a brow and set her pencil on her blotter. “So you’re back.”

“Yeah. I had a feeling I’d find you here.” He wanted to drag her up from her chair and hold her. Just hold her. He dipped his hands into his pockets and leaned against the jamb.

“A feeling?” This time she smiled. “Precognition or telepathy?”

“Logic.” He smiled, too, then walked toward the desk. “You look good, Fields. Real good.”

Leaning back in her chair, she gave herself the pleasure of a thorough study. “You look a little tired. Rough trip?”

“Long.” He plucked a daisy from the vase and spun it by the stem. “But it should be the last one before we wrap.” Watching her, he came around the desk, then, resting a hip on it, leaned over and tucked the daisy behind her ear. “Got any plans for tonight?”

If she’d had any, she would have tossed them out the window and forgotten them. With her tongue caught in her teeth, A.J. made a business out of checking her desk calender. “No.”

“Tomorrow?”

She flipped the page over. “Doesn’t look like it.”

“Sunday?”

“Even agents need a day of rest.”

“Monday?”

She flipped the next page and shrugged. “Offices are closed. I thought I’d spend the day reading over some scripts and doing my nails.”

“Uh-huh. In case you hadn’t noticed, office hours are over.”

Her heart was drumming. Already. Her blood was warming. So soon. “I’d noticed.”

In silence he held out his hand. After only a slight hesitation, A.J. put hers into it and let him draw her up. “Come home with me.”

He’d asked her before, and she’d refused. Looking at him now, she knew the days of refusal were long past. Reaching down, she gathered her purse and her briefcase.

“Not tonight,” David told her, and took the briefcase to set it back down.

“I want to—”

“Not tonight, Aurora.” Taking her hand again, he brought it to his lips. “Please.”

With a nod, she left the briefcase and the office behind.

They kept their hands linked as they walked down the hall. They kept them linked still as they rode down in the elevator. It didn’t seem foolish, A.J. realized, but sweet. He hadn’t kissed her, hadn’t held her, and yet the tension that had built so quickly was gone again, just through a touch.

She was content to leave her car in the lot, thinking that sometime the next day, they’d drive back into town and arrange things. Pleased just to be with him again, she stopped at his car while he unlocked the doors.

“Haven’t you been home yet?” she asked, noticing a suitcase in the back seat.

“No.”

She started to smile, delighted that he’d wanted to see her first, but she glanced over her shoulder again as she stepped into the car. “I have a case just like that.”

David settled in the seat, then turned on the ignition. “That is your case.”

“Mine?” Baffled, she turned around and looked closer. “But—I don’t remember you borrowing one of my suitcases.”

“I didn’t. Mine are in the trunk.” He eased out of the lot and merged with clogged L.A. weekend traffic.

“Well, if you didn’t borrow it, what’s it doing in your car?”

“I stopped by your place on the way. Your housekeeper packed for you.”

“Packed…” She stared at the case. When she turned to him, her eyes were narrowed. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, Brady. Just where do you come off packing my clothes and assuming—”

“The housekeeper packed them. Nice lady. I thought you’d be more comfortable over the weekend with some of your own things. I had thought about keeping you naked, but that’s a little tricky when you take walks in the woods.”

Because her jaw was beginning to ache, she relaxed it. “You thought? You didn’t think at all. You drop by the office and calmly assume that I’ll drop everything and run off with you. What if I’d had plans?

“Then that would’ve been too bad.” He swung easily off the ramp toward the hills.

“Too bad for whom?”

“For the plans.” He punched in the car lighter and sent her a mild smile. “I have no intention of letting you out of my sight for the next three days.”

“You have no intention?” The fire was rising as she shifted in her seat toward him. “What about my intention? Maybe you think it’s very male and macho to just—just bundle a woman off for a weekend without asking, without any discussion, but I happen to prefer being consulted. Stop the car.”

“Not a chance.” David had expected this reaction. Even looked forward to it. He touched the lighter to the tip of his cigarette. He hadn’t enjoyed himself this much for days. Since the last time he’d been with her.

Her breath came out in a long, slow hiss. “I don’t find abductions appealing.”

“Didn’t think I did, either.” He blew out a lazy stream of smoke. “Guess I was wrong.”

She flopped back against her seat, arms folded. “You’re going to be sorry.”

“I’m only sorry I didn’t think of it before.” With his elbow resting lightly on the open window, he drove higher into the hills, with A.J. fuming beside him. The minute he stopped the car in his drive, A.J. pushed open her door, snatched her purse up and began to walk. When he grabbed her arm, she spun around, holding the pastel-dyed leather like a weapon.

“Want to fight?”

“I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction.” She yanked her arm out of his hold. “I’m walking back.”

“Oh?” He look a quick look at the slim skirt, thin hose and fragile heels. “You wouldn’t make it the first mile in those shoes.”

“That’s my problem.”

He considered a minute, then sighed. “I guess we’ll just carry through with the same theme.” Before she realized his intention, he wrapped an arm around her waist and hauled her over his shoulder.

Too stunned to struggle, she blew hair out of her eyes. “Put me down.”

“In a few minutes,” he promised as he walked toward the house.

“Now.” She whacked him smartly on the back with her purse. “This isn’t funny.”

“Are you kidding?” When he stuck his key in the lock, she began to struggle. “Easy, A.J., you’ll end up dropping on your head.”

“I’m not going to tolerate this.” She tried to kick out and found her legs pinned behind the knee. “David, this is degrading. I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but if you get hold of yourself now, I’ll forget the whole thing.”

“No deal.” He started up the steps.

“I’ll give you a deal,” she said between her teeth as she made a futile grab for the railing. “If you put me down now, I won’t kill you.”

“Now?”

“Right now.”

“Okay.” With a quick twist of his body, he had her falling backward. Even as her eyes widened in shock, he was tumbling with her onto the bed.

“What the hell’s gotten into you?” she demanded as she struggled to sit up.

“You,” he said, so simply she stopped in the act of shoving him away. “You,” he repeated, cupping the back of her neck. “I thought about you the whole time I was gone. I wanted you in Chicago. I wanted you in the airport, and thirty thousand feet up I still wanted you.”

“You’re—this is crazy.”

“Maybe. Maybe it is. But when I was on that plane flying back to L.A. I realized that I wanted you here, right here, alone with me for days.”

His fingers were stroking up and down her neck, soothing. Her nerves were stretching tighter and tighter. “If you’d asked,” she began.

“You’d have had an excuse. You might have spent the night.” His fingers inched up into her hair. “But you’d have found a reason you couldn’t stay longer.”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it? Why haven’t you spent a weekend with me before?”

Her fingers linked and twisted. “There’ve been reasons.”

“Yeah.” He put his hand over hers. “And the main one is you’re afraid to spend more than a few hours at a time with me.” When she opened her mouth, he shook his head to cut her off. “Afraid if you do, I might just get too close.”

“I’m not afraid of you. That’s ridiculous.”

“No, I don’t think you are. I think you’re afraid of us.” He drew her closer. “So am I.”

“David.” The word was shaky. The world was suddenly shaky. Just passion, she reminded herself again. That’s what made her head swim, her heart pound. Desire. Her arms slid up his back. It was only desire. “Let’s not think at all for a while.” She touched her lips to his and felt resistance as well as need.

“Sooner or later we’re going to have to.”

“No.” She kissed him again, let her tongue trace lightly over his lips. “There’s no sooner, no later.” Her breath was warm, tempting, as it fluttered over him. “There’s only now. Make love with me now, in the light.” Her hands slipped under his shirt to tease and invite.

Her eyes were open and on his, her lips working slowly, steadily, to drive him to the edge. He swore, then pulled her to him and let the madness come.

* * *

“It’s good for you.”

“So’s calves’ liver,” A.J. said breathlessly, and paused to lean against a tree. “I avoid that, too.”

They’d taken the path behind his house, crossed the stream and continued up. By David’s calculations they’d gone about three-quarters of a mile. He walked back to stand beside her. “Look.” He spread his arm wide. “It’s terrific, isn’t it?”

The trees were thick and green. Birds rustled the leaves and sang for the simple pleasure of sound. Wildflowers she’d never seen before and couldn’t name pushed their way through the underbrush and battled for the patches of sunlight. It was, even to a passionately avowed city girl, a lovely sight.

“Yes, it’s terrific. You tend to forget there’s anything like this when you’re down in L.A.”

“That’s why I moved up here.” He put an arm around her shoulder and absently rubbed his hand up and down. “I was beginning to forget there was any place other than the fast lane.”

“Work, parties, meetings, parties, brunch, lunch and cocktails.”

“Yeah, something like that. Anyway, coming up here after a day in the factory keeps things in perspective. If a project bombs in the ratings, the sun’s still going to set.”

She thought about it, leaning into him a bit as he stroked her arm. “If I blow a deal, I go home, lock the doors, put on my headset and drown my brain in Rachmaninoff.”

“Same thing.”

“But usually I kick something first.”

He laughed and kissed the top of her head. “Whatever works. Wait till you see the view from the top.”

A.J. leaned down to massage her calf. “I’ll meet you back at the house. You can draw me a picture.”

“You need the air. Do you realize we’ve barely been out of bed for thirty-six hours?”

“And we’ve probably logged about ten hours’ sleep.” Straightening a bit, she stretched protesting muscles. “I think I’ve had enough health and nature for the day.”

He looked down at her. She wasn’t A. J. Fields now, in T-shirt and jeans and scuffed boots. But he still knew how to play her. “I guess I’m in better shape than you are.”

“Like hell.” She pushed away from the tree.

Determined to keep up, she strode along beside him, up the winding dirt path, until sweat trickled down her back. Her leg muscles whimpered, reminding her she’d neglected her weekly tennis games for over a month. At last, aching and exhausted, she dropped down on a rock.

“That’s it. I give up.”

“Another hundred yards and we start circling back.”

“Nope.”

“A.J., it’s shorter to go around this way than to turn around.”

Shorter? She shut her eyes and asked herself what had possessed her to let him drag her through the woods. “I’ll just stay here tonight. You can bring me back a pillow and a sandwich.”

“I could always carry you.”

She folded her arms. “No.”

“How about a bribe?”

Her bottom lip poked out as she considered. “I’m always open to negotiations.”

“I’ve got a bottle of cabernet sauvignon I’ve been saving for the right moment.”

She rubbed at a streak of dirt on her knee. “What year?”

“Seventy-nine.”

“A good start. That might get me the next hundred yards or so.”

“Then there’s that steak I took out of the freezer this morning, the one I’m going to grill over mesquite.”

“I’d forgotten about that.” She brought her tongue over her top lip and thought she could almost taste it. “That should get me halfway back down.”

“You drive a hard bargain.”

“Thank you.”

“Flowers. Dozens of them.”

She lifted a brow. “By the time we get back, the florist’ll be closed.”

“City-oriented,” he said with a sigh. “Look around you.”

“You’re going to pick me flowers?” Surprised, and foolishly pleased, she lifted her arms to twine them around his neck. “That should definitely get me through the front door.”

Smiling, she leaned back as he stepped off the path to gather blossoms. “I like the blue ones,” she called out, and laughed as he muttered at her.

She hadn’t expected the weekend to be so relaxed, so easy. She hadn’t known she could enjoy being with one person for so long. There were no schedules, no appointments, no pressing deals. There were simply mornings and afternoons and evenings.

It seemed absurd that something as mundane as fixing breakfast could be fun. She’d discovered that spending the time to eat it instead of rushing into the morning had a certain appeal. When you weren’t alone. She didn’t have a script or a business letter to deal with. And she had to admit, she hadn’t missed them. She’d done nothing more mind-teasing in two days than a crossword puzzle. And even that, she remembered happily, had been interrupted.

Now he was picking her flowers. Small, colorful wildflowers. She’d put them in a vase by the window where they’d be cozy and bright. And deadly.

For an instant, her heart stopped. The birds were silent and the air was still as glass. She saw David as though she were looking through a long lens. As she watched, the light went gray. There was pain, sharp and sudden, as her knuckles scraped over the rock.

“No!” She thought she shouted, but the word came out in a whisper. She nearly slipped off the rock before she caught herself and stumbled toward him. She gasped for his name twice before it finally ripped out of her. “David! No, stop.”

He straightened, but only had time to take a step toward her before she threw herself into his arms. He’d seen that blank terror in her eyes before, once before, when she’d stood in an old empty room watching something no one else could see.

“Aurora, what is it?” He held her close while she shuddered, though he had no idea how to soothe. “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t pick any more. David, don’t.” Her fingers dug hard into his back.

“All right, I won’t.” Hands firm, he drew her away to study her face. “Why?”

“Something’s wrong with them.” The fear hadn’t passed. She pressed the heel of her hand against her chest as if to push it out. “Something’s wrong with them,” she repeated.

“They’re just flowers.” He showed her what he held in his hands.

“Not them. Over there. You were going to pick those over there.”

He followed the direction of her gaze to a large sunny rock with flowers around the perimeter. He remembered he’d just been turning in their direction when her shouts had stopped him. “Yes, I was. Let’s have a look.”

“No.” She grabbed him again. “Don’t touch them.”

“Calm down,” he said quietly enough, though his own nerves were starting to jangle. Bending, he picked up a stick. Letting the flowers he’d already picked fall, he took A.J.’s hand in his and dragged the end of the stick along the edge of the rock through a thick clump of bluebells. He heard the hissing rattle, felt the jolt of the stick he held as the snake reared up and struck. A.J.’s hand went limp in his. David held on to the stick as he pulled her back to the path. He wore boots, thick and sturdy enough to protect against the snakes scattered through the hills. But he’d been picking flowers, and there had been nothing to protect the vulnerable flesh of his hands and wrists.

“I want to go back,” she said flatly.

She was grateful he didn’t question, didn’t probe or even try to soothe. If he had, she wasn’t sure what idiotic answers she’d have given him. A.J. had discovered more in that one timeless moment than David’s immediate danger. She’d discovered she was in love with him. All her rules, her warnings, her precautions hadn’t mattered. He could hurt her now, and she might never recover.

So she didn’t speak. Because he was silent, as well, she felt the first pang of rejection. They entered through the kitchen door. David took a bottle of brandy and two water glasses out of a cupboard. He poured, handed one to A.J., then emptied half the contents of his own glass in one swallow.

She sipped, then sipped again, and felt a little steadier. “Would you like to take me home now?”

He picked up the bottle and added a dollop to his glass. “What are you talking about?”

A.J. wrapped both hands around her glass and made herself speak calmly. “Most people are uncomfortable after—after an episode. They either want to distance themselves from the source or dissect it.” When he said nothing, only stared at her, she set her glass down. “It won’t take me long to pack.”

“You take another step,” he said in a voice that was deadly calm, “and I don’t know what the hell I’ll do. Sit down, Aurora.”

“David, I don’t want an interrogation.”

He hurled his glass into the sink, making her jolt at the sudden violence. “Don’t we know each other any better than that by now?” He was shouting. She couldn’t know it wasn’t at her, but himself. “Can’t we have any sort of discussion, any sort of contact, that isn’t sex or negotiations?”

“We agreed—”

He said something so uncharacteristically vulgar about agreements that she stopped dead. “You very possibly saved my life.” He stared down at his hand, well able to imagine what might have happened. “What am I supposed to say to you? Thanks?”

When she found herself stuttering, A.J. swallowed and pulled herself back. “I’d really rather you didn’t say anything.”

He walked to her but didn’t touch. “I can’t. Look, I’m a little shaky about this myself. That doesn’t mean I’ve suddenly decided you’re a freak.” He saw the emotion come and go in her eyes before he reached out to touch her face. “I’m grateful. I just don’t quite know how to handle it.”

“It’s all right.” She was losing ground. She could feel it. “I don’t expect—”

“Do.” He brought his other hand to her face. “Do expect. Tell me what you want. Tell me what you need right now.”

She tried not to. She’d lose one more foothold if she did. But his hands were gentle, when they never were, and his eyes offered. “Hold me.” She closed her eyes as she said it. “Just hold me a minute.”

He put his arms around her, drew her against him. There was no passion, no fire, just comfort. He felt her hands knead at his back until both of them relaxed. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“It was just a flash. I was sitting there, thinking about how nice it had been to do nothing. I was thinking about the flowers. I had a picture of them in the window. All at once they were black and ugly and the petals were like razors. I saw you bending over that clump of bluebells, and it all went gray.”

“I hadn’t bent over them yet.”

“You would have.”

“Yeah.” He held her closer a moment. “I would have. Looks like I reneged on the last part of the deal. I don’t have any flowers for you.”

“It doesn’t matter.” She pressed her lips against his neck.

“I’ll have to make it up to you.” Drawing back, he took both of her hands. “Aurora…” He started to lift one, then saw the caked blood on her knuckles. “What the hell have you done to yourself?”

Blankly she looked down. “I don’t know. It hurts,” she said as she flexed her hand.

“Come on.” He led her to the sink and began to clean off dried blood with cool water.

“Ow!” She would have jerked her hand away if he hadn’t held it still.

“I’ve never had a very gentle touch,” he muttered.

She leaned a hip against the sink. “So I’ve noticed.”

Annoyed at seeing the rough wound on her hand, he began to dab it with a towel. “Let’s go upstairs. I’ve got some Merthiolate.”

“That stings.”

“Don’t be a baby.”

“I’m not.” But he had to tug her along. “It’s only a scrape.”

“And scrapes get infected.”

“Look, you’ve already rubbed it raw. There can’t be a germ left.”

He nudged her into the bathroom. “We’ll make sure.”

Before she could stop him, he took out a bottle and dumped medicine over her knuckles. What had been a dull sting turned to fire. “Damn it!”

“Here.” He grabbed her hand again and began to blow on the wound. “Just give it a minute.”

“A lot of good that does,” she muttered, but the pain cooled.

“We’ll fix dinner. That’ll take your mind off it.”

“You’re supposed to fix dinner,” she reminded him.

“Right.” He kissed her forehead. “I’ve got to run out for a minute. I’ll start the grill when I get back.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m going to be chopping vegetables while you’re gone. I’m going to take a bath.”

“Fine. If the water’s still hot when I get back, I’ll join you.”

She didn’t ask where he was going. She wanted to, but there were rules. Instead A.J. walked into the bedroom and watched from the window as he pulled out of the drive. Weary, she sat on the bed and pulled off her boots. The afternoon had taken its toll, physically, emotionally. She didn’t want to think. She didn’t want to feel.

Giving in, she stretched out across the bed. She’d rest for a minute, she told herself. Only for a minute.

David came home with a handful of asters he’d begged from a neighbor’s garden. He thought the idea of dropping them on A.J. while she soaked in the tub might bring the laughter back to her eyes. He’d never heard her laugh so much or so easily as she had over the weekend. It wasn’t something he wanted to lose. Just as he was discovering she wasn’t something he wanted to lose.

He went up the stairs quietly, then paused at the bedroom door when he saw her. She’d taken off only her boots. A pillow was crumpled under her arm as she lay diagonally across the bed. It occurred to him as he stepped into the room that he’d never watched her sleep before. They’d never given each other the chance.

Her face looked so soft, so fragile. Her hair was pale and tumbled onto her cheek, her lips unpainted and just parted. How was it he’d never noticed how delicate her features were, how slender and frail her wrists were, how elegantly feminine the curve of her neck was?

Maybe he hadn’t looked, David admitted as he crossed to the bed. But he was looking now.

She was fire and thunder in bed, sharp and tough out of it. She had a gift, a curse and ability she fought against every waking moment, one that he was just beginning to understand. He was just beginning to see that it made her defensive and defenseless.

Only rarely did the vulnerabilities emerge, and then with such reluctance from her he’d tended to gloss over them. But now, just now, when she was asleep and unaware of him, she looked like something a man should protect, cherish.

The first stirrings weren’t of passion and desire, but of a quiet affection he hadn’t realized he felt for her. He hadn’t realized it was possible to feel anything quiet for Aurora. Unable to resist, he reached down to brush the hair from her cheek and feel the warm, smooth skin beneath.

She stirred. He’d wanted her to. Heavy and sleep-glazed, her eyes opened. “David?” Even her voice was soft, feminine.

“I brought you a present.” He sat on the bed beside her and dropped the flowers by her hand.

“Oh.” He’d seen that before, too, he realized. That quick surprise and momentary confusion when he’d done something foolish or romantic. “You didn’t have to.”

“I think I did,” he murmured, half to himself. Almost as an experiment, he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her softly, gently, with the tenderness she’d made him feel as she slept. He felt the ache move through him, sweet as a dream.

“David?” She said his name again, but this time her eyes were dark and dazed.

“Ssh.” His hands didn’t drag through her hair now with trembles of passion, but stroked, exploring the texture. He could watch the light strike individual strands. “Lovely.” He brought his gaze back to hers. “Have I ever told you how lovely you are?”

She started to reach for him, for the passion that she could understand. “It isn’t necessary.”

His lips met hers again, but they didn’t devour and demand. This mood was foreign and made her heart pound as much with uncertainty as need. “Make love with me,” she murmured as she tried to draw him down.

“I am.” His mouth lingered over hers. “Maybe for the first time.”

“I don’t understand,” she began, but he shifted so that he could cradle her in his arms.

“Neither do I.”

So he began, slowly, gently, testing them both. Her mouth offered darker promises, but he waited, coaxing. His lips were patient as they moved over hers, light and soothing as they kissed her eyes closed. He didn’t touch her, not yet, though he wondered what it would be like to stroke her while the light was softening, to caress as though it were all new, all fresh. Gradually he felt the tension in her body give way, he felt what he’d never felt from her before. Pliancy, surrender, warmth.

Her body seemed weightless, gloriously light and free. She felt the pleasure move through her, but sweetly, fluidly, like wine. Then he was the wine, heady and potent, drugging her with the intoxicating taste of his mouth. The hands that had clutched him in demand went lax. There was so much to absorb—the flavor of his lips as they lingered on hers; the texture of his skin as his cheek brushed hers; the scent that clung to him, part man, part woods; the dark, curious look in his eyes as he watched her.

She looked as she had when she’d slept, he thought. Fragile, so arousingly fragile. And she felt… At last he touched, fingertips only, along skin already warm. He heard her sigh his name in a way she’d never said it before. Keeping her cradled in his arms, he began to take her deeper, take himself deeper, with tenderness.

She had no strength to demand, no will to take control. For the first time her body was totally his, just as for the first time her emotions were. He touched, and she yielded. He tasted, and she gave. When he shifted her, she felt as though she could float. Perhaps she was. Clouds of pleasure, mists of soft, soft delight. When he began to undress her, she opened her eyes, needing to see him again.

The light had gone to rose with sunset. It made her skin glow as he slowly drew off her shirt. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, couldn’t stop his hands from touching, though he had no desire to be quick. When she reached up, he helped her pull off his own shirt, then took her injured hand to his lips. He kissed her fingers, then her palm, then her wrist, until he felt her begin to tremble. Bending, he brushed her lips with his again, wanting to hear her sigh his name. Then, watching her, waiting until she looked at him, he continued to undress her.

Slowly. Achingly slowly, he drew the jeans down her legs, pausing now and then to taste newly exposed skin. Pulses beat at the back of her knees. He felt them, lingered there, exploited them. Her ankles were slim, fragile like her wrists. He traced them with his tongue until she moaned. Then he waited, letting her settle again as he stripped off his own jeans. He came to her, flesh against flesh.

Nothing had been like this. Nothing could be like this. The thoughts whirled in her brain as he began another deliciously slow assault. Her body was to be enjoyed and pleasured, not worshiped. But he did so now, and enticed her to do the same with his.

So strong. She’d known his strength before, but this was different. His fingers didn’t grip; his hands didn’t press. They skimmed, they traced, they weakened. So intense. They’d shared intensity before, but never so quietly.

She heard him say her name. Aurora. It was like a dream, one she’d never dared to have. He murmured promises in her ear and she believed them. Whatever tomorrow might bring, she believed them now. She could smell the flowers strewn over the bed and taste the excitement that built in a way it had never done before.

He slipped into her as though their bodies had never been apart. The rhythm was easy, patient, giving.

Holding himself back, he watched her climb higher. That was what he wanted, he realized, to give her everything there was to give. When she arched and shuddered, the force whipped through him. Power, he recognized it, but was driven to leash it. His mouth found hers and drew on the sweetness. How could he have known sweetness could be so arousing?

The blood was pounding in his head, roaring in his ears, yet his body continued to move slowly with hers. Balanced on the edge, David said her name a last time.

“Aurora, look at me.” When her eyes opened, they were dark and aware. “I want to see where I take you.”

Even when control slipped away, echoes of tenderness remained.

10

Alice Robbins had exploded onto the screen in the sixties, a young, raw talent. She had, like so many girls before her and after her, fled to Hollywood to escape the limitations of small-town life. She’d come with dreams, with hopes and ambitions. An astrologer might have said Alice’s stars were in the right quadrant. When she hit, she hit big.

She had had an early, turbulent marriage that had ended in an early, turbulent divorce. Scenes in and out of the courtroom had been as splashy as anything she’d portrayed on the screen. With her marriage over and her career climbing, she’d enjoyed all the benefits of being a beautiful woman in a town that demanded, then courted, beauty. Reports of her love affairs sizzled on the pages of glossies. Glowing reviews and critical praise heaped higher with each role. But in her late twenties, when her career was reaching its peak, she found something that fulfilled her in a way success and reviews never had. Alice Robbins met Peter Van Camp.

He’d been nearly twenty years her senior, a hard-bitten, well-to-do business magnate. They’d married after a whirlwind two-week courtship that had kept the gossip columns salivating. Was it for money? Was it for power? Was it for prestige? It had been, very simply, for love.

In an unprecedented move, Alice had taken her husband’s name professionally as well as privately. Hardly more than a year later, she’d given birth to a son and had, without a backward glance, put her career on hold. For nearly a decade, she’d devoted herself to her family with the same kind of single-minded drive she’d put into her acting.

When word leaked that Alice Van Camp had been lured back into films, the hype had been extravagant. Rumors of a multimillion-dollar deal flew and promises of the movie of the century were lavish.

Four weeks before the release of the film, her son, Matthew, had been kidnapped.

David knew the background. Alice Van Camp’s triumphs and trials were public fodder. Her name was legend. Though she rarely consented to grace the screen, her popularity remained constant. As to the abduction and recovery of her son, details were sketchy. Perhaps because of the circumstances, the police had never been fully open and Clarissa DeBasse had been quietly evasive. Neither Alice nor Peter Van Camp had ever, until now, granted an interview on the subject. Even with their agreement and apparent cooperation, David knew he would have to tread carefully.

He was using the minimum crew, and a well-seasoned one. “Star” might be an overused term, but David was aware they would be dealing with a woman who fully deserved the title and the mystique that went with it.

Her Beverly Hills home was guarded by electric gates and a wall twice as tall as a man. Just inside the gates was a uniformed guard who verified their identification. Even after they had been passed through, they drove another half a mile to the house.

It was white, flowing out with balconies, rising up with Doric columns, softened by tall, tall trellises of roses in full bloom. Legend had it that her husband had had it built for her in honor of the last role she’d played before the birth of their son. David had seen the movie countless times and remembered her as an antebellum tease who made Scarlett O’Hara look like a nun.

There were Japanese cherry trees dripping down to sweep the lawn in long skirts. Their scent and the citrus fragrance of orange and lemon stung the air. As he pulled his car to a halt behind the equipment van, he spotted a peacock strutting across the lawn.

I wish A.J. could see this.

The thought came automatically before he had time to check it, just as thoughts of her had come automatically for days. Because he wasn’t yet sure just how he felt about it, David simply let it happen.

And how did he feel about her? That was something else he wasn’t quite sure of. Desire. He desired her more, even more now after he’d saturated himself with her. Friendship. In some odd, cautious way he felt they were almost as much friends as they were lovers. Understanding. It was more difficult to be as definite about that. A.J. had an uncanny ability to throw up mirrors that reflected back your own thoughts rather than hers. Still, he had come to understand that beneath the confidence and drive was a warm, vulnerable woman.

She was passionate. She was reserved. She was competent. She was fragile. And she was, David had discovered, a tantalizing mystery to be solved, one layer at a time.

Perhaps that was why he’d found himself so caught up in her. Most of the women he knew were precisely what they seemed. Sophisticated. Ambitious. Well-bred. His own taste had invariably drawn him to a certain type of woman. A.J. fit. Aurora didn’t. If he understood anything about her, he understood she was both.

As an agent, he knew, she was pleased with the deal she’d made for her client, including the Van Camp segment. As a daughter, he sensed, she was uneasy about the repercussions.

But the deal had been made, David reminded himself as he walked up the wide circular steps to the Van Camp estate. As a producer, he was satisfied with the progress of his project. But as a man, he wished he knew of a way to put A.J.’s mind at rest. She excited him; she intrigued him. And as no woman had ever done before, she concerned him. He’d wondered, more often than once, if that peculiar combination equaled love. And if it did, what in hell he was going to do about it.

“Second thoughts?” Alex asked as David hesitated at the door.

Annoyed with himself, David shrugged his shoulders, then pushed the bell. “Should there be?”

“Clarissa’s comfortable with this.”

David found himself shifting restlessly. “That’s enough for you?”

“It’s enough,” Alex answered. “Clarissa knows her own mind.”

The phrasing had him frowning, had him searching. “Alex—”

Though he wasn’t certain what he had been about to say, the door opened and the moment was lost. A formally dressed, French-accented maid took their names before leading them into a room off the main hall. The crew, not easily impressed, spoke in murmurs.

It was unapologetically Hollywood. The furnishings were big and bold, the colors flashy. On a baby grand in the center of the room was a silver candelabra dripping with crystal prisms. David recognized it as a prop from Music at Midnight.

“Not one for understatement,” Alex commented.

“No.” David took another sweep of the room. There were brocades and silks in jewel colors. Furniture gleamed like mirrors. “But Alice Van Camp might be one of the few in the business who deserves to bang her own drum.”

“Thank you.”

Regal, amused and as stunning as she had been in her screen debut, Alice Van Camp paused in the doorway. She was a woman who knew how to pose, and who did so without a second thought. Like others who had known her only through her movies, David’s first thought was how small she was. Then she stepped forward and her presence alone whisked the image away.

“Mr. Marshall.” Hand extended, Alice walked to him. Her hair was a deep sable spiked around a face as pale and smooth as a child’s. If he hadn’t known better, David would have said she’d yet to see thirty. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m a great admirer of journalists—when they don’t misquote me.”

“Mrs. Van Camp.” He covered her small hand with both of his. “Shall I say the obvious?”

“That depends.”

“You’re just as beautiful face-to-face as you are on the screen.”

She laughed, the smoky, sultry murmur that had made men itch for more than two decades. “I appreciate the obvious. And you’re David Brady.” Her gaze shifted to him and he felt the unapologetic summing up, strictly woman to man. “I’ve seen several of your productions. My husband prefers documentaries and biographies to films. I can’t think why he married me.”

“I can.” David accepted her hand. “I’m an avid fan.”

“As long as you don’t tell me you’ve enjoyed my movies since you were a child.” Amusement glimmered in her eyes again before she glanced around. “Now if you’ll introduce me to our crew, we can get started.”

David had admired her for years. After ten minutes in her company, his admiration grew. She spoke to each member of the crew, from the director down to the assistant lighting technician. When she’d finished, she turned herself over to Sam for instructions.

At her suggestion, they moved to the terrace. Patient, she waited while technicians set up reflectors and umbrellas to exploit the best effect from available light. Her maid set a table of cold drinks and snacks out of camera range. Though she didn’t touch a thing, she indicated to the crew that they should enjoy. She sat easily through sound tests and blocking. When Sam was satisfied, she turned to Alex and began.

“Mrs. Van Camp, for twenty years you’ve been known as one of the most talented and best-loved actresses in the country.”

“Thank you, Alex. My career has always been one of the most important parts of my life.”

“One of the most. We’re here now to discuss another part of your life. Your family, most specifically your son. A decade ago, you nearly faced tragedy.”

“Yes, I did.” She folded her hands. Though the sun shone down in her face, she never blinked. “A tragedy that I sincerely doubt I would have recovered from.”

“This is the first interview you’ve given on this subject. Can I ask you why you agreed now?”

She smiled a little, leaning back in her weathered rattan chair. “Timing, in life and in business, is crucial. For several years after my son’s abduction I simply couldn’t speak of it. After a time, it seemed unnecessary to bring it up again. Now, if I watch the news or look in a store window and see posters of missing children, I ache for the parents.”

“Do you consider that this interview might help those parents?”

“Help them find their children, no.” Emotion flickered in her eyes, very real and very brief. “But perhaps it can ease some of the misery. I’d never considered sharing my feelings about my own experience. And I doubt very much if I would have agreed if it hadn’t been for Clarissa DeBasse.”

“Clarissa DeBasse asked you to give this interview?”

After a soft laugh, Alice shook her head. “Clarissa never asks anything. But when I spoke with her and I realized she had faith in this project, I agreed.”

“You have a great deal of faith in her.”

“She gave me back my son.”

She said it with such simplicity, with such utter sincerity, that Alex let the sentence hang. From somewhere in the garden at her back, a bird began to trill.

“That’s what we’d like to talk about here. Will you tell us how you came to know Clarissa DeBasse?”

Behind the cameras, behind the crew, David stood with his hands in his pockets and listened to the story. He remembered how A.J. had once told him of her mother’s gradual association with celebrities. Alice Van Camp had come to her with a friend on a whim. After an hour, she’d gone away impressed with Clarissa’s gentle style and straightforward manner. On impulse, she’d commissioned Clarissa to do her husband’s chart as a gift for their anniversary. When it was done, even the pragmatic and business-oriented Peter Van Camp had been intrigued.

“She told me things about myself,” Alice went on. “Not about tomorrow, you understand, but about my feelings, things about my background that had influenced me, or still worried me. I can’t say I always liked what she had to say. There are things about ourselves we don’t like to admit. But I kept going back because she was so intriguing, and gradually we became friends.”

“You believed in clairvoyance?”

Alice’s brows drew together as she considered. “I would say I first began to see her because it was fun, it was different. I’d chosen to lead a secluded life after the birth of my son, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t appreciate, even need, little touches of flash. Of the unique.” The frown smoothed as she smiled. “Clarissa was undoubtedly unique.”

“So you went to her for entertainment.”

“Oh, yes, that was definitely the motivation in the beginning. You see, at first I thought she was simply very clever. Then, as I began to know her, I discovered she was not simply clever, she was special. That certainly doesn’t mean I endorse every palmist on Sunset Boulevard. I certainly can’t claim to understand the testing and research that’s done on the subject. I do believe, however, that there are some of us who are more sensitive, or whose senses are more finely tuned.”

“Will you tell us what happened when your son was abducted?”

“June 22. Almost ten years ago.” Alice closed her eyes a moment. “To me it’s yesterday. You have children, Mr. Marshall?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And you love them.”

“Very much.”

“Then you have some small glimmer of what it would be like to lose them, even for a short time. There’s terror and there’s guilt. The guilt is nearly as painful as the fear. You see, I hadn’t been with him when he’d been taken. Jenny was Matthew’s nanny. She’d been with us over five years and was very devoted to my son. She was young, but dependable and fiercely protective. When I made the decision to go back into films, we leaned on Jenny heavily. Neither my husband nor myself wanted Matthew to suffer because I was working again.”

“Your son was nearly ten when you agreed to do another movie.”

“Yes, he was quite independent already. Both Peter and I wanted that for him. Very often during the filming, Jenny would bring him to the studio. Even after the shooting was complete, she continued in her habit of walking to the park with him in the afternoon. If I had realized then how certain habits can be dangerous, I would have stopped it. Both my husband and myself had been careful to keep Matthew out of the limelight, not because we were afraid for him physically, but because we felt it was best that his upbringing be as normal and natural as possible. Of course he was recognized, and now and then some enterprising photographer would get a shot in.”

“Did that sort of thing bother you?”

“No.” When she smiled, the sultry glamour came through. “I suppose I was accustomed to such things. Peter and I didn’t want to be fanatics about our privacy. And I wonder, and always have, if we’d been stricter would it have made any difference? I doubt it.” There was a little sigh, as though it were a point she’d yet to resolve. “We learned later that Matthew’s visits to the park were being watched.”

“For a time the police suspected Jennifer Waite, your son’s nanny, of working with the kidnappers.”

“That was, of course, absurd. I never for a minute doubted Jenny’s loyalty and devotion to Matthew. Once it was over, she was completely cleared.” A trace of stubbornness came through. “She’s still in my employ.”

“The investigators found her story disjointed.”

“The afternoon he was abducted, Jenny came home hysterical. We were the closest thing to family she had, and she blamed herself. Matthew had been playing ball with several other children while she watched. A young woman had come up to her asking for directions. She’d spun a story about missing her bus and being new in town. She’d distracted Jenny only a few moments, and that’s all it took. When she looked back, Jenny saw Matthew being hustled into a car at the edge of the park. She ran after him, but he was gone. Ten minutes after she came home alone the first ransom call came in.”

She lifted her hands to her lips a moment, and they trembled lightly. “I’m sorry. Could we stop here a moment?”

“Cut. Five minutes,” Sam ordered the crew.

David was beside her chair before Sam had finished speaking. “Would you like something, Mrs. Van Camp? A drink?”

“No.” She shook her head and looked beyond him. “It isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Ten years, and it still isn’t easy.”

“I could send for your husband.”

“I told Peter to stay away today because he’s always so uncomfortable around cameras. I wish I hadn’t.”

“We can wrap for today.”

“Oh, no.” She took a deep breath and composed herself. “I believe in finishing what I start. Matthew’s a sophomore in college.” She smiled up at David. “Do you like happy endings?”

He held her hand. For the moment she was only a woman. “I’m a sucker for them.”

“He’s bright, handsome and in love. I just needed to remember that. It could have been…” She linked her hands again and the ruby on her finger shone like blood. “It could have been much different. You know Clarissa’s daughter, don’t you?”

A bit off-balance at the change of subject, David shifted. “Yes.”

She admired the caution. “I meant it when I said Clarissa and I are friends. Mothers worry about their children. Do you have a cigarette?”

In silence he took one out and lit it for her.

Alice blew out smoke and let some of the tension fade. “She’s a hell of an agent. Do you know, I wanted to sign with her and she wouldn’t have me?”

David forgot his own cigarette in simple astonishment. “I beg your pardon?”

Alice laughed again and relaxed. She’d needed a moment to remember life went on. “It was a few months after the kidnapping. A.J. figured I’d come to her out of gratitude to Clarissa. And maybe I had. In any case, she turned me down flat, even though she was scrambling around trying to rent decent office space. I admired her integrity. So much so that a few years ago I approached her again.” Alice smiled at him, enjoying the fact that he listened very carefully. Apparently, she mused, Clarissa was right on target, as always. “She was established, respected. And she turned me down again.”

What agent in her right mind would turn down a top name, a name that had earned through sheer talent the label of “megastar”? “A.J. never quite does what you expect,” he murmured.

“Clarissa’s daughter is a woman who insists on being accepted for herself, but can’t always tell when she is.” She crushed out the cigarette after a second quick puff. “Thanks. I’d like to continue now.”

Within moments, Alice was deep into her own story. Though the camera continued to roll, she forgot about it. Sitting in the sunlight with the scent of roses strong and sweet, she talked about her hours of terror.

“We would have paid anything. Anything. Peter and I fought bitterly about calling in the police. The kidnappers had been very specific. We weren’t to contact anyone. But Peter felt, and rightly so, that we needed help. The ransom calls came every few hours. We agreed to pay, but they kept changing the terms. Testing us. It was the worst kind of cruelty. While we waited, the police began searching for the car Jenny had seen and the woman she’d spoken with in the park. It was as if they’d vanished into thin air. At the end of forty-eight hours, we were no closer to finding Matthew.”

“So you decided to call in Clarissa DeBasse?”

“I don’t know when the idea of asking Clarissa to help came to me. I know I hadn’t slept or eaten. I just kept waiting for the phone to ring. It’s such a helpless feeling. I remembered, God knows why, that Clarissa had once told me where to find a diamond brooch I’d misplaced. It wasn’t just a piece of jewelry to me, but something Peter had given me when Matthew was born. A child isn’t a brooch, but I began to think, maybe, just maybe. I needed some hope.

“The police didn’t like the idea. I don’t believe Peter did, either, but he knew I needed something. I called Clarissa and I told her that Matthew had been taken.” Her eyes filled. She didn’t bother to blink the tears away. “I asked her if she could help me and she told me she’d try.

“I broke down when she arrived. She sat with me awhile, friend to friend, mother to mother. She spoke to Jenny, though there was no calming the poor girl down even at that point. The police were very terse with Clarissa, but she seemed to accept that. She told them they were looking in the wrong place.” Unselfconsciously she brushed at the tears on her cheek. “I can tell you that didn’t sit too well with the men who’d been working around the clock. She told them Matthew hadn’t been taken out of the city, he hadn’t gone north as they’d thought. She asked for something of Matthew’s, something he would have worn. I brought her the pajamas he’d worn to bed the night before. They were blue with little cars across the top. She just sat there, running them through her hands. I remember wanting to scream at her, plead with her, to give me something. Then she started to speak very quietly.

“Matthew was only miles away, she said. He hadn’t been taken to San Francisco, though the police had traced one of the ransom calls there. She said he was still in Los Angeles. She described the street, then the house. A white house with blue shutters on a corner lot. I’ll never forget the way she described the room in which he was being held. It was dark, you see, and Matthew, though he always tried to be brave, was still afraid of the dark. She said there were only two people in the house, one man and the woman who had spoken to Jenny in the park. She thought there was a car in the drive, gray or green, she said. And she told me he wasn’t hurt. He was afraid—” her voice shuddered, then strengthened “—but he wasn’t hurt.”

“And the police pursued the lead?”

“They didn’t have much faith in it, naturally enough, but they sent out cars to look for the house she’d described. I don’t know who was more stunned when they found it, Peter and myself or the police. They got Matthew out without a struggle because the two kidnappers with him weren’t expecting any trouble. The third accomplice was in San Fransico, making all the calls. The police also found the car he’d been abducted in there.

“Clarissa stayed until Matthew was home, until he was safe. Later he told me about the room he’d been held in. It was exactly as she’d described it.”

“Mrs. Van Camp, a lot of people claimed that the abduction and the dramatic rescue of your son was a publicity stunt to hype the release of your first movie since his birth.”

“That didn’t matter to me.” With only her voice, with only her eyes, she showed her complete contempt. “They could say and believe whatever they wanted. I had my son back.”

“And you believe Clarissa DeBasse is responsible for that?”

“I know she is.”

“Cut,” Sam mumbled to his cameraman before he walked to Alice. “Mrs. Van Camp, if we can get a few reaction shots and over-the-shoulder angles, we’ll be done.”

He could go now. David knew there was no real reason for him to remain during the angle changes. The shoot was essentially finished, and had been everything he could have asked for. Alice Van Camp was a consummate actress, but no one watching this segment would consider that she’d played a part. She’d been a mother, reliving an experience every mother fears. And she had, by the telling, brought the core of his project right back to Clarissa.

He thought perhaps he understood a little better why A.J. had had mixed feelings about the interview. Alice Van Camp had suffered in the telling. If his instincts were right, Clarissa would have suffered, too. It seemed to him that empathy was an intimate part of her gift.

Nevertheless he stayed behind the camera and restlessly waited until the shoot was complete. Though he detected a trace of weariness in her eyes, Alice escorted the crew to the door herself.

“A remarkable woman,” Alex commented as they walked down the circular steps toward the drive.

“And then some. But you’ve got one yourself.”

“I certainly do.” Alex pulled out the cigar he’d been patiently waiting for for more than three hours. “I might be a little biased, but I believe you have one, as well.”

Frowning, David paused by his car. “I haven’t got A.J.” It occurred to him that it was the first time he had thought of it in precisely those terms.

“Clarissa seems to think you do.”

He turned back and leaned against his car. “And approves?”

“Shouldn’t she?”

He pulled out a cigarette. The restlessness was growing. “I don’t know.”

“You were going to ask me something earlier, before we went in. Do you want to ask me now?”

It had been nagging at him. David wondered if by stating it aloud it would ease. “Clarissa isn’t an ordinary woman. Does it bother you?”

Alex took a contented puff on his cigar. “It certainly intrigues me, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I’ve had one or two uneasy moments. What I feel for her cancels out the fact that I have five senses and she has what we might call six. You’re having uneasy moments.” He smiled a little when David said nothing. “Clarissa doesn’t believe in keeping secrets. We’ve talked about her daughter.”

“I’m not sure A.J. would be comfortable with that.”

“No, maybe not. It’s more to the point what you’re comfortable with. You know the trouble with a man your age, David? You consider yourself too old to go take foolish risks and too young to trust impulse. I thank God I’m not thirty.” With a smile, he walked over to hitch a ride back to town with Sam.

He was too old to take foolish risks, David thought as he pulled his door open. And a man who trusted impulse usually landed flat on his face. But he wanted to see her. He wanted to see her now.

* * *

A.J.’s briefcase weighed heavily as she pulled it from the front seat. Late rush-hour traffic streamed by the front of her building. If she’d been able to accomplish more during office hours, she reminded herself as she lugged up her case, she wouldn’t have to plow through papers tonight. She would have accomplished more if she hadn’t been uneasy, thinking of the Van Camp interview.

It was over now, she told herself as she turned the key to lock both car doors. The filming of the documentary was all but over. She had other clients, other projects, other contracts. It was time she put her mind on them. Shifting her briefcase to her free hand, she turned and collided with David.

“I like running into you,” he murmured as he slid his hands up her hips.

She’d had the wind knocked out of her. That’s what she told herself as she struggled for breath and leaned into him. After a man and a woman had been intimate, after they’d been lovers, they didn’t feel breathless and giddy when they saw each other. But she found herself wanting to wrap her arms around him and laugh.

“You might have cracked a rib,” she told him, and contented herself with smiling up at him. “I certainly didn’t expect to see you around this evening.”

“Problem?”

“No.” She let herself brush a hand through his hair. “I think I can work you in. How did the shoot go?”

He heard it, the barest trace of nerves. Not tonight, he told himself. There would be no nerves tonight. “It’s done. You know, I like the way you smell up close.” He lowered his mouth to brush it over her throat. “Up very close.”

“David, we’re standing in the parking lot.”

“Mmm-hmm.” He shifted his mouth to her ear and sent the thrill tumbling to her toes.

“David.” She turned her head to ward him off and found her mouth captured by his in a long, lingering kiss.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he murmured, then kissed her again, hard, until the breath was trembling from her mouth into his. “I can’t get you out of my mind. Sometimes I wonder if you’ve put a spell on me. Mind over matter.”

“Don’t talk. Come inside with me.”

“We don’t talk enough.” He put his hand under her chin and drew her away before he gave in and buried himself in her again. “Sooner or later we’re going to have to.”

That’s what she was afraid of. When they talked, really talked, she was sure it would be about the end. “Later, then. Please.” She rested her cheek against his. “For now let’s just enjoy each other.”

He felt the edge of frustration compete with the first flares of desire. “That’s all you want?”

No, no, she wanted more, everything, anything. If she opened her mouth to speak of one wish, she would speak of dozens. “It’s enough,” she said almost desperately. “Why did you come here tonight?”

“Because I wanted you. Because I damn well can’t keep away from you.”

“And that’s all I need.” Was she trying to convince him or herself? Neither of them had the answer. “Come inside, I’ll show you.”

Because he needed, because he wasn’t yet sure of the nature of his own needs, he took her hand in his and went with her.

11

“Are you sure you want to do this?” A.J. felt it was only fair to give David one last chance before he committed himself.

“I’m sure.”

“It’s going to take the better part of your evening.”

“Want to get rid of me?”

“No.” She smiled but still hesitated. “Ever done anything like this before?”

He took the collar of her blouse between his thumb and forefinger and rubbed. The practical A.J. had a weakness for silk. “You’re my first.”

“Then you’ll have to do what you’re told.”

He skimmed his finger down her throat. “Don’t you trust me?”

She cocked her head and gave him a long look. “I haven’t decided. But under the circumstances, I’ll take a chance. Pull up a chair.” She indicated the table behind her. There were stacks of paper, neatly arranged. A.J. picked up a pencil, freshly sharpened, and handed it to him. “The first thing you can do is mark off the names I give you. Those are the people who’ve sent an acceptance. I’ll give you the name and the number of people under that name. I need an amount for the caterer by the end of the week.”

“Sounds easy enough.”

“Just shows you’ve never dealt with a caterer,” A.J. mumbled, and took her own chair.

“What’s this?” As he reached for another pile of papers, she waved his hand away.

“People who’ve already sent gifts, and don’t mess with the system. When we finish with this, we have to deal with the guests coming in from out of town. I’m hoping to book a block of rooms tomorrow.”

He studied the tidy but extensive arrangement of papers spread between them. “I thought this was supposed to be a small, simple wedding.”

She sent him a mild look. “There’s no such thing as a small, simple wedding. I’ve spent two full mornings haggling with florists and over a week off and on struggling with caterers.”

“Learn anything?”

“Elopement is the wisest course. Now here—”

“Would you?”

“Would I what?”

“Elope.”

With a laugh, A.J. picked up her first stack of papers. “If I ever lost a grip on myself and decided on marriage, I think I’d fly to Vegas, swing through one of those drive-in chapels and have it over with.”

His eyes narrowed as he listened to her, as if he were trying to see beyond the words. “Not very romantic.”

“Neither am I.”

“Aren’t you?” He put a hand over hers, surprising her. There was something proprietary in the gesture, and something completely natural.

“No.” But her fingers linked with his. “There’s not a lot of room for romance in business.”

“And otherwise?”

“Otherwise romance tends to lead you to see things that aren’t really there. I like illusions on the stage and screen, not in my life.”

“What do you want in your life, Aurora? You’ve never told me.”

Why was she nervous? It was foolish, but he was looking at her so closely. He was asking questions he’d never asked. And the answers weren’t as simple as she’d once thought. “Success,” she told him. Hadn’t it always been true?

He nodded, but his thumb moved gently up and down the side of her hand. “You run a successful agency already. What else?” He was waiting, for one word, one sign. Did she need him? For the first time in his life he wanted to be needed.

“I…” She was fumbling for words. He seemed to be the only one who could make her fumble. What did he want? What answer would satisfy him? “I suppose I want to know I’ve earned my own way.”

“Is that why you turned down Alice Van Camp as a client?”

“She told you that?” They hadn’t discussed the Van Camp interview. A.J. had purposely talked around it for days.

“She mentioned it.” She’d pulled her hand from his. David wondered why every time they talked, really talked, she seemed to draw further away from him.

“It was kind of her to come to me when I was just getting started and things were…rough.” She shrugged her shoulders, then began to slide her pencil through her fingers. “But it was out of gratitude to my mother. I couldn’t sign my first big client out of gratitude.”

“Then later you turned her down again.”

“It was too personal.” She fought the urge to stand up, walk away from the table, and from him.

“No mixing business with personal relationships.”

“Exactly. Do you want some coffee before we get started?”

“You mixed a business and personal relationship with me.”

Her fingers tightened on the pencil. He watched them. “Yes, I did.”

“Why?”

Though it cost her, she kept her eyes on his. He could strip her bare, she knew. If she told him she had fallen in love with him, had started the tumble almost from the first, she would have no defense left. He would have complete and total control. And she would have reneged on the most important agreement in her life. If she couldn’t give him the truth, she could give him the answer he’d understand. The answer that mirrored his feelings for her. “Because I wanted you,” she said, and kept her voice cool. “I was attracted to you, and wisely or not, I gave in to the attraction.”

He felt the twinge, a need unfulfilled. “That’s enough for you?”

Hadn’t she said he could hurt her? He was hurting her now with every word. “Why shouldn’t it be?” She gave him an easy smile and waited for the ache to pass.

“Why shouldn’t it be?” he murmured, and tried to accept the answer for what it was. He pulled out a cigarette, then began carefully. “I think you should know we’re shooting a segment on the Ridehour case.” Though his eyes stayed on hers, he saw her tense. “Clarissa agreed to discuss it.”

“She told me. That should wrap the taping?”

“It should.” She was holding back. Though no more than a table separated them, it might have been a canyon. “You don’t like it.”

“No, I don’t, but I’m trying to learn that Clarissa has to make her own decisions.”

“A.J., she seems very easy about it.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Then let me.”

“Before I convinced her to move, to keep her residence strictly confidential, she had closets full of letters.” She took her glasses off to rub at a tiny ache in her temple. “People asking for her to help them. Some of them involved no more than asking her to locate a ring, and others were full of problems so heartbreaking they gave you nightmares.”

“She couldn’t help everyone.”

“That’s what I kept telling her. When she moved down to Newport Beach, things eased up. Until she got the call from San Francisco.”

“The Ridehour murders.”

“Yes.” The ache grew. “There was never a question of her listening to me on that one. I don’t believe she heard one argument I made. She just packed. When I saw there was no stopping her from going, I went with her.” She kept her breathing even with great effort. Her hands were steady only because she locked them so tightly together. “It was one of the most painful experiences of her life. She saw.” A.J. closed her eyes and spoke to him what she’d never spoken to anyone. “I saw.”

When he covered her hand with his, he found it cold. He didn’t have to see her eyes to know the baffled fear would be there. Comfort, understanding. How did he show them? “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

She opened her eyes. The control was there, but teetering. “It isn’t something I like to remember. I’ve never before or since had anything come so clear, so hideously clear.”

“We’ll cut it.”

She gave him a blank, puzzled look. “What?”

“We’ll cut the segment.”

“Why?”

Slowly he drew her hands apart and into his. He wanted to explain, to tell her so that she’d understand. He wished he had the words. “Because it upsets you. That’s enough.”

She looked down at their hands. His looked so strong, so dependable, over hers. No one except her mother had ever offered to do anything for her without an angle. Yet it seemed he was. “I don’t know what to say to you.”

“Don’t say anything.”

“No.” She gave herself a moment. For reasons she couldn’t understand, she was relaxed again. Tension was there, hovering, but the knots in her stomach had eased. “Clarissa agreed to this segment, so she must feel as though it should be done.”

“We’re not talking about Clarissa now, but you. Aurora, I said once I never wanted to be responsible for your going through something like this. I mean it.”

“I think you do.” It made all the difference. “The fact that you’d cut the segment because of me makes me feel very special.”

“Maybe I should have told you that you are before now.”

Longings rose up. She let herself feel them for only a moment. “You don’t have to tell me anything. I realize that if you cut this part because of me I’d hate myself. It was a long time ago, David. Maybe it’s time I learned to deal with reality a little better.”

“Maybe you deal with it too well.”

“Maybe.” She smiled again. “In any case I think you should do the segment. Just do a good job of it.”

“I intend to. Do you want to sit in on it?”

“No.” She glanced down at the stacks of papers. “Alex will be there for her.”

He heard it in her voice, not doubt but resignation. “He’s crazy about her.”

“I know.” In a lightning change of mood, she picked up her pencil again. “I’m going to give them one hell of a wedding.”

He grinned at her. Resiliency was only one of the things that attracted him to her. “We’d better get started.”

They worked side by side for nearly two hours. It took half that time for the tension to begin to fade. They read off lists and compiled new ones. They analyzed and calculated how many cases of champagne would be adequate and argued over whether to serve salmon mousse or iced shrimp.

She hadn’t expected him to become personally involved with planning her mother’s wedding. Before they’d finished, she’d come to accept it to the point where she delegated him to help seat guests at the ceremony.

“Working with you’s an experience, A.J.”

“Hmm?” She counted the out-of-town guests one last time.

“If I needed an agent, you’d head the list.”

She glanced up, but was too cautious to smile. “Is that a compliment?”

“Not exactly.”

Now she smiled. When she took off her glasses, her face was abruptly vulnerable. “I didn’t think so. Well, once I give these figures to the caterer, that should be it. Everyone who attends will have me to thank that they aren’t eating Clarissa’s Swedish meatballs. And you.” She set the lists aside. “I appreciate all the help.”

“I’m fond of Clarissa.”

“I know. I appreciate that, too. Now I think you deserve a reward.” She leaned closer and caught her tongue in her teeth. “Anything in mind?”

He had plenty in mind every time he looked at her. “We can start with that coffee.”

“Coming right up.” She rose, and out of habit glanced at her watch. “Oh, God.”

He reached for a cigarette. “Problem?”

“Empire’s on.”

“A definite problem.”

“No, I have to watch it.”

As she dashed over to the television, he shook his head. “All this time, and I had no idea you were an addict. A.J., there are places you can go that can help you deal with these things.”

“Ssh.” She settled on the sofa, relieved she’d missed no more than the opening credits. “I have a client—”

“It figures.”

“She has a lot of potential,” A.J. continued. “But this is the first real break we’ve gotten. She’s only signed for four episodes, but if she does well, they could bring her back through next season.”

Resigned, he joined her on the sofa. “Aren’t these repeats, anyway?”

“Not this one. It’s a teaser for a spin-off that’s going to run through the summer.”

“A spin-off?” He propped his feet on an issue of Variety on the coffee table. “Isn’t there enough sex and misery in one hour a week?”

“Melodrama. It’s important to the average person to see that the filthy rich have their problems. See him?” Reaching over, she dug into a bowl of candied almonds. “That’s Dereck, the patriarch. He made his money in shipping—and smuggling. He’s determined that his children carry on his business, by his rules. That’s Angelica.”

“In the hot tub.”

“Yes, she’s his second wife. She married him for his money and power and enjoys every minute of them. But she hates his kids.”

“And they hate her right back.”

“That’s the idea.” Pleased with him, A.J. patted his leg. “Now the setup is that Angelica’s illegitimate daughter from a long-ago relationship is going to show up. That’s my client.”

“Like mother like daughter?”

“Oh, yes, she gets to play the perfect bitch. Her name’s Lavender.”

“Of course it is.”

“You see, Angelica never told Dereck she had a daughter, so when Lavender shows up, she’s going to cause all sorts of problems. Now Beau—that’s Dereck’s eldest son—”

“No more names.” With a sigh, he swung his arm over the back of the sofa. “I’ll just watch all the skin and diamonds.”

“Just because you’d rather watch pelicans migrate— Here she is.”

A.J. bit her lip. She tensed, agonizing with her client over each line, each move, each expression. And she would, David thought with a smile, fluff him off if he mentioned she had a personal involvement. Just business? Not by a long shot. She was pulling for her ingenue and ten percent didn’t enter into it.

“Oh, she’s good,” A.J. breathed at the commercial break. “She’s really very good. A season—maybe two—of this, and we’ll be sifting through offers for feature films.”

“Her timing’s excellent.” He might consider the show itself a glitzy waste of time, but he appreciated talent. “Where did she study?”

“She didn’t.” Smug, A.J. sat back. “She took a bus from Kansas City and ended up in my reception area with a homemade portfolio and a handful of high school plays to her credit.”

He gave in and tried the candied almonds himself. “You usually sign on clients that way?”

“I usually have Abe or one of the more maternal members of my staff give them a lecture and a pat on the head.”

“Sensible. But?”

“She was different. When she wouldn’t budge out of the office for the second day running, I decided to see her myself. As soon as I saw her I knew. Not that way,” she answered, understanding his unspoken question. “I make it a policy not to sign a client no matter what feelings might come through. She had looks and a wonderful voice. But more, she had the drive. I don’t know how many auditions I sent her on in the first few weeks. But I figured if she survived that, we were going to roll.” She watched the next glittery set of Empire appear on the screen. “And we’re rolling.”

“It took guts to camp out in one of the top agencies in Hollywood.”

“If you don’t have guts in this town, you’ll be flattened in six months.”

“Is that what keeps you on top, A.J.?”

“It’s part of it.” She found the curve of his shoulder an easy place to rest her head. “You can’t tell me you think you’re where you are today because you got lucky.”

“No. You start off thinking hard work’s enough, then you realize you have to take risks and shed a little blood. Then just when everything comes together and a project’s finished and successful, you have to start another and prove yourself all over again.”

“It’s a lousy business.” A.J. cuddled against him.

“Yep.”

“Why do you do it?” Forgetting the series, forgetting her client, A.J. turned her head to look at him.

“Masochism.”

“No, really.”

“Because every time I watch something I did on that little screen, it’s like Christmas. And I get every present I ever wanted.”

“I know.” Nothing he could have said could have hit more directly home. “I attended the Oscars a couple of years ago and two of my clients won. Two of them.” She let her eyes close as she leaned against him. “I sat in the audience watching, and it was the biggest thrill of my life. I know some people would say you’re not asking for enough when you get your thrills vicariously, but it’s enough, more than enough, to know you’ve had a part in something like that. Maybe your name isn’t a household word, but you were the catalyst.”

“Not everyone wants his name to be a household word.”

“Yours could be.” She shifted again to look at him. “I’m not just saying that because—” Because I love you. The phrase was nearly out before she checked it. When he lifted his brow at her sudden silence, she continued quickly. “Because of our relationship. With the right material, the right crew, you could be one of the top ten producers in the business.”

“I appreciate that.” Her eyes were so earnest, so intense. He wished he knew why. “I don’t think you throw around compliments without thinking about them first.”

“No, I don’t. I’ve seen your work, and I’ve seen the way you work. And I’ve been around long enough to know.”

“I don’t have any desire, not at this point, anyway, to tie myself up with any of the major studios. The big screen’s for fantasies.” He touched her cheek. It was real; it was soft. “I prefer dealing in reality.”

“So produce something real.” It was a challenge—she knew it. By the look in his eyes, he knew it, as well.

“Such as?”

“I have a script.”

“A.J.—”

“No, hear me out. David.” She said his name in frustration when he rolled her under him on the sofa. “Just listen a minute.”

“I’d rather bite your ear.”

“Bite it all you want. After you listen.”

“Negotiations again?” He drew himself up just to look down at her. Her eyes were lit with enthusiasm, her cheeks flushed with anticipation of excitement to come. “What script?” he asked, and watched her lips curve.

“I’ve done some business with George Steiger. You know him?”

“We’ve met. He’s an excellent writer.”

“He’s written a screenplay. His first. It just happened to come across my desk.”

“Just happened?”

She’d done him a few favors. He was asking for another. Doing favors without personal gain at the end didn’t fit the image she’d worked hard on developing. “We don’t need to get into that. It’s wonderful, David, really wonderful. It deals with the Cherokees and what they called the Trail of Tears, when they were driven from Georgia to reservations in Oklahoma. Most of the point of view is through a small child. You sense the bewilderment, the betrayal, but there’s this strong thread of hope. It’s not your ‘ride off into the sunset’ Western, and it’s not a pretty story. It’s real. You could make it important.”

She was selling, and doing a damn good job of it. It occurred to him she’d probably never pitched a deal while curled up on the sofa before. “A.J., what makes you think that if I were interested, Steiger would be interested in me?”

“I happened to mention that I knew you.”

“Happened to again?”

“Yes.” She smiled and ran her hands down to his hips. “He’s seen your work and knows your reputation. David, he needs a producer, the right producer.”

“And so?”

As if disinterested, she skimmed her fingertips up his back. “He asked if I’d mention it to you, all very informally.”

“This is definitely informal,” he murmured as he fit his body against hers. “Are you playing agent, A.J.?”

“No.” Her eyes were abruptly serious as she took his face in her hands. “I’m being your friend.”

She touched him, more deeply, more sweetly, than any of their loving, any of their passion. For a moment he could find nothing to say. “Every time I think I’ve got a track on you, you switch lanes.”

“Will you read it?”

He kissed one cheek, then the other, in a gesture he’d seen her use with her mother. It meant affection, devotion. He wondered if she understood. “I guess that means you can get me a copy.”

“I just happened to have brought one home with me.” With a laugh, she threw her arms around him. “David, you’re going to love it.”

“I’d rather love you.”

She stiffened, but only for a heartbeat. Their loving was physical, she reminded herself. Deeply satisfying but only physical. When he spoke of love, it didn’t mean the emotions, but the body. It was all she could expect from him, and all he wanted from her.

“Then love me now,” she murmured, and found his mouth with hers. “Love me now.”

She drew him to her, tempting him to take everything at once, quickly, heatedly. But he learned that pleasure taken slowly, given gently, could be so much more gratifying. Because it was still so new, she responded to tenderness with hesitation. Her stomach fluttered when he skimmed her lips with his, offering, promising. She heard her own sigh escape, a soft, giving sound that whispered across his lips. Then he murmured her name, quietly, as if it were the only sound he needed to hear.

No rush. His needs seemed to meld with her own. No hurry. Content, she let herself enjoy easy kisses that aroused the soul before they tempted the body. Relaxed, she allowed herself to thrill to the light caresses that made her strong enough to accept being weak.

She wanted to feel him against her without boundaries. With a murmur of approval, she pulled his shirt over his head, then took her hands on a long stroke down his back. There was the strength she’d understood from the beginning. A strength she respected, perhaps even more now that his hands were gentle.

When had she looked for gentleness? Her mind was already too clouded to know if she ever had. But now that she’d found it, she never wanted to lose it. Or him.

“I want you, David.” She whispered the words along his cheek as she drew him closer.

Hearing her say it made his heart pound. He’d heard the words before, but rarely from her and never with such quiet acceptance. He lifted his head to look down at her. “Tell me again.” As he took her chin in his hand, his voice was low and husky with emotion. “Tell me again, when I’m looking at you.”

“I want you.”

His mouth crushed down on hers, smothering any more words, any more thoughts. He seemed to need more; she thought she could feel it, though she didn’t know what to give. She offered her mouth, that his might hungrily meet it. She offered her body, that his could greedily take it. But she held back her heart, afraid he would take that, as well, and damage it.

Clothes were peeled off as patience grew thin. He wanted to feel her against him, all the long length of her. He trembled when he touched her, but he was nearly used to trembling for her now. He ached, as he always ached. Light and subtle along her skin was the path of scent. He could follow it from her throat, to the hollow of her breasts, to the pulse at the inside of her elbows.

She shuddered against him. Her body seemed to pulse, then sigh, with each touch, each stroke. He knew where the brush of a fingertip would arouse, or the nip of his teeth would inflame. And she knew his body just as intimately. Her lips would find each point of pleasure; her palms would stroke each flame higher.

He grew to need. Each time he loved her, he came to need not only what she would give, but what she could. Each time he was more desperate to draw more from her, knowing that if he didn’t find the key, he’d beg. She could, simply because she asked for nothing, bring him to his knees.

“Tell me what you want,” he demanded as she clung to him.

“You. I want you.”

She was hovering above the clouds that shook with lightning and thunder. The air was thick and heavy, the heat swirling. Her body was his; she gave it willingly. But the heart she struggled so hard to defend lost itself to him.

“David.” All the love, all the emotion she felt, shimmered in his name as she pressed herself against him. “Don’t let me go.”

* * *

They dozed, still wrapped together, still drowsily content. Though most of his weight was on her, she felt light, free. Each time they made love, the sense of her own freedom came stronger. She was bound to him, but more liberated than she had ever been in her life. So she lay quietly as his heart beat slowly and steadily against hers.

“TV’s still on,” David murmured.

“Uh-huh.” The late-night movie whisked by, sirens blaring, guns blasting. She didn’t care.

She linked her hands behind his waist. “Doesn’t matter.”

“A few more minutes like this and we’ll end up sleeping here tonight.”

“That doesn’t matter, either.”

With a laugh, he turned his face to kiss her neck where the skin was still heated from excitement. Reluctantly he shifted his weight. “You know, with a few minor changes, we could be a great deal more comfortable.”

“In the bed,” she murmured in agreement, but merely snuggled into him.

“For a start. I’m thinking more of the long term.”

It was difficult to think at all when he was warm and firm against her. “Which long term?”

“Both of us tend to do a lot of running around and overnight packing in order to spend the evening together.”

“Mmmm. I don’t mind.”

He did. The more content he became with her, the more discontent he became with their arrangement. I love you. The words seemed so simple. But he’d never spoken them to a woman before. If he said them to her, how quickly would she pull away and disappear from his life? Some risks he wasn’t ready to take. Cautious, he approached in the practical manner he thought she’d understand.

“Still, I think we could come up with a more logical arrangement.”

She opened her eyes and shifted a bit. He could see there was already a line between her brows. “What sort of arrangement?”

He wasn’t approaching this exactly as he’d planned. But then he’d learned that his usual meticulous plotting didn’t work when he was dealing with A.J. “Your apartment’s convenient to the city, where we both happen to be working at the moment.”

“Yes.” Her eyes had lost that dreamy softness they always had after loving. He wasn’t certain whether to curse himself or her.

“We only work five days a week. My house, on the other hand, is convenient for getting away and relaxing. It seems a logical arrangement might be for us to live here during the week and spend weekends at my place.”

She was silent for five seconds, then ten, while dozens of thoughts and twice as many warnings rushed through her mind. “A logical arrangement,” he called it. Not a commitment, an “arrangement.” Or more accurately, an amendment to the arrangement they’d already agreed on. “You want to live together.”

He’d expected more from her, anything more. A flicker of pleasure, a gleam of emotion. But her voice was cool and cautious. “We’re essentially doing that now, aren’t we?”

“No.” She wanted to distance herself, but his body kept hers trapped. “We’re sleeping together.”

And that was all she wanted. His hands itched to shake her, to shake her until she looked, really looked, at him and saw what he felt and what he needed. Instead he sat up and, in the unselfconscious way she always admired, began to dress. Feeling naked and defenseless, she reached for her blouse.

“You’re angry.”

“Let’s just say I didn’t think we’d have to go to the negotiating table with this.”

“David, you haven’t even given me five minutes to think it through.”

He turned to her then, and the heat in his eyes had her bracing. “If you need to,” he said with perfect calm, “maybe we should just drop it.”

“You’re not being fair.”

“No, I’m not.” He rose then, knowing he had to get out, get away from her, before he said too much. “Maybe I’m tired of being fair with you.”

“Damn it, David.” Half-dressed, she sprang up to face him. “You casually suggest that we should combine our living arrangements, then blow up because I need a few minutes to sort it through. You’re being ridiculous.”

“It’s a habit I picked up when I starting seeing you.” He should have left. He knew he should have already walked out the door. Because he hadn’t, he grabbed her arms and pulled her closer. “I want more than sex and breakfast. I want more than a quick roll in the sheets when our schedules make it convenient.”

Furious, she swung away from him. “You make me sound like a—”

“No. I make us both sound like it.” He didn’t reach for her again. He wouldn’t crawl. “I make us both sound like precisely what we are. And I don’t care for it.”

She’d known it would end. She’d told herself she’d be prepared when it did. But she wanted to shout and scream. Clinging to what pride she had left, she stood straight. “I don’t know what you want.”

He stared at her until she nearly lost the battle with the tears that threatened. “No,” he said quietly. “You don’t. That’s the biggest problem, isn’t it?”

He left her because he wanted to beg. She let him go because she was ready to.

12

Nervous as a cat, A.J. supervised as folding chairs were set in rows in her mother’s garden. She counted them—again—before she walked over to fuss with the umbrella-covered tables set in the side yard. The caterers were busy in the kitchen; the florist and two assistants were putting the finishing touches on the arrangements. Pots of lilies and tubs of roses were placed strategically around the terrace so that their scents wafted and melded with the flowers of Clarissa’s garden. It smelled like a fairy tale.

Everything was going perfectly. With her hands in her pockets, she stood in the midmorning sunlight and wished for a crisis she could dig her teeth into.

Her mother was about to marry the man she loved, the weather was a blessing and all of A.J.’s preplanning was paying off. She couldn’t remember ever being more miserable. She wanted to be home, in her own apartment, with the door locked and the curtains drawn, with her head buried under the covers. Hadn’t it been David who’d once told her that self-pity wasn’t attractive?

Well, David was out of her life now, A.J. reminded herself. And had been for nearly two weeks. That was for the best. Without having him around, confusing her emotions, she could get on with business. The agency was so busy she was seriously considering increasing her staff. Because of the increased work load, she was on the verge of canceling her own two-week vacation in Saint Croix. She was personally negotiating two multimillion-dollar contracts and one wrong move could send them toppling.

She wondered if he’d come. A.J. cursed herself for even thinking of him. He’d walked out of her apartment and her life. He’d walked out when she’d kept herself in a state of turmoil, struggling to keep strictly to the terms of their agreement. He’d been angry and unreasonable. He hadn’t bothered to call and she certainly wasn’t going to call him.

Maybe she had once, she thought with a sigh. But he hadn’t been home. It wasn’t likely that David Brady was mooning and moping around. A. J. Fields was too independent, and certainly too busy, to do any moping herself.

But she’d dreamed of him. In the middle of the night she’d pull herself out of dreams because he was there. She knew, better than most, that dreams could hurt.

That part of her life was over, she told herself again. It had been only an…episode, she decided. Episodes didn’t always end with flowers and sunlight and pretty words. She glanced over to see one of the hired help knock over a line of chairs. Grateful for the distraction, A.J. went over to help set things to rights.

When she went back into the house, the caterers were busily fussing over quiche and Clarissa was sitting contentedly in her robe, noting down the recipe.

“Momma, shouldn’t you be getting ready?”

Clarissa glanced up with a vague smile and petted the cat that curled in her lap. “Oh, there’s plenty of time, isn’t there?”

“A woman never has enough time to get ready on her wedding day.”

“It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it? I know it’s foolish to take it as a sign, but I’d like to.”

“You can take anything you want as a sign.” A.J. started to move to the stove for coffee, then changed her mind. On impulse, she opened the refrigerator and pulled out one of the bottles of champagne that were chilling. The caterers muttered together and she ignored them. It wasn’t every day a daughter watched her mother marry. “Come on. I’ll help you.” A.J. swung through the dining room and scooped up two fluted glasses.

“I wonder if I should drink before. I shouldn’t be fuzzy-headed.”

“You should absolutely be fuzzy-headed,” A.J. corrected. Walking into her mother’s room, she plopped down on the bed as she had as a child. “We should both be fuzzy-headed. It’s better than being nervous.”

Clarissa smiled beautifully. “I’m not nervous.” A.J. sent the cork cannoning to the ceiling. “Brides have to be nervous. I’m nervous and all I have to do is watch.”

“Aurora.” Clarissa took the glass she offered, then sat on the bed beside her. “You should stop worrying about me.”

“I can’t.” A.J. leaned over to kiss one cheek, then the other. “I love you.”

Clarissa took her hand and held it tightly. “You’ve always been a pleasure to me. Not once, not once in your entire life, have you brought me anything but happiness.”

“That’s all I want for you.”

“I know. And it’s all I want for you.” She loosened her grip on A.J.’s hand but continued to hold it. “Talk to me.”

A.J. didn’t need specifics to understand her mother meant David. She set down her untouched champagne and started to rise. “We don’t have time. You need to—”

“You’ve had an argument. You hurt.”

With a long, hopeless sigh, A.J. sank back down on the bed. “I knew I would from the beginning. I had my eyes open.”

“Did you?” With a shake of her head, Clarissa set her glass beside A.J.’s so she could take both her hands. “Why is it you have such a difficult time accepting affection from anyone but me? Am I responsible for that?”

“No. No, it’s just the way things are. In any case, David and I… We simply had a very intense physical affair that burned itself out.”

Clarissa thought of what she had seen, what she had felt, and nearly sighed. “But you’re in love with him.”

With anyone else, she could have denied. With anyone else, she could have lied and perhaps have been believed. “That’s my problem, isn’t it? And I’m dealing with it,” she added quickly, before she was tempted into self-pity again. “Today of all days we shouldn’t be talking about anything but lovely things.”

“Today of all days I want to see my daughter happy. How do you think he feels about you?”

It never paid to forget how quietly stubborn Clarissa could be. “He was attracted. I think he was a little intrigued because I wasn’t immediately compliant, and in business we stood toe-to-toe.”

Clarissa hadn’t forgotten how successfully evasive her daughter could be. “I asked you how you think he feels.”

“I don’t know.” A.J. dragged a hand through her hair and rose. “He wants me—or wanted me. We match very well in bed. And then I’m not sure. He seemed to want more—to get inside my head.”

“And you don’t care for that.”

“I don’t like being examined.”

Clarissa watched her daughter pace back and forth in her quick, nervous gait. So much emotion bottled up, she thought. Why couldn’t she understand she’d only truly feel it when she let it go? “Are you so sure that’s what he was doing?”

“I’m not sure of anything, but I know that David is a very logical sort of man. The kind who does meticulous research into any subject that interests him.”

“Did you ever consider that it was you who interested him, not your psychic abilities?”

“I think he might have been interested in one and uneasy about the other.” She wished, even now, that she could be sure. “In any case, it’s done now. We both understood commitment was out of the question.”

“Why?”

“Because it wasn’t what he—what we,” she corrected herself quickly, “were looking for. We set the rules at the start.”

“What did you argue about?”

“He suggested we live together.”

“Oh.” Clarissa paused a moment. She was old-fashioned enough to be anxious and wise enough to accept. “To some, a step like that is a form of commitment.”

“No, it was more a matter of convenience.” Was that what hurt? she wondered. She hadn’t wanted to analyze it. “Anyway, I wanted to think it over and he got angry. Really angry.”

“He’s hurt.” When A.J. glanced over, surprised protest on the tip of her tongue, Clarissa shook her head. “I know. You’ve managed to hurt each other deeply, with nothing more than pride.”

That changed things. A.J. told herself it shouldn’t, but found herself weakening. “I didn’t want to hurt David. I only wanted—”

“To protect yourself,” Clarissa finished. “Sometimes doing one can only lead to the other. When you love someone, really love them, you have to take some risks.”

“You think I should go to him.”

“I think you should do what’s in your heart.”

Her heart. Her heart was broken open. She wondered why everyone couldn’t see what was in it. “It sounds so easy.”

“And it’s the most frightening thing in the world. We can test, analyze and research psychic phenomena. We can set up labs in some of the greatest universities and institutions in the world, but no one but a poet understands the terror of love.”

“You’ve always been a poet, Momma.” A.J. sat down beside her again, resting her head on her mother’s shoulder. “Oh, God, what if he doesn’t want me?”

“Then you’ll hurt and you’ll cry. After you do, you’ll pick up the pieces of your life and go on. I have a strong daughter.”

“And I have a wise and beautiful mother.” A.J. leaned over to pick up both glasses of wine. After handing one to Clarissa, she raised hers in a toast. “What shall we drink to first?”

“Hope.” Clarissa clinked glasses. “That’s really all there is.”

* * *

A.J. changed in the bedroom her mother always kept prepared for her. It hadn’t mattered that she’d spent only a handful of nights in it over nearly ten years; Clarissa had labeled it hers, and hers it remained. Perhaps she would stay there tonight, after the wedding was over, the guests gone and the newlyweds off on their honeymoon. She might think better there, and tomorrow find the courage to listen to her mother’s advice and follow her heart.

What if he didn’t want her? What if he’d already forgotten her? A.J. faced the mirror but closed her eyes. There were too many “what ifs” to consider and only one thing she could be certain of. She loved him. If that meant taking risks, she didn’t have a choice.

Straightening her shoulders, she opened her eyes and studied herself. The dress was romantic because her mother preferred it. She hadn’t worn anything so blatantly feminine and flowing in years. Lace covered her bodice and caressed her throat, while the soft blue silk peeked out of the eyelets. The skirt swept to a bell at her ankles.

Not her usual style, A.J. thought again, but there was something appealing about the old-fashioned cut and the charm of lace. She picked up the nosegay of white roses that trailed with ribbon and felt foolishly like a bride herself. What would it be like to be preparing to bond yourself with another person, someone who loved and wanted you? There would be flutters in your stomach. She felt them in her own. Your throat would be dry. She lifted a hand to it. You would feel giddy with a combination of excitement and anxiety. She put her hand on the dresser to steady herself.

A premonition? Shaking it off, she stepped back from the mirror. It was her mother who would soon promise to love, honor and cherish. She glanced at her watch, then caught her breath. How had she managed to lose so much time? If she didn’t put herself in gear, the guests would be arriving with no one to greet them.

Alex’s children were the first to arrive. She’d only met them once, the evening before at dinner, and they were still a bit awkward and formal with one another. But when her future sister offered to help, A.J. decided to take her at her word. Within moments, cars began pulling up out front and she needed all the help she could get.

“A.J.” Alex found her in the garden, escorting guests to chairs. “You look lovely.”

He looked a little pale under his tan. The sign of nerves had her softening toward him. “Wait until you see your bride.”

“I wish I could.” He pulled at the knot in his tie. “I have to admit I’d feel easier if she were here to hold on to. You know, I talk to millions of people every night, but this…” He glanced around the garden. “This is a whole different ball game.”

“I predict very high ratings.” She brushed his cheek. “Why don’t you slip inside and have a little shot of bourbon?”

“I think I might.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “I think I just might.”

A.J. watched him make his way to the back door before she turned back to her duties. And there was David. He stood at the edge of the garden, where the breeze just ruffled the ends of his hair. She wondered, as her heart began to thud, that she hadn’t sensed him. She wondered, as the pleasure poured through her, if she’d wished him there.

He didn’t approach her. A.J.’s fingers tightened on the wrapped stems of her flowers. She knew she had to take the first step.

She was so lovely. He thought she looked like something that had stepped out of a dream. The breeze that tinted the air with the scents of the garden teased the lace at her throat. As she walked to him, he thought of every empty hour he’d spent away from her.

“I’m glad you came.”

He’d told himself he wouldn’t, then he’d been dressed and driving south. She’d pulled him there, through her thoughts or through his own emotions, it didn’t matter. “You seem to have it all under control.”

She had nothing under control. She wanted to reach out to him, to tell him, but he seemed so cool and distant. “Yes, we’re nearly ready to start. As soon as I get the rest of these people seated, I can go in for Clarissa.”

“I’ll take care of them.”

“You don’t have to. I—”

“I told you I would.”

His clipped response cut her off. A.J. swallowed her longings and nodded. “Thanks. If you’ll excuse me, then.” She walked away, into the house, into her own room, where she could compose herself before she faced her mother.

Damn it! He swung away, cursing her, cursing himself, cursing everything. Just seeing her again had made him want to crawl. He wasn’t a man who could live on his knees. She’d looked so cool, so fresh and lovely, and for a moment, just a moment, he’d thought he’d seen the emotions he needed in her eyes. Then she’d smiled at him as though he were just another guest at her mother’s wedding.

He wasn’t going to go on this way. David forced himself to make polite comments and usher well-wishers to their seats. Today, before it was over, he and A. J. Fields were going to come to terms. His terms. He’d planned it that way, hadn’t he? It was about time one of his plans concerning her worked.

The orchestra A.J. had hired after auditioning at least a half-dozen played quietly on a wooden platform on the lawn. A trellis of sweet peas stood a few feet in front of the chairs. Composed and clear-eyed, A.J. walked through the garden to take her place. She glanced at Alex and gave him one quick smile of encouragement. Then Clarissa, dressed in dusky rose silk, stepped out of the house.

She looks like a queen, A.J. thought as her heart swelled. The guests rose as she walked through, but she had eyes only for Alex. And he, A.J. noted, looked as though no one else in the world existed but Clarissa.

They joined hands, and they promised.

The ceremony was short and traditional. A.J. watched her mother pledge herself, and fought back a sense of loss that vied with happiness. The words were simple, and ultimately so complex. The vows were timeless, and somehow completely new.

With her vision misted, her throat aching, she took her mother in her arms. “Oh, be happy, Momma.”

“I am. I will be.” She drew away just a little. “So will you.”

Before A.J. could speak, Clarissa turned away and was swept up in an embrace by her new stepchildren.

There were guests to feed and glasses to fill. A.J. found keeping busy helped put her emotions on hold. In a few hours she’d be alone. Then she’d let them come. Now she laughed, brushed cheeks, toasted and felt utterly numb.

“Clarissa.” David had purposely waited until she’d had a chance to breathe before he approached her. “You’re beautiful.”

“Thank you, David. I’m so glad you’re here. She needs you.”

He stiffened and only inclined his head. “Does she?”

With a sigh, Clarissa took both of his hands. When he felt the intensity, he nearly drew away. “Plans aren’t necessary,” she said quietly. “Feelings are.”

David forced himself to relax. “You don’t play fair.”

“She’s my daughter. In more ways than one.”

“I understand that.”

It took her only a moment, then she smiled. “Yes, you do. You might let her know. Aurora’s an expert at blocking feelings, but she deals well with words. Talk to her?”

“Oh, I intend to.”

“Good.” Satisfied, Clarissa patted his hand. “Now I think you should try the quiche. I wheedled the recipe out of the caterer. It’s fascinating.”

“So are you.” David leaned down to kiss her cheek. A.J. all but exhausted herself. She moved from group to group, sipping champagne and barely tasting anything from the impressive display of food. The cake with its iced swans and hearts was cut and devoured. Wine flowed and music played. Couples danced on the lawn.

“I thought you’d like to know I read Steiger’s script.” After stepping beside her, David kept his eyes on the dancers. “It’s extraordinary.”

Business, she thought. It was best to keep their conversation on business. “Are you considering producing it?”

“Considering. That’s a long way from doing it. I have a meeting with Steiger Monday.”

“That’s wonderful.” She couldn’t stop the surge of pleasure for him. She couldn’t help showing it. “You’ll be sensational.”

“And if the script ever makes it to the screen, you’ll have been the catalyst.”

“I like to think so.”

“I haven’t waltzed since I was thirteen.” David slipped a hand to her elbow and felt the jolt. “My mother made me dance with my cousin, and at the time I felt girls were a lower form of life. I’ve changed my mind since.” His arm slid around her waist. “You’re tense.”

She concentrated on the count, on matching her steps to his, on anything but the feel of having him hold her again. “I want everything to be perfect for her.”

“I don’t think you need to worry about that anymore.”

Her mother danced with Alex as though they were alone in the garden. “No.” She sighed before she could prevent it. “I don’t.”

“You’re allowed to feel a little sad.” Her scent was there as he remembered, quietly tempting.

“No, it’s selfish.”

“It’s normal,” he corrected. “You’re too hard on yourself.”

“I feel as though I’ve lost her.” She was going to cry. A.J. steeled herself against it.

“You haven’t.” He brushed his lips along her temple. “And the feeling will pass.”

When he was kind, she was lost. When he was gentle, she was defenseless. “David.” Her fingers tightened on his shoulder. “I missed you.”

It cost her to say it. The first layer of pride that covered all the rest dissolved with the words. She felt his hand tense, then gentle on her waist.

“Aurora.”

“Please, don’t say anything now.” The control she depended on wouldn’t protect her now. “I just wanted you to know.”

“We need to talk.”

Even as she started to agree, the announcement blared over the mike. “All unmarried ladies, line up now for the bouquet toss.”

“Come on, A.J.” Her new stepsister, laughing and eager, grabbed her arm and hustled her along. “We have to see who’s going to be next.”

She wasn’t interested in bouquets or giddy young women. Her life was on the line. Distracted, A.J. glanced around for David. She looked back in time to throw up her hands defensively before her mother’s bouquet landed in her face. Embarrassed, A.J. accepted the congratulations and well-meaning teasing.

“Another sign?” Clarissa commented as she pecked her daughter’s cheek.

“A sign that my mother has eyes in the back of her head and excellent aim.” A.J. indulged herself with burying her face in the bouquet. It was sweet, and promising. “You should keep this.”

“Oh, no. That would be bad luck and I don’t intend to have any.”

“I’m going to miss you, Momma.”

She understood—she always had—but she smiled and gave A.J. another kiss. “I’ll be back in two weeks.”

She barely had time for another fierce embrace before her mother and Alex dashed off in a hail of rice and cheers.

Some guests left, others lingered. When the first streaks of sunset deepened the sky she watched the orchestra pack up their instruments.

“Long day.”

She turned to David and reached out a hand before she could help it. “I thought you’d gone.”

“Just got out of the way for a while. You did a good job.”

“I can’t believe it’s done.” She looked over as the last of the chairs were folded and carted away.

“I could use some coffee.”

She smiled, trying to convince herself to be light. “Do we have any left?”

“I put some on before I came back out.” He walked with her to the house. “Where were they going on their honeymoon?”

The house was so empty. Strange, she’d never noticed just how completely Clarissa had filled it. “Sailing.” She laughed a little, then found herself looking helplessly around the kitchen. “I have a hard time picturing Clarissa hoisting sails.”

“Here.” He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket. “Sit down and have a good cry. You’re entitled.”

“I’m happy for her.” But the tears began to fall. “Alex is a wonderful man and I know he loves her.”

“But she doesn’t need you to take care of her anymore.” He handed her a mug of coffee. “Drink.”

Nodding, she sipped. “She’s always needed me.”

“She still does.” He took the handkerchief and dried her cheeks himself. “Just in a different way.”

“I feel like a fool.”

“The trouble with you is you can’t accept that you’re supposed to feel like a fool now and again.”

She blew her nose, unladylike and indignant. “I don’t like it.”

“Not supposed to. Have you finished crying?”

She sulked a moment, sniffled, then sipped more coffee. “Yes.”

“Tell me again that you missed me.”

“It was a moment of weakness,” she murmured into the mug, but he took it away from her.

“No more evasions, Aurora. You’re going to tell me what you want, what you feel.”

“I want you back.” She swallowed and wished he would say something instead of just staring at her.

“Go on.”

“David, you’re making this difficult.”

“Yeah, I know.” He didn’t touch her, not yet. He needed more than that. “For both of us.”

“All right.” She steadied herself with a deep breath. “When you suggested we live together, I wasn’t expecting it. I wanted to think it through, but you got angry. Well, since you’ve been away, I’ve had a chance to think it through. I don’t see why we can’t live together under those terms.”

Always negotiating, he thought as he rubbed a hand over his chin. She still wasn’t going to take that last step. “I’ve had a chance to think it through, too. And I’ve changed my mind.”

He could have slapped her and not have knocked the wind from her so successfully. Rejection, when it came, was always painful, but it had never been like this. “I see.” She turned away to pick up her coffee, but her hands weren’t nearly steady enough.

“You did a great job on this wedding, A.J.”

Closing her eyes, she wondered why she felt like laughing. “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

“Seems to me like you could plan another standing on your head.”

“Oh, sure.” She pressed her fingers to her eyes. “I might go into the business.”

“No, I was thinking about just one more. Ours.”

The tears weren’t going to fall. She wouldn’t let them. It helped to concentrate on that. “Our what?”

“Wedding. Aren’t you paying attention?”

She turned slowly to see him watching her with what appeared to be mild amusement. “What are you talking about?”

“I noticed you caught the bouquet. I’m superstitious.”

“This isn’t funny.” Before she could stalk from the room he had caught her close.

“Damn right it’s not. It’s not funny that I’ve spent eleven days and twelve nights thinking of little but you. It’s not funny that every time I took a step closer, you took one back. Every time I’d plan something out, the whole thing would be blown to hell after five minutes with you.”

“It’s not going to solve anything to shout at me.”

“It’s not going to solve anything until you start listening and stop anticipating. Look, I didn’t want this any more than you did. I liked my life just the way it was.”

“That’s fine, then. I liked my life, too.”

“Then we both have a problem, because nothing’s going to be quite the same again.”

Why couldn’t she breathe? Temper never made her breathless. “Why not?”

“Guess.” He kissed her then, hard, angry, as if he wanted to kick out at both of them. But it only took an instant, a heartbeat. His lips softened, his hold gentled and she was molded to him. “Why don’t you read my mind? Just this once, Aurora, open yourself up.”

She started to shake her head, but his mouth was on hers again. The house was quiet. Outside, the birds serenaded the lowering sun. The light was dimming and there was nothing but that one room and that one moment. Feelings poured into her, feelings that once would have brought fear. Now they offered, requested and gave her everything she’d been afraid to hope for.

“David.” Her arms tightened around him. “I need you to tell me. I couldn’t bear to be wrong.”

Hadn’t he needed words? Hadn’t he tried time and again to pry them out of her? Maybe it was time to give them to her. “The first time I met your mother, she said something to me about needing to understand or discover my own tenderness. That first weekend you stayed with me, I came home and found you sleeping on the bed. I looked at you, the woman who’d been my lover, and fell in love. The problem was I didn’t know how to make you fall in love with me.”

“I already had. I didn’t think you—”

“The problem was you did think. Too much.” He drew her away, only to look at her. “So did I. Be civilized. Be careful. Wasn’t that the way we arranged things?”

“It seemed like the right way.” She swallowed and moved closer. “It didn’t work for me. When I fell in love with you, all I could think was that I’d ruin everything by wanting too much.”

“And I thought if I asked, you’d be gone before the words were out.” He brushed his lips over her brow. “We wasted time thinking when we should have been feeling.”

She should be cautious, but there was such ease, such quiet satisfaction, in just holding him. “I was afraid you’d never be able to accept what I am.”

“So was I.” He kissed one cheek, then the other. “We were both wrong.”

“I need you to be sure. I need to know that it doesn’t matter.”

“Aurora. I love you, who you are, what you are, how you are. I don’t know how else to tell you.”

She closed her eyes. Clarissa and she had been right to drink to hope. That was all there was. “You just found the best way.”

“There’s more.” He held her, waiting until she looked at him again. And he saw, as he’d needed to, her heart in her eyes. “I want to spend my life with you. Have children with you. There’s never been another woman who’s made me want those things.”

She took his face in her hands and lifted her mouth to his. “I’m going to see to it there’s never another.”

“Tell me how you feel.”

“I love you.”

He held her close, content. “Tell me what you want.”

“A lifetime. Two, if we can manage it.”

Risky Business

Nora Roberts

1

“Watch your step, please. Please, watch your step. Thank you.” Liz took a ticket from a sunburned man with palm trees on his shirt, then waited patiently for a woman with two bulging straw baskets to dig out another one.

“I hope you haven’t lost it, Mabel. I told you to let me hold it.”

“I haven’t lost it,” the woman said testily before she pulled out the little piece of blue cardboard.

“Thank you. Please take your seats.” It was several more minutes before everyone was settled and she could take her own. “Welcome aboard the Fantasy, ladies and gentlemen.”

With her mind on a half dozen other things, Liz began her opening monologue. She gave an absentminded nod to the man on the dock who cast off the ropes before she started the engine. Her voice was pleasant and easy as she took another look at her watch. They were already fifteen minutes behind schedule. She gave one last scan of the beach, skimming by lounge chairs, over bodies already stretched and oiled slick, like offerings to the sun. She couldn’t hold the tour any longer.

The boat swayed a bit as she backed it from the dock and took an eastern course. Though her thoughts were scattered, she made the turn from the coast expertly. She could have navigated the boat with her eyes closed. The air that ruffled around her face was soft and already warming, though the hour was early. Harmless and powder-puff white, clouds dotted the horizon. The water, churned by the engine, was as blue as the guidebooks promised. Even after ten years, Liz took none of it for granted—especially her livelihood. Part of that depended on an atmosphere that made muscles relax and problems disappear.

Behind her in the long, bullet-shaped craft were eighteen people seated on padded benches. They were already murmuring about the fish and formations they saw through the glass bottom. She doubted if any of them thought of the worries they’d left behind at home.

“We’ll be passing Paraiso Reef North,” Liz began in a low, flowing voice. “Diving depths range from thirty to fifty feet. Visibility is excellent, so you’ll be able to see star and brain corals, sea fans and sponges, as well as schools of sergeant majors, groupers and parrot fish. The grouper isn’t one of your prettier fish, but it’s versatile. They’re all born female and produce eggs before they change sex and become functioning males.”

Liz set her course and kept the speed steady. She went on to describe the elegantly colored angelfish, the shy, silvery small-mouth grunts, and the intriguing and dangerous sea urchin. Her clients would find the information useful when she stopped for two hours of snorkeling at Palancar Reef.

She’d made the run before, too many times to count. It might have become routine, but it was never monotonous. She felt now, as she always did, the freedom of open water, blue sky and the hum of engine with her at the controls. The boat was hers, as were three others, and the little concrete block dive shop close to shore. She’d worked for all of it, sweating through months when the bills were steep and the cash flow slight. She’d made it. Ten years of struggle had been a small price to pay for having something of her own. Turning her back on her country, leaving behind the familiar, had been a small price to pay for peace of mind.

The tiny, rustic island of Cozumel in the Mexican Caribbean promoted peace of mind. It was her home now, the only one that mattered. She was accepted there, respected. No one on the island knew of the humiliation and pain she’d gone through before she’d fled to Mexico. Liz rarely thought of it, though she had a vivid reminder.

Faith. Just the thought of her daughter made her smile. Faith was small and bright and precious, and so far away. Just six weeks, Liz thought, and she’d be home from school for the summer.

Sending her to Houston to her grandparents had been for the best, Liz reminded herself whenever the ache of loneliness became acute. Faith’s education was more important than a mother’s needs. Liz had worked, gambled, struggled so that Faith could have everything she was entitled to, everything she would have had if her father…

Determined, Liz set her mind on other things. She’d promised herself a decade before that she would cut Faith’s father from her mind, just as he had cut her from his life. It had been a mistake, one made in naïveté and passion, one that had changed the course of her life forever. But she’d won something precious from it: Faith.

“Below, you see the wreck of a forty-passenger Convair airliner lying upside down.” She slowed the boat so that her passengers could examine the wreck and the divers out for early explorations. Bubbles rose from air tanks like small silver disks. “The wreck’s no tragedy,” she continued. “It was sunk for a scene in a movie and provides divers with easy entertainment.”

Her job was to do the same for her passengers, she reminded herself. It was simple enough when she had a mate on board. Alone, she had to captain the boat, keep up the light, informative banter, deal with snorkel equipment, serve lunch and count heads. It just hadn’t been possible to wait any longer for Jerry.

She muttered to herself a bit as she increased speed. It wasn’t so much that she minded the extra work, but she felt her paying customers were entitled to the best she could offer. She should have known better than to depend on him. She could have easily arranged for someone else to come along. As it was, she had two men on the dive boat and two more in the shop. Because her second dive boat was due to launch at noon, no one could be spared to mate the glass bottom on a day trip. And Jerry had come through before, she reminded herself. With him on board, the women passengers were so charmed that Liz didn’t think they even noticed the watery world the boat passed over.

Who could blame them? she thought with a half smile. If she hadn’t been immune to men in general, Jerry might have had her falling over her own feet. Most women had a difficult time resisting dark, cocky looks, a cleft chin and smoky gray eyes. Add to that a lean, muscular build and a glib tongue, and no female was safe.

But that hadn’t been why Liz had agreed to rent him a room, or give him a part-time job. She’d needed the extra income, as well as the extra help, and she was shrewd enough to recognize an operator when she saw one. Previous experience had taught her that it made good business sense to have an operator on your side. She told herself he’d better have a good excuse for leaving her without a crew, then forgot him.

The ride, the sun, the breeze relaxed her. Liz continued to speak of the sea life below, twining facts she’d learned while studying marine biology in college with facts she’d learned firsthand in the waters of the Mexican Caribbean. Occasionally one of her passengers would ask a question or call out in excitement over something that skimmed beneath them. She answered, commented and instructed while keeping the flow light. Because three of her passengers were Mexican, she repeated all her information in Spanish. Because there were several children on board, she made certain the facts were fun.

If things had been different, she would have been a teacher. Liz had long since pushed that early dream from her mind, telling herself she was more suited to the business world. Her business world. She glanced over where the clouds floated lazily over the horizon. The sun danced white and sharp on the surface of blue water. Below, coral rose like castles or waved like fans. Yes, she’d chosen her world and had no regrets.

When a woman screamed behind her, Liz let off the throttle. Before she could turn, the scream was joined by another. Her first thought was that perhaps they’d seen one of the sharks that occasionally visited the reefs. Set to calm and soothe, Liz let the boat drift in the current. A woman was weeping in her husband’s arms, another held her child’s face protectively against her shoulder. The rest were staring down through the clear glass. Liz took off her sunglasses as she walked down the two steps into the cabin.

“Please try to stay calm. I promise you, there’s nothing down there that can hurt you in here.”

A man with a Nikon around his neck and an orange sun visor over a balding dome gave her a steady look.

“Miss, you’d better radio the police.”

Liz looked down through the clear glass, through the crystal blue water. Her heart rose to her throat. She saw now why Jerry had stood her up. He was lying on the white sandy bottom with an anchor chain wrapped around his chest.

* * *

The moment the plane finished its taxi, Jonas gathered his garment bag and waited impatiently for the door to be opened. When it did, there was a whoosh of hot air and the drone of engines. With a quick nod to the flight attendant he strode down the steep metal stairs. He didn’t have the time or the inclination to appreciate the palm trees, the bursts of flowers or the dreamy blue sky. He walked purposefully, eyes straight ahead and narrowed against the sun. In his dark suit and trim tie he could have been a businessman, one who’d come to Cozumel to work, not to play. Whatever grief, whatever anger he felt were carefully masked by a calm, unapproachable expression.

The terminal was small and noisy. Americans on vacation stood in groups laughing or wandered in confusion. Though he knew no Spanish, Jonas passed quickly through customs then into a small, hot alcove where men waited at podiums to rent cars and Jeeps. Fifteen minutes after landing, Jonas was backing a compact out of a parking space and heading toward town with a map stuck in the sun visor. The heat baked right through the windshield.

Twenty-four hours before, Jonas had been sitting in his large, elegantly furnished, air-conditioned office. He’d just won a long, tough case that had taken all his skill and mountains of research. His client was a free man, acquitted of a felony charge that carried a minimum sentence of ten years. He’d accepted his fee, accepted the gratitude and avoided as much publicity as possible.

Jonas had been preparing to take his first vacation in eighteen months. He’d felt satisfied, vaguely tired and optimistic. Two weeks in Paris seemed like the perfect reward for so many months of ten-hour days. Paris, with its ageless sophistication and cool parks, its stunning museums and incomparable food was precisely what suited Jonas Sharpe.

When the call had come through from Mexico, it had taken him several moments to understand. When he’d answered that he did indeed have a brother Jeremiah, Jonas’s predominant thought had been that Jerry had gotten himself into trouble again, and he was going to have to bail him out.

By the time he’d hung up the phone, Jonas couldn’t think at all. Numb, he’d given his secretary instructions to cancel his Paris arrangements and to make new ones for a flight to Cozumel the next day. Then Jonas had picked up the phone to call his parents and tell them their son was dead.

He’d come to Mexico to identify the body and take his brother home to bury. With a fresh wave of grief, Jonas experienced a sense of inevitability. Jerry had always lived on the edge of disaster. This time he’d stepped over. Since childhood Jerry had courted trouble—charmingly. He’d once joked that Jonas had taken to law so he could find the most efficient way to get his brother out of jams. Perhaps in a sense it had been true.

Jerry had been a dreamer. Jonas was a realist. Jerry had been unapologetically lazy, Jonas a workaholic. They were—had been—two sides of a coin. As Jonas drew up to the police station in San Miguel it was with the knowledge that part of himself had been erased.

The scene at port should have been painted. There were small fishing boats pulled up on the grass. Huge gray ships sat complacently at dock while tourists in flowered shirts or skimpy shorts strolled along the sea wall. Water lapped and scented the air.

Jonas got out of the car and walked to the police station to begin to wade through the morass of paperwork that accompanied a violent death.

Captain Moralas was a brisk, no-nonsense man who had been born on the island and was passionately dedicated to protecting it. He was approaching forty and awaiting the birth of his fifth child. He was proud of his position, his education and his family, though the order often varied. Basically, he was a quiet man who enjoyed classical music and a movie on Saturday nights.

Because San Miguel was a port, and ships brought sailors on leave, tourists on holiday, Moralas was no stranger to trouble or the darker side of human nature. He did, however, pride himself on the low percentage of violent crime on his island. The murder of the American bothered him in the way a pesky fly bothered a man sitting contentedly on his porch swing. A cop didn’t have to work in a big city to recognize a professional hit. There was no room for organized crime on Cozumel.

But he was also a family man. He understood love, and he understood grief, just as he understood certain men were compelled to conceal both. In the cool, flat air of the morgue, he waited beside Jonas. The American stood a head taller, rigid and pale.

“This is your brother, Mr. Sharpe?” Though he didn’t have to ask.

Jonas looked down at the other side of the coin. “Yes.”

In silence, he backed away to give Jonas the time he needed.

It didn’t seem possible. Jonas knew he could have stood for hours staring down at his brother’s face and it would never seem possible. Jerry had always looked for the easy way, the biggest deal, and he hadn’t always been an admirable man. But he’d always been so full of life. Slowly, Jonas laid his hand on his brother’s. There was no life there now, and nothing he could do; no amount of maneuvering or pulling of strings would bring it back. Just as slowly he removed his hand. It didn’t seem possible, but it was.

Moralas nodded to the attendant. “I’m sorry.”

Jonas shook his head. Pain was like a dull-edged knife through the base of his skull. He coated it with ice. “Who killed my brother, Captain?”

“I don’t know. We’re investigating.”

“You have leads?”

Moralas gestured and started down the corridor. “Your brother had been in Cozumel only three weeks, Mr. Sharpe. At the moment, we are interviewing everyone who had contact with him during that time.” He opened a door and stepped out into the air, breathing deeply of the fresh air and the flowers. The man beside him didn’t seem to notice the change. “I promise you, we will do everything possible to find your brother’s killer.”

The rage Jonas had controlled for so many hours bubbled toward the surface. “I don’t know you.” With a steady hand he drew out a cigarette, watching the captain with narrowed eyes as he lit it. “You didn’t know Jerry.”

“This is my island.” Moralas’s gaze remained locked with Jonas’s. “If there’s a murderer on it, I’ll find him.”

“A professional.” Jonas blew out smoke that hung in the air with no breeze to brush it away. “We both know that, don’t we?”

Moralas said nothing for a moment. He was still waiting to receive information on Jeremiah Sharpe. “Your brother was shot, Mr. Sharpe, so we’re investigating to find out why, how and who. You could help me by giving me some information.”

Jonas stared at the door a moment—the door that led down the stairs, down the corridor and to his brother’s body. “I’ve got to walk,” he murmured.

Moralas waited until they’d crossed the grass, then the road. For a moment, they walked near the sea wall in silence. “Why did your brother come to Cozumel?”

“I don’t know.” Jonas drew deeply on the cigarette until it burned into the filter. “Jerry liked palm trees.”

“His business? His work?”

With a half laugh Jonas ground the smoldering filter underfoot. Sunlight danced in diamonds on the water. “Jerry liked to call himself a free-lancer. He was a drifter.” And he’d brought complications to Jonas’s life as often as he’d brought pleasure. Jonas stared hard at the water, remembering shared lives, diverse opinions. “For Jerry, it was always the next town and the next deal. The last I heard—two weeks ago—he was giving diving lessons to tourists.”

“The Black Coral Dive Shop,” Moralas confirmed. “Elizabeth Palmer hired him on a part-time basis.”

“Palmer.” Jonas’s attention shifted away from the water. “That’s the woman he was living with.”

“Miss Palmer rented your brother a room,” Moralas corrected, abruptly proper. “She was also among the group to discover your brother’s body. She’s given my department her complete cooperation.”

Jonas’s mouth thinned. How had Jerry described this Liz Palmer in their brief phone conversation weeks before? A sexy little number who made great tortillas. She sounded like another one of Jerry’s tough ladies on the lookout for a good time and the main chance. “I’ll need her address.” At the captain’s quiet look he only raised a brow. “I assume my brother’s things are still there.”

“They are. I have some of your brother’s personal effects, those that he had on him, in my office. You’re welcome to collect them and what remains at Miss Palmer’s. We’ve already been through them.”

Jonas felt the rage build again and smothered it. “When can I take my brother home?”

“I’ll do my best to complete the paperwork today. I’ll need you to make a statement. Of course, there are forms.” He looked at Jonas’s set profile and felt a new tug of pity. “Again, I’m sorry.”

He only nodded. “Let’s get it done.”

* * *

Liz let herself into the house. While the door slammed behind her, she flicked switches, sending two ceiling fans whirling. The sound, for the moment, was company enough. The headache she’d lived with for over twenty-four hours was a dull, nagging thud just under her right temple. Going into the bathroom, she washed down two aspirin before turning on the shower.

She’d taken the glass bottom out again. Though it was off season, she’d had to turn a dozen people away. It wasn’t every day a body was found off the coast, and the curious had come in force. Morbid, she thought, then stripped and stepped under the cold spray of the shower. How long would it take, she wondered, before she stopped seeing Jerry on the sand beneath the water?

True, she’d barely known him, but he’d been fun and interesting and good company. He’d slept in her daughter’s bed and eaten in her kitchen. Closing her eyes, she let the water sluice over her, willing the headache away. She’d be better, she thought, when the police finished the investigation. It had been hard, very hard, when they’d come to her house and searched through Jerry’s things. And the questions.

How much had she known about Jerry Sharpe? He’d been American, an operator, a womanizer. She’d been able to use all three to her benefit when he’d given diving lessons or acted as mate on one of her boats. She’d thought him harmless—sexy, attractive and basically lazy. He’d boasted of making it big, of wheeling a deal that would set him up in style. Liz had considered it so much hot air. As far as she was concerned, nothing set you up in style but years of hard work—or inherited wealth.

But Jerry’s eyes had lit up when he’d talked of it, and his grin had been appealing. If she’d been a woman who allowed herself dreams, she would have believed him. But dreams were for the young and foolish. With a little tug of regret, she realized Jerry Sharpe had been both.

Now he was gone, and what he had left was still scattered in her daughter’s room. She’d have to box it up, Liz decided as she turned off the taps. It was something, at least. She’d box up Jerry’s things and ask that Captain Moralas what to do about them. Certainly his family would want whatever he’d left behind. Jerry had spoken of a brother, whom he’d affectionately referred to as “the stuffed shirt.” Jerry Sharpe had been anything but stuffy.

As she walked to the bedroom, Liz wrapped her hair in the towel. She remembered the way Jerry had tried to talk his way between her sheets a few days after he’d moved in. Smooth talk, smooth hands. Though he’d had her backed into the doorway, kissing her before she’d evaded it, Liz had easily brushed him off. He’d taken her refusal good-naturedly, she recalled, and they’d remained on comfortable terms. Liz pulled on an oversized shirt that skimmed her thighs.

The truth was, Jerry Sharpe had been a good-natured, comfortable man with big dreams. She wondered, not for the first time, if his dreams had had something to do with his death.

She couldn’t go on thinking about it. The best thing to do was to pack what had belonged to Jerry back into his suitcase and take it to the police.

It made her feel gruesome. She discovered that after only five minutes. Privacy, for a time, had been all but her only possession. To invade someone else’s made her uneasy. Liz folded a faded brown T-shirt that boasted the wearer had hiked the Grand Canyon and tried not to think at all. But she kept seeing him there, joking about sleeping with one of Faith’s collection of dolls. He’d fixed the window that had stuck and had cooked paella to celebrate his first paycheck.

Without warning, Liz felt the first tears flow. He’d been so alive, so young, so full of that cocky sense of confidence. She’d hardly had time to consider him a friend, but he’d slept in her daughter’s bed and left clothes in her closet.

She wished now she’d listened to him more, been friendlier, more approachable. He’d asked her to have drinks with him and she’d brushed him off because she’d had paperwork to do. It seemed petty now, cold. If she’d given him an hour of her life, she might have learned who he was, where he’d come from, why he’d died.

When the knock at the door sounded, she pressed her hands against her cheeks. Silly to cry, she told herself, when tears never solved anything. Jerry Sharpe was gone, and it had nothing to do with her.

She brushed away the tears as she walked to the door. The headache was easing. Liz decided it would be best if she called Moralas right away and arranged to have the clothes picked up. She was telling herself she really wasn’t involved at all when she opened the door.

For a moment she could only stare. The T-shirt she hadn’t been aware of still holding slipped from her fingers. She took one stumbling step back as she felt a rushing sound fill her head. Because her vision dimmed, she blinked to clear it. The man in the doorway stared back at her accusingly.

“Jer-Jerry,” she managed and nearly screamed when he took a step forward.

“Elizabeth Palmer?”

She shook her head, numb and terrified. She had no superstitions. She believed in action and reaction on a purely practical level. When someone died, they couldn’t come back. And yet she stood in her living room with the fans whirling and watched Jerry Sharpe step over her threshold. She heard him speak to her again.

“Are you Liz Palmer?”

“I saw you.” She heard her own voice rise with nerves but couldn’t take her eyes from his face. The cocky good looks, the cleft chin, the smoky eyes under thick dark brows. It was a face that appealed to a woman’s need to risk, or to her dreams of risking. “Who are you?”

“Jonas Sharpe. Jerry was my brother. My twin brother.”

When she discovered her knees were shaking, she sat down quickly. No, not Jerry, she told herself as her heartbeat leveled. The hair was just as dark, just as full, but it lacked Jerry’s unkempt shagginess. The face was just as attractive, just as ruggedly hewn, but she’d never seen Jerry’s eyes so hard, so cold. And this man wore a suit as though he’d been born in one. His stance was one of restrained passion and impatience. It took her a moment, only a moment, before anger struck.

“You did that on purpose.” Because her palms were damp she rubbed them against her knees. “It was a hideous thing to do. You knew what I’d think when I opened the door.”

“I needed a reaction.”

She sat back and took a deep, steadying breath. “You’re a bastard, Mr. Sharpe.”

For the first time in hours, his mouth curved…only slightly. “May I sit down?”

She gestured to a chair. “What do you want?”

“I came to get Jerry’s things. And to talk to you.”

As he sat, Jonas took a long look around. His was not the polite, casual glance a stranger indulges himself in when he walks into someone else’s home, but a sharp-eyed, intense study of what belonged to Liz Palmer. It was a small living area, hardly bigger than his office. While he preferred muted colors and clean lines, Liz chose bright, contrasting shades and odd knickknacks. Several Mayan masks hung on the walls, and rugs of different sizes and hues were scattered over the floor. The sunlight, fading now, came in slats through red window blinds. There was a big blue pottery vase on a woven mat on the table, but the butter-yellow flowers in it were losing their petals. The table itself didn’t gleam with polish, but was covered with a thin layer of dust.

The shock that had had her stomach muscles jumping had eased. She said nothing as he looked around the room because she was looking at him. A mirror image of Jerry, she thought. And weren’t mirror images something like negatives? She didn’t think he’d be fun to have around. She had a frantic need to order him out, to pitch him out quickly and finally. Ridiculous, she told herself. He was just a man, and nothing to her. And he had lost his brother.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Sharpe. This is a very difficult time for you.”

His gaze locked on hers so quickly that she tensed again. She’d barely been aware of his inch-by-inch study of her room, but she couldn’t remain unmoved by his study of her.

She wasn’t what he’d expected. Her face was all angles—wide cheekbones, a long narrow nose and a chin that came to a suggestion of a point. She wasn’t beautiful, but stunning in an almost uncomfortable way. It might have been the eyes, a deep haunted brown, that rose a bit exotically at the outer edge. It might have been the mouth, full and vulnerable. The shirt overwhelmed her body with its yards of material, leaving only long, tanned legs bare. Her hands, resting on the arms of her chair, were small, narrow and ringless. Jonas had thought he knew his brother’s taste as well as his own. Liz Palmer didn’t suit Jerry’s penchant for the loud and flamboyant, or his own for the discreet sophisticate.

Still, Jerry had lived with her. Jonas thought grimly that she was taking the murder of her lover very well. “And a difficult time for you.”

His long study had left her shaken. It had gone beyond natural curiosity and made her feel like a specimen, filed and labeled for further research. She tried to remember that grief took different forms in different people. “Jerry was a nice man. It isn’t easy to—”

“How did you meet him?”

Words of sympathy cut off, Liz straightened in her chair. She never extended friendliness where it wasn’t likely to be accepted. If he wanted facts only, she’d give him facts. “He came by my shop a few weeks ago. He was interested in diving.”

Jonas’s brow lifted as in polite interest but his eyes remained cold. “In diving.”

“I own a dive shop on the beach—rent equipment, boat rides, lessons, day trips. Jerry was looking for work. Since he knew what he was doing, I gave it to him. He crewed on the dive boat, gave some of the tourists lessons, that sort of thing.”

Showing tourists how to use a regulator didn’t fit with Jonas’s last conversation with his brother. Jerry had talked about cooking up a big deal. Big money, big time. “He didn’t buy in as your partner?”

Something came into her face—pride, disdain, amusement. Jonas couldn’t be sure. “I don’t take partners, Mr. Sharpe. Jerry worked for me, that’s all.”

“All?” The brow came up again. “He was living here.”

She caught the meaning, had dealt with it from the police. Liz decided she’d answered all the questions she cared to and that she’d given Jonas Sharpe more than enough of her time. “Jerry’s things are in here.” Rising, she walked out of the room. Liz waited at the doorway to her daughter’s room until Jonas joined her. “I was just beginning to pack his clothes. You’d probably prefer to do that yourself. Take as much time as you need.”

When she started to turn away, Jonas took her arm. He wasn’t looking at her, but into the room with the shelves of dolls, the pink walls and lacy curtains. And at his brother’s clothes tossed negligently over the back of a painted white chair and onto a flowered spread. It hurt, Jonas discovered, all over again.

“Is this all?” It seemed so little.

“I haven’t been through the drawers or the closet yet. The police have.” Suddenly weary, she pulled the towel from her head. Dark blond hair, still damp, tumbled around her face and shoulders. Somehow her face seemed even more vulnerable. “I don’t know anything about Jerry’s personal life, his personal belongings. This is my daughter’s room.” She turned her head until their eyes met. “She’s away at school. This is where Jerry slept.” She left him alone.

Twenty minutes was all he needed. His brother had traveled light. Leaving the suitcase in the living room, Jonas walked through the house. It wasn’t large. The next bedroom was dim in the early evening light, but he could see a splash of orange over a rattan bed and a desk cluttered with files and papers. It smelled lightly of spice and talcum powder. Turning away, he walked toward the back and found the kitchen. And Liz.

It was when he smelled the coffee that Jonas remembered he hadn’t eaten since morning. Without turning around, Liz poured a second cup. She didn’t need him to speak to know he was there. She doubted he was a man who ever had to announce his presence. “Cream?”

Jonas ran a hand through his hair. He felt as though he were walking through someone else’s dream. “No, black.”

When Liz turned to offer the cup, he saw the quick jolt. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, taking up her own cup. “You look so much like him.”

“Does that bother you?”

“It unnerves me.”

He sipped the coffee, finding it cleared some of the mists of unreality. “You weren’t in love with Jerry.”

Liz sent him a look of mild surprise. She realized he’d thought she’d been his brother’s lover, but she hadn’t thought he’d have taken the next step. “I only knew him a few weeks.” Then she laughed, remembering another time, another life. “No, I wasn’t in love with him. We had a business relationship, but I liked him. He was cocky and well aware of his own charms. I had a lot of repeat female customers over the past couple of weeks. Jerry was quite an operator,” she murmured, then looked up, horrified. “I’m sorry.”

“No.” Interested, Jonas stepped closer. She was a tall woman, so their eyes stayed level easily. She smelled of the talcum powder and wore no cosmetics. Not Jerry’s type, he thought again. But there was something about the eyes. “That’s what he was, only most people never caught on.”

“I’ve known others.” And her voice was flat. “Not so harmless, not so kind. Your brother was a nice man, Mr. Sharpe. And I hope whoever… I hope they’re found.”

She watched the gray eyes ice over. The little tremor in her stomach reminded her that cold was often more dangerous than heat. “They will be. I may need to talk with you again.”

It seemed a simple enough request, but she backed away from it. She didn’t want to talk to him again, she didn’t want to be involved in any way. “There’s nothing else I can tell you.”

“Jerry was living in your house, working for you.”

“I don’t know anything.” Her voice rose as she spun away to stare out the window. She was tired of the questions, tired of people pointing her out on the beach as the woman who’d found the body. She was tired of having her life turned upside down by the death of a man she had hardly known. And she was nervous, she admitted, because Jonas Sharpe struck her as a man who could keep her life turned upside down as long as it suited him. “I’ve talked to the police again and again. He worked for me. I saw him a few hours out of the day. I don’t know where he went at night, who he saw, what he did. It wasn’t my business as long as he paid for the room and showed up to work.” When she looked back, her face was set. “I’m sorry for your brother, I’m sorry for you. But it’s not my business.”

He saw the nerves as her hands unclenched but interpreted them in his own way. “We disagree, Mrs. Palmer.”

“Miss Palmer,” she said deliberately, and watched his slow, acknowledging nod. “I can’t help you.”

“You don’t know that until we talk.”

“All right. I won’t help you.”

He inclined his head and reached for his wallet. “Did Jerry owe you anything on the room?”

She felt the insult like a slap. Her eyes, usually soft, usually sad, blazed. “He owed me nothing, and neither do you. If you’ve finished your coffee…”

Jonas set the cup on the table. “I’ve finished. For now.” He gave her a final study. Not Jerry’s type, he thought again, or his. But she had to know something. If he had to use her to find out, he would. “Good night.”

Liz stayed where she was until the sound of the front door closing echoed back at her. Then she shut her eyes. None of her business, she reminded herself. But she could still see Jerry under her boat. And now, she could see Jonas Sharpe with grief hard in his eyes.

2

Liz considered working in the dive shop the next thing to taking a day off. Taking a day off, actually staying away from the shop and the boats, was a luxury she allowed herself rarely, and only when Faith was home on holiday. Today, she’d indulged herself by sending the boats out without her so that she could manage the shop alone. Be alone. By noon, all the serious divers had already rented their tanks so that business at the shop would be sporadic. It gave Liz a chance to spend a few hours checking equipment and listing inventory.

The shop was a basic cinder-block unit. Now and again, she toyed with the idea of having the outside painted, but could never justify the extra expense. There was a cubbyhole she wryly referred to as an office where she’d crammed an old gray steel desk and one swivel chair. The rest of the room was crowded with equipment that lined the floor, was stacked on shelves or hung from hooks. Her desk had a dent in it the size of a man’s foot, but her equipment was top grade and flawless.

Masks, flippers, tanks, snorkels could be rented individually or in any number of combinations. Liz had learned that the wider the choice, the easier it was to move items out and draw the customer back. The equipment was the backbone of her business. Prominent next to the wide square opening that was only closed at night with a heavy wooden shutter was a list, in English and Spanish, of her equipment, her services and the price.

When she’d started eight years before, Liz had stocked enough tanks and gear to outfit twelve divers. It had taken every penny she’d saved—every penny Marcus had given a young, dewy-eyed girl pregnant with his child. The girl had become a woman quickly, and that woman now had a business that could accommodate fifty divers from the skin out, dozens of snorkelers, underwater photographers, tourists who wanted an easy day on the water or gung-ho deep-sea fishermen.

The first boat she’d gambled on, a dive boat, had been christened Faith, for her daughter. She’d made a vow when she’d been eighteen, alone and frightened, that the child she carried would have the best. Ten years later, Liz could look around her shop and know she’d kept her promise.

More, the island she’d fled to for escape had become home. She was settled there, respected, depended on. She no longer looked over the expanses of white sand, blue water, longing for Houston or a pretty house with a flowing green lawn. She no longer looked back at the education she’d barely begun, or what she might have been. She’d stopped pining for a man who didn’t want her or the child they’d made. She’d never go back. But Faith could. Faith could learn how to speak French, wear silk dresses and discuss wine and music. One day Faith would go back and mingle unknowingly with her cousins on their own level.

That was her dream, Liz thought as she carefully filled tanks. To see her daughter accepted as easily as she herself had been rejected. Not for revenge, Liz mused, but for justice.

“Howdy there, missy.”

Crouched near the back wall, Liz turned and squinted against the sun. She saw a portly figure stuffed into a black-and-red wet suit, topped by a chubby face with a fat cigar stuck in the mouth.

“Mr. Ambuckle. I didn’t know you were still on the island.”

“Scooted over to Cancun for a few days. Diving’s better here.”

With a smile, she rose to go to her side of the opening. Ambuckle was a steady client who came to Cozumel two or three times a year and always rented plenty of tanks. “I could’ve told you that. See any of the ruins?”

“Wife dragged me to Tulum.” He shrugged and grinned at her with popping blue eyes. “Rather be thirty feet down than climbing over rocks all day. Did get some snorkeling in. But a man doesn’t fly all the way from Dallas just to paddle around. Thought I’d do some night diving.”

Her smile came easily, adding something soft and approachable to eyes that were usually wary. “Fix you right up. How much longer are you staying?” she asked as she checked an underwater flash.

“Two more weeks. Man’s got to get away from his desk.”

“Absolutely.” Liz had often been grateful so many people from Texas, Louisiana and Florida felt the need to get away.

“Heard you had some excitement while we were on the other side.”

Liz supposed she should be used to the comment by now, but a shiver ran up her spine. The smile faded, leaving her face remote. “You mean the American who was murdered?”

“Put the wife in a spin. Almost couldn’t talk her into coming back over. Did you know him?”

No, she thought, not as well as she should have. To keep her hands busy, she reached for a rental form and began to fill it out. “As a matter of fact, he worked here a little while.”

“You don’t say?” Ambuckle’s small blue eyes sparkled a bit. But Liz supposed she should be used to that, as well.

“You might remember him. He crewed the dive boat the last time you and your wife went out.”

“No kidding?” Ambuckle’s brow creased as he chewed on the cigar. “Not that good-looking young man—Johnny, Jerry,” he remembered. “Had the wife in stitches.”

“Yes, that was him.”

“Shame,” Ambuckle murmured, but looked rather pleased to have known the victim. “Had a lot of zip.”

“Yes, I thought so, too.” Liz lugged the tanks through the door and set them on the stoop. “That should take care of it, Mr. Ambuckle.”

“Add a camera on, missy. Want to get me a picture of one of those squids. Ugly things.”

Amazed, Liz plucked one from the shelf and added it to the list on a printed form. She checked her watch, noted down the time and turned the form for Ambuckle’s signature. After signing, he handed her bills for the deposit. She appreciated the fact that Ambuckle always paid in cash, American. “Thanks. Glad to see you back, Mr. Ambuckle.”

“Can’t keep me away, missy.” With a whoosh and a grunt, he hefted the tanks on his shoulders. Liz watched him cross to the walkway before she filed the receipt. Unlocking her cash box, she stored the money.

“Business is good.”

She jolted at the voice and looking up again stared at Jonas Sharpe.

She’d never again mistake him for Jerry, though his eyes were almost hidden this time with tinted glasses, and he wore shorts and an open shirt in lieu of a suit. There was a long gold chain around his neck with a small coin dangling. She recalled Jerry had worn one. But something in the way Jonas stood, something in the set of his mouth made him look taller and tougher than the man she’d known.

Because she didn’t believe in polite fencing, Liz finished relocking the cash box and began to check the straps and fasteners on a shelf of masks. No faulty equipment went out of her shop. “I didn’t expect to see you again.”

“You should have.” Jonas watched her move down the shelf. She seemed stronger, less vulnerable than she had when he’d seen her a week ago. Her eyes were cool, her voice remote. It made it easier to do what he’d come for. “You have quite a reputation on the island.”

She paused long enough to look over her shoulder. “Really?”

“I checked,” he said easily. “You’ve lived here for ten years. Built this place from the first brick and have one of the most successful businesses on the island.”

She examined the mask in her hand meticulously. “Are you interested in renting some equipment, Mr. Sharpe? I can recommend the snorkeling right off this reef.”

“Maybe. But I think I’d prefer to scuba.”

“Fine. I can give you whatever you need.” She set the mask down and chose another. “It isn’t necessary to be certified to dive in Mexico; however, I’d recommend a few basic lessons before you go down. We offer two different courses—individual or group.”

He smiled at her for the first time, a slow, appealing curving of lips that softened the toughness around his mouth. “I might take you up on that. Meantime, when do you close?”

“When I’m ready to.” The smile made a difference, she realized, and she couldn’t let it. In defense, she shifted her weight on one hip and sent him a look of mild insolence. “This is Cozumel, Mr. Sharpe. We don’t run nine to five here. Unless you want to rent some equipment or sign up for a tour, you’ll have to excuse me.”

He reached in to close his hand over hers. “I didn’t come back to tour. Have dinner with me tonight. We can talk.”

She didn’t attempt to free her hand but stared at him. Running a business had taught her to be scrupulously polite in any circumstances. “No, thank you.”

“Drinks, then.”

“No.”

“Miss Palmer…” Normally, Jonas was known for his deadly, interminable patience. It was a weapon, he’d learned, in the courtroom and out of it. With Liz, he found it difficult to wield it. “I don’t have a great deal to go on at this point, and the police haven’t made any progress at all. I need your help.”

This time Liz did pull away. She wouldn’t be sucked in, that she promised herself, not by quiet words or intense eyes. She had her life to lead, a business to run, and most important, a daughter coming home in a matter of weeks. “I won’t get involved. I’m sorry, even if I wanted to, there’d be nothing I could do to help.”

“Then it won’t hurt to talk to me.”

“Mr. Sharpe.” Liz wasn’t known for her patience. “I have very little free time. Running this business isn’t a whim or a lark, but a great deal of work. If I have a couple of hours to myself in the evening, I’m not going to spend them being grilled by you. Now—”

She started to brush him off again when a young boy came running up to the window. He was dressed in a bathing suit and slick with suntan lotion. With a twenty-dollar bill crumpled in his hand, he babbled a request for snorkeling equipment for himself and his brother. He spoke in quick, excited Spanish as Liz checked out the equipment, asking if she thought they’d see a shark.

She answered him in all seriousness as she exchanged money for equipment. “Sharks don’t live in the reef, but they do visit now and again.” She saw the light of adventure in his eyes. “You’ll see parrot fish.” She held her hands apart to show him how big. “And if you take some bread crumbs or crackers, the sergeant majors will follow you, lots of them, close enough to touch.”

“Will they bite?”

She grinned. “Only the bread crumbs. Adios.”

He dashed away, kicking up sand.

“You speak Spanish like a native,” Jonas observed, and thought it might come in handy. He’d also noticed the pleasure that had come into her eyes when she’d talked with the boy. There’d been nothing remote then, nothing sad or haunted. Strange, he mused, he’d never noticed just how much a barometer of feeling the eyes could be.

“I live here,” she said simply. “Now, Mr. Sharpe—”

“How many boats?”

“What?”

“How many do you have?”

She sucked in a deep breath and decided she could humor him for another five minutes. “I have four. The glass bottom, two dive boats and one for deep-sea fishing.”

“Deep-sea fishing.” That was the one, Jonas decided. A fishing boat would be private and isolated. “I haven’t done any in five or six years. Tomorrow.” He reached in his wallet. “How much?”

“It’s fifty dollars a person a day, but I don’t take the boat out for one man, Mr. Sharpe.” She gave him an easy smile. “It doesn’t make good business sense.”

“What’s your minimum?”

“Three. And I’m afraid I don’t have anyone else lined up. So—”

He set four fifty-dollar bills on the counter. “The extra fifty’s to make sure you’re driving the boat.” Liz looked down at the money. An extra two hundred would help buy the aqua bikes she’d been thinking about. Several of the other dive shops already had them and she kept a constant eye on competition. Aqua biking and wind surfing were becoming increasingly popular, and if she wanted to keep up… She looked back at Jonas Sharpe’s dark, determined eyes and decided it wasn’t worth it.

“My schedule for tomorrow’s already set. I’m afraid I—”

“It doesn’t make good business sense to turn down a profit, Miss Palmer.” When she only moved her shoulders, he smiled again, but this time it wasn’t so pleasant. “I’d hate to mention at the hotel that I couldn’t get satisfaction at The Black Coral. It’s funny how word of mouth can help or damage a small business.”

Liz picked up the money, one bill at a time. “What business are you in, Mr. Sharpe?”

“Law.”

She made a sound that might have been a laugh as she pulled out a form. “I should’ve guessed. I knew someone studying law once.” She thought of Marcus with his glib, calculating tongue. “He always got what he wanted, too. Sign here. We leave at eight,” she said briskly. “The price includes a lunch on board. If you want beer or liquor, you bring your own. The sun’s pretty intense on the water, so you’d better buy some sun-screen.” She glanced beyond him. “One of my dive boats is coming back. You’ll have to excuse me.”

“Miss Palmer…” He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say to her, or why he was uncomfortable having completed a successful maneuver. In the end, he pocketed his receipt. “If you change your mind about dinner—”

“I won’t.”

“I’m at the El Presidente.”

“An excellent choice.” She walked through the doorway and onto the dock to wait for her crew and clients.

* * *

By seven-fifteen, the sun was up and already burning off a low ground mist. What clouds there were, were thin and shaggy and good-natured.

“Damn!” Liz kicked the starter on her motorbike and turned in a little U toward the street. She’d been hoping for rain.

He was going to try to get her involved. Even now, Liz could imagine those dark, patient gray eyes staring into hers, hear the quietly insistent voice. Jonas Sharpe was the kind of man who took no for an answer but was dogged enough to wait however long it took for the yes. Under other circumstances, she’d have admired that. Being stubborn had helped her start and succeed in a business when so many people had shaken their heads and warned her against it. But she couldn’t afford to admire Jonas Sharpe. Budgeting her feelings was every bit as important as budgeting her accounts.

She couldn’t help him, Liz thought again, as the soft air began to play around her face. Everything she’d known about Jerry had been said at least twice. Of course she was sorry, and had grieved a bit herself for a man she’d hardly known, but murder was a police matter. Jonas Sharpe was out of his element.

She was in hers, Liz thought as her muscles began to relax with the ride. The street was bumpy, patched in a good many places. She knew when to weave and sway. There were houses along the street with deep green grass and trailing vines. Already clothes were waving out on lines. She could hear an early newscast buzzing through someone’s open window and the sound of children finishing chores or breakfast before school. She turned a corner and kept her speed steady.

There were a few shops here, closed up tight. At the door of a market, Señor Pessado fumbled with his keys. Liz tooted her horn and exchanged waves. A cab passed her, speeding down the road to the airport to wait for the early arrivals. In a matter of moments, Liz caught the first scent of the sea. It was always fresh. As she took the last turn, she glanced idly in her rearview mirror. Odd, she thought—hadn’t she seen that little blue car yesterday? But when she swung into the hotel’s parking lot, it chugged past.

Liz’s arrangement with the hotel had been of mutual benefit. Her shop bordered the hotel’s beach and encouraged business on both sides. Still, whenever she went inside, as she did today to collect the lunch for the fishing trip, she always remembered the two years she’d spent scrubbing floors and making beds.

“Buenos días, Margarita.”

The young woman with a bucket and mop started to smile. “Buenos días, Liz. ¿Cómo està?”

“Bien. How’s Ricardo?”

“Growing out of his pants.” Margarita pushed the button of the service elevator as they spoke of her son. “Faith comes home soon. He’ll be glad.”

“So will I.” They parted, but Liz remembered the months they’d worked together, changing linen, hauling towels, washing floors. Margarita had been a friend, like so many others she’d met on the island who’d shown kindness to a young woman who’d carried a child but had no wedding ring.

She could have lied. Even at eighteen Liz had been aware she could have bought a ten-dollar gold band and had an easy story of divorce or widowhood. She’d been too stubborn. The baby that had been growing inside her belonged to her. Only to her. She’d feel no shame and tell no lies.

By seven forty-five, she was crossing the beach to her shop, lugging a large cooler packed with two lunches and a smaller one filled with bait. She could already see a few tubes bobbing on the water’s surface. The water would be warm and clear and uncrowded. She’d like to have had an hour for snorkeling herself.

“Liz!” The trim, small-statured man who walked toward her was shaking his head. There was a faint, pencil-thin mustache above his lip and a smile in his dark eyes. “You’re too skinny to carry that thing.”

She caught her breath and studied him up and down. He wore nothing but a skimpy pair of snug trunks. She knew he enjoyed the frank or surreptitious stares of women on the beach. “So’re you, Luis. But don’t let me stop you.”

“So you take the fishing boat today?” He hefted the larger cooler and walked with her toward the shop. “I changed the schedule for you. Thirteen signed up for the glass bottom for the morning. We got both dive boats going out, so I told my cousin Miguel to help fill in today. Okay?”

“Terrific.” Luis was young, fickle with women and fond of his tequila, but he could be counted on in a pinch. “I guess I’m going to have to hire someone on, at least part-time.”

Luis looked at her, then at the ground. He’d worked closest with Jerry. “Miguel, he’s not dependable. Here one day, gone the next. I got a nephew, a good boy. But he can’t work until he’s out of school.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Liz said absently. “Let’s just put this right on the boat. I want to check the gear.”

On board, Liz went through a routine check on the tackle and line. As she looked over the big reels and massive rods, she wondered, with a little smirk, if the lawyer had ever done any big-game fishing. Probably wouldn’t know a tuna if it jumped up and bit his toe, she decided.

The decks were clean, the equipment organized, as she insisted. Luis had been with her the longest, but anyone who worked for Liz understood the hard and fast rule about giving the clients the efficiency they paid for.

The boat was small by serious sport fishing standards, but her clients rarely went away dissatisfied. She knew the waters all along the Yucatan Peninsula and the habits of the game that teemed below the surface. Her boat might not have sonar and fish finders and complicated equipment, but she determined to give Jonas Sharpe the ride of his life. She’d keep him so busy, strapped in a fighting chair, that he wouldn’t have time to bother her. By the time they docked again, his arms would ache, his back would hurt and the only thing he’d be interested in would be a hot bath and bed. And if he wasn’t a complete fool, she’d see to it that he had a trophy to take back to wherever he’d come from.

Just where was that? she wondered as she checked the gauges on the bridge. She’d never thought to ask Jerry. It hadn’t seemed important. Yet now she found herself wondering where Jonas came from, what kind of life he led there. Was he the type who frequented elegant restaurants with an equally elegant woman on his arm? Did he watch foreign films and play bridge? Or did he prefer noisy clubs and hot jazz? She hadn’t been able to find his slot as easily as she did with most people she met, so she wondered, perhaps too much. Not my business, she reminded herself and turned to call to Luis.

“I’ll take care of everything here. Go ahead and open the shop. The glass bottom should be ready to leave in half an hour.”

But he wasn’t listening. Standing on the deck, he stared back at the narrow dock. She saw him raise a shaky hand to cross himself. “Madre de Dios.”

“Luis?” She came down the short flight of stairs to join him. “What—”

Then she saw Jonas, a straw hat covering his head, sunglasses shading his eyes. He hadn’t bothered to shave, so that the light growth of beard gave him a lazy, vagrant look accented by a faded T-shirt and brief black trunks. He didn’t, she realized, look like a man who’d play bridge. Knowing what was going through Luis’s mind, Liz shook his arm and spoke quickly.

“It’s his brother, Luis. I told you they were twins.”

“Back from the dead,” Luis whispered.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She shook off the shudder his words brought her. “His name is Jonas and he’s nothing like Jerry at all, really. You’ll see when you talk to him. You’re prompt, Mr. Sharpe,” she called out, hoping to jolt Luis out of his shock. “Need help coming aboard?”

“I can manage.” Hefting a small cooler, Jonas stepped lightly on deck. “The Expatriate.” He referred to the careful lettering on the side of the boat. “Is that what you are?”

“Apparently.” It was something she was neither proud nor ashamed of. “This is Luis—he works for me. You gave him a jolt just now.”

“Sorry.” Jonas glanced at the slim man hovering by Liz’s side. There was sweat beading on his lip. “You knew my brother?”

“We worked together,” Luis answered in his slow, precise English. “With the divers. Jerry, he liked best to take out the dive boat. I’ll cast off.” Giving Jonas a wide berth, Luis jumped onto the dock.

“I seem to affect everyone the same way,” Jonas observed. “How about you?” He turned dark, direct eyes to her. Though he no longer made her think of Jerry, he unnerved her just the same. “Still want to keep me at arm’s length?”

“We pride ourselves in being friendly to all our clients. You’ve hired the Expatriate for the day, Mr. Sharpe. Make yourself comfortable.” She gestured toward a deck chair before climbing the steps to the bridge and calling out to Luis. “Tell Miguel he gets paid only if he finishes out the day.” With a final wave to Luis, she started the engine, then cruised sedately toward the open sea.

The wind was calm, barely stirring the water. Liz could see the dark patches that meant reefs and kept the speed easy. Once they were in deeper water, she’d open it up a bit. By midday the sun would be stunningly hot. She wanted Jonas strapped in his chair and fighting two hundred pounds of fish by then.

“You handle a wheel as smoothly as you do a customer.”

A shadow of annoyance moved in her eyes, but she kept them straight ahead. “It’s my business. You’d be more comfortable on the deck in a chair, Mr. Sharpe.”

“Jonas. And I’m perfectly comfortable here.” He gave her a casual study as he stood beside her. She wore a fielder’s cap over her hair with white lettering promoting her shop. On her T-shirt, the same lettering was faded from the sun and frequent washings. He wondered, idly, what she wore under it. “How long have you had this boat?”

“Almost eight years. She’s sound.” Liz pushed the throttle forward. “The waters are warm, so you’ll find tuna, marlin, swordfish. Once we’re out you can start chumming.”

“Chumming?”

She sent him a quick look. So she’d been right—he didn’t know a line from a pole. “Bait the water,” she began. “I’ll keep the speed slow and you bait the water, attract the fish.”

“Seems like taking unfair advantage. Isn’t fishing supposed to be luck and skill?”

“For some people it’s a matter of whether they’ll eat or not.” She turned the wheel a fraction, scanning the water for unwary snorkelers. “For others, it’s a matter of another trophy for the wall.”

“I’m not interested in trophies.”

She shifted to face him. No, he wouldn’t be, she decided, not in trophies or in anything else without a purpose. “What are you interested in?”

“At the moment, you.” He put his hand over hers and let off the throttle. “I’m in no hurry.”

“You paid to fish.” She flexed her hand under his.

“I paid for your time,” he corrected.

He was close enough that she could see his eyes beyond the tinted lenses. They were steady, always steady, as if he knew he could afford to wait. The hand still over hers wasn’t smooth as she’d expected, but hard and worked. No, he wouldn’t play bridge, she thought again. Tennis, perhaps, or hand ball, or something else that took sweat and effort. For the first time in years she felt a quick thrill race through her—a thrill she’d been certain she was immune to. The wind tossed the hair back from her face as she studied him.

“Then you wasted your money.”

Her hand moved under his again. Strong, he thought, though her looks were fragile. Stubborn. He could judge that by the way the slightly pointed chin stayed up. But there was a look in her eyes that said I’ve been hurt, I won’t be hurt again. That alone was intriguing, but added to it was a quietly simmering sexuality that left him wondering how it was his brother hadn’t been her lover. Not, Jonas was sure, for lack of trying.

“If I’ve wasted my money, it won’t be the first time. But somehow I don’t think I have.”

“There’s nothing I can tell you.” Her hand jerked and pushed the throttle up again.

“Maybe not. Or maybe there’s something you know without realizing it. I’ve dealt in criminal law for over ten years. You’d be surprised how important small bits of information can be. Talk to me.” His hand tightened briefly on hers. “Please.”

She thought she’d hardened her heart, but she could feel herself weakening. Why was it she could haggle for hours over the price of scuba gear and could never refuse a softly spoken request? He was going to cause her nothing but trouble. Because she already knew it, she sighed.

“We’ll talk.” She cut the throttle so the boat would drift. “While you fish.” She managed to smile a bit as she stepped away. “No chum.”

With easy efficiency, Liz secured the butt of a rod into the socket attached to a chair. “For now, you sit and relax,” she told him. “Sometimes a fish is hot enough to take the hook without bait. If you get one, you strap yourself in and work.”

Jonas settled himself in the chair and tipped back his hat. “And you?”

“I go back to the wheel and keep the speed steady so we tire him out without losing him.” She gathered her hair in one hand and tossed it back. “There’re better spots than this, but I’m not wasting my gas when you don’t care whether you catch a fish or not.”

His lips twitched as he leaned back in the chair. “Sensible. I thought you would be.”

“Have to be.”

“Why did you come to Cozumel?” Jonas ignored the rod in front of him and took out a cigarette.

“You’ve been here for a few days,” she countered. “You shouldn’t have to ask.”

“Parts of your own country are beautiful. If you’ve been here ten years, you’d have been a child when you left the States.”

“No, I wasn’t a child.” Something in the way she said it had him watching her again, looking for the secret she held just beyond her eyes. “I came because it seemed like the right thing to do. It was the right thing. When I was a girl, my parents would come here almost every year. They love to dive.”

“You moved here with your parents?”

“No, I came alone.” This time her voice was flat. “You didn’t pay two hundred dollars to talk about me, Mr. Sharpe.”

“It helps to have some background. You said you had a daughter. Where is she?”

“She goes to school in Houston—that’s where my parents live.”

Toss a child, and the responsibility, onto grandparents and live on a tropical island. It might leave a bad taste in his mouth, but it wasn’t something that would surprise him. Jonas took a deep drag as he studied Liz’s profile. It just didn’t fit. “You miss her.”

“Horribly,” Liz murmured. “She’ll be home in a few weeks, and we’ll spend the summer together. September always comes too soon.” Her gaze drifted off as she spoke, almost to herself. “It’s for the best. My parents take wonderful care of her and she’s getting an excellent education—taking piano lessons and ballet. They sent me pictures from a recital, and…” Her eyes filled with tears so quickly that she hadn’t any warning. She shifted into the wind and fought them back, but he’d seen them. He sat smoking silently to give her time to recover.

“Ever get back to the States?”

“No.” Liz swallowed and called herself a fool. It had been the pictures, she told herself, the pictures that had come in yesterday’s mail of her little girl wearing a pink dress.

“Hiding from something?”

She whirled back, tears replaced with fury. Her body was arched like a bow ready to launch. Jonas held up a hand.

“Sorry. I have a habit of poking into secrets.”

She forced herself to relax, to strap back passion as she’d taught herself so long ago. “It’s a good way to lose your fingers, Mr. Sharpe.”

He chuckled. “That’s a possibility. I’ve always considered it worth the risk. They call you Liz, don’t they?”

Her brow lifted under the fringe that blew around her brow. “My friends do.”

“It suits you, except when you try to be aloof. Then it should be Elizabeth.”

She sent him a smoldering look, certain he was trying to annoy her. “No one calls me Elizabeth.”

He merely grinned at her. “Why weren’t you sleeping with Jerry?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Yes, definitely Elizabeth. You’re a beautiful woman in an odd sort of way.” He tossed out the compliment as casually as he tossed the cigarette into the water. “Jerry had a…fondness for beautiful women. I can’t figure out why you weren’t lovers.”

For a moment, only a moment, it occurred to her that no one had called her beautiful in a very long time. She’d needed words like that once. Then she leaned back on the rail, planted her hands and aimed a killing look. She didn’t need them now.

“I didn’t choose to sleep with him. It might be difficult for you to accept, as you share the same face, but I didn’t find Jerry irresistible.”

“No?” As relaxed as she was tensed, Jonas reached into the cooler, offering her a beer. When she shook her head, he popped the top on one for himself. “What did you find him?”

“He was a drifter, and he happened to drift into my life. I gave him a job because he had a quick mind and a strong back. The truth was, I never expected him to last over a month. Men like him don’t.”

Though he hadn’t moved a muscle, Jonas had come to attention. “Men like him?”

“Men who look for the quickest way to easy street. He worked because he liked to eat, but he was always looking for the big strike—one he wouldn’t have to sweat for.”

“So you did know him,” Jonas murmured. “What was he looking for here?”

“I tell you I don’t know! For all I know he was looking for a good time and a little sun.” Frustration poured out of her as she tossed a hand in the air. “I let him have a room because he seemed harmless and I could use the money. I wasn’t intimate with him on any level. The closest he came to talking about what he was up to was bragging about diving for big bucks.”

“Diving? Where?”

Fighting for control, she dragged a hand through her hair. “I wish you’d leave me alone.”

“You’re a realistic woman, aren’t you, Elizabeth?”

Her chin was set when she looked back at him. “Yes.”

“Then you know I won’t. Where was he going to dive?”

“I don’t know. I barely listened to him when he got started on how rich he was going to be.”

“What did he say?” This time Jonas’s voice was quiet, persuading. “Just try to think back and remember what he told you.”

“He said something about making a fortune diving, and I joked about sunken treasure. And he said…” She strained to remember the conversation. It had been late in the evening, and she’d been busy, preoccupied. “I was working at home,” Liz remembered. “I always seem to handle the books better at night. He’d been out, partying I thought, because he was a little unsteady when he came in. He pulled me out of the chair. I remember I started to swear at him but he looked so damn happy, I let it go. Really, I hardly listened because I was picking up all the papers he’d scattered, but he was saying something about the big time and buying champagne to celebrate. I told him he’d better stick to beer on his salary. That’s when he talked about deals coming through and diving for big bucks. Then I made some comment about sunken treasure….”

“And what did he say?”

“Sometimes you make more putting stuff in than taking it out.” With a line between her brows, she remembered how he’d laughed when she’d told him to go sleep it off. “He made a pass neither one of us took seriously, and then…I think he made a phone call. I went back to work.”

“When was this?”

“A week, maybe one week after I took him on.”

“That must have been when he called me.” Jonas looked out to sea. And he hadn’t paid much attention, either, he reminded himself. Jerry had talked about coming home in style. But then he had always been talking about coming home in style. And the call, as usual, had been collect.

“Did you ever see him with anyone? Talking, arguing?”

“I never saw him argue with anyone. He flirted with the women on the beach, made small talk with the clients and got along just fine with everyone he worked with. I assumed he spent most of his free time in San Miguel. I think he cruised a few bars with Luis and some of the others.”

“What bars?”

“You’ll have to ask them, though I’m sure the police already have.” She took a deep breath. It was bringing it all back again, too close. “Mr. Sharpe, why don’t you let the police handle this? You’re running after shadows.”

“He was my brother.” And more, what he couldn’t explain, his twin. Part of himself had been murdered. If he were ever to feel whole again, he had to know why. “Haven’t you wondered why Jerry was murdered?”

“Of course.” She looked down at her hands. They were empty and she felt helpless. “I thought he must’ve gotten into a fight, or maybe he bragged to the wrong person. He had a bad habit of tossing what money he had around.”

“It wasn’t robbery or a mugging, Elizabeth. It was professional. It was business.”

Her heart began a slow, painful thud. “I don’t understand.”

“Jerry was murdered by a pro, and I’m going to find out why.”

Because her throat was suddenly dry, she swallowed. “If you’re right, then that’s all the more reason to leave it to the police.”

He drew out his cigarettes again, but stared ahead to where the sky met the water. “Police don’t want revenge. I do.” In his voice, she heard the calm patience and felt a shiver.

Staring, she shook her head. “Even if you found the person who did it, what could you do?”

He took a long pull from his beer. “As a lawyer, I suppose I’d be obliged to see they had their day in court. As a brother…” He trailed off and drank again. “We’ll have to see.”

“I don’t think you’re a very nice man, Mr. Sharpe.”

“I’m not.” He turned his head until his eyes locked on hers. “And I’m not harmless. Remember, if I make a pass, we’ll both take it seriously.”

She started to speak, then saw his line go taut. “You’ve got a fish, Mr. Sharpe,” she said dryly. “You’d better strap in or he’ll pull you overboard.”

Turning on her heel, she went back to the bridge, leaving Jonas to fend for himself.

3

It was sundown when Liz parked her bike under the lean-to beside her house. She was still laughing. However much trouble Jonas had caused her, however much he had annoyed her in three brief meetings, she had his two hundred dollars. And he had a thirty-pound marlin—whether he wanted it or not. We deliver, she thought as she jingled her keys.

Oh, it had been worth it, just to see his face when he’d found himself on the other end of the wire from a big, bad-tempered fish. Liz believed he’d have let it go if she hadn’t taken the time for one last smirk. Stubborn, she thought again. Yes, any other time she’d have admired it, and him.

Though she’d been wrong about his not being able to handle a rod, he’d looked so utterly perplexed with the fish lying at his feet on the deck that she’d nearly felt sorry for him. But his luck, or the lack of it, had helped her make an easy exit once they’d docked. With all the people crowding around to get a look at his catch and congratulate him, Jonas hadn’t been able to detain her.

Now she was ready for an early evening, she thought. And a rainy one if the clouds moving in from the east delivered. Liz let herself into the house, propping the door open to bring in the breeze that already tasted of rain. After the fans were whirling, she turned on the radio automatically. Hurricane season might be a few months off, but the quick tropical storms were unpredictable. She’d been through enough of them not to take them lightly.

In the bedroom she prepared to strip for the shower that would wash the day’s sweat and salt from her skin. Because it was twilight, she was already reaching for the light switch when a stray thought stopped her. Hadn’t she left the blinds up that morning? Liz stared at them, tugged snugly over the window-sill. Odd, she was sure she’d left them up, and why wasn’t the cord wrapped around its little hook? She was fanatical about that kind of detail, she supposed because ropes on a boat were always secured.

She hesitated, even after light spilled into the room. Then she shrugged. She must have been more distracted that morning than she’d realized. Jonas Sharpe, she decided, was taking up too much of her time, and too many of her thoughts. A man like him was bound to do so, even under different circumstances. But she’d long since passed the point in her life where a man could dominate it. He only worried her because he was interfering in her time, and her time was a precious commodity. Now that he’d had his way, and his talk, there should be no more visits. She remembered, uncomfortably, the way he’d smiled at her. It would be best, she decided, if he went back to where he’d come from and she got on with her own routine.

To satisfy herself, Liz walked over to the first shade and secured the cord. From the other room, the radio announced an evening shower before music kicked in. Humming along with it, she decided to toss together a chicken salad before she logged the day’s accounts.

As she straightened, the breath was knocked out of her by an arm closing tightly around her neck. The dying sun caught a flash of silver. Before she could react, she felt the quick prick of a knife blade at her throat.

“Where is it?”

The voice that hissed in her ear was Spanish. In reflex, she brought her hands to the arm around her neck. As her nails dug in, she felt hard flesh and a thin metal band. She gasped for air, but stopped struggling when the knife poked threateningly at her throat.

“What do you want?” In terror her mind skimmed forward. She had less than fifty dollars cash and no jewelry of value except a single strand of pearls left by her grandmother. “My purse is in on the table. You can take it.”

The vicious yank on her hair had her gasping in pain. “Where did he put it?”

“Who? I don’t know what you want.”

“Sharpe. Deal’s off, lady. If you want to live, you tell me where he put the money.”

“I don’t know.” The knife point pricked the vulnerable skin at her throat. She felt something warm trickle down her skin. Hysteria bubbled up behind it. “I never saw any money. You can look—there’s nothing here.”

“I’ve already looked.” He tightened his hold until her vision grayed from lack of air. “Sharpe died fast. You won’t be so lucky. Tell me where it is and nothing happens.”

He was going to kill her. The thought ran in her head. She was going to die for something she knew nothing about. Money…he wanted money and she only had fifty dollars. Faith. As she felt herself on the verge of unconsciousness, she thought of her daughter. Who would take care of her? Liz bit down on her lip until the pain cleared her mind. She couldn’t die.

“Please…” She let herself go limp in his arms. “I can’t tell you anything. I can’t breathe.”

His hold loosened just slightly. Liz slumped against him and when he shifted, she brought her elbow back with all her strength. She didn’t bother to turn around but ran blindly. A rug slid under her feet, but she stumbled ahead, too terrified to look back. She was already calling for help when she hit the front door.

Her closest neighbor was a hundred yards away. She vaulted the little fence that separated the yards and sprinted toward the house. She stumbled up the steps, sobbing. Even as the door opened, she heard the sound of a car squealing tires on the rough gravel road behind her.

“He tried to kill me,” she managed, then fainted.

* * *

“There is no further information I can give you, Mr. Sharpe.” Moralas sat in his neat office facing the waterfront. The file on his desk wasn’t as thick as he would have liked. Nothing in his investigation had turned up a reason for Jerry Sharpe’s murder. The man who sat across from him stared straight ahead. Moralas had a photo of the victim in the file, and a mirror image a few feet away. “I wonder, Mr. Sharpe, if your brother’s death was a result of something that happened before his coming to Cozumel.”

“Jerry wasn’t running when he came here.”

Moralas tidied his papers. “Still, we have asked for the cooperation of the New Orleans authorities. That was your brother’s last known address.”

“He never had an address,” Jonas murmured. Or a conventional job, a steady woman. Jerry had been a comet, always refusing to burn itself out. “I’ve told you what Miss Palmer said. Jerry was cooking up a deal, and he was cooking it up in Cozumel.”

“Yes, having to do with diving.” Always patient, Moralas drew out a thin cigar. “Though we’ve already spoken with Miss Palmer, I appreciate your bringing me the information.”

“But you don’t know what the hell to do with it.”

Moralas flicked on his lighter, smiling at Jonas over the flame. “You’re blunt. I’ll be blunt as well. If there was a trail to follow to your brother’s murder, it’s cold. Every day it grows colder. There were no fingerprints, no murder weapon, no witnesses.” He picked up the file, gesturing with it. “That doesn’t mean I intend to toss this in a drawer and forget about it. If there is a murderer on my island, I intend to find him. At the moment, I believe the murderer is miles away, perhaps in your own country. Procedure now is to backtrack on your brother’s activities until we find something. To be frank, Mr. Sharpe, you’re not doing yourself or me any good by being here.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“That is, of course, your privilege—unless you interfere with police procedure.” At the sound of the buzzer on his desk, Moralas tipped his ash and picked up the phone.

“Moralas.” There was a pause. Jonas saw the captain’s thick, dark brows draw together. “Yes, put her on. Miss Palmer, this is Captain Moralas.”

Jonas stopped in the act of lighting a cigarette and waited. Liz Palmer was the key, he thought again. He had only to find what lock she fit.

“When? Are you injured? No, please stay where you are, I’ll come to you.” Moralas was rising as he hung up the phone. “Miss Palmer has been attacked.”

Jonas was at the door first. “I’m coming with you.”

His muscles ached with tension as the police car raced out of town toward the shore. He asked no questions. In his mind, Jonas could see Liz as she’d been on the bridge hours before— tanned, slim, a bit defiant. He remembered the self-satisfied smirk she’d given him when he’d found himself in a tug-of-war with a thirty-pound fish. And how neatly she’d skipped out on him the moment they’d docked.

She’d been attacked. Why? Was it because she knew more than she’d been willing to tell him? He wondered if she were a liar, an opportunist or a coward. Then he wondered how badly she’d been hurt.

As they pulled down the narrow drive, Jonas glanced toward Liz’s house. The door was open, the shades drawn. She lived there alone, he thought, vulnerable and unprotected. Then he turned his attention to the little stucco building next door. A woman in a cotton dress and apron came onto the porch. She carried a baseball bat.

“You are the police.” She nodded, satisfied, when Moralas showed his identification. “I am Señora Alderez. She’s inside. I thank the Virgin we were home when she came to us.”

“Thank you.”

Jonas stepped inside with Moralas and saw her. She was sitting on a patched sofa, huddled forward with a glass of wine in both hands. Jonas saw the liquid shiver back and forth as her hands trembled. She looked up slowly when they came in, her gaze passing over Moralas to lock on Jonas. She stared, with no expression in those deep, dark eyes. Just as slowly, she looked back at her glass.

“Miss Palmer.” With his voice very gentle, Moralas sat down beside her. “Can you tell me what happened?”

She took the smallest of drinks, pressed her lips together briefly, then began as though she were reciting. “I came home at sunset. I didn’t close the front door or lock it. I went straight into the bedroom. The shades were down, and I thought I’d left them up that morning. The cord wasn’t secured, so I went over and fixed it. That’s when he grabbed me—from behind. He had his arm around my neck and a knife. He cut me a little.” In reflex, she reached up to touch the inch-long scratch her neighbor had already cleaned and fussed over. “I didn’t fight because he had the knife at my throat and I thought he would kill me. He was going to kill me.” She brought her head up to look directly into Moralas’s eyes. “I could hear it in his voice.”

“What did he say to you, Miss Palmer?”

“He said, ‘Where is it?’ I didn’t know what he wanted. I told him he could take my purse. He was choking me and he said, ‘Where did he put it?’ He said Sharpe.” This time she looked at Jonas. When she lifted her head, he saw that bruises were already forming on her throat. “He said the deal was off and he wanted the money. If I didn’t tell him where it was he’d kill me, and I wouldn’t die quickly, the way Jerry had. He didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t know anything.” She spoke directly to Jonas. As she stared at him he felt the guilt rise.

Patient, Moralas touched her arm to bring her attention back to him. “He let you go?”

“No, he was going to kill me.” She said it dully, without fear, without passion. “I knew he would whether I told him anything or not, and my daughter—she needs me. I slumped as if I’d fainted, then I hit him. I think I hit him in the throat with my elbow. And I ran.”

“Can you identify the man?”

“I never saw him. I never looked.”

“His voice.”

“He spoke Spanish. I think he was short because his voice was right in my ear. I don’t know anything else. I don’t know anything about money or Jerry or anything else.” She looked back into her glass, abruptly terrified she would cry. “I want to go home.”

“As soon as my men make certain it’s safe. You’ll have police protection, Miss Palmer. Rest here. I’ll come back for you and take you home.”

She didn’t know if it had been minutes or hours since she’d fled through the front door. When Moralas took her back, it was dark with the moon just rising. An officer would remain outside in her driveway and all her doors and windows had been checked. Without a word, she went through the house into the kitchen.

“She was lucky.” Moralas gave the living room another quick check. “Whoever attacked her was careless enough to be caught off guard.”

“Did the neighbors see anything?” Jonas righted a table that had been overturned in flight. There was a conch shell on the floor that had cracked.

“A few people noticed a blue compact outside the house late this afternoon. Señora Alderez saw it drive off when she opened the door to Miss Palmer, but she couldn’t identify the make or the plates. We will, of course, keep Miss Palmer under surveillance while we try to track it down.”

“It doesn’t appear my brother’s killer’s left the island.”

Moralas met Jonas’s gaze blandly. “Apparently whatever deal your brother was working on cost him his life. I don’t intend for it to cost Miss Palmer hers. I’ll drive you back to town.”

“No. I’m staying.” Jonas examined the pale pink shell with the crack spreading down its length. He thought of the mark on Liz’s throat. “My brother involved her.” Carefully, he set the damaged shell down. “I can’t leave her alone.”

“As you wish.” Moralas turned to go when Jonas stopped him.

“Captain, you don’t still think the murderer’s hundreds of miles away.”

Moralas touched the gun that hung at his side. “No, Mr. Sharpe, I don’t. Buenas noches.”

Jonas locked her door himself, then rechecked the windows before he went back to the kitchen. Liz was pouring her second cup of coffee. “That’ll keep you up.”

Liz drank half a cup, staring at him. She felt nothing at the moment, no anger, no fear. “I thought you’d gone.”

“No.” Without invitation, he found a mug and poured coffee for himself.

“Why are you here?”

He took a step closer, to run a fingertip gently down the mark on her throat. “Stupid question,” he murmured.

She backed up, fighting to maintain the calm she’d clung to. If she lost control, it wouldn’t be in front of him, in front of anyone. “I want to be alone.”

He saw her hands tremble before she locked them tighter on the cup. “You can’t always have what you want. I’ll bunk in your daughter’s room.”

“No!” After slamming the cup down, she folded her arms across her chest. “I don’t want you here.”

With studied calm, he set his mug next to hers. When he took her shoulders, his hands were firm, not gentle. When he spoke, his voice was brisk, not soothing. “I’m not leaving you alone. Not now, not until they find Jerry’s killer. You’re involved whether you like it or not. And so, damn it, am I.”

Her breath came quickly, too quickly, though she fought to steady it. “I wasn’t involved until you came back and started hounding me.”

He’d already wrestled with his conscience over that. Neither one of them could know if it were true. At the moment, he told himself it didn’t matter. “However you’re involved, you are. Whoever killed Jerry thinks you know something. You’ll have an easier time convincing me you don’t than you will them. It’s time you started thinking about cooperating with me.”

“How do I know you didn’t send him here to frighten me?”

His eyes stayed on hers, cool and unwavering. “You don’t. I could tell you that I don’t hire men to kill women, but you wouldn’t have to believe it. I could tell you I’m sorry.” For the first time, his tone gentled. He lifted a hand to brush the hair back from her face and his thumb slid lightly over her cheekbone. Like the conch shell, she seemed delicate, lovely and damaged. “And that I wish I could walk away, leave you alone, let both of us go back to the way things were a few weeks ago. But I can’t. We can’t. So we might as well help each other.”

“I don’t want your help.”

“I know. Sit down. I’ll fix you something to eat.”

She tried to back away. “You can’t stay here.”

“I am staying here. Tomorrow, I’m moving my things from the hotel.”

“I said—”

“I’ll rent the room,” he interrupted, turning away to rummage through the cupboards. “Your throat’s probably raw. This chicken soup should be the best thing.”

She snatched the can from his hand. “I can fix my own dinner, and you’re not renting a room.”

“I appreciate your generosity.” He took the can back from her. “But I’d rather keep it on a business level. Twenty dollars a week seems fair. You’d better take it, Liz,” he added before she could speak. “Because I’m staying, one way or the other. Sit down,” he said again and looked for a pot.

She wanted to be angry. It would help keep everything else bottled up. She wanted to shout at him, to throw him bodily out of her house. Instead she sat because her knees were too weak to hold her any longer.

What had happened to her control? For ten years she’d been running her own life, making every decision by herself, for herself. For ten years, she hadn’t asked advice, she hadn’t asked for help. Now something had taken control and decisions out of her hands, something she knew nothing about. Her life was part of a game, and she didn’t know any of the rules.

She looked down and saw the tear drop on the back of her hand. Quickly, she reached up and brushed others from her cheeks. But she couldn’t stop them. One more decision had been taken from her.

“Can you eat some toast?” Jonas asked her as he dumped the contents of the soup in a pan. When she didn’t answer, he turned to see her sitting stiff and pale at the table, tears running unheeded down her face. He swore and turned away again. There was nothing he could do for her, he told himself. Nothing he could offer. Then, saying nothing, he came to the table, pulled a chair up beside her and waited.

“I thought he’d kill me.” Her voice broke as she pressed a hand to her face. “I felt the knife against my throat and thought I was going to die. I’m so scared. Oh God, I’m so scared.”

He drew her against him and let her sob out the fear. He wasn’t used to comforting women. Those he knew well were too chic to shed more than a delicate drop or two. But he held her close during a storm of weeping that shook her body and left her gasping.

Her skin was icy, as if to prove the fact that fear made the blood run cold. She couldn’t summon the pride to draw herself away, to seek a private spot as she’d always done in a crisis. He didn’t speak to tell her everything would be fine; he didn’t murmur quiet words of comfort. He was simply there. When she was drained, he still held her. The rain began slowly, patting the glass of the windows and pinging on the roof. He still held her.

When she shifted away, he rose and went back to the stove. Without a word, he turned on the burner. Minutes later he set a bowl in front of her then went back to ladle some for himself. Too tired to be ashamed, Liz began to eat. There was no sound in the kitchen but the slow monotonous plop of rain on wood, tin and glass.

She hadn’t realized she could be hungry, but the bowl was empty almost before she realized it. With a little sigh, she pushed it away. He was tipped back in his chair, smoking in silence.

“Thank you.”

“Okay.” Her eyes were swollen, accentuating the vulnerability that always haunted them. It tugged at him, making him uneasy. Her skin, with its ripe, warm honey glow was pale, making her seem delicate and defenseless. She was a woman, he realized, that a man had to keep an emotional distance from. Get too close and you’d be sucked right in. It wouldn’t do to care about her too much when he needed to use her to help both of them. From this point on, he’d have to hold the controls.

“I suppose I was more upset than I realized.”

“You’re entitled.”

She nodded, grateful he was making it easy for her to skim over what she considered an embarrassing display of weakness. “There’s no reason for you to stay here.”

“I’ll stay anyway.”

She curled her hand into a fist, then uncurled it slowly. It wasn’t possible for her to admit she wanted him to, or that for the first time in years she was frightened of being alone. Since she had to cave in, it was better to think of the arrangement on a practical level.

“All right, the room’s twenty a week, first week in advance.”

He grinned as he reached for his wallet. “All business?”

“I can’t afford anything else.” After putting the twenty on the counter, she stacked the bowls. “You’ll have to see to your own food. The twenty doesn’t include meals.”

He watched her take the bowls to the sink and wash them. “I’ll manage.”

“I’ll give you a key in the morning.” She took a towel and meticulously dried the bowls. “Do you think he’ll be back?” She tried to make her voice casual, and failed.

“I don’t know.” He crossed to her to lay a hand on her shoulder. “You won’t be alone if he does.”

When she looked at him, her eyes were steady again. Something inside him unknotted. “Are you protecting me, Jonas, or just looking for your revenge?”

“I do one, maybe I’ll get the other.” He twined the ends of her hair around his finger, watching the dark gold spread over his skin. “You said yourself I’m not a nice man.”

“What are you?” she whispered.

“Just a man.” When his gaze lifted to hers, she didn’t believe him. He wasn’t just a man, but a man with patience, with power and with violence. “I’ve wondered the same about you. You’ve got secrets, Elizabeth.”

She was breathless. In defense, she lifted her hand to his. “They’ve got nothing to do with you.”

“Maybe they don’t. Maybe you do.”

It happened very slowly, so slowly she could have stopped it. Yet she seemed unable to move. His arms slipped around her, drawing her close with an arrogant sort of laziness that should have been his undoing. Instead, Liz watched, fascinated, as his mouth lowered to hers.

She’d just thought of him as a violent man, but his lips were soft, easy, persuading. It had been so long since she’d allowed herself to be persuaded. With barely any pressure, with only the slightest hint of power, he sapped the will she’d always relied on. Her mind raced with questions, then clouded over to a fine, smoky mist. She wasn’t aware of how sweetly, how hesitantly her mouth answered his.

Whatever impulse had driven him to kiss her was lost in the reality of mouth against mouth. He’d expected her to resist, or to answer with fire and passion. To find her so soft, yielding, unsteady, had his own desire building in a way he’d never experienced. It was as though she’d never been kissed before, never been held close to explore what man and woman have for each other. Yet she had a daughter, he reminded himself. She’d had a child, she was young, beautiful. Other men had held her like this. Yet he felt like the first and had no choice but to treat her with care.

The more she gave, the more he wanted. He’d known needs before. The longer he held her, the longer he wanted to. He understood passions. But a part of himself he couldn’t understand held back, demanded restraint. She wanted him—he could feel it. But even as his blood began to swim, his hands, as if under their own power, eased her away.

Needs, so long unstirred, churned in her. As she stared back at him, Liz felt them spring to life, with all their demands and risks. It wouldn’t happen to her again. But even as she renewed the vow she felt the soft, fluttering longings waltz through her. It couldn’t happen again. But the eyes that were wide and on his reflected confusion and hurt and hope. It was a combination that left Jonas shaken.

“You should get some sleep,” he told her, and took care not to touch her again.

So that was all, Liz thought as the flicker of hope died. It was foolish to believe, even for a moment, anything could change. She brought her chin up and straightened her shoulders. Perhaps she’d lost control of many things, but she could still control her heart. “I’ll give you a receipt for the rent and the key in the morning. I get up at six.” She took the twenty-dollar bill she’d left on the counter and walked out.

4

The jury was staring at him. Twelve still faces with blank eyes were lined behind the rail. Jonas stood before them in a small, harshly lit courtroom that echoed with his own voice. He carried stacks of law books, thick, dusty and heavy enough to make his arms ache. But he knew he couldn’t put them down. Sweat rolled down his temples, down his back as he gave an impassioned closing plea for his client’s acquittal. It was life and death, and his voice vibrated with both. The jury remained unmoved, disinterested. Though he struggled to hold them, the books began to slip from his grasp. He heard the verdict rebound, bouncing off the courtroom walls.

Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.

Defeated, empty-handed, he turned to the defendant. The man stood, lifting his head so that they stared, eye to eye, twin images. Himself? Jerry. Desperate, Jonas walked to the bench. In black robes, Liz sat above him, aloof with distance. But her eyes were sad as she slowly shook her head. “I can’t help you.”

Slowly, she began to fade. He reached up to grab her hand, but his fingers passed through hers. All he could see were her dark, sad eyes. Then she was gone, his brother was gone, and he was left facing a jury—twelve cold faces who smiled smugly back at him.

Jonas lay still, breathing quickly. He found himself staring back at the cluster of gaily dressed dolls on the shelf beside the bed. A flamenco dancer raised her castanets. A princess held a glass slipper. A spiffily dressed Barbie relaxed in a pink convertible, one hand raised in a wave.

Letting out a long breath, Jonas ran a hand over his face and sat up. It was like trying to sleep in the middle of a party, he decided. No wonder he’d had odd dreams. On the opposing wall was a collection of stuffed animals ranging from the dependable bear to something that looked like a blue dust rag with eyes.

Coffee, Jonas thought, closing his own. He needed coffee. Trying to ignore the dozens of smiling faces surrounding him, he dressed. He wasn’t sure how or where to begin. The coin on his chain dangled before he pulled a shirt over his chest. Outside, birds were sending up a clatter. At home there would have been the sound of traffic as Philadelphia awoke for the day. He could see a bush close to the window where purple flowers seemed to crowd each other for room. There were no sturdy elms, no tidy evergreen hedges or chain-link fences. No law books would help him with what he had to do. There was nothing familiar, no precedents to follow. Each step he took would be taken blindly, but he had to take them. He smelled the coffee the moment he left the room.

Liz was in the kitchen dressed in a T-shirt and what appeared to be the bottoms of a skimpy bikini. Jonas wasn’t a man who normally awoke with all batteries charged, but he didn’t miss a pair of long, honey-toned legs. Liz finished buttering a piece of toast.

“Coffee’s on the stove,” she said without turning around. “There’re some eggs in the refrigerator. I don’t stock cereal when Faith’s away.”

“Eggs are fine,” he mumbled, but headed for the coffee.

“Use what you want, as long as you replace it.” She turned up the radio to listen to the weather forecast. “I leave in a half hour, so if you want a ride to your hotel, you’ll have to be ready.”

Jonas let the first hot taste of coffee seep into his system. “My car’s in San Miguel.”

Liz sat down at the table to go over that day’s schedule. “I can drop you by the El Presidente or one of the other hotels on the beach. You’ll have to take a cab from there.”

Jonas took another sip of coffee and focused on her fully. She was still pale, he realized, so that the marks on her neck stood out in dark relief. The smudges under her eyes made him decide she’d slept no better than he had. He tossed off his first cup of coffee and poured another.

“Ever consider taking a day off?”

She looked at him for the first time. “No,” she said simply and lowered her gaze to her list again.

So they were back to business, all business, and don’t cross the line. “Don’t you believe in giving yourself a break, Liz?”

“I’ve got work to do. You’d better fix those eggs if you want to have time to eat them. The frying pan’s in the cupboard next to the stove.”

He studied her for another minute, then with a restless movement of his shoulders prepared to cook his breakfast. Liz waited until she was sure his back was to her before she looked up again.

She’d made a fool of herself the night before. She could almost accept the fact that she’d broken down in front of him because he’d taken it so matter-of-factly. But when she added the moments she’d stood in his arms, submissive, willing, hoping, she couldn’t forgive herself. Or him.

He’d made her feel something she hadn’t felt in a decade. Arousal. He’d made her want what she’d been convinced she didn’t want from a man. Affection. She hadn’t backed away or brushed him aside as she’d done with any other man who’d approached her. She hadn’t even tried. He’d made her feel soft again, then he’d shrugged her away.

So it would be business, she told herself. Straight, impersonal business as long as he determined to stay. She’d put the rent money aside until she could manage the down payment on the aqua bikes. Jonas sat at the table with a plate of eggs that sent steam rising toward the ceiling.

“Your key.” Liz slid it over to him. “And your receipt for the first week’s rent.”

Without looking at it, Jonas tucked the paper in his pocket. “Do you usually take in boarders?”

“No, but I need some new equipment.” She rose to pour another cup of coffee and wash her plate. The radio announced the time before she switched it off. She was ten minutes ahead of schedule, but as long as she continued to get up early enough, they wouldn’t have to eat together. “Do you usually rent a room in a stranger’s house rather than a hotel suite?”

He tasted the eggs and found himself vaguely dissatisfied with his own cooking. “No, but we’re not strangers anymore.”

Liz watched him over the rim of her cup. He looked a little rough around the edges this morning, she decided. It added a bit too much sexuality to smooth good looks. She debated offering him a razor, then rejected the notion. Too personal. “Yes, we are.”

He continued to eat his eggs so that she thought he’d taken her at her word. “I studied law at Notre Dame, apprenticed with Neiram and Barker in Boston, then opened my own practice five years ago in Philadelphia.” He added some salt, hoping it would jazz up his cooking. “I specialize in criminal law. I’m not married, and live alone. In an apartment,” he added. “On weekends I’m remodeling an old Victorian house I bought in Chadd’s Ford.”

She wanted to ask him about the house—was it big, did it have those wonderful high ceilings and rich wooden floors? Were the windows tall and mullioned? Was there a garden where roses climbed on trellises? Instead she turned to rinse out her cup. “That doesn’t change the fact that we’re strangers.”

“Whether we know each other or not, we have the same problem.”

The cup rattled in the sink as it slipped from her hand. Silently, Liz picked it up again, rinsed it off and set it in the drainer. She’d chipped it, but that was a small matter at the moment. “You’ve got ten minutes,” she said, but he took her arm before she could skirt around him.

“We do have the same problem, Elizabeth.” His voice was quiet, steady. She could have hated him for that alone.

“No, we don’t. You’re trying to avenge your brother’s death. I’m just trying to make a living.”

“Do you think everything would settle down quietly if I were back in Philadelphia?”

She tugged her arm uselessly. “Yes!” Because she knew she lied, her eyes heated.

“One of the first impressions I had of you was your intelligence. I don’t know why you’re hiding on your pretty little island, Liz, but you’ve got a brain, a good one. We both know that what happened to you last night would have happened with or without me.”

“All right.” She relaxed her arm. “What happened wasn’t because of you, but because of Jerry. That hardly makes any difference to my position, does it?”

He stood up slowly, but didn’t release her arm. “As long as someone thinks you knew what Jerry was into, you’re the focus. As long as you’re the focus, I’m standing right beside you, because directly or indirectly, you’re going to lead me to Jerry’s killer.”

Liz waited a moment until she was sure she could speak calmly. “Is that all people are to you, Jonas? Tools? Means to an end?” She searched his face and found it set and remote. “Men like you never look beyond their own interests.”

Angry without knowing why, he cupped her face in his hand. “You’ve never known a man like me.”

“I think I have,” she said softly. “You’re not unique, Jonas. You were raised with money and expectations, you went to the best schools and associated with the best people. You had your goal set and if you had to step on or over a few people on the way to it, it wasn’t personal. That’s the worst of it,” she said on a long breath. “It’s never personal.” Lifting her chin, she pushed his hand from her face. “What do you want me to do?”

Never in his life had anyone made him feel so vile. With a few words she’d tried and condemned him. He remembered the dream, and the blank, staring eyes of the jury. He swore at her and turned to pace to the window. He couldn’t back away now, no matter how she made him feel because he was right—whether he was here or in Philadelphia, she was still the key.

There was a hammock outside, bright blue and yellow strings stretched between two palms. He wondered if she ever gave herself enough time to use it. He found himself wishing he could take her hand, walk across the yard and lie with her on the hammock with nothing more important to worry about than swatting at flies.

“I need to talk to Luis,” he began. “I want to know the places he went with Jerry, the people he may have seen Jerry talk to.”

“I’ll talk to Luis.” When Jonas started to object, Liz shook her head. “You saw his reaction yesterday. He wouldn’t be able to talk to you because you make him too nervous. I’ll get you a list.”

“All right.” Jonas fished for his cigarettes and found with some annoyance that he’d left them in the bedroom. “I’ll need you to go with me, starting tonight, to the places Luis gives you.”

A feeling of stepping into quicksand came strongly. “Why?”

He wasn’t sure of the answer. “Because I have to start somewhere.”

“Why do you need me?”

And even less sure of this one. “I don’t know how long it’ll take, and I’m not leaving you alone.”

She lifted a brow. “I have police protection.”

“Not good enough. In any case, you know the language, the customs. I don’t. I need you.” He tucked his thumbs in his pockets. “It’s as simple as that.”

Liz walked over to turn off the coffee and move the pot to a back burner. “Nothing’s simple,” she corrected. “But I’ll get your list, and I’ll go along with you under one condition.”

“Which is?”

She folded her hands. Jonas was already certain by her stance alone that she wasn’t set to bargain but to lay down the rules. “That no matter what happens, what you find out or don’t find out, you’re out of this house and out of my life when my daughter comes home. I’ll give you four weeks, Jonas—that’s all.”

“It’ll have to be enough.”

She nodded and started out of the room. “Wash your dishes. I’ll meet you out front.”

The police car still sat in the driveway when Jonas walked out the front door. A group of children stood on the verge of the road and discussed it in undertones. He heard Liz call one of them by name before she took out a handful of coins. Jonas didn’t have to speak Spanish to recognize a business transaction. Moments later, coins in hand, the boy raced back to his friends.

“What was that about?”

Liz smiled after them. Faith would play with those same children throughout the summer. “I told them they were detectives. If they see anyone but you or the police around the house, they’re to run right home and call Captain Moralas. It’s the best way to keep them out of trouble.”

Jonas watched the boy in charge pass out the coins. “How much did you give them?”

“Twenty pesos apiece.”

He thought of the current rate of exchange and shook his head. “No kid in Philadelphia would give you the time of day for that.”

“This is Cozumel,” she said simply and wheeled out her bike.

Jonas looked at it, then at her. The bike would have sent a young teenager into ecstasies. “You drive this thing?”

Something in his tone made her want to smile. Instead, she kept her voice cool. “This thing is an excellent mode of transportation.”

“A BMW’s an excellent mode of transportation.”

She laughed. He hadn’t heard her laugh so easily since he’d met her. When she looked back at him, her eyes were warm and friendly. Jonas felt the ground shift dangerously under his feet. “Try to take your BMW on some of the back roads to the coast or into the interior.” She swung a leg over the seat. “Hop on, Jonas, unless you want to hike back to the hotel.”

Though he had his doubts, Jonas sat behind her. “Where do I put my feet?”

She glanced down and didn’t bother to hide the grin. “Well, if I were you, I’d keep them off the ground.” With this she started the engine then swung the bike around in the driveway. After adjusting for the added weight, Liz kept the speed steady. Jonas kept his hands lightly at her hips as the bike swayed around ruts and potholes.

“Are there roads worse than this?”

Liz sped over a bump. “What’s wrong with this?”

“Just asking.”

“If you want sophistication, try Cancun. It’s only a few minutes by air.”

“Ever get there?”

“Now and again. Last year Faith and I took the Expatriate over and spent a couple of days seeing the ruins. We have some shrines here. They’re not well restored, but you shouldn’t miss them. Still, I wanted her to see the pyramids and walled cities around Cancun.”

“I don’t know much about archaeology.”

“You don’t have to. All you need’s an imagination.”

She tooted the horn. Jonas saw an old, bent man straighten from the door of a shop and wave. “Señor Pessado,” she said. “He gives Faith candy they both think I don’t know about.”

Jonas started to ask her about her daughter, then decided to wait for a better time. As long as she was being expansive, it was best to keep things less personal. “Do you know a lot of people on the island?”

“It’s like a small town, I suppose. You don’t necessarily have to know someone to recognize their face. I don’t know a lot of people in San Miguel or on the east coast. I know a few people from the interior because we worked at the hotel.”

“I didn’t realize your shop was affiliated with the hotel.”

“It’s not.” She paused at a stop sign. “I used to work in the hotel. As a maid.” Liz gunned the engine and zipped across the intersection.

He looked at her hands, lean and delicate on the handlebars. He studied her slender shoulders, thought of the slight hips he was even now holding. It was difficult to imagine her lugging buckets and pails. “I’d have thought you more suited to the front desk or the concierge.”

“I was lucky to find work at all, especially during the off season.” She slowed the bike a bit as she started down the long drive to El Presidente. She’d indulge herself for a moment by enjoying the tall elegant palms that lined the road and the smell of blooming flowers. She was taking one of the dive boats out today, with five beginners who’d need instruction and constant supervision, but she wondered about the people inside the hotel who came to such a place to relax and to play.

“Is it still gorgeous inside?” she asked before she could stop herself.

Jonas glanced ahead to the large stately building. “Lots of glass,” he told her. “Marble. The balcony of my room looks out over the water.” She steered the bike to the curb. “Why don’t you come in? See for yourself.”

She was tempted. Liz had an affection for pretty things, elegant things. It was a weakness she couldn’t allow herself. “I have to get to work.”

Jonas stepped onto the curb, but put his hand over hers before she could drive away. “I’ll meet you at the house. We’ll go into town together.”

She only nodded before turning the bike back toward the road. Jonas watched her until the sound of the motor died away. Just who was Elizabeth Palmer? he wondered. And why was it becoming more and more important that he find out?

* * *

By evening she was tired. Liz was used to working long hours, lugging equipment, diving, surfacing. But after a fairly easy day, she was tired. It should have made her feel secure to have had the young policeman identify himself to her and join her customers on the dive boat. It should have eased her mind that Captain Moralas was keeping his word about protection. It made her feel caged.

All during the drive home, she’d been aware of the police cruiser keeping a discreet distance. She’d wanted to run into her house, lock the door and fall into a dreamless, private sleep. But Jonas was waiting. She found him on the phone in her living room, a legal pad on his lap and a scowl on his face. Obviously a complication at his office had put him in a nasty mood. Ignoring him, Liz went to shower and change.

Because her wardrobe ran for the most part to beachwear, she didn’t waste time studying her closet. Without enthusiasm, she pulled out a full cotton skirt in peacock blue and matched it with an oversized red shirt. More to prolong her time alone than for any other reason, she fiddled with her little cache of makeup. She was stalling, brushing out her braided hair, when Jonas knocked on her door. He didn’t give her time to answer before he pushed it open.

“Did you get the list?”

Liz picked up a piece of notepaper. She could, of course, snap at him for coming in, but the end result wouldn’t change. “I told you I would.”

He took the paper from her to study it. He’d shaved, she noticed, and wore a casually chic jacket over bone-colored slacks. But the smoothness and gloss didn’t mesh with the toughness around his mouth and in his eyes. “Do you know these places?”

“I’ve been to a couple of them. I don’t really have a lot of time for bar-or club-hopping.”

He glanced up and his curt answer slipped away. The shades behind her were up as she preferred them, but the light coming through the windows was pink with early evening. Though she’d buttoned the shirt high over her throat, her hair was brushed back, away from her face. She’d dawdled over the makeup, but her hand was always conservative. Her lashes were darkened, the lids lightly touched with shadow. She’d brushed some color over her cheeks but not her lips.

“You should be careful what you do to your eyes,” Jonas murmured, absently running his thumb along the top curve of her cheek. “They’re a problem.”

She felt the quick, involuntary tug but stood still. “A problem?”

“My problem.” Uneasy, he tucked the paper in his pocket and glanced around the room. “Are you ready?”

“I need my shoes.”

He didn’t leave her as she’d expected, instead wandering around her room. It was, as was the rest of the house, furnished simply but with jarring color. The spicy scent he’d noticed before came from a wide green bowl filled with potpourri. On the wall were two colored sketches, one of a sunset very much like the quietly brilliant one outside the window, and another of a storm-tossed beach. One was all serenity, the other all violence. He wondered how much of each were inside Elizabeth Palmer. Prominent next to the bed was a framed photograph of a young girl.

She was all smiles in a flowered blouse tucked at the shoulders. Her hair came to a curve at her jawline, black and shiny. A tooth was missing, adding charm to an oval, tanned face. If it hadn’t been for the eyes, Jonas would never have connected the child with Liz. They were richly, deeply brown, slightly tilted. Still, they laughed out of the photo, open and trusting, holding none of the secrets of her mother’s.

“This is your daughter.”

“Yes.” Liz slipped on the second shoe before taking the photo out of Jonas’s hand and setting it down again.

“How old is she?”

“Ten. Can we get started? I don’t want to be out late.”

“Ten?” A bit stunned, Jonas stopped her with a look. He’d assumed Faith was half that age, a product of a relationship Liz had fallen into while on the island. “You can’t have a ten-year-old child.”

Liz glanced down at the picture of her daughter. “I do have a ten-year-old child.”

“You’d have been a child yourself.”

“No. No, I wasn’t.” She started to leave again, and again he stopped her.

“Was she born before you came here?”

Liz gave him a long, neutral look. “She was born six months after I moved to Cozumel. If you want my help, Jonas, we go now. Answering questions about Faith isn’t part of our arrangement.”

But he didn’t let go of her hand. As it could become so unexpectedly, his voice was gentle. “He was a bastard, wasn’t he?”

She met his eyes without wavering. Her lips curved, but not with humor. “Yes. Oh yes, he was.”

Without knowing why he was compelled to, Jonas bent and just brushed her lips with his. “Your daughter’s lovely, Elizabeth. She has your eyes.”

She felt herself softening again, too much, too quickly. There was understanding in his voice without pity. Nothing could weaken her more. In defense she took a step back. “Thank you. Now we have to go. I have to be up early tomorrow.”

* * *

The first club they hit was noisy and crowded with a high percentage of American clientele. In a corner booth, a man in a tight white T-shirt spun records on a turntable and announced each selection with a display of colored lights. They ordered a quick meal in addition to drinks while Jonas hoped someone would have a reaction to his face.

“Luis said they came in here a lot because Jerry liked hearing American music.” Liz nibbled on hot nachos as she looked around. It wasn’t the sort of place she normally chose to spend an evening. Tables were elbow to elbow, and the music was pitched to a scream. Still, the crowd seemed good-natured enough, shouting along with the music or just shouting to each other. At the table beside them a group of people experimented with a bottle of tequila and a bowl of lemon wedges. Since they were a group of young gringos, she assumed they’d be very sick in the morning.

It was definitely Jerry’s milieu, Jonas decided. Loud, just this side of wild and crammed to the breaking point. “Did Luis say if he spoke with anyone in particular?”

“Women.” Liz smiled a bit as she sampled a tortilla. “Luis was very impressed with Jerry’s ability to…interest the ladies.”

“Any particular lady?”

“Luis said there was one, but Jerry just called her baby.”

“An old trick,” Jonas said absently.

“Trick?”

“If you call them all baby, you don’t mix up names and complicate the situation.”

“I see.” She sipped her wine and found it had a delicate taste.

“Could Luis describe her?”

“Only that she was a knockout—a Mexican knockout, if that helps. She had lots of hair and lots of hip. Luis’s words,” Liz added when Jonas gave her a mild look. “He also said there were a couple of men Jerry talked to a few times, but he always went over to them, so Luis didn’t know what they spoke about. One was American, one was Mexican. Since Luis was more interested in the ladies, he didn’t pay any attention. But he did say Jerry would cruise the bars until he met up with them, then he’d usually call it a night.”

“Did he meet them here?”

“Luis said it never seemed to be in the same place twice.”

“Okay, finish up. We’ll cruise around ourselves.”

By the fourth stop, Liz was fed up. She noticed that Jonas no more than toyed with a drink at each bar, but she was tired of the smell of liquor. Some places were quiet, and on the edge of seamy. Others were raucous and lit with flashing lights. Faces began to blur together. There were young people, not so young people. There were Americans out for exotic nightlife, natives celebrating a night on the town. Some courted on dance floors or over tabletops. She saw those who seemed to have nothing but time and money, and others who sat alone nursing a bottle and a black mood.

“This is the last one,” Liz told him as Jonas found a table at a club with a crowded dance floor and recorded music.

Jonas glanced at his watch. It was barely eleven. Action rarely heated up before midnight. “All right,” he said easily, and decided to distract her. “Let’s dance.”

Before she could refuse, he was pulling her into the crowd. “There’s no room,” she began, but his arms came around her.

“We’ll make some.” He had her close, his hand trailing up her back. “See?”

“I haven’t danced in years,” she muttered, and he laughed.

“There’s no room anyway.” Locked together, jostled by the crowd, they did no more than sway.

“What’s the purpose in all this?” she demanded.

“I don’t know until I find it. Meantime, don’t you ever relax?” He rubbed his palm up her back again, finding the muscles taut.

“No.”

“Let’s try it this way.” His gaze skimmed the crowd as he spoke. “What do you do when you’re not working?”

“I think about working.”

“Liz.”

“All right, I read—books on marine life mostly.”

“Busman’s holiday?”

“It’s what interests me.”

Her body shifted intimately against his. Jonas forgot to keep his attention on the crowd and looked down at her. “All that interests you?”

He was too close. Liz tried to ease away and found his arms very solid. In spite of her determination to remain unmoved, her heart began to thud lightly in her head. “I don’t have time for anything else.”

She wore no perfume, he noted, but carried the scent of powder and spice. He wondered if her body would look as delicate as it felt against his. “It sounds as though you limit yourself.”

“I have a business to run,” she murmured. Would it be the same if he kissed her again? Sweet, overpowering. His lips were so close to hers, closer still when he ran his hand through her hair and drew her head back. She could almost taste him.

“Is making money so important?”

“It has to be,” she managed, but could barely remember why. “I need to buy some aqua bikes.”

Her eyes were soft, drowsy. They made him feel invulnerable. “Aqua bikes?”

“If I don’t keep up with the competition…” He pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth.

“The competition?” he prompted.

“I…the customers will go someplace else. So I…” The kiss teased the other corner.

“So?”

“I have to buy the bikes before the summer season.”

“Of course. But that’s weeks away. I could make love with you dozens of times before then. Dozens,” he repeated as she stared at him. Then he closed his mouth over hers.

He felt her jolt—surprise, resistance, passion—he couldn’t be sure. He only knew that holding her had led to wanting her and wanting to needing. By nature, he was a man who preferred his passion in private, quiet spots of his own choosing. Now he forgot the crowded club, loud music and flashing lights. They no longer swayed, but were hemmed into a corner of the dance floor, surrounded, pressed close. Oblivious.

She felt her head go light, heard the music fade. The heat from his body seeped into hers and flavored the kiss. Hot, molten, searing. Though they stood perfectly still, Liz had visions of racing. The breath backed up in her lungs until she released it with a shuddering sigh. Her body, coiled like a spring, went lax on a wave of confused pleasure. She strained closer, reaching up to touch his face. Abruptly the music changed from moody to rowdy. Jonas shifted her away from flailing arms.

“Poor timing,” he murmured.

She needed a minute. “Yes.” But she meant it in a more general way. It wasn’t a matter of time and place, but a matter of impossibility. She started to move away when Jonas’s grip tightened on her. “What is it?” she began, but only had to look at his face.

Cautiously, she turned to see what he stared at. A woman in a skimpy red dress stared back at him. Liz recognized the shock in her eyes before the woman turned and fled, leaving her dance partner gaping.

“Come on.” Without waiting for her, Jonas sprinted through the crowd. Dodging, weaving and shoving when she had to, Liz dashed after him.

The woman had barely gotten out to the street when Jonas caught up to her. “What are you running away from?” he demanded. His fingers dug into her arms as he held her back against a wall.

“Por favor, no comprendo,” she murmured and shook like a leaf.

“Oh yes, I think you do.” With his fingers bruising her arms, Jonas towered over her until she nearly squeaked in fear. “What do you know about my brother?”

“Jonas.” Appalled, Liz stepped between them. “If this is the way you intend to behave, you’ll do without my help.” She turned away from him and touched the woman’s shoulder. “Lo siento mucho,” she began, apologizing for Jonas. “He’s lost his brother. His brother, Jerry Sharpe. Did you know him?”

She looked at Liz and whispered. “He has Jerry’s face. But he’s dead—I saw in the papers.”

“This is Jerry’s brother, Jonas. We’d like to talk to you.”

As Liz had, the woman had already sensed the difference between Jonas and the man she’d known. She’d never have cowered away from Jerry for the simple reason that she’d known herself to be stronger and more clever. The man looming over her now was a different matter.

“I don’t know anything.”

“Por favor. Just a few minutes.”

“Tell her I’ll make it worth her while,” Jonas added before she could refuse again. Without waiting for Liz to translate, he reached for his wallet and took out a bill. He saw fear change to speculation.

“A few minutes,” she agreed, but pointed to an outdoor café. “There.”

Jonas ordered two coffees and a glass of wine. “Ask her her name,” he told Liz.

“I speak English.” The woman took out a long, slim cigarette and tapped it on the tabletop. “I’m Erika. Jerry and I were friends.” More relaxed, she smiled at Jonas. “You know, good friends.”

“Yes, I know.”

“He was very good-looking,” she added, then caught her bottom lip between her teeth. “Lots of fun.”

“How long did you know him?”

“A couple of weeks. I was sorry when I heard he was dead.”

“Murdered,” Jonas stated.

Erika took a deep drink of wine. “Do you think it was because of the money?”

Every muscle in his body tensed. Quickly, he shot Liz a warning look before she could speak. “I don’t know—it looks that way. How much did he tell you about it?”

“Oh, just enough to intrigue me. You know.” She smiled again and held out her cigarette for a light. “Jerry was very charming. And generous.” She remembered the little gold bracelet he’d bought for her and the earrings with the pretty blue stones. “I thought he was very rich, but he said he would soon be much richer. I like charming men, but I especially like rich men. Jerry said when he had the money, we could take a trip.” She blew out smoke again before giving a philosophical little shrug. “Then he was dead.”

Jonas studied her as he drank coffee. She was, as Luis had said, a knockout. And she wasn’t stupid. He was also certain her mind was focusing on one point, and one point alone. “Do you know when he was supposed to have the money?”

“Sure, I had to take off work if we were going away. He called me—it was Sunday. He was so excited. ‘Erika,’ he said, ‘I hit the jackpot.’ I was a little mad because he hadn’t shown up Saturday night. He told me he’d done some quick business in Acapulco and how would I like to spend a few weeks in Monte Carlo?” She gave Jonas a lash-fluttering smile. “I decided to forgive him. I was packed,” she added, blowing smoke past Jonas’s shoulder. “We were supposed to leave Tuesday afternoon. I saw in the papers Monday night that he was dead. The papers said nothing about the money.”

“Do you know who he had business with?”

“No. Sometimes he would talk to another American, a skinny man with pale hair. Other times he would see a Mexican. I didn’t like him—he had mal ojo.”

“Evil eye,” Liz interpreted. “Can you describe him?”

“Not pretty,” she said offhandedly. “His face was pitted. His hair was long in the back, over his collar and he was very thin and short.” She glanced at Jonas again with a sultry smile that heated the air. “I like tall men.”

“Do you know his name?”

“No. But he dressed very nicely. Nice suits, good shoes. And he wore a silver band on his wrist, a thin one that crossed at the ends. It was very pretty. Do you think he knows about the money? Jerry said it was lots of money.”

Jonas merely reached for his wallet. “I’d like to find out his name,” he told her and set a fifty on the table. His hand closed over hers as she reached for it. “His name, and the name of the American. Don’t hold out on me, Erika.”

With a toss of her head, she palmed the fifty. “I’ll find out the names. When I tell you, it’s another fifty.”

“When you tell me.” He scrawled Liz’s number on the back of a business card. “Call this number when you have something.”

“Okay.” She slipped the fifty into her purse as she stood up. “You know, you don’t look as much like Jerry as I thought.” With the click of high heels, she crossed the pavement and went back into the club.

“It’s a beginning,” Jonas murmured as he pushed his coffee aside. When he looked over, he saw Liz studying him. “Problem?”

“I don’t like the way you work.”

He dropped another bill on the table before he rose. “I don’t have time to waste on amenities.”

“What would you have done if I hadn’t calmed her down? Dragged her off to the nearest alley and beaten it out of her?”

He drew out a cigarette, struggling with temper. “Let’s go home, Liz.”

“I wonder if you’re any different from the men you’re looking for.” She pushed back from the table. “Just as a matter of interest, the man who broke into my house and attacked me wore a thin band at his wrist. I felt it when he held the knife to my throat.”

She watched as his gaze lifted from the flame at the end of the cigarette and came to hers. “I think you two might recognize each other when the time comes.”

5

“Always check your gauges,” Liz instructed, carefully indicating each one on her own equipment as she spoke. “Each one of these gauges is vital to your safety when you dive. That’s true if it’s your first dive or your fiftieth. It’s very easy to become so fascinated not only by the fish and coral, but the sensation of diving itself, that you can forget you’re dependent on your air tank. Always be certain you start your ascent while you have five or ten minutes of air left.”

She’d covered everything, she decided, in the hour lesson. If she lectured any more, her students would be too impatient to listen. It was time to give them a taste of what they were paying for.

“We’ll dive as a group. Some of you may want to explore on your own, but remember, always swim in pairs. As a final precaution, check the gear of the diver next to you.”

Liz strapped on her own weight belt as her group of novices followed instructions. So many of them, she knew, looked on scuba diving as an adventure. That was fine, as long as they remembered safety. Whenever she instructed, she stressed the what ifs just as thoroughly as the how tos. Anyone who went down under her supervision would know what steps to take under any circumstances. Diving accidents were most often the result of carelessness. Liz was never careless with herself or with her students. Most of them were talking excitedly as they strapped on tanks.

“This group.” Luis hefted his tank. “Very green.”

“Yeah.” Liz helped him with the straps. As she did with all her employees, Liz supplied Luis’s gear. It was checked just as thoroughly as any paying customer’s. “Keep an eye on the honeymoon couple, Luis. They’re more interested in each other than their regulators.”

“No problem.” He assisted Liz with her tank, then stepped back while she cinched the straps. “You look tired, kid.”

“No, I’m fine.”

When she turned, he glanced at the marks on her neck. The story had already made the rounds. “You sure? You don’t look so fine.”

She lifted a brow as she hooked on her diving knife. “Sweet of you.”

“Well, I mean it. You got me worried about you.”

“No need to worry.” As Liz pulled on her mask, she glanced over at the roly-poly fatherly type who was struggling with his flippers. He was her bodyguard for the day. “The police have everything under control,” she said, and hoped it was true. She wasn’t nearly as sure about Jonas.

He hadn’t shocked her the night before. She’d sensed that dangerously waiting violence in him from the first. But seeing his face as he’d grabbed Erika, hearing his voice, had left her with a cold, flat feeling in her stomach. She didn’t know him well enough to be certain if he would choose to control the violence or let it free. More, how could she know he was capable of leashing it? Revenge, she thought, was never pretty. And that’s what he wanted. Remembering the look in his eyes, Liz was very much afraid he’d get it.

The boat listed, bringing her back to the moment. She couldn’t think about Jonas now, she told herself. She had a business to run and customers to satisfy.

“Miss Palmer.” A young American with a thin chest and a winning smile maneuvered over to her. “Would you mind giving me a check?”

“Sure.” In her brisk, efficient way, Liz began to check gauges and hoses.

“I’m a little nervous,” he confessed. “I’ve never done this sort of thing before.”

“It doesn’t hurt to be a little nervous. You’ll be more careful. Here, pull your mask down. Make sure it’s comfortable but snug.”

He obeyed, and his eyes looked wide and pale through the glass. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll stick close to you down there.”

She smiled at him. “That’s what I’m here for. The depth here is thirty feet,” she told the group in general. “Remember to make your adjustments for pressure and gravity as you descend. Please keep the group in sight at all times.” With innate fluidity, she sat on the deck and rolled into the water. With Luis on deck, and Liz treading a few feet away, they waited until each student made his dive. With a final adjustment to her mask, Liz went under.

She’d always loved it. The sensation of weightlessness, the fantasy of being unimpeded, invulnerable. From near the surface, the sea floor was a spread of white. She loitered there a moment, enjoying the cathedral like view. Then, with an easy kick, she moved down with her students.

The newlyweds were holding hands and having the time of their lives. Liz reminded herself to keep them in sight. The policeman assigned to her was plodding along like a sleepy sea turtle. He’d keep her in sight. Most of the others remained in a tight group, fascinated but cautious. The thin American gave her a wide-eyed look that was a combination of pleasure and nerves and stuck close by her side. To help him relax, Liz touched his shoulder and pointed up. In an easy motion, she turned on her back so that she faced the surface. Sunlight streaked thinly through the water. The hull of the dive boat was plainly visible. He nodded and followed her down.

Fish streamed by, some in waves, some on their own. Though the sand was white, the water clear, there was a montage of color. Brain coral rose up in sturdy mounds, the color of saffron. Sea fans, as delicate as lace, waved pink and purple in the current. She signaled to her companion and watched a school of coral sweepers, shivering with metallic tints, turn as a unit and skim through staghorn coral.

It was a world she understood as well as, perhaps better, than the one on the surface. Here, in the silence, Liz often found the peace of mind that eluded her from day to day. The scientific names of the fish and formations they passed were no strangers to her. Once she’d studied them diligently, with dreams of solving mysteries and bringing the beauty of the world of the sea to others. That had been another life. Now she coached tourists and gave them, for hourly rates, something memorable to take home after a vacation. It was enough.

Amused, she watched an angelfish busy itself by swallowing the bubbles rising toward the surface. To entertain her students, she poked at a small damselfish. The pugnacious male clung to his territory and nipped at her. To the right, she saw sand kick up and cloud the water. Signaling for caution, Liz pointed out the platelike ray that skimmed away, annoyed by the intrusion.

The new husband showed off a bit, turning slow somersaults for his wife. As divers gained confidence, they spread out a little farther. Only her bodyguard and the nervous American stayed within an arm span at all times. Throughout the thirty-minute dive, Liz circled the group, watching individual divers. By the time the lesson was over, she was satisfied that her customers had gotten their money’s worth. This was verified when they surfaced.

“Great!” A British businessman on his first trip to Mexico clambered back onto the deck. His face was reddened by the sun but he didn’t seem to mind. “When can we go down again?”

With a laugh, Liz helped other passengers on board. “You have to balance your down time with your surface time. But we’ll go down again.”

“What was that feathery-looking stuff?” someone else asked. “It grows like a bush.”

“It’s a gorgonian, from the Gorgons of mythology.” She slipped off her tanks and flexed her muscles. “If you remember, the Gorgons had snakes for hair. The whip gorgonian has a resilient skeletal structure and undulates like a snake with the current.”

More questions were tossed out, more answers supplied. Liz noticed the American who’d stayed with her, sitting by himself, smiling a little. Liz moved around gear then dropped down beside him.

“You did very well.”

“Yeah?” He looked a little dazed as he shrugged his shoulders. “I liked it, but I gotta admit, I felt better knowing you were right there. You sure know what you’re doing.”

“I’ve been at it a long time.”

He sat back, unzipping his wet suit to his waist. “I don’t mean to be nosy, but I wondered about you. You’re American, aren’t you?”

It had been asked before. Liz combed her fingers through her wet hair. “That’s right.”

“From?”

“Houston.”

“No kidding.” His eyes lit up. “Hell, I went to school in Texas. Texas A and M.”

“Really?” The little tug she felt rarely came and went. “So did I, briefly.”

“Small world,” he said, pleased with himself. “I like Texas. Got a few friends in Houston. I don’t suppose you know the Dresscots?”

“No.”

“Well, Houston isn’t exactly small-town U.S.A.” He stretched out long, skinny legs that were shades paler than his arms but starting to tan. “So you went to Texas A and M.”

“That’s right.”

“What’d you study?”

She smiled and looked out to sea. “Marine biology.”

“Guess that fits.”

“And you?”

“Accounting.” He flashed his grin again. “Pretty dry stuff. That’s why I always take a long breather after tax time.”

“Well, you chose a great place to take it. Ready to go down again?”

He took a long breath as if to steady himself. “Yeah. Hey, listen, how about a drink after we get back in?”

He was attractive in a mild sort of way, pleasant enough. She gave him an apologetic smile as she rose. “It sounds nice, but I’m tied up.”

“I’ll be around for a couple of weeks. Some other time?”

“Maybe. Let’s check your gear.”

By the time the dive boat chugged into shore, the afternoon was waning. Her customers, most of them pleased with themselves, wandered off to change for dinner or spread out on the beach. Only a few loitered near the boat, including her bodyguard and the accountant from America. It occurred to Liz that she might have been a bit brisk with him.

“I hope you enjoyed yourself, Mr….”

“Trydent. But it’s Scott, and I did. I might just try it again.”

Liz smiled at him as she helped Luis and another of her employees unload the boat. “That’s what we’re here for.”

“You, ah, ever give private lessons?”

Liz caught the look. Perhaps she hadn’t been brisk enough. “On occasion.”

“Then maybe we could—”

“Hey, there, missy.”

Liz shaded her eyes. “Mr. Ambuckle.”

He stood on the little walkway, his legs bulging out of the short wet suit. What hair he had was sleeked wetly back. Beside him, his wife stood wearily in a bathing suit designed to slim down wide hips. “Just got back in!” he shouted. “Had a full day of it.”

He seemed enormously pleased with himself. His wife looked at Liz and rolled her eyes. “Maybe I should take you out as crew, Mr. Ambuckle.”

He laughed, slapping his side. “Guess I’d rather dive than anything.” He glanced at his wife and patted her shoulder. “Almost anything. Gotta trade in these tanks, honey, and get me some fresh ones.”

“Going out again?”

“Tonight. Can’t talk the missus into it.”

“I’m crawling into bed with a good book,” she told Liz. “The only water I want to see is in the tub.”

With a laugh, Liz jumped down to the walkway. “At the moment, I feel the same way. Oh, Mr. and Mrs. Ambuckle, this is Scott Trydent. He just took his first dive.”

“Well now.” Expansive, Ambuckle slapped him on the back. “How’d you like it?”

“Well, I—”

“Nothing like it, is there? You want try it at night, boy. Whole different ball game at night.”

“I’m sure, but—”

“Gotta trade in these tanks.” After slapping Scott’s back again, Ambuckle hefted his tanks and waddled off toward the shop.

“Obsessed,” Mrs. Ambuckle said, casting her eyes to the sky. “Don’t let him get started on you, Mr. Trydent. You’ll never get any peace.”

“No, I won’t. Nice meeting you, Mrs. Ambuckle.” Obviously bemused, Scott watched her wander back toward the hotel. “Quite a pair.”

“That they are.” Liz lifted her own tanks. She stored them separately from her rental equipment. “Goodbye, Mr. Trydent.”

“Scott,” he said again. “About that drink—”

“Thanks anyway,” Liz said pleasantly and left him standing on the walkway. “Everything in?” she asked Luis as she stepped into the shop.

“Checking it off now. One of the regulators is acting up.”

“Set it aside for Jose to look at.” As a matter of habit, she moved into the back to fill her tanks before storage. “All the boats are in, Luis. We shouldn’t have too much more business now. You and the rest can go on as soon as everything’s checked in. I’ll close up.”

“I don’t mind staying.”

“You closed up last night,” she reminded him. “What do you want?” She tossed a grin over her shoulder. “Overtime? Go on home, Luis. You can’t tell me you don’t have a date.”

He ran a fingertip over his mustache. “As a matter of fact…”

“A hot date?” Liz lifted a brow as air hissed into her tank.

“Is there any other kind?”

Chuckling, Liz straightened. She noticed Ambuckle trudging across the sand with his fresh tanks. Her other employees talked among themselves as the last of the gear was stored. “Well, go make yourself beautiful then. The only thing I have a date with is the account books.”

“You work too much,” Luis mumbled.

Surprised, Liz turned back to him. “Since when?”

“Since always. It gets worse every time you send Faith back to school. Better off if she was here.”

That her voice cooled only slightly was a mark of her affection for Luis. “No, she’s happy in Houston with my parents. If I thought she wasn’t, she wouldn’t be there.”

“She’s happy, sure. What about you?”

Her brows drew together as she picked her keys from a drawer. “Do I look unhappy?”

“No.” Tentatively, he touched her shoulder. He’d known Liz for years, and understood there were boundaries she wouldn’t let anyone cross. “But you don’t look happy either. How come you don’t give one of these rich American tourists a spin? That one on the boat—his eyes popped out every time he looked at you.”

The exaggeration made her laugh, so she patted his cheek. “So you think a rich American tourist is the road to happiness?”

“Maybe a handsome Mexican.”

“I’ll think about it—after the summer season. Go home,” she ordered.

“I’m going.” Luis pulled a T-shirt over his chest. “You look out for that Jonas Sharpe,” he added. “He’s got a different kind of look in his eyes.”

Liz waved him off. “Hasta luego.”

When the shop was empty, Liz stood, jingling her keys and looking out onto the beach. People traveled in couples, she noted, from the comfortably married duo stretched out on lounge chairs, to the young man and woman curled together on a beach towel. Was it an easy feeling, she wondered, to be half of a set? Or did you automatically lose part of yourself when you joined with another?

She’d always thought of her parents as separate people, yet when she thought of one, the other came quickly to mind. Would it be a comfort to know you could reach out your hand and someone else’s would curl around it?

She held out her own and remembered how hard, how strong, Jonas’s had been. No, he wouldn’t make a relationship a comfortable affair. Being joined with him would be demanding, even frightening. A woman would have to be strong enough to keep herself intact, and soft enough to allow herself to merge. A relationship with a man like Jonas would be a risk that would never ease.

For a moment, she found herself dreaming of it, dreaming of what it had been like to be held close and kissed as though nothing and no one else existed. To be kissed like that always, to be held like that whenever the need moved you—it might be worth taking chances for.

Stupid, she thought quickly, shaking herself out of it. Jonas wasn’t looking for a partner, and she wasn’t looking for a dream. Circumstances had tossed them together temporarily. Both of them had to deal with their own realities. But she felt a sense of regret and a stirring of wishes.

Because the feeling remained, just beyond her grasp, Liz concentrated hard on the little details that needed attending to before she could close up. The paperwork and the contents of the cash box were transferred to a canvas portfolio. She’d have to swing out of her way to make a night deposit, but she no longer felt safe taking the cash or the checks home. She spent an extra few minutes meticulously filling out a deposit slip.

It wasn’t until she’d picked up her keys again that she remembered her tanks. Tucking the portfolio under the counter, she turned to deal with her own gear.

It was perhaps her only luxury. She’d spent more on her personal equipment than she had on all the contents of her closet and dresser. To Liz, the wet suit was more exciting than any French silks. All her gear was kept separate from the shop’s inventory. Unlocking the door to the closet, Liz hung up her wet suit, stored her mask, weight belt, regulator. Her knife was sheathed and set on a shelf. After setting her tanks side by side, she shut the door and prepared to lock it again. After she’d taken two steps away she looked down at the keys again. Without knowing precisely why, she moved each one over the ring and identified it.

The shop door, the shop window, her bike, the lock for the chain, the cash box, the front and back doors of her house, her storage room. Eight keys for eight locks. But there was one more on her ring, a small silver key that meant nothing to her at all.

Puzzled, she counted off the keys again, and again found one extra. Why should there be a key on her ring that didn’t belong to her? Closing her fingers over it, she tried to think if anyone had given her the key to hold. No, it didn’t make sense. Brows drawn together, she studied the key again. Too small for a car or door key, she decided. It looked like the key to a locker, or a box or… Ridiculous, she decided on a long breath. It wasn’t her key but it was on her ring. Why?

Because someone put it there, she realized, and opened her hand again. Her keys were often tossed in the drawer at the shop for easy access for Luis or one of the other men. They needed to open the cash box. And Jerry had often worked in the shop alone.

With a feeling of dread, Liz slipped the keys into her pocket. Jonas’s words echoed in her head. “You’re involved, whether you want to be or not.”

Liz closed the shop early.

* * *

Jonas stepped into the dim bar to the scent of garlic and the wail of a squeaky jukebox. In Spanish, someone sang of endless love. He stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust, then skimmed his gaze over the narrow booths. As agreed, Erika sat all the way in the back, in the corner.

“You’re late.” She waved an unlit cigarette idly as he joined her.

“I passed it the first time. This place isn’t exactly on the tourist route.”

She closed her lips over the filter as Jonas lit her cigarette. “I wanted privacy.”

Jonas glanced around. There were two men at the bar, each deep in separate bottles. Another couple squeezed themselves together on one side of a booth. The rest of the bar was deserted. “You’ve got it.”

“But I don’t have a drink.”

Jonas slid out from the booth and bought two drinks at the bar. He set tequila and lime in front of Erika and settled for club soda. “You said you had something for me.”

Erica twined a string of colored beads around her finger. “You said you would pay fifty for a name.”

In silence, Jonas took out his wallet. He set fifty on the table, but laid his hand over it. “You have the name.”

Erika smiled and sipped at her drink. “Maybe. Maybe you want it bad enough to pay another fifty.”

Jonas studied her coolly. This was the type his brother had always been attracted to. The kind of woman whose hard edge was just a bit obvious. He could give her another fifty, Jonas mused, but he didn’t care to be taken for a sucker. Without a word, he picked up the bill and tucked it into his pocket. He was halfway out of the booth when Erika grabbed his arm.

“Okay, don’t get mad. Fifty.” She sent him an easy smile as he settled back again. Erika had been around too long to let an opportunity slip away. “A girl has to make a living, sí? The name is Pablo Manchez—he’s the one with the face.”

“Where can I find him?”

“I don’t know. You got the name.”

With a nod, Jonas took the bill out and passed it to her. Erika folded it neatly into her purse. “I’ll tell you something else, because Jerry was a sweet guy.” Her gaze skimmed the bar again as she leaned closer to Jonas. “This Manchez, he’s bad. People got nervous when I asked about him. I heard he was mixed up in a couple of murders in Acapulco last year. He’s paid, you know, to…” She made a gun out of her hand and pushed down her thumb. “When I hear that, I stop asking questions.”

“What about the other one, the American?”

“Nothing. Nobody knows him. But if he hangs out with Manchez, he’s not a Boy Scout.” Erika tipped back her drink. “Jerry got himself in some bad business.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.” She touched the bracelet on her wrist. “He gave me this. We had some good times.”

The air in the bar was stifling him. Jonas rose and hesitated only a moment before he took out another bill and set it next to her drink. “Thanks.”

Erika folded the bill as carefully as the first. “De nada.”

* * *

She’d wanted him to be home. When Liz found the house empty, she made a fist over the keys in her hand and swore in frustration. She couldn’t sit still; her nerves had been building all during the drive home. Outside, Moralas’s evening shift was taking over.

For how long? she wondered. How long would the police sit patiently outside her house and follow her through her daily routine? In her bedroom, Liz closed the canvas bag of papers and cash in her desk. She regretted not having a lock for it, as well. Sooner or later, she thought, Moralas would back off on the protection. Then where would she be? Liz looked down at the key again. She’d be alone, she told herself bluntly. She had to do something.

On impulse, she started into her daughter’s room. Perhaps Jerry had left a case, a box of some kind that the police had overlooked. Systematically she searched Faith’s closet. When she found the little teddy bear with the worn ear, she brought it down from the shelf. She’d bought it for Faith before she’d been born. It was a vivid shade of purple, or had been so many years before. Now it was faded a bit, a little loose at the seams. The ear had been worn down to a nub because Faith had always carried him by it. They’d never named it, Liz recalled. Faith had merely called it mine and been satisfied.

On a wave of loneliness that rocked her, Liz buried her face against the faded purple pile. “Oh, I miss you, baby,” she murmured. “I don’t know if I can stand it.”

“Liz?”

On a gasp of surprise, Liz stumbled back against the closet door. When she saw Jonas, she put the bear behind her back. “I didn’t hear you come in,” she said, feeling foolish.

“You were busy.” He came toward her to gently pry the bear from her fingers. “He looks well loved.”

“He’s old.” She cleared her throat and took the toy back again. But she found it impossible to stick it back on the top shelf. “I keep meaning to sew up the seams before the stuffing falls out.” She set the bear down on Faith’s dresser. “You’ve been out.”

“Yes.” He’d debated telling her of his meeting with Erika, and had decided to keep what he’d learned to himself, at least for now. “You’re home early.”

“I found something.” Liz reached in her pocket and drew out her keys. “This isn’t mine.”

Jonas frowned at the key she indicated. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean this isn’t my key, and I don’t know how it got on my ring.”

“You just found it today?”

“I found it today, but it could have been put on anytime. I don’t think I would’ve noticed.” With the vain hope of distancing herself, Liz unhooked it from the others and handed it to Jonas. “I keep these in a drawer at the shop when I’m there. At home, I usually toss them on the kitchen counter. I can’t think of any reason for someone to put it with mine unless they wanted to hide it.”

Jonas examined the key. “‘The Purloined Letter,’” he murmured.

“What?”

“It was one of Jerry’s favorite stories when we were kids. I remember when he tested out the theory by putting a book he’d bought for my father for Christmas on the shelf in the library.”

“So do you think it was his?”

“I think it would be just his style.”

Liz picked up the bear again, finding it comforted her. “It doesn’t do much good to have a key when you don’t have the lock.”

“It shouldn’t be hard to find it.” He held the key up by the stem. “Do you know what it is?”

“A key.” Liz sat on Faith’s bed. No, she hadn’t distanced herself. The quicksand was bubbling again.

“To a safe-deposit box.” Jonas turned it over to read the numbers etched into the metal.

“Do you think Captain Moralas can trace it?”

“Eventually,” Jonas murmured. The key was warm in his hand. It was the next step, he thought. It had to be. “But I’m not telling him about it.”

“Why?”

“Because he’d want it, and I don’t intend to give it to him until I open the lock myself.”

She recognized the look easily enough now. It was still revenge. Leaving the bear on her daughter’s bed, Liz rose. “What are you going to do, go from bank to bank and ask if you can try the key out? You won’t have to call the police, they will.”

“I’ve got some connections—and I’ve got the serial number.” Jonas pocketed the key. “With luck, I’ll have the name of the bank by tomorrow afternoon. You may have to take a couple of days off.”

“I can’t take a couple of days off, and if I could, why should I need to?”

“We’re going to Acapulco.”

She started to make some caustic comment, then stopped. “Because Jerry told Erika he’d had business there?”

“If Jerry was mixed up in something, and he had something important or valuable, he’d tuck it away. A safe-deposit box in Acapulco makes sense.”

“Fine. If that’s what you believe, have a nice trip.” She started to brush past him. Jonas only had to shift his body to bar the door.

“We go together.”

The word “together” brought back her thoughts on couples and comfort. And it made her remember her conclusion about Jonas. “Look, Jonas, I can’t drop everything and follow you on some wild-goose chase. Acapulco is very cosmopolitan. You won’t need an interpreter.”

“The key was on your ring. The knife was at your throat. I want you where I can see you.”

“Concerned?” Her face hardened, muscle by muscle. “You’re not concerned with me, Jonas. And you’re certainly not concerned about me. The only thing you care about is your revenge. I don’t want any part of it, or you.”

He took her by the shoulders until she was backed against the door. “We both know that’s not true. We’ve started something.” His gaze skimmed down, lingered on her lips. “And it’s not going to stop until we’re both finished with it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do.” He pressed closer so that their bodies met and strained, one against the other. He pressed closer to prove something, perhaps only to himself. “Yes, you do,” he repeated. “I came here to do something, and I intend to do it. I don’t give a damn if you call it revenge.”

Her heart was beating lightly at her throat. She wouldn’t call it fear. But his eyes were cold and close. “What else?”

“Justice.”

She felt an uncomfortable twinge, remembering her own feelings on justice. “You’re not using your law books, Jonas.”

“Law doesn’t always equal justice. I’m going to find out what happened to my brother and why.” He skimmed his hand over her face and tangled his fingers in her hair. He didn’t find silk and satin, but a woman of strength. “But there’s more now. I look at you and I want you.” He reached out, taking her face in his hand so that she had no choice but to look directly at him. “I hold you and I forget what I have to do. Damn it, you’re in my way.”

At the end of the words, his mouth was crushed hard on hers. He hadn’t meant to. He hadn’t had a choice. Before he’d been gentle with her because the look in her eyes requested it. Now he was rough, desperate, because the power of his own needs demanded it.

He frightened her. She’d never known fear could be a source of exhilaration. As her heart pounded in her throat, she let him pull her closer, still closer to the edge. He dared her to jump off, to let herself tumble down into the unknown. To risk.

His mouth drew desperately from hers, seeking passion, seeking submission, seeking strength. He wanted it all. He wanted it mindlessly from her. His hands were reaching for her as if they’d always done so. When he found her, she stiffened, resisted, then melted so quickly that it was nearly impossible to tell one mood from the next. She smelled of the sea and tasted of innocence, a combination of mystery and sweetness that drove him mad.

Forgetting everything but her, he drew her toward the bed and fulfillment.

“No.” Liz pushed against him, fighting to bring herself back. They were in her daughter’s room. “Jonas, this is wrong.”

He took her by the shoulders. “Damn it, it may be the only thing that’s right.”

She shook her head, and though unsteady, backed away. His eyes weren’t cold now. A woman might dream of having a man look at her with such fire and need. A woman might toss all caution aside if only to have a man want her with such turbulent desire. She couldn’t.

“Not for me. I don’t want this, Jonas.” She reached up to push back her hair. “I don’t want to feel like this.”

He took her hand before she could back away. His head was swimming. There had been no other time, no other place, no other woman that had come together to make him ache. “Why?”

“I don’t make the same mistake twice.”

“This is now, Liz.”

“And it’s my life.” She took a long, cleansing breath and found she could face him squarely. “I’ll go with you to Acapulco because the sooner you have what you want, the sooner you’ll go.” She gripped her hands together tightly, the only outward sign that she was fighting herself. “You know Moralas will have us followed.”

He had his own battles to fight. “I’ll deal with that.”

Liz nodded because she was sure he would. “Do what you have to do. I’ll make arrangements for Luis to take over the shop for a day or two.”

When she left him alone, Jonas closed his hands over the key again. It would open a lock, he thought. But there was another lock that mystified and frustrated him. Idly, he picked up the bear Liz had left on the bed. He looked from it to the key in his hand. Somehow he’d have to find a way to bring them together.

6

Acapulco wasn’t the Mexico Liz understood and loved. It wasn’t the Mexico she’d fled to a decade before, nor where she’d made her home. It was sophisticated and ultra modern with spiraling high-rise hotels crowded together and gleaming in tropical sunlight. It was swimming pools and trendy shops. Perhaps it was the oldest resort in Mexico, and boasted countless restaurants and nightclubs, but Liz preferred the quietly rural atmosphere of her own island.

Still she had to admit there was something awesome about the city, cupped in the mountains and kissed by a magnificent bay. She’d lived all her life in flat land, from Houston to Cozumel. The mountains made everything else seem smaller, and somehow protected. Over the water, colorful parachutes floated, allowing the adventurous a bird’s-eye view and a stunning ride. She wondered fleetingly if skimming through the sky would be as liberating as skimming through the water.

The streets were crowded and noisy, exciting in their own way. It occurred to her that she’d seen more people in the hour since they’d landed at the airport than she might in a week on Cozumel. Liz stepped out of the cab and wondered if she’d have time to check out any of the dive shops.

Jonas had chosen the hotel methodically. It was luxuriously expensive—just Jerry’s style. The villas overlooked the Pacific and were built directly into the mountainside. Jonas took a suite, pocketed the key and left the luggage to the bellman.

“We’ll go to the bank now.” It had taken him two days to match the key with a name. He wasn’t going to waste any more time.

Liz followed him out onto the street. True, she hadn’t come to enjoy herself, but a look at their rooms and a bite of lunch didn’t seem so much to ask. Jonas was already climbing into a cab. “I don’t suppose you’d considered making that a request.”

He gave her a brief look as she slammed the cab door. “No.” After giving the driver their direction, Jonas settled back. He could understand Jerry drifting to Acapulco, with its jet-set flavor, frantic nightlife and touches of luxury. When Jerry landed in a place for more than a day, it was a city that had the atmosphere of New York, London, Chicago. Jerry had never been interested in the rustic, serene atmosphere of a spot like Cozumel. So since he’d gone there, stayed there, he’d had a purpose. In Acapulco, Jonas would find out what it was.

As to the woman beside him, he didn’t have a clue. Was she caught up in the circumstances formed before they’d ever met, or was he dragging her in deeper than he had a right to? She sat beside him, silent and a little sulky. Probably thinking about her shop, Jonas decided, and wished he could send her safely back to it. He wished he could turn around, go back to the villa and make love with her until they were both sated.

She shouldn’t have appealed to him at all. She wasn’t witty, flawlessly polished or classically beautiful. But she did appeal to him, so much so that he was spending his nights awake and restless, and his days on the edge of frustration. He wanted her, wanted to fully explore the tastes of passion she’d given him. He wanted to arouse her until she couldn’t think of accounts or customers or schedules. Perhaps it was a matter of wielding power—he could no longer be sure. But mostly, inexplicably, he wanted to erase the memory of how she’d looked when he’d walked into her daughter’s room and found her clutching a stuffed bear.

When the cab rolled up in front of the bank, Liz stepped out on the curb without a word. There were shops across the streets, boutiques where she could see bright, wonderful dresses on cleverly posed mannequins. Even with the distance, she caught the gleam and glimmer of jewelry. A limousine rolled by, with smoked glass windows and quiet engine. Liz looked beyond the tall, glossy buildings to the mountains, and space.

“I suppose this is the sort of place that appeals to you.”

He’d watched her survey. She didn’t have to speak for him to understand that she’d compared Acapulco with her corner of Mexico and found Acapulco lacking. “Under certain circumstances.” Taking her arm, Jonas led her inside.

The bank was, as banks should be, quiet and sedate. Clerks wore neat suits and polite smiles. What conversation there was, was carried on in murmurs. Jerry, he thought, had always preferred the ultraconservative in storing his money, just as he’d preferred the wild in spending it. Without hesitation, Jonas strolled over to the most attractive teller. “Good afternoon.”

She glanced up. It only took a second for her polite smile to brighten. “Mr. Sharpe, Buenos días. It’s nice to see you again.”

Beside him, Liz stiffened. He’s been here before, she thought. Why hadn’t he told her? She sent a long, probing look his way. Just what game was he playing?

“It’s nice to see you.” He leaned against the counter, urbane and, she noted, flirtatious. The little tug of jealousy was as unexpected as it was unwanted. “I wondered if you’d remember me.”

The teller blushed before she glanced cautiously toward her supervisor. “Of course. How can I help you today?”

Jonas took the key out of his pocket. “I’d like to get into my box.” He simply turned and stopped Liz with a look when she started to speak.

“I’ll arrange that for you right away.” The teller took a form, dated it and passed it to Jonas. “If you’ll just sign here.”

Jonas took her pen and casually dashed off a signature. Liz read: Jeremiah C. Sharpe. Though she looked up quickly, Jonas was smiling at the teller. Because her supervisor was hovering nearby, the teller stuck to procedure and checked the signature against the card in the files. They matched perfectly.

“This way, Mr. Sharpe.”

“Isn’t that illegal?” Liz murmured as the teller led them from the main lobby.

“Yes.” Jonas gestured for her to precede him through the doorway.

“And does it make me an accessory?”

He smiled at her, waiting while the teller drew the long metal box from its slot. “Yes. If there’s any trouble, I’ll recommend a good lawyer.”

“Great. All I need’s another lawyer.”

“You can use this booth, Mr. Sharpe. Just ring when you’re finished.”

“Thanks.” Jonas nudged Liz inside, shut, then locked, the door.

“How did you know?”

“Know what?” Jonas set the box on a table.

“To go to that clerk? When she first spoke to you, I thought you’d been here before.”

“There were three men and two women. The other woman was into her fifties. As far as Jerry would’ve been concerned, there would have been only one clerk there.”

That line of thinking was clear enough, but his actions weren’t. “You signed his name perfectly.”

Key in hand, Jonas looked at her. “He was part of me. If we were in the same room, I could have told you what he was thinking. Writing his name is as easy as writing my own.”

“And was it the same for him?”

It could still hurt, quickly and unexpectedly. “Yes, it was the same for him.”

But Liz remembered Jerry’s good-natured description of his brother as a stuffed shirt. The man Liz was beginning to know didn’t fit. “I wonder if you understood each other as well as both of you thought.” She looked down at the box again. None of her business, she thought, and wished it were as true as she’d once believed. “I guess you’d better open it.”

He slipped the key into the lock, then turned it soundlessly. When he drew back the lid, Liz could only stare. She’d never seen so much money in her life. It sat in neat stacks, tidily banded, crisply American. Unable to resist, Liz reached out to touch.

“God, it looks like thousands.” She swallowed. “Hundreds of thousands.”

His face expressionless, Jonas flipped through the stacks. The booth became as quiet as a tomb. “Roughly three hundred thousand, in twenties and fifties.”

“Do you think he stole it?” she murmured, too overwhelmed to notice Jonas’s hands tighten on the money. “This must be the money the man who broke into my house wanted.”

“I’m sure it is.” Jonas set down a stack of bills and picked up a small bag. “But he didn’t steal it.” He forced his emotions to freeze. “I’m afraid he earned it.”

“How?” she demanded. “No one earns this kind of money in a matter of days, and I’d swear Jerry was nearly broke when I hired him. I know Luis lent him ten thousand pesos before his first paycheck.”

“I’m sure he was.” He didn’t bother to add that he’d wired his brother two hundred before Jerry had left New Orleans. Carefully, Jonas reached under the stack of money and pulled out a small plastic bag, dipped in a finger and tasted. But he’d already known.

“What is that?”

His face expressionless, Jonas sealed the bag. He couldn’t allow himself any more grief. “Cocaine.”

Horrified, Liz stared at the bag. “I don’t understand. He lived in my house. I’d have known if he were using drugs.”

Jonas wondered if she realized just how innocent she was of the darker side of humanity. Until that moment, he hadn’t fully realized just how intimate he was with it. “Maybe, maybe not. In any case, Jerry wasn’t into this sort of thing. At least not for himself.”

Liz sat down slowly. “You mean he sold it?”

“Dealt drugs?” Jonas nearly smiled. “No, that wouldn’t have been exciting enough.” In the corner of the box was a small black address book. Jonas took it out to leaf through it. “But smuggling,” he murmured. “Jerry could have justified smuggling. Action, intrigue and fast money.”

Her mind was whirling as she tried to focus back on the man she’d known so briefly. Liz had thought she’d understood him, categorized him, but he was more of a stranger now than when he’d been alive. It didn’t seem to matter anymore who or what Jerry Sharpe had been. But the man in front of her mattered. “And you?” she asked. “Can you justify it?”

He glanced down at her, over the book in his hands. His eyes were cold, so cold that she could read nothing in them at all. Without answering, Jonas went back to the book.

“He’d listed initials, dates, times and some numbers. It looks as though he made five thousand a drop. Ten drops.”

Liz glanced over at the money again. It no longer seemed crisp and neat but ugly and ill used. “That only makes fifty thousand. You said there was three hundred.”

“That’s right.” Plus a bag of uncut cocaine with a hefty street value. Jonas took out his own book and copied down the pages from his brother’s.

“What are we going to do with this?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Liz rose again, certain she’d stepped into a dream. “Do you mean just leave it here? Just leave it here in this box and walk away?”

With the last of the numbers copied, Jonas replaced his brother’s book. “Exactly.”

“Why did we come if we’re not going to do anything with it?”

He slipped his own book into his jacket. “To find it.”

“Jonas.” Before he could close the lid she had her hand on his wrist. “You have to take it to the police. To Captain Moralas.”

In a deliberate gesture, he removed her hand, then picked up the bag of coke. She understood rejection and braced herself against it. But it wasn’t rejection she saw in his face; it was fury. “You want to take this on the plane, Liz? Any idea on what the penalty is in Mexico for carrying controlled substances?”

“No.”

“And you don’t want to.” He closed the lid, locked it. “For now, just forget you saw anything. I’ll handle this in my own way.”

“No.”

His emotions were raw and tangled, his patience thin. “Don’t push me, Liz.”

“Push you?” Infuriated, she grabbed his shirtfront and planted her feet. “You’ve pushed me for days. Pushed me right into the middle of something that’s so opposed to the way I’ve lived I can’t even take it all in. Now that I’m over my head in drug smuggling and something like a quarter of a million dollars, you tell me to forget it. What do you expect me to do, go quietly back and rent tanks? Maybe you’ve finished using me now, Jonas, but I’m not ready to be brushed aside. There’s a murderer out there who thinks I know where the money is.” She stopped as her skin iced over. “And now I do.”

“That’s just it,” Jonas said quietly. For the second time, he removed her hands, but this time he held on to her wrists. Frightened, he thought. He was sure her pulse beat with fear as well as anger. “Now you do. The best thing for you to do now is stay out of it, let them focus on me.”

“Just how am I supposed to do that?”

The anger was bubbling closer, the anger he’d wanted to lock in the box with what had caused it. “Go to Houston, visit your daughter.”

“How can I?” she demanded in a whisper that vibrated in the little room. “They might follow me.” She looked down at the long, shiny box. “They would follow me. I won’t risk my daughter’s safety.”

She was right, and because he knew it, Jonas wanted to rage. He was boxed in, trapped between love and loyalty and right and wrong. Justice and the law. “We’ll talk to Moralas when we get back.” He picked up the box again, hating it.

“Where are we going now?”

Jonas unlocked the door. “To get a drink.”

* * *

Rather than going with Jonas to the lounge, Liz took some time for herself. Because she felt he owed her, she went into the hotel’s boutique, found a simple one-piece bathing suit and charged it to the room. She hadn’t packed anything but a change of clothes and toiletries. If she was stuck in Acapulco for the rest of the evening, she was going to enjoy the private pool each villa boasted.

The first time she walked into the suite, she was dumb-founded. Her parents had been reasonably successful, and she’d been raised in a quietly middle-class atmosphere. Nothing had prepared her for the sumptuousness of the two-bedroom suite overlooking the Pacific. Her feet sank cozily into the carpet. Softly colored paintings were spaced along ivory-papered walls. The sofa, done in grays and greens and blues, was big enough for two to sprawl on for a lazy afternoon nap.

She found a phone in the bathroom next to a tub so wide and deep that she was almost tempted to take her dip there. The sink was a seashell done in the palest of pinks.

So this is how the rich play, she mused as she wandered to the bedroom where her overnight bag was set at the end of a bed big enough for three. The drapes of her balcony were open so that she could see the tempestuous surf of the Pacific hurl up and spray. She pulled the glass doors open, wanting the noise.

This was the sort of world Marcus had told her of so many years before. He’d made it seem like a fairy tale with gossamer edges. Liz had never seen his home, had never been permitted to, but he’d described it to her. The white pillars, the white balconies, the staircase that curved up and up. There were servants to bring you tea in the afternoons, a stable where grooms waited to saddle glossy horses. Champagne was drunk from French crystal. It had been a fairy tale, and she hadn’t wanted it for herself. She had only wanted him.

A young girl’s foolishness, Liz thought now. In her naive way, she’d made a prince out of a man who was weak and selfish and spoiled. But over the years she had thought of the house he’d talked of and pictured her daughter on those wide, curving stairs. That had been her sense of justice.

The image wasn’t as clear now, not now that she’d seen wealth in a long metal box and understood where it had come from. Not when she’d seen Jonas’s eyes when he’d spoken of his kind of justice. That hadn’t been a fairy tale with gossamer edges, but grimly real. She had some thinking to do. But before she could plan for the rest of her life, and for her daughter’s, she had to get through the moment.

Jonas. She was bound to him through no choice of her own. And perhaps he was bound to her in the same way. Was that the reason she was drawn to him? Because they were trapped in the same puzzle? If she could only explain it away, maybe she could stop the needs that kept swimming through her. If she could only explain it away, maybe she would be in control again.

But how could she explain the feelings she’d experienced on the silent cab ride back to the hotel? She had had to fight the desire to put her arms around him, to offer comfort when nothing in his manner had indicated he needed or wanted it. There were no easy answers—no answers at all to the fact that she was slowly, inevitably falling in love with him.

It was time to admit that, she decided, because you could never face anything until it was admitted. You could never solve anything until it was faced. She’d lived by that rule years before during the biggest crisis of her life. It still held true.

So she loved him, or very nearly loved him. She was no longer naive enough to believe that love was the beginning of any answer. He would hurt her. There were no ifs about that. He’d steal from her the one thing she’d managed to hold fast to for ten years. And once he’d taken her heart, what would it mean to him? She shook her head. No more than such things ever mean to those who take them.

Jonas Sharpe was a man on a mission, and she was no more to him than a map. He was ruthless in his own patient way. When he had finished what he’d come to do, he would turn away from her, go back to his life in Philadelphia and never think of her again.

Some women, Liz thought, were doomed to pick the men who could hurt them the most. Making her mind a blank, Liz stripped and changed to her bathing suit. But Jonas, thoughts of Jonas, kept slipping through the barriers.

Maybe if she talked to Faith—if she could touch her greatest link with normality, things would snap back into focus. On impulse, Liz picked up the phone beside her bed and began the process of placing the call. Faith would just be home from school, Liz calculated, growing more excited as she heard the clinks and buzzes on the receiver. When the phone began to ring, she sat on the bed. She was already smiling.

“Hello?”

“Mom?” Liz felt the twin surges of pleasure and guilt as she heard her mother’s voice. “It’s Liz.”

“Liz!” Rose Palmer felt identical surges. “We didn’t expect to hear from you. Your last letter just came this morning. Nothing’s wrong, is it?”

“No, no, nothing’s wrong.” Everything’s wrong. “I just wanted to talk to Faith.”

“Oh, Liz, I’m so sorry. Faith’s not here. She has her piano lesson today.”

The letdown came, but she braced herself against it. “I forgot.” Tears threatened, but she forced them back. “She likes the lessons, doesn’t she?”

“She loves them. You should hear her play. Remember when you were taking them?”

“I had ten thumbs.” She managed to smile. “I wanted to thank you for sending the pictures. She looks so grown up. Momma, is she…looking forward to coming back?”

Rose heard the need, felt the ache. She wished, not for the first time, that her daughter was close enough to hold. “She’s marking off the days on her calendar. She bought you a present.”

Liz had to swallow. “She did?”

“It’s supposed to be a surprise, so don’t tell her I told you.”

“I won’t.” She dashed tears away, grateful she could keep her voice even. It hurt, but was also a comfort to be able to speak to someone who knew and understood Faith as she did. “I miss her. The last few weeks always seem the hardest.”

Her voice wasn’t as steady as she thought—and a mother hears what others don’t. “Liz, why don’t you come home? Spend the rest of the month here while she’s in school?”

“No, I can’t. How’s Dad?”

Rose fretted impatiently at the change of subject, then subsided. She’d never known anyone as thoroughly stubborn as her daughter. Unless it was her granddaughter. “He’s fine. Looking forward to coming down and doing some diving.”

“We’ll take one of the boats out—just the four of us. Tell Faith I…tell her I called,” she finished lamely.

“Of course I will. Why don’t I have her call you back when she gets home? The car pool drops her off at five.”

“No. No, I’m not home. I’m in Acapulco—on business.” Liz let out a long breath to steady herself. “Just tell her I miss her and I’ll be waiting at the airport. You know I appreciate everything you’re doing. I just—”

“Liz.” Rose interrupted gently. “We love Faith. And we love you.”

“I know.” Liz pressed her fingers to her eyes. She did know, but was never quite sure what to do about it. “I love you, too. It’s just that sometimes things get so mixed up.”

“Are you all right?”

She dropped her hand again, and her eyes were dry. “I will be when you get there. Tell Faith I’m marking off the days too.”

“I will.”

“Bye, Momma.”

She hung up and sat until the churning emptiness had run its course. If she’d had more confidence in her parents’ support, more trust in their love, would she have fled the States and started a new life on her own? Liz dragged a hand through her hair. She’d never be sure of that, nor could she dwell on it. She’d burned her own bridges. The only thing that was important was Faith, and her happiness.

* * *

An hour later, Jonas found her at the pool. She swam laps in long, smooth strokes, her body limber. She seemed tireless, and oddly suited to the private luxury. Her suit was a flashy red, but the cut so simple that it relied strictly on the form it covered for style.

He counted twenty laps before she stopped, and wondered how many she’d completed before he’d come down. It seemed to him as if she swam to drain herself of some tension or sorrow, and that with each lap she’d come closer to succeeding. Waiting, he watched her tip her head back in the water so that her hair slicked back. The marks on her neck had faded. As she stood, water skimmed her thigh.

“I’ve never seen you relaxed,” Jonas commented. But even as he said the words, he could see her muscles tense again. She turned away from her contemplation of the mountains and looked at him.

He was tired, she realized, and wondered if she should have seen it before. There was a weariness around his eyes that hadn’t been there that morning. He hadn’t changed his clothes, and had his hands tucked into the pockets of bone-colored slacks. She wondered if he’d been up to the suite at all.

“I didn’t bring a suit with me.” Liz pushed against the side of the pool and hitched herself out. Water rained from her. “I charged this one to the room.”

The thighs were cut nearly to the waist. Jonas caught himself wondering just how the skin would feel there. “It’s nice.”

Liz picked up her towel. “It was expensive.”

He only lifted a brow. “I could deduct it from the rent.”

Her lips curved a little as she rubbed her hair dry. “No, you can’t. But since you’re a lawyer, I imagine you can find a way to deduct it from something else. I saved the receipt.”

He hadn’t thought he could laugh. “I appreciate it. You know, I get the impression you don’t think much of lawyers.”

Something came and went in her eyes. “I try not to think of them at all.”

Taking the towel from her, he gently dried her face. “Faith’s father’s a lawyer?”

Without moving, she seemed to shift away from him. “Leave it alone, Jonas.”

“You don’t.”

“Actually I do, most of the time. Maybe it’s been on my mind the past few weeks, but that’s my concern.”

He draped the towel around her shoulders and, holding the ends, drew her closer. “I’d like you to tell me about it.”

It was his voice, she thought, so calm, so persuasive, that nearly had her opening both mind and heart. She could almost believe as she looked at him that he really wanted to know, to understand. The part of her that was already in love with him needed to believe he might care. “Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s that look that comes into your eyes. It makes a man want to stroke it away.”

Her chin came up a fraction. “There’s no need to feel sorry for me.”

“I don’t think sympathy’s the right word.” Abruptly weary, he dropped his forehead to hers. He was tired of fighting demons, of trying to find answers. “Damn.”

Uncertain, she stood very still. “Are you all right?”

“No. No, I’m not.” He moved away from her to walk to the end of the path where a plot of tiny orange flowers poked up through white gravel. “A lot of things you said today were true. A lot of things you’ve said all along are true. I can’t do anything about them.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say now.”

“Nothing.” Hideously tired, he ran both hands over his face. “I’m trying to live with the fact that my brother’s dead, and that he was murdered because he decided to make some easy money drug-trafficking. He had a good brain, but he always chose to use it in the wrong way. Every time I look in the mirror, I wonder why.”

Liz was beside him before she could cut off her feelings. He hurt. It was the first time she’d seen below the surface to the pain. She knew what it was like to live with pain. “He was different, Jonas. I don’t think he was bad, just weak. Mourning him is one thing—blaming yourself for what he did, or for what happened to him, is another.”

He hadn’t known he needed comfort, but her hand resting on him had something inside him slowly uncurling. “I was the only one who could reach him, keep him on some kind of level. There came a point where I just got tired of running both our lives.”

“Do you really believe you could have prevented him from doing what he did?”

“Maybe. That’s something else I have to live with.”

“Just a minute.” She took his shirtfront in much the same way she had that afternoon. There was no sympathy now, but annoyance on her face. He hadn’t known he needed that, as well. “You were brothers, twins, but you were separate people. Jerry wasn’t a child to be guided and supervised. He was a grown man who made his decisions.”

“That’s the trouble. Jerry never grew up.”

“And you did,” she tossed back. “Are you going to punish yourself for it?”

He’d been doing just that, Jonas realized. He’d gone home, buried his brother, comforted his parents and blamed himself for not preventing something he knew in his heart had been inevitable. “I have to find out who killed him, Liz. I can’t set the rest aside until I do.”

“We’ll find them.” On impulse, she pressed her cheek to his. Sometimes the slightest human contact could wash away acres of pain. “Then it’ll be over.”

He wasn’t sure he wanted it to be, not all of it. He ran a hand down her arm, needing the touch of her skin. He found it chilled. “The sun’s gone down.” He wrapped the towel around her in a gesture that would have been mere politeness with another woman. With Liz, it was for protection. “You’d better get out of that wet suit. We’ll have dinner.”

“Here?”

“Sure. The restaurant’s supposed to be one of the best.”

Liz thought of the elegance of their suite and the contents of her overnight bag. “I didn’t bring anything to wear.”

He laughed and swung an arm around her. It was the first purely frivolous thing he’d heard her say. “Charge something else.”

“But—”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got the best crooked accountant in Philadelphia.”

7

Because she’d been certain she would never sleep away from home, in a hotel bed, Liz was surprised to wake to full sunlight. Not only had she slept, she realized, she’d slept like a rock for eight hours and was rested and ready to go. True, it was just a little past six, and she had no business to run, but her body was tuned to wake at that hour. A trip to Acapulco didn’t change that.

It had changed other things, she reminded herself as she stretched out in the too-big bed. Because of it, she’d become inescapably tangled in murder and smuggling. Putting the words together made her shake her head. In a movie, she might have enjoyed watching the melodrama. In a book, she’d have turned the page to read more. But in her own life, she preferred the more mundane. Liz was too practical to delude herself into believing she could distance herself from any part of the puzzle any longer. For better or worse, she was personally involved in this melodrama. That included Jonas Sharpe. The only question now was which course of action to take.

She couldn’t run. That had never been a choice. Liz had already concluded she couldn’t hide behind Moralas and his men forever. Sooner or later the man with the knife would come back, or another man more determined or more desperate. She wouldn’t escape a second time. The moment she’d looked into the safe-deposit box, she’d become a full-fledged player in the game. Which brought her back full circle to Jonas. She had no choice but to put her trust in him now. If he were to give up on his brother’s murder and return to Philadelphia she would be that much more alone. However much she might wish it otherwise, Liz needed him just as much as he needed her.

Other things had changed, she thought. Her feelings for him were even more undefined and confusing than they had started out to be. Seeing him as she had the evening before, hurt and vulnerable, had touched off more than impersonal sympathy or physical attraction. It had made her feel a kinship, and the kinship urged her to help him, not only for her own welfare, but for his. He suffered, for his brother’s loss, but also for what his brother had done. She’d loved once, and had suffered, not only because of loss but because of disillusionment.

A lifetime ago? Liz wondered. Did we ever really escape from one lifetime to another? It seemed years could pass, circumstances could change, but we carried our baggage with us through each phase. If anything, with each phase we had to carry a bit more. There was little use in thinking, she told herself as she climbed from the bed. From this point on, she had little choice but to act.

Jonas heard her the moment she got up. He’d been awake since five, restless and prowling. For over an hour he’d been racking his brain and searching his conscience for a way to ease Liz out of a situation his brother, and he himself had locked her into. He’d already thought of several ways to draw attention away from her to himself, but that wouldn’t guarantee Liz’s safety. She wouldn’t go to Houston, and he understood her feelings about endangering her daughter in any way.

As the days passed, he felt he was coming to understand her better and better. She was a loner, but only because she saw it as the safest route. She was a businesswoman, but only because she looked to her daughter’s welfare first. Inside, he thought, she was a woman with dreams on hold and love held in bondage. She had steered both toward her child and denied herself. And, Jonas added, she’d convinced herself she was content.

That was something else he understood, because until a few weeks before he had also convinced himself he was content. It was only now, after he’d had the opportunity to look at his life from a distance that he realized he had merely been drifting. Perhaps, when the outward trimmings were stripped away, he hadn’t been so different from his brother. For both of them, success had been the main target, they had simply aimed for it differently. Though Jonas had a steady job, a home of his own, there had never been an important woman. He’d put his career first. Jonas wasn’t certain he’d be able to do so again. It had taken the loss of his brother to make him realize he needed something more, something solid. Exploring the law was only a job. Winning cases was only a transitory satisfaction. Perhaps he’d known it for some time. After all, he’d bought the old house in Chadd’s Ford to give himself something permanent. When had he started thinking about sharing it?

Still, thinking about his own life didn’t solve the problem of Liz Palmer and what he was going to do with her. She couldn’t go to Houston, he thought again, but there were other places she could go until he could assure her that her life could settle back the way she wanted it. His parents were his first thought, and the quiet country home they’d retired to in Lancaster. If he could find a way to slip her out of Mexico, she would be safe there. It would even be possible to have her daughter join her. Then his conscience would ease. Jonas had no doubt that his parents would accept them both, then dote on them.

Once he’d done what he’d come to do, he could go to Lancaster himself. He’d like to see Liz there, in surroundings he was used to. He wanted time to talk with her about simple things. He wanted to hear her laugh again, as she had only once in all the days he’d known her. Once they were there, away from the ugliness, he might understand his feelings better. Perhaps by then he’d be able to analyze what had happened inside him when she’d pressed her cheek against his and had offered unconditional support.

He’d wanted to hold on to her, to just hold on and the hell with the world. There was something about her that made him think of lazy evenings on cool porches and long Sunday afternoon walks. He couldn’t say why. In Philadelphia he rarely took time for such things. Even socializing had become business. And he’d seen for himself that she never gave herself an idle hour. Why should he, a man dedicated to his work, think of lazing days away with a woman obsessed by hers?

She remained a mystery to him, and perhaps that was an answer in itself. If he thought of her too often, too deeply, it was only because while his understanding was growing, he still knew so little. If it sometimes seemed that discovering Liz Palmer was just as important as discovering his brother’s killer, it was only because they were tied together. How could he take his mind off one without taking his mind off the other? Yet when he thought of her now, he thought of her stretched out on his mother’s porch swing, safe, content and waiting for him.

Annoyed with himself, Jonas checked his watch. It was after nine on the East Coast. He’d call his office, he thought. A few legal problems might clear his mind. He’d no more than picked up the receiver when Liz came out from her bedroom.

“I didn’t know you were up,” she said, and fiddled nervously with her belt. Odd, she felt entirely different about sharing the plush little villa with him than she did her home. After all, she reasoned, at home he was paying rent.

“I thought you’d sleep longer.” He replaced the receiver again. The office could wait.

“I never sleep much past six.” Feeling awkward, she wandered to the wide picture window. “Terrific view.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I haven’t stayed in a hotel in…in years,” she finished. “When I came to Cozumel, I worked in the same hotel where I’d stayed with my parents. It was an odd feeling. So’s this.”

“No urge to change the linen or stack the towels?”

When she chuckled, some of the awkwardness slipped away. “No, not even a twinge.”

“Liz, when we’re finished with all this, when it’s behind us, will you talk to me about that part of your life?”

She turned to him, away from the window, but they both felt the distance. “When we’re finished with this, there won’t be any reason to.”

He rose and came to her. In a gesture that took her completely by surprise, he took both of her hands. He lifted one, then the other, to his lips and watched her eyes cloud. “I can’t be sure of that,” he murmured. “Can you?”

She couldn’t be sure of anything when his voice was quiet, his hands gentle. For a moment, she simply absorbed the feeling of being a woman cared for by a man. Then she stepped back, as she knew she had to. “Jonas, you told me once we had the same problem. I didn’t want to believe it then, but it was true. It is true. Once that problem is solved, there really isn’t anything else between us. Your life and mine are separated by a lot more than miles.”

He thought of his house and his sudden need to share it. “They don’t have to be.”

“There was a time I might have believed that.”

“You’re living in the past.” He took her shoulders, but this time his hands weren’t as gentle. “You’re fighting ghosts.”

“I may have my ghosts, but I don’t live in the past. I can’t afford to.” She put her hands to his wrists, but let them lie there only a moment before she let go. “I can’t afford to pretend to myself about you.”

He wanted to demand, he wanted to pull her with him to the sofa and prove to her that she was wrong. He resisted. It wasn’t the first time he’d used courtroom skill, courtroom tactics, to win on a personal level. “We’ll leave it your way for now,” he said easily. “But the case isn’t closed. Are you hungry?”

Unsure whether she should be uneasy or relieved, Liz nodded. “A little.”

“Let’s have breakfast. We’ve got plenty of time before the plane leaves.”

* * *

She didn’t trust him. Though Jonas kept the conversation light and passionless throughout breakfast, Liz kept herself braced for a countermove. He was a clever man, she knew. He was a man, she was certain, who made sure he got his own way no matter how long it took. Liz considered herself a woman strong enough to keep promises made, even when they were to herself. No man, not even Jonas, was going to make her change the course she’d set ten years before. There was only room enough for two loves in her life. Faith and her work.

“I can’t get used to eating something at this hour of the morning that’s going to singe my stomach lining.”

Liz swallowed the mixture of peppers, onions and eggs. “Mine’s flame resistant. You should try my chili.”

“Does that mean you’re offering to cook for me?”

When Liz glanced up she wished he hadn’t been smiling at her in just that way. “I suppose I could make enough for two as easily as enough for one. But you don’t seem to have any trouble in the kitchen.”

“Oh, I can cook. It’s just that once I’ve finished, it never seems worth the bother.” He leaned forward to run a finger down her hand from wrist to knuckle. “Tell you what—I’ll buy the supplies and even clean up the mess if you handle the chili.”

Though she smiled, Liz drew her hand away. “The question is, can you handle the chili? It might burn right through a soft lawyer’s stomach.”

Appreciating the challenge, he took her hand again. “Why don’t we find out? Tonight.”

“All right.” She flexed her fingers, but he merely linked his with them. “I can’t eat if you have my hand.”

He glanced down. “You have another one.”

He made her laugh when she’d been set to insist. “I’m entitled to two.”

“I’ll give it back. Later.”

“Hey, Jerry!”

The easy smile on Jonas’s face froze. Only his eyes changed, locking on to Liz’s, warning and demanding. His hand remained on hers, but the grip tightened. The message was very clear—she was to do nothing, say nothing until he’d tallied the odds. He turned, flashing a new smile. Liz’s stomach trembled. It was Jerry’s smile, she realized. Not Jonas’s.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were back in town?” A tall, tanned man with sandy blond hair and a trim beard dropped a hand on Jonas’s shoulder. Liz caught the glint of a diamond on his finger. He was young, she thought, determined to store everything she could, barely into his thirties, and dressed with slick, trendy casualness.

“Quick trip,” Jonas said as, like Liz, he took in every detail. “Little business…” He cast a meaningful glance toward Liz. “Little pleasure.”

The man turned and stared appreciatively at Liz. “Is there any other way?”

Thinking fast, Liz offered her hand. “Hello. Since Jerry’s too rude to introduce us, we’ll have to do it ourselves. I’m Liz Palmer.”

“David Merriworth.” He took her hand between both of his. They were smooth and uncallused. “Jerry might have trouble with manners, but he’s got great taste.”

She smiled, hoping she did it properly. “Thank you.”

“Pull up a chair, Merriworth.” Jonas took out a cigarette. “As long as you keep your hands off my lady.” He said it in the good-natured, only-kidding tone Jerry had inevitably used, but his eyes were Jonas’s, warning her to tread carefully.

“Wouldn’t mind a quick cup of coffee.” David pulled over a chair after he checked his watch. “Got a breakfast meeting in a few minutes. So how are things on Cozumel?” He inclined his head ever so slightly. “Getting in plenty of diving?”

Jonas allowed his lips to curve and kept his eyes steady. “Enough.”

“Glad to hear it. I was going to check in with you myself, but I’ve been in the States for a couple weeks. Just got back in last night.” He used two sugars after the waiter set a fresh cup of coffee beside him. “Business is good, buddy. Real good.”

“What business are you in, Mr. Merriworth?”

He gave Liz a big grin before he winked at Jonas. “Sales, sweetheart. Imports, you might say.”

“Really.” Because her throat was dry she drank more coffee. “It must be fascinating.”

“It has its moments.” He turned in his chair so that he could study her face. “So where did Jerry find you?”

“On Cozumel.” She sent Jonas a steady look. “We’re partners.”

David lowered his cup. “That so?”

They were in too deep, Jonas thought, for him to contradict her. “That’s so,” he agreed.

David picked up his cup again with a shrug. “If it’s okay with the boss, it doesn’t bother me.”

“I do things my way,” Jonas drawled. “Or I don’t do them.”

Amused, and perhaps admiring, David broke into a smile. “That never changes. Look, I’ve been out of touch for a few weeks. The drops still going smooth?”

With those words, Jonas’s last hopes died. What he’d found in the safe-deposit box had been real, and it had been Jerry’s. He buttered a roll as though he had all the time in the world. Beneath the table, Liz touched his leg once, hoping he’d take it as comfort. He never looked at her. “Why shouldn’t they?”

“It’s the classiest operation I’ve ever come across,” David commented, taking a cautious glance around to other tables. “Wouldn’t like to see anything screw it up.”

“You worry too much.”

“You’re the one who should worry,” David pointed out. “I don’t have to deal with Manchez. You weren’t around last year when he took care of those two Colombians. I was. You deal with supplies, I stick with sales. I sleep better.”

“I just dive,” Jonas said, and tapped out his cigarette. “And I sleep fine.”

“He’s something, isn’t he?” David sent Liz another grin. “I knew Jerry here was just the man the boss was looking for. You keep diving, kid.” He tipped his cup at Jonas. “It makes me look good.”

“Sounds like you two have known each other for a while,” Liz said with a smile. Under the table, she twisted the napkin in her lap.

“Go way back, don’t we, Jer?”

“Yeah. We go back.”

“First time we hooked up was six, no, seven years ago. We were working a pigeon drop in L.A. We’d have had that twenty thousand out of that old lady if her daughter hadn’t caught on.” He took out a slim cigarette case. “Your brother got you out of that one, didn’t he? The East Coast lawyer.”

“Yeah.” Jonas remembered posting the bond and pulling the strings.

“Now I’ve been working out of here for almost five. A real businessman.” He slapped Jonas’s arm. “Hell of a lot better than the pigeon drop, huh, Jerry?”

“Pays better.”

David let out a roar of laughter. “Why don’t I show you two around Acapulco tonight?”

“Gotta get back.” Jonas signaled for the check. “Business.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” He nodded toward the restaurant’s entrance. “Here’s my customer now. Next time you drop down, give a call.”

“Sure.”

“And give my best to old Clancy.” With another laugh, David gave them each a quick salute. They watched him stride across the room and shake hands with a dark-suited man.

“Don’t say anything here,” Jonas murmured as he signed the breakfast check. “Let’s go.”

Liz’s crumpled napkin slid to the floor as she rose to walk out with him. He didn’t speak again until they had the door of the villa closed behind them.

“You had no business telling him we were partners.”

Because she’d been ready for the attack, she shrugged it off. “He said more once I did.”

“He’d have said just as much if you’d made an excuse and left the table.”

She folded her arms. “We have the same problem, remember?”

He didn’t care to have his own words tossed back at him. “The least you could have done was to give him another name.”

“Why? They know who I am. Sooner or later he’s going to talk to whoever’s in charge and get the whole story.”

She was right. He didn’t care for that either. “Are you packed?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s check out. We’ll go to the airport.”

“And then?”

“And then we go straight to Moralas.”

* * *

“You’ve been very busy.” Moralas held on to his temper as he rocked back in his chair. “Two of my men wasted their valuable time looking for you in Acapulco. You might have told me, Mr. Sharpe, that you planned to take Miss Palmer on a trip.”

“I thought a police tail in Acapulco might be inconvenient.”

“And now that you have finished your own investigation, you bring me this.” He held up the key and examined it. “This which Miss Palmer discovered several days ago. As a lawyer, you must understand the phrase ‘withholding evidence.’”

“Of course.” Jonas nodded coolly. “But neither Miss Palmer nor myself could know the key was evidence. We speculated, naturally, that it might have belonged to my brother. Withholding a speculation is hardly a crime.”

“Perhaps not, but it is poor judgment. Poor judgment often translates into an offense.”

Jonas leaned back in his chair. If Moralas wanted to argue law, they’d argue law. “If the key belonged to my brother, as executor of his estate, it became mine. In any case, once it was proved to me that the key did indeed belong to Jerry, and that the contents of the safe-deposit box were evidence, I brought both the key and a description of the contents to you.”

“Indeed. And do you also speculate as to how your brother came to possess those particular items?”

“Yes.”

Moralas waited a beat, then turned to Liz. “And you, Miss Palmer—you also have your speculations?”

She had her hands gripped tightly in her lap, but her voice was matter-of-fact and reasonable. “I know that whoever attacked me wanted money, obviously a great deal of money. We found a great deal.”

“And a bag of what Mr. Sharpe…speculates is cocaine.” Moralas folded his hands on the desk with the key under them. “Miss Palmer, did you at any time see Mr. Jeremiah Sharpe in possession of cocaine?”

“No.”

“Did he at any time speak to you of cocaine or drug-trafficking?”

“No, of course not. I would have told you.”

“As you told me about the key?” When Jonas started to protest, Moralas waved him off. “I will need a list of your customers for the past six weeks, Miss Palmer. Names and, wherever possible, addresses.”

“My customers? Why?”

“It’s more than possible that Mr. Sharpe used your shop for his contacts.”

“My shop.” Outraged, she stood up. “My boats? Do you think he could have passed drugs under my nose without me being aware?”

Moralas took out a cigar and studied it. “I very much hope you were unaware, Miss Palmer. You will bring me the list of clients by the end of the week.” He glanced at Jonas. “Of course, you are within your rights to demand a warrant. It will simply slow down the process. And I, of course, am within my rights to hold Miss Palmer as a material witness.”

Jonas watched the pale blue smoke circle toward the ceiling. It was tempting to call Moralas’s bluff simply as an exercise in testing two ends of the law. And in doing so, he and the captain could play tug-of-war with Liz for hours. “There are times, Captain, when it’s wiser not to employ certain rights. I think I’m safe in saying that the three of us in this room want basically the same thing.” He rose and flicked his lighter at the end of Moralas’s cigar. “You’ll have your list, Captain. And more.”

Moralas lifted his gaze and waited.

“Pablo Manchez,” Jonas said, and was gratified to see Moralas’s eyes narrow.

“What of Manchez?”

“He’s on Cozumel. Or was,” Jonas stated. “My brother met with him several times in local bars and clubs. You may also be interested in David Merriworth, an American working out of Acapulco. Apparently he’s the one who put my brother onto his contacts in Cozumel. If you contact the authorities in the States, you’ll find that Merriworth has an impressive rap sheet.”

In his precise handwriting, Moralas noted down the names, though he wasn’t likely to forget them. “I appreciate the information. However, in the future, Mr. Sharpe, I would appreciate it more if you stayed out of my way. Buenas tardes, Miss Palmer.”

Moments later, Liz strode out to the street. “I don’t like being threatened. That’s what he was doing, wasn’t it?” she demanded. “He was threatening to put me in jail.”

Very calm, even a bit amused, Jonas lit a cigarette. “He was pointing out his options, and ours.”

“He didn’t threaten to put you in jail,” Liz muttered.

“He doesn’t worry as much about me as he does about you.”

“Worry?” She stopped with her hand gripping the handle of Jonas’s rented car.

“He’s a good cop. You’re one of his people.”

She looked back toward the police station with a scowl. “He has a funny way of showing it.” A scruffy little boy scooted up to the car and gallantly opened the door for her. Even as he prepared to hold out a hand, Liz was digging for a coin.

“Gracias.”

He checked the coin, grinned at the amount and nodded approval. “Buenas tardes, señorita.” Just as gallantly he closed the door for her while the coin disappeared into a pocket.

“It’s a good thing you don’t come into town often,” Jonas commented.

“Why?”

“You’d be broke in a week.”

Liz found a clip in her purse and pulled back her hair. “Because I gave a little boy twenty-five pesos?”

“How much did you give the other kid before we went in to Moralas?”

“I bought something from him.”

“Yeah.” Jonas swung away from the curb. “You look like a woman who can’t go a day without a box of Chiclets.”

“You’re changing the subject.”

“That’s right. Now tell me where I can find the best place for buying ingredients for chili.”

“You want me to cook for you tonight?”

“It’ll keep your mind off the rest. We’ve done everything we can do for the moment,” he added. “Tonight we’re going to relax.”

She would have liked to believe he was right. Between nerves and anger, she was wound tight. “Cooking’s supposed to relax me?”

“Eating is going to relax you. It’s just an unavoidable circumstance that you have to cook it first.”

It sounded so absurd that she subsided. “Turn left at the next corner. I tell you what to buy, you buy it, then you stay out of my way.”

“Agreed.”

“And you clean up.”

“Absolutely.”

“Pull over here,” she directed. “And remember, you asked for it.”

* * *

Liz never skimped when she cooked, even taking into account that authentic Mexican spices had more zing than the sort sold in the average American supermarket. She’d developed a taste for Mexican food and Yucatán specialties when she’d been a child, exploring the peninsula with her parents. She wasn’t an elaborate cook, and when alone would often make do with a sandwich, but when her heart was in it, she could make a meal that would more than satisfy.

Perhaps, in a way, she wanted to impress him. Liz found she was able to admit it while she prepared a Mayan salad for chilling. It was probably very natural and harmless to want to impress someone with your cooking. After peeling and slicing an avocado, she found, oddly enough, she was relaxing.

So much of what she’d done in the past few days had been difficult or strange. It was a relief to make a decision no more vital than the proper way to slice her fruits and vegetables. In the end, she fussed with the arrangement a bit more, pleased with the contrasting colors of greens and oranges and cherry tomatoes. It was, she recalled, the only salad she could get Faith to eat because it was the only one Faith considered pretty enough. Liz didn’t realize she was smiling as she began to sauté onions and peppers. She added a healthy dose of garlic and let it all simmer.

“It already smells good,” Jonas commented as he strode through the doorway.

She only glanced over her shoulder. “You’re supposed to stay out of my way.”

“You cook, I take care of the table.”

Liz only shrugged and turned back to the stove. She measured, stirred and spiced until the kitchen was filled with a riot of scent. The sauce, chunky with meat and vegetables, simmered and thickened on low heat. Pleased with herself, she wiped her hands on a cloth and turned around. Jonas was sitting comfortably at the table watching her.

“You look good,” he told her. “Very good.”

It seemed so natural, their being together in the kitchen with a pot simmering and a breeze easing its way through the screen. It made her remember how hard it was not to want such simple things in your life. Liz set the cloth down and found she didn’t know what to do with her hands. “Some men think a woman looks best in front of a stove.”

“I don’t know. It’s a toss-up with the way you looked at the wheel of a boat. How long does that have to cook?”

“About a half hour.”

“Good.” He rose and went to the counter where he’d left two bottles. “We have time for some wine.”

A little warning signal jangled in her brain. Liz decided she needed a lid for the chili. “I don’t have the right glasses.”

“I already thought of that.” From a bag beside the bottle, he pulled out two thin-stemmed wineglasses.

“You’ve been busy,” she murmured.

“You didn’t like me hovering over you in the market. I had to do something.” He drew out the cork, then let the wine breathe.

“These candles aren’t mine.”

He turned to see Liz fiddling with the fringe of one of the woven mats he’d set on the table. In the center were two deep blue tapers that picked up the color in the border of her dishes.

“They’re ours,” Jonas told her.

She twisted the fringe around one finger, let it go, then twisted it again. The last time she’d burned candles had been during a power failure. These didn’t look sturdy, but slender and frivolous. “There wasn’t any need to go to all this trouble. I don’t—”

“Do candles and wine make you uneasy?”

Dropping the fringe, she let her hands fall to her sides. “No, of course not.”

“Good.” He poured rich red wine into both glasses. Walking to her, he offered one. “Because I find them relaxing. We did agree to relax.”

She sipped, and though she wanted to back away, held her ground. “I’m afraid you may be looking for more than I can give.”

“No.” He touched his glass to hers. “I’m looking for exactly what you can give.”

Recognizing when she was out of her depth, Liz turned toward the refrigerator. “We can start on the salad.”

He lit the candles and dimmed the lights. She told herself it didn’t matter. Atmosphere was nothing more than a pleasant addition to a meal.

“Very pretty,” Jonas told her when she’d mixed the dressing and arranged avocado slices. “What’s it called?”

“It’s a Mayan salad.” Liz took the first nibble and was satisfied. “I learned the recipe when I worked at the hotel. Actually, that’s where most of my cooking comes from.”

“Wonderful,” Jonas decided after the first bite. “It makes me wish I’d talked you into cooking before.”

“A one time only.” She relaxed enough to smile. “Meals aren’t—”

“Included in the rent,” Jonas finished. “We might negotiate.”

This time she laughed at him and chose a section of grapefruit. “I don’t think so. How do you manage in Philadelphia?”

“I have a housekeeper who’ll toss together a casserole on Wednesdays.” He took another bite, enjoying the contrast of crisp greens and spicy dressing. “And I eat out a lot.”

“And parties? I suppose you go to a lot of parties.”

“Some business, some pleasure.” He’d almost forgotten what it was like to sit in a kitchen and enjoy a simple meal. “To be honest, it wears a bit. The cruising.”

“Cruising?”

“When Jerry and I were teenagers, we might hop in the car on a Friday night and cruise. The idea was to see what teenage girls had hopped in their cars to cruise. The party circuit’s just adult cruising.”

She frowned a bit because it didn’t seem as glamorous as she’d imagined. “It seems rather aimless.”

“Doesn’t seem. Is.”

“You don’t appear to be a man who does anything without a purpose.”

“I’ve had my share of aimless nights,” he murmured. “You come to a point where you realize you don’t want too many more.” That was just it, he realized. It wasn’t the work, the hours spent closeted with law books or in a courtroom. It was the nights without meaning that left him wanting more. He lifted the wine to top off her glass, but his eyes stayed on hers. “I came to that realization very recently.”

Her blood began to stir. Deliberately, Liz pushed her wine aside and rose to go to the stove. “We all make decisions at certain points in our lives, realign our priorities.”

“I have the feeling you did that a long time ago.”

“I did. I’ve never regretted it.”

That much was true, he thought. She wasn’t a woman for regrets. “You wouldn’t change it, would you?”

Liz continued to spoon chili into bowls. “Change what?”

“If you could go back eleven years and take a different path, you wouldn’t do it.”

She stopped. From across the room he could see the flicker of candlelight in her eyes as she turned to him. More, he could see the strength that softness and shadows couldn’t disguise. “That would mean I’d have to give up Faith. No, I wouldn’t do it.”

When she set the bowls on the table, Jonas took her hand. “I admire you.”

Flustered, she stared down at him. “What for?”

“For being exactly what you are.”

8

No smooth phrases, no romantic words could have affected her more deeply. She wasn’t used to flattery, but flattery, Liz was sure, could be brushed easily aside by a woman who understood herself. Sincere and simple approval was a different matter. Perhaps it was the candlelight, the wine, the intimacy of the small kitchen in the empty house, but she felt close to him, comfortable with him. Without being aware of it happening, Liz dropped her guard.

“I couldn’t be anything else.”

“Yes, you could. I’m glad you’re not.”

“What are you?” she wondered as she sat beside him.

“A thirty-five-year-old lawyer who’s just realizing he’s wasted some time.” He lifted his glass and touched it to hers. “To making the best of whatever there is.”

Though she wasn’t certain she understood him, Liz drank, then waited for him to eat.

“You could fuel an engine with this stuff.” Jonas dipped his spoon into the chili again and tasted. Hot spice danced on his tongue. “It’s great.”

“Not too hot for your Yankee stomach?”

“My Yankee stomach can handle it. You know, I’m surprised you haven’t opened a restaurant, since you can cook like this.”

She wouldn’t have been human if the compliment hadn’t pleased her. “I like the water more than I like the kitchen.”

“I can’t argue with that. So you picked this up in the kitchen when you worked at the hotel?”

“That’s right. We’d take a meal there. The cook would show me how much of this and how much of that. He was very kind,” Liz remembered. “A lot of people were kind.”

He wanted to know everything—the small details, the feelings, the memories. Because he did, he knew he had to probe with care. “How long did you work there?”

“Two years. I lost count of how many beds I made.”

“Then you started your own business?”

“Then I started the dive shop.” She took a thin cracker and broke it in two. “It was a gamble, but it was the right one.”

“How did you handle it?” He waited until she looked over at him. “With your daughter?”

She withdrew. He could hear it in her voice. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I wonder about you.” He kept the tone light, knowing she’d never respond to pressure. “Not many women could have managed all you’ve managed. You were alone, pregnant, making a living.”

“Does that seem so unusual?” It made her smile to think of it. “There are only so many choices, aren’t there?”

“A great many people would have made a different one.”

With a nod, she accepted. “A different one wouldn’t have been right for me.” She sipped her wine as she let her mind drift back. “I was frightened. Quite a bit at first, but less and less as time when on. People were very good to me. It might have been different if I hadn’t been lucky. I went into labor when I was cleaning room 328.” Her eyes warmed as if she’d just seen something lovely. “I remember holding this stack of towels in my hand and thinking, ‘Oh God, this is it, and I’ve only done half my rooms.’” She laughed and went back to her meal. Jonas’s bowl sat cooling.

“You worked the day your baby was born?”

“Of course. I was healthy.”

“I know men who take the day off if they need a tooth filled.”

She laughed again and passed him the crackers. “Maybe women take things more in stride.”

Only some women, he thought. Only a few exceptional women. “And afterward?”

“Afterward I was lucky again. A woman I worked with knew Señora Alderez. When Faith was born, her youngest had just turned five. She took care of Faith during the day, so I was able to go right back to work.”

The cracker crumbled in his hand. “It must have been difficult for you.”

“The only hard part was leaving my baby every morning, but the señora was wonderful to Faith and to me. That’s how I found this house. Anyway, one thing led to another. I started the dive shop.”

He wondered if she realized that the more simply she described it, the more poignant it sounded. “You said the dive shop was a gamble.”

“Everything’s a gamble. If I’d stayed at the hotel, I never would have been able to give Faith what I wanted to give her. And I suppose I’d have felt cheated myself. Would you like some more?”

“No.” He rose to take the bowls himself while he thought out how to approach her. If he said the wrong thing, she’d pull away again. The more she told him, the more he found he needed to know. “Where did you learn to dive?”

“Right here in Cozumel, when I was just a little older than Faith.” As a matter of habit she began to store the leftovers while Jonas ran water in the sink. “My parents brought me. I took to it right away. It was like, I don’t know, learning to fly I suppose.”

“Is that why you came back?”

“I came back because I’d always felt peaceful here. I needed to feel peaceful.”

“But you must have still been in school in the States.”

“I was in college.” Crouching, Liz shifted things in the refrigerator to make room. “My first year. I was going to be a marine biologist, a teacher who’d enlighten class after class on the mysteries of the sea. A scientist who’d find all the answers. It was such a big dream. It overwhelmed everything else to the point where I studied constantly and rarely went out. Then I—” She caught herself. Straightening slowly, she closed the refrigerator. “You’ll want the lights on to do those dishes.”

“Then what?” Jonas demanded, taking her shoulder as she hit the switch.

She stared at him. Light poured over them without the shifting shadows of candles. “Then I met Faith’s father, and that was the end of dreams.”

The need to know eclipsed judgment. He forgot to be careful. “Did you love him?”

“Yes. If I hadn’t, there’d have been no Faith.”

It wasn’t the answer he’d wanted. “Then why are you raising her alone?”

“That’s obvious, isn’t it?” Anger surged as she shoved his hand aside. “He didn’t want me.”

“Whether he did or didn’t, he was responsible to you and the child.”

“Don’t talk to me about responsibility. Faith’s my responsibility.”

“The law sees things otherwise.”

“Keep your law,” she snapped. “He could quote it chapter and verse, and it didn’t mean a thing. We weren’t wanted.”

“So you let pride cut you off from your rights?” Impatient with her, he stuck his hands in his pockets and strode back to the sink. “Why didn’t you fight for what you were entitled to?”

“You want the details, Jonas?” Memory brought its own particular pain, its own particular shame. Liz concentrated on the anger. Going back to the table, she picked up her glass of wine and drank deeply.

“I wasn’t quite eighteen. I was going to college to study exactly what I wanted to study so I could do exactly what I wanted to do. I considered myself a great deal more mature than some of my classmates who flitted around from class to class more concerned about where the action would be that night. I spent most of my evenings in the library. That’s where I met him. He was in his last year and knew if he didn’t pass the bar there’d be hell to pay at home. His family had been in law or politics since the Revolution. You’d understand about family honor, wouldn’t you?”

The arrow hit the mark, but he only nodded.

“Then you should understand the rest. We saw each other every night in the library, so it was natural that we began to talk, then have a cup of coffee. He was smart, attractive, wonderfully mannered and funny.” Almost violently, she blew out the candles. The scent carried over and hung in the room. “I fell hard. He brought me flowers and took me for long quiet drives on Saturday nights. When he told me he loved me, I believed him. I thought I had the world in the palm of my hand.”

She set the wine down again, impatient to be finished. Jonas said nothing. “He told me we’d be married as soon as he established himself. We’d sit in his car and look at the stars and he’d tell me about his home in Dallas and the wonderful rooms. The parties and the servants and the chandeliers. It was like a story, a lovely happily-ever-after story. Then one day his mother came.” Liz laughed, but gripped the back of her chair until her knuckles were white. She could still feel the humiliation.

“Actually, she sent her driver up to the dorm to fetch me. Marcus hadn’t said a thing about her visiting, but I was thrilled that I was going to meet her. At the curb was this fabulous white Rolls, the kind you only see in movies. When the driver opened the door for me, I was floating. Then I got in and she gave me the facts of life. Her son had a certain position to maintain, a certain image to project. She was sure I was a very nice girl, but hardly suitable for a Jensann of Dallas.”

Jonas’s eyes narrowed at the name, but he said nothing. Restless, Liz went to the stove and began to scrub the surface. “She told me she’d already spoken with her son and he understood the relationship had to end. Then she offered me a check as compensation. I was humiliated, and worse, I was pregnant. I hadn’t told anyone yet, because I’d just found out that morning. I didn’t take her money. I got out of the Rolls and went straight to Marcus. I was sure he loved me enough to toss it all aside for me, and for our baby. I was wrong.”

Her eyes were so dry that they hurt. Liz pressed her fingers to them a moment. “When I went to see him, he was very logical. It had been nice; now it was over. His parents held the purse strings and it was important to keep them happy. But he wanted me to know we could still see each other now and again, as long as it was on the side. When I told him about the baby, he was furious. How could I have done such a thing? I.”

Liz tossed the dishrag into the sink so that hot, soapy water heaved up. “It was as though I’d conceived the baby completely on my own. He wouldn’t have it, he wouldn’t have some silly girl who’d gotten herself pregnant messing up his life. He told me I had to get rid of it. It—as though Faith were a thing to be erased and forgotten. I was hysterical. He lost his temper. There were threats. He said he’d spread word that I was sleeping around and his friends would back him up. I’d never be able to prove the baby was his. He said my parents would be embarrassed, perhaps sued if I tried to press it. He tossed around a lot of legal phrases that I couldn’t understand, but I understood he was finished with me. His family had a lot of pull at the college, and he said he’d see that I was dismissed. Because I was foolish enough to believe everything he said, I was terrified. He gave me a check and told me to go out of state—better, out of the country—to take care of things. That way no one would have to know.

“For a week I did nothing. I went through my classes in a daze, thinking I’d wake up and find out it had all been a bad dream. Then I faced it. I wrote my parents, telling them what I could. I sold the car they’d given me when I graduated from high school, took the check from Marcus and came to Cozumel to have my baby.”

He’d wanted to know, even demanded, but now his insides were raw. “You could have gone to your parents.”

“Yes, but at the time Marcus had convinced me they’d be ashamed. He told me they’d hate me and consider the baby a burden.”

“Why didn’t you go to his family? You were entitled to be taken care of.”

“Go to them?” He’d never heard venom in her voice before. “Be taken care of by them? I’d have gone to hell first.”

He waited a moment, until he was sure he could speak calmly. “They don’t even know, do they?”

“No. And they never will. Faith is mine.”

“And what does Faith know?”

“Only what she has to know. I’d never lie to her.”

“And do you know that Marcus Jensann has his sights set on the senate, and maybe higher?”

Her color drained quickly and completely. “You know him?”

“By reputation.”

Panic came and went, then returned in double force. “He doesn’t know Faith exists. None of them do. They can’t.”

Watching her steadily, he took a step closer. “What are you afraid of?”

“Power. Faith is mine, she’s going to stay mine. None of them will ever touch her.”

“Is that why you stay here? Are you hiding from them?”

“I’ll do whatever’s necessary to protect my child.”

“He’s still got you running scared.” Furious for her, Jonas took her arms. “He’s got a frightened teenager strapped inside of you who’s never had the chance to stretch and feel alive. Don’t you know a man like that wouldn’t even remember who you are? You’re still running away from a man who wouldn’t recognize you on the street.”

She slapped him hard enough to make his head snap back. Breathing fast, she backed away from him, appalled by a show of violence she hadn’t been aware of possessing. “Don’t tell me what I’m running from,” she whispered. “Don’t tell me what I feel.” She turned and fled. Before she’d reached the front door he had her again, whirling her around, gripping her hard. He no longer knew why his anger was so fierce, only that he was past the point of controlling it.

“How much have you given up because of him?” Jonas demanded. “How much have you cut out of your life?”

“It’s my life!” she shouted at him.

“And you won’t share it with anyone but your daughter. What the hell are you going to do when she’s grown? What the hell are you going to do in twenty years when you have nothing but your memories?”

“Don’t.” Tears filled her eyes too quickly to be blinked away.

He grabbed her close again, twisting until she had to look at him. “We all need someone. Even you. It’s about time someone proved it to you.”

“No.”

She tried to turn her head but he was quick. With his mouth crushed on hers she struggled, but her arms were trapped between their bodies and his were ironlike around her. Emotions already mixed with fear and anger became more confused with passion. Liz fought not to give in to any of them as his mouth demanded both submission and response.

“You’re not fighting me,” he told her. His eyes were close, searing into hers. “You’re fighting yourself. You’ve been fighting yourself since the first time we met.”

“I want you to let me go.” She wanted her voice to be strong, but it trembled.

“Yes. You want me to let you go just as much as you want me not to. You’ve been making your own decisions for a long time, Liz. This time I’m making one for you.”

Her furious protest was lost against his mouth as he pressed her down to the sofa. Trapped under him, her body began to heat, her blood began to stir. Yes, she was fighting herself. She had to fight herself before she could fight him. But she was losing.

She heard her own moan as his lips trailed down her throat, and it was a moan of pleasure. She felt the hard line of his body against hers as she arched under him, but it wasn’t a movement of protest. Want me, she seemed to say. Want me for what I am.

Her pulse began to thud in parts of her body that had been quiet for so many years. Life burst through her like a torrid wind through thin glass until every line of defense was shattered. With a desperate groan, she took his face in her hands and dragged his mouth back to hers.

She could taste the passion, the life, the promises. She wanted them all. Recklessness, so long chained within, tore free and ruled. A sound bubbled in her throat she wasn’t even aware was a laugh as she wrapped herself around him. She wanted. He wanted. The hell with the rest.

He wasn’t sure what had driven him—anger, need, pain. All he knew now was that he had to have her, body, soul and mind. She was wild beneath him, but no longer in resistance. Every movement was a demand that he take more, give more, and nothing seemed fast enough. She was a storm set to rage, a fire desperate to consume. Whatever he’d released inside of her had whipped out and taken him prisoner.

He pulled the shirt over her head and tossed it aside. His heartbeat thundered. She was so small, so delicate. But he had a beast inside him that had been caged too long. He took her breast in his mouth and sent them both spinning. She tasted so fresh: a cool, clear glass of water. She smelled of woman at her most unpampered and most seductive. He felt her body arch against his, taut as a bowstring, hot as a comet. The innocence that remained so integral a part of her trembled just beneath wanton passion. No man alive could have resisted it; any man alive might have wished for it. His mouth was buried at her throat when he felt the shirt rip away from his back.

She hardly knew what she was doing. Touching him sent demands to her brain that she couldn’t deny. She wanted to feel him against her, flesh to flesh, to experience an intimacy she’d so long refused to allow herself. There’d been no one else. As Liz felt her skin fused to his she understood why. There was only one Jonas. She pulled his mouth back to hers to taste him again.

He drew off her slacks so that she was naked, but she didn’t feel vulnerable. She felt invulnerable. Hardly able to breathe, she struggled with his. Then she gave him no choice. Desperate for that final release, she wrapped her legs around him and drew him into her until she was filled. At the shock of that first ragged peak, her eyes flew open. Inches away, he watched her face. Her mouth trembled open, but before she could catch her breath, he was driving her higher, faster. She couldn’t tell how long they balanced on the edge, trapped between pleasure and fulfillment. Then his arms came around her, hers around his. Together, they broke free.

* * *

She didn’t speak. Her system leveled slowly, and she was helpless to hurry it. He didn’t move. He’d shifted his weight, but his arms had come around her and stayed there. She needed him to speak, to say something that would put what had happened in perspective. She’d only had one other lover and had learned not to expect.

Jonas rested his forehead against her shoulder a moment. He was wrestling with his own demons. “I’m sorry, Liz.”

He could have said nothing worse. She closed her eyes and forced her emotions to drain. She nearly succeeded. Steadier, she reached for the tangle of clothes on the floor. “I don’t need an apology.” With her clothes in a ball in her arm, she walked quickly to the bedroom.

On a long breath, Jonas sat up. He couldn’t seem to find the right buttons on Liz Palmer. Every move he made seemed to be a move in reverse. It still stunned him that he’d been so rough with her, left her so little choice in the final outcome. He’d be better off hiring her a private bodyguard and moving himself back to the hotel. It was true he didn’t want to see her hurt and felt a certain responsibility for her welfare, but he didn’t seem to be able to act on it properly. When she’d stood in the kitchen telling him what she’d been through, something had begun to boil in him. That it had taken the form of passion in the end wasn’t something easily explained or justified. His apology had been inadequate, but he had little else.

Drawing on his pants, Jonas started for his room. It shouldn’t have surprised him to find himself veering toward Liz’s. She was just pulling on a robe. “It’s late, Jonas.”

“Did I hurt you?”

She sent him a look that made guilt turn over in his stomach. “Yes. Now I want to take a shower before I go to bed.”

“Liz, there’s no excuse for being so rough, and there’s no making it up to you, but—”

“Your apology hurt me,” she interrupted. “Now if you’ve said all you have to say, I’d like to be alone.”

He stared at her a moment, then dragged a hand through his hair. How could he have convinced himself he understood her when she was now and always had been an enigma? “Damn it, Liz, I wasn’t apologizing for making love to you, but for the lack of finesse. I practically tossed you on the ground and ripped your clothes off.”

She folded her hands and tried to keep calm. “I ripped yours.”

His lips twitched, then curved. “Yeah, you did.”

Humor didn’t come into her eyes. “And do you want an apology?”

He came to her then and rested his hands on her shoulders. Her robe was cotton and thin and whirling with bright color. “No. I guess what I’d like is for you to say you wanted me as much as I wanted you.”

Her courage weakened, so she looked beyond him. “I’d have thought that was obvious.”

“Liz.” His hand was gentle as he turned her face back to his.

“All right. I wanted you. Now—”

“Now,” he interrupted. “Will you listen?”

“There’s no need to say anything.”

“Yes, there is.” He walked with her to the bed and drew her down to sit. Moonlight played over their hands as he took hers. “I came to Cozumel for one reason. My feelings on that haven’t changed but other things have. When I first met you I thought you knew something, were hiding something. I linked everything about you to Jerry. It didn’t take long for me to see there was something else. I wanted to know about you, for myself.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It’s impossible not to care about you.” At her look of surprise, he smiled. “You project this image of pure self-sufficiency and still manage to look like a waif. Tonight, I purposely maneuvered you into talking about Faith and what had brought you here. When you told me I couldn’t handle it.”

She drew her hand from his. “That’s understandable. Most people have trouble handling unwed mothers.”

Anger bubbled as he grabbed her hand again. “Stop putting words in my mouth. You stood in the kitchen talking and I could see you, young, eager and trusting, being betrayed and hurt. I could see what it had done to you, how it had closed you off from things you wanted to do.”

“I told you I don’t have any regrets.”

“I know.” He lifted her hand and kissed it. “I guess for a moment I needed to have them for you.”

“Jonas, do you think anyone’s life turns out the way they plan it as children?”

He laughed a little as he slipped an arm around her and drew her against him. Liz sat still a moment, unsure how to react to the casual show of affection. Then she leaned her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes. “Jerry and I were going to be partners.”

“In what?”

“In anything.”

She touched the coin on the end of his chain. “He had one of these.”

“Our grandparents gave them to us when we were kids. They’re identical five-dollar gold pieces. Funny, I always wore mine heads up. Jerry wore his heads down.” He closed his fingers over the coin. “He stole his first car when we were sixteen.”

Her fingers crept up to his. “I’m sorry.”

“The thing was he didn’t need to—we had access to any car in the garage. He told me he just wanted to see if he could get away with it.”

“He didn’t make life easy for you.”

“No, he didn’t make life easy. Especially for himself. But he never did anything out of meanness. There were times I hated him, but I never stopped loving him.”

Liz drew closer. “Love hurts more than hate.”

He kissed the top of her head. “Liz, I don’t suppose you’ve ever talked to a lawyer about Faith.”

“Why should I?”

“Marcus has a responsibility, a financial responsibility at the least, to you and Faith.”

“I took money from Marcus once. Not again.”

“Child support payments could be set up very quietly. You could stop working seven days a week.”

Liz took a deep breath and pulled away until she could see his face. “Faith is my child, has been my child only since the moment Marcus handed me a check. I could have had the abortion and gone back to my life as I’d planned it. I chose not to. I chose to have the baby, to raise the baby, to support the baby. She’s never given me anything but pleasure from the moment she was born, and I have no intention of sharing her.”

“One day she’s going to ask you for his name.”

Liz moistened her lips, but nodded. “Then one day I’ll tell her. She’ll have her own choice to make.”

He wouldn’t press her now, but there was no reason he couldn’t have his law clerk begin to investigate child support laws and paternity cases. “Are you going to let me meet her? I know the deal is for me to be out of the house and out of your life when she gets back. I will, but I’d like the chance to meet her.”

“If you’re still in Mexico.”

“One more question.”

The smile came more easily. “One more.”

“There haven’t been any other men, have there?”

The smile faded. “No.”

He felt twin surges of gratitude and guilt. “Then let me show you how it should be.”

“There’s no need—”

Gently, he brushed the hair back from her face. “Yes, there is. For both of us.” He kissed her eyes closed. “I’ve wanted you from the first.” His mouth on hers was as sweet as spring rain and just as gentle. Slowly, he slipped the robe from her shoulders, following the trail with warm lips. “Your skin’s like gold,” he murmured, then traced a finger over her breasts where the tone changed. “And so pale. I want to see all of you.”

“Jonas—”

“All of you,” he repeated, looking into her eyes until the heat kindled again. “I want to make love with all of you.”

She didn’t resist. Never in her life had anyone ever touched her with such reverence, looked at her with such need. When he urged her back, Liz lay on the bed, naked and waiting.

“Lovely,” Jonas murmured. Her body was milk and honey in the moonlight. And her eyes were dark—dark and open and uncertain. “I want you to trust me.” He began a slow journey of exploration at her ankles. “I want to know when I look at you that you’re not afraid of me.”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

“You have been. Maybe I’ve even wanted you to be. No more.”

His tongue slid over her skin and teased the back of her knees. The jolt of power had her rising up and gasping. “Jonas.”

“Relax.” He ran a hand lightly up her hip. “I want to feel your bones melt. Lie back, Liz. Let me show you how much you can have.”

She obeyed, only because she hadn’t the strength to resist. He murmured to her, stroking, nibbling, until she was too steeped in what he gave to give in return. But he wanted her that way, wanted to take her as though she hadn’t been touched before. Not by him, not by anyone. Slowly, thoroughly and with great, great patience he seduced and pleasured. He thought as his mouth skimmed up her thigh that he could hear her skin hum.

She’d never known anything could be like this—so deep, so dark. There was a freedom here, she discovered, that she’d once only associated with diving down through silent fathoms. Her body could float, her limbs could be weightless, but she could feel every touch, every movement. Dreamlike, sensations drifted over her, so soft, so misty, each blended into the next. How long could it go on? Perhaps, after all, there were forevers.

She was lean, with muscles firm in her legs. Like a dancer’s he thought, disciplined and trained. The scent from the bowl on her dresser spiced the air, but it was her fragrance, cool as a waterfall, that swam in his head. His mind emptied of everything but the need to delight her. Love, when unselfish, has incredible power.

His tongue plunged into the heat and his hands gripped hers as she arched, stunned at being flung from a floating world to a churning one. He drew from her, both patient and relentless, until she shuddered to climax and over. When her hands went limp in his, he brought them back to his body and pleasured himself.

She hadn’t known passion could stretch so far or a body endure such a barrage of sensations. His hands, rough at the palm, showed her secrets she’d never had the chance to imagine. His lips, warmed from her own skin, opened mysteries and whispered the answers. He gentled her, he enticed her, he stroked with tenderness and he devoured. Gasping for air, she had no choice but to allow him whatever he wanted, and to strain for him to show her more.

When he was inside of her she thought it was all, and more, than she could ever want. If this was love, she’d never tasted it. If this was passion, she’d only skimmed its surface. Now it was time to risk the depths. Willing, eager, she held on to him.

It was trust he felt from her, and trust that moved him unbearably. He thought he’d needed before, desired before, but never so completely. Though he knew what it was to be part of another person, he’d never expected to feel the merger again. Strong, complex, unavoidable, the emotion swamped him. He belonged to her as fully as he’d wanted her to belong to him.

He took her slowly, so that the thrill that coursed through her seemed endless. His skin was moist when she pressed her lips to his throat. The pulse there was as quick as her own. A giddy sense of triumph moved through her, only to be whipped away with passion before it could spread.

Then he drew her up to him, and her body, liquid and limber with emotion, rose like a wave to press against his. Wrapped close, mouths fused, they moved together. Her hair fell like rain down her back. She could feel his heartbeat fast against her breast.

Still joined, they lowered again. The rhythm quickened. Desperation rose. She heard him breathe her name before the gates burst open and she was lost in the flood.

9

She woke slowly, with a long, lazy stretch. Keeping her eyes closed, Liz waited for the alarm to ring. It wasn’t often she felt so relaxed, even when waking, so she pampered herself and absorbed the luxury of doing nothing. In an hour, she mused, she’d be at the dive shop shifting through the day’s schedule. The glass bottom, she thought, frowning a little. Was she supposed to take it out? Odd that she couldn’t remember. Then with a start, it occurred to her that she didn’t remember because she didn’t know. She hadn’t handled the schedule in two days. And last night…

She opened her eyes and looked into Jonas’s.

“I could watch your mind wake up.” He bent over and kissed her. “Fascinating.”

Liz closed her fingers over the sheet and tugged it a little higher. What was she supposed to say? She’d never spent the night with a man, never awoken with one. She cleared her throat and wondered if every man awoke as sexily disheveled as Jonas Sharpe. “How did you sleep?” she managed, and felt ridiculous.

“Fine.” He smiled as he brushed her hair from her cheek with a fingertip. “And you?”

“Fine.” Her fingers moved restlessly on the sheet until he closed his hands over them. His eyes were warm and heavy and made her heart pound.

“It’s a little late to be nervous around me, Elizabeth.”

“I’m not nervous.” But color rose to her cheeks when he pressed his lips to her naked shoulder.

“Still, it’s rather flattering. If you’re nervous…” He turned his head so the tip of his tongue could toy with her ear. “Then you’re not unmoved. I wouldn’t like to think you felt casually about being with me—yet.”

Was it possible to want so much this morning what she’d sated herself with the night before? She didn’t think it should be, and yet her body told her differently. She would, as she always did, listen to her intellect first. “It must be almost time to get up.” One hand firmly on the sheets, she rose on her elbows to look at the clock. “That’s not right.” She blinked and focused again. “It can’t be eight-fifteen.”

“Why not?” He slipped a hand beneath the sheet and stroked her thigh.

“Because.” His touch had her pulses speeding. “I always set it for six-fifteen.”

Finding her a challenge, Jonas brushed light kisses over her shoulder, down her arm. “You didn’t set it last night.”

“I always—” She cut herself off. It was hard enough to try to think when he was touching her, but when she remembered the night before, it was nearly impossible to understand why she had to think. Her mind hadn’t been on alarms and schedules and customers when her body had curled into Jonas’s to sleep. Her mind, as it was now, had been filled with him.

“Always what?”

She wished he wouldn’t distract her with fingertips sliding gently over her skin. She wished he could touch her everywhere at once. “I always wake up at six, whether I set it or not.”

“You didn’t this time.” He laughed as he eased her back down. “I suppose I should be flattered again.”

“Maybe I flatter you too much,” she murmured and started to shift away. He simply rolled her back to him. “I have to get up.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Jonas, I’m already late. I have to get to work.”

Sunlight dappled over her face. He wanted to see it over the rest of her. “The only thing you have to do is make love with me.” He kissed her fingers, then slowly drew them from the sheet. “I’ll never get through the day without you.”

“The boats—”

“Are already out, I’m sure.” He cupped her breast, rubbing his thumb back and forth over the nipple. “Luis seems competent.”

“He is. I haven’t been in for two days.”

“One more won’t hurt.”

Her body vibrated with need that slowly wound itself into her mind. Her arms came up to him, around him. “No, I guess it won’t.”

* * *

She hadn’t stayed in bed until ten o’clock since she’d been a child. Liz felt as irresponsible as one as she started the coffee. True, Luis could handle the shop and the boats as well as she, but it wasn’t his job. It was hers. Here she was, brewing coffee at ten o’clock, with her body still warm from loving. Nothing had been the same since Jonas Sharpe had arrived on her doorstep.

“It’s useless to give yourself a hard time for taking a morning off,” Jonas said from behind her.

Liz popped bread into the toaster. “I suppose not, since I don’t even know today’s schedule.”

“Liz.” Jonas took her by the arms and firmly turned her around. He studied her, gauging her mood before he spoke. “You know, back in Philadelphia I’m considered a workaholic. I’ve had friends express concern over the workload I take on and the hours I put in. Compared to you, I’m retired.”

Her brows drew together as they did when she was concentrating. Or annoyed. “We each do what we have to do.”

“True enough. It appears what I have to do is harass you until you relax.”

She had to smile. He said it so reasonably and his eyes were laughing. “I’m sure you have a reputation for being an expert on harassment.”

“I majored in it at college.”

“Good for you. But I’m an expert at budgeting my own time. And there’s my toast.” He let her pluck it out, waited until she’d buttered it, then took a piece for himself.

“You mentioned diving lessons.”

She was still frowning at him when she heard the coffee begin to simmer. She reached for one cup, then relented and took two. “What about them?”

“I’ll take one. Today.”

“Today?” She handed him his coffee, drinking her own standing by the stove. “I’ll have to see what’s scheduled. The way things have been going, both dive boats should already be out.”

“Not a group lesson, a private one. You can take me out on the Expatriate.”

“Luis usually takes care of the private lessons.”

He smiled at her. “I prefer dealing with the management.”

Liz dusted crumbs from her fingers. “All right then. It’ll cost you.”

He lifted his cup in salute. “I never doubted it.”

* * *

Liz was laughing when Jonas pulled into a narrow parking space at the hotel. “If he’d picked your pocket, why did you defend him?”

“Everyone’s entitled to representation,” Jonas reminded her. “Besides, I figured if I took him on as a client, he’d leave my wallet alone.”

“And did he?”

“Yeah.” Jonas took her hand as they crossed the sidewalk to the sand. “He stole my watch instead.”

She giggled, a foolish, girlish sound he’d never heard from her. “And did you get him off?”

“Two years probation. There, it looks like business is good.”

Liz shielded her eyes from the sun and looked toward the shop. Luis was busily fitting two couples with snorkel gear. A glance to the left showed her only the Expatriate remained in dock. “Cozumel’s becoming very popular,” she murmured.

“Isn’t that the idea?”

“For business?” She moved her shoulders. “I’d be a fool to complain.”

“But?”

“But sometimes I think it would be nice if I could block out the changes. I don’t want to see the water choked with suntan oil. Hola, Luis.”

“Liz!” His gaze passed over Jonas briefly before he grinned at her. “We thought maybe you deserted us. How did you like Acapulco?”

“It was…different,” she decided, and was already scooting behind the counter to find the daily schedule. “Any problems?”

“Jose took care of a couple repairs. I brought Miguel back to fill in, but I keep an eye on him. Got this—what do you call it—brochure on the aqua bikes.” He pulled out a colorful pamphlet, but Liz only nodded.

“The Brinkman party’s out diving. Did we take them to Palancar?”

“Two days in a row. Miguel likes them. They tip good.”

“Hmm. You’re handling the shop alone.”

“No problem. Hey, there was a guy.” He screwed up his face as he tried to remember the name. “Skinny guy, American. You know the one you took out on the beginners’ trip?”

She flipped through the receipts and was satisfied. “Trydent?”

“Sí, that was it. He came by a coupla times.”

“Rent anything?”

“No.” Luis wiggled his eyebrows at her. “He was looking for you.”

Liz shrugged it off. If he hadn’t rented anything, he didn’t interest her. “If everything’s under control here, I’m going to take Mr. Sharpe out for a diving lesson.”

Luis looked quickly at Jonas, then away. The man made him uneasy, but Liz looked happier than she had in weeks. “Want me to get the gear?”

“No, I’ll take care of it.” She looked up and smiled at Jonas. “Write Mr. Sharpe up a rental form and give him a receipt for the gear, the lesson and the boat trip. Since it’s…” She trailed off as she checked her watch. “Nearly eleven, give him the half-day rate.”

“You’re all heart,” Jonas murmured as she went to the shelves to choose his equipment.

“You got the best teacher,” Luis told him, but couldn’t manage more than another quick look at Jonas.

“I’m sure you’re right.” Idly, Jonas swiveled the newspaper Luis had tossed on the counter around to face him. He missed being able to sit down with the morning paper over coffee. The Spanish headlines told him nothing. “Anything going on I should know about?” Jonas asked, indicating the paper.

Luis relaxed a bit as he wrote. Jonas’s voice wasn’t so much like Jerry’s when you weren’t looking at him. “Haven’t had a chance to look at it yet. Busy morning.”

Going with habit, Jonas turned the paper over. There, in a faded black-and-white picture, was Erika. Jonas’s fingers tightened. He glanced back and saw that Liz was busy, her back to him. Without a word, he slid the paper over the receipt Luis was writing.

“Hey, that’s the—”

“I know,” Jonas said in an undertone. “What does it say?”

Luis bent over the paper to read. He straightened again very slowly, and his face was ashen. “Dead,” he whispered. “She’s dead.”

“How?”

Luis’s fingers opened and closed on the pen he held. “Stabbed.”

Jonas thought of the knife held at Liz’s throat. “When?”

“Last night.” Luis had to swallow twice. “They found her last night.”

“Jonas,” Liz called from the back, “how much do you weigh?”

Keeping his eyes on Luis, Jonas turned the paper over again. “One seventy. She doesn’t need to hear this now,” he added under his breath. He pulled bills from his wallet and laid them on the counter. “Finish writing the receipt.”

After a struggle, Luis mastered his own fear and straightened. “I don’t want anything to happen to Liz.”

Jonas met the look with a challenge that held for several humming seconds before he relaxed. The smaller man was terrified, but he was thinking of Liz. “Neither do I. I’m going to see nothing does.”

“You brought trouble.”

“I know.” His gaze shifted beyond Luis to Liz. “But if I leave, the trouble doesn’t.”

For the first time, Luis forced himself to study Jonas’s face. After a moment, he blew out a long breath. “I liked your brother, but I think it was him who brought trouble.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore who brought it. I’m going to look out for her.”

“Then you look good,” Luis warned softly. “You look real good.”

“First lesson,” Liz said as she unlocked her storage closet. “Each diver carries and is responsible for his own gear.” She jerked her head back to where Jonas’s was stacked. With a last look at Luis, he walked through the doorway to gather it up.

“Preparing for a dive is twice as much work as diving itself,” she began as she hefted her tanks. “It’s a good thing it’s worth it. We’ll be back before sundown, Luis. Hasta luego.”

“Liz.” She stopped, turning back to where Luis hovered in the doorway. His gaze passed over Jonas, then returned to her. “Hasta luego,” he managed, and closed his fingers over the medal he wore around his neck.

The moment she was on board, Liz restacked her gear. As a matter of routine, she checked all the Expatriate’s gauges. “Can you cast off?” she asked Jonas.

He ran a hand down her hair, surprising her. She looked so competent, so in charge. He wondered if by staying close he was protecting or endangering. It was becoming vital to believe the first. “I can handle it.”

She felt her stomach flutter as he continued to stare at her. “Then you’d better stop looking at me and do it.”

“I like looking at you.” He drew her close, just to hold her. “I could spend years looking at you.”

Her arms came up, hesitated, then dropped back to her sides. It would be so easy to believe. To trust again, give again, be hurt again. She wanted to tell him of the love growing inside her, spreading and strengthening with each moment. But if she told him she’d no longer have even the illusion of control. Without control, she was defenseless.

“I clocked you on at eleven,” she said, but couldn’t resist breathing deeply of his scent and committing it to memory.

Because she made him smile again, he drew her back. “I’m paying the bill, I’ll worry about the time.”

“Diving lesson,” she reminded him. “And you can’t dive until you cast off.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” But he gave her a hard, breath-stealing kiss before he jumped back on the dock.

Liz drew air into her lungs and let it out slowly before she turned on the engines. All she could hope was that she looked more in control than she felt. He was winning a battle, she mused, that he didn’t even know he was fighting. She waited for Jonas to join her again before she eased the throttle forward.

“There are plenty of places to dive where we don’t need the boat, but I thought you’d enjoy something away from the beaches. Palancar is one of the most stunning reefs in the Caribbean. It’s probably the best place to start because the north end is shallow and the wall slopes rather than having a sheer vertical drop-off. There are a lot of caves and passageways, so it makes for an interesting dive.”

“I’m sure, but I had something else in mind.”

“Something else?”

Jonas took a small book out of his pocket and flipped through it. “What do these numbers look like to you?”

Liz recognized the book. It was the same one he’d used in Acapulco to copy down the numbers from his brother’s book in the safe-deposit box. He still had his priorities, she reminded herself, then drew back on the throttle to let the boat idle.

The numbers were in precise, neat lines. Any child who’d paid attention in geography class would recognize them. “Longitude and latitude.”

He nodded. “Do you have a chart?”

He’d planned this since he’d first seen the numbers, she realized. Their being lovers changed nothing else. “Of course, but I don’t need it for this. I know these waters. That’s just off the coast of Isla Mujeres.” Liz adjusted her course and picked up speed. Perhaps, she thought, the course had already been set for both of them long before this. They had no choice but to see it through. “It’s a long trip. You might as well relax.”

He put his hands on her shoulders to knead. “We won’t find anything, but I have to go.”

“I understand.”

“Would you rather I go alone?”

She shook her head violently, but said nothing.

“Liz, this had to be his drop point. By tomorrow, Moralas will have the numbers and send his own divers down. I have to see for myself.”

“You’re chasing shadows, Jonas. Jerry’s gone. Nothing you can do is going to change that.”

“I’ll find out why. I’ll find out who. That’ll be enough.”

“Will it?” With her hand gripping the wheel hard, she looked over her shoulder. His eyes were close, but they held that cool, set look again. “I don’t think so—not for you.” Liz turned her face back to the sea. She would take him where he wanted to go.

Isla Mujeres, Island of Women, was a small gem in the water. Surrounded by reefs and studded with untouched lagoons, it was one of the perfect retreats of the Caribbean. Party boats from the continental coast or one of the other islands cruised there daily to offer their customers snorkeling or diving at its best. It had once been known by pirates and blessed by a goddess. Liz anchored the boat off the southwest coast. Once again, she became the teacher.

“It’s important to know and understand both the name and the use of every piece of equipment. It’s not just a matter of stuffing in a mouthpiece and strapping on a tank. No smoking,” she added as Jonas took out a cigarette. “It’s ridiculous to clog up your lungs in the first place, and absurd to do it before a dive.”

Jonas set the pack on the bench beside him. “How long are we going down?”

“We’ll keep it under an hour. The depth here ranges to eighty feet. That means the nitrogen in your air supply will be over three times denser than what your system’s accustomed to. In some people at some depths, this can cause temporary imbalances. If you begin to feel light-headed, signal to me right away. We’ll descend in stages to give your body time to get used to the changes in pressure. We ascend the same way in order to give the nitrogen time to expel. If you come up too quickly, you risk decompression sickness. It can be fatal.” As she spoke, she spread out the gear with the intention of explaining each piece. “Nothing is to be taken for granted in the water. It is not your milieu. You’re dependent on your equipment and your own good sense. It’s beautiful and it’s exciting, but it’s not an amusement park.”

“Is this the same lecture you give on the dive boat?”

“Basically.”

“You’re very good.”

“Thank you.” She picked up a gauge. “Now—”

“Can we get started?” he asked and reached for his wet suit.

“We are getting started. You can’t dive without a working knowledge of your equipment.”

“That’s a depth gauge.” He nodded toward her hand as he stripped down to black briefs. “A very sophisticated one. I wouldn’t think most dive shops would find it necessary to stock that quality.”

“This is mine,” she murmured. “But I keep a handful for rentals.”

“I don’t think I mentioned that you have the best-tended equipment I’ve ever seen. It isn’t in the same league with your personal gear, but it’s quality. Give me a hand, will you?”

Liz rose to help him into the tough, stretchy suit. “You’ve gone down before.”

“I’ve been diving since I was fifteen.” Jonas pulled up the zipper before bending over to check the tanks himself.

“Since you were fifteen.” Liz yanked off her shirt and tossed it aside. Fuming, she pulled off her shorts until she wore nothing but a string bikini and a scowl. “Then why did you let me go on that way?”

“I liked hearing you.” Jonas glanced up and felt his blood surge. “Almost as much as I like looking at you.”

She wasn’t in the mood to be flattered, less in the mood to be charmed. Without asking for assistance, she tugged herself into her wet suit. “You’re still paying for the lesson.”

Jonas grinned as he examined his flippers. “I never doubted it.”

She strapped on the rest of her gear in silence. It was difficult even for her to say if she were really angry. All she knew was the day, and dive, weren’t as simple as they had started out to be. Lifting the top of a bench, she reached into a compartment and took out two short metal sticks shaped like bats.

“What’s this for?” Jonas asked as she handed him one.

“Insurance.” She adjusted her mask. “We’re going down to the caves where the sharks sleep.”

“Sharks don’t sleep.”

“The oxygen content in the water in the cave keeps them quiescent. But don’t think you can trust them.”

Without another word, she swung over the side and down the ladder.

The water was as clear as glass, so she could see for more than a hundred feet. As she heard Jonas plunge in beside her, Liz turned to assure herself he did indeed know what he was doing. Catching her skeptical look, Jonas merely circled his thumb and forefinger, then pointed down.

He was tense. Liz could feel it from him, though she understood it had nothing to do with his skill underwater. His brother had dived here once—she was as certain of it as Jonas. And the reason for his dives had been the reason for his death. She no longer had to think whether she was angry. In a gesture as personal as a kiss, she reached out a hand and took his.

Grateful, Jonas curled his fingers around hers. He didn’t know what he was looking for, or even why he continued to look when already he’d found more than he’d wanted to. His brother had played games with the rules and had lost. Some would say there was justice in that. But they’d shared birth. He had to go on looking, and go on hoping.

Liz saw the first of the devilfish and tugged on Jonas’s hand. Such things never failed to touch her spirit. The giant manta rays cruised together, feeding on plankton and unconcerned with the human intruders. Liz kicked forward, delighted to swim among them. Their huge mouths could crush and devour crustaceans. Their wingspan of twenty feet and more was awesome. Without fear, Liz reached out to touch. Pleasure came easily, as it always did to her in the sea. Her eyes were laughing as she reached out again for Jonas.

They descended farther, and some of his tension began to dissolve. There was something different about her here, a lightness, an ease that dissolved the sadness that always seemed to linger in her eyes. She looked free, and more, as happy as he’d ever seen her. If it were possible to fall in love in a matter of moments, Jonas fell in love in those, forty feet below the surface with a mermaid who’d forgotten how to dream.

Everything she saw, everything she could touch fascinated her. He could see it in the way she moved, the way she looked at everything as though it were her first dive. If he could have found a way, he would have stayed with her there, surrounded by love and protected by fathoms.

They swam deeper, but leisurely. If something evil had been begun, or been ended there, it had left no trace. The sea was calm and silent and full of life too lovely to exist in the air.

When the shadow passed over, Liz looked up. In all her dives, she’d never seen anything so spectacular. Thousands upon thousands of silvery grunts moved together in a wave so dense that they might have been one creature. Eyes wide with the wonder of it, Liz lifted her arms and took her body up. The wave swayed as a unit, avoiding intrusion. Delighted, she signaled for Jonas to join her. The need to share the magic was natural. This was the pull of the sea that had driven her to study, urged to explore and invited her once to dream. With her fingers linked with Jonas’s, she propelled them closer. The school of fish split in half so that it became two unified forms swirling on either side of them. The sea teemed with them, thick clouds of silver so tightly grouped that they seemed fused together.

For a moment she was as close to her own fantasies as she had ever been, floating free, surrounded by magic, with her lover’s hand in hers. Impulsively, she wrapped her arms around Jonas and held on. The clouds of fish swarmed around them, linked into one, then swirled away.

He could feel her pulse thud when he reached for her wrist. He could see the fascinated delight in her eyes. Hampered by his human frailty in the water, he could only touch his hand to her cheek. When she lifted her own to press it closer, it was enough. Side by side they swam toward the seafloor.

The limestone caves were eerie and compelling. Once Jonas saw the head of a moray eel slide out and curve, either in curiosity or warning. An old turtle with barnacles crusting his back rose from his resting place beneath a rock and swam between them. Then at the entrance to a cave, Liz pointed and shared another mystery.

The shark moved across the sand, as a dog might on a hearth rug. His small, black eyes stared back at them as his gills slowly drew in water. While they huddled just inside the entrance, their bubbles rising up through the porous limestone and toward the surface, the shark shifted restlessly. Jonas reached for Liz’s hand to draw her back, but she moved a bit closer, anxious to see.

In a quick move, the shark shot toward the entrance. Jonas was grabbing for Liz and his knife, when she merely poked at the head with her wooden bat. Without pausing, the shark swam toward the open sea and vanished.

He wanted to strangle her. He wanted to tell her how fascinating she was to watch. Since he could do neither, Jonas merely closed a hand over her throat and gave her a mock shake. Her laughter had bubbles dancing.

They swam on together, parting from time to time to explore separate interests. He decided she’d forgotten his purpose in coming, but thought it was just as well. If she could take this hour for personal freedom, he was glad of it. For him, there were demands.

The water and the life in it were undeniably beautiful, but Jonas noticed other things. They hadn’t seen another diver and their down time was nearly up. The caves where the sharks slept were also a perfect place to conceal a cache of drugs. Only the very brave or the very foolish would swim in their territory at night. He thought of his brother and knew Jerry would have considered it the best kind of adventure. A man with a reason could swim into one of the caves while the sharks were out feeding, and leave or take whatever he liked.

Liz hadn’t forgotten why Jonas had come. Because she thought she could understand a part of what he was feeling, she gave him room. Here, eighty feet below the surface, he was searching for something, anything, to help him accept his brother’s death. And his brother’s life.

It would come to an end soon, Liz reflected. The police had the name of the go-between in Acapulco. And the other name that Jonas had given them, she remembered suddenly. Where had he gotten that one? She looked toward him and realized there were things he wasn’t telling her. That, too, would end soon, she promised herself. Then she found herself abruptly out of air.

She didn’t panic. Liz was too well trained to panic. Immediately, she checked her gauge and saw that she had ten full minutes left. Reaching back, she ran a hand down her hose and found it unencumbered. But she couldn’t draw air.

Whatever the gauge said, her life was on the line. If she swam toward the surface, her lungs would be crushed by the pressure. Forcing herself to stay calm, she swam in a diagonal toward Jonas. When she caught his ankle, she tugged sharply. The smile he turned with faded the moment he saw her eyes. Recognizing her signal, he immediately removed his regulator and passed it to her. Liz drew in air. Nodding, she handed it back to him. Their bodies brushing, her hand firm on his shoulder, they began their slow ascent.

Buddy-breathing, they rose closer to the surface, restraining themselves from rushing. What took only a matter of minutes seemed to drag on endlessly. The moment Liz’s head broke water, she pushed back her mask and gulped in fresh air.

“What happened?” Jonas demanded, but when he felt her begin to shake, he only swore and pulled her with him to the ladder. “Take it easy.” His hand was firm at her back as she climbed up.

“I’m all right.” But she collapsed on a bench, without the energy to draw off her tanks. Her body shuddered once with relief as Jonas took the weight from her. With her head between her knees, she waited for the mists to clear. “I’ve never had anything like that happen,” she managed. “Not at eighty feet.”

He was rubbing her hands to warm them. “What did happen?”

“I ran out of air.”

Enraged, he took her by the shoulders and dragged her back to a sitting position. “Ran out of air? That’s unforgivably careless. How can you give lessons when you haven’t the sense to watch your own gauges?”

“I watched my gauge.” She drew air in and let it out slowly. “I should have had another ten minutes.”

“You rent diving equipment, for God’s sake! How can you be negligent with your own? You might’ve died.”

The insult to her competence went a long way toward smothering the fear. “I’m never careless,” she snapped at him. “Not with rental equipment or my own.” She dragged the mask from her head and tossed it on the bench. “Look at my gauge. I should have had ten minutes left.”

He looked, but it didn’t relieve his anger. “Your equipment should be checked. If you go down with a faulty gauge you’re inviting an accident.”

“My equipment has been checked. I check it myself after every dive, and it was fine before I stored it. I filled those tanks myself.” The alternative came to her even as she finished speaking. Her face, already pale, went white. “God, Jonas, I filled them myself. I checked every piece of equipment the last time I went down.”

He closed a hand over hers hard enough to make her wince. “You keep it in the shop, in that closet.”

“I lock it up.”

“How many keys?”

“Mine—and an extra set in the drawer. They’re rarely used because I always leave mine there when I go out on the boats.”

“But the extra set would have been used when we were away?”

The shaking was starting again. This time it wasn’t as simple to control it. “Yes.”

“And someone used the key to the closet to get in and tamper with your equipment.”

She moistened her lips. “Yes.”

The rage ripped inside him until he was nearly blind with it. Hadn’t he just promised to watch out for her, to keep her safe? With intensely controlled movements, he pulled off his flippers and discarded his mask. “You’re going back. You’re going to pack, then I’m putting you on a plane. You can stay with my family until this is over.”

“No.”

“You’re going to do exactly what I say.”

“No,” she said again and managed to draw the strength to stand. “I’m not going anywhere. This is the second time someone’s threatened my life.”

“And they’re not going to have a chance to do it again.”

“I’m not leaving my home.”

“Don’t be a fool.” He rose. Knowing he couldn’t touch her, he unzipped his wet suit and began to strip it off. “Your business isn’t going to fall apart. You can come back when it’s safe.”

“I’m not leaving.” She took a step toward him. “You came here looking for revenge. When you have it, you can leave and be satisfied. Now I’m looking for answers. I can’t leave because they’re here.”

Struggling to keep his hands gentle, he took her face between them. “I’ll find them for you.”

“You know better than that, don’t you, Jonas? Answers don’t mean anything unless you find them yourself. I want my daughter to be able to come home. Until I find those answers, until it’s safe, she can’t.” She lifted her hands to his face so that they stood as a unit. “We both have reasons to look now.”

He sat, took his pack of cigarettes and spoke flatly. “Erika’s dead.”

The anger that had given her the strength to stand wavered. “What?”

“Murdered.” His voice was cold again, hard again. “A few days ago I met her, paid her for a name.”

Liz braced herself against the rail. “The name you gave to the captain.”

Jonas lit his cigarette, telling himself he was justified to put fear back into her eyes. “That’s right. She asked some questions, got some answers. She told me this Pablo Manchez was bad, a professional killer. Jerry was killed by a pro. So, it appears, was Erika.”

“She was shot?”

“Stabbed,” Jonas corrected and watched Liz’s hand reach involuntarily for her own neck. “That’s right.” He drew violently on the cigarette then hurled it overboard before he rose. “You’re going back to the States until this is all over.”

She turned her back on him a moment, needing to be certain she could be strong. “I’m not leaving, Jonas. We have the same problem.”

“Liz—”

“No.” When she turned back her chin was up and her eyes were clear. “You see, I’ve run from problems before, and it doesn’t work.”

“This isn’t a matter of running, it’s a matter of being sensible.”

“You’re staying.”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“Then neither do I.”

“Liz, I don’t want you hurt.”

She tilted her head as she studied him. She could believe that, she realized, and take comfort in it. “Will you go?”

“I can’t. You know I can’t.”

“Neither can I.” She wrapped her arms around him, pressed her cheek to his shoulder in a first spontaneous show of need or affection. “Let’s go home,” she murmured. “Let’s just go home.”

10

Every morning when Liz awoke she was certain Captain Moralas would call to tell her it was all over. Every night when she closed her eyes, she was certain it was only a matter of one more day. Time went on.

Every morning when Liz awoke she was certain Jonas would tell her he had to leave. Every night when she slept in his arms, she was certain it was the last time. He stayed.

For over ten years her life had had a certain purpose. Success. She’d started the struggle toward it in order to survive and to provide for her child. Somewhere along the way she’d learned the satisfaction of being on her own and making it work. In over ten years, Liz had gone steadily forward without detours. A detour could mean failure and the loss of independence. It had been barely a month since Jonas had walked into her house and her life. Since that time the straight road she had followed had forked. Ignoring the changes hadn’t helped, fighting them hadn’t worked. Now it no longer seemed she had the choice of which path to follow.

Because she had to hold on to something, she worked every day, keeping stubbornly to her old routine. It was the only aspect of her life that she could be certain she could control. Though it brought some semblance of order to her life, it didn’t keep Liz’s mind at rest. She found herself studying her customers with suspicion. Business thrived as the summer season drew closer. It didn’t seem as important as it had even weeks before, but she kept the shop open seven days a week.

Jonas had taken the fabric of her life, plucked at a few threads and changed everything. Liz had come to the point that she could admit nothing would ever be quite the same again, but she had yet to come to the point that she knew what to do about it. When he left, as she knew he would, she would have to learn all over again how to suppress longings and black out dreams.

They would find Jerry Sharpe’s killer. They would find the man with the knife. If she hadn’t believed that, Liz would never have gone on day after day. But after the danger was over, after all questions were answered, her life would never be as it had been. Jonas had woven himself into it. When he went away, he’d leave a hole behind that would take all her will to mend.

Her life had been torn before. Liz could comfort herself that she had put it together again. The shape had been different, the texture had changed, but she had put it together. She could do so again. She would have to.

There were times when she lay in bed in the dark, in the early hours of the morning, restless, afraid she would have to begin those repairs before she was strong enough.

Jonas could feel her shift beside him. He’d come to understand she rarely slept peacefully. Or she no longer slept peacefully. He wished she would lean on him, but knew she never would. Her independence was too vital, and opposingly, her insecurity was too deep to allow her to admit a need for another. Even the sharing of a burden was difficult for her. He wanted to soothe. Through his adult life, Jonas had carefully chosen companions who had no problems, required no advice, no comfort, no support. A woman who required such things required an emotional attachment he had never been willing to make. He wasn’t a selfish man, simply a cautious one. Throughout his youth, and through most of his adult life, he’d picked up the pieces his brother had scattered. Consciously or unconsciously, Jonas had promised himself he’d never be put in the position of having to do so for anyone else.

Now he was drawing closer and closer to a woman who elicited pure emotion, then tried to deflect it. He was falling in love with a woman who needed him but refused to admit it. She was strong and had both the intelligence and the will to take care of herself. And she had eyes so soft, so haunted, that a man would risk anything to protect her from any more pain.

She had completely changed his life. She had altered the simple, tidy pattern he’d been weaving for himself. He needed to soothe, to protect, to share. There was nothing he could do to change that. Whenever he touched her, he came closer to admitting there was nothing he would do.

The bed was warm and the room smelled of the flowers that grew wild outside the open window. Their scent mixed with the bowl of potpourri on Liz’s dresser. Now and then the breeze ruffled through palm fronds so that the sound whispered but didn’t disturb. Beside him was a woman whose body was slim and restless. Her hair spread over her pillow and onto his, carrying no more fragrance than wind over water. The moonlight trickled in, dipping into corners, filtering over the bed so he could trace her silhouette. As she tossed in sleep, he drew her closer. Her muscles were tense, as though she were prepared to reject the gift of comfort even before it was offered. Slowly, as her breath whispered at his throat, he began to massage her shoulders. Strong shoulders, soft skin. He found the combination irresistible. She murmured, shifting toward him, but he didn’t know if it was acceptance or request. It didn’t matter.

She felt so good there; she felt right there. All questions, all doubts could wait for the sunrise. Before dawn they would share the need that was in both of them. In the moonlight, in the quiet hours, each would have what the other could offer. He touched his mouth lightly, ever so lightly, to hers.

She sighed, but it was only a whisper of a sound—a sigh in sleep as her body relaxed against his. If she dreamed now, she dreamed of easy things, calm water, soft grass. He trailed a hand down her back, exploring the shape of her. Long, lean, slender and strong. He felt his own body warm and pulse. Passion, still sleepy, began to stir.

She seemed to wake in stages. First her skin, then her blood, then muscle by muscle. Her body was alert and throbbing before her mind raced to join it. She found herself wrapped around Jonas, already aroused, already hungry. When his mouth came to hers again, she answered him.

There was no hesitation in her this time, no moment of doubt before desire overwhelmed reason. She wanted to give herself to him as fully as it was possible to give. It wouldn’t be wise to speak her feelings out loud. It couldn’t be safe to tell him with words that her heart was stripped of defenses and open for him. But she could show him, and by doing so give them both the pleasure of love without restrictions.

Her arms tightened around him as her mouth roamed madly over his. She drew his bottom lip inside the heat, inside the moistness of her mouth and nibbled, sucked until his breath came fast and erratic. She felt the abrupt tension as his body pressed against hers and realized he, too, could be seduced. He, too, could be aroused beyond reason. And she realized with a heady sort of wonder that she could be the seducer, she could arouse.

She shifted her body under his, tentatively, but with a slow rhythm that had him murmuring her name and grasping for control. Instinctively she sought out vulnerabilities, finding them one by one, learning from them, taking from them. Her tongue flicked over his throat, seeking then enjoying the subtle, distinct taste of man. His pulse was wild there, as wild as hers. She shifted again until she lay across him and his body was hers for the taking.

Her hands were inexperienced so that her stroking was soft and hesitant. It drove him mad. No one had ever been so sweetly determined to bring him pleasure. She pressed kisses over his chest, slowly, experimentally, then rubbed her cheek over his skin so that the touch both soothed and excited.

His body was on fire, yet it seemed to float free so that he could feel the passage of air breathe cool over his flesh. She touched, and the heat spread like brushfire. She tasted and the moistness from her lips was like the whisper of a night breeze, cooling, calming.

“Tell me what you want.” She looked up and her eyes were luminous in the moonlight, dark and beautiful. “Tell me what to do.”

It was almost more than he could bear, the purity of the request, the willingness to give. He reached up so that his hands were lost in her hair. He could have kept her there forever, arched above him with her skin glowing gold in the thin light, her hair falling pale over her shoulders, her eyes shimmering with need. He drew her down until their lips met again. Hunger exploded between them. She didn’t need to be told, she didn’t need to be taught. Her body took over so that her own desire drove them both.

Jonas let reason go, let control be damned. Gripping her hips, he drew her up, then brought her to him, brought himself into her with a force that had her gasping in astonished pleasure. As she shuddered again, then again, he reached for her hands. Their fingers linked as she arched back and let her need set the pace. Frantic. Desperate. Uncontrollable. Pleasure, pain, delight, terror all whipped through her, driving her on, thrusting her higher.

He couldn’t think, but he could feel. Until that moment, he wouldn’t have believed it possible to feel so much so intensely. Sensations racked him, building and building and threatening to explode until the only sound he could hear was the roar of his own heart inside his head. With his eyes half open he could see her above him, naked and glorious in the moonlight. And when she plunged him beyond sensation, beyond sight and reason, he could still see her. He always would.

* * *

It didn’t seem possible. It didn’t, Liz thought, seem reasonable that she could be managing the shop, dealing with customers, stacking equipment when her system was still soaking up every delicious sensation she’d experienced just before dawn. Yet she was there, filling out forms, giving advice, quoting prices and making change. Still it was all mechanical. She’d been wise to delegate the diving tours and remain on shore.

She greeted her customers, some old and some new, and tried not to think too deeply about the list she’d been forced to give Moralas. How many of them would come to the Black Coral for equipment or lessons if they knew that by doing only that they were under police investigation? Jerry Sharpe’s murder, and her involvement in it, could endanger her business far more than a slow season or a rogue hurricane.

Over and above her compassion, her sympathy and her hopes that Jonas could put his mind and heart at rest was a desperate need to protect her own, to guard what she’d built from nothing for her daughter. No matter how she tried to bury it, she couldn’t completely block out the resentment she felt for being pulled into a situation that had been none of her making.

Yet there was a tug-of-war waging inside of her. Resentment for the disruption of her life battled against the longing to have Jonas remain in it. Without the disruption, he never would have come to her. No matter how much she tried, she could never regret the weeks they’d had together. She promised herself that she never would. It was time to admit that she had a great scope of love that had been trapped inside her. Rejected once, it had refused to risk again. But Jonas had released it, or perhaps she’d released it herself. Whatever happened, however it ended, she’d been able to love again.

“You’re a hard lady to pin down.”

Startled out of her own thoughts, Liz looked up. It took her a moment to remember the face, and a moment still to link a name with it. “Mr. Trydent.” She rose from her desk to go to the counter. “I didn’t realize you were still on the island.”

“I only take one vacation a year, so I like to make the most of it.” He set a tall paper cup that bounced with ice on the counter. “I figured this was the only way to get you to have a drink with me.”

Liz glanced at the cup and wondered if she’d been businesslike or rude. At the moment she would have liked nothing better than to be alone with her own thoughts, but a customer was a customer. “That’s nice of you. I’ve been pretty tied up.”

“No kidding.” He gave her a quick smile that showed straight teeth and easy charm. “You’re either out of town or out on a boat. So I thought about the mountain and Mohammed.” He glanced around. “Things are pretty quiet now.”

“Lunchtime,” Liz told him. “Everyone who’s going out is already out. Everyone else is grabbing some food or a siesta before they decide how to spend the afternoon.”

“Island living.”

She smiled back. “Exactly. Tried any more diving?”

He made a face. “I let myself get talked into a night dive with Mr. Ambuckle before he headed back to Texas. I’m planning on sticking to the pool for the rest of my vacation.”

“Diving’s not for everyone.”

“You can say that again.” He drank from the second cup he’d brought, then leaned on the counter. “How about dinner? Dinner’s for everyone.”

She lifted a brow, a little surprised, a little flattered that he seemed bent on a pursuit. “I rarely eat out.”

“I like home cooking.”

“Mr. Trydent—”

“Scott,” he corrected.

“Scott, I appreciate the offer, but I’m…” How did she put it? Liz wondered. “I’m seeing someone.”

He laid a hand on hers. “Serious?”

Not sure whether she was embarrassed or amused, Liz drew her hand away. “I’m a serious sort of person.”

“Well.” Scott lifted his cup, watching her over the rim as he drank. “I guess we’d better stick to business then. How about explaining the snorkeling equipment to me?”

With a shrug, Liz glanced over her shoulder. “If you can swim, you can snorkel.”

“Let’s just say I’m cautious. Mind if I come in and take a look?”

She’d been ungracious enough for one day, Liz decided. She sent him a smile. “Sure, look all you want.” When he’d skirted around the counter and through the door, she walked with him to the back shelves. “The snorkel’s just a hollow tube with a mouthpiece,” she began as she took one down to offer it. “You put this lip between your teeth and breathe normally through your mouth. With the tube attached to a face mask, you can paddle around on the surface indefinitely.”

“Okay. How about all the times I see these little tubes disappear under the water?”

“When you want to go down, you hold your breath and let out a bit of air to help you descend. The trick is to blow out and clear the tube of water when you surface. Once you get the knack, you can go down and up dozens of times without ever taking your face out of the water.”

Scott turned the snorkel over in his hand. “There’s a lot to see down there.”

“A whole world.”

He was no longer looking at the snorkel, but at her. “I guess you know a lot about the water and the reefs in this area. Know much about Isla Mujeres?”

“Excellent snorkeling and diving.” Absently, Liz took down a mask to show him how to attach the snorkel. “We offer full-and half-day trips. If you’re adventurous enough, there are caves to explore.”

“And some are fairly remote,” he said idly.

“For snorkeling you’d want to stay closer to the reefs, but an experienced diver could spend days around the caves.”

“And nights.” Scott passed the snorkel through his fingers as he watched her. “I imagine a diver could go down there at night and be completely undisturbed.”

She wasn’t certain why she felt a trickle of alarm. Automatically, she glanced over his shoulder to where her police guard half dozed in the sun. Silly, she told herself with a little shrug. She’d never been one to jump at shadows. “It’s a dangerous area for night diving.”

“Some people prefer danger, especially when it’s profitable.”

Her mouth was dry, so she swallowed as she replaced the mask on the shelf. “Perhaps. I don’t.”

This time his smile wasn’t so charming or his eyes so friendly. “Don’t you?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do.” His hand closed over her arm. “I think you know exactly what I mean. What Jerry Sharpe skimmed off the top and dumped in that safe-deposit box in Acapulco was petty cash, Liz.” He leaned closer as his voice lowered. “There’s a lot more to be made. Didn’t he tell you?”

She had a sudden, fierce memory of a knife probing against her throat. “He didn’t tell me anything. I don’t know anything.” Before she could evade, he had her backed into a corner. “If I scream,” she managed in a steady voice, “there’ll be a crowd of people here before you can take a breath.”

“No need to scream.” He held up both hands as if to show her he meant no harm. “This is a business discussion. All I want to know is how much Jerry told you before he made the mistake of offending the wrong people.”

When she discovered she was trembling, Liz forced herself to stop. He wouldn’t intimidate her. What weapon could he hide in a pair of bathing trunks and an open shirt? She straightened her shoulders and looked him directly in the eye. “Jerry didn’t tell me anything. I said the same thing to your friend when he had the knife at my throat. It didn’t satisfy him, so he put a damaged gauge on my tanks.”

“My partner doesn’t understand much about finesse,” Scott said easily. “I don’t carry knives, and I don’t know enough about your diving equipment to mess with the gauges. What I know about is you, and I know plenty. You work too hard, Liz, getting up at dawn and hustling until sundown. I’m just trying to give you some options. Business, Liz. We’re just going to talk business.”

It was his calm, reasonable attitude that had her temper whipping out. He could be calm, he could be reasonable, and people were dead. “I’m not Jerry and I’m not Erika, so keep that in mind. I don’t know anything about the filthy business you’re into, but the police do, and they’ll know more. If you think you can frighten me by threatening me with a knife or damaging my equipment, you’re right. But that doesn’t stop me from wishing every one of you to hell. Now get out of my shop and leave me alone.”

He studied her face for a long ten seconds, then backed an inch or two away. “You’ve got me wrong, Liz. I said this was a business discussion. With Jerry gone, an experienced diver would come in handy, especially one who knows the waters around here. I’m authorized to offer you five thousand dollars. Five thousand American dollars for doing what you do best. Diving. You go down, drop off one package and pick up another. No names, no faces. Bring the package back to me unopened and I hand you five thousand in cash. Once or twice a week, and you can build up a nice little nest egg. I’d say a woman raising a kid alone could use some extra money.”

Fear had passed into fury; she clenched her hands together. “I told you to get out,” she repeated. “I don’t want your money.”

He smiled and touched a finger to her cheek. “Give it some thought. I’ll be around if you change your mind.”

Liz waited for her breathing to level as she watched him walk away. With deliberate movements, she locked the shop, then walked directly to her police guard. “I’m going home,” she told him as he sprang to attention. “Tell Captain Moralas to meet me there in half an hour.” Without waiting for a reply, she strode across the sand.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Liz slammed into her house. The ride home hadn’t calmed her. At every turn she’d been violated. At every turn, her privacy and peace had been disrupted. This last incident was the last she’d accept. She might have been able to handle another threat, another demand. But he’d offered her a job. Offered to pay her to smuggle cocaine, to take over the position of a man who’d been murdered. Jonas’s brother.

A nightmare, Liz thought as she paced from window to window. She wished she could believe it was a nightmare. The cycle was drawing to a close, and she felt herself being trapped in the center. What Jerry Sharpe had started, she and Jonas would be forced to finish, no matter how painful. No matter how deadly. Finish it she would, Liz promised herself. The cycle would be broken, no matter what she had to do. She would be finished with it so her daughter could come home safely. Whatever she had to do, she would see to that.

At the sound of a car approaching, Liz went to the front window. Jonas, she thought, and felt her heart sink. Did she tell him now that she’d met face-to-face with the man who might have killed his brother? If he had the name, if he knew the man, would he race off in a rage for the revenge he’d come so far to find? And if he found his revenge, could the cycle ever be broken? Instead, she was afraid it would revolve and revolve around them, smothering everything else. She saw Jonas, a man of the law, a man of patience and compassion, shackled forever within the results of his own violence. How could she save him from that and still save herself?

Her hand was cold as she reached for the door and opened it to meet him. He knew there was something wrong before he touched her. “What are you doing home? I went by the shop and it was closed.”

“Jonas.” She did the only thing she knew how. She drew him against her and held on. “Moralas is on his way here.”

“What happened?” A little skip of panic ran through him before he could stop it. He held her away, searching her face. “Did something happen to you? Were you hurt?”

“No, I’m not hurt. Come in and sit down.”

“Liz, I want to know what happened.”

She heard the sound of a second engine and looked down the street to see the unmarked car. “Moralas is here,” she murmured. “Come inside, Jonas. I’d rather go through this only once.”

There was really no decision to be made, Liz told herself as she moved away from the door to wait. She would give Moralas and Jonas the name of the man who had approached her. She would tell them exactly what he’d said. By doing so she would take herself one step further away from the investigation. They would have a name, a face, a location. They would have motive. It was what the police wanted, it was what she wanted. She glanced at Jonas as Moralas came up the front walk. It was what Jonas wanted. What he needed. And by giving it to him, she would take herself one step further way from him.

“Miss Palmer.” Moralas took off his hat as he entered, glanced briefly at Jonas and waited.

“Captain.” She stood by a chair but didn’t sit. “I have some information for you. There’s an American, a man named Scott Trydent. Less than an hour ago he offered me five thousand dollars to smuggle cocaine off the reef of Isla Mujeres.”

Moralas’s expression remained impassive. He tucked his hat under his arm. “And have you had previous dealings with this man?”

“He joined one of my diving classes. He was friendly. Today he came by the shop to talk to me. Apparently he believed that I…” She trailed off to look at Jonas. He stood very still and very quiet just inside the door. “He thought that Jerry had told me about the operation. He’d found out about the safe-deposit box. I don’t know how. It was as though he knew every move I’ve made for weeks.” As her nerves began to fray, she dragged a hand through her hair. “He told me that I could take over Jerry’s position, make the exchange in the caves near Isla Mujeres and be rich. He knows…” She had to swallow to keep her voice from trembling. “He knows about my daughter.”

“You would identify him?”

“Yes. I don’t know if he killed Jerry Sharpe.” Her gaze shifted to Jonas again and pleaded. “I don’t know, but I could identify him.”

Moralas watched the exchange before crossing the room. “Please sit down, Miss Palmer.”

“You’ll arrest him?” She wanted Jonas to say something, anything, but he continued to stand in silence. “He’s part of the cocaine ring. He knows about Jerry’s Sharpe’s murder. You have to arrest him.”

“Miss Palmer.” Moralas urged her down on the sofa, then sat beside her. “We have names. We have faces. The smuggling ring currently operating in the Yucatan Peninsula is under investigation by both the Mexican and the American governments. The names you and Mr. Sharpe have given me are not unfamiliar. But there is one we don’t have. The person who organizes, the person who undoubtedly ordered the murder of Jerry Sharpe. This is the name we need. Without it, the arrest of couriers, of salesmen, is nothing. We need this name, Miss Palmer. And we need proof.”

“I don’t understand. You mean you’re just going to let Trydent go? He’ll just find someone else to make the drops.”

“It won’t be necessary for him to look elsewhere if you agree.”

“No.” Before Liz could take in Moralas’s words, Jonas was breaking in. He said it quietly, so quietly that chills began to race up and down her spine. He took out a cigarette. His hands were rock steady. Taking his time, he flicked his lighter and drew until the tip glowed red. He blew out a stream of smoke and locked his gaze on Moralas. “You can go to hell.”

“Miss Palmer has the privilege to tell me so herself.”

“You’re not using her. If you want someone on the inside, someone closer to the names and proof, I’ll make the drop.”

Moralas studied him, saw the steady nerves and untiring patience along with simmering temper. If he’d had a choice, he’d have preferred it. “It isn’t you who has been asked.”

“Liz isn’t going down.”

“Just a minute.” Liz pressed both hands to her temples. “Are you saying you want me to see Trydent again, to tell him I’ll take the job? That’s crazy. What purpose could there be?”

“You would be a decoy.” Moralas glanced down at her hands. Delicate, yes, but strong. There was nothing about Elizabeth Palmer he didn’t know. “The investigation is closing in. We don’t want the ring to change locations at this point. If the operation appears to go smoothly, there should be no move at this time. You’ve been the stumbling block, Miss Palmer, for the ring, and the investigation.”

“How?” Furious, she started to stand. Moralas merely put a hand on her arm.

“Jerry Sharpe lived with you, worked for you. He had a weakness for women. Neither the police nor the smugglers have been sure exactly what part you played. Jerry Sharpe’s brother is now living in your home. The key to the safe-deposit box was found by you.”

“Guilty by association, Captain?” Her voice took on that ice-sharp edge Jonas had heard only once or twice before. “Have I had police protection, or have I been under surveillance?”

Moralas’s tone never altered. “One serves the same purpose as the other.”

“If I’m under suspicion, haven’t you considered that I might simply take the money and run?”

“That’s precisely what we want you to do.”

“Very clever.” Jonas wasn’t certain how much longer he could hold on to his temper. It would have given him great satisfaction to have picked Moralas up bodily and thrown him out of the house. Out of Liz’s life. “Liz double-crosses them, annoying the head of the operation. It’s then necessary to eliminate her the way my brother was eliminated.”

“Except that Miss Palmer will be under police protection at all times. If this one drop goes as we plan, the investigation will end, and the smugglers, along with your brother’s killer, will be caught and punished. This is what you want?”

“Not if it means risking Liz. Plant your own pigeon, Moralas.”

“There isn’t time. With your cooperation, Miss Palmer, we can end this. Without it, it could take months.”

Months? she thought. Another day would be a lifetime. “I’ll do it.”

Jonas was beside her in a heartbeat, pulling her off the couch. “Liz—”

“My daughter comes home in two weeks.” She put her hands on his arms. “She won’t come back to anything like this.”

“Take her someplace else.” Jonas gripped her shoulders until his fingers dug into flesh. “We’ll go someplace else.”

“Where?” she demanded. “Every day I tell myself I’m pulling away from this thing and every day it’s a lie. I’ve been in it since Jerry walked in the door. We can’t change that. Until it’s over, really over, nothing’s going to be right.”

He knew she was right, had known it from the first moment. But too much had changed. There was a desperation in him now that he’d never expected to feel. It was all for her. “Come back to the States with me. It will be over.”

“Will it? Will you forget your brother was murdered? Will you forget the man who killed him?” His fingers tightened, his eyes darkened, but he said nothing. Her breath came out in a sigh of acceptance. “No, it won’t be over until we finish it. I’ve run before, Jonas. I promised myself I’d never run again.”

“You could be killed.”

“I’ve done nothing and they’ve nearly killed me twice.” She dropped her head on his chest. “Please help me.”

He couldn’t force her to bend his way. Two of the things he most admired in her were her capacity to give and her will to stand firm. He could plead with her, he could argue, but he could never lie. If she ran, if they ran, they’d never be free of it. His arm came around her. Her hair smelled of summer and sea air. And before the summer ended, he promised himself, she’d be free. They’d both be free.

“I go with her.” He met Moralas’s eyes over her head.

“That may not be possible.”

“I’ll make it possible.”

11

She’d never been more frightened in her life. Every day she worked in the shop, waiting for Scott Trydent to approach. Every evening she locked up, went home and waited for the phone to ring. Jonas said little. She no longer knew what he did with the hours they were apart, but she was aware that he was planning his own move, in his own time. It only frightened her more.

Two days passed until her nerves were stretched thinner and tighter than she would have believed possible. On the beach, people slept or read novels, lovers walked by arm in arm. Children chattered and ran. Snorkelers splashed around the reef. She wondered why nothing seemed normal, or if it ever would again. At sundown she emptied her cash box, stacked gear and began to lock up.

“How about that drink?”

Though she’d thought she’d braced herself for the moment when it would begin, Liz jolted. Her head began to throb in a slow, steady rhythm she knew would last for hours. In the pit of her stomach she felt the twist come and go from panicked excitement. From this point on, she reminded herself, she had no room to panic. She turned and looked at Scott. “I was wondering if you’d come back.”

“Told you I’d be around. I always figure people need a couple of days to mull things over.”

She had a part to play, Liz reminded herself. She had to do it well. Carefully, she finished locking up, then turned back to him. She didn’t smile. It was to be a business discussion, cut-and-dried. “We can get a drink over there.” She pointed to the open-air thatched-roof restaurant overhanging the reef. “It’s public.”

“Suits me.” Though he offered his hand, she ignored it and began to walk.

“You used to be friendlier.”

“You used to be a customer.” She sent him a sideways look. “Not a business partner.”

“So…” She saw him glance right, then left. “You’ve mulled.”

“You need a diver, I need money.” Liz walked up the two wooden stairs and chose a chair that had her back to the water. Seconds after she sat, a man settled himself into a corner table. One of Moralas’s, she thought, and ordered herself to be calm. She’d been briefed and rebriefed. She knew what to say, how to say it, and that the waiter who would serve them carried a badge and a gun. “Jerry didn’t tell me a great deal,” she began, and ordered an American soft drink. “Just that he made the drop and collected the money.”

“He was a good diver.”

Liz swallowed the little bubble of fear. “I’m better.”

Scott grinned at her. “So I’m told.”

A movement beside her had her glancing over, then freezing. A dark man with a pitted face took the chair beside her. Liz knew he wore a thin silver band on his wrist before she looked for it.

“Pablo Manchez, Liz Palmer. Though I think you two have met.”

“Señorita.” Manchez’s thin mouth curved as he took her hand.

“Tell your friend to keep his hands to himself.” Calmly, Jonas pulled a chair up to the table. “Why don’t you introduce me, Liz?” When she could do no more than stare at him, he settled back. “I’m Jonas Sharpe. Liz and I are partners.” He leveled his gaze to Manchez. This was the man, he thought, whom he’d come thousands of miles to see. This was the man he’d kill. Jonas felt the hatred and the fury rise. But he knew how to strap the emotions and wait. “I believe you knew my brother.”

Manchez’s hand dropped from Liz’s and went to his side. “Your brother was greedy and stupid.”

Liz held her breath as Jonas reached in his pocket. Slowly, he pulled out his cigarettes. “I’m greedy,” he said easily as he lit one. “But I’m not stupid. I’ve been looking for you.” He leaned across the table. With a slow smile, he offered Manchez the cigarettes.

Manchez took one and broke off the filter. His hands were beautiful, with long spidery fingers and narrow palms. Liz fought back a shudder as she looked at them. “So you found me.”

Jonas was still smiling as he ordered a beer. “You need a diver.”

Scott sent Manchez a warning look. “We have a diver.”

“What you have is a team. Liz and I work together.” Jonas blew out a stream of smoke. “Isn’t that right, Liz?”

He wanted them. He wasn’t going to back off until he had them. And she had no choice. “That’s right.”

“We don’t need no team.” Manchez started to rise.

“You need us.” Jonas took his beer as it was served. “We already know a good bit about your operation. Jerry wasn’t good at keeping secrets.” Jonas took a swig from the bottle. “Liz and I are more discreet. Five thousand a drop?”

Scott waited a beat, then held a hand up, signaling Manchez. “Five. If you want to work as a team, it’s your business how you split it.”

“Fifty-fifty.” Liz spread her fingers around Jonas’s beer. “One of us goes down, one stays in the dive boat.”

“Tomorrow night. Eleven o’clock. You come to the shop. Go inside. You’ll find a waterproof case. It’ll be locked.”

“So will the shop,” Liz put in. “How does the case get inside?”

Manchez blew smoke between his teeth. “I got no problem getting in.”

“Just take the case,” Scott interrupted. “The coordinates will be attached to the handle. Take the boat out, take the case down, leave it. Then come back up and wait exactly an hour. That’s when you dive again. All you have to do is take the case that’s waiting for you back to the shop and leave it.”

“Sounds smooth,” Jonas decided. “When do we get paid?”

“After you do the job.”

“Half up front.” Liz took a long swallow of beer and hoped her heart would settle. “Leave twenty-five hundred with the case or I don’t dive.”

Scott smiled. “Not as trusting as Jerry.”

She gave him a cold, bitter look. “And I intend to stay alive.”

“Just follow the rules.”

“Who makes them?” Jonas took the beer back from Liz. Her hand slipped down to his leg and stayed steady.

“You don’t want to worry about that,” Manchez advised. The cigarette was clamped between his teeth as he smiled. “He knows who you are.”

“Just follow the coordinates and keep an eye on your watch.” Scott dropped bills on the table as he rose. “The rest is gravy.”

“Stay smart, Jerry’s brother.” Manchez gave them both a slow smile. “Adios, señorita.”

Jonas calmly finished his beer as the two men walked away.

“You weren’t supposed to interfere during the meeting,” Liz began in a furious undertone. “Moralas said—”

“The hell with Moralas.” He crushed out his cigarette, watching as the smoke plumed up. “Is that the man who put the bruises on your neck?”

Her hand moved up before she could stop it. Halfway to her throat, Liz curled her fingers into a ball and set her hand on the table. “I told you I didn’t see him.”

Jonas turned his head. His eyes, as they had before, reminded her of frozen smoke. “Was it the man?”

He didn’t need to be told. Liz leaned closer and spoke softly. “I want it over, Jonas. And I don’t need revenge. You were supposed to let me meet with Scott and set things up by myself.”

In an idle move, he tilted the candle on the table toward him and lit it. “I changed my mind.”

“Damn you, you could’ve messed everything up. I don’t want to be involved but I am. The only way to get uninvolved is to finish it. How do we know they won’t just back off now that you’ve come into it?”

“Because you’re right in the middle, and you always have been.” Before she could speak, he took her arm. His face was close, his voice cool and steady. “I was going to use you. From the minute I walked into your house, I was going to use you to get to Jerry’s killer. If I had to walk all over you, if I had to knock you out of the way or drag you along with me, I was going to use you. Just the way Moralas is going to use you. Just the way the others are going to use you.” The heat of the candle flickered between them as he drew her closer. “The way Jerry used you.”

She swallowed the tremor and fought against the pain. “And now?”

He didn’t speak. They were so close that he could see himself reflected in her eyes. In them, surrounding his own reflection, he saw the doubts and the defiance. His hand came to the back of her neck, held there until he could feel the rhythm of her pulse. With a simmering violence, he pulled her against him and covered her mouth with his. A flare that was passion, a glimmer that was hope—he didn’t know which to reach for. So he let her go.

“No one’s going to hurt you again,” he murmured. “Especially not me.”

* * *

It was the longest day of her life. Liz worked and waited as the hours crawled by. Moralas’s men mixed with the vacationers on the beach. So obviously, it seemed to Liz, that she wondered everyone else didn’t notice them as though they wore badges around their necks. Her boats went out, returned and went out again. Tanks and equipment were checked and rented. She filled out invoices and accepted credit cards as if there were some importance to daily routine. She wished for the day to end. She hoped the night would never come.

A thousand times she thought of telling Moralas she couldn’t go through with it. A thousand times she called herself a coward. But as the sun went down and the beach began to clear, she realized courage wasn’t something that could be willed into place. She would run, if she had the choice. But as long as she was in danger, Faith was in danger. When the sun went down, she locked the shop as if it were the end of any ordinary day. Before she’d pocketed her keys, Jonas was beside her.

“There’s still time to change your mind.”

“And do what? Hide?” She looked out at the beach, at the sea, at the island that was her home. And her prison. Why had she never seen it as a prison until Jonas had come to it? “You’ve already told me how good I am at hiding.”

“Liz—”

She shook her head to stop him. “I can’t talk about it. I just have to do it.”

They drove home in silence. In her mind, Liz went over her instructions, every point, every word Moralas had pushed at her. She was to follow the routine, make the exchange, then turn the case with the money over to the police who’d be waiting near the dock. She’d wait for the next move. And while she waited, she’d never be more than ten feet away from a cop. It sounded foolproof. It made her stomach churn.

There was a man walking a dog along the street in front of her house. One of Moralas’s men. The man whittling on her neighbor’s porch had a gun under his denim vest. Liz tried to look at neither of them.

“You’re going to have a drink, some food and a nap,” Jonas ordered as he steered her inside.

“Just the nap.”

“The nap first then.” After securing the lock, Jonas followed her into the bedroom. He lowered the shades. “Do you want anything?”

It was still so hard to ask. “Would you lie down with me?”

He came to her. She was already curled on her side, so he drew her back against him and wrapped her close. “Will you sleep?”

“I think so.” In sleep she could find escape, if only temporarily. But she didn’t close her eyes. “Jonas?”

“Hmm?”

“After tonight—after we’ve finished, will you hold me like this again?”

He pressed his lips to her hair. He didn’t think he could love her any more. He was nearly certain if he told her she’d pull away. “As long as you want. Just sleep.”

Liz let her eyes close and her mind empty.

* * *

The case was small, the size of an executive briefcase. It seemed too inconspicuous to be the catalyst for so much danger. Beside it, on the counter of Liz’s shop, was an envelope. Inside was a slip of paper with longitude and latitude printed. With the slip of paper were twenty-five one-hundred-dollar bills.

“They kept their part of the bargain,” Jonas commented.

Liz merely shoved the envelope into a drawer. “I’ll get my equipment.”

Jonas watched her. She’d rather do this on her own, he reflected. She’d rather not think she had someone to lean on, to turn to. He took her tanks before she could heft them. She was going to learn, he reminded himself, that she had a great deal more than that. “The coordinates?”

“The same that were in Jerry’s book.” She found herself amazingly calm as she waited to lock the door behind him. They were being watched. She was aware that Moralas had staked men in the hotel. She was just as certain Manchez was somewhere close. She and Jonas didn’t speak again until they were on the dive boat and had cast off. “This could end it.” She glanced at him as she set her course.

“This could end it.”

She was silent for a moment. All during the evening hours she’d thought about what she would say to him, how she would say it. “Jonas, what will you do?”

The flame of his lighter hissed, flared, then was quiet. “What I have to do.”

The fear tasted like copper in her mouth, but it had nothing to do with herself and everything to do with Jonas. “If we make the exchange tonight, turn the second case over to Moralas. They’ll have to come out in the open. Manchez, and the man who gives the orders.”

“What are you getting at, Liz?”

“Manchez killed your brother.”

Jonas looked beyond her. The sea was black. The sky was black. Only the hum of the motor broke the silence. “He was the trigger.”

“Are you going to kill him?”

Slowly, he turned back to her. The question had been quiet, but her eyes weren’t. They sent messages, posed argument, issued pleas. “It doesn’t involve you.”

That hurt deeply, sharply. With a nod, she followed the shimmer of light on the water. “Maybe not. But if you let hate rule what you do, how you think, you’ll never be free of it. Manchez will be dead, Jerry will still be dead and you…” She turned to look at him again. “You’ll never really be alive again.”

“I didn’t come all this way, spend all this time, to let Manchez walk away. He kills for money and because he enjoys it. He enjoys it,” Jonas repeated viciously. “You can see it in his eyes.”

And she had. But she didn’t give a damn about Manchez. “Do you remember telling me once that everyone was entitled to representation?”

He remembered. He remembered everything he’d once believed in. He remembered how Jerry had looked in the cold white light of the morgue. “It didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“I suppose you change the rules when it’s personal.”

“He was my brother.”

“And he’s dead.” With a sigh she lifted her face so that the wind could cool her skin. “I’m sorry, Jonas. Jerry’s dead and if you go through with what you’ve planned, you’re going to kill something in yourself.” And, though she couldn’t tell him, something in her. “Don’t you trust the law?”

He tossed his cigarette into the water, then leaned on the rail. “I’ve been playing with it for years. It’s the last thing I’d trust.”

She wanted to go to him but didn’t know how. Still, no matter what he did, she was beside him. “Then you’ll have to trust yourself. And so will I.”

Slowly, he crossed to her. Taking her face in his hands, he tried to understand what she was telling him, what she was still holding back. “Will you?”

“Yes.”

He leaned to press a kiss to her forehead. Inside there was a need, a fierce desire to tell her to head the boat out to sea and keep going. But that would never work, not for either of them. They stood on the boat together, and stood at the crossroads. “Then start now.” He kissed her again before he turned and lifted one of the compartment seats. Liz frowned as she saw the wet suit.

“What are you doing?”

“I arranged to have Luis leave this here for me.”

“Why? We can’t both go down.”

Jonas stripped down to his trunks. “That’s right. I’m diving, you’re staying with the boat.”

Liz stood very straight. It wouldn’t do any good to lose her temper. “The arrangements were made on all sides, Jonas. I’m diving.”

“I’m changing the arrangements.” He tugged the wet suit up to his waist before he looked at her. “I’m not taking any more chances with you.”

“You’re not taking chances with me. I am. Jonas, you don’t know these waters. I do. You’ve never gone down here at night. I have.”

“I’m about to.”

“The last thing we need right now is for you to start behaving like an overprotective man.”

He nearly laughed as he snapped the suit over his shoulders. “That’s too bad, then, because that’s just what we’ve got.”

“I told Manchez and Trydent I was going down.”

“I guess your reputation’s shot when you lie to murderers and drug smugglers.”

“Jonas, I’m not in the mood for jokes.”

He strapped on his diver’s knife, adjusted his weight belt, then reached for his mask. “Maybe not. And maybe you’re not in the mood to hear this. I care about you. Too damn much.” He reached out, gripping her chin. “My brother dragged you into this because he never wasted two thoughts about anyone else in his life. I pulled you in deeper because all I was thinking about was payback. Now I’m thinking about you, about us. You’re not going down. If I have to tie you to the wheel, you’re not going down.”

“I don’t want you to go.” She balled her fists against his chest. “If I was down, all I’d think about was what I was doing. If I stay up here, I won’t be able to stop thinking about what could happen to you.”

“Time me.” He lifted the tanks and held them out to her. “Help me get them on.”

Hadn’t she told herself weeks before that he wasn’t a man who’d lose an argument? Her hands trembled a bit as she slipped the straps over his shoulders. “I don’t know how to handle being protected.”

He hooked the tanks as he turned back to her. “Practice.”

She closed her eyes. It was too late for talk, too late for arguments. “Bear northeast as you dive. The cave’s at eighty feet.” She hesitated only a moment, then picked up a spear gun. “Watch out for sharks.”

When he was over the side, she lowered the case to him. In seconds, he was gone and the sea was black and still. In her mind, Liz followed him fathom by fathom. The water would be dark so that he would be dependent on his gauges and the thin beam of light. Night creatures would be feeding. Squid, the moray, barracuda. Sharks. Liz closed her mind to it.

She should have forced him to let her go. How? Pacing the deck, she pushed the hair back from her face. He’d gone to protect her. He’d gone because he cared about her. Shivering, she sat down to rub her arms warm again. Was this what it was like to be cared for by a man? Did it mean you had to sit and wait? She was up again and pacing. She’d lived too much of her life doing to suddenly become passive. And yet… To hear him say he cared. Liz sat again and waited.

She’d checked her watch four times before she heard him at the ladder. On a shudder of relief, she dashed over to the side to help him. “I’m going down the next time,” she began.

Jonas pulled off his light, then his tanks. “Forget it.” Before she could protest, he dragged her against him. “We’ve got an hour,” he murmured against her ear. “You want to spend it arguing?”

He was wet and cold. Liz wrapped herself around him. “I don’t like being bossed around.”

“Next time you can boss me around.” He dropped onto a bench and pulled her with him. “I’d forgotten what it was like down there at night. Fabulous.” And it was nearly over, he told himself. The first step had been taken, the second one had to follow. “I saw a giant squid. Scared the hell out of him with the light. I swear he was thirty feet long.”

“They get bigger.” She rested her head on his shoulder and tried to relax. They had an hour. “I was diving with my father once. We saw one that was nearly sixty.”

“Made you nervous?”

“No. I was fascinated. I remember I swam close enough to touch the tentacles. My father gave me a twenty-minute lecture when we surfaced.”

“I imagine you’d do the same thing with Faith.”

“I’d be proud of her,” Liz began, then laughed. “Then I’d give her a twenty-minute lecture.”

For the first time that night he noticed the stars. The sky was alive with them. It made him think of his mother’s porch swing and long summer nights. “Tell me about her.”

“You don’t want to get me started.”

“Yes, I do.” He slipped an arm around her shoulder. “Tell me about her.”

With a half smile, Liz closed her eyes. It was good to think of Faith, to talk of Faith. A picture began to emerge for Jonas of a young girl who liked school because there was plenty to do and lots of people. He heard the love and the pride, and the wistfulness. He saw the dark, sunny-faced girl in the photo and learned she spoke two languages, liked basketball and hated vegetables.

“She’s always been sweet,” Liz reflected. “But she’s no angel. She’s very stubborn, and when she’s crossed, her temper isn’t pretty. Faith wants to do things herself. When she was two she’d get very annoyed if I wanted to help her down the stairs.”

“Independence seems to run in the family.”

Liz moved her shoulders. “We’ve needed it.”

“Ever thought about sharing?”

Her nerves began to hum. Though she shifted only a bit, it was away from him. “When you share, you have to give something up. I’ve never been able to afford to give up anything.”

It was an answer he’d expected. It was an answer he intended to change. “It’s time to go back down.”

Liz helped him back on with his tanks. “Take the spear gun. Jonas…” He was already at the rail before she ran to him. “Hurry back,” she murmured. “I want to go home. I want to make love with you.”

“Hell of a time to bring that up.” He sent her a grin, curled and fell back into the water.

Within five minutes Liz was pacing again. Why hadn’t she thought to bring any coffee? She’d concentrate on that. In little more than an hour they could be huddled in her kitchen with a pot brewing. It wouldn’t matter that there would be police surrounding the house. She and Jonas would be inside. Together. Perhaps she was wrong about sharing. Perhaps… When she heard the splash at the side of the boat, she was at the rail like a shot.

“Jonas, did something happen? Why—” She found herself looking down the barrel of a .22.

“Señorita.” Manchez tossed his mask and snorkel onto a bench as he climbed over the side. “Buenas noches.”

“What are you doing here?” She struggled to sound indignant as the blood rushed from her face. No, she wasn’t brave, she realized. She wasn’t brave at all. “We had a deal.”

“You’re an amateur,” he told her. “Like Sharpe was an amateur. You think we’d just forget about the money?”

“I don’t know anything about the money Jerry took.” She gripped the rail. “I’ve told you that all along.”

“The boss decided you were a loose end, pretty lady. You do us a favor and make this delivery. We do you a favor. We kill you quickly.”

She didn’t look at the gun again. She didn’t dare. “If you keep killing your divers, you’re going to be out of business.”

“We’re finished in Cozumel. When your friend brings up the case, I take it and go to Merida. I live in style. You don’t live at all.”

She wanted to sit because her knees were shaking. She stood because she thought she might never be able to again. “If you’re finished in Cozumel, why did you set up this drop?”

“Clancy likes things tidy.”

“Clancy?” The name David Merriworth had mentioned, Liz remembered, and strained to hear any sound from the water.

“There’s a few thousand in cocaine down there, that’s all. A few thousand dollars in the case coming up. The boss figures it’s worth the investment to make it look like you were doing the dealing with Sharpe. Then you two have an argument and shoot each other. Case closed.”

“You killed Erika too, didn’t you?”

“She asked too many questions.” He lowered the gun. “You ask too many questions.”

Light flooded the boat and the water so quickly that Liz’s first instinct was to freeze. Before the next reaction had fully registered, she was tumbling into the water and diving blind.

How could she warn Jonas? Liz groped frantically in the water as lights played on the surface above her. She had no tanks, no mask, no protection. Any moment he’d be surfacing, unaware of any danger. He had no protection but her.

Without equipment, she’d be helpless in a matter of moments. She fought to stay down, keeping as close to the ladder as she dared. Her lungs were ready to burst when she felt the movement in the water. Liz turned toward the beam of light.

When he saw her, his heart nearly stopped. She looked like a ghost clinging to the hull of the boat. Her hair was pale and floating out in the current, her face was nearly as white as his light. Before his mind could begin to question, he was pushing his mouthpiece between her lips and giving her air. There could be no communication but emotion. He felt the fear. Jonas steadied the spear gun in his arm and surfaced.

“Mr. Sharpe.” Moralas caught him in the beam of a spotlight. Liz rose up beside him. “We have everything under control.” On the deck of her boat, Liz saw Manchez handcuffed and flanked by two divers. “Perhaps you will give my men and their prisoner a ride back to Cozumel.”

She felt Jonas tense. The spear gun was set and aimed. Even through the mask, she could see his eyes burning, burning as only ice can. “Jonas, please.” But he was already starting up the ladder. She hauled herself over the rail and tumbled onto the deck, cold and dripping. “Jonas, you can’t. Jonas, it’s over.”

He barely heard her. All his emotion, all his concentration was on the man who stood only feet away. Their eyes were locked. It gave him no satisfaction to watch the blood drain from Manchez’s face, or the knowledge leap frantically into his eyes. It was what he’d come for, what he’d promised himself. The medallion on the edge of his chain dangled and reminded him of his brother. His brother was dead. No satisfaction. Jonas lowered the gun.

Manchez tossed back his head. “I’ll get out,” he said quietly. The smile started to spread. “I’ll get out.”

The spear shot out and plowed into the deck between Manchez’s feet. Liz saw the smile freeze on his face an instant before one formed on Jonas’s. “I’ll be waiting.”

* * *

Could it really be over? It was all Liz could think when she awoke, warm and dry, in her own bed. She was safe, Jonas was safe, and the smuggling ring on Cozumel was broken. Of course, Jonas had been furious. Manchez had been watched, they had been watched, but the police had made their presence known only after Liz had been held at gunpoint.

But he’d gotten what he’d come for, she thought. His brother’s killer was behind bars. He’d face a trial and justice. She hoped it was enough for Jonas.

The morning was enough for her. The normality of it. Happy, she rolled over and pressed her body against Jonas’s. He only drew her closer.

“Let’s stay right here until noon.”

She laughed and nuzzled against his throat. “I have—”

“A business to run,” he finished.

“Exactly. And for the first time in weeks I can run it without having this urge to look over my shoulder. I’m happy.” She looked at him, then tossed her arms around his neck and squeezed. “I’m so happy.”

“Happy enough to marry me?”

She went still as a stone, then slowly, very slowly drew away. “What?”

“Marry me. Come home with me. Start a life with me.”

She wanted to say yes. It shocked her that her heart burned to say yes. Pulling away from him was the hardest thing she’d ever done. “I can’t.”

He stopped her before she could scramble out of bed. It hurt, he realized, more than he could possibly have anticipated. “Why?”

“Jonas, we’re two different people with two totally separate lives.”

“We stopped having separate lives weeks ago.” He took her hands. “They’re not ever going to be separate again.”

“But they will.” She drew her hands away. “After you’re back in Philadelphia for a few weeks, you’ll barely remember what I look like.”

He had her wrists handcuffed in his hands. The fury that surfaced so seldom in him seemed always on simmer when he was around her. “Why do you do that?” he demanded. “Why can’t you ever take what you’re given?” He swung her around until she was beneath him on the bed. “I love you.”

“Don’t.” She closed her eyes as the wish nearly eclipsed the reason. “Don’t say that to me.”

Shut out. She was shutting him out. Jonas felt the panic come first, then the anger. Then the determination. “I will say it. If I say it enough, sooner or later you’ll start to believe it. Do you think all these nights have been a game? Haven’t you felt it? Don’t you feel anything?”

“I thought I felt something once before.”

“You were a child.” When she started to shake her head, he gripped her tighter. “Yes, you were. In some ways you still are, but I know what goes through you when you’re with me. I know. I’m not a ghost, I’m not a memory. I’m real and I want you.”

“I’m afraid of you,” she whispered. “I’m afraid because you make me want what I can’t have. I won’t marry you, Jonas, because I’m through taking chances with my life and I won’t take chances with my child’s life. Please let me go.”

He released her, but when she stood, his arms went around her. “It isn’t over for us.”

She dropped her head against his chest, pressed her cheek close. “Let me have the few days we have left. Please let me have them.”

He lifted her chin. Everything he needed to know was in her eyes. A man who knew and who planned to win could afford to wait. “You haven’t dealt with anyone as stubborn as you are before this. And you haven’t nearly finished dealing with me.” Then his hand gentled as he stroked her hair. “Get dressed. I’ll take you to work.”

Because he acted as though nothing had been said, Liz relaxed. It was impossible, and she knew it. They’d known each other only weeks, and under circumstances that were bound to intensify any feelings. He cared. She believed that he cared, but love—the kind of love needed to build a marriage—was too much to risk.

She loved. She loved so much that she pushed him away when she wanted to pull him closer. He needed to go back to his life, back to his world. After time had passed, if he thought of her he’d think with gratitude that she had closed a door he’d opened on impulse. She would think of him. Always.

By the time Liz was walking toward the shop, she’d settled her mind. “What are you going to do today?”

“Me?” Jonas, too, had settled his mind. “I’m going to sit in the sun and do nothing.”

“Nothing?” Incredulous, Liz stared at him. “All day?”

“It’s known as relaxing, or taking a day off. If you do it several days running, it’s called a vacation. I was supposed to have one in Paris.”

Paris, she thought. It would suit him. She wondered briefly how the air smelled in Paris. “If you get bored, I’m sure one of the boats could use the extra crew.”

“I’ve had enough diving for a few days, thanks.” Jonas plopped down on a chaise in front of the shop. It was the best place to keep an eye on her.

“Miguel.” Liz automatically looked around for Luis. “You’re here early.”

“I came with Luis. He’s checking out the dive boat—got an early tour.”

“Yes, I know.” But she wouldn’t trust Miguel to run the shop alone for long. “Why don’t you help him? I’ll take care of the counter.”

“Bueno. Oh, there were a couple of guys looking at the fishing boat. Maybe they want to rent.”

“I’ll take a look. You go ahead.” Walking back, she crouched beside Jonas. “Keep an eye on the shop for me, will you? I’ve got a couple of customers over by the Expatriate.”

Jonas adjusted his sunglasses. “What do you pay per hour?”

Liz narrowed her eyes. “I might cook dinner tonight.”

With a smile, he got up to go behind the counter. “Take all the time you need.”

He made her laugh. Liz strolled down the walkway and to the pier, drinking up the morning. She could use a good fishing cruise. The aqua bikes had been ordered, but they still had to be paid for. Besides, she’d like the ride herself. It made her think of Jonas and his unwanted catch a few weeks before. Liz laughed again as she approached the men beside her boat.

“Buenos días,” she began. “Mr. Ambuckle.” Beaming a smile, Liz held out a hand. “I didn’t know you were back. Is this one of your quick weekend trips?”

“That’s right.” His almost bald head gleamed in the sun as he patted her hand. “When the mood strikes me I just gotta move.”

“Thinking about some big-game fishing this time around?”

“Funny you should mention it. I was just saying to my associate here that I only go for the big game.”

“Only the big game.” Scott Trydent turned around and pushed back his straw hat. “That’s right, Clancy.”

“Now don’t turn around, honey.” Ambuckle’s fingers clamped over hers before she could move. “You’re going to get on the boat, nice and quiet. We have some talking to do, then we might just take a little ride.”

“How long have you been using my dive shop to smuggle?” Liz saw the gun under Scott’s jacket. She couldn’t signal to Jonas, didn’t dare.

“For the past couple of years I’ve found your shop’s location unbeatable. You know, they ship that stuff up from Colombia and dump in Miami. The way the heat’s been on the past few years, you take a big chance using the regular routes. It takes longer this way, but I lose less merchandise.”

“And you’re the organizer,” she murmured. “You’re the man the police want.”

“I’m a businessman,” he said with a smile. “Let’s get on board, little lady.”

“The police are watching,” Liz told him as she climbed on deck.

“The police have Manchez. If he hadn’t tried to pull a double cross, the last shipment would have gone down smooth.”

“A double cross?”

“That’s right,” Scott put in as he flanked her. “Pablo decided he could make more free-lancing than by being a company man.”

“And by reporting on his fellow employee, Mr. Trydent moves up in rank. I work my organization on the incentive program.”

Scott grinned at Ambuckle. “Can’t beat the system.”

“You had Jerry Sharpe killed.” Struggling to believe what was happening, Liz stared at the round little man who’d chatted with her and rented her tanks. “You had him shot.”

“He stole a great deal of money from me.” Ambuckle’s face puckered as he thought of it. “A great deal. I had Manchez dispose of him. The truth is, I’d considered you as a liaison for some time. It seemed simpler, however, just to use your shop. My wife’s very fond of you.”

“Your wife.” Liz thought of the neat, matronly woman in skirted bathing suits. “She knows you smuggle drugs, and she knows you kill people?”

“She thinks we have a great stockbroker.” Ambuckle grinned. “I’ve been moving snow for ten years, and my wife wouldn’t know coke from powdered sugar. I like to keep business and family separate. The little woman’s going to be sick when she finds out you had an accident. Now we’re going to take a little ride. And we’re going to talk about the three hundred thousand our friend Jerry slipped out from under my nose. Cast off, Scott.”

“No!” Thinking only of survival, Liz made a lunge toward the dock. Ambuckle had her on the deck with one shove. He shook his head, dusted his hands and turned to her. “I’d wanted to keep this from getting messy. You know, I switched gauges on your tanks, figuring you’d back off. Always had a soft spot for you, little lady. But business is business.” With a wheezy sigh, he turned to Scott. “Since you’ve taken over Pablo’s position, I assume you know how to deal with this.”

“I certainly do.” He took out a revolver. His eyes locked on Liz’s. When she caught her breath, he turned the barrel toward Ambuckle. “You’re under arrest.” With his other hand, he pulled out a badge. “You have the right to remain silent…” It was the last thing Liz heard before she buried her face in her hands and wept.

12

“I want to know what the hell’s been going on.” They were in Moralas’s office, but Jonas wouldn’t sit. He stood behind Liz’s chair, his fingers curled tight over the back rung. If anyone had approached her, he would have struck first and asked questions later. He’d already flattened the unfortunate detective who’d tried to hold him back when he’d seen Liz on the deck of the Expatriate with Scott.

With his hands folded on his desk, Moralas gave Jonas a long, quiet look. “Perhaps the explanation should come from your countryman.”

“Special Agent Donald Scott.” The man Liz had known as Scott Trydent sat on the corner of Moralas’s desk. “Sorry for the deception, Liz.” Though his voice was calm and matter-of-fact, it couldn’t mask the excitement that bubbled from him. As he sipped his coffee, he glanced up at Jonas. Explanations wouldn’t go over easily with this one, he thought. But he’d always believed the ends justified the means. “I’ve been after that son of a bitch for three years.” He drank again, savoring triumph. “It took us two before we could infiltrate the ring, and even then I couldn’t make contact with the head man. To get to him I had to go through more channels than you do with the Company. He’s been careful. For the past eight months I’ve been working with Manchez as Scott Trydent. He was the closest I could get to Ambuckle until two days ago.”

“You used her.” Jonas’s hand went to Liz’s shoulder. “You put her right in the middle.”

“Yeah. The problem was, for a long time we weren’t sure just how involved she was. We knew about your shop, Liz. We knew you were an experienced diver. In fact, there isn’t anything about you my organization didn’t know. For some time, you were our number-one suspect.”

“Suspect?” She had her hands folded neatly in her lap, but the anger was boiling. “You suspected me.”

“You left the U.S. over ten years ago. You’ve never been back. You have both the contacts and the means to have run the ring. You keep your daughter off the island for most of the year and in one of the best schools in Houston.”

“That’s my business.”

“Details like that become our business. When you took Jerry Sharpe in and gave him a job, we leaned even further toward you. He thought differently, but then we weren’t using him for his opinions.”

She felt Jonas’s fingers tighten and reached up to them as she spoke. “Using him?”

“I contacted Jerry Sharpe in New Orleans. He was someone else we knew everything about. He was a con, an operator, but he had style.” He took another swig of coffee as he studied Jonas. “We made him a deal. If he could get on the inside, feed us information, we’d forget about a few…indiscretions. I liked your brother,” Scott said to Jonas. “Really liked him. If he’d been able to settle a bit, he’d have made a hell of a cop. ‘Conning the bad guys,’ he called it.”

“Are you saying Jerry was working for you?” Jonas felt his emotions race toward the surface. The portrait he’d barely been able to force himself to accept was changing.

“That’s right.” Scott took out a cigarette and watched the match flare as he struck it. “I liked him—I mean that. He had a way of looking at things that made you forget they were so lousy.”

That was Jerry, Jonas thought. To give himself a moment, he walked to the window. He could see the water lapping calmly against the hulls of boats. He could see the sun dancing down on it and children walking along the sea wall. The scene had been almost the same the day he’d arrived on Cozumel. Some things remained the same; others altered constantly. “What happened?”

“He had a hard time following orders. He wanted to push them too fast too far. He told me once he had something to prove, to himself and to the other part of him. The better part of him.”

Jonas turned slowly. The pain came again, an ache. Liz saw it in his eyes and went to stand with him. “Go on.”

“He got the idea into his head to rip off the money from a shipment. I didn’t know about it until he called me from Acapulco. He figured he’d put the head man in a position where he’d have to deal personally. I told him to stay put, that we were scrubbing him. He’d have been taken back to the States and put somewhere safe until the job was over.” He tossed the match he’d been holding into an ashtray on Moralas’s desk. “He didn’t listen. He came back to Cozumel and tried to deal with Manchez himself. It was over before I knew. Even if I’d have known, I can’t be sure I could’ve stopped it. We don’t like to lose civilians, Mr. Sharpe. I don’t like to lose friends.”

The anger drained from him degree by degree. It would have been so like Jerry, Jonas thought. An adventure, the excitement, the impulsiveness. “Go on.”

“Orders came down to put the pressure on Liz.” Scott gave a half laugh that had nothing to do with humor. “Orders from both sides. It wasn’t until after your trip to Acapulco that we were sure you weren’t involved in the smuggling. You stopped being a suspect and became the decoy.”

“I came to the police.” She looked at Moralas. “I came to you. You didn’t tell me.”

“I wasn’t aware of Agent Scott’s identity until yesterday. I knew only that we had a man on the inside and that it was necessary to use you.”

“You were protected,” Scott put in. “There wasn’t a day you weren’t guarded by Moralas’s men and by mine. Your being here complicated things,” he said to Jonas. “You were pushing too close to the bone. I guess you and Jerry had more in common than looks.”

Jonas felt the weight on the chain around his neck. “Maybe we did.”

“Well, we’d come to the point where we had to settle for Manchez and a few others or go for broke. We went for broke.”

“The drop we made. It was a setup.”

“Manchez had orders to do whatever he had to to get back the money Jerry had taken. They didn’t know about the safe-deposit box.” He blew out a stream of smoke. “I had to play it pretty fast and loose to keep that under wraps. But then we didn’t know about it either, until you led us to it. As far as Ambuckle was concerned, you had the money, and he was going to get it back. He wanted it to look as though you’d been running the smuggling operation together. When you were found dead, the heat would be off of him. He planned to lie low a while, then pick up business elsewhere. I had that from Manchez. You were set up,” he agreed. “So was he. I got to Merriworth, made enough noise about how Manchez was about to double-cross to set him off. When Manchez was snorkeling to your boat, I was on the phone with the man I knew as Clancy. I got a promotion, and Clancy came back to deal with you himself.”

Liz tried to see it as he did, as a chess game, as any game with pawns. She couldn’t. “You knew who he was yesterday morning and you still had me get on that boat.”

“There were a dozen sharpshooters in position. I had a gun, Ambuckle didn’t. We wanted him to order Liz’s murder, and we wanted him to tell her as much as possible. When this goes to court, we want it tidy. We want him put away for a long time. You’re a lawyer, Sharpe. You know how these things can go. We can make a clean collar, have a stack of evidence and lose. I’ve watched too many of these bastards walk.” He blew out smoke between set teeth. “This one’s not walking anywhere but into federal prison.”

“There is still the question of whether these men will be tried in your country or mine.” Moralas spoke softly, and didn’t move when Scott whirled on him.

“Look, Moralas—”

“This will be discussed later. You have my thanks and my apologies,” he said to Jonas and Liz. “I regret we saw no other way.”

“So do I,” Liz murmured, then turned to Scott. “Was it worth it?”

“Ambuckle brought thousands of pounds of cocaine into the States. He’s responsible for more than fifteen murders in the U.S. and Mexico. Yeah, it was worth it.”

She nodded. “I hope you understand that I never want to see you again.” After closing her hand around Jonas’s she managed a smile. “You were a lousy student.”

“Sorry we never had that drink.” He looked back at Jonas. “Sorry about a lot of things.”

“I appreciate what you told me about my brother. It makes a difference.”

“I’m recommending him for a citation. They’ll send it to your parents.”

“It’ll mean a great deal to them.” He offered his hand and meant it. “You were doing your job—I understand that. We all do what we have to do.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t regret it.”

Jonas nodded. Something inside him was free, completely free. “As to putting Liz through hell for the past few weeks…” Very calmly, Jonas curled his hand into a fist and planted it solidly on Scott’s jaw. The thin man snapped a chair in half as he crashed into it on his way to the floor.

“Jonas!” Stunned, Liz could do no more than stare. Then, incredibly, she felt the urge to giggle. With one hand over her mouth, she leaned into Jonas and let the laughter come. Moralas remained contentedly at his desk, sipping coffee.

Scott rubbed his jaw gingerly. “We all do what we have to do,” he murmured.

Jonas only turned his back. “Goodbye, Captain.”

Moralas stayed where he was. “Goodbye, Mr. Sharpe.” He rose and, in a rare show of feeling, took Liz’s hand and kissed it. “Vaya con dios.”

He waited until the door had shut behind them before he looked down at Scott again. “Your government will, of course, pay for the chair.”

* * *

He was gone. She’d sent him away. After nearly two weeks, Liz awoke every morning with the same thoughts. Jonas was gone. It was for the best. After nearly two weeks she awoke every morning struggling to convince herself. If she’d followed her heart, she would have said yes the moment he’d asked her to marry him. She would have left everything she’d built behind and gone with him. And ruined his life, perhaps her own.

He was already back in his own world, poring through law books, facing juries, going to elegant dinner parties. By now, she was sure his time in Cozumel was becoming vague. After all, he hadn’t written. He hadn’t called. He’d left the day after Ambuckle had been taken into custody without another word about love. He’d conquered his ghosts when he’d faced Manchez and had walked away whole.

He was gone, and she was once more standing on her own. As she was meant to, Liz thought. She’d have no regrets. That she’d promised herself. What she’d given to Jonas had been given without conditions or expectations. What he’d given to her she’d never lose.

The sun was high and bright, she thought. The air was as mellow as quiet music. Her lover was gone, but she, too, was whole. A month of memories could be stretched to last a lifetime. And Faith was coming home.

Liz pulled her bike into a parking space and listened to the thunder of a plane taking off. Even now Faith and her parents were crossing the Gulf. Liz left her bike and walked toward the terminal. It was ridiculous to feel nervous, she told herself, but she couldn’t prevent it. It was ridiculous to arrive at the airport nearly an hour early, but she’d have gone mad at home. She skirted around a bed of marigolds and geraniums. She’d buy flowers, she decided. Her mother loved flowers.

Inside the terminal, the air was cool and full of noise. Tourists came and went but rarely passed the shops without a last-minute purchase. Liz started in the first store and worked her way down, buying consistently and strictly on impulse. By the time she arrived at the gate, she carried two shopping bags and an armful of dyed carnations.

Any minute, she thought. She’d be here any minute. Liz shifted both bags to one hand and nervously brushed at her hair. Passengers waited for their flights by napping in the black plastic chairs or reading guidebooks. She watched a woman check her lipstick in a compact mirror and wondered if she had time to run into the ladies room to examine her own face. Gnawing on her lip, she decided she couldn’t leave, even for a moment. Neither could she sit, so she paced back and forth in front of the wide windows and watched the planes come and go. It was late. Planes were always late when you were waiting for them. The sky was clear and blue. She knew it was equally clear in Houston because she’d been checking the weather for days. But the plane was late. Impatient, she walked back to security to ask about the status. She should have known better.

Liz got a shrug and the Mexican equivalent of It’ll be here when it comes. In another ten minutes, she was ready to scream. Then she saw it. She didn’t have to hear the flight announcement to know. With her heart thudding dully, she waited by the door.

Faith wore blue striped pants and a white blouse. Her hair’s grown, Liz thought as she watched her daughter come down the steps. She’s grown—though she knew it would never do to tell Faith so. She’d just wrinkle her nose and roll her eyes. Her palms were wet. Don’t cry, don’t cry, Liz ordered herself. But the tears were already welling. Then Faith looked up and saw her. With a grin and a wave she was racing forward. Liz dropped her bags and reached out for her daughter.

“Mom, I got to sit by the window, but I couldn’t see our house.” As she babbled, Faith held her mother’s neck in a stranglehold. “I brought you a present.”

With her face buried against Faith’s throat, Liz drew in the scents—powder, soap and chocolate from the streak on the front of the white blouse. “Let me look at you.” Drawing her back, Liz soaked up the sight of her. She’s beautiful, Liz realized with a jolt. Not just cute or sweet or pretty any longer. Her daughter was beautiful.

I can’t let her go again. It hit her like a wall. I’ll never be able to let her go again. “You’ve lost a tooth,” Liz managed as she brushed back her daughter’s hair.

“Two.” Faith grinned to show the twin spaces. “Grandma said I could put them under my pillow, but I brought them with me so I can put them under my real pillow. Will I get pesos?”

“Yes.” Liz kissed one cheek, then the other. “Welcome home.”

With her hand firmly in Faith’s, Liz rose to greet her parents. For a moment she just looked at them, trying to see them as a stranger would. Her father was tall and still slim, though his hairline was creeping back. He was grinning at her the way he had whenever she’d done something particularly pleasing to him. Her mother stood beside him, lovely in her tidy way. She looked now, as she’d always looked to Liz, like a woman who’d never had to handle a crisis more stressful than a burned roast. Yet she’d been as solid and as sturdy as a rock. There were tears in her eyes. Liz wondered abruptly if the beginning of the summer left her mother as empty as the end of the summer left her.

“Momma.” Liz reached out and was surrounded. “Oh, I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you all so much.” I want to go home. The thought surged up inside her and nearly poured out. She needed to go home.

“Mom.” Faith tugged on the pocket of her jeans. “Mom.”

Giddy, Liz turned and scooped her up. “Yes.” She covered her face with kisses until Faith giggled. “Yes, yes, yes!”

Faith snuggled in. “You have to say hello to Jonas.”

“What?”

“He came with us. You have to say hi.”

“I don’t—” Then she saw him, leaning against the window, watching—waiting patiently. The blood rushed out of her head to her heart until she was certain something would burst. Holding onto Faith, Liz stood where she was. Jonas walked to her, took her face in both hands and kissed her hard.

“Nice to see you,” he murmured, then bent down to pick up the bags Liz had dropped. “I imagine these are for you,” he said as he handed Liz’s mother the flowers.

“Yes.” Liz tried to gather the thoughts stumbling through her mind. “I forgot.”

“They’re lovely.” She sent her daughter a smile. “Jonas is going to drive us to the hotel. I invited him to dinner tonight. I hope you don’t mind. You always make enough.”

“No, I… Of course.”

“We’ll see you then.” She gave Liz another brief kiss. “I know you want to get Faith home and have some time together. We’ll see you tonight.”

“But I—”

“Our bags are here. We’re going to deal with customs.”

Before Liz could say another word, she was alone with her daughter.

“Can we stop by and see Señor Pessado?”

“Yes,” Liz said absently.

“Can I have some candy?”

Liz glanced down to the chocolate stain on Faith’s blouse. “You’ve already had some.”

Faith just smiled. She knew she could depend on Señor Pessado. “Let’s go home now.”

* * *

Liz waited until Faith was unpacked, until the crystal bird Faith had bought her was hanging in the window and her daughter had consumed two tacos and a pint of milk.

“Faith…” She wanted her voice to be casual. “When did you meet Mr. Sharpe?”

“Jonas? He came to Grandma’s house.” Faith turned the doll Liz had brought her this way and that for inspection.

“To Grandma’s? When?”

“I don’t know.” She decided to call the doll Cassandra because it was pretty and had long hair. “Can I have my ice cream now?”

“Oh—yes.” Liz walked over to get it out of the freezer. “Faith, do you know why he went to Grandma’s?”

“He wanted to talk to her, I guess. To Grandpa, too. He stayed for dinner. I knew Grandma liked him because she made cherry pies. I liked him, too. He can play the piano really good.” Faith eyed the ice cream and was satisfied when her mother added another scoop. “He took me to the zoo.”

“What?” The bowl nearly slipped out of Liz’s hand as she set it down. “Jonas took you to the zoo?”

“Last Saturday. We fed popcorn to the monkeys, but mostly we ate it.” She giggled as she shoveled in ice cream. “He tells funny stories. I scraped my knee.” Remembering suddenly, Faith pulled up her slacks to show off her wound.

“Oh, baby.” It was small and already scabbed over, but Liz brushed a kiss over it anyway. “How’d you do this?”

“At the zoo. I was running. I can run really fast in my new sneakers, but I fell down. I didn’t cry.”

Liz rolled the slacks down. “I’m sure you didn’t.”

“Jonas didn’t get mad or anything. He cleaned it all up with his handkerchief. It was pretty messy. I bled a lot.” She smiled at that, pleased with herself. “He said I have pretty eyes just like you.”

A little thrill of panic raced through her, but she couldn’t stop herself. “Did he? What else did he say?”

“Oh, we talked about Mexico and about Houston. He wondered which I liked best.”

Liz rested her hands on her daughter’s knees. This is what matters, she realized. This was all that really mattered. “What did you tell him?”

“I like it best where you are.” She scraped the bottom of the bowl. “He said he liked it best there, too. Is he going to be your boyfriend?”

“My—” Liz managed, just barely, to suppress the laugh. “No.”

“Charlene’s mother has a boyfriend, but he isn’t as tall as Jonas and I don’t think he ever took Charlene to the zoo. Jonas said sometime maybe we could go see the Liberty Bell. Do you think we can?”

Liz picked up the ice cream dish and began to wash it. “We’ll see,” she muttered.

“Listen, someone’s coming.” Faith was up like a shot and dashing for the front door. “It’s Jonas!” With a whoop, she was out of the door and running full steam.

“Faith!” Liz hurried from the kitchen and reached the porch in time to see Faith hurl herself at Jonas. With a laugh, he caught her, tossed her in the air then set her down again in a move so natural that it seemed he’d been doing so all his life. Liz knotted the dishcloth in her hands.

“You came early.” Pleased, Faith hung on to his hand. “We were talking about you.”

“Were you?” He tousled Faith’s hair but looked up at Liz. “That’s funny, because I was thinking about you.”

“We’re going to make paella because that’s what Grandpa likes best. You can help.”

“Faith—”

“Love to,” Jonas interrupted. “After I talk to your mother.” At the foot of the stairs he crouched down to Faith’s level. “I’d really like to talk to your mom alone.”

Faith’s mouth screwed up. “Why?”

“I have to convince her to marry me.”

He ignored Liz’s gasp and watched for Faith’s reaction. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth pursed. “She said you weren’t her boyfriend. I asked.”

He grinned and leaned closer. “I just have to talk her into it.”

“Grandma says nobody can ever talk my mom into anything. She has a hard head.”

“So do I, and I make a living talking people into things. But maybe you could put in a few good words for me later.”

As Faith considered, her eyes brightened. “Okay. Mom, can I see if Roberto’s home? You said he had new puppies.”

Liz stretched out the cloth then balled it again. “Go ahead, but just for a little while.”

Jonas straightened as he watched Faith race toward the house across the street. “You’ve done an excellent job with your daughter, Elizabeth.”

“She’s done a great deal of it herself.”

He turned and saw the nerves on her face. It didn’t displease him. But he remembered the way she’d looked when she had opened her arms to Faith at the airport. He wanted, he would, see her look that way again. “Do you want to talk inside?” he began as he walked up the steps. “Or right here?”

“Jonas, I don’t know why you’ve come back, but—”

“Of course you know why I’ve come back. You’re not stupid.”

“We don’t have anything to talk about.”

“Fine.” He closed the distance quickly. She didn’t resist, though she told herself she would. When he dragged her against him, she went without hesitation. Her mouth locked hungrily to his, and for a moment, just for a moment, the world was right again. “If you don’t want to talk, we’ll go inside and make love until you see things a little more clearly.”

“I see things clearly.” Liz put her hands on his arms and started to draw away.

“I love you.”

He felt the shudder, saw the flash of joy in her eyes before she looked away. “Jonas, this isn’t possible.”

“Wrong. It’s entirely possible—in fact, it’s already done. The point is, Liz, you need me.”

Her eyes narrowed to slits. “What I need I take care of.”

“That’s why I love you,” he said simply and took the wind out of her sails.

“Jonas—”

“Are you going to tell me you haven’t missed me?” She opened her mouth, then shut it again. “Okay, so you take the Fifth on that one.” He stepped back from her. “Are you going to deny that you’ve spent some sleepless nights in the past couple of weeks, that you’ve thought about what happened between us? Are you going to stand here and look at me now and tell me you’re not in love with me?”

She’d never been able to lie well. Liz turned and meticulously spread the dishcloth over the porch rail. “Jonas, I can’t run my life on my feelings.”

“From now on you can. Did you like the present Faith brought you?”

“What?” Confused, she turned back. “Yes, of course I did.”

“Good. I brought you one too.” He took a box out of his pocket. Liz saw the flash of diamond and nearly had her hand behind her back before he caught it in his. Firmly, he slipped the ring on. “It’s official.”

She wouldn’t even look at it. She couldn’t stop herself. The diamond was shaped in a teardrop and as white and glossy as a wish. “You’re being ridiculous,” she told him, but couldn’t make herself take it off.

“You’re going to marry me.” He took her shoulders and leaned her back against a post. “That’s not negotiable. After that, we have several options. I can give up my practice and live in Cozumel. You can support me.”

She let out a quick breath that might have been a laugh. “Now you’re really being ridiculous.”

“You don’t like that one. Good, I didn’t care for it either. You can come back to Philadelphia with me. I’ll support you.”

Her chin went up. “I don’t need to be supported.”

“Excellent. We agree on the first two options.” He ran his hands through her hair and discovered he wasn’t feeling as patient as he’d thought he would. “Now, you can come back to the States. We’ll take a map and you can close your eyes and pick a spot. That’s where we’ll live.”

“We can’t run our lives this way.” She pushed him aside to walk down the length of the porch and back. But part of her was beginning to believe they could. “Don’t you see how impossible it is?” she demanded as much of herself as of him. “You have your career. I have my business. I’d never be a proper wife for someone like you.”

“You’re the only wife for someone like me.” He grabbed her shoulders again. No, he wasn’t feeling patient at all. “Damn it, Liz, you’re the only one. If the business is important to you, keep it. Have Luis run it. We can come back a half a dozen times a year if you want. Start another business. We’ll go to Florida, to California, anywhere you want where they need a good dive shop. Or…” He waited until he was sure he had her full attention. “You could go back to school.”

He saw it in her eyes—the surprise, the dream, then the denial. “That’s over.”

“The hell it is. Look at you—it’s what you want. Keep the shop, build another, build ten others, but give yourself something for yourself.”

“It’s been more than ten years.”

He lifted a brow. “You said once you wouldn’t change anything.”

“And I meant it, but to go back now, after all this time.”

“Afraid?”

Her eyes narrowed; her spine stiffened. “Yes.”

He laughed, delighted with her. “Woman, in the past few weeks, you’ve been through hell and out again. And you’re afraid of a few college courses?”

With a sigh, she turned away. “I might not be able to make it.”

“So what?” He whirled her back again. “So you fall flat on your face. I’ll be right there falling down with you. It’s time for risking, Liz. For both of us.”

“Oh, I want to believe you.” She lifted a hand to rest it on his face. “I want to. I do love you, Jonas. So much.”

She was locked against him again, lost in him. “I need you, Liz. I’m not going back without you.”

She clung to him a moment, almost ready to believe. “But it’s not just me. You have to understand I can’t do whatever I’d like.”

“Faith?” He drew her back again. “I’ve spent the past weeks getting to know her. My main objective when I started was to ingratiate myself. I figured the only way to get to you was through her.”

So she’d already surmised. “Afternoons at the zoo?”

“That’s right. Thing was, I didn’t know she was as easy to fall for as her mother. I want her.”

The hand Liz had lifted to her hair froze. “I don’t understand.”

“I want her to be mine—legally, emotionally. I want you to agree to let me adopt her.”

“Adopt…” Whatever she might have expected from him, it hadn’t been this. “But she’s—”

“Yours?” he interrupted. “No, she’s going to be ours. You’re going to have to share her. And if you’re set on her going to school in Houston, we’ll live in Houston. Within the year I expect she should have a brother or sister because she needs family as much as we do.”

He was offering her everything, everything she’d ever wanted and had refused to believe in. She had only to hold out her hand. The idea terrified her. “She’s another man’s child. How will you be able to forget that?”

“She’s your child,” he reminded her. “You told me yourself she was your child only. Now she’s going to be mine.” Taking her hands, he kissed them. “So are you.”

“Jonas, do you know what you’re doing? You’re asking for a wife who’ll have to start from scratch and a half-grown daughter. You’re complicating your life.”

“Yeah, and maybe I’m saving it.”

And hers. Her blood was pumping again, her skin was tingling. For the first time in years she could look at her life and see no shadows. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply before she turned. “Be sure,” she whispered. “Be absolutely sure. If I let myself go, if I say yes and you change your mind, I’ll hate you for the rest of my life.”

He took her by the shirtfront. “In one week, we’re going to my parents’ farm in Lancaster, calling the local minister, justice of the peace or witch doctor and we’re getting married. Adoption papers are being drawn up. When we settle in as a family, we’re all having the same name. You and Faith and I.”

With a sigh, Liz leaned back again against the post and studied his face. It was beautiful, she decided. Strong, passionate, patient. Her life was going to be bound up with that face. It was as real as flesh and blood and as precious as dreams. Her lover was back, her child was with her and nothing was impossible.

“When I first met you, I thought you were the kind of man who always got what he wanted.”

“And you were right.” He took her hands again and held them. “Now what are we going to tell Faith?” he demanded.

Her lips curved slowly. “I guess we’d better tell her you talked me into it.”

The Art of Deception

Nora Roberts

Chapter 1

It was more like a castle than a house. The stone was gray, but beveled at the edges, Herodian-style, so that it shimmered with underlying colors. Towers and turrets jutted toward the sky, joined together by a crenellated roof. Windows were mullioned, long and narrow with diamond-shaped panes.

The structure—Adam would never think of it as anything so ordinary as a house—loomed over the Hudson, audacious and eccentric and, if such things were possible, pleased with itself. If the stories were true, it suited its owner perfectly.

All it required, Adam decided as he crossed the flagstone courtyard, was a dragon and a moat.

Two grinning gargoyles sat on either side of the wide stone steps. He passed by them with a reservation natural to a practical man. Gargoyles and turrets could be accepted in their proper place—but not in rural New York, a few hours’ drive out of Manhattan.

Deciding to reserve judgment, he lifted the heavy brass knocker and let it fall against a door of thick Honduras mahogany. After a third pounding, the door creaked open. With strained patience, Adam looked down at a small woman with huge gray eyes, black braids and a soot-streaked face. She wore a rumpled sweatshirt and jeans that had seen better days. Lazily, she rubbed her nose with the back of her hand and stared back.

“Hullo.”

He bit back a sigh, thinking that if the staff ran to half-witted maids, the next few weeks were going to be very tedious. “I’m Adam Haines. Mr. Fairchild is expecting me,” he enunciated.

Her eyes narrowed with curiosity or suspicion, he couldn’t be sure. “Expecting you?” Her accent was broad New England. After another moment of staring, she frowned, shrugged, then moved aside to let him in.

The hall was wide and seemingly endless. The paneling gleamed a dull deep brown in the diffused light. Streaks of sun poured out of a high angled window and fell over the small woman, but he barely noticed. Paintings. For the moment, Adam forgot the fatigue of the journey and his annoyance. He forgot everything else but the paintings.

Van Gogh, Renoir, Monet. A museum could claim no finer exhibition. The power pulled at him. The hues, the tints, the brush strokes, and the overall magnificence they combined to create, tugged at his senses. Perhaps, in some strange way, Fairchild had been right to house them in something like a fortress. Turning, Adam saw the maid with her hands loosely folded, her huge gray eyes on his face. Impatience sprang back.

“Run along, will you? Tell Mr. Fairchild I’m here.”

“And who might you be?” Obviously impatience didn’t affect her.

“Adam Haines,” he repeated. He was a man accustomed to servants—and one who expected efficiency.

“Ayah, so you said.”

How could her eyes be smoky and clear at the same time? he wondered fleetingly. He gave a moment’s thought to the fact that they reflected a maturity and intelligence at odds with her braids and smeared face. “Young lady…” He paced the words, slowly and distinctly. “Mr. Fairchild is expecting me. Just tell him I’m here. Can you handle that?”

A sudden dazzling smile lit her face. “Ayah.”

The smile threw him off. He noticed for the first time that she had an exquisite mouth, full and sculpted. And there was something…something under the soot. Without thinking, he lifted a hand, intending to brush some off. The tempest hit.

“I can’t do it! I tell you it’s impossible. A travesty!” A man barreled down the long, curved stairs at an alarming rate. His face was shrouded in tragedy, his voice croaked with doom. “This is all your fault.” Coming to a breathless stop, he pointed a long, thin finger at the little maid. “It’s on your head, make no mistake.”

Robin Goodfellow, Adam thought instantly. The man was the picture of Puck, short with a spritely build, a face molded on cherubic lines. The spare thatch of light hair nearly stood on end. He seemed to dance. His thin legs lifted and fell on the landing as he waved the long finger at the dark-haired woman. She remained serenely undisturbed.

“Your blood pressure’s rising every second, Mr. Fairchild. You’d better take a deep breath or two before you have a spell.”

“Spell!” Insulted, he danced faster. His face glowed pink with the effort. “I don’t have spells, girl. I’ve never had a spell in my life.”

“There’s always a first time.” She nodded, keeping her fingers lightly linked. “Mr. Adam Haines is here to see you.”

“Haines? What the devil does Haines have to do with it? It’s the end, I tell you. The climax.” He placed a hand dramatically over his heart. The pale blue eyes watered so that for one awful moment, Adam thought he’d weep. “Haines?” he repeated. Abruptly he focused on Adam with a brilliant smile. “I’m expecting you, aren’t I?”

Cautiously Adam offered his hand. “Yes.”

“Glad you could come, I’ve been looking forward to it.” Still showing his teeth, he pumped Adam’s hand. “Into the parlor,” he said, moving his grip from Adam’s hand to his arm. “We’ll have a drink.” He walked with the quick bouncing stride of a man who hadn’t a worry in the world.

In the parlor Adam had a quick impression of antiques and old magazines. At a wave of Fairchild’s hand he sat on a horsehair sofa that was remarkably uncomfortable. The maid went to an enormous stone fireplace and began to scrub out the hearth with quick, tuneful little whistles.

“I’m having Scotch,” Fairchild decided, and reached for a decanter of Chivas Regal.

“That’ll be fine.”

“I admire your work, Adam Haines.” Fairchild offered the Scotch with a steady hand. His face was calm, his voice moderate. Adam wondered if he’d imagined the scene on the stairs.

“Thank you.” Sipping Scotch, Adam studied the little genius across from him.

Small networks of lines crept out from Fairchild’s eyes and mouth. Without them and the thinning hair, he might have been taken for a very young man. His aura of youth seemed to spring from an inner vitality, a feverish energy. The eyes were pure, unfaded blue. Adam knew they could see beyond what others saw.

Philip Fairchild was, indisputably, one of the greatest living artists of the twentieth century. His style ranged from the flamboyant to the elegant, with a touch of everything in between. For more than thirty years, he’d enjoyed a position of fame, wealth and respect in artistic and popular circles, something very few people in his profession achieved during their lifetime.

Enjoy it he did, with a temperament that ranged from pompous to irascible to generous. From time to time he invited other artists to his house on the Hudson, to spend weeks or months working, absorbing or simply relaxing. At other times, he barred everyone from the door and went into total seclusion.

“I appreciate the opportunity to work here for a few weeks, Mr. Fairchild.”

“My pleasure.” The artist sipped Scotch and sat, gesturing with a regal wave of his hand—the king granting benediction.

Adam successfully hid a smirk. “I’m looking forward to studying some of your paintings up close. There’s such incredible variety in your work.”

“I live for variety,” Fairchild said with a giggle. From the hearth came a distinct snort. “Disrespectful brat,” Fairchild muttered into his drink. When he scowled at her, the maid tossed a braid over her shoulder and plopped her rag noisily into the bucket. “Cards!” Fairchild bellowed, so suddenly Adam nearly dumped the Scotch in his lap.

“I beg your pardon?”

“No need for that,” Fairchild said graciously and shouted again. At the second bellow the epitome of butlers walked into the parlor.

“Yes, Mr. Fairchild.” His voice was grave, lightly British. The dark suit he wore was a discreet contrast to the white hair and pale skin. He held himself like a soldier.

“See to Mr. Haines’s car, Cards, and his luggage. The Wedgwood guest room.”

“Very good, sir,” the butler agreed after a slight nod from the woman at the hearth.

“And put his equipment in Kirby’s studio,” Fairchild added, grinning as the hearth scrubber choked. “Plenty of room for both of you,” he told Adam before he scowled. “My daughter, you know. She’s doing sculpture, up to her elbows in clay or chipping at wood and marble. I can’t cope with it.” Gripping his glass in both hands, Fairchild bowed his head. “God knows I try. I’ve put my soul into it. And for what?” he demanded, jerking his head up again. “For what?”

“I’m afraid I—”

“Failure!” Fairchild moaned, interrupting him. “To have to deal with failure at my age. It’s on your head,” he told the little brunette again. “You have to live with it—if you can.”

Turning, she sat on the hearth, folded her legs under her and rubbed more soot on her nose. “You can hardly blame me if you have four thumbs and your soul’s lost.” The accent was gone. Her voice was low and smooth, hinting of European finishing schools. Adam’s eyes narrowed. “You’re determined to be better than I,” she went on. “Therefore, you were doomed to fail before you began.”

“Doomed to fail! Doomed to fail, am I?” He was up and dancing again, Scotch sloshing around in his glass. “Philip Fairchild will overcome, you heartless brat. He shall triumph! You’ll eat your words.”

“Nonsense.” Deliberately, she yawned. “You have your medium, Papa, and I have mine. Learn to live with it.”

“Never.” He slammed a hand against his heart again. “Defeat is a four-letter word.”

“Six,” she corrected, and, rising, commandeered the rest of his Scotch.

He scowled at her, then at his empty glass. “I was speaking metaphorically.”

“How clever.” She kissed his cheek, transferring soot.

“Your face is filthy,” Fairchild grumbled.

Lifting a brow, she ran a finger down his cheek. “So’s yours.”

They grinned at each other. For a flash, the resemblance was so striking, Adam wondered how he’d missed it. Kirby Fairchild, Philip’s only child, a well-respected artist and eccentric in her own right. Just what, Adam wondered, was the darling of the jet set doing scrubbing out hearths?

“Come along, Adam.” Kirby turned to him with a casual smile. “I’ll show you to your room. You look tired. Oh, Papa,” she added as she moved to the door, “this week’s issue of People came. It’s on the server. That’ll keep him entertained,” she said to Adam as she led him up the stairs.

He followed her slowly, noting that she walked with the faultless grace of a woman who’d been taught how to move. The pigtails swung at her back. Jeans, worn white at the stress points, had no designer label on the back pocket. Her canvas Nikes had broken shoelaces.

Kirby glided along the second floor, passing half a dozen doors before she stopped. She glanced at her hands, then at Adam. “You’d better open it. I’ll get the knob filthy.”

He pushed open the door and felt like he was stepping back in time. Wedgwood blue dominated the color scheme. The furniture was all Middle Georgian—carved armchairs, ornately worked tables. Again there were paintings, but this time, it was the woman behind him who held his attention.

“Why did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Put on that act at the door.” He walked back to where she stood at the threshold. Looking down, he calculated that she barely topped five feet. For the second time he had the urge to brush the soot from her face to discover what lay beneath.

“You looked so polished, and you positively glowered.” She leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb. There was an elegance about him that intrigued her, because his eyes were sharp and arrogant. Though she didn’t smile, the amusement in her expression was soft and ripe. “You were expecting a dimwitted parlor maid, so I made it easy for you. Cocktails at seven. Can you find your way back, or shall I come for you?”

He’d make do with that for now. “I’ll find it.”

“All right. Ciao, Adam.”

Unwillingly fascinated, he watched her until she’d turned the corner at the end of the hall. Perhaps Kirby Fairchild would be as interesting a nut to crack as her father. But that was for later.

Adam closed the door and locked it. His bags were already set neatly beside the rosewood wardrobe. Taking the briefcase, Adam spun the combination lock and drew up the lid. He pulled out a small transmitter and flicked a switch.

“I’m in.”

“Password,” came the reply.

He swore, softly and distinctly. “Seagull. And that is, without a doubt, the most ridiculous password on record.”

“Routine, Adam. We’ve got to follow routine.”

“Sure.” There’d been nothing routine since he’d stopped his car at the end of the winding uphill drive. “I’m in, McIntyre, and I want you to know how much I appreciate your dumping me in this madhouse.” With a flick of his thumb, he cut McIntyre off.

* * *

Without stopping to wash, Kirby jogged up the steps to her father’s studio. She opened the door, then slammed it so that jars and tubes of paint shuddered on their shelves.

“What have you done this time?” she demanded.

“I’m starting over.” Wispy brows knit, he huddled over a moist lump of clay. “Fresh start. Rebirth.”

“I’m not talking about your futile attempts with clay. Adam Haines,” she said before he could retort. Like a small tank, she advanced on him. Years before, Kirby had learned size was of no consequence if you had a knack for intimidation. She’d developed it meticulously. Slamming her palms down on his worktable, she stood nose to nose with him. “What the hell do you mean by asking him here and not even telling me?”

“Now, now, Kirby.” Fairchild hadn’t lived six decades without knowing when to dodge and weave. “It simply slipped my mind.”

Better than anyone else, Kirby knew nothing slipped his mind. “What’re you up to now, Papa?”

“Up to?” He smiled guilelessly.

“Why did you ask him here now, of all times?”

“I’ve admired his work. So’ve you,” he pointed out when her mouth thinned. “He wrote such a nice letter about Scarlet Moon when it was exhibited at the Metropolitan last month.”

Her brow lifted, an elegant movement under a layer of soot. “You don’t invite everyone who compliments your work.”

“Of course not, my sweet. That would be impossible. One must be…selective. Now I must get back to my work while the mood’s flowing.”

“Something’s going to flow,” she promised. “Papa, if you’ve a new scheme after you promised—”

“Kirby!” His round, smooth face quivered with emotion. His lips trembled. It was only one of his talents. “You’d doubt the word of your own father? The seed that spawned you?”

“That makes me sound like a gardenia, and it won’t work.” She crossed her arms over her chest. Frowning, Fairchild poked at the unformed clay.

“My motives are completely altruistic.”

“Hah.”

“Adam Haines is a brilliant young artist. You’ve said so yourself.”

“Yes, he is, and I’m sure he’d be delightful company under different circumstances.” She leaned forward, grabbing her father’s chin in her hand. “Not now.”

“Ungracious,” Fairchild said with disapproval. “Your mother, rest her soul, would be very disappointed in you.”

Kirby ground her teeth. “Papa, the Van Gogh!”

“Coming along nicely,” he assured her. “Just a few more days.”

Knowing she was in danger of tearing out her hair, she stalked to the tower window. “Oh, bloody murder.”

Senility, she decided. It had to be senility. How could he consider having that man here now? Next week, next month, but now? That man, Kirby thought ruthlessly, was nobody’s fool.

At first glance she’d decided he wasn’t just attractive—very attractive—but sharp. Those big camel’s eyes gleamed with intelligence. The long, thin mouth equaled determination. Perhaps he was a bit pompous in his bearing and manner, but he wasn’t soft. No, she was certain instinctively that Adam Haines would be hard as nails.

She’d like to do him in bronze, she mused. The straight nose, the sharp angles and planes in his face. His hair was nearly the color of deep, polished bronze, and just a tad too long for convention. She’d want to capture his air of arrogance and authority. But not now!

Sighing, she moved her shoulders. Behind her back, Fairchild grinned. When she turned back to him, he was studiously intent on his clay.

“He’ll want to come up here, you know.” Despite the soot, she dipped her hands in her pockets. They had a problem; now it had to be dealt with. For the better part of her life, Kirby had sorted through the confusion her father gleefully created. The truth was, she’d have had it no other way. “It would seem odd if we didn’t show him your studio.”

“We’ll show him tomorrow.”

“He mustn’t see the Van Gogh.” Kirby planted her feet, prepared to do battle on this one point, if not the others. “You’re not going to make this more complicated than you already have.”

“He won’t see it. Why should he?” Fairchild glanced up briefly, eyes wide. “It has nothing to do with him.”

Though she realized it was foolish, Kirby was reassured. No, he wouldn’t see it, she thought. Her father might be a little…unique, she decided, but he wasn’t careless. Neither was she. “Thank God it’s nearly finished.”

“Another few days and off it goes, high into the mountains of South America.” He made a vague, sweeping gesture with his hands.

Moving over, Kirby uncovered the canvas that stood on an easel in the far corner. She studied it as an artist, as a lover of art and as a daughter.

The pastoral scene was not peaceful but vibrant. The brush strokes were jagged, almost fierce, so that the simple setting had a frenzied kind of motion. No, it didn’t sit still waiting for admiration. It reached out and grabbed by the throat. It spoke of pain, of triumph, of agonies and joys. Her lips tilted because she had no choice. Van Gogh, she knew, could have done no better.

“Papa.” When she turned her head, their eyes met in perfect understanding. “You are incomparable.”

* * *

By seven, Kirby had not only resigned herself to their house guest, but was prepared to enjoy him. It was a basic trait of her character to enjoy what she had to put up with. As she poured vermouth into a glass, she realized she was looking forward to seeing him again, and to getting beneath the surface gloss. She had a feeling there might be some fascinating layers in Adam Haines.

She dropped into a high-backed chair, crossed her legs and tuned back in to her father’s rantings.

“It hates me, fails me at every turn. Why, Kirby?” He spread his hands in an impassioned plea. “I’m a good man, loving father, faithful friend.”

“It’s your attitude, Papa.” She shrugged a shoulder as she drank. “Your emotional plane’s faulty.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my emotional plane.” Sniffing, Fairchild lifted his glass. “Not a damn thing wrong with it. It’s the clay that’s the problem, not me.”

“You’re cocky,” she said simply. Fairchild made a sound like a train straining up a long hill.

“Cocky? Cocky? What the devil kind of word is that?”

“Adjective. Two syllables, five letters.”

Adam heard the byplay as he walked toward the parlor. After a peaceful afternoon, he wondered if he was ready to cope with another bout of madness. Fairchild’s voice was rising steadily, and as Adam paused in the doorway, he saw that the artist was up and shuffling again.

McIntyre was going to pay for this, Adam decided. He’d see to it that revenge was slow and thorough. When Fairchild pointed an accusing finger, Adam followed its direction. For an instant he was totally and uncharacteristically stunned.

The woman in the chair was so completely removed from the grimy, pigtailed chimney sweep, he found it nearly impossible to associate the two. She wore a thin silk dress as dark as her hair, draped at the bodice and slit up the side to show off one smooth thigh. He studied her profile as she watched her father rant. It was gently molded, classically oval with a very subtle sweep of cheekbones. Her lips were full, curved now in just a hint of a smile. Without the soot, her skin was somewhere between gold and honey with a look of luxurious softness. Only the eyes reminded him this was the same woman—gray and large and amused. Lifting one hand, she tossed back the dark hair that covered her shoulders.

There was something more than beauty here. Adam knew he’d seen women with more beauty than Kirby Fairchild. But there was something… He groped for the word, but it eluded him.

As if sensing him, she turned—just her head. Again she stared at him, openly and with curiosity, as her father continued his ravings. Slowly, very slowly, she smiled. Adam felt the power slam into him.

Sex, he realized abruptly. Kirby Fairchild exuded sex the way other women exuded perfume. Raw, unapologetic sex.

With a quick assessment typical of him, Adam decided she wouldn’t be easy to deceive. However he handled Fairchild, he’d have to tread carefully with Fairchild’s daughter. He decided as well that he already wanted to make love to her. He’d have to tread very carefully.

“Adam.” She spoke in a soft voice that nonetheless carried over her father’s shouting. “You seem to have found us. Come in, Papa’s nearly done.”

“Done? I’m undone. And by my own child.” Fairchild moved toward Adam as he entered the room. “Cocky, she says. I ask you, is that a word for a daughter to use?”

“An aperitif?” Kirby asked. She rose with a fluid motion that Adam had always associated with tall, willowy women.

“Yes, thank you.”

“Your room’s agreeable?” His face wreathed in smiles again, Fairchild plopped down on the sofa.

“Very agreeable.” The best way to handle it, Adam decided, was to pretend everything was normal. Pretenses were, after all, part of the game. “You have an…exceptional house.”

“I’m fond of it.” Content, Fairchild leaned back. “It was built near the turn of the century by a wealthy and insane English lord. You’ll take Adam on a tour tomorrow, won’t you, Kirby?”

“Of course.” As she handed Adam a glass, she smiled into his eyes. Diamonds, cold as ice, glittered at her ears. He could feel the heat rise.

“I’m looking forward to it.” Style, he concluded. Whether natural or developed, Miss Fairchild had style.

She smiled over the rim of her own glass, thinking precisely the same thing about Adam. “We aim to please.”

A cautious man, Adam turned to Fairchild again. “Your art collection rivals a museum’s. The Titian in my room is fabulous.”

The Titian, Kirby thought in quick panic. How could she have forgotten it? What in God’s name could she do about it? No difference. It made no difference, she reassured herself. It couldn’t, because there was nothing to be done.

“The Hudson scene on the west wall—” Adam turned to her just as Kirby was telling herself to relax “—is that your work?”

“My… Oh, yes.” She smiled as she remembered. She’d deal with the Titian at the first opportunity. “I’d forgotten that. It’s sentimental, I’m afraid. I was home from school and had a crush on the chauffeur’s son. We used to neck down there.”

“He had buck teeth,” Fairchild reminded her with a snort.

“Love conquers all,” Kirby decided.

“The Hudson River bank is a hell of a place to lose your virginity,” her father stated, suddenly severe. He swirled his drink, then downed it.

Enjoying the abrupt paternal disapproval, she decided to poke at it. “I didn’t lose my virginity on the Hudson River bank.” Amusement glimmered in her eyes. “I lost it in a Renault in Paris.”

Love conquers all, Adam repeated silently.

“Dinner is served,” Cards announced with dignity from the doorway.

“And about time, too.” Fairchild leaped up. “A man could starve in his own home.”

With a smile at her father’s retreating back, Kirby offered Adam her hand. “Shall we go in?”

In the dining room, Fairchild’s paintings dominated. An enormous Waterford chandelier showered light over mahogany and crystal. A massive stone fireplace thundered with flame and light. There were scents of burning wood, candles and roasted meat. There was Breton lace and silver. Still, his paintings dominated.

It appeared he had no distinct style. Art was his style, whether he depicted a sprawling, light-filled landscape or a gentle, shadowy portrait. Bold brush strokes or delicate ones, oils streaked on with a pallet knife or misty watercolors, he’d done them all. Magnificently.

As varied as his paintings were his opinions on other artists. While they sat at the long, laden table, Fairchild spoke of each artist personally, as if he’d been transported back in time and had developed relationships with Raphael, Goya, Manet.

His theories were intriguing, his knowledge was impressive. The artist in Adam responded to him. The practical part, the part that had come to do a job, remained cautious. The opposing forces made him uncomfortable. His attraction to the woman across from him made him itchy.

He cursed McIntyre.

Adam decided the weeks with the Fairchilds might be interesting despite their eccentricities. He didn’t care for the complications, but he’d allowed himself to be pulled in. For now, he’d sit back and observe, waiting for the time to act.

The information he had on them was sketchy. Fairchild was just past sixty, a widower of nearly twenty years. His art and his talent were no secrets, but his personal life was veiled. Perhaps due to temperament. Perhaps, Adam mused, due to necessity.

About Kirby, he knew almost nothing. Professionally, she’d kept a low profile until her first showing the year before. Though it had been an unprecedented success, both she and her father rarely sought publicity for their work. Personally, she was often written up in the glossies and tabloids as she jetted to Saint Moritz with this year’s tennis champion or to Martinique with the current Hollywood golden boy. He knew she was twenty-seven and unmarried. Not for lack of opportunity, he concluded. She was the type of woman men would constantly pursue. In another century, duels would have been fought over her. Adam thought she’d have enjoyed the melodrama.

From their viewpoint, the Fairchilds knew of Adam only what was public knowledge. He’d been born under comfortable circumstances, giving him both the time and means to develop his talent. At the age of twenty, his reputation as an artist had begun to take root. A dozen years later, he was well established. He’d lived in Paris, then in Switzerland, before settling back in the States.

Still, during his twenties, he’d traveled often while painting. With Adam, his art had always come first. However, under the poised exterior, under the practicality and sophistication, there was a taste for adventure and a streak of cunning. So there had been McIntyre.

He’d just have to learn control, Adam told himself as he thought of McIntyre. He’d just have to learn how to say no, absolutely no. The next time Mac had an inspiration, he could go to hell with it.

When they settled back in the parlor with coffee and brandy, Adam calculated that he could finish the job in a couple of weeks. True, the place was immense, but there were only a handful of people in it. After his tour he’d know his way around well enough. Then it would be routine.

Satisfied, he concentrated on Kirby. At the moment she was the perfect hostess—charming, personable. All class and sophistication. She was, momentarily, precisely the type of woman who’d always appealed to him—well-groomed, well-mannered, intelligent, lovely. The room smelled of hothouse roses, wood smoke and her own tenuous scent, which seemed to blend the two. Adam began to relax with it.

“Why don’t you play, Kirby?” Fairchild poured a second brandy for himself and Adam. “It helps clear my mind.”

“All right.” With a quick smile for Adam, Kirby moved to the far end of the room, running a finger over a wing-shaped instrument he’d taken for a small piano.

It took only a few notes for him to realize he’d been wrong. A harpsichord, he thought, astonished. The tinny music floated up. Bach. Adam recognized the composer and wondered if he’d fallen down the rabbit hole. No one—no one normal—played Bach on a harpsichord in a castle in the twentieth century.

Fairchild sat, his eyes half closed, one thin finger tapping, while Kirby continued to play. Her eyes were grave, her mouth was faintly moist and sober. Suddenly, without missing a note or moving another muscle, she sent Adam a slow wink. The notes flowed into Brahms. In that instant, Adam knew he was not only going to take her to bed. He was going to paint her.

“I’ve got it!” Fairchild leaped up and scrambled around the room. “I’ve got it. Inspiration. The golden light!”

“Amen,” Kirby murmured.

“I’ll show you, you wicked child.” Grinning like one of his gargoyles, Fairchild leaned over the harpsichord. “By the end of the week, I’ll have a piece that’ll make anything you’ve ever done look like a doorstop.”

Kirby raised her brows and kissed him on the mouth. “Goat droppings.”

“You’ll eat your words,” he warned as he dashed out of the room.

“I sincerely hope not.” Rising, she picked up her drink. “Papa has a nasty competitive streak.” Which constantly pleased her. “More brandy?”

“Your father has a…unique personality.” An emerald flashed on her hand as she filled her glass again. He saw her hands were narrow, delicate against the hard glitter of the stone. But there’d be strength in them, he reminded himself as he moved to the bar to join her. Strength was indispensable to an artist.

“You’re diplomatic.” She turned and looked up at him. There was the faintest hint of rose on her lips. “You’re a very diplomatic person, aren’t you, Adam?”

He’d already learned not to trust the nunlike expression. “Under some circumstances.”

“Under most circumstances. Too bad.”

“Is it?”

Because she enjoyed personal contact during any kind of confrontation, she kept her eyes on his while she drank. Her irises were the purest gray he’d ever seen, with no hint of other colors. “I think you’d be a very interesting man if you didn’t bind yourself up. I believe you think everything through very carefully.”

“You see that as a problem?” His voice had cooled. “It’s a remarkable observation after such a short time.”

No, he wouldn’t be a bore, she decided, pleased with his annoyance. It was lack of emotion Kirby found tedious. “I could’ve come by it easily enough after an hour, but I’d already seen your work. Besides talent, you have self-control, dignity and a strong sense of the conventional.”

“Why do I feel as though I’ve been insulted?”

“Perceptive, too.” She smiled, that slow curving of lips that was fascinating to watch. When he answered it, she made up her mind quickly. She’d always found it the best way. Still watching him, she set down her brandy. “I’m impulsive,” she explained. “I want to see what it feels like.”

Her arms were around him, her lips on his, in a move that caught him completely off balance. He had a very brief impression of wood smoke and roses, of incredible softness and strength, before she drew back. The hint of a smile remained as she picked up her brandy and finished it off. She’d enjoyed the brief kiss, but she’d enjoyed shocking him a great deal more.

“Very nice,” she said with borderline approval. “Breakfast is from seven on. Just ring for Cards if you need anything. Good night.”

She turned to leave, but he took her arm. Kirby found herself whirled around. When their bodies collided, the surprise was hers.

“You caught me off guard,” he said softly. “I can do much better than nice.”

He took her mouth swiftly, molding her to him. Soft to hard, thin silk to crisp linen. There was something primitive in her taste, something…ageless. She brought to his mind the woods on an autumn evening—dark, pungent and full of small mysteries.

The kiss lengthened, deepened without plan on either side. Her response was instant, as her responses often were. It was boundless as they often were. She moved her hands from his shoulders, to his neck, to his face, as if she were already sculpting. Something vibrated between them.

For the moment, blood ruled. She was accustomed to it; he wasn’t. He was accustomed to reason, but he found none here. Here was heat and passion, needs and desires without questions or answers.

Ultimately, reluctantly, he drew back. Caution, because he was used to winning, was his way.

She could still taste him. Kirby wondered, as she felt his breath feather over her lips, how she’d misjudged him. Her head was spinning, something new for her. She understood heated blood, a fast pulse, but not the clouding of her mind.

Not certain how long he’d have the advantage, Adam smiled at her. “Better?”

“Yes.” She waited until the floor became solid under her feet again. “That was quite an improvement.” Like her father, she knew when to dodge and weave. She eased herself away and moved to the doorway. She’d have to do some thinking, and some reevaluating. “How long are you here, Adam?”

“Four weeks,” he told her, finding it odd she didn’t know.

“Do you intend to sleep with me before you go?”

Torn between amusement and admiration, he stared at her. He respected candor, but he wasn’t used to it in quite so blunt a form. In this case, he decided to follow suit. “Yes.”

She nodded, ignoring the little thrill that raced up her spine. Games—she liked to play them. To win them. Kirby sensed one was just beginning between her and Adam. “I’ll have to think about that, won’t I? Good night.”

Chapter 2

Shafts of morning light streamed in the long windows of the dining room and tossed their diamond pattern on the floor. Outside the trees were touched with September. Leaves blushed from salmon to crimson, the colors mixed with golds and rusts and the last stubborn greens. The lawn was alive with fall flowers and shrubs that seemed caught on fire. Adam had his back to the view as he studied Fairchild’s paintings.

Again, Adam was struck with the incredible variety of styles Fairchild cultivated. There was a still life with the light and shadows of a Goya, a landscape with the frantic colors of a Van Gogh, a portrait with the sensitivity and grace of a Raphael. Because of its subject, it was the portrait that drew him.

A frail, dark-haired woman looked out from the canvas. There was an air of serenity, of patience, about her. The eyes were the same pure gray as Kirby’s, but the features were gentler, more even. Kirby’s mother had been a rare beauty, a rare woman who looked like she’d had both strength and understanding. While she wouldn’t have scrubbed at a hearth, she would have understood the daughter who did. That Adam could see this, be certain of it, without ever having met Rachel Fairchild, was only proof of Fairchild’s genius. He created life with oil and brush.

The next painting, executed in the style of Gainsborough, was a full-length portrait of a young girl. Glossy black curls fell over the shoulders of a white muslin dress, tucked at the bodice, belled at the skirt. She wore white stockings and neat black buckle shoes. Touches of color came from the wide pink sash around her waist and the dusky roses she carried in a basket. But this was no demure Pinky.

The girl held her head high, tilting it with youthful arrogance. The half smile spoke of devilment while the huge gray eyes danced with both. No more than eleven or twelve, Adam calculated. Even then, Kirby must have been a handful.

“An adorable child, isn’t she?” Kirby stood at the doorway as she had for five full minutes. She’d enjoyed watching and dissecting him as much as Adam had enjoyed dissecting the painting.

He stood very straight—prep school training, Kirby decided. Yet his hands were dipped comfortably in his pockets. Even in a casual sweater and jeans, there was an air of formality about him. Contrasts intrigued her, as a woman and as an artist.

Turning, Adam studied her as meticulously as he had her portrait. The day before, he’d seen her go from grubby urchin to sleek sophisticate. Today she was the picture of the bohemian artist. Her face was free of cosmetics and unframed as her hair hung in a ponytail down her back. She wore a shapeless black sweater, baggy, paint-streaked jeans and no shoes. To his annoyance, she continued to attract him.

She turned her head and, by accident or design, the sunlight fell over her profile. In that instant, she was breathtaking. Kirby sighed as she studied her own face. “A veritable angel.”

“Apparently her father knew better.”

She laughed, low and rich. His calm, dry voice pleased her enormously. “He did at that, but not everyone sees it.” She was glad he had, simply because she appreciated a sharp eye and a clever mind. “Have you had breakfast?”

He relaxed. She’d turned again so that the light no longer illuminated her face. She was just an attractive, friendly woman. “No, I’ve been busy being awed.”

“Oh, well, one should never be awed on an empty stomach. It’s murder on the digestion.” After pressing a button, she linked her arm through his and led him to the table. “After we’ve eaten, I’ll take you through the house.”

“I’d like that.” Adam took the seat opposite her. She wore no fragrance this morning but soap—clean and sexless. It aroused nonetheless.

A woman clumped into the room. She had a long bony face, small mud-brown eyes and an unfortunate nose. Her graying hair was scraped back and bundled at the nape of her neck. The deep furrows in her brow indicated her pessimistic nature. Glancing over, Kirby smiled.

“Good morning, Tulip. You’ll have to send a tray up to Papa, he won’t budge out of the tower.” She drew a linen napkin from its ring. “Just toast and coffee for me, and don’t lecture. I’m not getting any taller.”

After a grumbling disapproval, Tulip turned to Adam. His order of bacon and eggs received the same grumble before she clumped back out again.

“Tulip?” Adam cocked a brow as he turned to Kirby.

“Fits beautifully, doesn’t it?” Lips sober, eyes amused, she propped her elbows on the table and dropped her face in her hands. “She’s really a marvel as far as organizing. We’ve had a running battle over food for fifteen years. Tulip insists that if I eat, I’ll grow. After I hit twenty, I figured I’d proved her wrong. I wonder why adults insist on making such absurd statements to children.”

The robust young maid who’d served dinner the night before brought in coffee. She showered sunbeam smiles over Adam.

“Thank you, Polly.” Kirby’s voice was gentle, but Adam caught the warning glance and the maid’s quick blush.

“Yes, ma’am.” Without a backward glance, Polly scurried from the room. Kirby poured the coffee herself.

“Our Polly is very sweet,” she began. “But she has a habit of becoming, ah, a bit too matey with two-thirds of the male population.” Setting down the silver coffee urn, Kirby smiled across the table. “If you’ve a taste for slap and tickle, Polly’s your girl. Otherwise, I wouldn’t encourage her. I’ve even had to warn her off Papa.”

The picture of the lusty young Polly with the Pucklike Fairchild zipped into Adam’s mind. It lingered there a moment with perfect clarity until he roared with laughter.

Well, well, well, Kirby mused, watching him. A man who could laugh like that had tremendous potential. She wondered what other surprises he had tucked away. Hopefully she’d discover quite a few during his stay.

Picking up the cream pitcher, he added a stream to his coffee. “You have my word, I’ll resist temptation.”

“She’s built stupendously,” Kirby observed as she sipped her coffee black.

“Really?” It was the first time she’d seen his grin—quick, crooked and wicked. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Kirby studied him while the grin did odd things to her nervous system. Surprise again, she told herself, then reached for her coffee. “I’ve misjudged you, Adam,” she murmured. “A definite miscalculation. You’re not precisely what you seem.”

He thought of the small transmitter locked in his dignified briefcase. “Is anyone?”

“Yes.” She gave him a long and completely guileless look. “Yes, some people are precisely what they seem, for better or worse.”

“You?” He asked because he suddenly wanted to know badly who and what she was. Not for McIntyre, not for the job, but for himself.

She was silent a moment as a quick, ironic smile moved over her face. He guessed, correctly, that she was laughing at herself. “What I seem to be today is what I am—today.” With one of her lightning changes, she threw off the mood. “Here’s breakfast.”

They talked a little as they ate, inconsequential things, polite things that two relative strangers speak about over a meal. They’d both been raised to handle such situations—small talk, intelligent give-and-take that skimmed over the surface and meant absolutely nothing.

But Kirby found herself aware of him, more aware than she should have been. More aware than she wanted to be.

Just what kind of man was he, she wondered as he sprinkled salt on his eggs. She’d already concluded he wasn’t nearly as conventional as he appeared to be—or perhaps as he thought himself to be. There was an adventurer in there, she was certain. Her only annoyance stemmed from the fact that it had taken her so long to see it.

She remembered the strength and turbulence of the kiss they’d shared. He’d be a demanding lover. And a fascinating one. Which meant she’d have to be a great deal more careful. She no longer believed he’d be easily managed. Something in his eyes…

Quickly she backed off from that line of thought. The point was, she had to manage him. Finishing off her coffee, she sent up a quick prayer that her father had the Van Gogh well concealed.

“The tour begins from bottom to top,” she said brightly. Rising, she held out her hand. “The dungeons are marvelously morbid and damp, but I think we’ll postpone that in respect of your cashmere sweater.”

“Dungeons?” He accepted her offered arm and walked from the room with her.

“We don’t use them now, I’m afraid, but if the vibrations are right, you can still hear a few moans and rattles.” She said it so casually, he nearly believed her. That, he realized, was one of her biggest talents. Making the ridiculous sound plausible. “Lord Wickerton, the original owner, was quite dastardly.”

“You approve?”

“Approve?” She weighed this as they walked. “Perhaps not, but it’s easy to be intrigued by things that happened nearly a hundred years ago. Evil can become romantic after a certain period of time, don’t you think?”

“I’ve never looked at it quite that way.”

“That’s because you have a very firm grip on what’s right and what’s wrong.”

He stopped and, because their arms were linked, Kirby stopped beside him. He looked down at her with an intensity that put her on guard. “And you?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again before she could say something foolish. “Let’s just say I’m flexible. You’ll enjoy this room,” she said, pushing open a door. “It’s rather sturdy and staid.”

Taking the insult in stride, Adam walked through with her. For nearly an hour they wandered from room to room. It occurred to him that he’d underestimated the sheer size of the place. Halls snaked and angled, rooms popped up where they were least expected, some tiny, some enormous. Unless he got very, very lucky, Adam concluded, the job would take him a great deal of time.

Pushing open two heavy, carved doors, Kirby led him into the library. It had two levels and was the size of an average two-bedroom apartment. Faded Persian rugs were scattered over the floor. The far wall was glassed in the small diamond panes that graced most of the windows in the house. The rest of the walls were lined floor to ceiling with books. A glance showed Chaucer standing beside D. H. Lawrence. Stephen King leaned against Milton. There wasn’t even the pretense of organization, but there was the rich smell of leather, dust and lemon oil.

The books dominated the room and left no space for paintings. But there was sculpture.

Adam crossed the room and lifted a figure of a stallion carved in walnut. Freedom, grace, movement, seemed to vibrate in his hands. He could almost hear the steady heartbeat against his palm.

There was a bronze bust of Fairchild on a high, round stand. The artist had captured the puckishness, the energy, but more, she’d captured a gentleness and generosity Adam had yet to see.

In silence, he wandered the room, examining each piece as Kirby looked on. He made her nervous, and she struggled against it. Nerves were something she felt rarely, and never acknowledged. Her work had been looked at before, she reminded herself. What else did an artist want but recognition? She linked her fingers and remained silent. His opinion hardly mattered, she told herself, then moistened her lips.

He picked up a piece of marble shaped into a roaring mass of flames. Though the marble was white, the fire was real. Like every other piece he’d examined, the mass of marble flames was physical. Kirby had inherited her father’s gift for creating life.

For a moment, Adam forgot all the reasons he was there and thought only of the woman and the artist. “Where did you study?”

The flip remark she’d been prepared to make vanished from her mind the moment he turned and looked at her with those calm brown eyes. “École des Beaux-Arts formally. But Papa taught me always.”

He turned the marble in his hands. Even a pedestrian imagination would’ve felt the heat. Adam could all but smell it. “How long have you been sculpting?”

“Seriously? About four years.”

“Why the hell have you only had one exhibition? Why are you burying it here?”

Anger. She lifted her brow at it. She’d wondered just what sort of a temper he’d have, but she hadn’t expected to see it break through over her work. “I’m having another in the spring,” she said evenly. “Charles Larson’s handling it.” Abruptly uncomfortable, she shrugged. “Actually, I was pressured into having the other. I wasn’t ready.”

“That’s ridiculous.” He held up the marble as if she hadn’t seen it before. “Absolutely ridiculous.”

Why should it make her feel vulnerable to have her work in the palm of his hand? Turning away, Kirby ran a finger down her father’s bronze nose. “I wasn’t ready,” she repeated, not sure why, when she never explained herself to anyone, she was explaining such things to him. “I had to be sure, you see. There are those who say—who’ll always say—that I rode on Papa’s coattails. That’s to be expected.” She blew out a breath, but her hand remained on the bust of her father. “I had to know differently. I had to know.”

He hadn’t expected sensitivity, sweetness, vulnerability. Not from her. But he’d seen it in her work, and he’d heard it in her voice. It moved him, every bit as much as her passion had. “Now you do.”

She turned again, and her chin tilted. “Now I do.” With an odd smile, she crossed over and took the marble from him. “I’ve never told anyone that before—not even Papa.” When she looked up, her eyes were quiet, soft and curious. “I wonder why it should be you.”

He touched her hair, something he’d wanted to do since he’d seen the morning sun slant on it. “I wonder why I’m glad it was.”

She took a step back. There was no ignoring a longing so quick and so strong. There was no forgetting caution. “Well, we’ll have to think about it, I suppose. This concludes the first part of our tour.” She set the marble down and smiled easily. “All comments and questions are welcome.”

He’d dipped below the surface, Adam realized, and she didn’t care for it. That he understood. “Your home’s…overwhelming,” he decided, and made her smile broaden into a grin. “I’m disappointed there isn’t a moat and dragon.”

“Just try leaving your vegetables on your plate and you’ll see what a dragon Tulip can be. As to the moat…” She started to shrug an apology, then remembered. “Toadstools, how could I have forgotten?”

Without waiting for an answer, she grabbed his hand and dashed back to the parlor. “No moat,” she told him as she went directly to the fireplace. “But there are secret passageways.”

“I should’ve known.”

“It’s been quite a while since I—” She broke off and began to mutter to herself as she pushed and tugged at the carved oak mantel. “I swear it’s one of the flowers along here—there’s a button, but you have to catch it just right.” With an annoyed gesture, she flicked the ponytail back over her shoulder. Adam watched her long, elegant fingers push and prod. He saw that her nails were short, rounded and unpainted. A schoolgirl’s nails, or a nun’s. Yet the impression of sexual vitality remained. “I know it’s here, but I can’t quite… Et voilà.” Pleased with herself, Kirby stepped back as a section of paneling slid creakily aside. “Needs some oil,” she decided.

“Impressive,” Adam murmured, already wondering if he’d gotten lucky. “Does it lead to the dungeons?”

“It spreads out all over the house in a maze of twists and turns.” Moving to the entrance with him, she peered into the dark. “There’s an entrance in nearly every room. A button on the other side opens or closes the panel. The passages are horribly dark and moldy.” With a shudder, she stepped back. “Perhaps that’s why I forgot about them.” Suddenly cold, she rubbed her hands together. “I used to haunt them as a child, drove the servants mad.”

“I can imagine.” But he saw the quick dread in her eyes as she looked back into the dark.

“I paid for it, I suppose. One day my flashlight went out on me and I couldn’t find my way out. There’re spiders down there as big as schnauzers.” She laughed, but took another step back. “I don’t know how long I was in there, but when Papa found me I was hysterical. Needless to say, I found other ways to terrorize the staff.”

“It still frightens you.”

She glanced up, prepared to brush it off. For the second time the quiet look in his eyes had her telling the simple truth. “Yes. Yes, apparently it does. Well, now that I’ve confessed my neurosis, let’s move on.”

The panel closed, grumbling in protest as she pushed the control. Adam felt rather than heard her sigh of relief. When he took her hand, he found it cold. He wanted to warm it, and her. Instead he concentrated on just what the passages could mean to him. With them he’d have access to every room without the risk of running into one of the staff or one of the Fairchilds. When an opportunity was tossed in your lap, you took it for what it was worth. He’d begin tonight.

“A delivery for you, Miss Fairchild.”

Both Kirby and Adam paused on the bottom landing of the stairs. Kirby eyed the long white box the butler held in his hands. “Not again, Cards.”

“It would appear so, miss.”

“Galoshes.” Kirby sniffed, scratched a point just under her jaw and studied the box. “I’ll just have to be more firm.”

“Just as you say, miss.”

“Cards…” She smiled at him, and though his face remained inscrutable, Adam would have sworn he came to attention. “I know it’s rude, but give them to Polly. I can’t bear to look at another red rose.”

“As you wish, miss. And the card?”

“Details,” she muttered, then sighed. “Leave it on my desk, I’ll deal with it. Sorry, Adam.” Turning, she started up the stairs again. “I’ve been bombarded with roses for the last three weeks. I’ve refused to become Jared’s mistress, but he’s persistent.” More exasperated than annoyed, she shook her head as they rounded the first curve. “I suppose I’ll have to threaten to tell his wife.”

“Might work,” Adam murmured.

“I ask you, shouldn’t a man know better by the time he hits sixty?” Rolling her eyes, she bounced up the next three steps. “I can’t imagine what he’s thinking of.”

She smelled of soap and was shapeless in the sweater and jeans. Moving behind her to the second story, Adam could imagine very well.

The second floor was lined with bedrooms. Each was unique, each furnished in a different style. The more Adam saw of the house, the more he was charmed. And the more he realized how complicated his task was going to be.

“The last room, my boudoir.” She gave him the slow, lazy smile that made his palms itchy. “I’ll promise not to compromise you as long as you’re aware my promises aren’t known for being kept.” With a light laugh, she pushed open the door and stepped inside. “Fish fins.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Whatever for?” Ignoring him, Kirby marched into the room. “Do you see that?” she demanded. In a gesture remarkably like her father’s, she pointed at the bed. A scruffy dog lay like a lump in the center of a wedding ring quilt. Frowning, Adam walked a little closer.

“What is it?”

“A dog, of course.”

He looked at the gray ball of hair, which seemed to have no front or back. “It’s possible.”

A stubby tail began to thump on the quilt.

“This is no laughing matter, Montique. I take the heat, you know.”

Adam watched the bundle shift until he could make out a head. The eyes were still hidden behind the mop of fur, but there was a little black nose and a lolling tongue. “Somehow I’d’ve pictured you with a brace of Afghan hounds.”

“What? Oh.” Giving the mop on the bed a quick pat, she turned back to Adam. “Montique doesn’t belong to me, he belongs to Isabelle.” She sent the dog an annoyed glance. “She’s going to be very put out.”

Adam frowned at the unfamiliar name. Had McIntyre missed someone? “Is she one of the staff?”

“Good grief, no.” Kirby let out a peal of laughter that had Montique squirming in delight. “Isabelle serves no one. She’s… Well, here she is now. There’ll be the devil to pay,” she added under her breath.

Shifting his head, Adam looked toward the doorway. He started to tell Kirby there was no one there when a movement caught his eye. He looked down on a large buff-colored Siamese. Her eyes were angled, icily blue and, though he hadn’t considered such things before, regally annoyed. The cat crossed the threshold, sat and stared up at Kirby.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Kirby tossed out. “I had nothing to do with it. If he wanders in here, it has nothing to do with me.” Isabelle flicked her tail and made a low, dangerous sound in her throat. “I won’t tolerate your threats, and I will not keep my door locked.” Kirby folded her arms and tapped a foot on the Aubusson carpet. “I refuse to change a habit of a lifetime for your convenience. You’ll just have to keep a closer eye on him.”

As he watched silently, Adam was certain he saw genuine temper in Kirby’s eyes—the kind of temper one person aims toward another person. Gently he placed a hand on her arm and waited for her to look at him. “Kirby, you’re arguing with a cat.”

“Adam.” Just as gently, she patted his hand. “Don’t worry. I can handle it.” With a lift of her brow, she turned back to Isabelle. “Take him, then, and put him on a leash if you don’t want him wandering. And the next time, I’d appreciate it if you’d knock before you come into my room.”

With a flick of her tail, Isabelle moved to the bed and stared up at Montique. He thumped his tail, tongue lolling, before he leaped clumsily to the floor. With a kind of jiggling trot, he followed the gliding cat from the room.

“He went with her,” Adam murmured.

“Of course he did,” Kirby retorted. “She has a beastly temper.”

Refusing to be taken for a fool, Adam gave Kirby a long, uncompromising look. “Are you trying to tell me that the dog belongs to that cat?”

“Do you have a cigarette?” she countered. “I rarely smoke, but Isabelle affects me that way.” She noted that his eyes never lost their cool, mildly annoyed expression as he took one out and lit it for her. Kirby had to swallow a chuckle. Adam was, she decided, remarkable. She drew on the cigarette and blew out the smoke without inhaling. “Isabelle maintains that Montique followed her home. I think she kidnapped him. It would be just like her.”

Games, he thought again. Two could play. “And to whom does Isabelle belong?”

“Belong?” Kirby’s eyes widened. “Isabelle belongs to no one but herself. Who’d want to lay claim to such a wicked creature?”

And he could play as well as anyone. Taking the cigarette from her, Adam drew in smoke. “If you dislike her, why don’t you just get rid of her?”

She nipped the cigarette from his fingers again. “I can hardly do that as long as she pays the rent, can I? There, that’s enough,” she decided after another drag. “I’m quite calm again.” She handed him back the cigarette before she walked to the door. “I’ll take you up to Papa’s studio. We’ll just skip over the third floor, everything’s draped with dustcovers.”

Adam opened his mouth, then decided that some things were best left alone. Dismissing odd cats and ugly dogs, he followed Kirby back into the hall again. The stairs continued up in a lazy arch to the third floor, then veered sharply and became straight and narrow. Kirby stopped at the transition point and gestured down the hall.

“The floor plan is the same as the second floor. There’s a set of stairs at the opposite side that lead to my studio. The rest of these rooms are rarely used.” She gave him the slow smile as she linked hands. “Of course, the entire floor’s haunted.”

“Of course.” He found it only natural. Without a word, he followed her to the tower.

Chapter 3

Normalcy. Tubes of paint were scattered everywhere, brushes stood in jars. The scent of oil and turpentine hung in the air. This Adam understood—the debris and the sensuality of art.

The room was rounded with arching windows and a lofty ceiling. The floor might have been beautiful at one time, but now the wood was dull and splattered and smeared with paints and stains. Canvases were in the corners, against the walls, stacked on the floor.

Kirby gave the room a swift, thorough study. When she saw all was as it should be, the tension eased from her shoulders. Moving across the room, she went to her father.

He sat, motionless and unblinking, staring down at a partially formed mound of clay. Without speaking, Kirby walked around the worktable, scrutinizing the clay from all angles. Fairchild’s eyes remained riveted on his work. After a few moments, Kirby straightened, rubbed her nose with the back of her hand and pursed her lips.

“Mmm.”

“That’s only your opinion,” Fairchild snapped.

“It certainly is.” For a moment, she nibbled on her thumbnail. “You’re entitled to another. Adam, come have a look.”

He sent her a killing glance that caused her to grin. Trapped by manners, he crossed the studio and looked down at the clay.

It was, he supposed, an adequate attempt—a partially formed hawk, talons exposed, beak just parted. The power, the life, that sung in his paints, and in his daughter’s sculptures, just wasn’t there. In vain, Adam searched for a way out.

“Hmm,” he began, only to have Kirby pounce on the syllable.

“There, he agrees with me.” Kirby patted her father’s head and looked smug.

“What does he know?” Fairchild demanded. “He’s a painter.”

“And so, darling Papa, are you. A brilliant one.”

He struggled not to be pleased and poked a finger into the clay. “Soon, you hateful brat, I’ll be a brilliant sculptor as well.”

“I’ll get you some Play-Doh for your birthday,” she offered, then let out a shriek as Fairchild grabbed her ear and twisted. “Fiend.” With a sniff, she rubbed at the lobe.

“Mind your tongue or I’ll make a Van Gogh of you.”

As Adam watched, the little man cackled; Kirby, however, froze—face, shoulders, hands. The fluidity he’d noticed in her even when she was still vanished. It wasn’t annoyance, he thought, but…fear? Not of Fairchild. Kirby, he was certain, would never be afraid of a man, particularly her father. For Fairchild was more feasible, and just as baffling.

She recovered quickly enough and tilted her chin. “I’m going to show Adam my studio. He can settle in.”

“Good, good.” Because he recognized the edge to her voice, Fairchild patted her hand. “Damn pretty girl, isn’t she, Adam?”

“Yes, she is.”

As Kirby heaved a gusty sigh, Fairchild patted her hand again. The clay on his smeared onto hers. “See, my sweet, aren’t you grateful for those braces now?”

“Papa.” With a reluctant grin, Kirby laid her cheek against his balding head. “I never wore braces.”

“Of course not. You inherited your teeth from me.” He gave Adam a flashing smile and a wink. “Come back when you’ve got settled, Adam. I need some masculine company.” He pinched Kirby’s cheek lightly. “And don’t think Adam’s going to sniff around your ankles like Rick Potts.”

“Adam’s nothing like Rick,” Kirby murmured as she picked up a rag and wiped the traces of clay from her hands. “Rick is sweet.”

“She inherited her manners from the milkman,” Fairchild observed.

She shot a look at Adam. “I’m sure Adam can be sweet, too.” But there was no confidence in her voice. “Rick’s forte is watercolor. He’s the sort of man women want to mother. I’m afraid he stutters a bit when he gets excited.”

“He’s madly in love with our little Kirby.” Fairchild would’ve cackled again, but for the look his daughter sent him.

“He just thinks he is. I don’t encourage him.”

“What about the clinch I happened in on in the library?” Pleased with himself, Fairchild turned back to Adam. “I ask you, when a man’s glasses are steamed, isn’t there a reason for it?”

“Invariably.” He liked them, damn it, whether they were harmless lunatics or something more than harmless. He liked them both.

“You know very well that was totally one-sided.” Barely shifting her stance, she became suddenly regal and dignified. “Rick lost control, temporarily. Like blowing a fuse, I suppose.” She brushed at the sleeve of her sweater. “Now that’s quite enough on the subject.”

“He’s coming to stay for a few days next week.” Fairchild dropped the bombshell as Kirby walked to the door. To her credit, she barely broke stride. Adam wondered if he was watching a well-plotted game of chess or a wild version of Chinese checkers.

“Very well,” Kirby said coolly. “I’ll tell Rick that Adam and I are lovers and that Adam’s viciously jealous, and keeps a stiletto in his left sock.”

“Good God,” Adam murmured as Kirby swept out of the door. “She’ll do it, too.”

“You can bank on it,” Fairchild agreed, without disguising the glee in his voice. He loved confusion. A man of sixty was entitled to create as much as he possibly could.

* * *

The structure of the second tower studio was identical to the first. Only the contents differed. In addition to paints and brushes and canvases, there were knives, chisels and mallets. There were slabs of limestone and marble and lumps of wood. Adam’s equipment was the only spot of order in the room. Cards had stacked his gear personally.

A long wooden table was cluttered with tools, wood shavings, rags and a crumpled ball of material that might’ve been a paint smock. In a corner was a high-tech stereo component system. An ancient gas heater was set into one wall with an empty easel in front of it.

As with Fairchild’s tower, Adam understood this kind of chaos. The room was drenched with sun. It was quiet, spacious and instantly appealing.

“There’s plenty of room,” Kirby told him with a sweeping gesture. “Set up where you’re comfortable. I don’t imagine we’ll get in each other’s way,” she said doubtfully, then shrugged. She had to make the best of it. Better for him to be here, in her way, than sharing her father’s studio with the Van Gogh. “Are you temperamental?”

“I wouldn’t say so,” Adam answered absently as he began to unpack his equipment. “Others might. And you?”

“Oh, yes.” Kirby plopped down behind the worktable and lifted a piece of wood. “I have tantrums and fits of melancholia. I hope it won’t bother you.” He turned to answer, but she was staring down at the wood in her hands, as if searching for something hidden inside. “I’m doing my emotions now. I can’t be held responsible.”

Curious, Adam left his unpacking to walk to the shelf behind her. On it were a dozen pieces in various stages. He chose a carved piece of fruitwood that had been polished. “Emotions,” he murmured, running his fingers over the wood.

“Yes, that’s—”

“Grief,” he supplied. He could see the anguish, feel the pain.

“Yes.” She wasn’t sure if it pleased her or not to have him so in tune—particularly with that one piece that had cost her so much. “I’ve done Joy and Doubt as well. I thought to save Passion for last.” She spread her hands under the wood she held and brought it to eye level. “This is to be Anger.” As if to annoy it, she tapped the wood with her fingers. “One of the seven deadly sins, though I’ve always thought it mislabeled. We need anger.”

He saw the change in her eyes as she stared into the wood. Secrets, he thought. She was riddled with them. Yet as she sat, the sun pouring around her, the unformed wood held aloft in her hands, she seemed to be utterly, utterly open, completely readable, washed with emotion. Even as he began to see it, she shifted and broke the mood. Her smile when she looked up at him was teasing.

“Since I’m doing Anger, you’ll have to tolerate a few bouts of temper.”

“I’ll try to be objective.”

Kirby grinned, liking the gloss of politeness over the sarcasm. “I bet you have bundles of objectivity.”

“No more than my share.”

“You can have mine, too, if you like. It’s very small.” Still moving the wood in her hands, she glanced toward his equipment. “Are you working on anything?”

“I was.” He walked around to stand in front of her. “I’ve something else in mind now. I want to paint you.”

Her gaze shifted from the wood in her hands to his face. With some puzzlement, he saw her eyes were wary. “Why?”

He took a step closer and closed his hand over her chin. Kirby sat passively as he examined her from different angles. But she felt his fingers, each individual finger, as it lay on her skin. Soft skin, and Adam didn’t bother to resist the urge to run his thumb over her cheek. The bones seemed fragile under his hands, but her eyes were steady and direct.

“Because,” he said at length,” your face is fascinating. I want to paint that, the translucence, and your sexuality.”

Her mouth heated under the careless brush of his fingers. Her hands tightened on the fruitwood, but her voice was even. “And if I said no?”

That was another thing that intrigued him, the trace of hauteur she used sparingly—and very successfully. She’d bring men to their knees with that look, he thought. Deliberately he leaned over and kissed her. He felt her stiffen, resist, then remain still. She was, in her own way, in her own defense, absorbing the feelings he brought to her. Her knuckles had whitened on the wood, but he didn’t see. When he lifted his head, all Adam saw was the deep, pure gray of her eyes.

“I’d paint you anyway,” he murmured. He left the room, giving them both time to think about it.

* * *

She did think about it. For nearly thirty minutes, Kirby sat perfectly still and let her mind work. It was a curious part of her nature that such a vibrant, restless woman could have such a capacity for stillness. When it was necessary, Kirby could do absolutely nothing while she thought through problems and looked for answers. Adam made it necessary.

He stirred something in her that she’d never felt before. Kirby believed that one of the most precious things in life was the original and the fresh. This time, however, she wondered if she should skirt around it.

She appreciated a man who took the satisfaction of his own desires for granted, just as she did. Nor was she averse to pitting herself against him. But… She couldn’t quite get past the but in Adam’s case.

It might be safer—smarter, she amended—if she concentrated on the awkwardness of Adam’s presence with respect to the Van Gogh and her father’s hobby. The attraction she felt was ill-timed. She touched her tongue to her top lip and thought she could taste him. Ill-timed, she thought again. And inconvenient.

Her father had better be prudent, she thought, then immediately sighed. Calling Philip Fairchild prudent was like calling Huck Finn studious. The blasted, brilliant Van Gogh was going to have to make a speedy exit. And the Titian, she remembered, gnawing on her lip. She still had to handle that.

Adam was huddled with her father, and there was nothing she could do at the moment. Just a few more days, she reminded herself. There’d be nothing more to worry about. The smile crept back to her mouth. The rest of Adam’s visit might be fun. She thought of him, the serious brown eyes, the strong, sober mouth.

Dangerous fun, she conceded. But then, what was life without a bit of danger? Still smiling, she picked up her tools.

She worked in silence, in total concentration. Adam, her father, the Van Gogh were forgotten. The wood in her hand was the center of the universe. There was life there; she could feel it. It only waited for her to find the key to release it. She would find it, and the soaring satisfaction that went hand in hand with the discovery.

Painting had never given her that. She’d played at it, enjoyed it, but she’d never possessed it. She’d never been possessed by it. Art was a lover that demanded complete allegiance. Kirby understood that.

As she worked, the wood seemed to take a tentative breath. She felt suddenly, clearly, the temper she sought pushing against the confinement. Nearly—nearly free.

At the sound of her name, she jerked her head up. “Bloody murder!”

“Kirby, I’m so sorry.”

“Melanie.” She swallowed the abuse, barely. “I didn’t hear you come up.” Though she set down her tools, she continued to hold the wood. She couldn’t lose it now. “Come in. I won’t shout at you.”

“I’m sure you should.” Melanie hesitated at the doorway. “I’m disturbing you.”

“Yes, you are, but I forgive you. How was New York?” Kirby gestured to a chair as she smiled at her oldest friend.

Pale blond hair was elegantly styled around a heart-shaped face. Cheekbones, more prominent than Kirby’s, were tinted expertly. The Cupid’s-bow mouth was carefully glossed in deep rose. Kirby decided, as she did regularly, that Melanie Burgess had the most perfect profile ever created.

“You look wonderful, Melly. Did you have fun?”

Melanie wrinkled her nose as she brushed off the seat of her chair. “Business. But my spring designs were well received.”

Kirby brought up her legs and crossed them under her. “I’ll never understand how you can decide in August what we should be wearing next April.” She was losing the power of the wood. Telling herself it would come back, she set it on the table, within reach. “Have you done something nasty to the hemlines again?”

“You never pay any attention anyway.” She gave Kirby’s sweater a look of despair.

“I like to think of my wardrobe as timeless rather than trendy.” She grinned, knowing which buttons to push. “This sweater’s barely twelve years old.”

“And looks every day of it.” Knowing the game and Kirby’s skill, Melanie switched tactics. “I ran into Ellen Parker at 21.”

“Did you?” After lacing her hands, Kirby rested her chin on them. She never considered gossiping rude, particularly if it was interesting. “I haven’t seen her for months. Is she still spouting French when she wants to be confidential?”

“You won’t believe it.” Melanie shuddered as she pulled a long, slender cigarette from an enameled case. “I didn’t believe it myself until I saw it with my own eyes. Jerry told me. You remember Jerry Turner, don’t you?”

“Designs women’s underwear.”

“Intimate apparel,” Melanie corrected with a sigh. “Really, Kirby.”

“Whatever. I appreciate nice underwear. So what did he tell you?”

Melanie pulled out a monogrammed lighter and flicked it on. She took a delicate puff. “He told me that Ellen was having an affair.”

“There’s news,” Kirby returned dryly. With a yawn, she stretched her arms to the ceiling and relieved the stiffness in her shoulder blades. “Is this number two hundred and three, or have I missed one?”

“But, Kirby—” Melanie tapped her cigarette for emphasis as she leaned forward “—she’s having this one with her son’s orthodontist.”

It was the sound of Kirby’s laughter that caused Adam to pause on his way up the tower steps. It rang against the stone walls, rich, real and arousing. He stood as it echoed and faded. Moving quietly, he continued up.

“Kirby, really. An orthodontist.” Even knowing Kirby as well as she did, Melanie was stunned by her reaction. “It’s so—so middle-class.”

“Oh, Melanie, you’re such a wonderful snob.” She smothered another chuckle as Melanie gave an indignant huff. When Kirby smiled, it was irresistible. “It’s perfectly acceptable for Ellen to have any number of affairs, as long as she keeps her choice socially prominent but an orthodontist goes beyond good taste?”

“It’s not acceptable, of course,” Melanie muttered, finding herself caught in the trap of Kirby’s logic. “But if one is discreet, and…”

“Selective?” Kirby supplied good-naturedly. “Actually, it is rather nasty. Here’s Ellen carrying on with her son’s orthodontist, while poor Harold shells out a fortune for the kid’s overbite. Where’s the justice?”

“You say the most astonishing things.”

“Orthodonture work is frightfully expensive.”

With an exasperated sigh, Melanie tried another change of subject. “How’s Stuart?”

Though he’d been about to enter, Adam stopped in the doorway and kept his silence. Kirby’s smile had vanished. The eyes that had been alive with humor were frigid. Something hard, strong and unpleasant came into them. Seeing the change, Adam realized she’d make a formidable enemy. There was grit behind the careless wit, the raw sexuality and the eccentric-rich-girl polish. He wouldn’t forget it.

“Stuart,” Kirby said in a brittle voice. “I really wouldn’t know.”

“Oh, dear.” At the arctic tone, Melanie caught her bottom lip between her teeth. “Have you two had a row?”

“A row?” The smile remained unpleasant. “One might put it that way.” Something flared—the temper she’d been prodding out of the wood. With an effort, Kirby shrugged it aside. “As soon as I’d agreed to marry him, I knew I’d made a mistake. I should’ve dealt with it right away.”

“You’d told me you were having doubts.” After stubbing out her cigarette, Melanie leaned forward to take Kirby’s hands. “I thought it was nerves. You’d never let any relationship get as far as an engagement before.”

“It was an error in judgment.” No, she’d never let a relationship get as far as an engagement. Engagements equaled commitment. Commitments were a lock, perhaps the only lock, Kirby considered sacred. “I corrected it.”

“And Stuart? I suppose he was furious.”

The smile that came back to Kirby’s lips held no humor. “He gave me the perfect escape hatch. You know he’d been pressuring me to set a date?”

“And I know that you’d been putting him off.”

“Thank God,” Kirby murmured. “In any case, I’d finally drummed up the courage to renege. I think it was the first time in my life I’ve felt genuine guilt.” Moving her shoulders restlessly, she picked up the wood again. It helped to steady her, helped her to concentrate on temper. “I went by his place, unannounced. It was a now-or-never sort of gesture. I should’ve seen what was up as soon as he answered the door, but I was already into my neat little speech when I noticed a few—let’s say articles of intimate apparel tossed around the room.”

“Oh, Kirby.”

Letting out a long breath, Kirby went on. “That part of it was my fault, I suppose. I wouldn’t sleep with him. There was just no driving urge to be intimate with him. No…” She searched for a word. “Heat,” she decided, for lack of anything better. “I guess that’s why I knew I’d never marry him. But, I was faithful.” The fury whipped through her again. “I was faithful, Melly.”

“I don’t know what to say.” Distress vibrated in her voice. “I’m so sorry, Kirby.”

Kirby shook her head at the sympathy. She never looked for it. “I wouldn’t have been so angry if he hadn’t stood there, telling me how much he loved me, when he had another woman keeping the sheets warm. I found it humiliating.”

“You have nothing to be humiliated about,” Melanie returned with some heat. “He was a fool.”

“Perhaps. It would’ve been bad enough if we’d stuck to the point, but we got off the track of love and fidelity. Things got nasty.”

Her voice trailed off. Her eyes clouded over. It was time for secrets again. “I found out quite a bit that night,” she murmured. “I’ve never thought of myself as a fool, but it seems I’d been one.”

Again, Melanie reached for her hand. “It must have been a dreadful shock to learn Stuart was unfaithful even before you were married.”

“What?” Blinking, Kirby brought herself back. “Oh, that. Yes, that, too.”

“Too? What else?”

“Nothing.” With a shake of her head, Kirby swept it all aside. “It’s all dead and buried now.”

“I feel terrible. Damn it, I introduced you.”

“Perhaps you should shave your head in restitution, but I’d advise you to forget it.”

“Can you?”

Kirby’s lips curved up, her brow lifted. “Tell me, Melly, do you still hold André Fayette against me?”

Melanie folded her hands primly. “It’s been five years.”

“Six, but who’s counting?” Grinning, Kirby leaned forward. “Besides, who expects an oversexed French art student to have any taste?”

Melanie’s pretty mouth pouted. “He was very attractive.”

“But base.” Kirby struggled with a new grin. “No class, Melly. You should thank me for luring him away, however unintentionally.”

Deciding it was time to make his presence known, Adam stepped inside. Kirby glanced up and smiled without a trace of the ice or the fury. “Hello, Adam. Did you have a nice chat with Papa?”

“Yes.”

Melanie, he decided as he glanced in her direction, was even more stunning at close quarters. Classic face, classic figure draped in a pale rose dress cut with style and simplicity. “Am I interrupting?”

“Just gossip. Melanie Burgess, Adam Haines. Adam’s our guest for a few weeks.”

Adam accepted the slim rose-tipped hand. It was soft and pampered, without the slight ridge of callus that Kirby’s had just under the fingers. He wondered what had happened in the past twenty-four hours to make him prefer the untidy artist to the perfectly groomed woman smiling up at him. Maybe he was coming down with something.

“The Adam Haines?” Melanie’s smile warmed. She knew of him, the irreproachable lineage and education. “Of course you are,” she continued before he could comment. “This place attracts artists like a magnet. I have one of your paintings.”

“Do you?” Adam lit her cigarette, then one of his own. “Which one?”

“A Study in Blue.” Melanie tilted her face to smile into his eyes, a neat little feminine trick she’d learned soon after she’d learned to walk.

From across the table, Kirby studied them both. Two extraordinary faces, she decided. The tips of her fingers itched to capture Adam in bronze. A year before, she’d done Melanie in ivory—smooth, cool and perfect. With Adam, she’d strive for the undercurrents.

“I wanted the painting because it was so strong,” Melanie continued. “But I nearly let it go because it made me sad. You remember, Kirby. You were there.”

“Yes, I remember.” When she looked up at him, her eyes were candid and amused, without the traces of flirtation that flitted in Melanie’s. “I was afraid she’d break down and disgrace herself, so I threatened to buy it myself. Papa was furious that I didn’t.”

“Uncle Philip could practically stock the Louvre already,” Melanie said with a casual shrug.

“Some people collect stamps,” Kirby returned, then smiled again. “The still life in my room is Melanie’s work, Adam. We studied together in France.”

“No, don’t ask,” Melanie said quickly, holding up her hand. “I’m not an artist. I’m a designer who dabbles.”

“Only because you refuse to dig your toes in.”

Melanie inclined her head, but didn’t agree or refute. “I must go. Tell Uncle Philip I said hello. I won’t risk disturbing him, as well.”

“Stay for lunch, Melly. We haven’t seen you in two months.”

“Another time.” She rose with the grace of one who’d been taught to sit and stand and walk. Adam stood with her, catching the drift of Chanel. “I’ll see you this weekend at the party.” With another smile, she offered Adam her hand. “You’ll come, too, won’t you?”

“I’d like that.”

“Wonderful.” Snapping open her bag, Melanie drew out thin leather gloves. “Nine o’clock, Kirby. Don’t forget. Oh!” On her way to the door, she stopped, whirling back. “Oh, God, the invitations were sent out before I… Kirby, Stuart’s going to be there.”

“I won’t pack my derringer, Melly.” She laughed, but it wasn’t quite as rich or quite as free. “You look as though someone’s just spilled caviar on your Saint Laurent. Don’t worry about it.” She paused, and the chill passed quickly in and out of her eyes. “I promise you, I won’t.”

“If you’re sure…” Melanie frowned. It was, however, not possible to discuss such a thing in depth in front of a guest. “As long as you won’t be uncomfortable.”

“I won’t be the one who suffers discomfort.” The careless arrogance was back.

“Saturday, then.” Melanie gave Adam a final smile before she slipped from the room.

“A beautiful woman,” Adam commented, coming back to the table.

“Yes, exceptional.” The simple agreement had no undertones of envy or spite.

“How do two women, two exceptional women, of totally different types, remain friends?”

“By not attempting to change one another.” She picked up the wood again and began to roll it around in her hands. “I overlook what I see as Melanie’s faults, and she overlooks mine.” She saw the pad and pencil in his hand and lifted a brow. “What’re you doing?”

“Some preliminary sketches. What are your faults?”

“Too numerous to mention.” Setting the wood down again, she leaned back.

“Any good points?”

“Dozens.” Perhaps it was time to test him a bit, to see what button worked what switch. “Loyalty,” she began breezily. “Sporadic patience and honesty.”

“Sporadic?”

“I’d hate to be perfect.” She ran her tongue over her teeth. “And I’m terrific in bed.”

His gaze shifted to her bland smile. Just what game was Kirby Fairchild playing? His lips curved as easily as hers. “I bet you are.”

Laughing, she leaned forward again, chin cupped in her hands. “You don’t rattle easily, Adam. It makes me all the more determined to keep trying.”

“Telling me something I’d already concluded isn’t likely to rattle me. Who’s Stuart?”

The question had her stiffening. She’d challenged him, Kirby conceded, now she had to meet one of his. “A former fiancé,” she said evenly. “Stuart Hiller.”

The name clicked, but Adam continued to sketch. “The same Hiller who runs the Merrick Gallery?”

“The same.” He heard the tightening in her voice. For a moment he wanted to drop it, to leave her to her privacy and her anger. The job came first.

“I know him by reputation,” Adam continued. “I’d planned to see the gallery. It’s about twenty miles from here, isn’t it?”

She paled a bit, which confused him, but when she spoke her voice was steady. “Yes, it’s not far. Under the circumstances, I’m afraid I can’t take you.”

“You may mend your differences over the weekend.” Prying wasn’t his style. He had a distaste for it, particularly when it involved someone he was beginning to care about. When he lifted his gaze, however, he didn’t see discomfort. She was livid.

“I think not.” She made a conscious effort to relax her hands. Noting the gesture, Adam wondered how much it cost her. “It occurred to me that my name would be Fairchild-Hiller.” She gave a slow, rolling shrug. “That would never do.”

“The Merrick Gallery has quite a reputation.”

“Yes. As a matter of fact, Melanie’s mother owns it, and managed it until a couple of years ago.”

“Melanie? Didn’t you say her name was Burgess?”

“She was married to Carlyse Burgess—Burgess Enterprises. They’re divorced.”

“So, she’s Harriet Merrick’s daughter.” The cast of players was increasing. “Mrs. Merrick’s given the running of the gallery over to Hiller?”

“For the most part. She dips her hand in now and then.”

Adam saw that she’d relaxed again, and concentrated on the shape of her eyes. Round? Not quite, he decided. They were nearly almond shaped, but again, not quite. Like Kirby, they were simply unique.

“Whatever my personal feelings, Stuart’s a knowledgeable dealer.” She gave a quick, short laugh. “Since she hired him, she’s had time to travel. Harriet’s just back from an African safari. When I phoned her the other day, she told me she’d brought back a necklace of crocodile teeth.”

To his credit, Adam closed his eyes only briefly. “Your families are close, then. I imagine your father’s done a lot of dealing through the Merrick Gallery.”

“Over the years. Papa had his first exhibition there, more than thirty years ago. It sort of lifted his and Harriet’s careers off at the same time.” Straightening in her chair, Kirby frowned across the table. “Let me see what you’ve done.”

“In a minute,” he muttered, ignoring her outstretched hand.

“Your manners sink to my level when it’s convenient, I see.” Kirby plopped back in her chair. When he didn’t comment, she screwed her face into unnatural lines.

“I wouldn’t do that for long,” Adam advised. “You’ll hurt yourself. When I start in oil, you’ll have to behave or I’ll beat you.”

Kirby relaxed her face because her jaw was stiffening. “Corkscrews, you wouldn’t beat me. You have the disadvantage of being a gentleman, inside and out.”

Lifting his head, he pinned her with a look. “Don’t bank on it.”

The look alone stopped whatever sassy rejoinder she might have made. It wasn’t the look of a gentleman, but of a man who made his own way however he chose. Before she could think of a proper response, the sound of shouting and wailing drifted up the tower steps and through the open door. Kirby made no move to spring up and investigate. She merely smiled.

“I’m going to ask two questions,” Adam decided. “First, what the hell is that?”

“Which that is that, Adam?” Her eyes were dove gray and guileless.

“The sound of mourning.”

“Oh, that.” Grinning, she reached over and snatched his sketch pad. “That’s Papa’s latest tantrum because his sculpture’s not going well—which of course it never will. Does my nose really tilt that way?” Experimentally she ran her finger down it. “Yes, I guess it does. What was your other question?”

“Why do you say ‘corkscrews’ or something equally ridiculous when a simple ‘hell’ or ‘damn’ would do?”

“It has to do with cigars. You really must show these sketches to Papa. He’ll want to see them.”

“Cigars.” Determined to have her full attention, Adam grabbed the pad away from her.

“Those big, nasty, fat ones. Papa used to smoke them by the carload. You needed a gas mask just to come in the door. I begged, threatened, even tried smoking them myself.” She swallowed on that unfortunate memory. “Then I came up with the solution. Papa is a sucker.”

“Is that so?”

“That is, he just can’t resist a bet, no matter what the odds.” She touched the wood again, knowing she’d have to come back to it later. “My language was, let’s say, colorful. I can swear eloquently in seven languages.”

“Quite an accomplishment.”

“It has its uses, believe me. I bet Papa ten thousand dollars that I could go longer without swearing than he could without smoking. Both my language and the ozone layer have been clean for three months.” Rising, Kirby circled the table. “I have the gratitude of the entire staff.” Abruptly she dropped in his lap. Letting her head fall back, she wound her arms around his neck. “Kiss me again, will you? I can’t resist.”

There can’t be another like her, Adam thought as he closed his mouth over hers. With a low sound of pleasure, Kirby melted against him, all soft demand.

Then neither of them thought, but felt only.

Desire was swift and sharp. It built and expanded so that they could wallow in it. She allowed herself the luxury, for such things were too often brief, too often hollow. She wanted the speed, the heat, the current. A risk, but life was nothing without them. A challenge, but each day brought its own. He made her feel soft, giddy, senseless. No one else had. If she could be swept away, why shouldn’t she be? It had never happened before.

She needed what she’d never realized she needed from a man before: strength, solidity.

Adam felt the initial stir turn to an ache—something deep and dull and constant. It wasn’t something he could resist, but something he found he needed. Desire had always been basic and simple and painless. Hadn’t he known she was a woman who would make a man suffer? Knowing it, shouldn’t he have been able to avoid it? But he hurt. Holding her soft and pliant in his arms, he hurt. From wanting more.

“Can’t you two wait until after lunch?” Fairchild demanded from the doorway.

With a quiet sigh, Kirby drew her lips from Adam’s. The taste lingered as she knew now it would. Like the wood behind her, it would be something that pulled her back again and again.

“We’re coming,” she murmured, then brushed Adam’s mouth again, as if in promise. She turned and rested her cheek against his in a gesture he found impossibly sweet. “Adam’s been sketching me,” she told her father.

“Yes, I can see that.” Fairchild gave a quick snort. “He can sketch you all he chooses after lunch. I’m hungry.”

Chapter 4

Food seemed to soothe Fairchild’s temperament. As he plowed his way through poached salmon, he went off on a long, technical diatribe on surrealism. It appeared breaking conventional thought to release the imagination had appealed to him to the extent that he’d given nearly a year of his time in study and application. With a good-humored shrug, he confessed that his attempts at surrealistic painting had been poor, and his plunge into abstraction little better.

“He’s banished those canvases to the attic,” Kirby told Adam as she poked at her salad. “There’s one in shades of blue and yellow, with clocks of all sizes and shapes sort of melting and drooping everywhere and two left shoes tucked in a corner. He called it Absence of Time.”

“Experimental,” Fairchild grumbled, eyeing Kirby’s uneaten portion of fish.

“He refused an obscene amount of money for it and locked it, like a mad relation, in the attic.” Smoothly she transferred her fish to her father’s plate. “He’ll be sending his sculpture to join it before long.”

Fairchild swallowed a bite of fish, then ground his teeth. “Heartless brat.” In the blink of an eye he changed from amiable cherub to gnome. “By this time next year, Philip Fairchild’s name will be synonymous with sculpture.”

“Horse dust,” Kirby concluded, and speared a cucumber. “That shade of pink becomes you, Papa.” Leaning over, she placed a loud kiss on his cheek. “It’s very close to fuchsia.”

“You’re not too old to forget my ability to bring out the same tone on your bottom.”

“Child abuser.” As Adam watched, she stood and wrapped her arms around Fairchild’s neck. In the matter of love for her father, the enigma of Kirby Fairchild was easily solvable. “I’m going out for a walk before I turn yellow and dry up. Will you come?”

“No, no, I’ve a little project to finish.” He patted her hand as she tensed. Adam saw something pass between them before Fairchild turned to him. “Take her for a walk and get on with your…sketching,” he said with a cackle. “Have you asked Kirby if you can paint her yet? They all do.” He stabbed at the salmon again. “She never lets them.”

Adam lifted his wine. “I told Kirby I was going to paint her.”

The new cackle was full of delight. Pale blue eyes lit with the pleasure of trouble brewing. “A firm hand, eh? She’s always needed one. Don’t know where she got such a miserable temper.” He smiled artlessly. “Must’ve come from her mother’s side.”

Adam glanced up at the serene, mild-eyed woman in the portrait. “Undoubtedly.”

“See that painting there?” Fairchild pointed to the portrait of Kirby as a girl. “That’s the one and only time she modeled for me. I had to pay the brat scale.” He gave a huff and a puff before he attacked the fish again. “Twelve years old and already mercenary.”

“If you’re going to discuss me as if I weren’t here, I’ll go fetch my shoes.” Without a backward glance, Kirby glided from the room.

“Hasn’t changed much, has she?” Adam commented as he drained his wine.

“Not a damn bit,” Fairchild agreed proudly. “She’ll lead you a merry chase, Adam, my boy. I hope you’re in condition.”

“I ran track in college.”

Fairchild’s laugh was infectious. Damn it, Adam thought again, I like him. It complicated things. From the other room he heard Kirby in a heated discussion with Isabelle. He was beginning to realize complication was the lady’s middle name. What should’ve been a very simple job was developing layers he didn’t care for.

“Come on, Adam.” Kirby poked her head around the doorway. “I’ve told Isabelle she can come, but she and Montique have to keep a distance of five yards at all times. Papa—” she tossed her ponytail back “—I really think we ought to try raising the rent. She might look for an apartment in town.”

“We should never have agreed to a long-term lease,” Fairchild grumbled, then gave his full attention to Kirby’s salmon.

Deciding not to comment, Adam rose and went outside.

It was warm for September, and breezy. The grounds around the house were alive with fall. Beds of zinnias and mums spread out helter-skelter, flowing over their borders and adding a tang to the air. Near a flaming maple, Adam saw an old man in patched overalls. With a whimsical lack of dedication, he raked at the scattered leaves. As they neared him, he grinned toothlessly.

“You’ll never get them all, Jamie.”

He made a faint wheezing sound that must’ve been a laugh. “Sooner or later, missy. There be plenty of time.”

“I’ll help you tomorrow.”

“Ayah, and you’ll be piling them up and jumping in ’em like always.” He wheezed again and rubbed a frail hand over his chin. “Stick to your whittling and could be I’ll leave a pile for you.”

With her hands hooked in her back pockets, she scuffed at a leaf. “A nice big one?”

“Could be. If you’re a good girl.”

“There’s always a catch.” Grabbing Adam’s hand, she pulled him away.

“Is that little old man responsible for the grounds?” Three acres, he calculated. Three acres if it was a foot.

“Since he retired.”

“Retired?”

“Jamie retired when he was sixty-five. That was before I was born.” The breeze blew strands of hair into her face and she pushed at them. “He claims to be ninety-two, but of course he’s ninety-five and won’t admit it.” She shook her head. “Vanity.”

Kirby pulled him along until they stood at a dizzying height above the river. Far below, the ribbon of water seemed still. Small dots of houses were scattered along the view. There was a splash of hues rather than distinct tones, a melding of textures.

On the ridge where they stood there was only wind, river and sky. Kirby threw her head back. She looked primitive, wild, invincible. Turning, he looked at the house. It looked the same.

“Why do you stay here?” Blunt questions weren’t typical of him. Kirby had already changed that.

“I have my family, my home, my work.”

“And isolation.”

Her shoulders moved. Though her lashes were lowered, her eyes weren’t closed. “People come here. That’s not isolation.”

“Don’t you want to travel? To see Florence, Rome, Venice?”

From her stance on a rock, she was nearly eye level with him. When she turned to him, it was without her usual arrogance. “I’d been to Europe five times before I was twelve. I spent four years in Paris on my own when I was studying.”

She looked over his shoulder a moment, at nothing or at everything, he couldn’t be sure. “I slept with a Breton count in a chateau, skied in the Swiss Alps and hiked the moors in Cornwall. I’ve traveled, and I’ll travel again. But…” He knew she looked at the house now, because her lips curved. “I always come home.”

“What brings you back?”

“Papa.” She stopped and smiled fully. “Memories, familiarity. Insanity.”

“You love him very much.” She could make things impossibly complicated or perfectly simple. The job he’d come to do was becoming more and more of a burden.

“More than anything or anyone.” She spoke quietly, so that her voice seemed a part of the breeze. “He’s given me everything of importance: security, independence, loyalty, friendship, love—and the capability to give them back. I’d like to think someday I’ll find someone who wants that from me. My home would be with him then.”

How could he resist the sweetness, the simplicity, she could show so unexpectedly? It wasn’t in the script, he reminded himself, but reached a hand to her face, just to touch. When she brought her hand to his, something stirred in him that wasn’t desire, but was just as potent.

She felt the strength in him, and sensed a confusion that might have been equal to her own. Another time, she thought. Another time, it might have worked. But now, just now, there were too many other things. Deliberately she dropped her hand and turned back to the river. “I don’t know why I tell you these things,” she murmured. “It’s not in character. Do people usually let you in on their personal thoughts?”

“No. Or maybe I haven’t been listening.”

She smiled and, in one of her lightning changes of mood, leaped from the rock. “You’re not the type people would confide in.” Casually she linked her arm through his. “Though you seem to have strong, sturdy shoulders. You’re a little aloof,” she decided. “And just a tad pompous.”

“Pompous?” How could she allure him one instant and infuriate him the next? “What do you mean, pompous?”

Because he sounded dangerously like her father, she swallowed. “Just a tad,” she reminded him, nearly choking on a laugh. “Don’t be offended, Adam. Pomposity certainly has its place in the world.” When he continued to scowl down at her, she cleared her throat of another laugh. “I like the way your left brow lifts when you’re annoyed.”

“I’m not pompous.” He spoke very precisely and watched her lips tremble with fresh amusement.

“Perhaps that was a bad choice of words.”

“It was a completely incorrect choice.” Just barely, he caught himself before his brow lifted. Damn the woman, he thought, and swore he wouldn’t smile.

“Conventional.” Kirby patted his cheek. “I’m sure that’s what I meant.”

“I’m sure those two words mean the same thing to you. I won’t be categorized by either.”

Tilting her head, she studied him. “Maybe I’m wrong,” she said, to herself as much as him. “I’ve been wrong before. Give me a piggyback ride.”

“What?”

“A piggyback ride,” Kirby repeated.

“You’re crazy.” She might be sharp, she might be talented, he’d already conceded that, but part of her brain was permanently on holiday.

With a shrug, she started back toward the house. “I knew you wouldn’t. Pompous people never give or receive piggyback rides. It’s the law.”

“Damn.” She was doing it to him, and he was letting her. For a moment, he stuck his hands in his pockets and stood firm. Let her play her games with her father, Adam told himself. He wasn’t biting. With another oath, he caught up to her. “You’re an exasperating woman.”

“Why, thank you.”

They stared at each other, him in frustration, her in amusement, until he turned his back. “Get on.”

“If you insist.” Nimbly she jumped on his back, blew the hair out of her eyes and looked down. “Wombats, you’re tall.”

“You’re short,” he corrected, and hitched her to a more comfortable position.

“I’m going to be five-seven in my next life.”

“You’d better add pounds as well as inches to your fantasy.” Her hands were light on his shoulders, her thighs firm around his waist. Ridiculous, he thought. Ridiculous to want her now, when she’s making a fool of both of you. “What do you weigh?”

“An even hundred.” She sent a careless wave to Jamie.

“And when you take the ball bearings out of your pocket?”

“Ninety-six, if you want to be technical.” With a laugh, she gave him a quick hug. Her laughter was warm and distracting at his ear. “You might do something daring, like not wearing socks.”

“The next spontaneous act might be dropping you on your very attractive bottom.”

“Is it attractive?” Idly she swung her feet back and forth. “I see so little of it myself.” She held him for a moment longer because it felt so right, so good. Keep it light, she reminded herself. And watch your step. As long as she could keep him off balance, things would run smoothly. Leaning forward, she caught the lobe of his ear between her teeth. “Thanks for the lift, sailor.”

Before he could respond, she’d jumped down and dashed into the house.

* * *

It was night, late, dark and quiet, when Adam sat alone in his room. He held the transmitter in his hand and found he wanted to smash it into little pieces and forget it had ever existed. No personal involvements. That was rule number one, and he’d always followed it. He’d never been tempted not to.

He’d wanted to follow it this time, he reminded himself. It just wasn’t working that way. Involvement, emotion, conscience; he couldn’t let any of it interfere. Staring at Kirby’s painting of the Hudson, he flicked the switch.

“McIntyre?”

“Password.”

“Damn it, this isn’t a chapter of Ian Fleming.”

“Procedure,” McIntyre reminded him briskly. After twenty seconds of dead air, he relented. “Okay, okay, what’ve you found out?”

I’ve found out I’m becoming dangerously close to being crazy about a woman who makes absolutely no sense to me, he thought. “I’ve found out that the next time you have a brainstorm, you can go to hell with it.”

“Trouble?” McIntyre’s voice snapped into the receiver. “You were supposed to call in if there was trouble.”

“The trouble is I like the old man and the daughter’s…unsettling.” An apt word, Adam mused. His system hadn’t settled since he’d set eyes on her.

“It’s too late for that now. We’re committed.”

“Yeah.” He let out a breath between his teeth and blocked Kirby from his mind. “Melanie Merrick Burgess is a close family friend and Harriet Merrick’s daughter. She’s a very elegant designer who doesn’t seem to have any deep interest in painting. At a guess I’d say she’d be very supportive of the Fairchilds. Kirby recently broke off her engagement to Stuart Hiller.”

“Interesting. When?”

“I don’t have a date,” Adam retorted. “And I didn’t like pumping her about something that sensitive.” He struggled with himself as McIntyre remained silent. “Sometime during the last couple months, I’d say, no longer. She’s still smoldering.” And hurting, he said to himself. He hadn’t forgotten the look in her eyes. “I’ve been invited to a party this weekend. I should meet both Harriet Merrick and Hiller. In the meantime, I’ve had a break here. The place is riddled with secret passages.”

“With what?”

“You heard me. With some luck, I’ll have easy access throughout the house.”

McIntyre grunted in approval. “You won’t have any trouble recognizing it?”

“If he’s got it, and if it’s in the house, and if by some miracle I can find it in this anachronism, I’ll recognize it.” He switched off and, resisting the urge to throw the transmitter against the wall, dropped it back in the briefcase.

Clearing his mind, Adam rose and began to search the fireplace for the mechanism.

It took him nearly ten minutes, but he was rewarded with a groaning as a panel slid halfway open. He squeezed inside with a flashlight. It was both dank and musty, but he played the light against the wall until he found the inside switch. The panel squeaked closed and left him in the dark.

His footsteps echoed and he heard the scuttering sound of rodents. He ignored both. For a moment he stopped at the wall of Kirby’s room. Telling himself he was only doing his job, he took the time to find the switch. But he wondered if she was already sleeping in the big four-poster bed, under the wedding ring quilt.

He could press the button and join her. The hell with McIntyre and the job. The hell with everything but what lay beyond the wall. Procedure, he thought on an oath. He was sick to death of procedure. But Kirby had been right. Adam had a very firm grip on what was right and what was wrong.

He turned and continued down the passage.

Abruptly the corridor snaked off, with steep stone steps forking to the left. Mounting them, he found himself in another corridor. A spider scrambled on the wall as he played his light over it. Kirby hadn’t exaggerated much about the size. The third story, he decided, was as good a place to start as any.

He turned the first mechanism he found and slipped through the opening. Dust and dustcovers. Moving quietly, he began a slow, methodical search.

Kirby was restless. While Adam had been standing on the other side of the wall, fighting back the urge to open the panel, she’d been pacing her room. She’d considered going up to her studio. Work might calm her—but any work she did in this frame of mind would be trash. Frustrated, she sank down on the window seat. She could see the faint reflection of her own face and stared at it.

She wasn’t completely in control. Almost any other flaw would’ve been easier to admit. Control was essential and, under the current circumstances, vital. The problem was getting it back.

The problem was, she corrected, Adam Haines.

Attraction? Yes, but that was simple and easily dealt with. There was something more twisted into it that was anything but simple. He could involve her, and once involved, nothing would be easily dealt with.

Laying her hands on the sill, she rested her head on them. He could hurt her. That was a first—a frightening first. Not a superficial blow to the pride or ego, Kirby admitted, but a hurt down deep where it counted; where it wouldn’t heal.

Obviously, she told herself, forewarned was forearmed. She just wouldn’t let him involve her, therefore she wouldn’t let him hurt her. And that little piece of logic brought her right back to the control she didn’t have. While she struggled to methodically untangle her thoughts, the beam of headlights distracted her.

Who’d be coming by at this time of night? she wondered without too much surprise. Fairchild had a habit of asking people over at odd hours. Kirby pressed her nose to the glass. A sound, not unlike Isabelle’s growl, came from her throat.

“Of all the nerve,” she muttered. “Of all the bloody nerve.”

Springing up, she paced the floor three times before she grabbed a robe and left the room.

Above her head, Adam was about to reenter the passageway when he, too, saw the beams. Automatically he switched off his flashlight and stepped beside the window. He watched the man step from a late-model Mercedes and walk toward the house. Interesting, Adam decided. Abandoning the passageway, he slipped silently into the hall.

The sound of voices drifted up as he eased himself into the cover of a doorway and waited. Footsteps drew nearer. From his concealment, Adam watched Cards lead a slim, dark man up to Fairchild’s tower studio.

“Mr. Hiller to see you, sir.” Cards gave the information as if it were four in the afternoon rather than after midnight.

“Stuart, so nice of you to come.” Fairchild’s voice boomed through the doorway. “Come in, come in.”

After counting to ten, Adam started to move toward the door Cards had shut, but just then a flurry of white scrambled up the stairs. Swearing, he pressed back into the wall as Kirby passed, close enough to touch.

What the hell is this? he demanded, torn between frustration and the urge to laugh. Here he was, trapped in a doorway, while people crept up tower steps in the middle of the night. While he watched, Kirby gathered the skirt of her robe around her knees and tiptoed up to the tower.

It was a nightmare, he decided. Women with floating hair sneaking around drafty corridors in filmy white. Secret passages. Clandestine meetings. A normal, sensible man wouldn’t be involved in it for a minute. Then again, he’d stopped being completely sensible when he’d walked in the front door.

After Kirby reached the top landing, Adam moved closer. Her attention was focused on the studio door. Making a quick calculation, Adam moved up the steps behind her, then melted into the shadows in the corner. With his eyes on her, he joined Kirby in the eavesdropping.

“What kind of fool do you think I am?” Stuart demanded. He stood beside Adam with only the wall separating them.

“Whatever kind you prefer. Makes no difference to me. Have a seat, my boy.”

“Listen to me, we had a deal. How long did you think it would take before I found out you’d double-crossed me?”

“Actually I didn’t think it would take you quite so long.” Smiling, Fairchild rubbed a thumb over his clay hawk. “Not as clever as I thought you were, Stuart. You should’ve discovered the switch weeks ago. Not that it wasn’t superb,” he added with a touch of pride. “But a smart man would’ve had the painting authenticated.”

Because the conversation confused her, Kirby pressed even closer to the door. She tucked her hair behind her ear as if to hear more clearly. Untended, her robe fell open, revealing a thin excuse for a nightgown and a great deal of smooth golden skin. In his corner, Adam shifted and swore to himself.

“We had a deal—” Stuart’s voice rose, but Fairchild cut him off with no more than a wave of his hand.

“Don’t tell me you believe in that nonsense about honor among thieves? Time to grow up if you want to play in the big leagues.”

“I want the Rembrandt, Fairchild.”

Kirby stiffened. Because his attention was now fully focused on the battle in the tower, Adam didn’t notice. By God, he thought grimly, the old bastard did have it.

“Sue me,” Fairchild invited. Kirby could hear the shrug in his voice.

“Hand it over, or I’ll break your scrawny neck.”

For a full ten seconds, Fairchild watched calmly as Stuart’s face turned a deep, dull red. “You won’t get it that way. And I should warn you that threats make me irritable. You see…” Slowly he picked up a rag and began to wipe some excess clay from his hands. “I didn’t care for your treatment of Kirby. No, I didn’t care for it at all.”

Abruptly he was no longer the harmless eccentric. He was neither cherub nor gnome, but a man. A dangerous one. “I knew she’d never go as far as marrying you. She’s far too bright. But your threats, once she told you off, annoyed me. When I’m annoyed, I tend to be vindictive. A flaw,” he said amiably. “But that’s just the way I’m made.” The pale eyes were cold and calm on Stuart’s. “I’m still annoyed, Stuart. I’ll let you know when I’m ready to deal. In the meantime, stay away from Kirby.”

“You’re not going to get away with this.”

“I hold all the cards.” In an impatient gesture, he brushed Stuart aside. “I have the Rembrandt, and only I know where it is. If you become a nuisance, which you’re dangerously close to becoming, I may decide to keep it. Unlike you, I have no pressing need for money.” He smiled, but the chill remained in his eyes. “One should never live above one’s means, Stuart. That’s my advice.”

Impotent, intimidated, Stuart loomed over the little man at the worktable. He was strong enough, and furious enough, to have snapped Fairchild’s neck with his hands. But he wouldn’t have the Rembrandt, or the money he so desperately needed. “Before we’re done, you’ll pay,” Stuart promised. “I won’t be made a fool of.”

“Too late,” Fairchild told him easily. “Run along now. You can find your way out without disturbing Cards, can’t you?”

As if he were already alone, Fairchild went back to his hawk.

Swiftly, Kirby looked around for a hiding place. For one ridiculous moment, Adam thought she’d try to ease herself into the corner he occupied. The moment she started to cross the hall toward him, the handle of the door turned. She’d left her move too late. With her back pressed against the wall, Kirby closed her eyes and pretended to be invisible.

Stuart wrenched open the door and stalked from the room, blind with rage. Without a backward glance he plunged down the steps. His face, Adam noted as he passed, was murderous. At the moment, he lacked a weapon. But if he found one, he wouldn’t hesitate.

Kirby stood, still and silent, as the footsteps receded. She sucked in a deep breath, then let it out on a huff. What now? What now? she thought, and wanted to just bury her face in her hands and surrender. Instead, she straightened her shoulders and went in to confront her father.

“Papa.” The word was quiet and accusing. Fairchild’s head jerked up, but his surprise was quickly masked by a genial smile.

“Hello, love. My hawk’s beginning to breathe. Come have a look.”

She took another deep breath. All of her life she’d loved him, stood by him. Adored him. None of that had ever stopped her from being angry with him. Slowly, keeping her eyes on him, she crossed the front panels of her robe and tied the sash. As she approached, Fairchild thought she looked like a gunslinger buckling on his six-gun. She wouldn’t, he thought with a surge of pride, intimidate like Hiller.

“Apparently you haven’t kept me up to date,” she began. “A riddle, Papa. What do Philip Fairchild, Stuart Hiller and Rembrandt have in common?”

“You’ve always been clever at riddles, my sweet.”

“Now, Papa.”

“Just business.” He gave her a quick, hearty smile as he wondered just how much he’d have to tell her.

“Let’s be specific, shall we?” She moved so that only the table separated them. “And don’t give me that blank, foolish look. It won’t work.” Bending over, she stared directly into his eyes. “I heard quite a bit while I was outside. Tell me the rest.”

“Eavesdropping.” He made a disapproving tsk-tsk. “Rude.”

“I come by it honestly. Now tell me or I’ll annihilate your hawk.” Sweeping up her arm, she held her palm three inches above his clay.

“Vicious brat.” With his bony fingers, he grabbed her wrist, each knowing who’d win if it came down to it. He gave a windy sigh. “All right.”

With a nod, Kirby removed her hand then folded her arms under her breasts. The habitual gesture had him sighing again.

“Stuart came to me with a little proposition some time ago. You know, of course, he hasn’t a cent to his name, no matter what he pretends.”

“Yes, I know he wanted to marry me for my money.” No one but her father would’ve detected the slight tightening in her voice.

“I didn’t bring that up to hurt you.” His hand reached for hers in the bond that had been formed when she’d taken her first breath.

“I know, Papa.” She squeezed his hand, then stuck both of hers in the pockets of her robe. “My pride suffered. It has to happen now and again, I suppose. But I don’t care for humiliation,” she said with sudden fierceness. “I don’t care for it one bloody bit.” With a toss of her head, she looked down at him. “The rest.”

“Well.” Fairchild puffed out his cheeks, then blew out the breath. “Among his other faults, Stuart’s greedy. He needed a large sum of money, and didn’t see why he had to work for it. He decided to help himself to the Rembrandt self-portrait from Harriet’s gallery.”

“He stole it?” Kirby’s eyes grew huge. “Great buckets of bedbugs! I wouldn’t have given him credit for that much nerve.”

“He thought himself clever.” Rising, Fairchild walked to the little sink in the corner to wash off his hands. “Harriet was going on her safari, and there’d be no one to question the disappearance for several weeks. Stuart’s a bit dictatorial with the staff at the gallery.”

“It’s such a treat to flog underlings.”

“In any case—” lovingly, Fairchild draped his hawk for the night “—he came to me with an offer—a rather paltry offer, too—if I’d do the forgery for the Rembrandt’s replacement.”

She hadn’t thought he could do anything to surprise her. Certainly nothing to hurt her. “Papa, it’s Harriet’s Rembrandt,” she said in shock.

“Now, Kirby, you know I’m fond of Harriet. Very fond.” He put a comforting arm around her shoulders. “Our Stuart has a very small brain. He handed over the Rembrandt when I said I needed it to do the copy.” Fairchild shook his head. “There wasn’t any challenge to it, Kirby. Hardly any fun at all.”

“Pity,” she said dryly and dropped into a chair.

“Then I told him I didn’t need the original any longer, and gave him the copy instead. He never suspected.” Fairchild linked his hands behind his back and stared up at the ceiling. “I wish you’d seen it. It was superlative. It was one of Rembrandt’s later works, you know. Rough textures, such luminous depth—”

“Papa!” Kirby interrupted what would’ve become a lecture.

“Oh, yes, yes.” With an effort, Fairchild controlled himself. “I told him it’d take just a little more time to complete the copy and treat it for the illusion of age. He bought it. Gullibility,” Fairchild added and clucked his tongue. “It’s been almost three weeks, and he just got around to having the painting tested. I made certain it wouldn’t stand up to the most basic of tests, of course.”

“Of course,” Kirby murmured.

“Now he has to leave the copy in the gallery. And I have the original.”

She gave herself a moment to absorb all he’d told her. It didn’t make any difference in how she felt. Furious. “Why, Papa? Why did you do this! It isn’t like all the others. It’s Harriet.”

“Now, Kirby, don’t lose control. You’ve such a nasty temper.” He did his best to look small and helpless. “I’m much too old to cope with it. Remember my blood pressure.”

“Blood pressure be hanged.” She glared up at him with fury surging into her eyes. “Don’t think you’re going to get around me with that. Old?” she tossed back. “You’re still your youngest child.”

“I feel a spell coming on,” he said, inspired by Kirby’s own warning two days before. He pressed a trembling hand to his heart and staggered. “I’ll end up a useless heap of cold spaghetti. Ah, the paintings I might have done. The world’s losing a genius.”

Clenching her fists, Kirby beat them on his worktable. Tools bounced and clattered while she let out a long wail. Protective, Fairchild placed his hands around his hawk and waited for the crisis to pass. At length, she slumped back in the chair, breathless.

“You used to do better than that,” he observed. “I think you’re mellowing.”

“Papa.” Kirby clamped her teeth to keep from grinding them. “I know I’ll be forced to beat you about the head and ears, then I’ll be arrested for patricide. You know I’ve a terror of closed-in places. I’d go mad in prison. Do you want that on your conscience?”

“Kirby, have I ever given you cause for one moment’s worry?”

“Don’t force me into a recital, Papa, it’s after midnight. What have you done with the Rembrandt?”

“Done with it?” He frowned and fiddled with the cover of his hawk. “What do you mean, done with it?”

“Where is it?” she asked, carefully spacing the words. “You can’t leave a painting like that lying around the house, particularly when you’ve chosen to have company.”

“Company? Oh, you mean Adam. Fine boy. I’m fond of him already.” His eyebrows wiggled twice. “You seem to be finding him agreeable.”

Kirby narrowed her eyes. “Leave Adam out of this.”

“Dear, dear, dear.” Fairchild grinned lavishly. “And I thought you’d brought him up.”

“Where is the Rembrandt?” All claim to patience disintegrated. Briefly, she considered banging her head on the table, but she’d given up that particular ploy at ten.

“Safe and secure, my sweet.” Fairchild’s voice was calm and pleased. “Safe and secure.”

“Here? In the house?”

“Of course.” He gave her an astonished look. “You don’t think I’d keep it anywhere else?”

“Where?”

“You don’t need to know everything.” With a flourish, he whipped off his painting smock and tossed it over a chair. “Just content yourself that it’s safe, hidden with appropriate respect and affection.”

“Papa.”

“Kirby.” He smiled—a gentle father’s smile. “A child must trust her parent, must abide by the wisdom of his years. You do trust me, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course, but—”

He cut her off with the first bars of “Daddy’s Little Girl” in a wavering falsetto.

Kirby moaned and lowered her head to the table. When would she learn? And how was she going to deal with him this time? He continued to sing until the giggles welled up and escaped. “You’re incorrigible.” She lifted her head and took a deep breath. “I have this terrible feeling that you’re leaving out a mountain of details and that I’m going to go along with you anyway.”

“Details, Kirby.” His hand swept them aside. “The world’s too full of details, they clutter things up. Remember, art reflects life, and life’s an illusion. Come now, I’m tired.” He walked to her and held out his hand. “Walk your old papa to bed.”

Defeated, she accepted his hand and stood. Never, never would she learn. And always, always would she adore him. Together they walked from the room.

Adam watched as they started down the steps, arm in arm.

“Papa…” Only feet away from Adam’s hiding place, Kirby stopped. “There is, of course, a logical reason for all this?”

“Kirby.” Adam could see the mobile face move into calm, sober lines. “Have I ever done anything without a sensible, logical reason?”

She started with a near-soundless chuckle. In moments, her laughter rang out, rich and musical. It echoed back, faint and ghostly, until she rested her head against her father’s shoulder. In the half-light, with her eyes shining, Adam thought she’d never looked more alluring. “Oh, my papa,” she began in a clear contralto. “To me he is so wonderful.” Linking her arm through Fairchild’s, she continued down the steps.

Rather pleased with himself, and with his offspring, Fairchild joined her in his wavery falsetto. Their mixed voices drifted over Adam until the distance swallowed them.

Leaving the shadows, he stood at the head of the stairway. Once he heard Kirby’s laugh, then there was silence.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” he murmured.

Both Fairchilds were probably mad. They fascinated him.

Chapter 5

In the morning the sky was gray and the rain sluggish. Adam was tempted to roll over, close his eyes and pretend he was in his own well-organized home, where a housekeeper tended to the basics and there wasn’t a gargoyle in sight. Partly from curiosity, partly from courage, he rose and prepared to deal with the day.

From what he’d overheard the night before, he didn’t count on learning much from Kirby. Apparently she’d known less about the matter of the Rembrandt than he. Adam was equally sure that no matter how much he prodded and poked, Fairchild would let nothing slip. He might look innocent and harmless, but he was as shrewd as they came. And potentially dangerous, Adam mused, remembering how cleanly Fairchild had dealt with Hiller.

The best course of action remained the nightly searches with the aid of the passages. The days he determined for his own sanity to spend painting.

I shouldn’t be here in the first place, Adam told himself as he stood in the shower under a strong cold spray of water. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Mac tantalized me with the Rembrandt, I wouldn’t be here. The last time, he promised himself as he toweled off. The very last time.

Once the Fairchild hassle was over, painting would not only be his first order of business, it would be his only business.

Dressed, and content with the idea of ending his secondary career in a few more weeks, Adam walked down the hallway thinking of coffee. Kirby’s door was wide open. As he passed, he glanced in. Frowning, he stopped, walked back and stood in the doorway.

“Good morning, Adam. Isn’t it a lovely day?” She smiled, upside down, as she stood on her head in the corner.

Deliberately he glanced at the window to make sure he was on solid ground. “It’s raining.”

“Don’t you like the rain? I do.” She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. “Look at it this way, there must be dozens of places where the sun’s shining. It’s all relative. Did you sleep well?”

“Yes.” Even in her current position, Adam could see that her face glowed, showing no signs of a restless night.

“Come in and wait a minute, I’ll go down to breakfast with you.”

He walked over to stand directly in front of her. “Why are you standing on your head?”

“It’s a theory of mine.” She crossed her ankles against the wall while her hair pooled onto the carpet. “Could you sit down a minute? It’s hard for me to talk to you when your head’s up there and mine’s down here.”

Knowing he’d regret it, Adam crouched. Her sweater had slipped up, showing a thin line of smooth midriff.

“Thanks. My theory is that all night I’ve been horizontal, and most of the day I’ll be right side up. So…” Somehow she managed to shrug. “I stand on my head in the morning and before bed. That way the blood can slosh around a bit.”

Adam rubbed his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “I think I understand. That terrifies me.”

“You should try it.”

“I’ll just let my blood stagnate, thanks.”

“Suit yourself. You’d better stand back, I’m coming up.”

She dropped her feet and righted herself with a quick athletic agility that surprised him. Facing him, she pushed at the hair that floated into her eyes. As she tossed it back she gave him a long, slow smile.

“Your face is red,” he murmured, more in his own defense than for any other reason.

“Can’t be helped, it’s part of the process.” She’d spent a good many hours arguing with herself the night before. This morning she’d decided to let things happen as they happened. “It’s the only time I blush,” she told him. “So, if you’d like to say something embarrassing…or flattering…?”

Against his better judgment, he touched her, circling her waist with his hands. She didn’t move back, didn’t move forward, but simply waited. “Your blush is already fading, so it seems I’ve missed my chance.”

“You can give it another try tomorrow. Hungry?”

“Yes.” Her lips made him hungry, but he wasn’t ready to test himself quite yet. “I want to go through your clothes after breakfast.”

“Oh, really?” She drew out the word, catching her tongue between her teeth.

His brow lifted, but only she was aware of the gesture. “For the painting.”

“You don’t want to do a nude.” The humor in her eyes faded into boredom as she drew away. “That’s the usual line.”

“I don’t waste my time with lines.” He studied her—the cool gray eyes that could warm with laughter, the haughty mouth that could invite and promise with no more than a smile. “I’m going to paint you because you were meant to be painted. I’m going to make love with you for exactly the same reason.”

Her expression didn’t change, but her pulse rate did. Kirby wasn’t foolish enough to pretend even to herself it was anger. Anger and excitement were two different things. “How decisive and arrogant of you,” she drawled. Strolling over to her dresser, she picked up her brush and ran it quickly through her hair. “I haven’t agreed to pose for you, Adam, nor have I agreed to sleep with you.” She flicked the brush through a last time then set it down. “In fact, I’ve serious doubts that I’ll do either. Shall we go?”

Before she could get to the door, he had her. The speed surprised her, if the strength didn’t. She’d hoped to annoy him, but when she tossed her head back to look at him, she didn’t see temper. She saw cool, patient determination. Nothing could have been more unnerving.

Then he had her close, so that his face was a blur and his mouth was dominant. She didn’t resist. Kirby rarely resisted what she wanted. Instead she let the heat wind through her in a slow continuous stream that was somehow both terrifying and peaceful.

Desire. Wasn’t that how she’d always imagined it would be with the right man? Wasn’t that what she’d been waiting for since the first moment she’d discovered herself a woman? It was here now. Kirby opened her arms to it.

His heartbeat wasn’t steady, and it should have been. His mind wasn’t clear, and it had to be. How could he win with her when he lost ground every time he was around her? If he followed through on his promise—or threat—that they’d be lovers, how much more would he lose? And gain, he thought as he let himself become steeped in her. The risk was worth taking.

“You’ll pose for me,” he said against her mouth. “And you’ll make love with me. There’s no choice.”

That was the word that stopped her. That was the phrase that forced her to resist. She’d always have a choice. “I don’t—”

“For either of us,” Adam finished as he released her. “We’ll decide on the clothes after breakfast.” Because he didn’t want to give either of them a chance to speak, he propelled her from the room.

An hour later, he propelled her back.

She’d been serene during the meal. But he hadn’t been fooled. Livid was what she was, and livid was exactly how he wanted her. She didn’t like to be outmaneuvered, even on a small point. It gave him a surge of satisfaction to be able to do so. The defiant, sulky look in her eyes was exactly what he wanted for the portrait.

“Red, I think,” he stated. “It would suit you best.”

Kirby waved a hand at her closet and flopped backward onto her bed. Staring up at the ceiling, she thought through her position. It was true she’d always refused to be painted, except by her father. She hadn’t wanted anyone else to get that close to her. As an artist, she knew just how intimate the relationship was between painter and subject, be the subject a person or a bowl of fruit. She’d never been willing to share herself with anyone to that extent.

But Adam was different. She could, if she chose, tell herself it was because of his talent, and because he wanted to paint her, not flatter her. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t quite the truth. Still, Kirby was comfortable with partial truths in certain cases. If she was honest, she had to admit that she was curious to see just how she’d look from his perspective, and yet she wasn’t entirely comfortable with that.

Moving only her eyes, she watched him as he rummaged through her closet.

He didn’t have to know what was going on in her head. Certainly she was skilled in keeping her thoughts to herself. It might be a challenge to do so under the sharp eyes of an artist. It might be interesting to see just how difficult she could make it for him. She folded her hands demurely on her stomach.

While Kirby was busy with her self-debate, Adam looked through an incredible variety of clothes. Some were perfect for an orphan, others for an eccentric teenager. He wondered if she’d actually worn the purple miniskirt and just how she’d looked in it. Elegant gowns from Paris and New York hung haphazardly with army surplus. If clothes reflected the person, there was more than one Kirby Fairchild. He wondered just how many she’d show him.

He discarded one outfit after another. This one was too drab, that one too chic. He found a pair of baggy overalls thrown over the same hanger with a slinky sequin dress with a two-thousand-dollar label. Pushing aside a three-piece suit perfect for an assistant D.A., he found it.

Scarlet silk. It was undoubtedly expensive, but not chic in the way he imagined Melanie Burgess would design. The square-necked bodice tapered to a narrow waist before the material flared into a full skirt. There were flounces at the hem and underskirts of white and black and fuchsia. The sleeves were short and puffed, running with stripes of the same colors. It was made for a wealthy gypsy. It was perfect.

“This.” Adam carried it to the bed and stood over Kirby. With a frown, she continued to stare up at the ceiling. “Put it on and come up to the studio. I’ll do some sketches.”

She spoke without looking at him. “Do you realize that not once have you asked me to pose for you? You told me you wanted to paint me, you told me you were going to paint me, but you’ve never asked if you could paint me.” With her hands still folded, one finger began to tap. “Instinct tells me you’re basically a gentleman, Adam. Perhaps you’ve just forgotten to say please.”

“I haven’t forgotten.” He tossed the dress across the bottom of the bed. “But I think you hear far too many pleases from men. You’re a woman who brings men to their knees with the bat of an eye. I’m not partial to kneeling.” No, he wasn’t partial to kneeling, and it was becoming imperative that he handle the controls, for both of them. Bending over, he put his hands on either side of her head then sat beside her. “And I’m just as used to getting my own way as you are.”

She studied him, thinking over his words and her position. “Then again, I haven’t batted my eyes at you yet.”

“Haven’t you?” he murmured.

He could smell her, that wild, untamed fragrance that was suited to isolated winter nights. Her lips pouted, not by design, but mood. It was that that tempted him. He had to taste them. He did so lightly, as he’d intended. Just a touch, just a taste, then he’d go about his business. But her mouth yielded to him as the whole woman hadn’t. Or perhaps it conquered.

Desire scorched him. Fire was all he could relate to. Flames and heat and smoke. That was her taste. Smoke and temptation and a promise of unreasonable delights.

He tasted, but it was no longer enough. He had to touch.

Her body was small, delicate, something a man might fear to take. He did, but no longer for her sake. For his own. Small and delicate she might be, but she could slice a man in two. Of that he was certain. But as he touched, as he tasted, he didn’t give a damn.

Never had he wanted a woman more. She made him feel like a teenager in the back seat of a car, like a man paying for the best whore in a French bordello, like a husband nuzzling into the security of a wife. Her complexities were more erotic than satin and lace and smoky light—the soft, agile mouth, the strong, determined hands. He wasn’t certain he’d ever escape from either. In possessing her, he’d invite an endless cycle of complications, of struggles, of excitement. She was an opiate. She was a dive from a cliff. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to overdose and hit the rocks.

It cost him more than he would have believed to draw back. She lay with her eyes half closed, her mouth just parted. Don’t get involved, he told himself frantically. Get the Rembrandt and walk away. That’s what you came to do.

“Adam…” She whispered his name as if she’d never said it before. It felt so beautiful on her tongue. The only thought that stayed with her was that no one had ever made her feel like this. No one else ever would. Something was opening inside her, but she wouldn’t fight it. She’d give. The innocence in her eyes was real, emotional not physical. Seeing it, Adam felt desire flare again.

She’s a witch, he told himself. Circe. Lorelei. He had to pull back before he forgot that. “You’ll have to change.”

“Adam…” Still swimming, she reached up and touched his face.

“Emphasize your eyes.” He stood before he could take the dive.

“My eyes?” Mind blank, body throbbing, she stared up at him.

“And leave your hair loose.” He strode to the door as she struggled up to her elbows. “Twenty minutes.”

She wouldn’t let him see the hurt. She wouldn’t allow herself to feel the rejection. “You’re a cool one, aren’t you?” she said softly. “And as smooth as any I’ve ever run across. You might find yourself on your knees yet.”

She was right—he could’ve strangled her for it. “That’s a risk I’ll have to take.” With a nod, he walked through the door. “Twenty minutes,” he called back.

Kirby clenched her fists together then slowly relaxed them. “On your knees,” she promised herself. “I swear it.”

* * *

Alone in Kirby’s studio, Adam searched for the mechanism to the passageway. He looked mainly from curiosity. It was doubtful he’d need to rummage through a room that he’d been given free run in, but he was satisfied when he located the control. The panel creaked open, as noisily as all the others he’d found. After a quick look inside, he shut it again and went back to the first order of business—painting.

It was never a job, but it wasn’t always a pleasure. The need to paint was a demand that could be soft and gentle, or sharp and cutting. Not a job, but work certainly, sometimes every bit as exhausting as digging a trench with a pick and shovel.

Adam was a meticulous artist, as he was a meticulous man. Conventional, as Kirby had termed him, perhaps. But he wasn’t rigid. He was as orderly as she wasn’t, but his creative process was remarkably similar to hers. She might stare at a piece of wood for an hour until she saw the life in it. He would do the same with a canvas. She would feel a jolt, a physical release the moment she saw what she’d been searching for. He’d feel that same jolt when something would leap out at him from one of his dozens of sketches.

Now he was only preparing, and he was as calm and ordered as his equipment. On an easel he set the canvas, blank and waiting. Carefully, he selected three pieces of charcoal. He’d begin with them. He was going over his first informal sketches when he heard her footsteps.

She paused in the doorway, tossed her head and stared at him. With deliberate care, he set his pad back on the worktable.

Her hair fell loose and rich over the striped silk shoulders. At a movement, the gold hoops at her ears and the half-dozen gold bracelets on her arm jangled. Her eyes, darkened and sooty, still smoldered with temper. Without effort, he could picture her whirling around an open fire to the sound of violins and tambourines.

Aware of the image she projected, Kirby put both hands on her hips and walked into the room. The full scarlet skirt flowed around her legs. Standing in front of him, she whirled around twice, turning her head each time so that she watched him over her shoulder. The scent of wood smoke and roses flowed into the room.

“You want to paint Katrina’s picture, eh?” Her voice lowered into a sultry Slavic accent as she ran a fingertip down his cheek. Insolence, challenge, and then a laugh that skidded warm and dangerous over his skin. “First you cross her palm with silver.”

He’d have given her anything. What man wouldn’t? Fighting her, fighting himself, he pulled out a cigarette. “Over by the east window,” he said easily. “The light’s better there.”

No, he wouldn’t get off so easy. Behind the challenge and the insolence, her body still trembled for him. She wouldn’t let him know it. “How much you pay?” she demanded, swirling away in a flurry of scarlet and silk. “Katrina not come free.”

“Scale.” He barely resisted the urge to grab her by the hair and drag her back. “And you won’t get a dime until I’m finished.”

In an abrupt change, Kirby brushed and smoothed her skirts. “Is something wrong?” she asked mildly. “Perhaps you don’t like the dress after all.”

He crushed out his cigarette in one grinding motion. “Let’s get started.”

“I thought we already had,” she murmured. Her eyes were luminous and amused. He wanted to choke her every bit as much as he wanted to crawl for her. “You insisted on painting.”

“Don’t push me too far, Kirby. You have a tendency to bring out my baser side.”

“I don’t think I can be blamed for that. Maybe you’ve locked it up too long.” Because she’d gotten precisely the reaction she’d wanted, she became completely cooperative. “Now, where do you want me to stand?”

“By the east window.”

Tie score, she thought with satisfaction as she obliged him.

He spoke only when he had to—tilt your chin higher, turn your head. Within moments he was able to turn the anger and the desire into concentration. The rain fell, but its sound was muffled against the thick glass windows. With the tower door nearly closed, there wasn’t another sound.

He watched her, studied her, absorbed her, but the man and the artist were working together. Perhaps by putting her on canvas, he’d understand her…and himself. Adam swept the charcoal over the canvas and began.

Now she could watch him, knowing that he was turned inward. She’d seen dozens of artists work; the old, the young, the talented, the amateur. Adam was, as she’d suspected, different.

He wore a sweater, one he was obviously at home in, but no smock. Even as he sketched he stood straight, as though his nature demanded that he remain always alert. That was one of the things she’d noticed about him first. He was always watching. A true artist did, she knew, but there seemed to be something more.

She called him conventional, knowing it wasn’t quite true. Not quite. What was it about him that didn’t fit into the mold he’d been fashioned for? Tall, lean, attractive, aristocratic, wealthy, successful, and…daring? That was the word that came to mind, though she wasn’t completely sure why.

There was something reckless about him that appealed to her. It balanced the maturity, the dependability she hadn’t known she’d wanted in a man. He’d be a rock to hold on to during an earthquake. And he’d be the earthquake. She was, Kirby realized, sinking fast. The trick would be to keep him from realizing it and making a fool of herself. Still, beneath it all, she liked him. That simple.

Adam glanced up to see her smiling at him. It was disarming, sweet and uncomplicated. Something warned him that Kirby without guards was far more dangerous than Kirby with them. When she let hers drop, he put his in place.

“Doesn’t Hiller paint a bit?”

He saw her smile fade and tried not to regret it. “A bit.”

“Haven’t you posed for him?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

The ice that came into her eyes wasn’t what he wanted for the painting. The man and artist warred as he continued to sketch. “Let’s say I didn’t care much for his work.”

“I suppose I can take that as a compliment to mine.”

She gave him a long, neutral look. “If you like.”

Deceit was part of the job, he reminded himself. What he’d heard in Fairchild’s studio left him no choice. “I’m surprised he didn’t make an issue of it, being in love with you.”

“He wasn’t.” She bit off the words, and ice turned to heat.

“He asked you to marry him.”

“One hasn’t anything to do with the other.”

He looked up and saw she said exactly what she meant. “Doesn’t it?”

“I agreed to marry him without loving him.”

He held the charcoal an inch from the canvas, forgetting the painting. “Why?”

While she stared at him, he saw the anger fade. For a moment she was simply a woman at her most vulnerable. “Timing,” she murmured. “It’s probably the most important factor governing our lives. If it hadn’t been for timing, Romeo and Juliet would’ve raised a half-dozen children.”

He was beginning to understand, and understanding only made him more uncomfortable. “You thought it was time to get married?”

“Stuart’s attractive, very polished, charming, and I’d thought harmless. I realized the last thing I wanted was a polished, charming, harmless husband. Still, I thought he loved me. I didn’t break the engagement for a long time because I thought he’d make a convenient husband, and one who wouldn’t demand too much.” It sounded empty. It had been empty. “One who’d give me children.”

“You want children?”

The anger was back, quickly. “Is there something wrong with that?” she demanded. “Do you think it strange that I’d want a family?” She made a quick, furious movement that had the gold jangling again. “This might come as a shock, but I have needs and feelings almost like a real person. And I don’t have to justify myself to you.”

She was halfway to the door before he could stop her. “Kirby, I’m sorry.” When she tried to jerk out of his hold, he tightened it. “I am sorry.”

“For what?” she tossed back.

“For hurting you,” he murmured. “With stupidity.”

Her shoulders relaxed under his hands, slowly, so that he knew it cost her. Guilt flared again. “All right. You hit a nerve, that’s all.” Deliberately she removed his hands from her shoulders and stepped back. He’d rather she’d slapped him. “Give me a cigarette, will you?”

She took one from him and let him light it before she turned away again. “When I accepted Stuart’s proposal—”

“You don’t have to tell me anything.”

“I don’t leave things half done.” Some of the insolence was back when she whirled back to him. For some reason it eased Adam’s guilt. “When I accepted, I told Stuart I wasn’t in love with him. It didn’t seem fair otherwise. If two people are going to have a relationship that means anything, it has to start out honestly, don’t you think?”

He thought of the transmitter tucked into his briefcase. He thought of McIntyre waiting for the next report. “Yes.”

She nodded. It was one area where she wasn’t flexible. “I told him that what I wanted from him was fidelity and children, and in return I’d give him those things and as much affection as I could.” She toyed with the cigarette, taking one of her quick, nervous drags. “When I realized things just wouldn’t work for either of us that way, I went to see him. I didn’t do it carelessly, casually. It was very difficult for me. Can you understand that?”

“Yes, I understand that.”

It helped, she realized. More than Melanie’s sympathy, more even than her father’s unspoken support, Adam’s simple understanding helped. “It didn’t go well. I’d known there’d be an argument, but I hadn’t counted on it getting so out of hand. He made a few choice remarks on my maternal abilities and my track record. Anyway, with all the blood and bone being strewn about, the real reason for him wanting to marry me came out.”

She took a last puff on the cigarette and crushed it out before she dropped into a chair. “He never loved me. He’d been unfaithful all along. I don’t suppose it mattered.” But she fell silent, knowing it did. “All the time he was pretending to care for me, he was using me.” When she looked up again, the hurt was back in her eyes. She didn’t know it—she’d have hated it. “Can you imagine how it feels to find out that all the time someone was holding you, talking with you, he was thinking of how you could be useful?” She picked up the piece of half-formed wood that would be her anger. “Useful,” she repeated. “What a nasty word. I haven’t bounced back from it as well as I should have.”

He forgot McIntyre, the Rembrandt and the job he still had to do. Walking over, he sat beside her and closed his hand over hers. Under them was her anger. “I can’t imagine any man thinking of you as useful.”

When she looked up, her smile was already spreading. “What a nice thing to say. The perfect thing.” Too perfect for her rapidly crumbling defenses. Because she knew it would take so little to have her turning to him now and later, she lightened the mood. “I’m glad you’re going to be there Saturday.”

“At the party?”

“You can send me long, smoldering looks and everyone’ll think I jilted Stuart for you. I’m fond of petty revenge.”

He laughed and brought her hands to his lips. “Don’t change,” he told her with a sudden intenseness that had her uncertain again.

“I don’t plan on it. Adam, I— Oh, chicken fat, what’re you doing here? This is a private conversation.”

Wary, Adam turned his head and watched Montique bounce into the room. “He won’t spread gossip.”

“That isn’t the point. I’ve told you you’re not allowed in here.”

Ignoring her, Montique scurried over and with an awkward leap plopped into Adam’s lap. “Cute little devil,” Adam decided as he scratched the floppy ears.

“Ah, Adam, I wouldn’t do that.”

“Why?”

“You’re only asking for trouble.”

“Don’t be absurd. He’s harmless.”

“Oh, yes, he is. She isn’t.” Kirby nodded her head toward the doorway as Isabelle slinked through. “Now you’re in for it. I warned you.” Tossing back her head, Kirby met Isabelle’s cool look equally. “I had nothing to do with it.”

Isabelle blinked twice, then shifted her gaze to Adam. Deciding her responsibility had ended, Kirby sighed and rose. “There’s nothing I can do,” she told Adam and patted his shoulder. “You asked for it.” With this, she swept out of the room, giving the cat a wide berth.

“I didn’t ask him to come up here,” Adam began, scowling down at Isabelle. “And there can’t be any harm in— Oh, God,” he murmured. “She’s got me doing it.”

Chapter 6

“Let’s walk,” Kirby demanded when the afternoon grew late and Fairchild had yet to budge from his studio. Nor would he budge, she knew, until the Van Gogh was completed down to the smallest detail. If she didn’t get out and forget about her father’s pet project for a while, she knew she’d go mad.

“It’s raining,” Adam pointed out as he lingered over coffee.

“You mentioned that before.” Kirby pushed away her own coffee and rose. “All right then, I’ll have Cards bring you a lap robe and a nice cup of tea.”

“Is that a psychological attack?”

“Did it work?”

“I’ll get a jacket.” He strode from the room, ignoring her quiet chuckle.

When they walked outside, the fine misting rain fell over them. Leaves streamed with it. Thin fingers of fog twisted along the ground. Adam hunched inside his jacket, thinking it was miserable weather for a walk. Kirby strolled along with her face lifted to the sky.

He’d planned to spend the afternoon on the painting, but perhaps this was better. If he was going to capture her with colors and brush strokes, he should get to know her better. No easy task, Adam mused, but a strangely appealing one.

The air was heavy with the fragrance of fall, the sky gloomy. For the first time since he’d met her, Adam sensed a serenity in Kirby. They walked in silence, with the rain flowing over them.

She was content. It was an odd feeling for her to identify as she felt it so rarely. With her hand in his, she was content to walk along as the fog moved along the ground and the chilly drizzle fell over them. She was glad of the rain, of the chill and the gloom. Later, there would be time for a roaring fire and warm brandy.

“Adam, do you see the bed of mums over there?”

“Hmm?”

“The mums, I want to pick some. You’ll have to be the lookout.”

“Lookout for what?” He shook wet hair out of his eyes.

“For Jamie, of course. He doesn’t like anyone messing with his flowers.”

“They’re your flowers.”

“No, they’re Jamie’s.”

“He works for you.”

“What does that have to do with it?” She put a hand on his shoulder as she scanned the area. “If he catches me, he’ll get mad, then he won’t save me any leaves. I’ll be quick—I’ve done this before.”

“But if you—”

“There’s no time to argue. Now, you watch that window there. He’s probably in the kitchen having coffee with Tulip. Give me a signal when you see him.”

Whether he went along with her because it was simpler, or because he was getting into the spirit of things despite himself, Adam wasn’t sure. But he walked over to the window and peeked inside. Jamie sat at a huge round table with a mug of coffee in both frail hands. Turning, he nodded a go-ahead to Kirby.

She moved like lightning, dashing to the flower bed and plucking at stems. Dark and wet, her hair fell forward to curtain her face as she loaded her arms with autumn flowers. She should be painted like this, as well, Adam mused. In the fog, with her arms full of wet flowers. Perhaps it would be possible to capture those odd little snatches of innocence in the portrait.

Idly he glanced back in the window. With a ridiculous jolt of panic, he saw Jamie rise and head for the kitchen door. Forgetting logic, Adam dashed toward her.

“He’s coming.”

Surprisingly swift, Kirby leaped over the bed of flowers and kept on going. Even though he was running full stride, Adam didn’t catch her until they’d rounded the side of the house. Giggling and out of breath, she collapsed against him.

“We made it!”

“Just,” he agreed. His own heart was thudding—from the race? Maybe. He was breathless—from the game? Perhaps. But they were wet and close and the fog was rising. It didn’t seem he had a choice any longer.

With his eyes on hers, he brushed the dripping hair back from her face. Her cheeks were cool, wet and smooth. Yet her mouth, when his lowered to it, was warm and waiting.

She hadn’t planned it this way. If she’d had the time to think, she’d have said she didn’t want it this way. She didn’t want to be weak. She didn’t want her mind muddled. It didn’t seem she had a choice any longer.

He could taste the rain on her, fresh and innocent. He could smell the sharp tang of the flowers that were crushed between them. He couldn’t keep his hands out of her hair, the soft, heavy tangle of it. He wanted her closer. He wanted all of her, not in the way he’d first wanted her, but in every way. The need was no longer the simple need of a man for woman, but of him for her. Exclusive, imperative, impossible.

She’d wanted to fall in love, but she’d wanted to plan it out in her own way, in her own time. It wasn’t supposed to happen in a crash and a roar that left her trembling. It wasn’t supposed to happen without her permission. Shaken, Kirby drew back. It wasn’t going to happen until she was ready. That was that. Nerves taut again, she made herself smile.

“It looks like we’ve done a good job of squashing them.” When he would’ve drawn her back, Kirby thrust the flowers at him. “They’re for you.”

“For me?” Adam looked down at the mums they held between them.

“Yes, don’t you like flowers?”

“I like flowers,” he murmured. However unintentionally, she’d moved him as much with the gift as with the kiss. “I don’t think anyone’s given me flowers before.”

“No?” She gave him a long, considering look. She’d been given floods of them over the years, orchids, lilies, roses and more roses, until they’d meant little more than nothing. Her smile came slowly as she touched a hand to his chest. “I’d’ve picked more if I’d known.”

Behind them a window was thrown open. “Don’t you know better than to stand in the rain and neck?” Fairchild demanded. “If you want to nuzzle, come inside. I can’t stand sneezing and sniffling!” The window shut with a bang.

“You’re terribly wet,” Kirby commented, as if she hadn’t noticed the steadily falling rain. She linked her arm with his and walked to the door that was opened by the ever-efficient Cards.

“Thank you.” Kirby peeled off her soaking jacket. “We’ll need a vase for the flowers, Cards. They’re for Mr. Haines’s room. Make sure Jamie’s not about, will you?”

“Naturally, miss.” Cards took both the dripping jackets and the dripping flowers and headed back down the hall.

“Where’d you find him?” Adam wondered aloud. “He’s incredible.”

“Cards?” Like a wet dog, Kirby shook her head. “Papa brought him back from England. I think he was a spy, or maybe it was a bouncer. In either case, it’s obvious he’s seen everything.”

“Well, children, have you had a nice holiday?” Fairchild bounced out of the parlor. He wore a paint-streaked shirt and a smug smile. “My work’s complete, and now I’m free to give my full attention to my sculpting. It’s time I called Victor Alvarez,” he murmured. “I’ve kept him dangling long enough.”

“He’ll dangle until after coffee, Papa.” She sent her father a quick warning glance Adam might’ve missed if he hadn’t been watching so closely. “Take Adam in the parlor and I’ll see to it.”

She kept him occupied for the rest of the day. Deliberately, Adam realized. Something was going on that she didn’t want him getting an inkling of. Over dinner, she was again the perfect hostess. Over coffee and brandy in the parlor, she kept him entertained with an in-depth discussion on baroque art. Though her conversations and charm were effortless, Adam was certain there was an underlying reason. It was one more thing for him to discover.

She couldn’t have set the scene better, he mused. A quiet parlor, a crackling fire, intelligent conversation. And she was watching Fairchild like a hawk.

When Montique entered, the scene changed. Once again, the scruffy puppy leaped into Adam’s lap and settled down.

“How the hell did he get in here?” Fairchild demanded.

“Adam encourages him,” Kirby stated as she sipped at her brandy. “We can’t be held responsible.”

“I should say not!” Fairchild gave both Adam and Montique a steely look. “And if that—that creature threatens to sue again, Adam will have to retain his own attorney. I won’t be involved in a legal battle, particularly when I have my business with Senhor Alvarez to complete. What time is it in Brazil?”

“Some time or other,” Kirby murmured.

“I’ll call him immediately and close the deal before we find ourselves slapped with a summons.”

Adam sat back with his brandy and scratched Montique’s ears. “You two don’t seriously expect me to believe you’re worried about being sued by a cat?”

Kirby ran a fingertip around the rim of her snifter. “I don’t think we’d better tell him about what happened last year when we tried to have her evicted.”

“No!” Fairchild leaped up and shuffled before he darted to the door. “I won’t discuss it. I won’t remember it. I’m going to call Brazil.”

“Ah, Adam…” Kirby trailed off with a meaningful glance at the doorway.

Adam didn’t have to look to know that Isabelle was making an entrance.

“I won’t be intimidated by a cat.”

“I’m sure that’s very stalwart of you.” Kirby downed the rest of her drink then rose. “Just as I’m sure you’ll understand if I leave you to your courage. I really have to reline my dresser drawers.”

For the second time that day, Adam found himself alone with a dog and cat.

A half hour later, after he’d lost a staring match with Isabelle, Adam locked his door and contacted McIntyre. In the brief, concise tones that McIntyre had always admired, Adam relayed the conversation he’d overheard the night before.

“It fits,” McIntyre stated. Adam could almost see him rubbing his hands together. “You’ve learned quite a bit in a short time. The check on Hiller reveals he’s living on credit and reputation. Both are running thin. No idea where Fairchild’s keeping it?”

“I’m surprised he doesn’t have it hanging in full view.” Adam lit a cigarette and frowned at the Titian across the room. “It would be just like him. He mentioned a Victor Alvarez from Brazil a couple of times. Some kind of deal he’s cooking.”

“I’ll see what I can dig up. Maybe he’s selling the Rembrandt.”

“He hardly needs the money.”

“Some people never have enough.”

“Yeah.” But it didn’t fit. It just didn’t fit. “I’ll get back to you.”

Adam brooded, but only for a few moments. The sooner he had something tangible, the sooner he could untangle himself. He opened the panel and went to work.

* * *

In the morning, Kirby posed for Adam for more than two hours without the slightest argument. If he thought her cooperation and her sunny disposition were designed to confuse him, he was absolutely right. She was also keeping him occupied while Fairchild made the final arrangements for the disposal of the Van Gogh.

Adam had worked the night before until after midnight, but had found nothing. Wherever Fairchild had hidden the Rembrandt, he’d hidden it well. Adam’s search of the third floor was almost complete. It was time to look elsewhere.

“Hidden with respect and affection,” he remembered. In all probability that would rule out the dungeons and the attic. Chances were he’d have to give them some time, but he intended to concentrate on the main portion of the house first. His main objective would be Fairchild’s private rooms, but when and how he’d do them he had yet to determine.

After the painting session was over and Kirby went back to her own work, Adam wandered around the first floor. There was no one to question his presence. He was a guest and he was trusted. He was supposed to be, he reminded himself when he became uncomfortable. One of the reasons McIntyre had drafted him for this particular job was because he would have easy access to the Fairchilds and the house. He was, socially and professionally, one of them. They’d have no reason to be suspicious of a well-bred, successful artist whom they’d welcomed into their own home. And the more Adam tried to justify his actions, the more the guilt ate at him.

Enough, he told himself as he stared out at the darkening sky. He’d had enough for one day. It was time he went up and changed for Melanie Burgess’s party. There he’d meet Stuart Hiller and Harriet Merrick. There were no emotional ties there to make him feel like a spy and a thief. Swearing at himself, he started up the stairs.

“Excuse me, Mr. Haines.” Impatient, Adam turned and looked down at Tulip. “Were you going up?”

“Yes.” Because he stood on the bottom landing blocking her way, he stood aside to let her pass.

“You take this up to her then, and see she drinks it.” Tulip shoved a tall glass of milky white liquid into his hand. “All,” she added tersely before she clomped back toward the kitchen.

Where did they get their servants? Adam wondered, frowning down at the glass in his hands. And why, for the love of God, had he let himself be ordered around by one? When in Rome, he supposed, and started up the steps again.

The she obviously meant Kirby. Adam sniffed doubtfully at the glass as he knocked on her door.

“You can bring it in,” she called out, “but I won’t drink it. Threaten all you like.”

All right, he decided, and pushed her door open. The bedroom was empty, but he could smell her.

“Do your worst,” she invited. “You can’t intimidate me with stories of intestinal disorders and vitamin deficiencies. I’m healthy as a horse.”

The warm, sultry scent flowed over him. Glass in hand, he walked through and into the bathroom where the steam rose up, fragrant and misty as a rain forest. With her hair pinned on top of her head, Kirby lounged in a huge sunken tub. Overhead, hanging plants dripped down, green and moist. White frothy bubbles floated in heaps on the surface of the water.

“So she sent you, did she?” Unconcerned, Kirby rubbed a loofah sponge over one shoulder. The bubbles, she concluded, covered her with more modesty than most women at the party that night would claim. “Well, come in then, and stop scowling at me. I won’t ask you to scrub my back.”

He thought of Cleopatra, floating on her barge. Just how many men other than Caesar and Antony had she driven mad? He glanced at the long mirrored wall behind the sink. It was fogged with the steam that rose in visible columns from her bath. “Got the water hot enough?”

“Do you know what that is?” she demanded, and plucked her soap from the dish. The cake was a pale, pale pink and left a creamy lather on her skin. “It’s a filthy-tasting mixture Tulip tries to force on me periodically. It has raw eggs in it and other vile things.” Making a face she lifted one surprisingly long leg out of the bath and soaped it. “Tell me the truth, Adam, would you voluntarily drink raw eggs?”

He watched her run soap and fingertips down her calf. “I can’t say I would.”

“Well, then.” Satisfied, she switched legs. “Down the drain with it.”

“She told me to see that you drank it. All,” he added, beginning to enjoy himself.

Her lower lip moved forward a bit as she considered. “Puts you in an awkward position, doesn’t it?”

“A position in any case.”

“Tell you what, I’ll have a sip. Then when she asks if I drank it I can say I did. I’m trying to cut down on my lying.”

Adam handed her the glass, watching as she sipped and grimaced. “I’m not sure you’re being truthful this way.”

“I said cutting down, not eliminating. Into the sink,” she added. “Unless you’d care for the rest.”

“I’ll pass.” He poured it out then sat on the lip of the tub.

Surprised by the move, she tightened her fingers on the soap. It plopped into the water. “Hydrophobia,” she muttered. “No, don’t bother, I’ll find it.” Dipping her hand in, she began to search. “You’d think they could make a soap that wasn’t forever leaping out of your hands.” Grateful for the distraction, she gripped the soap again. “Aha. I appreciate your bringing me that revolting stuff, Adam. Now if you’d like to run along…”

“I’m in no hurry.” Idly he picked up her loofah. “You mentioned something about scrubbing your back.”

“Robbery!” Fairchild’s voice boomed into the room just ahead of him. “Call the police. Call the FBI. Adam, you’ll be a witness.” He nodded, finding nothing odd in the audience to his daughter’s bath.

“I’m so glad I have a large bathroom,” she murmured. “Pity I didn’t think to serve refreshments.” Relieved by the interruption, she ran the soap down her arm. “What’s been stolen, Papa? The Monet street scene, the Renoir portrait? I know, your sweat socks.”

“My black dinner suit!” Dramatically he pointed a finger to the ceiling. “We’ll have to take fingerprints.”

“Obviously stolen by a psychotic with a fetish for formal attire,” Kirby concluded. “I love a mystery. Let’s list the suspects.” She pushed a lock of hair out of her eyes and leaned back—a naked, erotic Sherlock Holmes. “Adam, have you an alibi?”

With a half smile, he ran the damp abrasive sponge through his hands. “I’ve been seducing Polly all afternoon.”

Her eyes lit with amusement. She’d known he had potential. “That won’t do,” she said soberly. “It wouldn’t take above fifteen minutes to seduce Polly. You have a black dinner suit, I suppose.”

“Circumstantial evidence.”

“A search warrant,” Fairchild chimed in, inspired. “We’ll get a search warrant and go through the entire house.”

“Time-consuming,” Kirby decided. “Actually, Papa, I think we’d best look to Cards.”

“The butler did it.” Fairchild cackled with glee, then immediately sobered. “No, no, my suit would never fit Cards.”

“True. Still, as much as I hate to be an informer, I overheard Cards telling Tulip he intended to take your suit.”

“Trust,” Fairchild mumbled to Adam. “Can’t trust anyone.”

“His motive was sponging and pressing, I believe.” She sank down to her neck and examined her toes. “He’ll crumble like a wall if you accuse him. I’m sure of it.”

“Very well.” Fairchild rubbed his thin, clever hands together. “I’ll handle it myself and avoid the publicity.”

“A brave man,” Kirby decided as her father strode out of the room. Relaxed and amused, she smiled at Adam. “Well, my bubbles seem to be melting, so we’d better continue this discussion some other time.”

Reaching over, Adam yanked the chain and drew the old-fashioned plug out of the stupendous tub. “The time’s coming when we’re going to start—and finish—much more than a conversation.”

Wary, Kirby watched her water level and last defense recede. When cornered, she determined, it was best to be nonchalant. She tried a smile that didn’t quite conceal the nerves. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

“I intend to,” he said softly. Without another word, he rose and left her alone.

* * *

Later, when he descended the stairs, Adam grinned when he heard her voice.

“Yes, Tulip, I drank the horrid stuff. I won’t disgrace you by fainting in the Merrick living room from malnutrition.” The low rumble of response that followed was dissatisfied. “Cricket wings, I’ve been walking in heels for half my life. They’re not six inches, they’re three. And I’ll still have to look up at everyone over twelve. Go bake a cake, will you?”

He heard Tulip’s mutter and sniff before she stomped out of the room and passed him.

“Adam, thank God. Let’s go before she finds something else to nag me about.”

Her dress was pure, unadorned white, thin and floaty. It covered her arms, rose high at the throat, as modest as a nun’s habit, as sultry as a tropical night. Her hair fell, black and straight over the shoulders.

Tossing it back, she picked up a black cape and swirled it around her. For a moment she stood, adjusting it while the light from the lamps flitted over the absence of color. She looked like a Manet portrait—strong, romantic and timeless.

“You’re a fabulous-looking creature, Kirby.”

They both stopped, staring. He’d given compliments before, with more style, more finesse, but he’d never meant one more. She’d been flattered by princes, in foreign tongues and with smooth deliveries. It had never made her stomach flutter.

“Thank you,” she managed. “So’re you.” No longer sure it was wise, she offered her hand. “Are you ready?”

“Yes. Your father?”

“He’s already gone,” she told him as she walked toward the door. And the sooner they were, the better. She needed a little more time before she was alone with him again. “We don’t drive to parties together, especially to Harriet’s. He likes to get there early and usually stays longer, trying to talk Harriet into bed. I’ve had my car brought around.” She shut the door and led him to a silver Porsche. “I’d rather drive than navigate, if you don’t mind.”

But she didn’t wait for his response as she dropped into the driver’s seat. “Fine,” Adam agreed.

“It’s a marvelous night.” She turned the key in the ignition. The power vibrated under their feet. “Full moon, lots of stars.” Smoothly she released the brake, engaged the clutch and pressed the accelerator. Adam was tossed against the seat as they roared down the drive.

“You’ll like Harriet,” Kirby continued, switching gears as Adam stared at the blurring landscape. “She’s like a mother to me.” When they came to the main road, Kirby downshifted and swung to the left, tires squealing. “You met Melly, of course. I hope you won’t desert me completely tonight after seeing her again.”

Adam braced his feet against the floor. “Does anyone notice her when you’re around?” And would they make it to the Merrick home alive?

“Of course.” Surprised by the question, she turned to look at him.

“Good God, watch where you’re going!” None too gently, he pushed her head around.

“Melly’s the most perfectly beautiful woman I’ve ever known.” Downshifting again, Kirby squealed around a right turn then accelerated. “She’s a very clever designer and very, very proper. Wouldn’t even take a settlement from her husband when they divorced. Pride, I suppose, but then she wouldn’t need the money. There’s a marvelous view of the Hudson coming up on your side, Adam.” Kirby leaned over to point it out. The car swerved.

“I prefer seeing it from up here, thanks,” Adam told her as he shoved her back in her seat. “Do you always drive this way?”

“Yes. There’s the road you take to the gallery,” she continued. She waved her hand vaguely as the car whizzed by an intersection. Adam glanced down at the speedometer.

“You’re doing ninety.”

“I always drive slower at night.”

“There’s good news.” Muttering, he flicked on the lighter.

“There’s the house up ahead.” She raced around an ess curve. “Fabulous when it’s all lit up this way.”

The house was white and stately, the type you expected to see high above the riverbank. It glowed with elegance from dozens of windows. Without slackening pace, Kirby sped up the circular drive. With a squeal of brakes, and a muttered curse from Adam, she stopped the Porsche at the front entrance.

Reaching over, Adam pulled the keys from the ignition and pocketed them. “I’m driving back.”

“How thoughtful.” Offering her hand to the valet, Kirby stepped out. “Now I won’t have to limit myself to one drink. Champagne,” she decided, moving up the steps beside him. “It seems like a night for it.”

The moment the door opened, Kirby was enveloped by a flurry of dazzling, trailing silks. “Harriet.” Kirby squeezed the statuesque woman with flaming red hair. “It’s wonderful to see you, but I think I’m being gnawed by the denture work of your crocodile.”

“Sorry, darling.” Harriet held her necklace and drew back to press a kiss to each of Kirby’s cheeks. She was an impressive woman, full-bodied in the style Rubens had immortalized. Her face was wide and smooth, dominated by deep green eyes that glittered with silver on the lids. Harriet didn’t believe in subtlety. “And this must be your house-guest,” she continued with a quick sizing up of Adam.

“Harriet Merrick, Adam Haines.” Kirby grinned and pinched Harriet’s cheek. “And behave yourself, or Papa’ll have him choosing weapons.”

“Wonderful idea.” With one arm still linked with Kirby’s, Harriet twined her other through Adam’s. “I’m sure you have a fascinating life story to tell me, Adam.”

“I’ll make one up.”

“Perfect.” She liked the look of him. “We’ve a crowd already, though they’re mostly Melanie’s stuffy friends.”

“Harriet, you’ve got to be more tolerant.”

“No, I don’t.” She tossed back her outrageous hair. “I’ve been excruciatingly polite. Now that you’re here, I don’t have to be.”

“Kirby.” Melanie swept into the hall in an ice-blue sheath. “What a picture you make. Take her cloak, Ellen, though it’s a pity to spoil that effect.” Smiling, she held out a hand to Adam as the maid slipped Kirby’s cloak off her shoulders. “I’m so glad you came. We’ve some mutual acquaintances here, it seems. The Birminghams and Michael Towers from New York. You remember Michael, Kirby?”

“The adman who clicks his teeth?”

Harriet let out a roar of laughter while Adam struggled to control his. With a sigh, Melanie led them toward the party. “Try to behave, will you?” But Adam wasn’t certain whether she spoke to Kirby or her mother.

This was the world he was used to—elegant people in elegant clothes having rational conversations. He’d been raised in the world of restrained wealth where champagne fizzed quietly and dignity was as essential as the proper alma mater. He understood it, he fit in.

After fifteen minutes, he was separated from Kirby and bored to death.

“I’ve decided to take a trek through the Australian bush,” Harriet told Kirby. She fingered her necklace of crocodile teeth. “I’d love you to come with me. We’d have such fun brewing a billy cup over the fire.”

“Camping?” Kirby asked, mulling it over. Maybe what she needed was a change of scene, after her father settled down.

“Give it some thought,” Harriet suggested. “I’m not planning on leaving for another six weeks. Ah, Adam.” Reaching out, she grabbed his arm. “Did Agnes Birmingham drive you to drink? No, don’t answer. It’s written all over your face, but you’re much too polite.”

He allowed himself to be drawn between her and Kirby, where he wanted to be. “Let’s just say I was looking for more stimulating conversation. I’ve found it.”

“Charming.” She decided she liked him, but would reserve judgment a bit longer as to whether he’d suit her Kirby. “I admire your work, Adam. I’d like to put the first bid in on your next painting.”

He took glasses from a passing waiter. “I’m doing a portrait of Kirby.”

“She’s posing for you?” Harriet nearly choked on her champagne. “Did you chain her?”

“Not yet.” He gave Kirby a lazy glance. “It’s still a possibility.”

“You have to let me display it when it’s finished.” She might’ve been a woman who ran on emotion on many levels, but the bottom line was art, and the business of it. “I can promise to cause a nasty scene if you refuse.”

“No one does it better,” Kirby toasted her.

“You’ll have to see the portrait of Kirby that Philip painted for me. She wouldn’t sit for it, but it’s brilliant.” She toyed with the stem of her glass. “He painted it when she returned from Paris—three years ago, I suppose.”

“I’d like to see it. I’d planned on coming by the gallery.”

“Oh, it’s here, in the library.”

“Why don’t you two just toddle along then?” Kirby suggested. “You’ve been talking around me, you might as well desert me physically, as well.”

“Don’t be snotty,” Harriet told her. “You can come, too. And I… Well, well,” she murmured in a voice suddenly lacking in warmth. “Some people have no sense of propriety.”

Kirby turned her head, just slightly, and watched Stuart walk into the room. Her fingers tightened on the glass, but she shrugged. Before the movement was complete, Melanie was at her side.

“I’m sorry, Kirby. I’d hoped he wouldn’t come after all.”

In a slow, somehow insolent gesture, Kirby pushed her hair behind her back. “If it had mattered, I wouldn’t have come.”

“I don’t want you to be embarrassed,” Melanie began, only to be cut off by a quick and very genuine laugh.

“When have you ever known me to be embarrassed?”

“Well, I’ll greet him, or it’ll make matters worse.” Still, Melanie hesitated, obviously torn between loyalty and manners.

“I’ll fire him, of course,” Harriet mused when her daughter went to do her duty. “But I want to be subtle about it.”

“Fire him if you like, Harriet, but not on my account.” Kirby drained her champagne.

“It appears we’re in for a show, Adam.” Harriet tapped a coral fingertip against her glass. “Much to Melanie’s distress, Stuart’s coming over.”

Without saying a word, Kirby took Adam’s cigarette.

“Harriet, you look marvelous.” The smooth, cultured voice wasn’t at all like the tone Adam had heard in Fairchild’s studio. “Africa agreed with you.”

Harriet gave him a bland smile. “We didn’t expect to see you.”

“I was tied up for a bit.” Charming, elegant, he turned to Kirby. “You’re looking lovely.”

“So are you,” she said evenly. “It seems your nose is back in joint.” Without missing a beat, she turned to Adam. “I don’t believe you’ve met. Adam, this is Stuart Hiller. I’m sure you know Adam Haines’s work, Stuart.”

“Yes, indeed.” The handshake was polite and meaningless. “Are you staying in our part of New York long?”

“Until I finish Kirby’s portrait,” Adam told him and had the dual satisfaction of seeing Kirby grin and Stuart frown. “I’ve agreed to let Harriet display it in the gallery.”

With that simple strategy, Adam won Harriet over.

“I’m sure it’ll be a tremendous addition to our collection.” Even a man with little sensitivity wouldn’t have missed the waves of resentment. For the moment, Stuart ignored them. “I wasn’t able to reach you in Africa, Harriet, and things have been hectic since your return. The Titian woman has been sold to Ernest Myerling.”

As he lifted his glass, Adam’s attention focused on Kirby. Her color drained, slowly, degree by degree until her face was as white as the silk she wore.

“I don’t recall discussing selling the Titian,” Harriet countered. Her voice was as colorless as Kirby’s skin.

“As I said, I couldn’t reach you. As the Titian isn’t listed under your personal collection, it falls among the saleable paintings. I think you’ll be pleased with the price.” He lit a cigarette with a slim silver lighter. “Myerling did insist on having it tested. He’s more interested in investment than art, I’m afraid. I thought you’d want to be there tomorrow for the procedure.”

Oh, God, oh, my God! Panic, very real and very strong, whirled through Kirby’s mind. In silence, Adam watched the fear grow in her eyes.

“Tested!” Obviously insulted, Harriet seethed. “Of all the gall, doubting the authenticity of a painting from my gallery. The Titian should not have been sold without my permission, and certainly not to a peasant.”

“Testing isn’t unheard-of, Harriet.” Seeing a hefty commission wavering, Stuart soothed, “Myerling’s a businessman, not an art expert. He wants facts.” Taking a long drag, he blew out smoke. “In any case, the paperwork’s already completed and there’s nothing to be done about it. The deal’s a fait accompli, hinging on the test results.”

“We’ll discuss this in the morning.” Harriet’s voice lowered as she finished off her drink. “This isn’t the time or place.”

“I—I have to freshen my drink,” Kirby said suddenly. Without another word, she spun away to work her way through the crowd. The nausea, she realized, was a direct result of panic, and the panic was a long way from over. “Papa.” She latched on to his arm and pulled him out of a discussion on Dali’s versatility. “I have to talk to you. Now.”

Hearing the edge in her voice, he let her drag him from the room.

Chapter 7

Kirby closed the doors of Harriet’s library behind her and leaned back against them. She didn’t waste any time. “The Titian’s being tested in the morning. Stuart sold it.”

“Sold it!” Fairchild’s eyes grew wide, his face pink. “Impossible. Harriet wouldn’t sell the Titian.”

“She didn’t. She was off playing with lions, remember?” Dragging both hands through her hair, she tried to speak calmly. “Stuart closed the deal, he just told her.”

“I told you he was a fool, didn’t I? Didn’t I?” Fairchild repeated as he started dancing in place. “I told Harriet, too. Would anyone listen? No, not Harriet.” He whirled around, plucked up a pencil from her desk and broke it in two. “She hires the idiot anyway and goes off to roam the jungle.”

“There’s no use going over that again!” Kirby snapped at him. “We’ve got to deal with the results.”

“There wouldn’t be any results if I’d been listened to. Stubborn woman falling for a pretty face. That’s all it was.” Pausing, he took a deep breath and folded his hands. “Well,” he said in a mild voice, “this is a problem.”

“Papa, this isn’t an error in your checkbook.”

“But it can be handled, probably with less effort. Any way out of the deal?”

“Stuart said the paperwork had been finalized. And it’s Myerling,” she added.

“That old pirate.” He scowled a moment and gave Harriet’s desk a quick kick. “No way out of it,” Fairchild concluded. “On to the next step. We exchange them.” He saw by Kirby’s nod that she’d already thought of it. There was a quick flash of pride before anger set in. The round, cherubic face tightened. “By God, Stuart’s going to pay for making me give up that painting.”

“Very easily said, Papa.” Kirby walked into the room until she stood toe to toe with him. “But who was it who settled Adam in the same room with the painting? Now we’re going to have to get it out of his room, then get the copy from the gallery in without him knowing there’s been a switch. I’m sure you’ve noticed Adam’s not a fool.”

Fairchild’s eyebrows wiggled. His lips curved. He rubbed his palms together. “A plan.”

Knowing it was too late for regrets, Kirby flopped into a chair. “We’ll phone Cards and have him put the painting in my room before we get back.”

He approved this with a brief nod. “You have a marvelous criminal mind, Kirby.”

She had to smile. A sense of adventure was already spearing through the panic. “Heredity,” she told her father. “Now, here’s my idea….” Lowering her voice, she began the outline.

“It’ll work,” Fairchild decided a few moments later.

“That has yet to be seen.” It sounded plausible enough, but she didn’t underestimate Adam Haines. “So there’s nothing to be done but to do it.”

“And do it well.”

Her agreement was a careless shrug of her shoulders. “Adam should be too tired to notice that the Titian’s gone, and after I make the exchange at the gallery, I’ll slip it back into his room. Sleeping pills are the only way.” She stared down at her hands, dissatisfied, but knowing it was the only way out. “I don’t like doing this to Adam.”

“He’ll just get a good night’s sleep.” Fairchild sat on the arm of her chair. “We all need a good night’s sleep now and again. Now we’d better go back or Melanie’ll send out search parties.”

“You go first.” Kirby let out a deep breath. “I’ll phone Cards and tell him to get started.”

Kirby waited until Fairchild had closed the doors again before she went to the phone on Harriet’s desk. She didn’t mind the job she had to do, in fact she looked forward to it. Except for Adam’s part. It couldn’t be helped, she reminded herself, and gave Cards brief instructions.

Now, she thought as she replaced the receiver, it was too late to turn back. The die, so to speak, had been cast. The truth was, the hastily made plans for the evening would prove a great deal more interesting than a party. While she hesitated a moment longer, Stuart opened the door, then closed it softly behind him.

“Kirby.” He crossed to her with a half smile on his face. His patience had paid off now that he’d found her alone. “We have to talk.”

Not now, she thought on a moment’s panic. Didn’t she have enough to deal with? Then she thought of the way he’d humiliated her. The way he’d lied. Perhaps it was better to get everything over with at once.

“I think we said everything we had to say at our last meeting.”

“Not nearly everything.”

“Redundancy bores me,” she said mildly. “But if you insist, I’ll say this. It’s a pity you haven’t the money to suit your looks. Your mistake, Stuart, was in not making me want you—not the way you wanted me.” Deliberately her voice dropped, low and seductive. She hadn’t nearly finished paying him back. “You could deceive me about love, but not about lust. If you’d concentrated on that instead of greed, you might’ve had a chance. You are,” she continued softly, “a liar and a cheat, and while that might’ve been an interesting diversion for a short time, I thank God you never got your hands on me or my money.”

Before she could sweep around him, he grabbed her arm. “You’d better remember your father’s habits before you sling mud.”

She dropped her gaze to his hand, then slowly raised it again. It was a look designed to infuriate. “Do you honestly compare yourself with my father?” Her fury came out on a laugh, and the laugh was insult itself. “You’ll never have his style, Stuart. You’re second-rate, and you’ll always be second-rate.”

He brought the back of his hand across her face hard enough to make her stagger. She didn’t make a sound. When she stared up at him, her eyes were slits, very dark, very dangerous slits. The pain meant nothing, only that he’d caused it and she had no way to pay him back in kind. Yet.

“You prove my point,” Kirby said evenly as she brushed her fingers over her cheek. “Second-rate.”

He wanted to hit her again, but balled his hands into fists. He needed her, for the moment. “I’m through playing games, Kirby. I want the Rembrandt.”

“I’d take a knife to it before I saw Papa hand it over to you. You’re out of your class, Stuart.” She didn’t bother to struggle when he grabbed her arms.

“Two days, Kirby. You tell the old man he has two days or it’s you who’ll pay.”

“Threats and physical abuse are your only weapons.” Abruptly, with more effort than she allowed him to see, Kirby turned her anger to ice. “I’ve weapons of my own, Stuart, infinitely more effective. And if I chose to drop to gutter tactics, you haven’t the finesse to deal with me.” She kept her eyes on his, her body still. He might curse her, but Stuart knew the truth when he heard it. “You’re a snake,” she added quietly. “And you can’t stay off your belly for long. The fact that you’re stronger than I is only a temporary advantage.”

“Very temporary,” Adam said as he closed the door at his back. His voice matched Kirby’s chill for chill. “Take your hands off her.”

Kirby felt the painful grip on her arms relax and watched Stuart struggle with composure. Carefully he straightened his tie. “Remember what I said, Kirby. It could be important to you.”

“You remember how Byron described a woman’s revenge,” she countered as she rubbed the circulation back into her arms. “’Like a tiger’s spring—deadly, quick and crushing.’” She dropped her arms to her sides. “It could be important to you.” Turning, she walked to the window and stared out at nothing.

Adam kept his hand on the knob as Stuart walked to the door. “Touch her again and you’ll have to deal with me.” Slowly Adam turned the knob and opened the door. “That’s something else for you to remember.” The sounds of the party flowed in, then silenced again as he shut the door at Stuart’s back.

“Well,” he began, struggling with his own fury. “I guess I should be grateful I don’t have an ex-fiancée hanging around.” He’d heard enough to know that the Rembrandt had been at the bottom of it, but he pushed that aside and went to her. “He’s a poor loser, and you’re amazing. Most women would have been weeping or pleading. You stood there flinging insults.”

“I don’t believe in pleading,” she said as lightly as she could. “And Stuart would never reduce me to tears.”

“But you’re trembling,” he murmured as he put his hands on her shoulders.

“Anger.” She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. She didn’t care to show a weakness, not to anyone. “I appreciate the white-knight routine.”

He grinned and kissed the top of her head. “Any time. Why don’t we…” He trailed off as he turned her to face him. The mark of Stuart’s hand had faded to a dull, angry red, but it was unmistakable. When Adam touched his fingers to her cheek, his eyes were cold. Colder and more dangerous than she’d ever seen them. Without a word, he spun around and headed for the door.

“No!” Desperation wasn’t characteristic, but she felt it now as she grabbed his arm. “No, Adam, don’t. Don’t get involved.” He shook her off, but she sprinted to the door ahead of him and stood with her back pressed against it. The tears she’d been able to control with Stuart now swam in her eyes. “Please, I’ve enough on my conscience without dragging you into this. I live my life as I choose, and what I get from it is of my own making.”

He wanted to brush her aside and push through the crowd outside the door until he had his hands on Stuart. He wanted, more than he’d ever wanted anything, the pleasure of smelling the other man’s blood. But she was standing in front of him, small and delicate, with tears in her eyes. She wasn’t the kind of woman tears came easily to.

“All right.” He brushed one from her cheek and made a promise on it. Before it was over, he would indeed smell Stuart Hiller’s blood. “You’re only postponing the inevitable.”

Relieved, she closed her eyes a moment. When she opened them again, they were still damp, but no longer desperate. “I don’t believe in the inevitable.” She took his hand and brought it to her cheek, holding it there a moment until she felt the tension drain from both of them. “You must’ve come in to see my portrait. It’s there, above the desk.”

She gestured, but he didn’t take his eyes from hers. “I’ll have to give it a thorough study, right after I give my attention to the original.” He gathered her close and just held her. It was, though neither one of them had known it, the perfect gesture of support. Resting her head against his shoulder, she thought of peace, and she thought of the plans that had already been put into motion.

“I’m sorry, Adam.”

He heard the regret in her voice and brushed his lips over her hair. “What for?”

“I can’t tell you.” She tightened her arms around his waist and clung to him as she had never clung to anyone. “But I am sorry.”

* * *

The drive away from the Merrick estate was more sedate than the approach. Kirby sat in the passenger seat. Under most circumstances, Adam would’ve attributed her silence and unease to her scene with Hiller. But he remembered her reaction at the mention of the sale of a Titian.

What was going on in that kaleidoscope brain of hers? he wondered. And how was he going to find out? The direct approach, Adam decided, and thought fleetingly that it was a shame to waste the moonlight. “The Titian that’s been sold,” he began, pretending he didn’t see Kirby jolt. “Has Harriet had it long?”

“The Titian.” She folded her hands in her lap. “Oh, years and years. Your Mrs. Birmingham’s shaped like a zucchini, don’t you think?”

“She’s not my Mrs. Birmingham.” A new game, he concluded, and relaxed against the seat. “It’s too bad it was sold before I could see it. I’m a great admirer of Titian. The painting in my room’s exquisite.”

Kirby let out a sound that might have been a nervous giggle. “The one at the gallery is just as exquisite,” she told him. “Ah, here we are, home again. Just leave the car out front,” she said, half relieved, half annoyed, that the next steps were being put into play. “Cards will see to it. I hope you don’t mind coming back early, Adam. There’s Papa,” she added as she stepped from the car. “He must’ve struck out with Harriet. Let’s have a nightcap, shall we?”

She started up the steps without waiting for his agreement. Knowing he was about to become a part of some hastily conceived plan, he went along. It’s all too pat, he mused as Fairchild waited at the door with a genial smile.

“Too many people,” Fairchild announced. “I much prefer small parties. Let’s have a drink in the parlor and gossip.”

Don’t look so bloody anxious, Kirby thought, and nearly scowled at him. “I’ll go tell Cards to see to the Rolls and my car.” Still, she hesitated as the men walked toward the parlor. Adam caught the indecision in her eyes before Fairchild cackled and slapped him on the back.

“And don’t hurry back,” he told Kirby. “I’ve had enough of women for a while.”

“How sweet.” The irony and strength came back into her voice. “I’ll just go in and eat Tulip’s lemon trifle. All,” she added as she swept past.

Fairchild thought of his midnight snack with regret. “Brat,” he muttered. “Well, we’ll have Scotch instead.”

Adam dipped his hands casually in his pockets and watched every move Fairchild made. “I had a chance to see Kirby’s portrait in Harriet’s library. It’s marvelous.”

“One of my best, if I say so myself.” Fairchild lifted the decanter of Chivas Regal. “Harriet’s fond of my brat, you know.” In a deft move, Fairchild slipped two pills from his pocket and dropped them into the Scotch.

Under normal circumstances Adam would’ve missed it. Clever hands, he thought as intrigued as he was amused. Very quick, very agile. Apparently they wanted him out of the way. He was going to find it a challenge to pit himself against both of them. With a smile, he accepted the drink, then turned to the Corot landscape behind him.

“Corot’s treatment of light,” Adam began, taking a small sip. “It gives all of his work such deep perspective.”

No ploy could’ve worked better. Fairchild was ready to roll. “I’m very partial to Corot. He had such a fine hand with details without being finicky and obscuring the overall painting. Now the leaves,” he began, and set down his drink to point them out. While the lecture went on, Adam set down his own drink, picked up Fairchild’s and enjoyed the Scotch.

Upstairs Kirby found the Titian already wrapped in heavy paper. “Bless you, Cards,” she murmured. She checked her watch and made herself wait a full ten minutes before she picked up the painting and left the room. Quietly she moved down the back stairs and out to where her car waited.

In the parlor, Adam studied Fairchild as he sat in the corner of the sofa, snoring. Deciding the least he could do was to make his host more comfortable, Adam started to swing Fairchild’s legs onto the couch. The sound of a car engine stopped him. Adam was at the window in time to see Kirby’s Porsche race down the drive.

“You’re going to have company,” he promised her. Within moments, he was behind the wheel of the Rolls.

The surge of speed added to Kirby’s sense of adventure. She drove instinctively while she concentrated on her task for the evening. It helped ease the guilt over Adam, a bit.

A quarter mile from the gallery, she stopped and parked on the side of the road. Grateful that the Titian was relatively small, though the frame added weight, she gathered it up again and began to walk. Her heels echoed on the asphalt.

Clouds drifted across the moon, obscuring the light then freeing it again. With her cape swirling around her, Kirby walked into the cover of trees that bordered the gallery. The light was dim, all shadows and secrets. Up ahead came the low moan of an owl. Tossing back her hair, she laughed.

“Perfect,” she decided. “All we need is a rumble of thunder and a few streaks of lightning. Skulking through the woods on a desperate mission,” she mused. “Surrounded by the sounds of night.” She shifted the bundle in her arms and continued on. “What one does for those one loves.”

She could see the stately red brick of the gallery through the trees. Moonlight slanted over it. Almost there, she thought with a quick glance at her watch. In an hour she’d be back home—and perhaps she’d have the lemon trifle after all.

A hand fell heavily on her shoulder. Her cape spread out like wings as she whirled. Great buckets of blood, she thought as she stared up at Adam.

“Out for a stroll?” he asked her.

“Why, hello, Adam.” Since she couldn’t disappear, she had to face him down. She tried a friendly smile. “What are you doing out here?”

“Following you.”

“Flattering. But wasn’t Papa entertaining you?”

“He dozed off.”

She stared up at him a moment, then let out a breath. A wry smile followed it. “I suppose he deserved it. I hope you left him comfortable.”

“Enough. Now what’s in the package?”

Though she knew it was useless, she fluttered her lashes. “Package?”

He tapped his finger on the wrapping.

“Oh, this package. Just a little errand I have to run. It’s getting late, shouldn’t you be starting back?”

“Not a chance.”

“No.” She moved her shoulders. “I thought not.”

“What’s in the package, Kirby, and what do you intend to do with it?”

“All right.” She thrust the painting into his arms because hers were tiring. When the jig was up, you had to make the best of it. “I suppose you deserve an explanation, and you won’t leave until you have one anyway. It has to be the condensed version, Adam, I’m running behind schedule.” She laid a hand on the package he held. “This is the Titian woman, and I’m going to put it in the gallery.”

He lifted a brow. He didn’t need Kirby to tell him that he held a painting. “I was under the impression that the Titian woman was in the gallery.”

“No…” She drew out the word. If she could have thought of a lie, a half-truth, a fable, she’d have used it. She could only think of the truth. “This is a Titian,” she told him with a nod to the package. “The painting in the gallery is a Fairchild.”

He let the silence hang a moment while the moonlight filtered over her face. She looked like an angel…or a witch. “Your father forged a Titian and palmed it off on the gallery as an original?”

“Certainly not!” Indignation wasn’t feigned. Kirby bit back on it and tried to be patient. “I won’t tell you any more if you insult my father.”

“I don’t know what came over me.”

“All right then.” She leaned back against a tree. “Perhaps I should start at the beginning.”

“Good choice.”

“Years ago, Papa and Harriet were vacationing in Europe. They came across the Titian, each one swearing they’d seen it first. Neither one would give way, and it would’ve been criminal to let the painting go altogether. They compromised.” She gestured at the package. “Each paid half, and Papa painted a copy. They rotate ownership of the original every six months, alternating with the copy, if you get the drift. The stipulation was that neither of them could claim ownership. Harriet kept hers in the gallery—not listing it as part of her private collection. Papa kept it in a guest room.”

He considered for a moment. “That’s too ridiculous for you to have made up.”

“Of course I didn’t make it up.” As it could, effectively, her bottom lip pouted. “Don’t you trust me?”

“No. You’re going to do a lot more explaining when we get back.”

Perhaps, Kirby thought. And perhaps not.

“Now just how do you intend to get into the gallery?”

“With Harriet’s keys.”

“She gave you her keys?”

Kirby let out a frustrated breath. “Pay attention, Adam. Harriet’s furious about Stuart selling the painting, but until she studies the contracts there’s no way to know how binding the sale is. It doesn’t look good, and we can’t take a chance on having the painting tested—my father’s painting, that is. If the procedure were sophisticated enough, it might prove that the painting’s not sixteenth-century.”

“Harriet’s aware that a forgery’s hanging in her gallery?”

“An emulation, Adam.”

“And are there any other…emulations in the Merrick Gallery?”

She gave him a long, cool look. “I’m trying not to be annoyed. All of Harriet’s paintings are authentic, as is her half of the Titian.”

“Why didn’t she replace it herself?”

“Because,” Kirby began and checked her watch. Time was slipping away from her. “Not only would it have been difficult for her to disappear from the party early as we did, but it would’ve been awkward altogether. The night watchman could report to Stuart that she came to the gallery in the middle of the night carrying a package. He might put two and two together. Yes, even he might add it up.”

“So what’ll the night watchman have to say about Kirby Fairchild coming into the gallery in the middle of the night?”

“He won’t see us.” Her smile was quick and very, very smug.

“Us?”

“Since you’re here.” She smiled at him again, and meant it. “I’ve told you everything, and being a gentleman you’ll help me make the switch. We’ll have to work quickly. If we’re caught, we’ll just brazen it out. You won’t have to do anything, I’ll handle it.”

“You’ll handle it.” He nodded at the drifting clouds. “We can all sleep easy now. One condition.” He stopped her before she could speak. “When we’re done, if we’re not in jail or hospitalized, I want to know it all. If we are in jail, I’ll murder you as slowly as possible.”

“That’s two conditions,” she muttered. “But all right.”

They watched each other a moment, one wondering how much would have to be divulged, one wondering how much could be learned. Both found the deceit unpleasant.

“Let’s get it done.” Adam gestured for her to go first.

Kirby walked across the grass and went directly to the main door. From the deep pocket of her cloak, she drew out keys.

“These two switch off the main alarm,” she explained as she turned keys in a series of locks. “And these unbolt the door.” She smiled at the faint click of tumblers. Turning, she studied Adam, standing behind her in his elegant dinner suit. “I’m so glad we dressed for it.”

“Seems right to dress formally when you’re breaking into a distinguished institution.”

“True.” Kirby dropped the keys back in her pocket. “And we do make a rather stunning couple. The Titian hangs in the west room on the second floor. The watchman has a little room in the back, here on the main floor. I assume he drinks black coffee laced with rum and reads pornographic magazines. I would. He’s supposed to make rounds hourly, though there’s no way to be certain he’s diligent.”

“And what time does he make them, if he does?”

“On the hour—which gives us twenty minutes.” She glanced at her watch and shrugged. “That’s adequate, though if you hadn’t pressed me for details we’d’ve had more time. Don’t scowl,” she added. She pressed her finger to her lips and slipped through the door.

From out of the depths of her pocket came a flashlight. They followed the narrow beam over the carpet. Together they moved up the staircase.

Obviously she knew the gallery well. Without hesitation, she moved through the dark, turning on the second floor and marching down the corridor without breaking rhythm. Her cape swirled out as she pivoted into a room. In silence she played her light over paintings until it stopped on the copy of the Titian that had hung in Adam’s room.

“There,” Kirby whispered as the light shone on the sunset hair Titian had immortalized. The light was too poor for Adam to be certain of the quality, but he promised himself he’d examine it minutes later.

“It’s not possible to tell them apart—not even an expert.” She knew what he was thinking. “Harriet’s a respected authority, and she couldn’t. I’m not sure the tests wouldn’t bear it out as authentic. Papa has a way of treating the paints.” She moved closer so that her light illuminated the entire painting. “Papa put a red circle on the back of the copy’s frame so they could be told apart. I’ll take the package now,” she told him briskly. “You can get the painting down.” She knelt and began to unwrap the painting they’d brought with them. “I’m glad you happened along,” she decided. “Your height’s going to be an advantage when it comes to taking down and putting up again.”

Adam paused with the forgery in his hands. Throttling her would be too noisy at the moment, he decided. But later… “Let’s have it then.”

In silence they exchanged paintings. Adam replaced his on the wall, while Kirby wrapped the other. After she’d tied the string, she played the light on the wall again. “It’s a bit crooked,” she decided. “A little to the left.”

“Look, I—” Adam broke off at the sound of a faint, tuneless whistle.

“He’s early!” Kirby whispered as she gripped the painting. “Who expects efficiency from hired help these days?”

In a quick move, Adam had the woman, the painting and himself pressed against the wall by the archway. Finding herself neatly sandwiched, and partially smothered, Kirby held back a desperate urge to giggle. Certain it would annoy Adam, she held her breath and swallowed.

The whistle grew louder.

In her mind’s eye, Kirby pictured the watchman strolling down the corridor, pausing to shine his light here and there as he walked. She hoped, for the watchman’s peace of mind and Adam’s disposition, the search was cursory.

Adam felt her trembling and held her tighter. Somehow he’d manage to protect her. He forgot that she’d gotten him into the mess in the first place. Now his only thought was to get her out of it.

A beam of light streamed past the doorway, with the whistle close behind. Kirby shook like a leaf. The light bounced into the room, sweeping over the walls in a curving arch. Adam tensed, knowing discovery was inches away. The light halted, rested a moment, then streaked away over its original route. And there was darkness.

They didn’t move, though Kirby wanted to badly, with the frame digging into her back. They waited, still and silent, until the whistling receded.

Because her light trembling had become shudder after shudder, Adam drew her away to whisper reassurance. “It’s all right. He’s gone.”

“You were wonderful.” She covered her mouth to muffle the laughter. “Ever thought about making breaking and entering a hobby?”

He slid the painting under one arm, then took a firm grip on hers. When the time was right, he’d pay her back for this one. “Let’s go.”

“Okay, since it’s probably a bad time to show you around. Pity,” she decided. “There are some excellent engravings in the next room, and a really marvelous still life Papa painted.”

“Under his own name?”

“Really, Adam.” They paused at the hallway to make certain it was clear. “That’s tacky.”

They didn’t speak again until they were hidden by the trees. Then Adam turned to her. “I’ll take the painting and follow you back. If you go over fifty, I’ll murder you.”

She stopped when they reached the cars, then threw him off balance with suddenly serious eyes. “I appreciate everything, Adam. I hope you don’t think too badly of us. It matters.”

He ran a finger down her cheek. “I’ve yet to decide what I think of you.”

Her lips curved up at the corners. “That’s all right then. Take your time.”

“Get in and drive,” he ordered before he could forget what had to be resolved. She had a way of making a man forget a lot of things. Too many things.

The trip back took nearly twice the time, as Kirby stayed well below the speed limit. Again she left the Porsche out front, knowing Cards would handle the details. Once inside, she went straight to the parlor.

“Well,” she mused as she looked at her father. “He seems comfortable enough, but I think I’ll just stretch him out.”

Adam leaned against the doorjamb and waited as she settled her father for the night. After loosening his tie and pulling off his shoes, she tossed her cape over him and kissed his balding head. “Papa,” she murmured. “You’ve been outmaneuvered.”

“We’ll talk upstairs, Kirby. Now.”

Straightening, Kirby gave Adam a long, mild look. “Since you ask so nicely.” She plucked a decanter of brandy and two glasses from the bar. “We may as well be sociable during the inquisition.” She swept by him and up the stairs.

Chapter 8

Kirby switched on the rose-tinted bedside lamp before she poured brandy. After handing Adam a snifter, she kicked off her shoes and sat cross-legged on the bed. She watched as he ripped off the wrapping and examined the painting.

Frowning, he studied the brush strokes, the use of color, the Venetian technique that had been Titian’s. Fascinating, he thought. Absolutely fascinating. “This is a copy?”

She had to smile. She warmed the brandy between her hands but didn’t drink. “Papa’s mark’s on the frame.”

Adam saw the red circle but didn’t find it conclusive. “I’d swear it was authentic.”

“So would anyone.”

He propped the painting against the wall and turned to her. She looked like an Indian priestess—the nightfall of hair against the virgin white silk. With an enigmatic smile, she continued to sit in the lotus position, the brandy cupped in both hands.

“How many other paintings in your father’s collection are copies?”

Slowly she lifted the snifter and sipped. She had to work at not being annoyed by the question, telling herself he was entitled to ask. “All of the paintings in Papa’s collection are authentic. Excepting now this Titian.” She moved her shoulders carelessly. It hardly mattered at this point.

“When you spoke of his technique in treating paints for age, you didn’t give the impression he’d only used it on one painting.”

What had given her the idea he wouldn’t catch on to a chance remark like that one? she wondered. The fat’s in the fire in any case, she reminded herself. And she was tired of trying to dance around it. She swirled her drink and red and amber lights glinted against the glass.

“I trust you,” she murmured, surprising them both. “But I don’t want to involve you, Adam, in something you’ll regret knowing about. I really want you to understand that. Once I tell you, it’ll be too late for regrets.”

He didn’t care for the surge of guilt. Who was deceiving whom now? his conscience demanded of him. And who’d pay the price in the end? “Let me worry about that,” he stated, dealing with Kirby now and saving his conscience for later. He swallowed brandy and let the heat ease through him. “How many copies has your father done?”

“Ten—no, eleven,” she corrected, and ignored his quick oath. “Eleven, not counting the Titian, which falls into a different category.”

“A different category,” he murmured. Crossing the room, he splashed more brandy into his glass. He was certain to need it. “How is this different?”

“The Titian was a personal agreement between Harriet and Papa. Merely a way to avoid bad feelings.”

“And the others?” He sat on a fussily elegant Queen Anne chair. “What sort of arrangements did they entail?”

“Each is individual, naturally.” She hesitated as she studied him. If they’d met a month from now, would things have been different? Perhaps. Timing again, she mused and sipped the warming brandy. “To simplify matters, Papa painted them, then sold them to interested parties.”

“Sold them?” He stood because he couldn’t be still. Wishing it had been possible to stop her before she’d begun, he started to pace the room. “Good God, Kirby. Don’t you understand what he’s done? What he’s doing? It’s fraud, plain and simple.”

“I wouldn’t call it fraud,” she countered, giving her brandy a contemplative study. It was, after all, something she’d given a great deal of thought to. “And certainly not plain or simple.”

“What then?” If he’d had a choice, he’d have taken her away then and there—left the Titian, the Rembrandt and her crazy father in the ridiculous castle and taken off. Somewhere. Anywhere.

“Fudging,” Kirby decided with a half smile.

“Fudging,” he repeated in a quiet voice. He’d forgotten she was mad as well. “Fudging. Selling counterfeit paintings for large sums of money to the unsuspecting is fudging? Fixing a parking ticket’s fudging.” He paced another moment, looking for answers. “Damn it, his work’s worth a fortune. Why does he do it?”

“Because he can,” she said simply. She spread one hand, palm out. “Papa’s a genius, Adam. I don’t say that just as his daughter, but as a fellow artist. With the genius comes a bit of eccentricity, perhaps.” Ignoring the sharp sound of derision, she went on. “To Papa, painting’s not just a vocation. Art and life are one, interchangeable.”

“I’ll go along with all that, Kirby, but it doesn’t explain why—”

“Let me finish.” She had both hands on the snifter again, resting it in her lap. “One thing Papa can’t tolerate is greed, in any form. To him greed isn’t just the worship of money, but the hoarding of art. You must know his collection’s constantly being lent out to museums and art schools. Though he has strong feelings that art belongs in the private sector, as well as public institutions, he hates the idea of the wealthy buying up great art for investment purposes.”

“Admirable, Kirby. But he’s made a business out of selling fraudulent paintings.”

“Not a business. He’s never benefited financially.” She set her glass aside and clasped her hands together. “Each prospective buyer of one of Papa’s emulations is first researched thoroughly.” She waited a beat. “By Harriet.”

He nearly sat back down again. “Harriet Merrick’s in on all of this?”

“All of this,” she said mildly, “has been their joint hobby for the last fifteen years.”

“Hobby,” he murmured and did sit.

“Harriet has very good connections, you see. She makes certain the buyer is very wealthy and that he or she lives in a remote location. Two years ago, Papa sold an Arabian sheik a fabulous Renoir. It was one of my favorites. Anyway—” she continued, getting up to freshen Adam’s drink, then her own “—each buyer would also be known for his or her attachment to money, and/or a complete lack of any sense of community spirit or obligation. Through Harriet, they’d learn of Papa’s ownership of a rare, officially undiscovered artwork.”

Taking her own snifter, she returned to her position on the bed while Adam remained silent. “At the first contact, Papa is always uncooperative without being completely dismissive. Gradually he allows himself to be worn down until the deal’s made. The price, naturally, is exorbitant, otherwise the art fanciers would be insulted.” She took a small sip and enjoyed the warm flow of the brandy. “He deals only in cash, so there’s no record. Then the paintings float off to the Himalayas or Siberia or somewhere to be kept in seclusion. Papa then donates the money anonymously to charity.”

Taking a deep breath at the end of her speech, Kirby rewarded herself with more brandy.

“You’re telling me that he goes through all that, all the work, all the intrigue, for nothing?”

“I certainly am not.” Kirby shook her head and leaned forward. “He gets a great deal. He gets satisfaction, Adam. What else is necessary after all?”

He struggled to remember the code of right and wrong. “Kirby, he’s stealing!”

Kirby tilted her head and considered. “Who caught your support and admiration, Adam? The Sheriff of Nottingham or Robin Hood?”

“It’s not the same.” He dragged a hand through his hair as he tried to convince them both. “Damn it, Kirby, it’s not the same.”

“There’s a newly modernized pediatric wing at the local hospital,” she began quietly. “A little town in Appalachia has a new fire engine and modern equipment. Another, in the dust bowl, has a wonderful new library.”

“All right.” He rose again to cut her off. “In fifteen years I’m sure there’s quite a list. Maybe in some strange way it’s commendable, but it’s also illegal, Kirby. It has to stop.”

“I know.” Her simple agreement broke his rhythm. With a half smile, Kirby moved her shoulders. “It was fun while it lasted, but I’ve known for some time it had to stop before something went wrong. Papa has a project in mind for a series of paintings, and I’ve convinced him to begin soon. It should take him about five years and give us a breathing space. But in the meantime, he’s done something I don’t know how to cope with.”

She was about to give him more. Even before she spoke, Adam knew Kirby was going to give him all her trust. He sat in silence, despising himself, as she told him everything she knew about the Rembrandt.

“I imagine part of it’s revenge on Stuart,” she continued, while Adam smoked in silence and she again swirled her brandy without drinking. “Somehow Stuart found out about Papa’s hobby and threatened exposure the night I broke our engagement. Papa told me not to worry, that Stuart wasn’t in a position to make waves. At the time I had no idea about the Rembrandt business.”

She was opening up to him, no questions, no hesitation. He was going to probe, God help him, he hadn’t a choice. “Do you have any idea where he might’ve hidden it?”

“No, but I haven’t looked.” When she looked at him, she wasn’t the sultry gypsy or the exotic princess. She was only a daughter concerned about an adored father. “He’s a good man, Adam. No one knows that better than I. I know there’s a reason for what he’s done, and for the time being, I have to accept that. I don’t expect you to share my loyalty, just my confidence.” He didn’t speak, and she took his silence for agreement. “My main concern now is that Papa’s underestimating Stuart’s ruthlessness.”

“He won’t when you tell him about the scene in the library.”

“I’m not going to tell him. Because,” she continued before Adam could argue, “I have no way of predicting his reaction. You may have noticed, Papa’s a very volatile man.” Tilting her glass, she met his gaze with a quick change of mood. “I don’t want you to worry about all this, Adam. Talk to Papa about it if you like. Have a chat with Harriet, too. Personally, I find it helpful to tuck the whole business away from time to time and let it hibernate. Like a grizzly bear.”

“Grizzly bear.”

She laughed and rose. “Let me get you some more brandy.”

He stopped her with a hand on her wrist. “Have you told me everything?”

With a frown, she brushed at a speck of lint on the bedspread. “Did I mention the Van Gogh?”

“Oh, God.” He pressed his fingers to his eyes. Somehow he’d hoped there’d be an end without really believing it. “What Van Gogh?”

Kirby pursed her lips. “Not exactly a Van Gogh.”

“Your father?”

“His latest. He’s sold it to Victor Alvarez, a coffee baron in South America.” She smiled as Adam said nothing and stared straight ahead. “The working conditions on his farm are deplorable. Of course, there’s nothing we can do to remedy that, but Papa’s already allocated the purchase price for a school somewhere in the area. It’s his last for several years, Adam,” she added as he sat with his fingers pressed against his eyes. “And really, I think he’ll be pleased that you know all about everything. He’d love to show this painting to you. He’s particularly pleased with it.”

Adam rubbed his hands over his face. It didn’t surprise him to hear himself laughing. “I suppose I should be grateful he hasn’t decided to do the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel.”

“Only after he retires,” Kirby put in cheerfully. “And that’s years off yet.”

Not certain whether she was joking or not, he let it pass. “I’ve got to give all this a little time to settle.”

“Fair enough.”

He wasn’t going back to his room to report to McIntyre, he decided as he set his brandy aside. He wasn’t ready for that yet, so soon after Kirby shared it all with him without questions, without limitations. It wasn’t possible to think about his job, or remember outside obligations, when she looked at him with all her trust. No, he’d find a way, somehow, to justify what he chose to do in the end. Right and wrong weren’t so well defined now.

Looking at her, he needed to give, to soothe, to show her she’d been right to give him that most precious of gifts—unqualified trust. Perhaps he didn’t deserve it, but he needed it. He needed her.

Without a word, he pulled her into his arms and crushed his mouth to hers, no patience, no requests. Before either of them could think, he drew down the zipper at the back of her dress.

She wanted to give to him—anything, everything he wanted. She didn’t want to question him but to forget all the reasons why they shouldn’t be together. It would be so easy to drown in the flood of feeling that was so new and so unique. And yet, anything real, anything strong, was never easy. She’d been taught from an early age that the things that mattered most were the hardest to obtain. Drawing back, she determined to put things back on a level she could deal with.

“You surprise me,” she said with a smile she had to work at.

He pulled her back. She wouldn’t slip away from him this time. “Good.”

“You know, most women expect a seduction, no matter how perfunctory.”

The amusement might be in her eyes, but he could feel the thunder of her heart against his. “Most women aren’t Kirby Fairchild.” If she wanted to play it lightly, he’d do his damnedest to oblige her—as long as the result was the same. “Why don’t we call this my next spontaneous act?” he suggested, and slipped her dress down her shoulders. “I wouldn’t want to bore you with a conventional pursuit.”

How could she resist him? The hands light on her skin, the mouth that smiled and tempted? She’d never hesitated about taking what she wanted…until now. Perhaps the time had come for the chess game to stop at a stalemate, with neither winning all and neither losing anything.

Slowly she smiled and let her dress whisper almost soundlessly to the floor.

He found her a treasure of cool satin and warm flesh. She was as seductive, as alluring, as he’d known she’d be. Once she’d decided to give, there were no restrictions. In a simple gesture she opened her arms to him and they came together.

Soft sighs, low murmurs, skin against skin. Moonlight and the rose tint from the lamp competed, then merged, as the mattress yielded under their weight. Her mouth was hot and open, her arms were strong. As she moved under him, inviting, taunting, he forgot how small she was.

Everything. All. Now. Needs drove them both to take without patience, and yet… Somehow, beneath the passion, under the heat, was a tenderness neither had expected from the other.

He touched. She trembled. She tasted. He throbbed. They wanted until the air seemed to spark with it. With each second both of them found more of what they’d needed, but the findings brought more greed. Take, she seemed to say, then give and give and give.

She had no time to float, only to throb. For him. From him. Her body craved—yearn was too soft a word. She required him, something unique for her. And he, with a kiss, with a touch of his hand, could raise her up to planes she’d only dreamed existed. Here was the completion, here was the delight, she’d hoped for without truly believing in. This was what she’d wanted so desperately in her life but had never found. Here and now. Him. There was and needed to be nothing else.

He edged toward madness. She held him, hard and tight, as they swung toward the edge together. Together was all she could think. Together.

Quiet. It was so quiet there might never have been such a thing as sound. Her hair brushed against his cheek. Her hand, balled into a loose fist, lay over his heart. Adam lay in the silence and hurt as he’d never expected to hurt.

How had he let it happen? Control? What had made him think he had control when it came to Kirby? Somehow she’d wrapped herself around him, body and mind, while he’d been pretending he’d known exactly what he’d been doing.

He’d come to do a job, he reminded himself. He still had to do it, no matter what had passed between them. Could he go on with what he’d come to do, and protect her? Was it possible to split himself in two when his road had always been so straight? He wasn’t certain of anything now, but the tug-of-war he’d lose whichever way the game ended. He had to think, create the distance he needed to do so. Better for both of them if he started now.

But when he shifted away, she held him tighter. Kirby lifted her head so that moonlight caught in her eyes and mesmerized him. “Don’t go,” she murmured. “Stay and sleep with me. I don’t want it to end yet.”

He couldn’t resist her now. Perhaps he never would. Saying nothing, Adam drew her close again and closed his eyes. For a little while he could pretend tomorrow would take care of itself.

* * *

Sunlight woke her, but Kirby tried to ignore it by piling pillows on top of her head. It didn’t work for long. Resigned, she tossed them on the floor and lay quietly, alone.

She hadn’t heard Adam leave, nor had she expected him to stay until morning. As it was, she was grateful to have woken alone. Now she could think.

How was it she’d given her complete trust to a man she hardly knew? No answer. Why hadn’t she evaded his questions, skirted her way around certain facts as she was well capable of doing? No answer.

It wasn’t true. Kirby closed her eyes a moment, knowing she’d been more honest with Adam than she was being with herself. She knew the answer.

She’d given him more than she’d ever given to any man. It had been more than a physical alliance, more than a few hours of pleasure in the night. The essence of self had been shared with him. There was no taking it back now, even if both of them would have preferred it.

Unknowingly, he’d taken her innocence. Emotional virginity was just as real, just as vital, as the physical. And it was just as impossible to reclaim. She, thinking of the night, knew that she had no desire to go back. Now they would both move forward to whatever waited for them.

Rising, she prepared to face the day.

* * *

Upstairs in Fairchild’s studio, Adam studied the rural landscape. He could feel the agitation and drama. The serene scene leaped with frantic life. Vivid, real, disturbing. Its creator stood beside him, not the Vincent van Gogh who Adam would’ve sworn had wielded the brush and pallette, but Philip Fairchild.

“It’s magnificent,” Adam murmured. The compliment was out before he could stop it.

“Thank you, Adam. I’m fond of it.” Fairchild spoke as a man who’d long before accepted his own superiority and the responsibility that came with it.

“Mr. Fairchild—”

“Philip,” Fairchild interrupted genially. “No reason for formality between us.”

Somehow Adam felt even the casual intimacy could complicate an already hopelessly tangled situation. “Philip,” he began again, “this is fraud. Your motives might be sterling, but the result remains fraud.”

“Absolutely.” Fairchild bobbed his head in agreement. “Fraud, misrepresentation, a bald-faced lie without a doubt.” He lifted his arms and let them fall. “I’m stripped of defenses.”

Like hell, Adam thought grimly. Unless he was very much mistaken, he was about to be treated to the biggest bag of pure, classic bull on record.

“Adam…” Fairchild drew out the name and steepled his hands. “You’re an astute man, a rational man. I pride myself on being a good judge of character.” As if he were very old and frail, Fairchild lowered himself into a chair. “Then, again, you’re imaginative and open-minded—that shows in your work.”

Adam reached for the coffee Cards had brought up. “So?”

“Your help with our little problem last night—and your skill in turning my own plot against me—leads me to believe you have the ability to adapt to what some might term the unusual.”

“Some might.”

“Now.” Accepting the cup Adam handed him, Fairchild leaned back. “You tell me Kirby filled you in on everything. Odd, but we’ll leave that for now.” He’d already drawn his own conclusions there and found them to his liking. He wasn’t about to lose on other points. “After what you’ve been told, can you find one iota of selfishness in my enterprise? Can you see my motive as anything but humanitarian?” On a roll, Fairchild set down his cup and let his hands fall between his bony knees. “Small, sick children, and those less fortunate than ourselves, have benefited from my hobby. Not one dollar have I kept, not a dollar, a franc, a sou. Never, never have I asked for credit or honor that, naturally, society would be anxious to bestow on me.”

“You haven’t asked for the jail sentence they’d bestow on you, either.”

Fairchild tilted his head in acknowledgment but didn’t miss a beat. “It’s my gift to mankind, Adam. My payment for the talent awarded to me by a higher power. These hands…” He held them up, narrow, gaunt and oddly beautiful. “These hands hold a skill I’m obliged to pay for in my own way. This I’ve done.” Bowing his head, Fairchild dropped them into his lap. “However, if you must condemn me, I understand.”

Fairchild looked, Adam mused, like a stalwart Christian faced by pagan lions: firm in his belief, resigned to his fate. “One day,” Adam murmured, “your halo’s going to slip and strangle you.”

“A possibility.” Grinning, he lifted his head again. “But in the meantime, we enjoy what we can. Let’s have one of those Danishes, my boy.”

Wordlessly, Adam handed him the tray. “Have you considered the repercussions to Kirby if your…hobby is discovered?”

“Ah.” Fairchild swallowed pastry. “A straight shot to my Achilles’ heel. Naturally both of us know that Kirby can meet any obstacle and find a way over, around or through it.” He bit off more Danish, enjoying the tang of raspberry. “Still, merely by being, Kirby demands emotion of one kind or another. You’d agree?”

Adam thought of the night, and what it had changed in him. “Yes.”

The brief, concise answer was exactly what Fairchild had expected. “I’m taking a hiatus from this business for various reasons, the first of which is Kirby’s position.”

“And her position as concerns the Merrick Rembrandt?”

“A different kettle of fish.” Fairchild dusted his fingers on a napkin and considered another pastry. “I’d like to share the ins and outs of that business with you, Adam, but I’m not free to just yet.” He smiled and gazed over Adam’s head. “One could say I’ve involved Kirby figuratively, but until things are resolved, she’s a minor player in the game.”

“Are you casting as well as directing this performance, Papa?” Kirby walked into the room and picked up the Danish Fairchild had been eyeing. “Did you sleep well, darling?”

“Like a rock, brat,” he muttered, remembering the confusion of waking up on the sofa under her cape. He didn’t care to be outwitted, but was a man who acknowledged a quick mind. “I’m told your evening activities went well.”

“The deed’s done.” She glanced at Adam before resting her hands on her father’s shoulders. The bond was there, unbreakable. “Maybe I should leave the two of you alone for a while. Adam has a way of digging out information. You might tell him what you won’t tell me.”

“All in good time.” He patted her hands. “I’m devoting the morning to my hawk.” Rising, he went to uncover his clay, an obvious dismissal. “You might give Harriet a call and tell her all’s well before you two amuse yourselves.”

Kirby held out her hand. “Have you any amusements in mind, Adam?”

“As a matter of fact…” He went with the impulse and kissed her as her father watched and speculated. “I had a session of oils and canvas in mind. You’ll have to change.”

“If that’s the best you can do. Two hours only,” she warned as they walked from the room. “Otherwise my rates go up. I have my own work, you know.”

“Three.”

“Two and a half.” She paused at the second-floor landing.

“You looked like a child this morning,” he murmured, and touched her cheek. “I couldn’t bring myself to wake you.” He left his hand there only a moment, then moved away. “I’ll meet you upstairs.”

Kirby went to her room and tossed the red dress on the bed. While she undressed with one hand, she dialed the phone with the other.

“Harriet, it’s Kirby to set your mind at rest.”

“Clever child. Was there any trouble?”

“No.” She wiggled out of her jeans. “We managed.”

“We? Did Philip go with you?”

“Papa was snoozing on the couch after Adam switched drinks.”

“Oh, dear.” Amused, Harriet settled back. “Was he very angry?”

“Papa or Adam?” Kirby countered, then shrugged. “No matter, in the end they were both very reasonable. Adam was a great help.”

“The test isn’t for a half hour. Give me the details.”

Struggling in and out of clothes, Kirby told her everything.

“Marvelous!” Pleased with the drama, Harriet beamed at the phone. “I wish I’d done it. I’ll have to get to know your Adam better and find some spectacular way of showing him my gratitude. Do you think he’d like the crocodile teeth?”

“Nothing would please him more.”

“Kirby, you know how grateful I am to you.” Harriet’s voice was abruptly serious and maternal. “The situation’s awkward to say the least.”

“The contract’s binding?”

“Yes.” She let out a sigh at the thought of losing the Titian. “My fault. I should’ve explained to Stuart that the painting wasn’t to be sold. Philip must be furious with me.”

“You can handle him. You always do.”

“Yes, yes. Lord knows what I’d do without you, though. Poor Melly just can’t understand me as you do.”

“She’s just made differently.” Kirby stared down at the floor and tried not to think about the Rembrandt and the guilt it brought her. “Come to dinner tonight, Harriet, you and Melanie.”

“Oh, I’d love to, darling, but I’ve a meeting. Tomorrow?”

“Fine. Shall I call Melly, or will you speak with her?”

“I’ll see her this afternoon. Take care and do thank Adam for me. Damn shame I’m too old to give him anything but crocodile teeth.”

With a laugh, Kirby hung up.

* * *

The sun swept over her dress, shooting it with flames or darkening it to blood. It glinted from the rings at her ears, the bracelets on her arms. Knowing the light was as perfect as it would ever be, Adam worked feverishly.

He was an artist of subtle details, one who used light and shadow for mood. In his portraits he strove for an inner reality, the truth beneath the surface of the model. In Kirby he saw the essence of woman—power and frailty and that elusive, mystical quality of sex. Aloof, alluring. She was both. Now, more than ever, he understood it.

Hours passed without him giving them a thought. His model, however, had a different frame of mind.

“Adam, if you’ll consult your watch, you’ll see I’ve given you more than the allotted time already.”

He ignored her and continued to paint.

“I can’t stand here another moment.” She let her arms drop from their posed position, then wiggled them from the shoulders down. “As it is, I’ll probably never pole-vault again.”

“I can work on the background awhile,” he muttered. “I need another three hours in the morning. The light’s best then.”

Kirby bit off a retort. Rudeness was something to be expected when an artist was taken over by his art. Stretching her muscles, she went to look over his shoulder.

“You’ve a good hand with light,” she decided as she studied the emerging painting. “It’s very flattering, certainly, rather fiery and defiant with the colors you’ve chosen.” She looked carefully at the vague lines of her face, the tints and hues he was using to create her on canvas. “Still, there’s a fragility here I don’t quite understand.”

“Maybe I know you better than you know yourself.” He never looked at her, but continued to paint. In not looking, he didn’t see the stunned expression or the gradual acceptance.

Linking her hands together, Kirby wandered away. She’d have to do it quickly, she decided. It needed to be done, to be said. “Adam…”

An inarticulate mutter. His back remained to her.

Kirby took a deep breath. “I love you.”

“Umm-hmm.”

Some women might’ve been crushed. Others would’ve been furious. Kirby laughed and tossed back her hair. Life was never what you expected. “Adam, I’d like just a moment of your attention.” Though she continued to smile, her knuckles turned white. “I’m in love with you.”

It got through on the second try. His brush, tipped in coral, stopped in midair. Very slowly, he set it down and turned. She was looking at him, the half smile on her face, her hands linked together so tightly they hurt. She hadn’t expected a response, nor would she demand one.

“I don’t tell you that to put pressure on you, or to embarrass you.” Nerves showed only briefly as she moistened her lips. “It’s just that I think you have a right to know.” Her words began to spill out quickly. “We haven’t known each other for long, I know, but I suppose it just happens this way sometimes. I couldn’t do anything about it. I don’t expect anything from you, permanently or temporarily.” When he still didn’t speak, she felt a jolt of panic she didn’t know how to deal with. Had she ruined it? Now the smile didn’t reach her eyes. “I’ve got to change,” she said lightly. “You’ve made me miss lunch as it is.”

She was nearly to the door before he stopped her. As he took her shoulders, he felt her tense. And as he felt it, he understood she’d given him everything that was in her heart. Something he knew instinctively had never been given to any other man.

“Kirby, you’re the most exceptional woman I’ve ever known.”

“Yes, someone’s always pointing that out.” She had to get through the door and quickly. “Are you coming down, or shall I have a tray sent up?”

He lowered his head to the top of hers and wondered how things had happened so quickly, so finally. “How many people could make such a simple and unselfish declaration of love, then walk away without asking for anything? From the beginning you haven’t done one thing I’d’ve expected.” He brushed his lips over her hair, lightly, so that she hardly felt it. “Don’t I get a chance to say anything?”

“It’s not necessary.”

“Yes, it is.” Turning her, he framed her face with his hands. “And I’d rather have my hands on you when I tell you I love you.”

She stood very straight and spoke very calmly. “Don’t feel sorry for me, Adam. I couldn’t bear it.”

He started to say all the sweet, romantic things a woman wanted to hear when love was declared. All the traditional, normal words a man offered when he offered himself. They weren’t for Kirby. Instead he lifted a brow. “If you hadn’t counted on being loved back, you’ll have to adjust.”

She waited a moment because she had to be certain. She’d take the risk, take any risk, if she was certain. As she looked into his eyes, she began to smile. The tension in her shoulders vanished. “You’ve brought it on yourself.”

“Yeah. I guess I have to live with it.”

The smile faded as she pressed against him. “Oh, God, Adam, I need you. You’ve no idea how much.”

He held her just as tightly, just as desperately. “Yes, I do.”

Chapter 9

To love and to be loved in return. It was bewildering to Kirby, frightening, exhilarating. She wanted time to experience it, absorb it. Understanding it didn’t matter, not now, in the first rush of emotion. She only knew that although she’d always been happy in her life, she was being offered more. She was being offered laughter at midnight, soft words at dawn, a hand to hold and a life to share. The price would be a portion of her independence and the loyalty that had belonged only to her father.

To Kirby, love meant sharing, and sharing had no restrictions. Whatever she had, whatever she felt, belonged to Adam as much as to herself. Whatever happened between them now, she’d never be able to change that. No longer able to work, she went down from her studio to find him.

The house was quiet in the early-evening lull with the staff downstairs making the dinner preparations and gossiping. Kirby had always liked this time of day—after a long, productive session in her studio, before the evening meal. These were the hours to sit in front of a roaring fire, or walk along the cliffs. Now there was someone she needed to share those hours with. Stopping in front of Adam’s door, she raised a hand to knock.

The murmur of voices stopped her. If Adam had her father in another discussion, he might learn something more about the Rembrandt that would put her mind at ease. While she hesitated, the thumping of the front door knocker vibrated throughout the house. With a shrug, she turned away to answer.

Inside his room, Adam shifted the transmitter to his other hand. “This is the first chance I’ve had to call in. Besides, there’s nothing new.”

“You’re supposed to check in every night.” Annoyed, McIntyre barked into the receiver. “Damn it, Adam, I was beginning to think something had happened to you.”

“If you knew these people, you’d realize how ridiculous that is.”

“They don’t suspect anything?”

“No.” Adam swore at the existence of this job.

“Tell me about Mrs. Merrick and Hiller.”

“Harriet’s charming and flamboyant.” He wouldn’t say harmless. Though he thought of what he and Kirby had done the night before, he left it alone. Adam had already rationalized the entire business as having nothing to do with his job. Not specifically. That was enough to justify his keeping it from McIntyre. Instead, Adam would tell him what Adam felt applied and nothing more. “Hiller’s very smooth and a complete phony. I walked in on him and Kirby in time to keep him from shoving her around.”

“What was his reason?”

“The Rembrandt. He doesn’t believe her father’s keeping her in the dark about it. He’s the kind of man who thinks you can always get what you want by knocking the other person around—if they’re smaller.”

“Sounds like a gem.” But he’d heard the change in tone. If Adam was getting involved with the Fairchild woman… No. McIntyre let it go. That they didn’t need. “I’ve got a line on Victor Alvarez.”

“Drop it.” Adam kept his voice casual, knowing full well just how perceptive Mac could be. “It’s a wild-goose chase. I’ve already dug it up and it doesn’t have anything to do with the Rembrandt.”

“You know best.”

“Yeah.” McIntyre, he knew, would never understand Fairchild’s hobby. “Since we agree about that, I’ve got a stipulation.”

“Stipulation?”

“When I find the Rembrandt, I handle the rest my own way.”

“What do you mean your own way? Listen, Adam—”

“My way,” Adam cut him off. “Or you find someone else. I’ll get it back for you, Mac, but after I do, the Fairchilds are kept out of it.”

“Kept out?” McIntyre exploded so that the receiver crackled with static. “How the hell do you expect me to keep them out?”

“That’s your problem. Just do it.”

“The place is full of crazies,” McIntyre muttered. “Must be contagious.”

“Yeah. I’ll get back to you.” With a grin, Adam switched off the transmitter.

Downstairs, Kirby opened the door and looked into the myopic, dark-framed eyes of Rick Potts. Knowing his hand would be damp with nerves, she held hers out. “Hello, Rick. Papa told me you were coming to visit.”

“Kirby.” He swallowed and squeezed her hand. Just the sight of her played havoc with his glands. “You look mar-marvelous.” He thrust drooping carnations into her face.

“Thank you.” Kirby took the flowers Rick had partially strangled and smiled. “Come, let me fix you a drink. You’ve had a long drive, haven’t you? Cards, see to Mr. Potts’s luggage, please,” she continued without giving Rick a chance to speak. He’d need a little time, she knew, to draw words together. “Papa should be down soon.” She found a club soda and poured it over ice. “He’s been giving a lot of time to his new project; I’m sure he’ll want to discuss it with you.” After handing him his drink, she gestured to a chair. “So, how’ve you been?”

He drank first, to separate his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Fine. That is, I had a bit of a cold last week, but I’m much better now. I’d never come to see you if I had any germs.”

She turned in time to hide a grin and poured herself a glass of Perrier. “That’s very considerate of you, Rick.”

“Have you—have you been working?”

“Yes, I’ve nearly done enough for my spring showing.”

“It’ll be wonderful,” he told her with blind loyalty. Though he recognized the quality of her work, the more powerful pieces intimidated him. “You’ll be staying in New York?”

“Yes.” She walked over to sit beside him. “For a week.”

“Then maybe—that is, I’d love to, if you had the time, of course, I’d like to take you to dinner.” He gulped down club soda. “If you had an evening free.”

“That’s very sweet of you.”

Astonished, he gaped, pupils dilating. From the doorway, Adam watched the puppylike adulation of the lanky, somewhat untidy man. In another ten seconds, Adam estimated, Kirby would have him at her feet whether she wanted him there or not.

Kirby glanced up, and her expression changed so subtly Adam wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been so completely tuned in to her. “Adam.” If there’d been relief in her eyes, her voice was casual. “I was hoping you’d come down. Rick, this is Adam Haines. Adam, I think Papa mentioned Rick Potts to you the other day.”

The message came across loud and clear. Be kind. With an easy smile, Adam accepted the damp handshake. “Yes, Philip said you were coming for a few days. Kirby tells me you work in watercolors.”

“She did?” Nearly undone by the fact that Kirby would speak of him at all, Rick simply stood there a moment.

“We’ll have to have a long discussion after dinner.” Rising, Kirby began to lead Rick gently toward the door. “I’m sure you’d like to rest a bit after your drive. You can find the way to your room, can’t you?”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

Kirby watched him wander down the hall before she turned back. She walked back to Adam and wrapped her arms around him. “I hate to repeat myself, but I love you.”

He framed her face with his hands and kissed her softly, lightly, with the promise of more. “Repeat yourself as often as you like.” He stared down at her, suddenly and completely aroused by no more than her smile. He pressed his mouth into her palm with a restraint that left her weak. “You take my breath away,” he murmured. “It’s no wonder you turn Rick Potts to jelly.”

“I’d rather turn you to jelly.”

She did. It wasn’t an easy thing to admit. With a half smile, Adam drew her away. “Are you really going to tell him I’m a jealous lover with a stiletto?”

“It’s for his own good.” Kirby picked up her glass of Perrier. “He’s always so embarrassed after he loses control. Did you learn any more from Papa?”

“No.” Puzzled, he frowned. “Why?”

“I was coming to see you right before Rick arrived. I heard you talking.”

She slipped a hand into his and he fought to keep the tension from being noticeable. “I don’t want to press things now.” That much was the truth, he thought fiercely. That much wasn’t a lie.

“No, you’re probably right about that. Papa tends to get obstinate easily. Let’s sit in front of the fire for a little while,” she said as she drew him over to it. “And do nothing.”

He sat beside her, holding her close, and wished things were as simple as they seemed.

* * *

Hours went by before they sat in the parlor again, but they were no longer alone. After an enormous meal, Fairchild and Rick settled down with them to continue the ongoing discussion of art and technique. Assisted by two glasses of wine and half a glass of brandy, Rick began to heap praise on Kirby’s work. Adam recognized the warning signals of battle—Fairchild’s pink ears and Kirby’s guileless eyes.

“Thank you, Rick.” With a smile, Kirby lifted her brandy. “I’m sure you’d like to see Papa’s latest work. It’s an attempt in clay. A bird or something, isn’t it, Papa?”

“A bird? A bird?” In a quick circle, he danced around the table. “It’s a hawk, you horrid girl. A bird of prey, a creature of cunning.”

A veteran, Rick tried to soothe. “I’d love to see it, Mr. Fairchild.”

“And so you will.” In one dramatic gulp, Fairchild finished off his drink. “I intend to donate it to the Metropolitan.”

Whether Kirby’s snort was involuntary or contrived, it produced results.

“Do you mock your father?” Fairchild demanded. “Have you no faith in these hands?” He held them out, fingers spread. “The same hands that held you fresh from your mother’s womb?”

“Your hands are the eighth wonder of the world,” Kirby told him. “However…” She set down her glass, sat back and crossed her legs. Meticulously she brought her fingers together and looked over them. “From my observations, you have difficulty with your structure. Perhaps with a few years of practice, you’ll develop the knack of construction.”

“Structure?” he sputtered. “Construction?” His eyes narrowed, his jaw clenched. “Cards!” Kirby sent him an easy smile and picked up her glass again. “Cards!”

“Yes, Mr. Fairchild.”

“Cards,” Fairchild repeated, glaring at the dignified butler, who stood waiting in the doorway.

“Yes, Mr. Fairchild.”

“Cards!” He bellowed and pranced.

“I believe Papa wants a deck of cards—Cards,” Kirby explained. “Playing cards.”

“Yes, miss.” With a slight bow, Cards went to get some.

“What’s the matter with that man?” Fairchild muttered. In hurried motions, he began to clear off a small table. Exquisite Wedgwood and delicate Venetian glass were dumped unceremoniously on the floor. “You’d think I didn’t make myself clear.”

“It’s so hard to get good help these days,” Adam said into his glass.

“Your cards, Mr. Fairchild.” The butler placed two sealed decks on the table before gliding from the room.

“Now I’ll show you about construction.” Fairchild pulled up a chair and wrapped his skinny legs around its legs. Breaking the seal on the first deck, he poured the cards on the table. With meticulous care, he leaned one card against another and formed an arch. “A steady hand and a discerning eye,” Fairchild mumbled as he began slowly, and with total intensity, to build a house of cards.

“That should keep him out of trouble for a while,” Kirby declared. Sending Adam a wink, she turned to Rick and drew him into a discussion on mutual friends.

An hour drifted by over brandy and quiet conversation. Occasionally there was a mutter or a grumble from the architect in the corner. The fire crackled. When Montique entered and jumped into Adam’s lap, Rick paled and sprang up.

“You shouldn’t do that. She’ll be here any second.” He set down his glass with a clatter. “Kirby, I think I’ll go up. I want to start work early.”

“Of course.” She watched his retreat before turning to Adam. “He’s terrified of Isabelle. Montique got into his room when he was sleeping and curled on his pillow. Isabelle woke Rick with some rather rude comments while she stood on his chest. I’d better go up and make sure everything’s in order.” She rose, then bent over and kissed him lightly.

“That’s not enough.”

“No?” The slow smile curved her lips. “Perhaps we’ll fix that later. Come on, Montique, let’s go find your wretched keeper.”

“Kirby…” Adam waited until both she and the puppy were at the doorway. “Just how much rent does Isabelle pay?”

“Ten mice a month,” she told him soberly. “But I’m going to raise it to fifteen in November. Maybe she’ll be out by Christmas.” Pleased with the thought, she led Montique away.

“A fascinating creature, my Kirby,” Fairchild commented.

Adam crossed the room and stared down at the huge, erratic card structure Fairchild continued to construct. “Fascinating.”

“She’s a woman with much below the surface. Kirby can be cruel when she feels justified. I’ve seen her squash a six-foot man like a bug.” He held a card between the index fingers of both hands, then slowly lowered it into place. “You’ll notice, however, that her attitude toward Rick is invariably kind.”

Though Fairchild continued to give his full attention to his cards, Adam knew it was more than idle conversation. “Obviously she doesn’t want to hurt him.”

“Exactly.” Fairchild began to patiently build another wing. Unless Adam was very much mistaken, the cards were slowly taking on the lines of the house they were in. “She’ll take great care not to because she knows his devotion to her is sincere. Kirby’s a strong, independent woman. Where her heart’s involved, however, she’s a marshmallow. There are a handful of people on this earth she’d sacrifice anything she could for. Rick’s one of them—Melanie and Harriet are others. And myself.” He held a card on the tops of his fingers as if weighing it. “Yes, myself,” he repeated softly. “Because of this, the circumstances of the Rembrandt are very difficult for her. She’s torn between separate loyalties. Her father, and the woman who’s been her mother most of her life.”

“You do nothing to change it,” Adam accused. Irrationally he wanted to sweep the cards aside, flatten the meticulously formed construction. He pushed his hands into his pockets, where they balled into fists. Just how much could he berate Fairchild, when he was deceiving Kirby in nearly the same way? “Why don’t you give her some explanation? Something she could understand?”

“Ignorance is bliss,” Fairchild stated calmly. “In this case, the less Kirby knows, the simpler things are for her.”

“You’ve a hell of a nerve, Philip.”

“Yes, yes, that’s quite true.” He balanced more cards, then went back to the subject foremost in his mind. “There’ve been dozens of men in Kirby’s life. She could choose and discard them as other women do clothing. Yet, in her own way, she was always cautious. I think Kirby believed she wasn’t capable of loving a man and had decided to settle for much, much less by agreeing to marry Stuart. Nonsense, of course.” Fairchild picked up his drink and studied his rambling card house. “Kirby has a great capacity for love. When she loves a man, she’ll love with unswerving devotion and loyalty. And when she does, she’ll be vulnerable. She loves intensely, Adam.”

For the first time, he raised his eyes and met Adam’s. “When her mother died, she was devastated. I wouldn’t want to live to see her go through anything like that again.”

What could he say? Less than he wanted to, but still only the truth. “I don’t want to hurt Kirby. I’ll do everything I can to keep from hurting her.”

Fairchild studied him a moment with the pale blue eyes that saw deep and saw much. “I believe you, and hope you find a way to avoid it. Still, if you love her, you’ll find a way to mend whatever damage is done. The game’s on, Adam, the rules set. They can’t be altered now, can they?”

Adam stared down at the round face. “You know why I’m here, don’t you?”

With a cackle, Fairchild turned back to his cards. Yes, indeed, Adam Haines was sharp, he thought, pleased. Kirby had called it from the beginning. “Let’s just say for now that you’re here to paint and to…observe. Yes, to observe.” He placed another card. “Go up to her now, you’ve my blessing if you feel the need for it. The game’s nearly over, Adam. Soon enough we’ll have to pick up the pieces. Love’s tenuous when it’s new, my boy. If you want to keep her, be as stubborn as she is. That’s my advice.”

* * *

In long, methodical strokes, Kirby pulled the brush through her hair. She’d turned the radio on low so that the hot jazz was hardly more than a pulse beat. At the sound of a knock, she sighed. “Rick, you really must go to bed. You’ll hate yourself in the morning.”

Adam pushed open the door. He took a long look at the woman in front of the mirror, dressed in wisps of beige silk and ivory lace. Without a word, he closed and latched the door behind him.

“Oh, my.” Setting the brush on her dresser, Kirby turned around with a little shudder. “A woman simply isn’t safe these days. Have you come to have your way with me—I hope?”

Adam crossed to her. Letting his hands slide along the silk, he wrapped his arms around her. “I was just passing through.” When she smiled, he lowered his mouth to hers. “I love you, Kirby. More than anyone, more than anything.” Suddenly his mouth was fierce, his arms were tight. “Don’t ever forget it.”

“I won’t.” But her words were muffled against his mouth. “Just don’t stop reminding me. Now…” She drew away, inches only, and slowly began to loosen his tie. “Maybe I should remind you.”

He watched his tie slip to the floor just before she began to ease his jacket from his shoulders. “It might be a good idea.”

“You’ve been working hard,” she told him as she tossed his jacket in the general direction of a chair. “I think you should be pampered a bit.”

“Pampered?”

“Mmm.” Nudging him onto the bed, she knelt to take off his shoes. Carelessly she let them drop, followed by his socks, before she began to massage his feet. “Pampering’s good for you in small doses.”

He felt the pleasure spread through him at the touch that could almost be described as motherly. Her hands were soft, with that ridge of callus that proved they weren’t idle. They were strong and clever, belonging both to artist and to woman. Slowly she slid them up his legs, then down—teasing, promising, until he wasn’t certain whether to lay back and enjoy, or to grab and take. Before he could do either, Kirby stood and began to unbutton his shirt.

“I like everything about you,” she murmured as she tugged the shirt from the waistband of his slacks. “Have I mentioned that?”

“No.” He let her loosen the cuffs and slip the shirt from him. Taking her time, Kirby ran her hands up his rib cage to his shoulders. “The way you look.” Softly she pressed a kiss to his cheek. “The way you feel.” Then the other. “The way you think.” Her lips brushed over his chin. “The way you taste.” Unhooking his slacks, she drew them off, inch by slow inch. “There’s nothing about you I’d change.”

She straddled him and began to trace long, lingering kisses over his face and neck. “Once when I wondered about falling in love, I decided there simply wasn’t a man I’d like well enough to make it possible.” Her mouth paused just above his. “I was wrong.”

Soft, warm and exquisitely tender, her lips met his. Pampering…the word drifted through his mind as she gave him more than any man could expect and only a few might dream of. The strength of her body and her mind, the delicacy of both. They were his, and he didn’t have to ask. They’d be his as long as his arms could hold her and open wide enough to give her room.

Knowing only that she loved, Kirby gave. His body heated beneath hers, lean and hard. Disciplined. Somehow the word excited her. He knew who he was and what he wanted. He’d work for both. And he wouldn’t demand that she lose any part of what she was to suit that.

His shoulders were firm. Not so broad they would overwhelm her, but wide enough to offer security when she needed it. She brushed her lips over them. There were muscles in his arms, but subtle, not something he’d flex to show her his superiority, but there to protect if she chose to be protected. She ran her fingers over them. His hands were clever, elegantly masculine. They wouldn’t hold her back from the places she had to go, but they would be there, held out, when she returned. She pressed her mouth to one, then the other.

No one had ever loved him just like this—patiently, devotedly. He wanted nothing more than to go on feeling those long, slow strokes of her fingers, those moist, lingering traces of her lips. He felt each in every pore. A total experience. He could see the glossy black fall of her hair as it tumbled over his skin and hear the murmur of her approval as she touched him.

The house was quiet again, but for the low, simmering sound of the music. The quilt was soft under his back. The light was dim and gentle—the best light for lovers. And while he lay, she loved him until he was buried under layer upon layer of pleasure. This he would give back to her.

He could touch the silk, and her flesh, knowing that both were exquisite. He could taste her lips and know that he’d never go hungry as long as she was there. When he heard her sigh, he knew he’d be content with no other sound. The need for him was in her eyes, clouding them, so that he knew he could live with little else as long as he could see her face.

Patience began to fade in each of them. He could feel her body spring to frantic life wherever he touched. He could feel his own strain from the need only she brought to him. Desperate, urgent, exclusive. If he’d had only a day left to live, he’d have spent every moment of it there, with Kirby in his arms.

She smelled of wood smoke and musky flowers, of woman and of sex, ripe and ready. If he’d had the power, he’d have frozen time just then, as she loomed above him in the moonlight, eyes dark with need, skin flashing against silk.

Then he drew the silk up and over her head so that he could see her as he swore no man would ever see her again. Her hair tumbled down, streaking night against her flesh. Naked and eager, she was every primitive fantasy, every midnight dream. Everything.

Her lips were parted as the breath hurried between them. Passion swamped her so that she shuddered and rushed to take what she needed from him—for him. Everything. Everything and more. With a low sound of triumph, Kirby took him inside her and led the way. Fast, furious.

Her body urged her on relentlessly while her mind exploded with images. Such color, such sound. Such frenzy. Arched back, she moved like lightning, hardly aware of how tightly his hands gripped her hips. But she heard him say her name. She felt him fill her.

The first crest swamped her, shocking her system then thrusting her along to more, and more and more. There was nothing she couldn’t have and nothing she wouldn’t give. Senseless, she let herself go.

With his hands on her, with the taste of her still on his lips, Adam felt his system shudder on the edge of release. For a moment, only a moment, he held back. He could see her above him, poised like a goddess, flesh damp and glowing, hair streaming back as she lifted her hands to it in ecstasy. This he would remember always.

* * *

The moon was no longer full, but its light was soft and white. They were still on top of the quilt, tangled close as their breathing settled. As she lay over him, Adam thought of everything Fairchild had said. And everything he could and couldn’t do about it.

Slowly their systems settled, but he could find none of the answers he needed so badly. What answers would there be based on lies and half-truths?

Time. Perhaps time was all he had now. But how much or how little was no longer up to him. With a sigh, he shifted and ran a hand down her back.

Kirby rose on an elbow. Her eyes were no longer clouded, but saucy and clear. She smiled, touched a fingertip to her own lips and then to his. “Next time you’re in town, cowboy,” she drawled as she tossed her hair over her shoulder, “don’t forget to ask for Lulu.”

She’d expected him to grin, but he grabbed her hair and held her just as she was. There was no humor in his eyes, but the intensity she’d seen when he held a paint-brush. His muscles had tensed, she could feel it.

“Adam?”

“No, don’t.” He forced his hand to relax, then stroked her cheek. It wouldn’t be spoiled by the wrong word, the wrong move. “I want to remember you just like this. Fresh from loving, with moonlight on your hair.”

He was afraid, unreasonably, that he’d never see her like that again—with that half smile inches away from his face. He’d never feel the warmth of her flesh spread over his with nothing, nothing to separate them.

The panic came fast and was very real. Unable to stop it, Adam pulled her against him and held her as if he’d never let her go.

Chapter 10

After thirty minutes of posing, Kirby ordered herself not to be impatient. She’d agreed to give Adam two hours, and a bargain was a bargain. She didn’t want to think about the time she had left to stand idle, so instead tried to concentrate on her plans for sculpting once her obligation was over. Her Anger was nearly finished.

But the sun seemed too warm and too bright. Every so often her mind would go oddly blank until she pulled herself back just to remember where she was.

“Kirby.” Adam called her name for the third time and watched as she blinked and focused on him. “Could you wait until the session’s over before you take a nap?”

“Sorry.” With an effort, she cleared her head and smiled at him. “I was thinking of something else.”

“Don’t think at all if it puts you to sleep,” he muttered, and slashed scarlet across the canvas. It was right, so right. Nothing he’d ever done had been as right as this painting. The need to finish it was becoming obsessive. “Tilt your head to the right again. You keep breaking the pose.”

“Slave driver.” But she obeyed and tried to concentrate.

“Cracking the whip’s the only way to work with you.” With care, he began to perfect the folds in the skirt of her dress. He wanted them soft, flowing, but clearly defined. “You’d better get used to posing for me. I’ve already several other studies in mind that I’ll start after we’re married.”

Giddiness washed over her. She felt it in waves—physical, emotional—she couldn’t tell one from the other. Without thinking, she dropped her arms.

“Damn it, Kirby.” He started to swear at her again when he saw how wide and dark her eyes were. “What is it?”

“I hadn’t thought…I didn’t realize that you…” Lifting a hand to her spinning head, she walked around the room. The bracelets slid down to her elbow with a musical jingle. “I need a minute,” she murmured. Should she feel as though someone had cut off her air? As if her head was three feet above her shoulders?

Adam watched her for a moment. She didn’t seem quite steady, he realized. And there was an unnaturally high color in her cheeks. Standing, he took her hand and held her still. “Are you ill?”

“No.” She shook her head. She was never ill, Kirby reminded herself. Just a bit tired—and, perhaps for the first time in her life, completely overwhelmed. She took a deep breath, telling herself she’d be all right in a moment. “I didn’t know you wanted to marry me, Adam.”

Was that it? he wondered as he ran the back of his hand over her cheek. Shouldn’t she have known? And yet, he remembered, everything had happened so fast. “I love you.” It was simple for him. Love led to marriage and marriage to family. But how could he have forgotten Kirby wasn’t an ordinary woman and was anything but simple? “You accused me of being conventional,” he reminded her, and ran his hands down her hair to her shoulders. “Marriage is a very conventional institution.” And one she might not be ready for, he thought with a quick twinge of panic. He’d have to give her room if he wanted to keep her. But how much room did she need, and how much could he give?

“I want to spend my life with you.” Adam waited until her gaze had lifted to his again. She looked stunned by his words—a woman like her, Adam thought. Beautiful, sensuous, strong. How was it a woman like Kirby would be surprised to be wanted? Perhaps he’d moved too quickly, and too clumsily. “Any way you choose, Kirby. Maybe I should’ve chosen a better time, a better place, to ask rather than assume.”

“It’s not that.” Shaky, she lifted a hand to his face. It was so solid, so strong. “I don’t need that.” His face blurred a moment, and, shaking her head, she moved away again until she stood where she’d been posing. “I’ve had marriage proposals before—and a good many less binding requests.” She managed a smile. He wanted her, not just for today, but for the tomorrows, as well. He wanted her just as she was. She felt the tears well up, of love, of gratitude, but blinked them back. When wishes came true it was no time for tears. “This is the one I’ve been waiting for all of my life, I just didn’t expect to be so flustered.”

Relieved, he started to cross to her. “I’ll take that as a good sign. Still, I wouldn’t mind a simple yes.”

“I hate to do anything simple.”

She felt the room lurch and fade, then his hands on her shoulders.

“Kirby— Good God, there’s gas leaking!” As he stood holding her up, the strong, sweet odor rushed over him. “Get out! Get some air! It must be the heater.” Giving her a shove toward the door, he bent over the antiquated unit.

She stumbled across the room. The door seemed miles away, so that when she finally reached it she had only the strength to lean against the heavy wood and catch her breath. The air was cleaner there. Gulping it in, Kirby willed herself to reach for the knob. She tugged, but it held firm.

“Damn it, I told you to get out!” He was already choking on the fumes when he reached her. “The gas is pouring out of that thing!”

“I can’t open the door!” Furious with herself, Kirby pulled again. Adam pushed her hands away and yanked himself. “Is it jammed?” she murmured, leaning against him. “Cards will see to it.”

Locked, he realized. From the outside. “Stay here.” After propping her against the door, Adam picked up a chair and smashed it against the window. The glass cracked, but held. Again, he rammed the chair, and again, until with a final heave, the glass shattered. Moving quickly, he went back for Kirby and held her head near the jagged opening.

“Breathe,” he ordered.

For the moment she could do nothing else but gulp fresh air into her lungs and cough it out again. “Someone’s locked us in, haven’t they?”

He’d known it wouldn’t take her long once her head had cleared. Just as he knew better than to try to evade. “Yes.”

“We could shout for hours.” She closed her eyes and concentrated. “No one would hear us, we’re too isolated up here.” With her legs unsteady, she leaned against the wall. “We’ll have to wait until someone comes to look for us.”

“Where’s the main valve for that heater?”

“Main valve?” She pressed her fingers to her eyes and forced herself to think. “I just turn the thing on when it’s cold up here…. Wait. Tanks—there are tanks out in back of the kitchen.” She turned back to the broken window again, telling herself she couldn’t be sick. “One for each tower and for each floor.”

Adam glanced at the small, old-fashioned heater again. It wouldn’t take much longer, even with the broken window. “We’re getting out of here.”

“How?” If she could just lie down—just for a minute… “The door’s locked. I don’t think we’d survive a jump into Jamie’s zinnias,” she added, looking down to where the chair had landed. But he wasn’t listening to her. When Kirby turned, she saw Adam running his hand over the ornate trim. The panel yawned open. “How’d you find that one?”

He grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her forward. “Let’s go.”

“I can’t.” With the last of her strength, Kirby braced her hands against the wall. Fear and nausea doubled at the thought of going into the dark, dank hole in the wall. “I can’t go in there.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

When he would’ve pulled her through, Kirby jerked away and backed up. “No, you go. I’ll wait for you to come around and open the door.”

“Listen to me.” Fighting the fumes, he grabbed her shoulders. “I don’t know how long it’d take me to find my way through that maze in the dark.”

“I’ll be patient.”

“You could be dead,” he countered between his teeth. “That heater’s unstable—if there’s a short this whole room would go up! You’ve already taken in too much of the gas.”

“I won’t go in!” Hysteria bubbled, and she didn’t have the strength or the wit to combat it. Her voice rose as she stumbled back from him. “I can’t go in, don’t you understand?”

“I hope you understand this,” he muttered, and clipped her cleanly on the jaw. Without a sound, she collapsed into his arms. Adam didn’t hesitate. He tossed her unceremoniously over his shoulder and plunged into the passageway.

With the panel closed to cut off the flow of gas, the passage was in total darkness. With one arm holding Kirby in place, Adam inched along the wall. He had to reach the stairs, and the first mechanism. Groping, testing each step, he hugged the wall, knowing what would happen to both of them if he rushed and plunged them headlong down the steep stone stairway.

He heard the skitter of rodents and brushed spider-webs out of his face. Perhaps it was best that Kirby was unconscious, he decided. He’d get her through a lot easier carrying her than he would dragging her.

Five minutes, then ten, then at last his foot met empty space.

Cautiously, he shifted Kirby on his shoulder, pressed the other to the wall, and started down. The steps were stone, and treacherous enough with a light. In the dark, with no rail for balance, they were deadly. Fighting the need to rush, Adam checked himself on each step before going on to the next. When he reached the bottom, he went no faster, but began to trace his hand along the wall, feeling for a switch.

The first one stuck. He had to concentrate just to breathe. Kirby swayed on his shoulder as he maneuvered the sharp turn in the passage. Swearing, Adam moved forward blindly until his fingers brushed over a second lever. The panel groaned open just enough for him to squeeze himself and his burden through. Blinking at the sunlight, he dashed around dust-covered furniture and out into the hall.

When he reached the second floor and passed Cards, he didn’t break stride. “Turn off the gas to Kirby’s studio from the main valve,” he ordered, coughing as he moved by. “And keep everyone away from there.”

“Yes, Mr. Haines.” Cards continued to walk toward the main stairway, carrying his pile of fresh linens.

When Adam reached her room, he laid Kirby on the bed, then opened the windows. He stood there a moment, just breathing, letting the air rush over his face and soothe his eyes. His stomach heaved. Forcing himself to take slow, measured breaths, he leaned out. When the nausea passed, he went back to her.

The high color had faded. Now she was as pale as the quilt. She didn’t move. Hadn’t moved, he remembered, since he’d hit her. With a tremor, he pressed his fingers to her throat and felt a slow, steady pulse. Quickly he went into the bathroom and soaked a cloth with cold water. As he ran it over her face, he said her name.

She coughed first, violently. Nothing could’ve relieved him more. When her eyes opened, she stared at him dully.

“You’re in your room,” he told her. “You’re all right now.”

“You hit me.”

He grinned because there was indignation in her voice. “I thought you’d take a punch better with a chin like that. I barely tapped you.”

“So you say.” Gingerly she sat up and touched her chin. Her head whirled once, but she closed her eyes and waited for it to pass. “I suppose I had it coming. Sorry I got neurotic on you.”

He let his forehead rest against hers. “You scared the hell out of me. I guess you’re the only woman who’s received a marriage proposal and a right jab within minutes of each other.”

“I hate to do the ordinary.” Because she needed another minute, she lay back against the pillows. “Have you turned off the gas?”

“Cards is seeing to it.”

“Of course.” She said this calmly enough, then began to pluck at the quilt with her fingers. “As far as I know, no one’s tried to kill me before.”

It made it easier, he thought, that she understood and accepted that straight off. With a nod, he touched a hand to her cheek. “First we call a doctor. Then we call the police.”

“I don’t need a doctor. I’m just a little queasy now, it’ll pass.” She took both his hands and held them firmly. “And we can’t call the police.”

He saw something in her eyes that nearly snapped his temper. Stubbornness. “It’s the usual procedure after attempted murder, Kirby.”

She didn’t wince. “They’ll ask annoying questions and skulk all over the house. It’s in all the movies.”

“This isn’t a game.” His hands tightened on hers. “You could’ve been killed—would’ve been if you’d been in there alone. I’m not giving him another shot at you.”

“You think it was Stuart.” She let out a long breath. Be objective, she told herself. Then you can make Adam be objective. “Yes, I suppose it was, though I wouldn’t have thought him ingenious enough. There’s no one else who’d want to hurt me. Still, we can’t prove a thing.”

“That has yet to be seen.” His eyes flashed a moment as he thought of the satisfaction he’d get from beating a confession out of Hiller. She saw it. She understood it.

“You’re more primitive than I’d imagined.” Touched, she traced her finger down his jaw. “I didn’t know how nice it would be to have someone want to vanquish dragons for me. Who needs a bunch of silly police when I have you?”

“Don’t try to outmaneuver me.”

“I’m not.” The smile left her eyes and her lips. “We’re not in the position to call the police. I couldn’t answer the questions they’d ask, don’t you see? Papa has to resolve the business of the Rembrandt, Adam. If everything came out now, he’d be hopelessly compromised. He might go to prison. Not for anything,” she said softly. “Not for anything would I risk that.”

“He won’t,” Adam said shortly. No matter what strings he’d have to pull, what dance he’d have to perform, he’d see to it that Fairchild stayed clear. “Kirby, do you think your father would continue with whatever he’s plotting once he knew of this?”

“I couldn’t predict his reaction.” Weary, she let out a long breath and tried to make him understand. “He might destroy the Rembrandt in a blind rage. He could go after Stuart single-handed. He’s capable of it. What good would any of that do, Adam?” The queasiness was passing, but it had left her weak. Though she didn’t know it, the vulnerability was her best weapon. “We have to let it lie for a while longer.”

“What do you mean, let it lie?”

“I’ll speak to Papa—tell him what happened in my own way, so that he doesn’t overreact. Harriet and Melanie are coming to dinner tonight. It has to wait until tomorrow.”

“How can he sit down and have dinner with Harriet when he has stolen something from her?” Adam demanded. “How can he do something like this to a friend?”

Pain shot into her eyes. Deliberately she lowered them, but he’d already seen it. “I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shook her head. “No, you have no reason to be. You’ve been wonderful through all of this.”

“No, I haven’t.” He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes.

“Let me be the judge of that. And give me one more day.” She touched his wrists and waited until he lowered his hands. “Just one more day, then I’ll talk to Papa. Maybe we’ll get everything straightened out.”

“That much, Kirby. No more.” He had some thinking of his own to do. Perhaps one more night would give him some answers. “Tomorrow you tell Philip everything, no glossing over the details. If he doesn’t agree to resolve the Rembrandt business then, I’m taking over.”

She hesitated a minute. She’d said she trusted him. It was true. “All right.”

“And I’ll deal with Hiller.”

“You’re not going to fight with him.”

Amused, he lifted a brow. “No?”

“Adam, I won’t have you bruised and bloodied. That’s it.”

“Your confidence in me is overwhelming.”

With a laugh, she sat up again and threw her arms around him. “My hero. He’d never lay a hand on you.”

“I beg your pardon, Miss Fairchild.”

“Yes, Cards.” Shifting her head, Kirby acknowledged the butler in the doorway.

“It seems a chair has somehow found its way through your studio window. Unfortunately, it landed in Jamie’s bed of zinnias.”

“Yes, I know. I suppose he’s quite annoyed.”

“Indeed, miss.”

“I’ll apologize, Cards. Perhaps a new lawn mower… You’ll see to having the window repaired?”

“Yes, miss.”

“And have that heater replaced by something from the twentieth-century,” Adam added. He watched as Cards glanced at him then back at Kirby.

“As soon as possible, please, Cards.”

With a nod, the butler backed out of the doorway.

“He takes his orders from you, doesn’t he?” Adam commented as the quiet footsteps receded. “I’ve seen the subtle nods and looks between the two of you.”

She brushed a smudge of dirt on the shoulder of his shirt. “I’ve no idea what you mean.”

“A century ago, Cards would’ve been known as the queen’s man.” When she laughed at the term, he eased her back on the pillows. “Rest,” he ordered.

“Adam, I’m fine.”

“Want me to get tough again?” Before she could answer, he covered her mouth with his, lingering. “Turn the batteries down awhile,” he murmured. “I might have to call the doctor after all.”

“Blackmail.” She brought his mouth back to hers again. “But maybe if you rested with me…”

“Rest isn’t what would happen then.” He drew away as she grumbled a protest.

“A half hour.”

“Fine. I’ll be back.”

She smiled and let her eyes close. “I’ll be waiting.”

* * *

It was too soon for stars, too late for sunbeams. From a window in the parlor, Adam watched the sunset hold off twilight just a few moments longer.

After reporting the attempt on Kirby’s life to McIntyre, he’d found himself suddenly weary. Half lies, half truths. It had to end. It would end, he decided, tomorrow. Fairchild would have to see reason, and Kirby would be told everything. The hell with McIntyre, the job and anything else. She deserved honesty along with everything else he wanted to give her. Everything else, he realized, would mean nothing to Kirby without it.

The sun lowered further and the horizon exploded with rose-gold light. He thought of the Titian woman. She’d understand, he told himself. She had to understand. He’d make her understand. Thinking to check on her again, Adam turned from the window.

When he reached her room, he heard the sound of running water. The simple, natural sound of her humming along with her bath dissolved his tension. He thought about joining her, then remembered how pale and tired she’d looked. Another time, he promised both of them as he shut the door to her room again. Another time he’d have the pleasure of lounging in the big marble tub with her.

“Where’s that wretched girl?” Fairchild demanded from behind him. “She’s been hiding out all day.”

“Having a bath,” Adam told him.

“She’d better have a damn good explanation, that’s all I have to say.” Looking grim, Fairchild reached for the doorknob. Adam blocked the door automatically.

“For what?”

Fairchild glared at him. “My shoes.”

Adam looked down at Fairchild’s small stockinged feet. “I don’t think she has them.”

“A man tugs himself into a restraining suit, chokes himself with a ridiculous tie, then has no shoes.” Fairchild pulled at the knot around his neck. “Is that justice?”

“No. Have you tried Cards?”

“Cards couldn’t get his big British feet in my shoes.” Then he frowned and pursed his lips. “Then again, he did have my suit.”

“I rest my case.”

“The man’s a kleptomaniac,” Fairchild grumbled as he wandered down the hall. “I’d check my shorts if I were you. No telling what he’ll pick up next. Cocktails in a half hour, Adam. Hustle along.”

Deciding a quiet drink was an excellent idea after the day they’d put in, Adam went to change. He was adjusting the knot in his own tie when Kirby knocked. She opened it without waiting for his answer, then stood a moment, deliberately posed in the doorway—head thrown back, one arm raised high on the jamb, the other at her hip. The slinky jumpsuit clung to every curve, falling in folds from her neck and dispensing with a back altogether. At her ears, emeralds the size of quarters picked up the vivid green shade. Five twisted, gold chains hung past her waist.

“Hello, neighbor.” Glittering and gleaming, she crossed to him. Adam put a finger under her chin and studied her face. As an artist, she knew how to make use of the colors of a makeup palette. Her cheeks were tinted with a touch of bronze, her lips just a bit darker. “Well?”

“You look better,” he decided.

“That’s a poor excuse for a compliment.”

“How do you feel?”

“I’d feel a lot better if you’d stop examining me as though I had a rare terminal disease and kiss me as you’re supposed to.” She twisted her arms around his neck and let her lashes lower.

It was them he kissed first, softly, with a tenderness that had her sighing. Then his lips skimmed down, over her cheeks, gently over her jawline.

“Adam…” His name was only a breath on the air as his mouth touched hers. She wanted it all now. Instantly. She wanted the fire and flash, the pleasure and the passion. She wanted that calm, spreading contentment that only he could give to her. “I love you,” she murmured. “I love you until there’s nothing else but that.”

“There is nothing else but that,” he said, almost fiercely. “We’ve a lifetime for it.” He drew her away so he could bring both of her hands to his lips. “A lifetime, Kirby, and it isn’t long enough.”

“Then we’ll have to start soon.” She felt the giddiness again, the light-headedness, but she wouldn’t run from it. “Very soon,” she added. “But we have to wait at least until after dinner. Harriet and Melanie should be here any minute.”

“If I had my choice, I’d stay with you alone in this room and make love until sunrise.”

“Don’t tempt me to tarnish your reputation.” Because she knew she had to, she stepped back and finished adjusting his tie herself. It was a brisk, womanly gesture he found himself enjoying. “Ever since I told Harriet about your help with the Titian, she’s decided you’re the greatest thing since peanut butter. I wouldn’t want to mess that up by making you late for dinner.”

“Then we’d better go now. Five more minutes alone with you and we’d be a lot more than late.” When she laughed, he linked her arm through his and led her from the room. “By the way, your father’s shoes were stolen.”

* * *

To the casual observer, the group in the parlor would have seemed a handful of elegant, cosmopolitan people. Secure, friendly, casually wealthy. Looking beyond the sparkle and glitter, a more discerning eye might have seen the pallor of Kirby’s skin that her careful application of makeup disguised. Someone looking closely might have noticed that her friendly nonsense covered a discomfort that came from battling loyalties.

To someone from the outside, the group might have taken on a different aspect if the canvas were stretched. Rick’s stuttering nerves were hardly noticed by those in the parlor. As was Melanie’s subtle disdain for him. Both were the expected. Fairchild’s wolfish grins and Harriet’s jolting laughter covered the rest.

Everyone seemed relaxed, except Adam. The longer it went on, the more he wished he’d insisted that Kirby postpone the dinner party. She looked frail. The more energy she poured out, the more fragile she seemed to him. And touchingly valiant. Her devotion to Harriet hadn’t been lip service. Adam could see it, hear it. When she loved, as Fairchild had said, she loved completely. Even the thought of the Rembrandt would be tearing her in two. Tomorrow. By the next day, it would be over.

“Adam.” Harriet took his arm as Kirby poured after-dinner drinks. “I’d love to see Kirby’s portrait.”

“As soon as it’s finished you’ll have a private viewing.” And until the repairs in the tower were complete, he thought, he was keeping all outsiders away.

“I’ll have to be content with that, I suppose.” She pouted a moment, then forgave him. “Sit beside me,” Harriet commanded and spread the flowing vermilion of her skirt on the sofa. “Kirby said I could flirt with you.”

Adam noticed that Melanie turned a delicate pink at her mother’s flamboyance. Unable to resist, he lifted Harriet’s hand to his lips. “Do I need permission to flirt with you?”

“Guard your heart, Harriet,” Kirby warned as she set out drinks.

“Mind your own business,” Harriet tossed back. “By the way, Adam, I’d like you to have my necklace of crocodile teeth as a token of my appreciation.”

“Good heavens, Mother.” Melanie sipped at her blackberry brandy. “Why would Adam want that hideous thing?”

“Sentiment,” she returned without blinking an eye. “Adam’s agreed to let me exhibit Kirby’s portrait, and I want to repay him.”

The old girl’s quick, Adam decided as she sent him a guileless smile, and Melanie’s been kept completely in the dark about the hobby her mother shares with Fairchild. Studying Melanie’s cool beauty, Adam decided her mother knew best. She’d never react as Kirby did. Melanie could have their love and affection, but secrets were kept within the triangle. No, he realized, oddly pleased. It was now a rectangle.

“He doesn’t have to wear it,” Harriet went on, breaking into his thoughts.

“I should hope not,” Melanie put in, rolling her eyes at Kirby.

“It’s for good luck.” Harriet sent Kirby a glance, then squeezed Adam’s arm. “But perhaps you have all the luck you need.”

“Perhaps my luck’s just beginning.”

“How quaintly they speak in riddles.” Kirby sat on the arm of Melanie’s chair. “Why don’t we ignore them?”

“Your hawk’s coming along nicely, Mr. Fairchild,” Rich hazarded.

“Aha!” It was all Fairchild needed. Bursting with good feelings, he treated Rick to an in-depth lecture on the use of calipers.

“Rick’s done it now,” Kirby whispered to Melanie. “Papa has no mercy on a captive audience.”

“I didn’t know Uncle Philip was sculpting.”

“Don’t mention it,” Kirby said quickly. “You’ll never escape.” Pursing her lips, she looked down at Melanie’s elegant dark rose dress. The lines flowed fluidly with the flash of a studded buckle at the waist. “Melly, I wonder if you’d have time to design a dress for me.”

Surprised, Melanie glanced up. “Oh course, I’d love to. But I’ve been trying to talk you into it for years and you’ve always refused to go through the fittings.”

Kirby shrugged. A wedding dress was a different matter, she mused. Still, she didn’t mention her plans with Adam. Her father would know first. “I usually buy on impulse, whatever appeals at the time.”

“From Goodwill to Rive Gauche,” Melanie murmured. “So this must be special.”

“I’m taking a page from your book,” Kirby evaded. “You know I’ve always admired your talent, I just knew I wouldn’t have the patience for all the preliminaries.” She laughed. “Do you think you can design a dress that’d make me look demure?”

“Demure?” Harriet cut in, pouncing on the word. “Poor Melanie would have to be a sorceress to pull that off. Even as a child in that sweet little muslin you looked capable of battling a tribe of Comanches. Philip, you must let me borrow that painting of Kirby for the gallery.”

“We’ll see.” His eyes twinkled. “You’ll have to soften me up a bit first. I’ve always had a deep affection for that painting.” With a hefty sigh, he leaned back with his drink. “Its value goes below the surface.”

“He still begrudges me my sitting fee.” Kirby sent her father a sweet smile. “He forgets I never collected for any of the others.”

“You never posed for the others,” Fairchild reminded her.

“I never signed a release for them, either.”

“Melly posed for me out of the goodness of her heart.”

“Melly’s nicer than I am,” Kirby said simply. “I like being selfish.”

“Heartless creature,” Harriet put in mildly. “It’s so selfish of you to teach sculpture in the summer to those handicapped children.”

Catching Adam’s surprised glance, Kirby shifted uncomfortably. “Harriet, think of my reputation.”

“She’s sensitive about her good deeds,” Harriet told Adam with a squeeze for his knee.

“I simply had nothing else to do.” With a shrug, Kirby turned away. “Are you going to Saint Moritz this year, Melly?”

Fraud, Adam thought as he watched her guide the subject away from herself. A beautiful, sensitive fraud. And finding her so, he loved her more.

By the time Harriet and Melanie rose to leave, Kirby was fighting off a raging headache. Too much strain, she knew, but she wouldn’t admit it. She could tell herself she needed only a good night’s sleep, and nearly believe it.

“Kirby.” Harriet swirled her six-foot shawl over her shoulder before she took Kirby’s chin in her hand. “You look tired, and a bit pale. I haven’t seen you look pale since you were thirteen and had the flu. I remember you swore you’d never be ill again.”

“After that disgusting medicine you poured down my throat, I couldn’t afford to. I’m fine.” But she threw her arms around Harriet’s neck and held on. “I’m fine, really.”

“Mmm.” Over her head, Harriet frowned at Fairchild. “You might think about Australia. We’ll put some color in your cheeks.”

“I will. I love you.”

“Go to sleep, child,” Harriet murmured.

The moment the door was closed, Adam took Kirby’s arm. Ignoring her father and Rick, he began to pull her up the stairs. “You belong in bed.”

“Shouldn’t you be dragging me by the hair instead of the arm?”

“Some other time, when my intentions are less peaceful.” He stopped outside her door. “You’re going to sleep.”

“Tired of me already?”

The words were hardly out of her mouth when his covered it. Holding her close, he let himself go for a moment, releasing the needs, the desires, the love. He could feel her heart thud, her bones melt. “Can’t you see how tired I am of you?” He kissed her again with his hands framing her face. “You must see how you bore me.”

“Anything I can do?” she murmured, slipping her hands under his jacket.

“Get some rest.” He took her by the shoulders. “This is your last opportunity to sleep alone.”

“Am I sleeping alone?”

It wasn’t easy for him. He wanted to devour her, he wanted to delight her. He wanted, more than anything else, to have a clean slate between them before they made love again. If she hadn’t looked so weary, so worn, he’d have told her everything then and there. “This may come as a shock to you,” he said lightly. “But you’re not Wonder Woman.”

“Really?”

“You’re going to get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow.” He took her hands and the look, the sudden intenseness, confused her. “Tomorrow, Kirby, we have to talk.”

“About what?”

“Tomorrow,” he repeated before he could change his mind. “Rest now.” He gave her a nudge inside. “If you’re not feeling any better tomorrow, you’re going to stay in bed and be pampered.”

She managed one last wicked grin. “Promise?”

Chapter 11

It was clear after Kirby had tossed in bed and fluffed up her pillow for more than an hour that she wasn’t going to get the rest everyone seemed to want for her. Her body was dragging, but her mind refused to give in to it.

She tried. For twenty minutes she recited dull poetry. Closing her eyes, she counted five hundred and twenty-seven camels. She turned on her bedside radio and found chamber music. She was, after all of it, wide awake.

It wasn’t fear. If Stuart had indeed tried to kill her, he’d failed. She had her own wits, and she had Adam. No, it wasn’t fear.

The Rembrandt. She couldn’t think of anything else after seeing Harriet laughing, after remembering how Harriet had nursed her through the flu and had given her a sweet and totally unnecessary woman-to-woman talk when she’d been a girl.

Kirby had grieved for her own mother, and though she’d died when Kirby had been a child, the memory remained perfectly clear. Harriet hadn’t been a substitute. Harriet had simply been Harriet. Kirby loved her for that alone.

How could she sleep?

Annoyed, Kirby rolled over on her back and stared at the ceiling. Maybe, just maybe, she could make use of the insomnia and sort it all out and make some sense out of it.

Her father, she was certain, would do nothing to hurt Harriet without cause. Was revenge on Stuart cause enough? After a moment, she decided it didn’t follow.

Harriet had gone to Africa—that was first. It had been nearly two weeks after that when Kirby had broken her engagement with Stuart. Afterward she had told her father of Stuart’s blackmail threats and he’d been unconcerned. He’d said, Kirby remembered, that Stuart wasn’t in any position to make waves.

Then it made sense to assume they’d already begun plans to switch the paintings. Revenge was out.

Then why?

Not for money, Kirby thought. Not for the desire to own the painting himself. That wasn’t his way—she knew better than anyone how he felt about greed. But then, stealing from a friend wasn’t his way either.

If she couldn’t find the reason, perhaps she could find the painting itself.

Still staring at the ceiling, she began to go over everything her father had said. So many ambiguous comments, she mused. But then, that was typical of him. In the house—that much was certain. In the house, hidden with appropriate affection and respect. Just how many hundreds of possibilities could she sort through in one night?

She blew out a disgusted breath and rolled over again. With a last thump for her pillow, she closed her eyes. The yawn, she felt, was a hopeful sign. As she snuggled deeper, a tiny memory probed.

She’d think about it tomorrow…. No, now, she thought, and rolled over again. She’d think about it now. What was it her father had been saying to Adam when she’d walked into his studio the night after the Titian switch? Something… Something…about involving her figuratively.

“Root rot,” she muttered, and squeezed her eyes shut in concentration. “What the devil was that supposed to mean?” Just as she was about to give up, the idea seeped in. Her eyes sprang open as she sprang up. “It’d be just like him!”

Grabbing a robe, she dashed from the room.

For a moment in the hall she hesitated. Perhaps she should wake Adam and tell him of her theory. Then again, it was no more than that, and he hadn’t had the easiest day of it, either. If she produced results, then she’d wake him. And if she was wrong, her father would kill her.

She made a quick trip to her father’s studio, then went down to the dining room.

On neither trip did she bother with lights. She wanted no one to pop out of their room and ask what she was up to. Carrying a rag, a bottle and a stack of newspapers, she went silently through the dark. Once she’d reached the dining room, she turned on the lights. No one would investigate downstairs except Cards. He’d never question her. She worked quickly.

Kirby spread the newspapers in thick pads on the dining room table. Setting the bottle and the rag on them, she turned to her own portrait.

“You’re too clever for your own good, Papa,” she murmured as she studied the painting. “I’d never be able to tell if this was a duplicate. There’s only one way.”

Once she’d taken the portrait from the wall, Kirby laid it on the newspaper. “Its value goes below the surface,” she murmured. Isn’t that what he’d said to Harriet? And he’d been smug. He’d been smug right from the start. Kirby opened the bottle and tipped the liquid onto the rag. “Forgive me, Papa,” she said quietly.

With the lightest touch—an expert’s touch—she began to remove layers of paint in the lower corner. Minutes passed. If she was wrong, she wanted the damage to be minimal. If she was right, she had something priceless in her hands. Either way, she couldn’t rush.

She dampened the rag and wiped again. Her father’s bold signature disappeared, then the bright summer grass beneath it, and the primer.

And there, beneath where there should have been only canvas, was a dark, somber brown. One letter, then another, appeared. It was all that was necessary.

“Great buckets of blood,” she murmured. “I was right.”

Beneath the feet of the girl she’d been was Rembrandt’s signature. She’d go no further. As carefully as she’d unstopped it, Kirby secured the lid of the bottle.

“So, Papa, you put Rembrandt to sleep under a copy of my portrait. Only you would’ve thought to copy yourself to pull it off.”

“Very clever.”

Whirling, Kirby looked behind her into the dark outside the dining room. She knew the voice; it didn’t frighten her. As her heart pounded, the shadows moved. What now? she asked herself quickly. Just how would she explain it?

“Cleverness runs in the family, doesn’t it, Kirby?”

“So I’m told.” She tried to smile. “I’d like to explain. You’d better come in out of the dark and sit down. It could take—” She stopped as the first part of the invitation was accepted. She stared at the barrel of a small polished revolver. Lifting her gaze from it, she stared into clear, delicate blue eyes. “Melly, what’s going on?”

“You look surprised. I’m glad.” With a satisfied smile, Melanie aimed the gun at Kirby’s head. “Maybe you’re not so clever after all.”

“Don’t point that at me.”

“I intend to point it at you.” She lowered the gun to chest level. “And I’ll do more than point it if you move.”

“Melly.” She wasn’t afraid, not yet. She was confused, even annoyed, but she wasn’t afraid of the woman she’d grown up with. “Put that thing away and sit down. What’re you doing here this time of night?”

“Two reasons. First, to see if I could find any trace of the painting you’ve so conveniently found for me. Second, to finish the job that was unsuccessful this morning.”

“This morning?” Kirby took a step forward then froze when she heard the quick, deadly click. Good God, could it actually be loaded? “Melly…”

“I suppose I must have miscalculated a bit or you’d be dead already.” The elegant rose silk whispered as she shrugged. “I know the passages very well. Remember, you used to drag me around in them when we were children—before you went in with a faulty flashlight. I’d changed the batteries in it, you see. I’d never told you about that, had I?” She laughed as Kirby remained silent. “I used the passages this morning. Once I was sure you and Adam were settled in, I went out and turned on the gas by the main valve—I’d already broken the switch on the unit.”

“You can’t be serious.” Kirby dragged a hand through her hair.

“Deadly serious, Kirby.”

“Why?”

“Primarily for money, of course.”

“Money?” She would’ve laughed, but her throat was closing. “But you don’t need money.”

“You’re so smug.” The venom came through. Kirby wondered that she’d never heard it before. “Yes, I need money.”

“You wouldn’t take a settlement from your ex-husband.”

“He wouldn’t give me a dime,” Melanie corrected. “He cut me off, and as he had me cold on adultery, I wasn’t in a position to take him to court. He let me get a quiet, discreet divorce so that our reputations wouldn’t suffer. And except for one incident, I’d been very discreet. Stuart and I were always very careful.”

“Stuart?” Kirby lifted a hand to rub at her temple. “You and Stuart?”

“We’ve been lovers for over three years. Questions are just buzzing around in your head, aren’t they?” Enjoying herself, Melanie stepped closer. The whiff of Chanel followed her. “It was more practical for us if we pretended to be just acquaintances. I convinced Stuart to ask you to marry him. My inheritance has dwindled to next to nothing. Your money would have met Stuart’s and my tastes very nicely. And we’d have got close to Uncle Philip.”

She ignored the rest and homed in on the most important. “What do you want from my father?”

“I found out about the little game he and Mother indulged in years ago. Not all the details, but enough to know I could use it if I had to. I thought it was time to use your father’s talent for my own benefit.”

“You made plans to steal from your own mother.”

“Don’t be so self-righteous.” Her voice chilled. The gun was steady. “Your father betrayed her without a murmur, then double-crossed us in the bargain. Now you’ve solved that little problem for me.” With her free hand, she gestured to the painting. “I should be grateful I failed this morning. I’d still be looking for the painting.”

Somehow, some way, she’d deal with this. Kirby started with the basics. “Melly, how could you hurt me? We’ve been friends all our lives.”

“Friends?” The word sounded like an obscenity. “I’ve hated you for as long as I can remember.”

“No—”

“Hated,” Melanie repeated, coldly this time and with the ring of truth. “It was always you people flocked around, always you men preferred. My own mother preferred you.”

“That’s not true.” Did it go so deep? Kirby thought with a flood of guilt. Should she have seen it before? “Melly—” But as she started forward, Melanie gestured with the gun.

“’Melanie, don’t be so stiff and formal…. Melanie, where’s your sense of humor?”’ Her eyes narrowed into slits. “She never came right out and said I should be more like you, but that’s what she wanted.”

“Harriet loves you—”

“Love?” Melanie cut Kirby off with a laugh. “I don’t give a damn for love. It won’t buy what I need. You may have taken my mother, but that was a minor offense. The men you snatched from under my nose time and time again is a bigger one.”

“I never took a man from you. I’ve never shown an interest in anyone you were serious about.”

“There have been dozens,” Melanie corrected. Her voice was as brittle as glass. “You’d smile and say something stupid and I’d be forgotten. You never had my looks, but you’d use that so-called charm and lure them away, or you’d freeze up and do the same thing.”

“I might’ve been friendly to someone you cared for,” Kirby said quickly. “If I froze it was to discourage them. Good God, Melly, I’d never have done anything to hurt you. I love you.”

“I’ve no use for your love any longer. It served its purpose well enough.” She smiled slowly as tears swam in Kirby’s eyes. “My only regret is that you didn’t fall for Stuart. I wanted to see you fawn over him, knowing he preferred me—married you only because I wanted it. When you came to see him that night, I nearly came out of the bedroom just for the pleasure of seeing your face. But…” She shrugged. “We had long-range plans.”

“You used me,” Kirby said quietly when she could no longer deny it. “You had Stuart use me.”

“Of course. Still, it wasn’t wise of me to come back from New York for the weekend to be with him.”

“Why, Melanie? Why have you pretended all these years?”

“You were useful. Even as a child I knew that. Later, in Paris, you opened doors for me, then again in New York. It was even due to you that I spent a year of luxury with Carlyse. You wouldn’t sleep with him and you wouldn’t marry him. I did both.”

“And that’s all?” Kirby murmured. “That’s all?”

“That’s all. You’re not useful any longer, Kirby. In fact, you’re an inconvenience. I’d planned your death as a warning to Uncle Philip, now it’s just a necessity.”

She wanted to turn away, but she needed to face it. “How could I have known you all my life and not seen it? How could you have hated me and not shown it?”

“You let emotions rule your life, I don’t. Pick up the painting, Kirby.” With the gun, she gestured. “And be careful with it. Stuart and I have been offered a healthy sum for it. If you call out,” she added, “I’ll shoot you now and be in the passage with the painting before anyone comes down.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We’re going into the passage. You’re going to have a nasty spill, Kirby, and break your neck. I’m going to take the painting home and wait for the call to tell me of your accident.”

She’d stall. If only she’d woken Adam… No, if she’d woken him, he, too, would have a gun pointed at him. “Everyone knows how I feel about the passages.”

“It’ll be a mystery. When they find the empty space on the wall, they’ll know the Rembrandt was responsible. Stuart should be the first target, but he’s out of town and has been for three days. I’ll be devastated by the death of my oldest and dearest friend. It’ll take months in Europe to recover from the grief.”

“You’ve thought this out carefully.” Kirby rested against the table. “But are you capable of murder, Melly?” Slowly she closed her fingers around the bottle, working off the top with her thumb. “Face-to-face murder, not remote-control like this morning.”

“Oh, yes.” Melanie smiled beautifully. “I prefer it. I feel better with you knowing who’s going to kill you. Now pick up the painting, Kirby. It’s time.”

With a jerk of her arm, Kirby tossed the turpentine mixture, splattering it on Melanie’s neck and dress. When Melanie tossed up her hand in protection, Kirby lunged. Together they fell in a rolling heap onto the floor, the gun pressed between them.

* * *

“What do you mean Hiller’s been in New York since yesterday?” Adam demanded. “What happened this morning wasn’t an accident. He had to have done it.”

“No way.” In a few words McIntyre broke Adam’s theory. “I have a good man on him. I can give you the name of Hiller’s hotel. I can give you the name of the restaurant where he had lunch and what he ate while you were throwing chairs through windows. He’s got his alibi cold, Adam, but it doesn’t mean he didn’t arrange it.”

“Damn.” Adam lowered the transmitter while he rearranged his thinking. “It gives me a bad feeling, Mac. Dealing with Hiller’s one thing, but it’s a whole new story if he has a partner or he’s hired a pro to do his dirty work. Kirby needs protection, official protection. I want her out.”

“I’ll work on it. The Rembrandt—”

“I don’t give a damn about the Rembrandt,” Adam tossed back. “But it’ll be in my hands tomorrow if I have to hang Fairchild up by his thumbs.”

McIntyre let out a sigh of relief. “That’s better. You were making me nervous thinking you were hung up on the Fairchild woman.”

“I am hung up on the Fairchild woman,” Adam returned mildly. “So you’d better arrange for—” He heard the shot. One, sharp and clean. It echoed and echoed through his head. “Kirby!” He thought of nothing else as he dropped the open transmitter on the floor and ran.

He called her name again as he raced downstairs. But his only answer was silence. He called as he rushed like a madman through the maze of rooms downstairs, but she didn’t call back. Nearly blind with terror, his own voice echoing back to mock him, he ran on, slamming on lights as he went until the house was lit up like a celebration. Racing headlong into the dining room, he nearly fell over the two figures on the floor.

“Oh, my God!”

“I’ve killed her! Oh, God, Adam, help me! I think I’ve killed her!” With tears streaming down her face, Kirby pressed a blood-soaked linen napkin against Melanie’s side. The stain spread over the rose silk of the dress and onto Kirby’s hand.

“Keep the pressure firm.” He didn’t ask questions, but grabbed a handful of linen from the buffet behind him. Nudging Kirby aside, he felt for a pulse. “She’s alive.” He pressed more linen to Melanie’s side. “Kirby—”

Before he could speak again, there was chaos. The rest of the household poured into the dining room from every direction. Polly let out one squeal that never ended.

“Call an ambulance,” Adam ordered Cards, even as the butler turned to do so. “Shut her up, or get her out,” he told Rick, nodding to Polly.

Recovering quickly, Fairchild knelt beside his daughter and the daughter of his closest friend. “Kirby, what happened here?”

“I tried to take the gun from her.” She struggled to breathe as she looked down at the blood on her hands. “We fell. I don’t—Papa, I don’t even know which one of us pulled the trigger. Oh, God, I don’t even know.”

“Melanie had a gun?” Steady as a rock, Fairchild took Kirby’s shoulders and turned her to face him. “Why?”

“She hates me.” Her voice shook, then leveled as she stared into her father’s face. “She’s always hated me, I never knew. It was the Rembrandt, Papa. She’d planned it all.”

“Melanie?” Fairchild glanced beyond Kirby to the unconscious figure on the floor. “She was behind it.” He fell silent, only a moment. “How bad, Adam?”

“I don’t know, damn it. I’m an artist, not a doctor.” There was fury in his eyes and blood on his hands. “It might’ve been Kirby.”

“Yes, you’re right.” Fairchild’s fingers tightened on his daughter’s shoulder. “You’re right.”

“I found the Rembrandt,” Kirby murmured. If it was shock that was making her light-headed, she wouldn’t give in to it. She forced herself to think and to speak clearly.

Fairchild looked at the empty space on the wall, then at the table where the painting lay. “So you did.”

With a cluck of her tongue, Tulip pushed Fairchild aside and took Kirby by the arm. Ignoring everyone else, she pulled Kirby to her feet. “Come with me, lovie. Come along with me now, that’s a girl.”

Feeling helpless, Adam watched Kirby being led away while he fought to stop the bleeding. “You’d better have a damn good explanation,” he said between his teeth as his gaze swept over Fairchild.

“Explanations don’t seem to be enough at this point,” he murmured. Very slowly he rose. The sound of sirens cut through the quiet. “I’ll phone Harriet.”

Almost an hour had passed before Adam could wash the blood from his hands. Unconscious still, Melanie was speeding on her way to the hospital. His only thought was for Kirby now, and he left his room to find her. When he reached the bottom landing, he came upon an argument in full gear. Though the shouting was all one-sided, the noise vibrated through the hall.

“I want to see Adam Haines and I want to see him immediately!”

“Gate-crashing, Mac?” Adam moved forward to stand beside Cards.

“Adam, thank God.” The small, husky man with the squared-off face and disarming eyes ran a hand through his disheveled mat of hair. “I didn’t know what’d happened to you. Tell this wall to move aside, will you?”

“It’s all right, Cards.” He drew an expressionless stare. “He’s not a reporter. I know him.”

“Very well, sir.”

“What the hell’s going on?” McIntyre demanded when Cards walked back down the hall. “Who just got carted out of here in an ambulance? Damn it, Adam, I thought it might be you. Last thing I know, you’re shouting and breaking transmission.”

“It’s been a rough night.” Putting a hand on his shoulder, Adam led him into the parlor. “I need a drink.” Going directly to the bar, Adam poured, drank and poured again. “Drink up, Mac,” he invited. “This has to be better than the stuff you’ve been buying in that little motel down the road. Philip,” he continued as Fairchild walked into the room, “I imagine you could use one of these.”

“Yes.” With a nod of acknowledgment for McIntyre, and no questions, Fairchild accepted the glass Adam offered.

“We’d better sit down. Philip Fairchild,” Adam went on as Fairchild settled himself, “Henry McIntyre, investigator for the Commonwealth Insurance company.”

“Ah, Mr. McIntyre.” Fairchild drank half his Scotch in one gulp. “We have quite a bit to discuss. But first, Adam, satisfy my curiosity. How did you become involved with the investigation?”

“It’s not the first time I’ve worked for Mac, but it’s the last.” He sent McIntyre a quiet look that was lined in steel. “There’s a matter of our being cousins,” he added. “Second cousins.”

“Relatives.” Fairchild smiled knowingly, then gave McIntyre a charming smile.

“You knew why I was here,” Adam said. “How?”

“Well, Adam, my boy, it’s nothing to do with your cleverness.” Fairchild tossed off the rest of the Scotch, then rose to fill his glass again. “I was expecting someone to come along. You were the only one who did.” He sat back down with a sigh. “Simple as that.”

“Expecting?”

“Would someone tell me who was in that ambulance?” McIntyre cut in.

“Melanie Burgess.” Fairchild looked into his Scotch. “Melly.” It would hurt, he knew, for a long time. For himself, for Harriet and for Kirby. It was best to begin to deal with it. “She was shot when Kirby tried to take her gun away—the gun she was pointing at my daughter.”

“Melanie Burgess,” McIntyre mused. “It fits with the information I got today. Information,” he added to Adam, “I was about to give you when you broke transmission. I’d like it from the beginning, Mr. Fairchild. I assume the police are on their way.”

“Yes, no way around that.” Fairchild sipped at his Scotch and deliberated on just how to handle things. Then he saw he no longer had McIntyre’s attention. He was staring at the doorway.

Dressed in jeans and a white blouse, Kirby stood just inside the room. She was pale, but her eyes were dark. She was beautiful. It was the first thing McIntyre thought. The second was that she was a woman who could empty a man’s mind the way a thirsty man empties a bottle.

“Kirby.” Adam was up and across the room. He had his hands on hers. Hers were cold, but steady. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Melanie?”

“The paramedics handled everything. I got the impression the wound wasn’t as bad as it looked. Go lie down,” he murmured. “Forget it for a while.”

“No.” She shook her head and managed a weak smile. “I’m fine, really. I’ve been washed and patted and plied with liquor, though I wouldn’t mind another. The police will want to question me.” Her gaze drifted to McIntyre. She didn’t ask, but simply assumed he was with the police. “Do you need to talk to me?”

It wasn’t until then he realized he’d been staring. Clearing his throat, McIntyre rose. “I’d like to hear your father’s story first, Miss Fairchild.”

“Wouldn’t we all?” Struggling to find some balance, she walked to her father’s chair. “Are you going to come clean, Papa, or should I hire a shady lawyer?”

“Unnecessary, my sweet.” He took her hand and held it. “The beginning,” he continued with a smile for McIntyre. “It started, I suppose, a few days before Harriet flew off to Africa. She’s an absentminded woman. She had to return to the gallery one night to pick up some papers she’d forgotten. When she saw the light in Stuart’s office, she started to go in and scold him for working late. Instead she eavesdropped on his phone conversation and learned of his plans to steal the Rembrandt. Absentminded but shrewd, Harriet left and let Stuart think his plans were undetected.” He grinned and squeezed Kirby’s hand. “An intelligent woman, she came directly to a friend known for his loyalty and his sharp mind.”

“Papa.” With a laugh of relief, she bent over and kissed his head. “You were working together, I should’ve known.”

“We developed a plan. Perhaps unwisely, we decided not to bring Kirby into it.” He looked up at her. “Should I apologize?”

“Never.”

But the fingers brushing over her hand said it for him. “Kirby’s relationship with Stuart helped us along in that decision. And her occasional shortsightedness. That is, when she doesn’t agree with my point of view.”

“I might take the apology after all.”

“In any case.” Rising, Fairchild began to wander around the room, hands clasped behind his back. His version of Sherlock Holmes, Kirby decided, and settled back for the show. “Harriet and I both knew Stuart wasn’t capable of constructing and carrying through on a theft like this alone. Harriet hadn’t any idea whom he’d been talking to on the phone, but my name had been mentioned. Stuart had said he’d, ah, ‘feel me out on the subject of producing a copy of the painting.’” His face fell easily into annoyed lines. “I’ve no idea why he should’ve thought a man like me would do something so base, so dishonest.”

“Incredible,” Adam murmured, and earned a blinding smile from father and daughter.

“We decided I’d agree, after some fee haggling. I’d then have the original in my possession while palming the copy off on Stuart. Sooner or later, his accomplice would be forced into the open to try to recover it. Meanwhile, Harriet reported the theft, but refused to file a claim. Instead she demanded that the insurance company act with discretion. Reluctantly she told them of her suspicion that I was involved, thereby ensuring that the investigation would be centered around me, and by association, Stuart and his accomplice. I concealed the Rembrandt behind a copy of a painting of my daughter, the original of which is tucked away in my room. I’m sentimental.”

“Why didn’t Mrs. Merrick just tell the police and the insurance company the truth?” McIntyre demanded after he’d worked his way through the explanation.

“They might have been hasty. No offense,” Fairchild added indulgently. “Stuart might’ve been caught, but his accomplice would probably have gotten away. And, I confess, it was the intrigue that appealed to both of us. It was irresistible. You’ll want to corroborate my story, of course.”

“Of course,” McIntyre agreed, and wondered if he could deal with another loony.

“We’d have done things differently if we’d had any idea that Melanie was involved. It’s going to be difficult for Harriet.” Pausing, he aimed a long look at McIntyre that was abruptly no-nonsense. “Be careful with her. Very careful. You might find our methods unorthodox, but she’s a mother who’s had two unspeakable shocks tonight: her daughter’s betrayal and the possibility of losing her only child.” He ran a hand over Kirby’s hair as he stopped by her. “No matter how deep the hurt, the love remains, doesn’t it, Kirby?”

“All I feel is the void,” she murmured. “She hated me, and I think, I really think, she wanted me dead more than she wanted the painting. I wonder…I wonder just how much I’m to blame for that.”

“You can’t blame yourself for being, Kirby.” Fairchild cupped her chin. “You can’t blame a tree for reaching for the sun or another for rotting from within. We make our own choices and we’re each responsible for them. Blame and credit belong to the individual. You haven’t the right to claim either from someone else.”

“You won’t let me cover the hurt with guilt.” After a long breath she rose and kissed his cheek. “I’ll have to deal with it.” Without thinking, she held out a hand for Adam before she turned to McIntyre. “Do you need a statement from me?”

“No, the shooting’s not my jurisdiction, Miss Fairchild. Just the Rembrandt.” Finishing off the rest of his Scotch he rose. “I’ll have to take it with me, Mr. Fairchild.”

All graciousness, Fairchild spread his arms wide. “Perfectly understandable.”

“I appreciate your cooperation.” If he could call it that. With a weary smile, he turned to Adam. “Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten your terms. If everything’s as he says, I should be able to keep them out of it officially, as we agreed the other day. Your part of the job’s over, and all in all you handled it well. So, I’ll be sorry if you’re serious about not working for me anymore. You got the Rembrandt back, Adam. Now I’ve got to get started on untangling the red tape.”

“Job?” Going cold, Kirby turned. Her hand was still linked in Adam’s, but she felt it go numb as she drew it slowly away. “Job?” she repeated, pressing the hand to her stomach as if to ward off a blow.

Not now, he thought in frustration, and searched for the words he’d have used only a few hours later. “Kirby—”

With all the strength she had left, all the bitterness she’d felt, she brought her hand across his face. “Bastard,” she whispered. She fled at a dead run.

“Damn you, Mac.” Adam raced after her.

Chapter 12

Adam caught up to her just as Kirby started to slam her bedroom door. Shoving it open, he pushed his way inside. For a moment, they only stared at each other.

“Kirby, let me explain.”

“No.” The wounded look had been replaced by glacial anger. “Just get out. All the way out, Adam—of my house and my life.”

“I can’t.” He took her by the shoulders, but her head snapped up, and the look was so cold, so hard, he dropped his hands again. It was too late to explain the way he’d planned. Too late to prevent the hurt. Now he had to find the way around it. “Kirby, I know what you must be thinking. I want—”

“Do you?” It took all of her effort to keep her voice from rising. Instead it was cool and calm. “I’m going to tell you anyway so we can leave everything neat and tidy.” She faced him because she refused to turn her back on the pain or on the betrayal. “I’m thinking that I’ve never detested anyone more than I detest you at this moment. I’m thinking Stuart and Melanie could take lessons on using people from you. I’m thinking how naive I was, how stupid, to have believed there was something special about you, something stable and honest. And I wonder how I could’ve made love with you and never seen it. Then again, I didn’t see it in Melanie, either. I loved and trusted her.” Tears burned behind her eyes but she ignored them. “I loved and trusted you.”

“Kirby…”

“Don’t touch me.” She backed away, but it was the tremor in her voice, not the movement, that stopped him from going to her. “I don’t ever want to feel your hands on me again.” Because she wanted to weep, she laughed, and the sound was as sharp as a knife. “I’ve always admired a really good liar, Adam, but you’re the best. Every time you touched me, you lied. You prostituted yourself in that bed.” She gestured toward it and wanted to scream. She wanted to fling herself on it and weep until she was empty. She stood, straight as an arrow. “You lay beside me and said all the things I wanted to hear. Do you get extra points for that, Adam? Surely that was above and beyond the call of duty.”

“Don’t.” He’d had enough. Enough of her cold, clear look, her cold, clear words. “You know there was no dishonesty there. What happened between us had nothing to do with the rest.”

“It has everything to do with it.”

“No.” He’d take everything else she could fling at him, but not that. She’d changed his life with hardly more than a look. She had to know it. “I should never have put my hands on you, but I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted you. I needed you. You have to believe that.”

“I’ll tell you what I believe,” she said quietly, because every word he spoke was another slice into her heart. She’d finished with being used. “You came here for the Rembrandt, and you meant to find it no matter who or what you had to go through. My father and I were means to an end. Nothing more, nothing less.”

He had to take it, had to let her say it, but there’d be no lies between them any longer. “I came for the Rembrandt. When I walked through the door I only had one priority, to find it. But I didn’t know you when I walked through the door. I wasn’t in love with you then.”

“Is this the part where you say everything changed?” she demanded, falling back on fury. “Shall we wait for the violins?” She was weakening. She turned away and leaned on the post of the bed. “Do better, Adam.”

She could be cruel. He remembered her father’s warning. He only wished he believed he had a defense. “I can’t do better than the truth.”

“Truth? What the hell do you know about truth?” She whirled back around, eyes damp now and shimmering with heat. “I stood here in this room and told you everything, everything I knew about my father. I trusted you with his welfare, the most important thing in my life. Where was your truth then?”

“I had a commitment. Do you think it was easy for me to sit here and listen, knowing I couldn’t give you what you were giving me?”

“Yes.” Her tone was dead calm, but her eyes were fierce. “Yes, I think it was a matter of routine for you. If you’d told me that night, the next day or the next, I might’ve believed you. If I’d heard it from you, I might’ve forgiven you.”

Timing. Hadn’t she told him how vital timing could be? Now he felt her slipping away from him, but he had nothing but excuses to give her. “I was going to tell you everything, start to finish, tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Slowly she nodded. “Tomorrows are very convenient. A pity for us all how rarely they come.”

All the warmth, all the fire, that had drawn him to her was gone. He’d only seen this look on her face once before—when Stuart had backed her into a corner and she’d had no escape. Stuart had used physical dominance, but it was no prettier than the emotional pressure Adam knew he used. “I’m sorry, Kirby. If I’d taken the risk and told you this morning, it would’ve been different for all of us.”

“I don’t want your apology!” The tears beat her and poured out. She’d sacrificed everything else, now her pride was gone, as well. “I thought I’d found the man I could share my life with. I fell in love with you in the flash of an instant. No questions, no doubts. I believed everything you said to me. I gave you everything I had. In all my life no one’s been allowed to know me as you did. I entrusted you with everything I am and you used me.” Turning, she pressed her face into the bedpost.

He had, he couldn’t deny it even to himself. He’d used her, as Stuart had used her. As Melanie had used her. Loving her made no difference, yet he had to hope it made all the difference. “Kirby.” It took all the strength he had not to go to her, to comfort her, but he’d only be comforting himself if he put his arms around her now. “There’s nothing you can say to me I haven’t said to myself. I came here to do a job, but I fell in love with you. There wasn’t any warning for me, either. I know I’ve hurt you. There’s nothing I can do to turn back the clock.”

“Do you expect me to fall into your arms? Do you expect me to say nothing else matters but us?” She turned, and though her cheeks were still damp, her eyes were dry. “It all matters,” she said flatly. “Your job’s finished here, Adam. You’ve recovered your Rembrandt. Take it, you earned it.”

“You’re not going to cut me out of your life.”

“You’ve done that for me.”

“No.” The fury and frustration took over so that he grabbed her arm and jerked her against him. “No, you’ll have to adjust to the way things are, because I’m coming back.” He ran his hands down her hair, and they weren’t steady. “You can make me suffer. By God, you can do it. I’ll give you that, Kirby, but I’ll be back.”

Before his anger could push him too far, he whirled around and left her alone.

Fairchild was waiting for him, sitting calmly in the parlor by the fire. “I thought you’d need this.” Without getting up, he gestured to the glass of Scotch on the table beside him. He waited until Adam had tossed it back. He didn’t need to be told what had passed between them. “I’m sorry. She’s hurt. Perhaps in time the wounds will close and she’ll be able to listen.”

Adam’s knuckles whitened on the glass. “That’s what I told her, but I didn’t believe it. I betrayed her.” His glance lowered and settled on the older man. “And you.”

“You did what you had to do. You had a part to play.” Fairchild spread his hands on his knees and stared at them, thinking of his own part. “She would’ve dealt with it, Adam. She’s strong enough. But even Kirby has a breaking point. Melanie… It was too soon after Melanie.”

“She won’t let me comfort her.” It was that anguish that had him turning to stare out of the window. “She looks so wounded, and my being here only makes it harder for her.” Steadying himself, he stared out at nothing. “I’ll be out as soon as I can pack.” He turned, his head only, and looked at the small, balding man in front of the fire. “I love her, Philip.”

In silence Fairchild watched Adam walk away. For the first time in his six decades he felt old. Old and tired. With a deep, deep sigh he rose and went to his daughter.

He found her curled on her bed, her head cradled by her knees and arms. She sat silent and unmoving and, he knew, utterly, utterly beaten. When he sat beside her, her head jerked up. Slowly, with his hand stroking her hair, her muscles relaxed.

“Do we ever stop making fools of ourselves, Papa?”

“You’ve never been a fool.”

“Oh, yes, yes, it seems I have.” Settling her chin on her knees, she stared straight ahead. “I lost our bet. I guess you’ll be breaking open that box of cigars you’ve been saving.”

“I think we can consider the extenuating circumstances.”

“How generous of you.” She tried to smile and failed. “Aren’t you going to the hospital to be with Harriet?”

“Yes, of course.”

“You’d better go then. She needs you.”

His thin, bony hand continued to stroke her hair. “Don’t you?”

“Oh, Papa.” Tears came in a flood as she turned into his arms.

* * *

Kirby followed Cards downstairs as he carried her bags. In the week since the discovery of the Rembrandt she’d found it impossible to settle. She found no comfort in her art, no comfort in her home. Everything here held memories she could no longer deal with. She slept little and ate less. She knew she was losing touch with the person she was, and so she’d made plans to force herself back.

She opened the door for Cards and stared out at the bright, cheery morning. It made her want to weep.

“I don’t know why a sensible person would get up at this ridiculous hour to drive to the wilderness.”

Kirby forced back the gloom and turned to watch her father stride down the stairs in a ratty bathrobe and bare feet. What hair he had left was standing on end. “The early bird gathers no moss,” she told him. “I want to get to the lodge and settle in. Want some coffee?”

“Not while I’m sleeping,” he muttered as she nuzzled his cheek. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, going off to that shack in the Himalayas.”

“It’s Harriet’s very comfortable cabin in the Adirondacks, twenty miles from Lake Placid.”

“Don’t nitpick. You’ll be alone.”

“I’ve been alone before,” she reminded him. “You’re annoyed because you won’t have anyone but Cards to shout at for a few weeks.”

“He never shouts back.” But even as he grumbled, Fairchild was studying Kirby’s face. The shadows were still under her eyes and the loss of weight was much too apparent. “Tulip should go with you. Someone has to make you eat.”

“I’m going to do that. Mountain air should make me ravenous.” When he continued to frown at her, she touched his cheek. “Don’t worry, Papa.”

“I am worried.” Taking her shoulders, he held her at arm’s length. “For the first time in your life, you’re causing me genuine concern.”

“A few pounds, Papa.”

“Kirby.” He cupped her face in his strong, thin hand. “You have to talk to Adam.”

“No!” The word came out violently. With an effort, she drew a steadying breath. “I’ve said all I want to say to Adam. I need time and some solitude, that’s all.”

“Running away, Kirby?”

“As fast as I can. Papa, Rick proposed to me again before he left.”

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” he demanded. “He always proposes to you before he leaves.”

“I nearly said yes.” She lifted her hands to his, willing him to understand. “I nearly said yes because it seemed an easy way out. I’d have ruined his life.”

“What about yours?”

“I have to glue the pieces back together. Papa, I’ll be fine. It’s Harriet who needs you now.”

He thought of his friend, his oldest and closest friend. He thought of the grief. “Melanie’s going to Europe when she’s fully recovered.”

“I know.” Kirby tried not to remember the gun, or the hate. “Harriet told me. She’ll need both of us when Melly’s gone. If I can’t help myself, how can I help Harriet?”

“Melanie won’t see Harriet. The girl’s destroying herself with hate.” He looked at his own daughter, his pride, his treasure. “The sooner Melanie’s out of the hospital and thousands of miles away, the better it’ll be for everyone.”

She knew what he’d done, how he’d fought against his feelings about Melanie to keep from causing either her or Harriet more grief. He’d comforted them both without releasing his own fury. She held him tightly a moment, saying nothing. Needing to say nothing.

“We all need some time,” she murmured. When she drew away, she was smiling. She wouldn’t leave him with tears in her eyes. “I’ll cloister myself in the wilderness and sculpt while you pound on your hawk.”

“Such a wicked tongue in such a pretty face.”

“Papa…” Absently she checked the contents of her purse. “Whatever painting you do will be done under your own name?” When he didn’t answer, she glanced up, narrowing her eyes. “Papa?”

“All my paintings will be Fairchilds. Haven’t I given you my word?” He sniffed and looked injured. Kirby began to feel alarmed.

“This obsession with sculpting,” she began, eyeing him carefully. “You don’t have it in your head to attempt an emulation of a Rodin or Cellini?”

“You ask too many questions,” he complained as he nudged her toward the door. “The day’s wasting away, better get started. Don’t forget to write.”

Kirby paused on the porch and turned back to him. “It’ll take you years,” she decided. “If you ever acquire the talent. Go ahead and play with your hawk.” She kissed his forehead. “I love you, Papa.”

He watched her dart down the steps and into her car. “One should never interfere in the life of one’s child,” he murmured. Smiling broadly, he waved goodbye. When she was out of sight, he went directly to the phone.

* * *

The forest had always appealed to her. In mid-autumn, it shouted with life. The burst of colors were a last swirling fling before the trees went into the final cycle. It was an order Kirby accepted—birth, growth, decay, rebirth. Still, after three days alone, she hadn’t found her serenity.

The stream she walked past rushed and hissed. The air was brisk and tangy. She was miserable.

She’d nearly come to terms with her feelings about Melanie. Her childhood friend was ill, had been ill for a long, long time and might never fully recover. It hadn’t been a betrayal any more than cancer was a betrayal. But it was a malignancy Kirby knew she had to cut out of her life. She’d nearly accepted it, for Melanie’s sake and her own.

She could come to terms with Melanie, but she had yet to deal with Adam. He’d had no illness, nor a lifetime of resentments to feed it. He’d simply had a job to do. And that was too cold for her to accept.

With her hands in her pockets, she sat down on a log and scowled into the water. Her life, she admitted, was a mess. She was a mess. And she was damn sick of it.

She tried to tell herself she’d put Adam out of her life. She hadn’t. Yes, she’d refused to listen to him. She’d made no attempt to contact him. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough, Kirby decided, because it left things unfinished. Now she’d never know if he’d had any real feelings for her. She’d never know if, even briefly, he’d belonged to her.

Perhaps it was best that way.

Standing, she began to walk again, scuffing the leaves that danced around her feet. She was tired of herself. Another first. It wasn’t going to go on, she determined. Whatever the cost, she was going to whip Kirby Fairchild back into shape. Starting now. At a brisk pace, she started back to the cabin.

She liked the way it looked, set deep in the trees by itself. The roof was pitched high and the glass sparkled. Today, she thought as she went in through the back door, she’d work. After she’d worked, she’d eat until she couldn’t move.

Peeling off her coat as she went, she walked directly to the worktable she’d set up in the corner of the living room. Without looking around, she tossed the coat aside and looked at her equipment. She hadn’t touched it in days. Now she sat and picked up a formless piece of wood. This was to be her Passion. Perhaps now more than ever, she needed to put that emotion into form.

There was silence as she explored the feel and life of the wood in her hands. She thought of Adam, of the nights, the touches, the tastes. It hurt. Passion could. Using it, she began to work.

* * *

An hour slipped by. She only noticed when her fingers cramped. With a sigh, she set the wood down and stretched them. The healing had begun. She could be certain of it now. “A start,” she murmured to herself. “It’s a start.”

“It’s Passion. I can already see it.”

The knife slipped out of her hand and clattered on the table as she whirled. Across the room, calmly sitting in a faded wingback chair, was Adam. She’d nearly sprung out of the chair to go to him before she stopped herself. He looked the same, just the same. But nothing was. That she had to remember.

“How did you get in here?”

He heard the ice in her voice. But he’d seen her eyes. In that one instant, she’d told him everything he’d ached for. Still, he knew she couldn’t be rushed. “The front door wasn’t locked.” He rose and crossed to her. “I came inside to wait for you, but when you came in, you looked so intense; then you started right in. I didn’t want to disturb your work.” When she said nothing, he picked up the wood and turned it over in his hand. He thought it smoldered. “Amazing,” he murmured. “Amazing what power you have.” Just holding it made him want her more, made him want what she’d put into the wood. Carefully he set it down again, but his eyes were just as intense when he studied her. “What the hell’ve you been doing? Starving yourself?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She stood and walked away from him, but she didn’t know where to go.

“Am I to blame for that, too?”

His voice was quiet, serious. She’d never be able to resist that tone. Gathering her strength, she turned back to him. “Did Tulip send you to check up on me?”

She was too thin. Damn it. Had the pounds melted off her? She was so small. How could she be so small and look so arrogant? He wanted to go to her. Beg. He was nearly certain she’d listen now. Yet she wouldn’t want it that way. Instead, he tucked his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “This is a cozy little place. I wandered around a bit while you were out.”

“Glad you made yourself at home.”

“It’s everything Harriet said it would be.” He looked at her again and smiled. “Isolated, cozy, charming.”

She lifted a brow. It was easiest with the distance between them. “You’ve spoken to Harriet?”

“I took your portrait to the gallery.”

Emotion came and went again in her eyes. Picking up a small brass pelican, she caressed it absently. “My portrait?”

“I promised her she could exhibit it when I’d finished.” He watched her nervous fingers run over the brass. “It wasn’t difficult to finish without you. I saw you everywhere I looked.”

Quickly she turned to walk to the front wall. It was all glass, open to the woods. No one could feel trapped with that view. Kirby clung to it. “Harriet’s having a difficult time.”

“The strain shows a bit.” In her, he thought, and in you. “I think it’s better for her that Melanie won’t see her at this point. With Stuart out of the way, the gallery’s keeping Harriet busy.” He stared at her back, trying to imagine what expression he’d find on her face. “Why aren’t you pressing charges, Kirby?”

“For what purpose?” she countered. She set the piece of brass down. A crutch was a crutch, and she was through with them. “Both Stuart and Melanie are disgraced, banished from the elite that means so much to them. The publicity’s been horrid. They have no money, no reputation. Isn’t that punishment enough?”

“Melanie tried to kill you. Twice.” Suddenly furious at the calm, even tone, he went to her and spun her around. “Damn it, Kirby, she wanted you dead!”

“It was she who nearly died.” Her voice was still even, but she took a step back, from him. “The police have to accept my story that the gun went off accidentally, even if others don’t. I could have sent Melly to jail. Wouldn’t I feel avenged watching Harriet suffer?”

Adam forced back the impatience and stared through the glass. “She’s worried about you.”

“Harriet?” Kirby shrugged. “There’s no need. When you see her, tell her I’m well.”

“You can tell her yourself when we get back.”

“We?” The lightest hint of temper entered her voice. Nothing could have relieved him more. “I’m going to be here for some time yet.”

“Fine. I’ve nothing better to do.”

“That wasn’t an invitation.”

“Harriet already gave me one,” he told her easily. He gave the room another sweeping glance while Kirby smoldered. “The place looks big enough for two.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, but don’t let me spoil your plans.” She spun on her heel and headed for the stairs. Before she’d gotten five feet, his fingers curled around her arm and held her still. When she whirled, he saw that his gypsy was back.

“You don’t really think I’d let you leave? Kirby, you disappoint me.”

“You don’t let me do anything, Adam. Nor do you prevent me from doing anything.”

“Only when it’s necessary.” While she stood rigid, he put his hands on her shoulders. “You’re going to listen to me this time. And you’re going to start listening in just a minute.”

He pressed his mouth to hers as he’d needed to for weeks. She didn’t resist. Nor did she respond. He could feel her fighting the need to do both. He could press her, he knew, and she’d give in to him. Then he might never really have her. Slowly their gazes locked; he straightened.

“You’re nearly through making me suffer,” he murmured. “I’ve paid, Kirby, in every moment I haven’t been with you. Through every night you haven’t been beside me. When are you going to stop punishing me?”

“I don’t want to punish you.” It was true. She’d already forgiven him. Yet, her confidence, that strong, thin shield she’d always had, had suffered an enormous blow. This time when she stepped back he didn’t try to stop her. “I know we parted badly. Maybe it’d be best if we just admitted we’d both made a mistake and left it at that. I realize you did what you had to do. I’ve always done the same. It’s time I got on with my life and you with yours.”

He felt a quick jiggle of panic. She was too calm, much too calm. He wanted emotion from her, any kind she’d give. “What sort of life would either of us have without the other?”

None. But she shook her head. “I said we made a mistake—”

“And now you’re going to tell me you don’t love me?”

She looked straight at him and opened her mouth. Weakening, she shifted her gaze to just over his shoulder. “No, I don’t love you, Adam. I’m sorry.”

She’d nearly cut him off at the knees. If she hadn’t looked away at the last instant, it would’ve been over for him. “I’d’ve thought you could lie better than that.” In one move he closed the distance between them. His arms were around her, firm, secure. The same, she thought. Nothing had changed after all. “I’ve given you two weeks, Kirby. Maybe I should give you more time, but I can’t.” He buried his face in her hair while she squeezed her eyes shut. She’d been wrong, she remembered. She’d been wrong about so many things. Could this be right?

“Adam, please…”

“No, no more. I love you.” He drew away, barely resisting the need to shake her. “I love you and you’ll have to get used to it. It isn’t going to change.”

She curled her hand into a fist before she could stroke his cheek. “I think you’re getting pompous again.”

“Then you’ll have to get used to that, too. Kirby…” He framed her face with his hands. “How many ways would you like me to apologize?”

“No.” Shaking her head she moved away again. She should be able to think, she warned herself. She had to think. “I don’t need apologies, Adam.”

“You wouldn’t,” he murmured. Forgiveness would come as easily to her as every other emotion. “Your father and I had a long talk before I drove up here.”

“Did you?” She gave her attention to a bowl of dried flowers. “How nice.”

“He’s given me his word he’ll no longer…emulate paintings.”

With her back to him, she smiled. The pain vanished without her realizing it, and with it, the doubts. They loved. There was so little else in life. Still smiling, Kirby decided she wouldn’t tell Adam of her father’s ambition with sculpting. Not just yet. “I’m glad you convinced him,” she said with her tongue in her cheek.

“He decided to concede the point to me, since I’m going to be a member of the family.”

With a flutter of her lashes, she turned. “How lovely. Is Papa adopting you?”

“That wasn’t precisely the relationship we discussed.” Crossing to her, he took her into his arms again. This time he felt the give and the strength. “Tell me again that you don’t love me.”

“I don’t love you,” she murmured, and pulled his mouth to hers. “I don’t want you to hold me.” Her arms wound around his neck. “I don’t want you to kiss me again. Now.” Her lips clung to his, opening, giving. As the heat built, he groaned and drew her in.

“Obstinate, aren’t you?” he muttered.

“Invariably.”

“But are you going to marry me?”

“On my terms.”

When her head tilted back, he ran kisses up the length of her throat. “Which are?”

“I may come easy, but I don’t come free.”

“What do you want, a marriage settlement?” On a half laugh, he drew away. She was his, whoever, whatever she was. He’d never let her go again. “Can’t you think of anything but money?”

“I’m fond of money—and we still have to discuss my sitting fee. However…” She drew a deep breath. “My terms for marriage are four children.”

“Four?” Even knowing Kirby, he’d been caught off guard. “Four children?”

She moistened her lips but her voice was strong. “I’m firm on that number, Adam. The point’s non-negotiable.” Then her eyes were young and full of needs. “I want children. Your children.”

Every time he thought he loved her completely, he found he could love her more. Still more. “Four,” he repeated with a slow nod. “Any preference to gender?”

The breath she’d been holding came out on a laugh. No, she hadn’t been wrong. They loved. There was very little else. “I’m flexible, though a mix of some sort would be nice.” She tossed her head back and smiled up at him. “What do you think?”

He swept her into his arms then headed for the stairs. “I think we’d better get started.”

Treasures Lost, Treasures Found

Nora Roberts

Chapter 1

He had believed in it. Edwin J. Hardesty hadn’t been the kind of man who had fantasies or followed dreams, but sometime during his quiet, literary life he had looked for a pot of gold. From the information in the reams of notes, the careful charts and the dog-eared research books, he thought he’d found it.

In the panelled study, a single light shot a beam across a durable oak desk. The light fell over a hand—narrow, slender, without the affectation of rings or polish. Yet even bare, it remained an essentially feminine hand, the kind that could be pictured holding a porcelain cup or waving a feather fan. It was a surprisingly elegant hand for a woman who didn’t consider herself elegant, delicate or particularly feminine. Kathleen Hardesty was, as her father had been, and as he’d directed her to be, a dedicated educator.

Minds were her concern—the expanding and the fulfilling of them. This included her own as well as every one of her students’. For as long as she could remember, her father had impressed upon her the importance of education. He’d stressed the priority of it over every other aspect of life. Education was the cohesiveness that held civilization together. She grew up surrounded by the dusty smell of books and the quiet, placid tone of patient instruction.

She’d been expected to excel in school, and she had. She’d been expected to follow her father’s path into education. At twenty-eight, Kate was just finishing her first year at Yale as an assistant professor of English literature.

In the dim light of the quiet study, she looked the part. Her light brown hair was tidily secured at the nape of her neck with all the pins neatly tucked in. Her practical tortoiseshell reading glasses seemed dark against her milk-pale complexion. Her high cheekbones gave her face an almost haughty look that was often dispelled by her warm, doe-brown eyes.

Though her jacket was draped over the back of her chair, the white blouse she wore was still crisp. Her cuffs were turned back to reveal delicate wrists and a slim Swiss watch on her left arm. Her earrings were tasteful gold studs given to Kate by her father on her twenty-first birthday, the only truly personal gift she could ever remember receiving from him.

Seven long years later, one short week after her father’s funeral, Kate sat at his desk. The room still carried the scent of his cologne and a hint of the pipe tobacco he’d only smoked in that room.

She’d finally found the courage to go through his papers.

She hadn’t known he was ill. In his early sixties, Hardesty had looked robust and strong. He hadn’t told his daughter about his visits to the doctor, his check-ups, ECG results or the little pills he carried with him everywhere. She’d found his pills in his inside pocket after his fatal heart attack. Kate hadn’t known his heart was weak because Hardesty never shared his shortcomings with anyone. She hadn’t known about the charts and research papers in his desk; he’d never shared his dreams either.

Now that she was aware of both, Kate wasn’t certain she ever really knew the man who’d raised her. The memory of her mother was dim; that was to be expected after more than twenty years. Her father had been alive just a week before.

Leaning back for a moment, she pushed her glasses up and rubbed the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. She tried, with only the desk lamp between herself and the dark, to think of her father in precise terms.

Physically, he’d been a tall, big man with a full head of steel-gray hair and a patient face. He had favored dark suits and white shirts. The only vanity she could remember had been his weekly manicures. But it wasn’t a physical picture Kate struggled with now. As a father…

He was never unkind. In all her memories, Kate couldn’t remember her father ever raising his voice to her, ever striking her. He never had to, she thought with a sigh. All he had to do was express disappointment, disapproval, and that was enough.

He had been brilliant, tireless, dedicated. But all of that had been directed toward his vocation. As a father, Kate reflected…He’d never been unkind. That was all that would come to her, and because of it she felt a fresh wave of guilt and grief.

She hadn’t disappointed him, that much she could cling to. He had told her so himself, in just those words, when she was accepted by the English Department at Yale. Nor had he expected her ever to disappoint him. Kate knew, though it had never been discussed, that her father wanted her to become head of the English Department within ten years. That had been the extent of his dream for her.

Had he ever realized just how much she’d loved him? She wondered as she shut her eyes, tired now from the hours of reading her father’s handwriting. Had he ever known just how desperately she’d wanted to please him? If he’d just once said he was proud…

In the end, she hadn’t had those few intense last moments with her father one reads about in books or sees in the movies. When she’d arrived at the hospital, he was already gone. There’d been no time for words. No time for tears.

Now she was on her own in the tidy Cape Cod house she’d shared with him for so long. The housekeeper would still come on Wednesday mornings, and the gardener would come on Saturdays to cut the grass. She alone would have to deal with the paperwork, the sorting, the shifting, the clearing out.

That could be done. Kate leaned back further in her father’s worn leather chair. It could be done because all of those things were practical matters. She dealt easily with the practical. But what about these papers she’d found? What would she do about the carefully drawn charts, the notebooks filled with information, directions, history, theory? In part, because she was raised to be logical, she considered filing them neatly away.

But there was another part, the part that enabled one to lose oneself in fantasies, in dreams, in the “perhapses” of life. This was the part that allowed Kate to lose herself totally in the possibilities of the written word, in the wonders of a book. The papers on her father’s desk beckoned her.

He’d believed in it. She bent over the papers again. He’d believed in it or he never would have wasted his time documenting, searching, theorizing. She would never be able to discuss it with him. Yet, in a way, wasn’t he telling her about it through his words?

Treasure. Sunken treasure. The stuff of fiction and Hollywood movies. Judging by the stack of papers and notebooks on his desk, Hardesty must have spent months, perhaps years, compiling information on the location of an English merchant ship lost off the coast of North Carolina two centuries before.

It brought Kate an immediate picture of Edward Teach—Blackbeard, the bloodthirsty pirate with the crazed superstitions and reign of terror. The stuff of romances, she thought. Of romance…

Ocracoke Island. The memory was sharp, sweet and painful. Kate had blocked out everything that had happened that summer four years before. Everything and everyone. Now, if she was to make a rational decision about what was to be done, she had to think of those long, lazy months on the remote Outer Banks of North Carolina.

She’d begun work on her doctorate. It had been a surprise when her father had announced that he planned to spend the summer on Ocracoke and invited her to accompany him. Of course, she’d gone, taking her portable typewriter, boxes of books, reams of paper. She hadn’t expected to be seduced by white sand beaches and the call of gulls. She hadn’t expected to fall desperately and insensibly in love.

Insensibly, Kate repeated to herself, as if in defense. She’d have to remember that was the most apt adjective. There’d been nothing sensible about her feelings for Ky Silver.

Even the name, she mused, was unique, unconventional, flashy. They’d been as suitable for each other as a peacock and a wren. Yet that hadn’t stopped her from losing her head, her heart and her innocence during that balmy, magic summer.

She could still see him at the helm of the boat her father had rented, steering into the wind, laughing, dark hair flowing wildly. She could still remember that heady, weightless feeling when they’d gone scuba diving in the warm coastal waters. Kate had been too caught up in what was happening to herself to think about her father’s sudden interest in boating and diving.

She’d been too swept away by her own feelings of astonishment that a man like Ky Silver should be attracted to someone like her to notice her father’s preoccupation with currents and tides. There’d been too much excitement for her to realize that her father never bothered with fishing rods like the other vacationers.

But now her youthful fancies were behind her, Kate told herself. Now, she could clearly remember how many hours her father had closeted himself in his hotel room, reading book after book that he brought with him from the mainland library. He’d been researching even then. She was sure he’d continued that research in the following summers when she had refused to go back. Refused to go back, Kate remembered, because of Ky Silver.

Ky had asked her to believe in fairy tales. He asked her to give him the impossible. When she refused, frightened, he shrugged and walked away without a second look. She had never gone back to the white sand and gulls since then.

Kate looked down again at her father’s papers. She had to go back now—go back and finish what her father had started. Perhaps, more than the house, the trust fund, the antique jewelry that had been her mother’s, this was her father’s legacy to her. If she filed those papers neatly away, they’d haunt her for the rest of her life.

She had to go back, Kate reaffirmed as she took off her glasses and folded them neatly on the blotter. And it was Ky Silver she’d have to go to. Her father’s aspirations had drawn her away from Ky once; now, four years later, they were drawing her back.

But Dr. Kathleen Hardesty knew the difference between fairy tales and reality. Reaching in her father’s desk drawer, she drew out a sheet of thick creamy stationery and began to write.

* * *

Ky let the wind buffet him as he opened the throttle. He liked speed in much the same way he liked a lazy afternoon in the hammock. They were two of the things that made life worthwhile. He was used to the smell of salt spray, but he still inhaled deeply. He was well accustomed to the vibration of the deck under his feet, but he still felt it. He wasn’t a man to let anything go unnoticed or unappreciated.

He grew up in this quiet, remote little coastal town, and though he’d traveled and intended to travel more, he didn’t plan to live anywhere else. It suited him—the freedom of the sea, and the coziness of a small community.

He didn’t resent the tourists because he knew they helped keep the village alive, but he preferred the island in winter. Then the storms blew wild and cold, and only the hearty would brave the ferry across Hatteras Inlet.

He fished, but unlike the majority of his neighbors, he rarely sold what he caught. What he pulled out of the sea, he ate. He dove, occasionally collecting shells, but again, this was for his own pleasure. Often he took tourists out on his boat to fish or to scuba dive, because there were times he enjoyed the company. But there were afternoons, like this sparkling one, when he simply wanted the sea to himself.

He had always been restless. His mother had said that he came into the world two weeks early because he grew impatient waiting. Ky turned thirty-two that spring, but was far from settled. He knew what he wanted—to live as he chose. The trouble was that he wasn’t certain just what he wanted to choose.

At the moment, he chose the open sky and the endless sea. There were other moments when he knew that that wouldn’t be enough.

But the sun was hot, the breeze cool and the shoreline was drawing near. The boat’s motor was purring smoothly and in the small cooler was a tidy catch of fish he’d cook up for his supper that night. On a crystal, sparkling afternoon, perhaps it was enough.

From the shore he looked like a pirate might if there were pirates in the twentieth century. His hair was long enough to curl over his ears and well over the collar of a shirt had he worn one. It was black, a rich, true black that might have come from his Arapaho or Sicilian blood. His eyes were the deep, dark green of the sea on a cloudy day. His skin was bronzed from years in the sun, taut from the years of swimming and pulling in nets. His bone structure was also part of his heritage, sculpted, hard, defined.

When he smiled as he did now, racing the wind to shore, his face took on that reckless freedom women found irresistible. When he didn’t smile, his eyes could turn as cold as a lion’s before a leap. He discovered long ago that women found that equally irresistible.

Ky drew back on the throttle so that the boat slowed, rocked, then glided into its slip in Silver Lake Harbor. With the quick, efficient movements of one born to the sea, he leaped onto the dock to secure the lines.

“Catch anything?”

Ky straightened and turned. He smiled, but absently, as one does at a brother seen almost every day of one’s life. “Enough. Things slow at the Roost?”

Marsh smiled, and there was a brief flicker of family resemblance, but his eyes were a calm light brown and his hair was carefully styled. “Worried about your investment?”

Ky gave a half-shrug. “With you running things?”

Marsh didn’t comment. They knew each other as intimately as men ever know each other. One was restless, the other calm. The opposition never seemed to matter. “Linda wants you to come up for dinner. She worries about you.”

She would, Ky thought, amused. His sister-in-law loved to mother and fuss, even though she was five years younger than Ky. That was one of the reasons the restaurant she ran with Marsh was such a success—that, plus Marsh’s business sense and the hefty investment and shrewd renovations Ky had made. Ky left the managing up to his brother and his sister-in-law. He didn’t mind owning a restaurant, even keeping half an eye on the profit and loss, but he certainly had no interest in running one.

After the lines were secure, he wiped his palms down the hips of his cut-offs. “What’s the special tonight?”

Marsh dipped his hands into his front pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Bluefish.”

Grinning, Ky tossed back the lid of his cooler revealing his catch. “Tell Linda not to worry. I’ll eat.”

“That’s not going to satisfy her.” Marsh glanced at his brother as Ky looked out to sea. “She thinks you’re alone too much.”

“You’re only alone too much if you don’t like being alone.” Ky glanced back over his shoulder. He didn’t want to debate now, when the exhilaration of the speed and the sea were still upon him. But he’d never been a man to placate. “Maybe you two should think about having another baby, then Linda would be too busy to worry about big brothers.”

“Give me a break. Hope’s only eighteen months old.”

“You’ve got to add nine to that,” Ky reminded him carelessly. He was fond of his niece, despite—no, because she was a demon. “Anyway, it looks like the family lineage is in your hands.”

“Yeah.” Marsh shifted his feet, cleared his throat and fell silent. It was a habit he’d carried since childhood, one that could annoy or amuse Ky depending on his mood. At the moment, it was only mildly distracting.

Something was in the air. He could smell it, but he couldn’t quite identify it. A storm brewing, he wondered? One of those hot, patient storms that seemed capable of brewing for weeks. He was certain he could smell it.

“Why don’t you tell me what else is on your mind?” Ky suggested. “I want to get back to the house and clean these.”

“You had a letter. It was put in our box by mistake.”

It was a common enough occurrence, but by his brother’s expression Ky knew there was more. His sense of an impending storm grew sharper. Saying nothing, he held out his hand.

“Ky…” Marsh began. There was nothing he could say, just as there’d been nothing to say four years before. Reaching in his back pocket, he drew out the letter.

The envelope was made from heavy cream-colored paper. Ky didn’t have to look at the return address. The handwriting and the memories it brought leaped out at him. For a moment, he felt his breath catch in his lungs as it might if someone had caught him with a blow to the solar plexus. Deliberately, he expelled it. “Thanks,” he said, as if it meant nothing. He stuck the letter in his pocket before he picked up his cooler and gear.

“Ky—” Again Marsh broke off. His brother had turned his head, and the cool, half-impatient stare said very clearly—back off. “If you change your mind about dinner,” Marsh said.

“I’ll let you know.” Ky went down the length of the dock without looking back.

He was grateful he hadn’t bothered to bring his car down to the harbor. He needed to walk. He needed the fresh air and the exercise to keep his mind clear while he remembered what he didn’t want to remember. What he never really forgot.

Kate. Four years ago she’d walked out of his life with the same sort of cool precision with which she’d walked into it. She had reminded him of a Victorian doll—a little prim, a little aloof. He’d never had much patience with neatly folded hands or haughty manners, yet almost from the first instant he’d wanted her.

At first, he thought it was the fact that she was so different. A challenge—something for Ky Silver to conquer. He enjoyed teaching her to dive, and watching the precise step-by-step way she learned. It hadn’t been any hardship to look at her in a snug scuba suit, although she didn’t have voluptuous curves. She had a trim, neat, almost boy-like figure and what seemed like yards of thick, soft hair.

He could still remember the first time she took it down from its pristine knot. It left him breathless, hurting, fascinated. Ky would have touched it—touched her then and there if her father hadn’t been standing beside her. But if a man was clever, if a man was determined, he could find a way to be alone with a woman.

Ky had found ways. Kate had taken to diving as though she’d been born to it. While her father had buried himself in his books, Ky had taken Kate out on the water—under the water, to the silent, dreamlike world that had attracted her just as it had always attracted him.

He could remember the first time he kissed her. They had been wet and cool from a dive, standing on the deck of his boat. He was able to see the lighthouse behind her and the vague line of the coast. Her hair had flowed down her back, sleek from the water, dripping with it. He’d reached out and gathered it in his hand.

“What are you doing?”

Four years later, he could hear that low, cultured, eastern voice, the curiosity in it. It took no effort for him to see the curiosity that had been in her eyes.

“I’m going to kiss you.”

The curiosity had remained in her eyes, fascinating him. “Why?”

“Because I want to.”

It was as simple as that for him. He wanted to. Her body had stiffened as he’d drawn her against him. When her lips parted in protest, he closed his over them. In the time it takes a heart to beat, the rigidity had melted from her body. She’d kissed him with all the young, stored-up passion that had been in her—passion mixed with innocence. He was experienced enough to recognize her innocence, and that too had fascinated him. Ky had, foolishly, youthfully and completely, fallen in love.

Kate had remained an enigma to him, though they shared impassioned hours of laughter and long, lazy talks. He admired her thirst for learning and she had a predilection for putting knowledge into neat slots that baffled him. She was enthusiastic about diving, but it hadn’t been enough for her simply to be able to swim freely underwater, taking her air from tanks. She had to know how the tanks worked, why they were fashioned a certain way. Ky watched her absorb what he told her, and knew she’d retain it.

They had taken walks along the shoreline at night and she had recited poetry from memory. Beautiful words, Byron, Shelley, Keats. And he, who’d never been overly impressed by such things, had eaten it up because her voice had made the words somehow personal. Then she’d begin to talk about syntax, iambic pentameters, and Ky would find new ways to divert her.

For three months, he did little but think of her. For the first time, Ky had considered changing his lifestyle. His little cottage near the beach needed work. It needed furniture. Kate would need more than milk crates and the hammock that had been his style. Because he’d been young and had never been in love before, Ky had taken his own plans for granted.

She’d walked out on him. She’d had her own plans, and he hadn’t been part of them.

Her father came back to the island the following summer, and every summer thereafter. Kate never came back. Ky knew she had completed her doctorate and was teaching in a prestigious ivy league school where her father was all but a cornerstone. She had what she wanted. So, he told himself as he swung open the screen door of his cottage, did he. He went where he wanted, when he wanted. He called his own shots. His responsibilities extended only as far as he chose to extend them. To his way of thinking, that itself was a mark of success.

Setting the cooler on the kitchen floor, Ky opened the refrigerator. He twisted the top off a beer and drank half of it in one icy cold swallow. It washed some of the bitterness out of his mouth.

Calm now, and curious, he pulled the letter out of his pocket. Ripping it open, he drew out the single neatly written sheet.

Dear Ky,

You may or may not be aware that my father suffered a fatal heart attack two weeks ago. It was very sudden, and I’m currently trying to tie up the many details this involves.

In going through my father’s papers, I find that he had again made arrangements to come to the island this summer, and engage your services. I now find it necessary to take his place. For reasons which I’d rather explain in person, I need your help. You have my father’s deposit. When I arrive in Ocracoke on the fifteenth, we can discuss terms.

If possible, contact me at the hotel, or leave a message. I hope we’ll be able to come to a mutually agreeable arrangement. Please give my best to Marsh. Perhaps I’ll see him during my stay.

Best,

Kathleen Hardesty

So the old man was dead. Ky set down the letter and lifted his beer again. He couldn’t say he’d had any liking for Edwin Hardesty. Kate’s father had been a stringent, humorless man. Still, he hadn’t disliked him. Ky had, in an odd way, gotten used to his company over the last few summers. But this summer, it would be Kate.

Ky glanced at the letter again, then jogged his memory until he remembered the date. Two days, he mused. She’d be there in two days…to discuss terms. A smile played around the corners of his mouth but it didn’t have anything to do with humor. They’d discuss terms, he agreed silently as he scanned Kate’s letter again.

She wanted to take her father’s place. Ky wondered if she’d realized, when she wrote that, just how ironic it was. Kathleen Hardesty had been obediently dogging her father’s footsteps all her life. Why should that change after his death?

Had she changed? Ky wondered briefly. Would that fascinating aura of innocence and aloofness still cling to her? Or perhaps that had faded with the years. Would that rather sweet primness have developed into a rigidity? He’d see for himself in a couple of days, he realized, but tossed the letter onto the counter rather than into the trash.

So, she wanted to engage his services, he mused. Leaning both hands on either side of the sink, he looked out the window in the direction of the water he could smell, but not quite see. She wanted a business arrangement—the rental of his boat, his gear and his time. He felt the bitterness well up and swallowed it as cleanly as he had the beer. She’d have her business arrangement. And she’d pay. He’d see to that.

Ky left the kitchen with his catch still in the cooler. The appetite he’d worked up with salt spray and speed had vanished.

* * *

Kate pulled her car onto the ferry to Ocracoke and set the brake. The morning was cool and very clear. Even so, she was tempted to simply lean her head back and close her eyes. She wasn’t certain what impulse had pushed her to drive from Connecticut rather than fly, but now that she’d all but reached her destination, she was too weary to analyze.

In the bucket seat beside her was her briefcase, and inside, all the papers she’d collected from her father’s desk. Perhaps once she was in the hotel on the island, she could go through them again, understand them better. Perhaps the feeling that she was doing the right thing would come back. Over the last few days she’d lost that sense.

The closer she came to the island, the more she began to think she was making a mistake. Not to the island, Kate corrected ruthlessly—the closer she came to Ky. It was a fact, and Kate knew it was imperative to face facts so that they could be dealt with logically.

She had a little time left, a little time to calm the feelings that had somehow gotten stirred up during the drive south. It was foolish, and somehow it helped Kate to remind herself of that. She wasn’t a woman returning to a lover, but a woman hoping to engage a diver in a very specific venture. Past personal feelings wouldn’t enter into it because they were just that. Past.

The Kate Hardesty who’d arrived on Ocracoke four years ago had little to do with the Doctor Kathleen Hardesty who was going there now. She wasn’t young, inexperienced or impressionable. Those reckless, wild traits of Ky’s wouldn’t appeal to her now. They wouldn’t frighten her. They would be, if Ky agreed to her terms, business partners.

Kate felt the ferry move beneath her as she stared through the windshield. Yes, she thought, unless Ky had changed a great deal, the prospect of diving for treasure would appeal to his sense of adventure.

She knew enough about diving in the technical sense to be sure she’d find no one better equipped for the job. It was always advisable to have the best. More relaxed and less weary, Kate stepped out of her car to stand at the rail. From there she could watch the gulls swoop and the tiny uninhabited islands pass by. She felt a sense of homecoming, but pushed it away. Connecticut was home. Once Kate did what she came for, she’d go back.

The water swirled behind the boat. She couldn’t hear it over the motor, but looking down she could watch the wake. One island was nearly imperceptible under a flock of big, brown pelicans. It made her smile, pleased to see the odd, awkward-looking birds again. They passed the long spit of land, where fishermen parked trucks and tried their luck, near the point where bay met sea. She could watch the waves crash and foam where there was no shore, just a turbulent marriage of waters. That was something she hadn’t forgotten, though she hadn’t seen it since she left the island. Nor had she forgotten just how treacherous the current was along that verge.

Excitement. She breathed deeply before she turned back to her car. The treacherous was always exciting.

When the ferry docked, she had only a short wait before she could drive her car onto the narrow blacktop. The trip to town wouldn’t take long, and it wasn’t possible to lose your way if you stayed on the one long road. The sea battered on one side, the sound flowed smoothly on the other—both were deep blue in the late morning light.

Her nerves were gone, at least that’s what she told herself. It had just been a case of last minute jitters—very normal. She was prepared to see Ky again, speak to him, work with him if they could agree on the terms.

With the windows down, the soft moist air blew around her. It was soothing. She’d almost forgotten just how soothing air could be, or the sound of water lapping constantly against sand. It was right to come. When she saw the first faded buildings of the village, she felt a wave of relief. She was here. There was no turning back now.

The hotel where she had stayed that summer with her father was on the sound side of the island. It was small and quiet. If the service was a bit slow by northern standards, the view made up for it.

Kate pulled up in front and turned off the ignition. Self-satisfaction made her sigh. She’d taken the first step and was completely prepared for the next.

Then as she stepped out of the car, she saw him. For an instant, the confident professor of English literature vanished. She was only a woman, vulnerable to her own emotions.

Oh God, he hasn’t changed. Not at all. As Ky came closer, she could remember every kiss, every murmur, every crazed storm of their loving. The breeze blew his hair back from his face so that every familiar angle and plane was clear to her. With the sun warm on her skin, bright in her eyes, she felt the years spin back, then forward again. He hadn’t changed.

He hadn’t expected to see her yet. Somehow he thought she’d arrive that afternoon. Yet he found it necessary to go by the Roost that morning knowing the restaurant was directly across from the hotel where she’d be staying.

She was here, looking neat and a bit too thin in her tailored slacks and blouse. Her hair was pinned up so that the soft femininity of her neck and throat were revealed. Her eyes seemed too dark against her pale skin—skin Ky knew would turn golden slowly under the summer sun.

She looked the same. Soft, prim, calm. Lovely. He ignored the thud in the pit of his stomach as he stepped in front of her. He looked her up and down with the arrogance that was so much a part of him. Then he grinned because he had an overwhelming urge to strangle her.

“Kate. Looks like my timing’s good.”

She was almost certain she couldn’t speak and was therefore determined to speak calmly. “Ky, it’s nice to see you again.”

“Is it?”

Ignoring the sarcasm, Kate walked around to her trunk and released it. “I’d like to get together with you as soon as possible. There are some things I want to show you, and some business I’d like to discuss.”

“Sure, always open for business.”

He watched her pull two cases from her trunk, but didn’t offer to help. He saw there was no ring on her hand—but it wouldn’t have mattered.

“Perhaps we can meet this afternoon then, after I’ve settled in.” The sooner the better, she told herself. They would establish the purpose, the ground rules and the payment. “We could have lunch in the hotel.”

“No, thanks,” he said easily, leaning against the side of her car while she set her cases down. “You want me, you know where to find me. It’s a small island.”

With his hands in the pockets of his jeans, he walked away from her. Though she didn’t want to, Kate remembered that the last time he’d walked away, they’d stood in almost the same spot.

Picking up her cases, she headed for the hotel, perhaps a bit too quickly.

Chapter 2

She knew where to find him. If the island had been double in size, she’d still have known where to find him. Kate acknowledged that Ky hadn’t changed. That meant if he wasn’t out on his boat, he would be at home, in the small, slightly dilapidated cottage he owned near the beach. Because she felt it would be a strategic error to go after him too soon, she dawdled over her unpacking.

But there were memories even here, where she’d spent one giddy, whirlwind night of love with Ky. It had been the only time they were able to sleep together through the night, embracing each other in the crisp hotel sheets until the first light of dawn crept around the edges of the window shades. She remembered how reckless she’d felt during those few stolen hours, and how dull the morning had seemed because it brought them to an end.

Now she could look out the same window she had stood by then, staring out in the same direction she’d stared out then when she watched Ky walk away. She remembered the sky had been streaked with a rose color before it had brightened to a pure, pale blue.

Then, with her skin still warm from her lover’s touch and her mind glazed with lack of sleep and passion, Kate had believed such things could go on forever. But of course they couldn’t. She had seen that only weeks later. Passion and reckless nights of loving had to give way to responsibilities, obligations.

Staring out the same window, in the same direction, Kate could feel the sense of loss she’d felt that long ago dawn without the underlying hope that they’d be together again. And again.

They wouldn’t be together again, and there’d been no one else since that one heady summer. She had her career, her vocation, her books. She had had her taste of passion.

Turning away, she busied herself by rearranging everything she’d just arranged in her drawers and closet. When she decided she’d stalled in her hotel room long enough, Kate started out. She didn’t take her car. She walked, just as she always walked to Ky’s home.

She told herself she was over the shock of seeing him again. It was only natural that there be some strain, some discomfort. She was honest enough to admit that it would have been easier if there’d been only strain and discomfort, and not that one sharp quiver of pleasure. Kate acknowledged it, now that it had passed.

No, Ky Silver hadn’t changed, she reminded herself. He was still arrogant, self-absorbed and cocky. Those traits might have appealed to her once, but she’d been very young. If she were wise, she could use those same traits to persuade Ky to help her. Yes, those traits, she thought, and the tempting offer of a treasure hunt. Even at her most pessimistic, she couldn’t believe Ky would refuse. It was his nature to take chances.

This time she’d be in charge. Kate drew in a deep breath of warm air that tasted of sea. Somehow she felt it would steady her. Ky was going to find she was no longer naive, or susceptible to a few careless words of affection.

With her briefcase in hand, Kate walked through the village. This too was the same, she thought. She was glad of it. The simplicity and solitude still appealed to her. She enjoyed the dozens of little shops, the restaurants and small inns tucked here and there, all somehow using the harbor as a central point, the lighthouse as a landmark. The villagers still made the most of their notorious onetime resident and permanent ghost, Blackbeard. His name or face was lavishly displayed on store signs.

She passed the harbor, unconsciously scanning for Ky’s boat. It was there, in the same slip he’d always used—clean lines, scrubbed deck, shining hardware. The flying bridge gleamed in the afternoon light and looked the same as she remembered. Reckless, challenging. The paint was fresh and there was no film of salt spray on the bridge windows. However careless Ky had been about his own appearance or his home, he’d always pampered his boat.

The Vortex. Kate studied the flamboyant lettering on the stern. He could pamper, she thought again, but he also expected a lot in return. She knew the speed he could urge out of the second-hand cabin cruiser he’d lovingly reconstructed himself. Nothing could block the image of the days she’d stood beside him at the helm. The wind had whipped her hair as he’d laughed and pushed for speed, and more speed. Her heart thudded, her pulse raced until she was certain nothing and no one could catch them. She’d been afraid, of him, of the rush of wind—but she’d stayed with both. In the end, she’d left both.

He enjoyed the demanding, the thrilling, the frightening. Kate gripped the handle of her briefcase tighter. Isn’t that why she came to him? There were dozens of other experienced divers, many, many other experts on the coastal waters of the Outer Banks. There was only one Ky Silver.

“Kate? Kate Hardesty?”

At the sound of her name, Kate turned and felt the years tumble back again. “Linda!” This time there was no restraint. With an openness she showed to very few, Kate embraced the woman who dashed up to her, “It’s wonderful to see you.” With a laugh, she drew Linda away to study her. The same chestnut hair cut short and pert, the same frank, brown eyes. It seemed very little had changed on the island. “You look wonderful.”

“When I looked out the window and saw you, I could hardly believe it. Kate, you’ve barely changed at all.” With her usual candor and lack of pretention, Linda took a quick, thorough survey. It was quick only because she did things quickly, but it wasn’t subtle. “You’re too thin,” she decided. “But that might be jealousy.”

“You still look like a college freshman,” Kate returned. “That is jealousy.”

As swiftly as the laugh had come, Linda sobered. “I’m sorry about your father, Kate. These past weeks must’ve been difficult for you.”

Kate heard the sincerity, but she’d already tied up her grief and stored it away. “Ky told you?”

“Ky never tells me anything,” Linda said with a sniff. In an unconscious move, she glanced in the direction of his boat. It was in its slip and Kate had been walking north—in the direction of Ky’s cottage. There could be only one place she could have been going. “Marsh did. How long are you going to stay?”

“I’m not sure yet.” She felt the weight of her briefcase. Dreams held the same weight as responsibilities. “There are some things I have to do.”

“One of the things you have to do is have dinner at the Roost tonight. It’s the restaurant right across from your hotel.”

Kate looked back at the rough wooden sign. “Yes, I noticed it. Is it new?”

Linda glanced over her shoulder with a self-satisfied nod. “By Ocracoke standards. We run it.”

“We?”

“Marsh and I.” With a beaming smile, Linda held out her left hand. “We’ve been married for three years.” Then she rolled her eyes in a habit Kate remembered. “It only took me fifteen years to convince him he couldn’t live without me.”

“I’m happy for you.” She was, and if she felt a pang, she ignored it. “Married and running a restaurant. My father never filled me in on island gossip.”

“We have a daughter too. Hope. She’s a year and a half old and a terror. For some reason, she takes after Ky.” Linda sobered again, laying a hand lightly on Kate’s arm. “You’re going to see him now.” It wasn’t a question; she didn’t bother to disguise it as one.

“Yes.” Keep it casual, Kate ordered herself. Don’t let the questions and concern in Linda’s eyes weaken you. There were ties between Linda and Ky, not only newly formed family ones, but the older tie of the island. “My father was working on something. I need Ky’s help with it.”

Linda studied Kate’s calm face. “You know what you’re doing?”

“Yes.” She didn’t show a flicker of unease. Her stomach slowly wrapped itself in knots. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Okay.” Accepting Kate’s answer, but not satisfied, Linda dropped her hand. “Please come by—the restaurant or the house. We live just down the road from Ky. Marsh’ll want to see you, and I’d like to show off Hope—and our menu,” she added with a grin. “Both are outstanding.”

“Of course I’ll come by.” On impulse, she took both of Linda’s hands. “It’s really good to see you again. I know I didn’t keep in touch, but—”

“I understand.” Linda gave her hands a quick squeeze. “That was yesterday. I’ve got to get back, the lunch crowd’s pretty heavy during the season.” She let out a little sigh, wondering if Kate was as calm as she seemed. And if Ky were as big a fool as ever. “Good luck,” she murmured, then dashed across the street again.

“Thanks,” Kate said under her breath. She was going to need it.

The walk was as beautiful as she remembered. She passed the little shops with their display windows showing hand-made crafts or antiques. She passed the blue and white clapboard houses and the neat little streets on the outskirts of town with their bleached green lawns and leafy trees.

A dog raced back and forth on the length of his chain as she wandered by, barking at her as if he knew he was supposed to but didn’t have much interest in it. She could see the tower of the white lighthouse. There’d been a keeper there once, but those days were over. Then she was on the narrow path that led to Ky’s cottage.

Her palms were damp. She cursed herself. If she had to remember, she’d remember later, when she was alone. When she was safe.

The path was as it had been, just wide enough for a car, sparsely graveled, lined with bushes that always grew out a bit too far. The bushes and trees had always had a wild, overgrown look that suited the spot. That suited him.

Ky had told her he didn’t care much for visitors. If he wanted company, all he had to do was go into town where he knew everyone. That was typical of Ky Silver, Kate mused. If I want you, I’ll let you know. Otherwise, back off.

He’d wanted her once…. Nervous, Kate shifted the briefcase to her other hand. Whatever he wanted now, he’d have to hear her out. She needed him for what he was best at—diving and taking chances.

When the house came into view, she stopped, staring. It was still small, still primitive. But it no longer looked as though it would keel over on its side in a brisk wind.

The roof had been redone. Obviously Ky wouldn’t need to set out pots and pans during a rain any longer. The porch he’d once talked vaguely about building now ran the length of the front, sturdy and wide. The screen door that had once been patched in a half a dozen places had been replaced by a new one. Yet nothing looked new, she observed. It just looked right. The cedar had weathered to silver, the windows were untrimmed but gleaming. There was, much to her surprise, a spill of impatiens in a long wooden planter.

She’d been wrong, Kate decided as she walked closer. Ky Silver had changed. Precisely how, and precisely how much, she had yet to find out.

She was nearly to the first step when she heard sounds coming from the rear of the house. There was a shed back there, she remembered, full of boards and tools and salvage. Grateful that she didn’t have to meet him in the house, Kate walked around the side to the tiny backyard. She could hear the sea and knew it was less than a two-minute walk through high grass and sand dunes.

Did he still go down there in the evenings? she wondered. Just to look, he’d said. Just to smell. Sometimes he’d pick up driftwood or shells or whatever small treasures the sea gave up to the sand. Once he’d given her a small smooth shell that fit into the palm of her hand—very white with a delicate pink center. A woman with her first gift of diamonds could not have been more thrilled.

Shaking the memories away, she went into the shed. It was as tall as the cottage and half as wide. The last time she’d been there, it’d been crowded with planks and boards and boxes of hardware. Now she saw the hull of a boat. At a work table with his back to her, Ky sanded the mast.

“You’ve built it.” The words came out before she could stop them, full of astonished pleasure. How many times had he told her about the boat he’d build one day? It had seemed to Kate it had been his only concrete ambition. Mahogany on oak, he’d said. A seventeen-foot sloop that would cut through the water like a dream. He’d have bronze fastenings and teak on the deck. One day he’d sail the inner coastal waters from Ocracoke to New England. He’d described the boat so minutely that she’d seen it then just as clearly as she saw it now.

“I told you I would.” Ky turned away from the mast and faced her. She, in the doorway, had the sun at her back. He was half in shadow.

“Yes.” Feeling foolish, Kate tightened her grip on the briefcase. “You did.”

“But you didn’t believe me.” Ky tossed aside the sandpaper. Did she have to look so neat and cool, and impossibly lovely? A trickle of sweat ran down his back. “You always had a problem seeing beyond the moment.”

Reckless, impatient, compelling. Would he always bring those words to her mind? “You always had a problem dealing with the moment,” she said.

His brow lifted, whether in surprise or derision she couldn’t be sure. “Then it might be said we always had a problem.” He walked to her, so that the sun slanting through the small windows fell over him, then behind him. “But it didn’t always seem to matter.” To satisfy himself that he still could, Ky reached out and touched her face. She didn’t move, and her skin was as soft and cool as he remembered. “You look tired Kate.”

The muscles in her stomach quivered, but not her voice. “It was a long trip.”

His thumb brushed along her cheekbone. “You need some sun.”

This time she backed away. “I intend to get some.”

“So I gathered from your letter.” Pleased that she’d retreated first, Ky leaned against the open door. “You wrote that you wanted to talk to me in person. You’re here. Why don’t you tell me what you want?”

The cocky grin might have made her melt once. Now it stiffened her spine. “My father was researching a project. I intend to finish it.”

“So?”

“I need your help.”

Ky laughed and stepped past her into the sunlight. He needed the air, the distance. He needed to touch her again. “From your tone, there’s nothing you hate more than asking me for it.”

“No.” She stood firm, feeling suddenly strong and bitter. “Nothing.”

There was no humor in his eyes as he faced her again. The expression in them was cold and flat. She’d seen it before. “Then let’s understand each other before we start. You left the island and me, and took what I wanted.”

He couldn’t make her cringe now as he once had with only that look. “What happened four years ago has nothing to do with today.”

“The hell it doesn’t.” He came toward her again so that she took an involuntary step backward. “Still afraid of me?” he asked softly.

As it had a moment ago, the question turned the fear to anger. “No,” she told him, and meant it. “I’m not afraid of you, Ky. I’ve no intention of discussing the past, but I will agree that I left the island and you. I’m here now on business. I’d like you to hear me out. If you’re interested, we’ll discuss terms, nothing else.”

“I’m not one of your students, professor.” The drawl crept into his voice, as it did when he let it. “Don’t instruct.”

She curled her fingers tighter around the handle of her briefcase. “In business, there are always ground rules.”

“Nobody agreed to let you make them.”

“I made a mistake,” Kate said quietly as she fought for control. “I’ll find someone else.”

She’d taken only two steps away when Ky grabbed her arm. “No, you won’t.” The stormy look in his eyes made her throat dry. She knew what he meant. She’d never find anyone else that could make her feel as he made her feel, or want as he made her want. Deliberately, Kate removed his hand from her arm.

“I came here on business. I’ve no intention of fighting with you over something that doesn’t exist any longer.”

“We’ll see about that.” How long could he hold on? Ky wondered. It hurt just to look at her and to feel her withdrawing with every second that went by. “But for now, why don’t you tell me what you have in that businesslike briefcase, professor.”

Kate took a deep breath. She should have known it wouldn’t be easy. Nothing was ever easy with Ky. “Charts,” she said precisely. “Notebooks full of research, maps, carefully documented facts and precise theories. In my opinion, my father was very close to pinpointing the exact location of the Liberty, an English merchant vessel that sank, stores intact, off the North Carolina coast two hundred and fifty years ago.”

He listened without a comment or a change of expression from beginning to end. When she finished, Ky studied her face for one long moment. “Come inside,” he said and turned toward the house. “Show me what you’ve got.”

His arrogance made her want to turn away and go back to town exactly as she’d come. There were other divers, others who knew the coast and the waters as well as Ky did. Kate forced herself to calm down, forced herself to think. There were others, but if it was a choice between the devil she knew and the unknown, she had no choice. Kate followed him into the house.

This, too, had changed. The kitchen she remembered had had a paint splattered floor, with the only usable counter space being a tottering picnic table. The floor had been stripped and varnished, the cabinets redone, and scrubbed butcher block counters lined the sink. He had put in a skylight so that the sun spilled down over the picnic table, now re-worked and re-painted, with benches along either side.

“Did you do all of this yourself?”

“Yeah. Surprised?”

So he didn’t want to make polite conversation. Kate set her briefcase on the table. “Yes. You always seemed content that the walls were about to cave in on you.”

“I was content with a lot of things, once. Want a beer?”

“No.” Kate sat down and drew the first of her father’s notebooks out of her briefcase. “You’ll want to read these. It would be unnecessary and time-consuming for you to read every page, but if you’d look over the ones I’ve marked, I think you’ll have enough to go by.”

“All right.” Ky turned from the refrigerator, beer in hand. He sat, watching her over the rim as he took the first swallow, then he opened the notebook.

Edwin Hardesty’s handwriting was very clear and precise. He wrote down his facts in didactic, unromantic terms. What could have been exciting was as dry as a thesis, but it was accurate. Ky had no doubt of that.

The Liberty had been lost, with its stores of sugar, tea, silks, wine and other imports for the colonies. Hardesty had listed the manifest down to the last piece of hardtack. When it had left England, the ship had also been carrying gold. Twenty-five thousand in coins of the realm. Ky glanced up from the notebook to see Kate watching him.

“Interesting,” he said simply, and turned to the next page she marked.

There’d been only three survivors who’d washed up on the island. One of the crew had described the storm that had sunk the Liberty, giving details on the height of the waves, the splintering wood, the water gushing into the hole. It was a grim, grisly story which Hardesty had recounted in his pragmatic style, complete with footnotes. The crewman had also given the last known location of the ship before it had gone down. Ky didn’t require Hardesty’s calculations to figure the ship had sunk two-and-a-half miles off the coast of Ocracoke.

Going from one notebook to another, Ky read through Hardesty’s well drafted theories, his clear to-the-point documentations, corroborated and recorroborated. He scanned the charts, then studied them with more care. He remembered the man’s avid interest in diving, which had always seemed inconsistent with his precise life-style.

So he’d been looking for gold, Ky mused. All these years the man had been digging in books and looking for gold. If it had been anyone else, Ky might have dismissed it as another fable. Little towns along the coast were full of stories about buried treasure. Edward Teach had used the shallow waters of the inlets to frustrate and outwit the crown until his last battle off the shores of Ocracoke. That alone kept the dreams of finding sunken treasures alive.

But it was Doctor Edwin J. Hardesty, Yale professor, an unimaginative, humorless man who didn’t believe there was time to be wasted on the frivolous, who’d written these notebooks.

Ky might still have dismissed it, but Kate was sitting across from him. He had enough adventurous blood in him to believe in destinies.

Setting the last notebook aside, he picked up his beer again. “So, you want to treasure hunt.”

She ignored the humor in his voice. With her hands folded on the table, she leaned forward. “I intend to follow through with what my father was working on.”

“Do you believe it?”

Did she? Kate opened her mouth and closed it again. She had no idea. “I don’t believe that all of my father’s time and research should go for nothing. I want to try. As it happens, I need you to help me do it. You’ll be compensated.”

“Will I?” He studied the liquid left in the beer bottle with a half smile. “Will I indeed?”

“I need you, your boat and your equipment for a month, maybe two. I can’t dive alone because I just don’t know the waters well enough to risk it, and I don’t have the time to waste. I have to be back in Connecticut by the end of August.”

“To get more chalk dust under your fingernails.”

She sat back slowly. “You have no right to criticize my profession.”

“I’m sure the chalk’s very exclusive at Yale,” Ky commented. “So you’re giving yourself six weeks or so to find a pot of gold.”

“If my father’s calculations are viable, it won’t take that long.”

“If,” Ky repeated. Setting down his bottle, he leaned forward. “I’ve got no timetable. You want six weeks of my time, you can have it. For a price.”

“Which is?”

“A hundred dollars a day and fifty percent of whatever we find.”

Kate gave him a cool look as she slipped the notebooks back into her briefcase. “Whatever I was four years ago, Ky, I’m not a fool now. A hundred dollars a day is outrageous when we’re dealing with monthly rates. And fifty percent is out of the question.” It gave her a certain satisfaction to bargain with him. This made it business, pure and simple. “I’ll give you fifty dollars a day and ten percent.”

With the maddening half grin on his face he swirled the beer in the bottle. “I don’t turn my boat on for fifty a day.”

She tilted her head a bit to study him. Something tore inside him. She’d often done that whenever he said something she wanted to think over. “You’re more mercenary than you once were.”

“We’ve all got to make a living, professor.” Didn’t she feel anything? he thought furiously. Wasn’t she suffering just a little, being in the house where they’d made love their first and last time? “You want a service,” he said quietly, “you pay for it. Nothing’s free. Seventy-five a day and twenty-five percent. We’ll say it’s for old-times’ sake.”

“No, we’ll say it’s for business’ sake.” She made herself extend her hand, but when his closed over it, she regretted the gesture. It was callused, hard, strong. Kate knew how his hand felt skimming over her skin, driving her to desperation, soothing, teasing, seducing.

“We have a deal.” Ky thought he could see a flash of remembrance in her eyes. He kept her hand in his knowing she didn’t welcome his touch. Because she didn’t. “There’s no guarantee you’ll find your treasure.”

“That’s understood.”

“Fine. I’ll deduct your father’s deposit from the total.”

“All right.” With her free hand, she clutched at her briefcase. “When do we start?”

“Meet me at the harbor at eight tomorrow.” Deliberately, he placed his other free hand over hers on the leather case. “Leave this with me. I want to look over the papers some more.”

“There’s no need for you to have them,” Kate began, but his hands tightened on hers.

“If you don’t trust me with them, you take them along.” His voice was very smooth and very quiet. At its most dangerous. “And find yourself another diver.”

Their gazes locked. Her hands were trapped and so was she. Kate knew there would be sacrifices she’d have to make. “I’ll meet you at eight.”

“Fine.” He released her hands and sat back. “Nice doing business with you, Kate.”

Dismissed, she rose. Just how much had she sacrificed already? she wondered. “Goodbye.”

He lifted and drained his half-finished beer when the screen shut behind her. Then he made himself sit there until he was certain that when he rose and walked to the window she’d be out of sight. He made himself sit there until the air flowing through the screens had carried her scent away.

Sunken ships and deep-sea treasure. It would have excited him, captured his imagination, enthusiasm and interest if he hadn’t had an overwhelming urge to just get in his boat and head toward the horizon. He hadn’t believed she could still affect him that way, that much, that completely. He’d forgotten that just being within touching distance of her tied his stomach in knots.

He’d never gotten over her. No matter what he filled his life with over the past four years, he’d never gotten over the slim, intellectual woman with the haughty face and doe’s eyes.

Ky sat, staring at the briefcase with her initials stamped discreetly near the handle. He’d never expected her to come back, but he’d just discovered he’d never accepted the fact that she’d left him. Somehow, he’d managed to deceive himself through the years. Now, seeing her again, he knew it had just been a matter of pure survival and nothing to do with truth. He’d had to go on, to pretend that that part of his life was behind him, or he would have gone mad.

She was back now, but she hadn’t come back to him. A business arrangement. Ky ran his hand over the smooth leather of the case. She simply wanted the best diver she knew and was willing to pay for him. Fee for services, nothing more, nothing less. The past meant little or nothing to her.

Fury grew until his knuckles whitened around the bottle. He’d give her what she paid for, he promised himself. And maybe a bit extra.

This time when she went away, he wouldn’t be left feeling like an inadequate fool. She’d be the one who would have to go on pretending for the rest of her life. This time when she went away, he’d be done with her. God, he’d have to be.

Rising quickly, he went out to the shed. If he stayed inside, he’d give in to the need to get very, very drunk.

Chapter 3

Kate had the water in the tub so hot that the mirror over the white pedestal sink was fogged. Oil floated on the surface, subtly fragrant and soothing. She’d lost track of how long she lay there—soaking, recharging. The next irrevocable step had been taken. She’d survived. Somehow during her discussion with Ky in his kitchen she had fought back the memories of laughter and passion. She couldn’t count how many meals they’d shared there, cooking their catch, sipping wine.

Somehow during the walk back to her hotel, she’d overcome the need to weep. Tomorrow would be just a little easier. Tomorrow, and every day that followed. She had to believe it.

His animosity would help. His derision toward her kept Kate from romanticizing what she had to tell herself had never been more than a youthful summer fling. Perspective. She’d always been able to stand back and align everything in its proper perspective.

Perhaps her feelings for Ky weren’t as dead as she had hoped or pretended they were. But her emotions were tinged with bitterness. Only a fool asked for more sorrow. Only a romantic believed that bitterness could ever be sweet. It had been a long time since Kate had been a romantic fool. Even so, they would work together because both had an interest in what might be lying on the sea floor.

Think of it. Two hundred and fifty years. Kate closed her eyes and let her mind drift. The silks and sugar would be gone, but would they find brass fittings deep in corrosion after two-and-a-half centuries? The hull would be covered with fungus and barnacles, but how much of the oak would still be intact? Might the log have been secured in a waterproof hold and still be legible? It could be donated to a museum in her father’s name. It would be something—the last something she could do for him. Perhaps then she’d be able to lay all her ambiguous feelings to rest.

The gold, Kate thought as she rose from the tub, the gold would survive. She wasn’t immune to the lure of it. Yet she knew it would be the hunt that would be exciting, and somehow fulfilling. If she found it…

What would she do? Kate wondered. She dropped the hotel towel over the rod before she wrapped herself in her robe. Behind her, the mirror was still fogged with steam from the water that drained slowly from the tub. Would she put her share tidily in some conservative investments? Would she take a leisurely trip to the Greek islands to see what Byron had seen and fallen in love with there? With a laugh, Kate walked through to the other room to pick up her brush. Strange, she hadn’t thought beyond the search yet. Perhaps that was for the best, it wasn’t wise to plan too far ahead.

You always had a problem seeing beyond the moment.

Damn him! With a sudden fury, Kate slammed the brush onto the dresser. She’d seen beyond the moment. She’d seen that he’d offered her no more than a tentative affair in a run-down beach shack. No guarantees, no commitment, no future. She only thanked God she’d had enough of her senses left to understand it and to walk away from what was essentially nothing at all. She’d never let Ky know just how horribly it had hurt to walk away from nothing at all.

Her father had been right to quietly point out the weaknesses in Ky, and her obligation to herself and her chosen profession. Ky’s lack of ambition, his careless attitude toward the future weren’t qualities, but flaws. She’d had a responsibility, and by accepting it had given herself independence and satisfaction.

Calmer, she picked up her brush again. She was dwelling on the past too much. It was time to stop. With the deft movements of habit, she secured her hair into a sleek twist. From this time on, she’d think only of what was to come, not what had, or might have been.

She needed to get out.

With panic just under the surface, Kate pulled a dress out of her closet. It no longer mattered that she was tired, that all she really wanted to do was to crawl into bed and let her mind and body rest. Nerves wouldn’t permit it. She’d go across the street, have a drink with Linda and Marsh. She’d see their baby, have a long, extravagant dinner. When she came back to the hotel, alone, she’d make certain she’d be too tired for dreams.

Tomorrow, she had work to do.

Because she dressed quickly, Kate arrived at the Roost just past six. What she saw, she immediately approved of. It wasn’t elegant, but it was comfortable. It didn’t have the dimly lit, cathedral feel of so many of the restaurants she’d dined in with her father, with colleagues, back in Connecticut. It was relaxed, welcoming, cozy.

There were paintings of ships and boats along the stuccoed walls, of armadas and cutters. Throughout the dining room was other sailing paraphernalia—a ship’s compass with its brass gleaming, a colorful spinnaker draped behind the bar with the stools in front of it shaped like wooden kegs. There was a crow’s nest spearing toward the ceiling with ferns spilling out and down the mast.

The room was already half full of couples and families, the bulk of whom Kate identified as tourists. She could hear the comforting sound of cutlery scraping lightly over plates. There was the smell of good food and the hum of mixed conversations.

Comfortable, she thought again, but definitely well organized. Waiters and waitresses in sailor’s denims moved smoothly, making every second count without looking rushed. The window opened out to a full evening view of Silver Lake Harbor. Kate turned her back on it because she knew her gaze would fall on the Vortex or its empty slip.

Tomorrow was soon enough for that. She wanted one night without memories.

“Kate.”

She felt the hands on her shoulders and recognized the voice. There was a smile on her face when she turned around. “Marsh, I’m so glad to see you.”

In his quiet way, he studied her, measured her and saw both the strain and the relief. In the same way, he’d had a crush on her that had faded into admiration and respect before the end of that one summer. “Beautiful as ever. Linda said you were, but it’s nice to see for myself.”

She laughed, because he’d always been able to make her feel as though life could be honed down to the most simple of terms. She’d never questioned why that trait had made her relax with Marsh and tingle with Ky.

“Several congratulations are in order, I hear. On your marriage, your daughter and your business.”

“I’ll take them all. How about the best table in the house?”

“No less than I expected.” She linked her arm through his. “Your life agrees with you,” she decided as he led her to a table by the window. “You look happy.”

“Look and am.” He lifted a hand to brush hers. “We were sorry to hear about your father, Kate.”

“I know. Thank you.”

Marsh sat across from her and fixed her with eyes so much calmer, so much softer than his brother’s. She’d always wondered why the man with the dreamer’s eyes had been so practical while Ky had been the real dreamer. “It’s tragic, but I can’t say I’m sorry it brought you back to the island. We’ve missed you.” He paused, just long enough for effect. “All of us.”

Kate picked up the square carmine-colored napkin and ran it through her hands. “Things change,” she said deliberately. “You and Linda are certainly proof of that. When I left, you thought she was a bit of a nuisance.”

“That hasn’t changed,” he claimed and grinned. He glanced up at the young, pony-tailed waitress. “This is Cindy, she’ll take good care of you, Miss Hardesty—” He looked back at Kate with a grin. “I guess I should say Dr. Hardesty.”

“Miss’ll do,” Kate told him. “I’ve taken the summer off.”

“Miss Hardesty’s a guest, a special one,” he added, giving the waitress a smile. “How about a drink before you order? Or a bottle of wine?”

“Piesporter,” the reply came from a deep, masculine voice.

Kate’s fingers tightened on the linen, but she forced herself to look up calmly to meet Ky’s amused eyes.

“The professor has a fondness for it.”

“Yes, Mr. Silver.”

Before Kate could agree or disagree, the waitress had dashed off.

“Well, Ky,” Marsh commented easily. “You have a way of making the help come to attention.”

With a shrug, Ky leaned against his brother’s chair. If the three of them felt the air was suddenly tighter, each concealed it in their own way. “I had an urge for scampi.”

“I can recommend it,” Marsh told Kate. “Linda and the chef debated the recipe, then babied it until they reached perfection.”

Kate smiled at Marsh as though there were no dark, brooding man looking down at her. “I’ll try it. Are you going to join me?”

“I wish I could. Linda had to run home and deal with some crisis—Hope has a way of creating them and browbeating the babysitter—but I’ll try to get back for coffee. Enjoy your dinner.” Rising, he sent his brother a cool, knowing look, then walked away.

“Marsh never completely got over that first case of adulation,” Ky commented, then took his brother’s seat without invitation.

“Marsh has always been a good friend.” Kate draped the napkin over her lap with great care. “Though I realize this is your brother’s restaurant, Ky, I’m sure you don’t want my company for dinner any more than I want yours.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” He sent a quick, dashing smile at the waitress as she brought the wine. He didn’t bother to correct Kate’s assumption on the Roost’s ownership. Kate sat stone-faced, her manners too good to allow her to argue, while Cindy opened the bottle and poured the first sip for Ky to taste.

“It’s fine,” he told her. “I’ll pour.” Taking the bottle, he filled Kate’s glass to within half an inch of the rim. “Since we’ve both chosen the Roost tonight, why don’t we have a little test?”

Kate lifted her glass and sipped. The wine was cool and dry. She remembered the first bottle they’d shared—sitting on the floor of his cottage the night she gave him her innocence. Deliberately, she took another swallow. “What kind of test?”

“We can see if the two of us can share a civilized meal in public. That was something we never got around to before.”

Kate frowned as he lifted his glass. She’d never seen Ky drink from a wine glass. The few times they had indulged in wine, it had been drunk out of one of the half a dozen water glasses he’d owned. The stemware seemed too delicate for his hand, the wine too mellow for the look in his eye.

No, they’d never eaten dinner in public before. Her father would have exuded disapproval for socializing with someone he’d considered an employee. Kate had known it, and hadn’t risked it.

Things were different now, she told herself as she lifted her own glass. In a sense, Ky was now her employee. She could make her own judgments. Recklessly, she toasted him. “To a profitable arrangement then.”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself.” He touched the rim of his glass to hers, but his gaze was direct and uncomfortable. “Blue suits you,” he said, referring to her dress, but not taking his eyes off hers. “The deep midnight blue that makes your skin look like something that should be tasted very, very carefully.”

She stared at him, stunned at how easily his voice could take on that low, intimate tone that had always made the blood rush out of her brain. He’d always been able to make words seem something dark and secret. That had been one of his greatest skills, one she had never been prepared for. She was no more prepared for it now.

“Would you care to order now?” The waitress stopped beside the table, cheerful, eager to please.

Ky smiled when Kate remained silent. “We’re having scampi. The house dressing on the salads will be fine.” He leaned back, glass in hand, still smiling. But the smile on his lips didn’t connect with his eyes. “You’re not drinking your wine. Maybe I should’ve asked if your taste has changed over the years.”

“It’s fine.” Deliberately she sipped, then kept the glass in her hand as though it would anchor her. “Marsh looks well,” she commented. “I was happy to hear about him and Linda. I always pictured them together.”

“Did you?” Ky lifted his glass toward the lowering evening light slanting through the window. He watched the colors spear through the wine and glass and onto Kate’s hand. “He didn’t. But then…” Shifting his gaze, he met her eyes again. “Marsh always took more time to make up his mind than me.”

“Recklessness,” she continued as she struggled just to breathe evenly, “was always more your style than your brother’s.”

“But you didn’t come to my brother with your charts and notes, did you?”

“No.” With an effort she kept her voice and her eyes level. “I didn’t. Perhaps I decided a certain amount of recklessness had its uses.”

“Find me useful, do you, Kate?”

The waitress served the salads but didn’t speak this time. She saw the look in Ky’s eyes.

So had Kate. “When I’m having a job done, I’ve found that it saves a considerable amount of time and trouble to find the most suitable person.” With forced calm, she set down her wine and picked up her fork. “I wouldn’t have come back to Ocracoke for any other reason.” She tilted her head, surprised by the quick surge of challenge that rushed through her. “Things will be simpler for both of us if that’s clear up front.”

Anger moved through him, but he controlled it. If they were playing word games, he had to keep his wits. She’d always been clever, but now it appeared the cleverness was glossed over with sophistication. He remembered the innocent, curious Kate with a pang. “As I recall, you were always one for complicating rather than simplifying. I had to explain the purpose, history and mechanics of every piece of equipment before you’d take the first dive.”

“That’s called caution, not complication.”

“You’d know more about caution than I would. Some people spend half their lives testing the wind.” He drank deeply of wine. “I’d rather ride with it.”

“Yes.” This time it was she who smiled with her lips only. “I remember very well. No plans, no ties, tomorrow the wind might change.”

“If you’re anchored in one spot too long, you can become like those trees out there.” He gestured out the window where a line of sparse junipers bent away from the sea. “Stunted.”

“Yet you’re still here, where you were born, where you grew up.”

Slowly Ky poured her more wine. “The island’s too isolated, the life a bit too basic for some. I prefer it to those structured little communities with their parties and country clubs.”

Kate looked like she belonged in such a place, Ky thought as he fought against the frustrated desire that ebbed and flowed inside him. She belonged in an elegant silk suit, holding a Dresden cup and discussing an obscure eighteenth-century English poet. Was that why she could still make him feel rough and awkward and too full of longings?

If they could be swept back in time, he’d have stolen her, taken her out to open sea and kept her there. They would have traveled from port to exotic port. If having her meant he could never go home again, then he’d have sailed until his time was up. But he would have had her. Ky’s fingers tightened around his glass. By God, he would have had her.

The main course was slipped in front of him discreetly. Ky brought himself back to the moment. It wasn’t the eighteenth century, but today. Still, she had brought him the past with the papers and maps. Perhaps they’d both find more than they’d bargained for.

“I looked over the things you left with me.”

“Oh?” She felt a quick tingle of excitement but speared the first delicate shrimp as though it were all that concerned her.

“Your father’s research is very thorough.”

“Of course.”

Ky let out a quick laugh. “Of course,” he repeated, toasting her. “In any case, I think he might have been on the right track. You do realize that the section he narrowed it down to goes into a dangerous area.”

Her brows drew together, but she continued to eat. “Sharks?”

“Sharks are a little difficult to confine to an area,” he said easily. “A lot of people forget that the war came this close in the forties. There are still mines all along the coast of the Outer Banks. If we’re going down to the bottom, it’d be smart to keep that in mind.”

“I’ve no intention of being careless.”

“No, but sometimes people look so far ahead they don’t see what’s under their feet.”

Though he’d eaten barely half of his meal, Ky picked up his wine again. How could he eat when his whole system was aware of her? He couldn’t stop himself from wondering what it would be like to pull those confining pins out of her hair as he’d done so often in the past. He couldn’t prevent the memory from springing up about what it had been like to bundle her into his arms and just hold her there with her body fitting so neatly against his. He could picture those long, serious looks she’d give him just before passion would start to take over, then the freedom he could feel racing through her in those last heady moments of love-making.

How could it have been so right once and so wrong now? Wouldn’t her body still fit against his? Wouldn’t her hair flow through his hands as it fell—that quiet brown that took on such fascinating lights in the sun. She’d always murmur his name after passion was spent, as if the sound alone sustained her. He wanted to hear her say it, just once more, soft and breathless while they were tangled together, bodies still warm and pulsing. He wasn’t sure he could resist it.

Absently Ky signaled for coffee. Perhaps he didn’t want to resist it. He needed her. He’d forgotten just how sharp and sure a need could be. Perhaps he’d take her. He didn’t believe she was indifferent to him—certain things never fade completely. In his own time, in his own way, he’d take what he once had from her. And pray it would be enough this time.

When he looked back at her, Kate felt the warning signals shiver through her. Ky was a difficult man to understand. She knew only that he’d come to some decision and that it involved her. Grateful for the warming effects of the coffee, she drank. She was in charge this time, she reminded herself, every step of the way and she’d make him aware of it. There was no time like the present to begin.

“I’ll be at the harbor at eight,” she said briskly. “I’ll require tanks of course, but I brought my own wet suit. I’d appreciate it if you’d have my briefcase and its contents on board. I believe we’d be wise to spend between six and eight hours out a day.”

“Have you kept up with your diving?”

“I know what to do.”

“I’d be the last to argue that you had the best teacher.” He tilted his cup back in a quick, impatient gesture Kate found typical of him. “But if you’re rusty, we’ll take it slow for a day or two.”

“I’m a perfectly competent diver.”

“I want more than competence in a partner.”

He saw the flare in her eyes and his need sharpened. It was a rare and arousing thing to watch her controlled and reasonable temperament heat up. “We’re not partners. You’re working for me.”

“A matter of viewpoint,” Ky said easily. He rose, deliberately blocking her in. “We’ll be putting in a full day tomorrow, so you’d better go catch up on all the sleep you’ve been missing lately.”

“I don’t need you to worry about my health, Ky.”

“I worry about my own,” he said curtly. “You don’t go under with me unless you’re rested and alert. You come to the harbor in the morning with shadows under your eyes, you won’t make the first dive.” Furiously she squashed the urge to argue with the reasonable. “If you’re sluggish, you make mistakes,” Ky said briefly. “A mistake you make can cost me. That logical enough for you, professor?”

“It’s perfectly clear.” Bracing herself for the brush of bodies, Kate rose. But bracing herself didn’t stop the jolt, not for either of them.

“I’ll walk you back.”

“It’s not necessary.”

His hand curled over her wrist, strong and stubborn. “It’s civilized,” he said lazily. “You were always big on being civilized.”

Until you’d touch me, she thought. No, she wouldn’t remember that, not if she wanted to sleep tonight. Kate merely inclined her head in cool agreement. “I want to thank Marsh.”

“You can thank him tomorrow.” Ky dropped the waitress’s tip on the table. “He’s busy.”

She started to protest, then saw Marsh disappear into what must have been the kitchen. “All right.” Kate moved by him and out into the balmy evening air.

The sun was low, though it wouldn’t set for nearly an hour. The clouds to the west were just touched with mauve and rose. When she stepped outside, Kate decided there were more people in the restaurant than there were on the streets.

A charter fishing boat glided into the harbor. Some of the tourists would be staying on the island, others would be riding back across Hatteras Inlet on one of the last ferries of the day.

She’d like to go out on the water now, while the light was softening and the breeze was quiet. Now, she thought, while others were coming in and the sea would stretch for mile after endless empty mile.

Shaking off the mood, she headed for the hotel. What she needed wasn’t a sunset sail but a good solid night’s sleep. Daydreaming was foolish, and tomorrow too important.

The same hotel. Ky glanced up at her window. He already knew she had the same room. He’d walked her there before, but then she’d have had her arm through his in that sweet way she had of joining them together. She’d have looked up and laughed at him over something that had happened that day. And she’d have kissed him, warm, long and lingeringly before the door would close behind her.

Because her thoughts had run the same gamut, Kate turned to him while they were still outside the hotel. “Thank you, Ky.” She made a business out of shifting her purse strap on her arm. “There’s no need for you to go any further out of your way.”

“No, there isn’t.” He’d have something to take home with him that night, he thought with sudden, fierce impatience. And he’d leave her something to take up to the room where they’d had one long, glorious night. “But then we’ve always looked at needs from different angles.” He cupped his hand around the back of her neck, holding firm as he felt her stiffen.

“Don’t.” She didn’t back away. Kate told herself she didn’t back away because to do so would make her seem vulnerable. And she was, feeling those long hard fingers play against her skin again.

“I think this is something you owe me,” he told her in a voice so quiet it shivered on the air. “Maybe something I owe myself.”

He wasn’t gentle. That was deliberate. Somewhere inside him was a need to punish for what hadn’t been—or perhaps what had. The mouth he crushed on hers hungered, the arms he wrapped around her demanded. If she’d forgotten, he thought grimly, this would remind her. And remind her.

With her arms trapped between them, he could feel her hands ball into tight fists. Let her hate him, loathe him. He’d rather that than cool politeness.

But God she was sweet. Sweet and as delicate as one of the frothy waves that lapped and spread along the shoreline. Dimly, distantly, he knew he could drown in her without a murmur or complaint.

She wanted it to be different. Oh, how she wanted it to be different so that she’d feel nothing. But she felt everything.

The hard, impatient mouth that had always thrilled and bemused her—it was the same. The lean restless body that fit so unerringly against her—no different. The scent that clung to him, sea and salt—hadn’t changed. Always when he kissed her, there’d been the sounds of water or wind or gulls. That, too, remained constant. Behind them boats rocked gently in their slips, water against wood. A gull resting on pilings let out a long, lonely call. The light dimmed as the sun dropped closer to the sea. The flood of past feelings rose up to merge and mingle with the moment.

She didn’t resist him. Kate had told herself she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a struggle. But the command to her brain not to respond was lost in the thin clouds of dusk. She gave because she had to. She took because she had no choice.

His tongue played over hers and her fists uncurled until Kate’s palms rested against his chest. So warm, so hard, so familiar. He kissed as he always had, with complete concentration, no inhibitions and little patience.

Time tumbled back and she was young and in love and foolish. Why, she wondered while her head swam, should that make her want to weep?

He had to let her go or he’d beg. Ky could feel it rising in him. He wasn’t fool enough to plead for what was already gone. He wasn’t strong enough to accept that he had to let go again. The tug-of-war going on inside him was fierce enough to make him moan. On the sound he pulled away from her, frustrated, infuriated, bewitched.

Taking a moment, he stared down at her. Her look was the same, he realized—that half surprised, half speculative look she’d given him after their first kiss. It disoriented him. Whatever he’d sought to prove, Ky knew now he’d only proven that he was still as much enchanted with her as he’d ever been. He bit back an oath, instead, giving her a half-salute as he walked away.

“Get eight hours of sleep,” he ordered without turning around.

Chapter 4

Some mornings the sun seemed to rise more slowly than others, as if nature wanted to show off her particular majesty just a bit longer. When she’d gone to bed, Kate had left her shades up knowing that the morning light would awaken her before the travel alarm beside her bed rang.

She took the dawn as a gift to herself, something individual and personal. Standing at the window, she watched it bloom. The first quiet breeze of morning drifted through the screen to run over her hair and face, through the thin material of her nightshirt, cool and promising. While she stood, Kate absorbed the colors, the light and the silent thunder of day breaking over water.

The lazy contemplation was far different from her structured routine of the past months and years. Mornings had been a time to dress, a time to run over her schedule and notes for the day’s classes over two cups of coffee and a quick breakfast. She never had time to give herself the dawn, so she took it now.

She slept better than she’d expected, lulled by the quiet, exhausted by the days of traveling and the strain on her emotions. There’d been no dreams to haunt her from the time she’d turned back the sheets until the first light had fallen over her face. Then she rose quickly. There’d be no dreams now.

Kate let the morning wash over her with all its new promises, its beginnings. Today was the start. Everything, from the moment she’d taken out her father’s papers until she’d seen Ky again, had been a prelude. Even the brief, torrid embrace of the night before had been no more than a ghost of the past. Today was the real beginning.

She dressed and went out into the morning.

Breakfast was impossible. The excitement she’d so meticulously held off was beginning to strain for freedom. The feeling that what she was doing was right was back with her. Whatever it took, whatever it cost her, she’d look for the gold her father had dreamed of. She’d follow his directions. If she found nothing, she’d have looked anyway.

In looking, Kate had come to believe she’d lay all her personal ghosts to rest.

Ky’s kiss. It had been aching, disturbing as it had always been. She’d been absorbed, just as she’d always been. Though she knew she had to face both Ky and the past, she hadn’t known it would be so frighteningly easy to go back—back to that dark, dreamy world where only he had taken her.

Now that she knew, now that she’d faced even that, Kate had to prepare to fight the wind.

He’d never forgiven her, she realized, for saying no. For bruising his pride. She’d gone back to her world when he’d asked her to stay in his. Asked her to stay, Kate remembered, without offering anything, not even a promise. If he’d given her that, no matter how casual or airy the promise might have been, she wouldn’t have gone. She wondered if he knew that.

Perhaps he thought if he could make her lose herself to him again, the scales would be even. She wouldn’t lose. Kate stuck her hands into the pockets of her brief pleated shorts. No, she didn’t intend to lose. If he had pressed her last night, if he’d known just how weakened she’d been by that one kiss…

But he wouldn’t know, she told herself. She wouldn’t weaken again. For the summer, she’d make the treasure her goal and her one ambition. She wouldn’t leave the island empty-handed this time.

He was already on board the Vortex. Kate could see him stowing gear, his hair tousled by the breeze that flowed in from the sea. With only cut-offs and a sleeveless T-shirt between him and the sun she could see the muscles coil and relax, the skin gleam.

Magnificent. She felt the dull ache deep in her stomach and tried to rationalize it away. After all, a well-honed masculine build should make a woman respond. It was natural. One could even call it impersonal, Kate decided. As she started down the dock she wished she could believe it.

He didn’t see her. A fishing boat already well out on the water had caught his attention. For a moment, she stopped, just watching him. Why was it she could always sense the restlessness in him? There was movement in him even when he was still, sound even when he was silent. What was it he saw when he looked out over the sea? Challenge? Romance?

He was a man who always seemed poised for action, for doing. Yet he could sit quietly and watch the waves as if there were nothing more important than that endless battle between earth and water.

Just now he stood on the deck of his boat, hands on hips, watching the tubby fishing vessel putt toward the horizon. It was something he’d seen countless times, yet he stopped to take it in again. Kate looked where Ky looked and wished she could see what he was seeing.

Quietly she went forward, her deck shoes making no sound, but he turned, eyes still intense. “You’re early,” he said, and with no more greeting reached out a hand to help her on board.

“I thought you might be as anxious to start as I am.”

Palm met palm, rough against smooth. Both of them broke contact as soon as possible.

“It should be an easy ride.” He looked back to sea, toward the boat, but this time he didn’t focus on it. “The wind’s coming in from the north, no more than ten knots.”

“Good.” Though it wouldn’t have mattered to her nor, she thought, to him, if the wind had been twice as fast. This was the morning to begin.

She could sense the impatience in him, the desire to be gone and doing. Wanting to make things as simple as possible Kate helped Ky cast off, then walked to the stern. That would keep the maximum distance between them. They didn’t speak. The engine roared to life, shattering the calm. Smoothly, Ky maneuvered the small cruiser out of the harbor, setting up a small wake that caused the water to lap against pilings. He kept the same steady even speed while they sailed through the shallows of Ocracoke Inlet. Looking back, Kate watched the distance between the boat and the village grow.

The dreamy quality remained. The last thing she saw was a child walking down a pier with a rod cocked rakishly over his shoulder. Then she turned her face to the sea.

Warm wind, glaring sun. Excitement. Kate hadn’t been sure the feelings would be the same. But when she closed her eyes, letting the dull red light glow behind her lids, the salty mist touch her face, she knew this was a love that had remained constant, one that had waited for her.

Sitting perfectly still, she could feel Ky increase the speed until the boat was eating its way through the water as sleekly as a cat moves through the jungle. With her eyes closed, she enjoyed the movement, the speed, the sun. This was a thrill that had never faded. Tasting it again, she understood that it never would.

She’d been right, Kate realized, the hunt would be much more exciting than the final goal. The hunt, and no matter how cautious she was, the man at the helm.

He’d told himself he wouldn’t look back at her. But he had to—just once. Eyes closed, a smile playing around her mouth, hair dancing around her face where the wind nudged it from the pins. It brought back a flash of memory—to the first time he’d seen her like that and realized he had to have her. She looked calm, totally at peace. He felt there was a war raging inside him that he had no control over.

Even when he turned back to sea again Ky could see her, leaning back against the stern, absorbing what wind and water offered. In defense, he tried to picture her in a classroom, patiently explaining the intricacies of Don Juan or Henry IV. It didn’t help. He could only imagine her sitting behind him, soaking up sun and wind as if she’d been starved for it.

Perhaps she had been. Though she didn’t know what direction Ky’s thoughts had taken, Kate realized she’d never been further away from the classroom or the demands she placed on herself there than she was at this moment. She was part teacher, there was no question of that, but she was also, no matter how she’d tried to banish it, part dreamer.

With the sun and the wind on her skin, she was too exhilarated to be frightened by the knowledge, too content to worry. It was a wild, free sensation to experience again something known, loved, then lost.

Perhaps…Perhaps it was too much like the one frenzied kiss she’d shared with Ky the night before, but she needed it. It might be a foolish need, even a dangerous one. Just once, only this once, she told herself, she wouldn’t question it.

Steady, strong, she opened her eyes again. Now she could watch the sun toss its diamonds on the surface of the water. They rippled, enticing, enchanting. The fishing boat Ky had watched move away from the island before them was anchored, casting its nets. A purse seiner, she remembered. Ky had explained the wide, weighted net to her once and how it was often used to haul in menhaden.

She wondered why he’d never chosen that life, where he could work and live on the water day after day. But not alone, she recalled with a ghost of a smile. Fishermen were their own community, on the sea and off it. It wasn’t often Ky chose to share himself or his time with anyone. There were times, like this one, when she understood that perfectly.

Whether it was the freedom or the strength that was in her, Kate approached him without nerves. “It’s as beautiful as I remember.”

He dreaded having her stand beside him again. Now, however, he discovered the tension at the base of his neck had eased. “It doesn’t change much.” Together they watched the gulls swoop around the fishing boat, hoping for easy pickings. “Fishing’s been good this year.”

“Have you been doing much?”

“Off and on.”

“Clamming?”

He had to smile when he remembered how she’d looked, jeans rolled up to her knees, bare feet full of sand as he’d taught her how to dig. “Yeah.”

She, too, remembered, but her only memories were of warm days, warm nights. “I’ve often wondered what it’s like on the island in winter.”

“Quiet.”

She took the single careless answer with a nod. “I’ve often wondered why you preferred that.”

He turned to her, measuring. “Have you?”

Perhaps that had been a mistake. Since it had already been made, Kate shrugged. “It would be foolish of me to say I hadn’t thought of the island or you at all during the last four years. You’ve always made me curious.”

He laughed. It was so typical of her to put things that way. “Because all your tidy questions weren’t answered. You think too much like a teacher, Kate.”

“Isn’t life a multiple choice?” she countered. “Maybe two or three answers would fit, but only one’s ultimately right.”

“No, only one’s ultimately wrong.” He saw her eyes take on that thoughtful, considering expression. She was, he knew, weighing the pros and cons of his statement. Whether she agreed or not, she’d consider all the angles. “You haven’t changed either,” he murmured.

“I thought the same of you. We’re both wrong. Neither of us have stayed the same. That’s as it should be.” Kate looked away from him, further east, then gave a quick cry of pleasure. “Oh, look!” Without thinking, she put her hand on his arm, slender fingers gripping taut muscle. “Dolphins.”

She watched them, a dozen, perhaps more, leap and dive in their musical pattern. Pleasure was touched with envy. To move like that, she thought, from water to air and back to water again. It was a freedom that might drive a man mad with the glory of it. But what a madness…

“Fantastic, isn’t it?” she murmured. “To be part of the air and the sea. I’d nearly forgotten.”

“How much?” Ky studied her profile until he could have etched the shape of it on the wind. “How much have you nearly forgotten?”

Kate turned her head, only then realizing just how close they stood. Unconsciously, she’d moved nearer to him when she’d seen the dolphins. Now she could see nothing but his face, inches from hers, feel nothing but the warm skin beneath her hand. His question, the depth of it, seemed to echo off the surface of the water to haunt her.

She stepped back. The drop before her was very deep and torn with rip tides. “All that was necessary,” she said simply. “I’d like to look over my father’s charts. Did you bring them on board?”

“Your briefcase is in the cabin.” His hands gripped the wheel tightly, as though he were fighting against a storm. Perhaps he was. “You should be able to find your way below.”

Without answering, Kate walked around him to the short steep steps that led below decks.

There were two narrow bunks with the spreads taut enough to bounce a coin if one was dropped. The galley just beyond would have all the essentials, she knew, in small, efficient scale. Everything would be in its place, as tidy as a monk’s cell.

Kate could remember lying with Ky on one of the pristine bunks, flushed with passion while the boat swayed gently in the current and the music from his radio played jazz.

She gripped the leather of her case as if the pain in her fingers would help fight off the memories. To fight everything off entirely was too much to expect, but the intensity eased. Carefully she unfolded one of her father’s charts and spread it on the bunk.

Like everything her father had done, the chart was precise and without frills. Though it had certainly not been his field, Hardesty had drawn a chart any sailor would have trusted.

It showed the coast of North Caroline, Pamlico Sound and the Outer Banks, from Manteo to Cape Lookout. As well as the lines of latitude and longitude, the chart also had the thin crisscrossing lines that marked depth.

Seventy-six degrees north by thirty-five degrees east. From the markings, that was the area her father had decided the Liberty had gone down. That was southeast of Ocracoke by no more than a few miles. And the depth…Yes, she decided as she frowned over the chart, the depth would still be considered shallow diving. She and Ky would have the relative freedom of wet suits and tanks rather than the leaded boots and helmets required for deep-sea explorations.

X marks the spot she thought, a bit giddy, but made herself fold the chart with the same care she’d used to open it. She felt the boat slow then heard the resounding silence when the engines shut off. A fresh tremor of anticipation went through her as she climbed the steps into the sunlight again.

Ky was already checking the tanks though she knew he would have gone over all the equipment thoroughly before setting out. “We’ll go down here,” he said as he rose from his crouched position. “We’re about half a mile from the last place your father went in last summer.”

In one easy motion he pulled off his shirt. Kate knew he was self aware, but he’d never been self-conscious. Ky had already stripped down to brief bikini trunks before she turned away for her own gear.

If her heart was pounding, it was possible to tell herself it was in anticipation of the dive. If her throat was dry, she could almost believe it was nerves at the thought of giving herself to the sea again. His body was hard and brown and lean, but she was only concerned with his skill and his knowledge. And he, she told herself, was only concerned with his fee and his twenty-five percent of the find.

She wore a snug tank suit under her shorts that clung to subtle curves and revealed long, slender legs that Ky knew were soft as water, strong as a runner’s. He began to pull on the thin rubber wet suit. They were here to look for gold, to find a treasure that had been lost. Some treasures, he knew, could never be recovered.

As he thought of it, Ky glanced up to see Kate draw the pins from her hair. It fell, soft and slow, over, then past her shoulders. If she’d shot a dart into his chest, she couldn’t have pierced his heart more accurately. Swearing under his breath, Ky lifted the first set of tanks.

“We’ll go down for an hour today.”

“But—”

“An hour’s more than enough,” he interrupted without sparing her a glance. “You haven’t worn tanks in four years.”

Kate slipped into the set he offered her, securing the straps until they were snug, but not tight. “I didn’t tell you that.”

“No, but you’d sure as hell have told me if you had.”

The corner of his mouth lifted when she remained silent. After attaching his own tanks, Ky climbed over the side onto the ladder. She could either argue, he figured, or she could follow.

To clear his mask, he spat into it, rubbed, then reached down to rinse it in salt water. Pulling it over his eyes and nose, Ky dropped into the sea. It took less than ten seconds before Kate plunged into the water beside him. He paused a moment, to make certain she didn’t flounder or forget to breathe, then he headed for greater depth.

No, she wouldn’t forget to breathe, but the first breath was almost a sigh as her body submerged. It was as thrilling to her as it had been the first time, this incredible ability to stay beneath the ocean’s surface and breathe air.

Kate looked up to see the sun spearing through the water, and held out a hand to watch the watery light play on her skin. She could have stayed there, she realized, just reveling in it. But with a curl of her body and a kick, she followed Ky into depth and dimness.

Ky saw a school of menhaden and wondered if they’d end up in the net of the fishing boat he’d watched that morning. When the fish swerved in a mass and rushed past him, he turned to Kate again. She’d been right when she’d told him she knew what to do. She swam as cleanly and as competently as ever.

He expected her to ask him how he intended to look for the Liberty, what plan he’d outlined. When she hadn’t, Ky had figured it was for one of two reasons. Either she didn’t want to have any in-depth conversation with him at the moment, or she’d already reasoned it out for herself. It seemed more likely to be the latter, as her mind was also as clean and competent as ever.

The most logical method of searching seemed to be a semi-circular route around Hardesty’s previous dives. Slowly and methodically, they would widen the circle. If Hardesty had been right, they’d find the Liberty eventually. If he’d been wrong…they’d have spent the summer treasure hunting.

Though the tanks on her back reminded Kate not to take the weightless freedom for granted, she thought she could stay down forever. She wanted to touch—the water, the sea grass, the soft, sandy bottom. Reaching out toward a school of bluefish she watched them scatter defensively then regroup. She knew there were times when, as a diver moved through the dim, liquid world, he could forget the need for the sun. Perhaps Ky had been right in limiting the dive. She had to be careful not to take what she found again for granted.

The flattened disklike shape caught Ky’s attention. Automatically, he reached for Kate’s arm to stop her forward progress. The stingray that scuttled along the bottom looking for tasty crustaceans might be amusing to watch, but it was deadly. He gauged this one to be as long as he was tall with a tail as sharp and cruel as a razor. They’d give it a wide berth.

Seeing the ray reminded Kate that the sea wasn’t all beauty and dreams. It was also pain and death. Even as she watched, the stingray struck out with its whiplike tail and caught a small, hapless bluefish. Once, then twice. It was nature, it was life. But she turned away. Through the protective masks, her eyes met Ky’s.

She expected to see derision for an obvious weakness, or worse, amusement. She saw neither. His eyes were gentle, as they were very rarely. Lifting a hand, he ran his knuckles down her cheek, as he’d done years before when he’d chosen to offer comfort or affection. She felt the warmth, it reflected in her eyes. Then, as quickly as the moment had come, it was over. Turning, Ky swam away, gesturing for her to follow.

He couldn’t afford to be distracted by those glimpses of vulnerability, those flashes of sweetness. They had already done him in once. Top priority was the job they’d set out to do. Whatever other plans he had, Ky intended to be in full control. When the time was right, he’d have his fill of Kate. That he promised himself. He’d take exactly what he felt she owed him. But she wouldn’t touch his emotions again. When he took her to bed, it would be with cold calculation.

That was something else he promised himself.

Though they found no sign of the Liberty, Kysaw wreckage from other ships—pieces of metal, rusted, covered with barnacles. They might have been from a sub or a battleship from World War II. The sea absorbed what remained in her.

He was tempted to swim further out, but knew it would take twenty minutes to return to the boat. Circling around, he headed back, overlapping, double-checking the area they’d just covered.

Not quite a needle in a haystack, Ky mused, but close. Two centuries of storms and currents and sea quakes. Even if they had the exact location where the Liberty had sunk, rather than the last known location, it took calculation and guesswork, then luck to narrow the field down to a radius of twenty miles.

Ky believed in luck much the same way he imagined Hardesty had believed in calculation. Perhaps with a mixture of the two, he and Kate would find what was left of the Liberty.

Glancing over, he watched Kate gliding beside him. She was looking everywhere at once, but Ky didn’t think her mind was on treasure or sunken ships. She was, as she’d been that summer before, completely enchanted with the sea and the life it held. He wondered if she still remembered all the information she’d demanded of him before the first dive. What about the physiological adjustments to the body? How was the CO_2 absorbed? What about the change in external pressure?

Ky felt a flash of humor as they started to ascend. He was dead sure Kate remembered every answer he’d given her, right down to the decimal point in pounds of pressure per square inch.

The sun caught her as she rose toward the surface, slowly. It shone around and through her hair, giving her an ethereal appearance as she swam straight up, legs kicking gently, face tilted toward sun and surface. If there were mermaids, Ky knew they’d look as she did—slim, long, with pale loose hair free in the water. A man could only hold onto a mermaid if he accepted the world she lived in as his own. Reaching out, he caught the tip of her hair in his fingers just before they broke the surface together.

Kate came up laughing, letting her mouthpiece fall and pushing her mask up. “Oh, it’s wonderful! Just as I remembered.” Treading water, she laughed again and Ky realized it was a sound he hadn’t heard in four years. But he remembered it exactly.

“You looked like you wanted to play more than you wanted to look for sunken ships.” He grinned at her, enjoying her pleasure and the ease of a smile he’d never expected to see again.

“I did.” Almost reluctant, she reached out for the ladder to climb on board. “I never expected to find anything the first time down, and it was so wonderful just to dive again.” She stripped off her tanks then checked the valves herself before she set them down. “Whenever I go down I begin to believe I don’t need the sun anymore. Then when I come up it’s warmer and brighter than I remember.”

With the adrenaline still flowing, she peeled off her flippers, then her mask, to stand, face lifted toward the sun.

“There’s nothing else exactly like it.”

“Skin diving.” Ky tugged down the zipper of his wet suit. “I tried some in Tahiti last year. It’s incredible being in that clear water with no equipment but a mask and flippers, and your own lungs.”

“Tahiti?” Surprised and interested, Kate looked back as Ky stripped off the wet suit. “You went there?”

“Couple of weeks late last year.” He dropped the wet suit in the big plastic can he used for storing equipment before rinsing.

“Because of your affection for islands?”

“And grass skirts.”

The laughter bubbled out again. “I’m sure you’d look great in one.”

He’d forgotten just how quick she could be when she relaxed. Because the gesture appealed, Ky reached over and gave her hair a quick tug. “I wish I’d taken snapshots.” Turning, he jogged down the steps into the cabin.

“Too busy ogling the natives to put them on film for posterity?” Kate called out as she dropped down on the narrow bench on the starboard side.

“Something like that. And of course trying to pretend I didn’t notice the natives ogling me.”

She grinned. “People in grass skirts,” she began then let out a muffled shout as he tossed a peach in her direction. Catching it cleanly, Kate smiled at him before she bit into the fruit.

“Still have good reflexes,” Ky commented as he came up the last step.

“Especially when I’m hungry.” She touched her tongue to her palm where juice dribbled. “I couldn’t eat this morning, I was too keyed up.”

He held out one of two bottles of cold soda he’d taken from the refrigerator. “About the dive?”

“That and…” Kate broke off, surprised that she was talking to him as if it had been four years before.

“And?” Ky prompted. Though his tone was casual, his gaze had sharpened.

Aware of it, Kate rose, turning away to look back over the stern. She saw nothing there but sky and water. “It was the morning,” she murmured. “The way the sun came up over the water. All that color.” She shook her head and water dripped from the ends of her hair onto the deck. “I haven’t watched a sunrise in a very long time.”

Making himself relax again, Ky leaned back, biting into his own peach as he watched her. “Why?”

“No time. No need.”

“Do they both mean the same thing to you?”

Restless, she moved her shoulders. “When your life revolves around schedules and classes, I suppose one equals the other.”

“That’s what you want? A daily timetable?”

Kate looked back over her shoulder, meeting his eyes levelly. How could they ever understand each other, she wondered. Her world was as foreign to him as his to her. “It’s what I’ve chosen.”

“One of your multiple choices of life?” Ky countered, giving a short laugh before he tilted his bottle back again.

“Maybe, or maybe some parts of life only have one choice.” She turned completely around, determined not to lose the euphoria that had come to her with the dive. “Tell me about Tahiti, Ky. What’s it like?”

“Soft air, soft water. Blue, green, white. Those are the colors that come to mind, then outrageous splashes of red and orange and yellow.”

“Like a Gauguin painting.”

The length of the deck separated them. Perhaps that made it easier for him to smile. “I suppose, but I don’t think he’d have appreciated all the hotels and resorts. It isn’t an island that’s been left to itself.”

“Things rarely are.”

“Whether they should be or not.”

Something in the way he said it, in the way he looked at her, made Kate think he wasn’t speaking of an island now, but of something more personal. She drank, cooling her throat, moistening her lips. “Did you scuba?”

“Some. Shells and coral so thick I could’ve filled a boat with them if I’d wanted. Fish that looked like they should’ve been in an aquarium. And sharks.” He remembered one that had nearly caught him half a mile out. Remembering made him grin. “The waters off Tahiti are anything but boring.”

Kate recognized the look, the recklessness that would always surface just under his skill. Perhaps he didn’t look for trouble, but she thought he’d rarely sidestep it. No, she doubted they’d ever fully understand each other, if they had a lifetime.

“Did you bring back a shark’s tooth necklace?”

“I gave it to Hope.” He grinned again. “Linda won’t let her have it yet.”

“I should think not. Does it feel odd, being an uncle?”

“No. She looks like me.”

“Ah, the male ego.”

Ky shrugged, aware that he had a healthy share and was comfortable with it. “I get a kick out of watching her run Marsh and Linda in circles. There’s not much entertainment on the island.”

She tried to imagine Ky being entertained by something as tame as a baby girl. She failed. “It’s strange,” Kate said after a moment. “Coming back to find Marsh and Linda married and parents. When I left Marsh treated Linda like his little sister.”

“Didn’t your father keep you up on progress on the island?”

The smile left her eyes. “No.”

Ky lifted a brow. “Did you ask?”

“No.”

He tossed his empty bottle into a small barrel. “He hadn’t told you anything about the ship either, about why he kept coming back to the island year after year.”

She tossed her drying hair back from her face. It hadn’t been put in the tone of a question. Still, she answered because it was simpler that way. “No, he never mentioned the Liberty to me.”

“That doesn’t bother you?”

The ache came, but she pushed it aside. “Why should it?” she countered. “He was entitled to his own life, his privacy.”

“But you weren’t.”

She felt the chill come and go. Crossing the deck, Kate dropped her bottle beside Ky’s before reaching for her shirt. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You know exactly what I mean.” He closed his hand over hers before she could pull the shirt on. Because it would’ve been cowardly to do otherwise, she lifted her head and faced him. “You know,” he said again, quietly. “You just aren’t ready to say it out loud yet.”

“Leave it alone, Ky.” Her voice trembled, and though it infuriated her, she couldn’t prevent it. “Just leave it.”

He wanted to shake her, to make her admit, so that he could hear, that she’d left him because her father had preferred it. He wanted her to say, perhaps sob, that she hadn’t had the strength to stand up to the man who had shaped and molded her life to suit his values and wants.

With an effort, he relaxed his fingers. As he had before, Ky turned away with something like a shrug. “For now,” he said easily as he went back to the helm. “Summer’s just beginning.” He started the engine before turning around for one last look. “We both know what can happen during a summer.”

Chapter 5

“The first thing you have to understand about Hope,” Linda began, steadying a vase the toddler had jostled, “is that she has a mind of her own.”

Kate watched the chubby black-haired Hope climb onto a wing-backed chair to examine herself in an ornamental mirror. In the fifteen minutes Kate had been in Linda’s home, Hope hadn’t been still a moment. She was quick, surprisingly agile, with a look in her eyes that made Kate believe she knew exactly what she wanted and intended to get it, one way or the other. Ky had been right. His niece looked like him, in more ways than one.

“I can see that. Where do you find the energy to run a restaurant, keep a home and manage a fireball?”

“Vitamins,” Linda sighed. “Lots and lots of vitamins. Hope, don’t put your fingers on the glass.”

“Hope!” the toddler cried out, making faces at herself in the mirror. “Pretty, pretty, pretty.”

“The Silver ego,” Linda commented. “It never tarnishes.”

With a chuckle, Kate watched Hope crawl backwards out of the chair, land on her diaper-padded bottom and begin to systematically destroy the tower of blocks she’d built a short time before. “Well, she is pretty. It only shows she’s smart enough to know it.”

“It’s hard for me to argue that point, except when she’s spread toothpaste all over the bathroom floor.” With a contented sigh, Linda sat back on the couch. She enjoyed having Monday afternoons off to play with Hope and catch up on the dozens of things that went by the wayside when the restaurant demanded her time. “You’ve been here over a week now, and this is the first time we’ve been able to talk.”

Kate bent over to ruffle Hope’s hair. “You’re a busy woman.”

“So are you.”

Kate heard the question, not so subtly submerged in the statement, and smiled. “You know I didn’t come back to the island to fish and wade, Linda.”

“All right, all right, the heck with being tactful.” With a mother’s skill, she kept her antenna honed on her active toddler and leaned toward Kate. “What are you and Ky doing out on his boat every day?”

With Linda, evasions were neither necessary nor advisable. “Looking for treasure,” Kate said simply.

“Oh.” Expressing only mild surprise, Linda saved a budding African violet from her daughter’s curious fingers. “Blackbeard’s treasure.” She handed Hope a rubber duck in lieu of the plant. “My grandfather still tells stories about it. Pieces of eight, a king’s ransom and bottles of rum. I always figured that it was buried on land.”

Amused at the way Linda could handle the toddler without breaking rhythm, Kate shook her head. “No, not Blackbeard’s.”

There were dozens of theories and myths about where the infamous pirate had hidden his booty, and fantastic speculation on just how rich the trove was. Kate had never considered them any more than stories. Yet she supposed, in her own way, she was following a similar fantasy.

“My father’d been researching the whereabouts of an English merchant ship that sank off the coast here in the eighteenth century.”

“Your father?” Instantly Linda’s attention sharpened. She couldn’t conceive of the Edwin Hardesty she remembered from summers past as a treasure searcher. “That’s why he kept coming to the island every summer? I could never figure out why…” She broke off, grimaced, then plunged ahead. “I’m sorry, Kate, but he never seemed the type to take up scuba diving as a hobby, and I never once saw him with a fish. He certainly managed to keep what he was doing a secret.”

“Yes, even from me.”

“You didn’t know?” Linda glanced over idly as Hope began to beat on a plastic bucket with a wooden puzzle piece.

“Not until I went through his papers a few weeks ago. I decided to follow through on what he’d started.”

“And you came to Ky.”

“I came to Ky.” Kate smoothed the material of her thin summer skirt over her knees. “I needed a boat, a diver, preferably an islander. He’s the best.”

Linda’s attention shifted from her daughter to Kate. There was simple understanding there, but it didn’t completely mask impatience. “Is that the only reason you came to Ky?”

Needs rose up to taunt her. Memories washed up in one warm wave. “Yes, that’s the only reason.”

Linda wondered why Kate should want her to believe what Kate didn’t believe herself. “What if I told you he’s never forgotten you?”

Kate shook her head quickly, almost frantically. “Don’t.”

“I love him.” Linda rose to distract Hope who’d discovered tossing blocks was more interesting than stacking them. “Even though he’s a frustrating, difficult man. He’s Marsh’s brother.” She set Hope in front of a small army of stuffed animals before she turned and smiled. “He’s my brother. And you were the first mainlander I was ever really close to. It’s hard for me to be objective.”

It was tempting to pour out her heart, her doubts. Too tempting. “I appreciate that, Linda. Believe me, what was between Ky and me was over a long time ago. Lives change.”

Making a neutral sound, Linda sat again. There were some people you didn’t press. Ky and Kate were both the same in that area, however diverse they were otherwise. “All right. You know what I’ve been doing the past four years.” She sent a long-suffering look in Hope’s direction. “Tell me what your life’s been like.”

“Quieter.”

Linda laughed. “A small border war would be quieter than life in this house.”

“Earning my doctorate as early as I did took a lot of concentrated effort.” She’d needed that one goal to keep herself level, to keep herself…calm. “When you’re teaching as well it doesn’t leave much time for anything else.” Shrugging, she rose. It sounded so staid, she realized. So dull. She’d wanted to learn, she’d wanted to teach, but in and of itself, it sounded hollow.

There were toys spread all over the living room, tiny pieces of childhood. A tie was tossed carelessly over the back of a chair next to a table where Linda had dropped her purse. Small pieces of a marriage. Family. She wondered, with a panic that came and went quickly, how she would ever survive the empty house back in Connecticut.

“This past year at Yale has been fascinating and difficult.” Was she defending or explaining? Kate wondered impatiently. “Strange, even though my father taught, I didn’t realize that being a teacher is just as hard and demanding as being a student.”

“Harder,” Linda declared after a moment. “You have to have the answers.”

“Yes.” Kate crouched down to look at Hope’s collection of stuffed animals. “I suppose that’s part of the appeal, though. The challenge of either knowing the answer or reasoning it out, then watching it sink in.”

“Hoping it sinks in?” Linda ventured.

Kate laughed again. “Yes, I suppose that’s it. When it does, that’s the most rewarding aspect. Being a mother can’t be that much different. You’re teaching every day.”

“Or trying to,” Linda said dryly.

“The same thing.”

“You’re happy?”

Hope squeezed a bright pink dragon then held it out for Kate. Was she happy? Kate wondered as she obliged by cuddling the dragon in turn. She’d been aiming for achievement, she supposed, not happiness. Her father had never asked that very simple, very basic question. She’d never taken the time to ask herself. “I want to teach,” she answered at length. “I’d be unhappy if I couldn’t.”

“That’s a roundabout way of answering without answering at all.”

“Sometimes there isn’t any yes or no.”

“Ky!” Hope shouted so that Kate jolted, whipping her head around to the front door.

“No.” Linda noted the reaction, but said nothing. “She means the dragon. He gave it to her, so it’s Ky.”

“Oh.” She wanted to swear but managed to smile as she handed the baby back her treasured dragon. It wasn’t reasonable that just his name should make her hands unsteady, her pulse unsteady, her thoughts unsteady. “He wouldn’t pick the usual, would he?” she asked carelessly as she rose.

“No.” She gave Kate a very direct, very level look. “His tastes have always run to the unique.”

Amusement helped to relax her. Kate’s brow rose as she met the look. “You don’t give up, do you?”

“Not on something I believe in.” A trace of stubbornness came through. The stubbornness, Kate mused, that had kept her determinedly waiting for Marsh to fall in love with her. “I believe in you and Ky,” Linda continued. “You two can make a mess of it for as long as you want, but I’ll still believe in you.”

“You haven’t changed,” Kate said on a sigh. “I came back to find you a wife, a mother, and the owner of a restaurant, but you haven’t changed at all.”

“Being a wife and mother only makes me more certain that what I believe is right.” She had her share of arrogance, too, and used it. “We don’t own the restaurant,” she added as an afterthought.

“No?” Surprised, Kate looked up again. “But I thought you said the Roost was yours and Marsh’s.”

“We run it,” Linda corrected. “And we do have a twenty percent interest.” Sitting back, she gave Kate a pleased smile. There was nothing she liked better than to drop small bombs in calm water and watch the ripples. “Ky owns the Roost.”

“Ky?” Kate couldn’t have disguised the astonishment if she’d tried. The Ky Silver she thought she knew hadn’t owned anything but a boat and a shaky beach cottage. He hadn’t wanted to. Buying a restaurant, even a small one on a remote island took more than capital. It took ambition.

“Apparently he didn’t bother to mention it.”

“No.” He’d had several opportunities, Kate recalled, the night they’d had dinner. “No, he didn’t. It doesn’t seem characteristic,” she murmured. “I can picture him buying another boat, a bigger boat or a faster boat, but I can’t imagine him buying a restaurant.”

“I guess it surprised everyone except Marsh—but then Marsh knows Ky better than anyone. A couple of weeks before we were married, Ky told us he’d bought the place and intended to remodel. Marsh was ferrying over to Hatteras every day to work, I was helping out in my aunt’s craft shop during the season. When Ky asked if we wanted to buy in for twenty percent and take over as managers, we jumped at it.” She smiled, pleased, and perhaps relieved. “It wasn’t a mistake for any of us.”

Kate remembered the homey atmosphere, the excellent sea food, the fast service. No, it hadn’t been a mistake, but Ky… “I just can’t picture Ky in business, not on land anyway.”

“Ky knows the island,” Linda said simply. “And he knows what he wants. To my way of thinking, he just doesn’t always know how to get it.”

Kate was going to avoid that area of speculation. “I’m going to take a walk down to the beach,” she decided. “Would you like to come?”

“I’d love to, but—” With a gesture of her hand Linda indicated why Hope had been quiet for the last few minutes. With her arm hooked around her dragon, she was sprawled over the rest of the animals, sound asleep.

“It’s either stop or go with her, isn’t it?” Kate observed with a laugh.

“The nice thing is that when she stops, so can I.” Expertly Linda gathered up Hope, cradling her daughter on her shoulder. “Have a nice walk, and stop into the Roost tonight if you have the chance.”

“I will.” Kate touched Hope’s head, the thick, dark, disordered hair that was so much like her uncle’s. “She’s beautiful, Linda. You’re very lucky.”

“I know. It’s something I don’t ever forget.”

Kate let herself out of the house and walked along the quiet street. Clouds were low, making the light gloomy, but the rain held off. She could taste it in the breeze, the clean freshness of it, mixed with the faintest hint of the sea. It was in that direction she walked.

On an island, she’d discovered, you were much more drawn to the water than to the land. It was the one thing she’d understood completely about Ky, the one thing she’d never questioned.

It had been easier to avoid going to the beach in Connecticut, though she’d always loved the rocky, windy New England coast. She’d been able to resist it, knowing what memories it would bring back. Pain. Kate had learned there were ways of avoiding pain. But here, knowing you could reach the edge of land by walking in any direction, she couldn’t resist. It might have been wiser to walk to the sound, or the inlet. She walked to the sea.

It was warm enough that she needed no more than the sheer skirt and blouse, breezy enough so that the material fluttered around her. She saw two men, caps low over foreheads, their rods secured in the sand, talking together while they sat on buckets and waited for a strike. Their voices didn’t carry above the roar and thunder of surf, but she knew their conversation would deal with bait and lures and yesterday’s catch. She wouldn’t disturb them, nor they her. It was the way of the islander to be friendly enough, but not intrusive.

The water was as gray as the sky, but she didn’t mind. Kate had learned not just to accept its moods but to appreciate the contrasts of each one. When the sea was like this, brooding, with threats of violence on the surface, that meant a storm. She found it appealed to a restlessness in herself she rarely acknowledged.

Whitecaps tossed with systematic fever. The spray rose high and wide. The cry of gulls didn’t seem lonely or plaintive now, but challenging. No, a gray gloomy sky meeting a gray sea was anything but dull. It teamed with energy. It boiled with life.

The wind tugged at her hair, loosening pins. She didn’t notice. Standing just away from the edge of the surf, Kate faced wind and sea with her eyes wide. She had to think about what she’d just discovered about Ky. Perhaps what she had been determined not to discover about herself.

Thinking there, alone in the gray threatening light before a storm, was what Kate felt she needed. The constant wind blowing in from the east would keep her head clear. Maybe the smells and sounds of the sea would remind her of what she’d had and rejected, and what she’d chosen to have.

Once she’d had a powerful force that had held her swirling, breathless. That force was Ky, a man who could pull on your emotions, your senses, by simply being. The recklessness had attracted her once, the tough arrogance combined with unexpected gentleness. What she saw as his irresponsibility had disturbed her. Kate sensed that he was a man who would drift through life when she’d been taught from birth to seek out a goal and work for it to the exclusion of all else. It was that very different outlook on life that set them poles apart.

Perhaps he had decided to take on some responsibility in his life with the restaurant, Kate decided. If he had she was glad of it. But it couldn’t make any difference. They were still poles apart.

She chose the calm, the ordered. Success was satisfaction in itself when success came from something loved. Teaching was vital to her, not just a job, not even a profession. The giving of knowledge fed her. Perhaps for a moment in Linda’s cozy, cluttered home it hadn’t seemed like enough. Not quite enough. Still, Kate knew if you wished for too much, you often received nothing at all.

With the wind whipping at her face she watched the rain begin far out to sea in a dark curtain. If the past had been a treasure she’d lost, no chart could take her back. In her life, she’d been taught only one direction.

Ky never questioned his impulses to walk on the beach. He was a man who was comfortable with his own mood swings, so comfortable, he rarely noticed them. He hadn’t deliberately decided to stop work on his boat at a certain time. He simply felt the temptation of sea and storm and surrendered to it.

Ky watched the seas as he made his way up and over the hill of sand. He could have found his way without faltering in the dark, with no moon. He’d stood on shore and watched the rain at sea before, but repetition didn’t lessen the pleasure. The wind would bring it to the island, but there was still time to seek shelter if shelter were desired. More often than not, Ky would let the rain flow over him while the waves rose and fell wildly.

He’d seen his share of tropical storms and hurricanes. While he might find them exhilarating, he appreciated the relative peace of a summer rain. Today he was grateful for it. It had given him a day away from Kate.

They had somehow reached a shaky, tense coexistence that made it possible for them to be together day after day in a relatively small space. The tension was making him nervy; nervy enough to make a mistake when no diver could afford to make one.

Seeing her, being with her, knowing she’d withdrawn from him as a person was infinitely more difficult than being apart from her. To Kate, he was only a means to an end, a tool she used in the same way he imagined she used a textbook. If that was a bitter pill, he felt he had only himself to blame. He’d accepted her terms. Now all he had to do was live with them.

He hadn’t heard her laugh again since the first dive. He missed that, Ky discovered, every bit as much as he missed the taste of her lips, the feel of her in his arms. She wouldn’t give him any of it willingly, and he’d nearly convinced himself he didn’t want her any other way.

But at night, alone, with the sound of the surf in his head, he wasn’t sure he’d survive another hour. Yet he had to. It was the fierce drive for survival that had gotten him through the last years. Her rejection had eaten away at him, then it had pushed him to prove something to himself. Kate had been the reason for his risking every penny he’d had to buy the Roost. He’d needed something tangible. The Roost had given him that, in much the same way the charter boat he’d recently bought gave him a sense of worth he once thought was unnecessary.

So he owned a restaurant that made a profit, and a boat that was beginning to justify his investment. It had given his innate love of risk an outlet. It wasn’t money that mattered, but the dealing, the speculation, the possibilities. A search for sunken treasure wasn’t much different.

What was she looking for really? Ky wondered. Was the gold her objective? Was she simply looking for an unusual way to spend her holiday? Was she still trying to give her father the blind devotion he’d expected all her life? Was it the hunt? Watching the wall of rain move slowly closer, Ky found of all the possibilities he wanted it to be the last.

With perhaps a hundred yards between them, both Kate and Ky looked out to the sea and the rain without being aware of each other. He thought of her and she of him, but the rain crept closer and time slipped by. The wind grew bolder. Both of them could admit to the restlessness that churned inside them, but neither could acknowledge simple loneliness.

Then they turned to walk back up the dunes and saw each other.

Kate wondered how long he’d been there, and how, when she could feel the waves of tension and need, she hadn’t known the moment he’d stepped onto the beach. Her mind, her body—always so calm and cooperative—sprang to fevered life when she saw him. Kate knew she couldn’t fight that, only the outcome. Still she wanted him. She told herself that just wanting was asking for disaster, but that didn’t stop the need. If she ran from him now she’d admit defeat. Instead Kate took the first step across the sand toward him.

The thin white cotton of her skirt flapped around her, billowing, then clinging to the slender body he already knew. Her skin seemed very pale, her eyes very dark. Again Ky thought of mermaids, of illusions and of foolish dreams.

“You always liked the beach before a storm,” Kate said when she reached him. She couldn’t smile though she told herself she would. She wanted, though she told herself she wouldn’t.

“It won’t be much longer.” He hooked his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans. “If you didn’t bring your car, you’re going to get wet.”

“I was visiting Linda.” Kate turned her head to look back at the rain. No, it wouldn’t be much longer. “It doesn’t matter,” she murmured. “Storms like this are over just as quickly as they begin.” Storms like this, she thought, and like others. “I met Hope. You were right.”

“About what?”

“She looks like you.” This time she did manage to smile, though the tension was balled at the base of her neck. “Did you know she named a doll after you?”

“A dragon’s not a doll,” Ky corrected. His lips curved. He could resist a great deal, be apathetic about a great deal more, but he found it virtually impossible to do either when it came to his niece. “She’s a great kid. Hell of a sailor.”

“You take her out on your boat?”

He heard the astonishment and shrugged it away. “Why not? She likes the water.”

“I just can’t picture you…” Breaking off, Kate turned back to the sea again. No, she couldn’t picture him entertaining a child with toy dragons and boat rides, just as she couldn’t picture him in the business world with ledgers and accountants. “You surprise me,” she said a bit more casually. “About a lot of things.”

He wanted to reach out and touch her hair, wrap those loose blowing ends around his finger. He kept his hands in his pockets. “Such as?”

“Linda told me you own the Roost.”

He didn’t have to see her face to know it would hold that thoughtful, considering expression. “That’s right, or most of it anyway.”

“You didn’t mention it when we were having dinner there.”

“Why should I?” She didn’t have to see him to know he shrugged. “Most people don’t care who owns a place as long as the food’s good and the service is quick.”

“I guess I’m not most people.” She said it quietly, so quietly the words barely carried over the sound of the waves. Even so, Ky tensed.

“Why would it matter to you?”

Before she could think, she turned back, her eyes full of emotion. “Because it all matters. The whys, the hows. Because so much has changed and so much is the same. Because I want…” Breaking off, she took a step back. The look in her eyes turned to panic just before she started to dash away.

“What?” Ky demanded, grabbing her arm. “What do you want?”

“I don’t know!” she shouted, unaware that it was the first time she’d done so in years. “I don’t know what I want. I don’t understand why I don’t.”

“Forget about understanding.” He pulled her closer, holding her tighter when she resisted—or tried to. “Forget everything that’s not here and now.” The nights of restlessness and frustration already had his mercurial temperament on edge. Seeing her when he hadn’t expected to made his emotions teeter. “You walked away from me once, but I won’t crawl for you again. And you,” he added with his eyes suddenly dark, his face suddenly close, “you damn well won’t walk away as easy this time, Kate. Not this time.”

With his arms wrapped around her he held her against him. His lips hovered above hers, threatening, promising. She couldn’t tell. She didn’t care. It was their taste she wanted, their pressure, no matter how harsh, how demanding. No matter what the consequence. Intellect and emotion might battle, and the battle might be eternal. Yet as she stood there crushed against him, feeling the wind whip at both of them, she already knew what the inevitable outcome would be.

“Tell me what you want, Kate.” His voice was low, but as demanding as a shout. “Tell me what you want—now.”

Now, she thought. If there could only be just now. She started to shake her head, but his breath feathered over her skin. That alone made future and past fade into insignificance.

“You,” she heard herself murmur. “Just you.” Reaching up she drew his face down to hers.

A wild passionate wind, a thunderous surf, the threat of rain just moments away. She felt his body—hard and confident against hers. She tasted his lips—soft, urgent. Over the thunder in her head and the thunder to the east, she heard her own moan. She wanted, as long as the moment lasted.

His tongue tempted; she surrendered to it. He dove deep and took all, then more. It might never be enough. With no hesitation, Kate met demand with demand, heat with heat. While mouth sought mouth, her hands roamed his face, teaching what she hadn’t forgotten, reacquainting her with the familiar.

His skin was rough with a day’s beard, the angle of cheek and jaw, hard and defined. As her fingers inched up she felt the soft brush of his hair blown by the wind. The contrast made her tremble before she dove her fingers deeper.

She could make him blind and deaf with needs. Knowing it, Ky couldn’t stop it. The way she touched him, so sure, so sweet while her mouth was molten fire. Desire boiled in him, rising so quickly he was weak with it before his mind accepted what his body couldn’t deny. He held her closer, hard against soft, rough against smooth, flame against flame.

Through the thin barrier of her blouse he felt her flesh warm to his touch. He knew the skin here would be delicate, as fragile as the underside of a rose. The scent would be as sweet, the taste as honeyed. Memories, the moment, the dream of more, all these combined to make him half mad. He knew what it would be like to have her, and knowing alone aroused. He felt her now, and feeling made him irrational.

He wanted to take her right there, next to the sea, while the sky opened up and poured over them.

“I want you.” With his face buried against her neck he searched for all the places he remembered. “You know how much. You always knew.”

“Yes.” Her head was spinning. Every touch, every taste added speed to the whirl. Whatever doubts she’d had, Kate had never doubted the want. She hadn’t always understood it, the intensity of it, but she’d never doubted it. It was pulling at her now—his, hers—the mutual, mindless passion they’d always been able to ignite in one another. She knew where it would lead—to dark, secret places full of sound and velocity. Not the eye of the hurricane, never the calm with him, but full fury from beginning to end. She knew where it would lead, and knew there’d be glory and freedom. But Ky had spoken no less than the truth when he’d said she wouldn’t walk away so easily this time. It was that truth that made her reach for reason, when it would have been so simple to reach for madness.

“We can’t.” Breathless, she tried to turn in his arms. “Ky, I can’t.” This time when she took his face in her hands it was to draw it away from hers. “This isn’t right for me.”

Fury mixed with passion. It showed in his eyes, in the press of his fingers on her arms. “It’s right for you. It’s never been anything but right for you.”

“No.” She had to deny it, she had to mean it, because he was so persuasive. “No, it’s not. I’ve always been attracted to you. It’d be ridiculous for me to try to pretend otherwise, but this isn’t what I want for myself.”

His fingers tightened. If they brought her pain neither of them acknowledged it. “I told you to tell me what you wanted. You did.”

As he spoke the sky opened, just as he’d imagined. Rain swept in from the sea, tasting of salt, the damp wind and mystery. Instantly drenched, they stood just as they were, close, distant, with his hands firm on her arms and hers light on his face. She felt the water wash over her body, watched it run over his. It stirred her. She couldn’t say why, she wouldn’t give in to it.

“At that moment I did want you, I can’t deny it.”

“And now?” he demanded.

“I’m going back to the village.”

“Damn it, Kate, what else do you want?”

She stared at him through the rain. His eyes were dark, stormy as the sea that raged behind him. Somehow he was more difficult to resist when he was like this, volatile, on edge, not quite controlled. She felt desire knot in her stomach, and swim in her head. That was all, Kate told herself. That was all it had ever been. Desire without understanding. Passion without future. Emotion without reason.

“Nothing you can give me,” she whispered, knowing she’d have to dig for the strength to walk away, dig for it even to take the first step. “Nothing we can give to each other.” Dropping her hands she stepped back. “I’m going back.”

“You’ll come back to me,” Ky said as she took the first steps from him. “And if you don’t,” he added in a tone that made her hesitate, “it won’t make any difference. We’ll finish what’s been started again.”

She shivered, but continued to walk. Finish what’s been started again. That was what she most feared.

Chapter 6

The storm passed. In the morning the sea was calm and blue, sprinkled with diamonds of sunlight from a sky where all clouds had been whisked away. It was true that rain freshened things—the air, grass, even the wood and stone of buildings.

The day was perfect, the wind calm. Kate’s nerves rolled and jumped.

She’d committed herself to the project. It was her agreement with Ky that forced her to go to the harbor as she’d been doing every other morning. It made her climb on deck when she wanted nothing more than to pack and leave the island the way she’d come. If Ky could complete the agreement after what had passed between them on the beach, so could she.

Perhaps he sensed the fatigue she was feeling, but he made no comment on it. They spoke only when necessary as he headed out to open sea. Ky stood at the helm, Kate at the stern. Still, even the roar of the engine didn’t disguise the strained silence. Ky checked the boat’s compass, then cut the engines. Silence continued, thunderously.

With the deck separating them, each began to don their equipment—wet suits, the weight belts that would give them neutral buoyancy in the water, headlamps to light the sea’s dimness, masks for sight. Ky checked his depth gauge and compass on his right wrist, then the luminous dial of the watch on his left while Kate attached the scabbard for her diver’s knife onto her leg just below the knee.

Without speaking, they checked the valves and gaskets on the tanks, then strapped them on, securing buckles. As was his habit, Ky went into the water first, waiting until Kate joined him. Together they jackknifed below the surface.

The familiar euphoria reached out for her. Each time she dived, Kate expected the underwater world to become more commonplace. Each time it was still magic. She acknowledged what made it possible for her to join creatures of the sea—the regulator with its mouthpiece and hose that brought her air from the tanks on her back, the mask that gave her visibility. She knew the importance of every gauge. She acknowledged the technology, then put it in the practical side of her brain while she simply enjoyed.

They swam deeper, keeping in constant visual contact. Kate knew Ky often dived alone, and that doing so was always a risk. She also knew that no matter how much anger and resentment he felt toward her, she could trust him with her life.

She relied on Ky’s instincts as much as his ability. It was his expertise that guided her now, perhaps more than her father’s careful research and calculations. They were combing the very edge of the territory her father had mapped out, but Kate felt no discouragement. If she hadn’t trusted Ky’s skill and instincts, she would never have come back to Ocracoke.

They were going deeper now than they had on their other dives. Kate equalized by letting a tiny bit of air into her suit. Feeling the “squeeze” on her eardrums at the change in pressure, she relieved it carefully. A damaged eardrum could mean weeks without being able to dive.

When Ky signaled for her to switch on her head lamp she obeyed without question. Excitement began to rise.

The sunlight was fathoms above them. The world here never saw it. Sea grass swayed in the current. Now and then a fish, curious and brave enough, would swim along beside them only to vanish in the blink of an eye at a sudden movement.

Ky swam smoothly through the water, using his feet to propel him at a steady pace. Their lamps cut through the murk, surprising more fish, illuminating rock formations that had existed under the sea for centuries. Kate discovered shapes and faces in them.

No, she could never dive alone, Kate decided as Ky slowed his pace to keep rhythm with her more meandering one. It was so easy for her to lose her sense of time and direction. Air came into her lungs with a simple drawing of breath as long as the tanks held oxygen, but the gauges on her wrist only worked if she remembered to look at them.

Even mortality could be forgotten in enchantment. And enchantment could too easily lead to a mistake. It was a lesson she knew, but one that could slip away from her. The timelessness, the freedom was seductive. The feeling was somehow as sensual as the timeless freedom felt in a lover’s arms. Kate knew this pleasure could be as dangerous as a lover, but found it as difficult to resist.

There was so much to see, to touch. Crustaceans of different shapes, sizes and hues. They were alive here in their own milieu, so different from when they washed up helplessly on the beach for children to collect in buckets. Fish swam in and out of waving grass that would be limp and lifeless on land. Unlike dolphins or man, some creatures would never know the thrill of both air and water.

Her beam passed over another formation, crusted with barnacles and sea life. She nearly passed it, but curiosity made her turn back so that the light skimmed over it a second time. Odd, she thought, how structured some of the shapes could be. It almost looked like…

Hesitating, using her arms to reverse her progress, Kate turned in the water to play her light over the shape from end to end. Excitement rose so quickly she grabbed Ky’s arm in a grip strong enough to make him stop to search for a defect in her equipment. With a shake of her head Kate warded him off, then pointed.

When their twin lights illuminated the form on the ocean floor, Kate nearly shouted with the discovery. It wasn’t a shelf of rock. The closer they swam toward it the more apparent that became. Though it was heavily corroded and covered with crustaceans, the shape of the cannon remained recognizable.

Ky swam around the barrel. When he removed his knife and struck the cannon with the hilt the metallic sound rang out strangely. Kate was certain she’d never heard anything more musical. Her laughter came out in a string of bubbles that made Ky look in her direction and grin.

They’d found a corroded cannon, he thought, and she was as thrilled as if they’d found a chest full of doubloons. And he understood it. They’d found something perhaps no one had seen for two centuries. That in itself was a treasure.

With a movement of his hand he indicated for her to follow, then they began to swim slowly east. If they’d found a cannon, it was likely they’d find more.

Reluctant to leave her initial discovery, Kate swam with him, looking back as often as she looked ahead. She hadn’t realized the excitement would be this intense. How could she explain what it felt like to discover something that had lain untouched on the sea floor for more than two centuries? Who would understand more clearly, she wondered, her colleagues at Yale or Ky? Somehow she felt her colleagues would understand intellectually, but they would never understand the exhilaration. Intellectual pleasure didn’t make you giddy enough to want to turn somersaults.

How would her father have felt if he’d found it? She wished she knew. She wished she could have given him that one instant of exultation, perhaps shared it with him as they’d so rarely shared anything. He’d only known the planning, the theorizing, the bookwork. With one long look at that ancient weapon, she’d known so much more.

When Ky stopped and touched her shoulders, her emotions were as mixed as her thoughts. If she could have spoken she’d have told him to hold her, though she wouldn’t have known why. She was thrilled, yet running through the joy was a thin shaft of sorrow—for what was lost, she thought. For what she’d never be able to find again.

Perhaps he knew something of what moved her. They couldn’t communicate with words, but he touched her cheek—just a brush of his finger over her skin. It was more comforting to her than a dozen soft speeches.

She understood then that she’d never stopped loving him. No matter how many years, how many miles had separated them, what life she had she’d left with him. The time in between had been little more than existence. It was possible to live with emptiness, even to be content with it until you had that heady taste of life again.

She might have panicked. She might have run if she hadn’t been trapped there, fathoms deep in the midst of a discovery. Instead she accepted the knowledge, hoping that time would tell her what to do.

He wanted to ask her what was going through her mind. Her eyes were full of so many emotions. Words would have to wait. Their time in the sea was almost up. He touched her face again and waited for the smile. When she gave it to him, Ky pointed at something behind her that he had just noticed moments before.

An oaken plank, old, splintered and bumpy with parasites. For the second time Ky removed his knife and began to pry the board from its bed. Silt floated up thinly, cutting visibility before it settled again. Replacing his knife, Ky gave the thumbs-up signal that meant they’d surface. Kate shook her head indicating that they should continue to search, but Ky merely pointed to his watch, then again to the surface.

Frustrated with the technology that allowed her to dive, but also forced her to seek air again, Kate nodded.

They swam west, back toward the boat. When she passed the cannon again, Kate felt a quick thrill of pride. She’d found it. And the discoveries were only beginning.

The moment her head was above water, she started to laugh. “We found it!” She grabbed the ladder with one hand as Ky began to climb up, placing his find and his tanks on the deck first. “I can’t believe it, after hardly more than a week. It’s incredible, that cannon lying down there all these years.” Water ran down her face but she didn’t notice. “We have to find the hull, Ky.” Impatient, she released her tanks and handed them up to him before she climbed aboard.

“The chances are good—eventually.”

“Eventually?” Kate tossed her wet hair out of her eyes. “We found this in less than a week.” She indicated the board on the deck. She crouched over it, just wanting to touch. “We found the Liberty.”

“We found a wreck,” he corrected. “It doesn’t have to be the Liberty.”

“It is,” she said with a determination that caused his brow to lift. “We found the cannon and this just on the edge of the area my father had charted. It all fits too well.”

“Regardless of what wreck it is, it’s undocumented. You’ll get your name in the books, professor.”

Annoyed she rose. They stood facing each other on either side of the plank they’d lifted out of the sea. “I don’t care about having my name in the books.”

“Your father’s name then.” He unzipped his wet suit to let his skin dry.

She remembered her feelings after spotting the cannon, how Ky had seemed to understand them. Could they only be kind to each other, only be close to each other, fathoms under the surface? “Is there something wrong with that?”

“Only if it’s an obsession. You always had a problem with your father.”

“Because he didn’t approve of you?” she shot back.

His eyes took on that eerily calm, almost flat expression that meant his anger was lethal. “Because it mattered too much to you what he approved of.”

That stung. The truth often did. “I came here to finish my father’s project,” she said evenly. “I made that clear from the beginning. You’re still getting your fee.”

“You’re still following directions. His directions.” Before she could retort, he turned toward the cabin. “We’ll eat and rest before we go back under.”

With an effort, she held onto her temper. She wanted to dive again, badly. She wanted to find more. Not for her father’s approval, Kate thought fiercely. Certainly not for Ky’s. She wanted this for herself. Pulling down the zipper of her wet suit, she went down the cabin steps.

She’d eat because strength and energy were vital to a diver. She’d rest for the same reason. Then, she determined, she’d go back to the wreck and find proof that it was the Liberty.

Calmer, she watched Ky go through a small cupboard. “Peanut butter?” she asked when she saw the jar he pulled out.

“Protein.”

Her laugh helped her to relax again. “Do you still eat it with bananas?”

“It’s still good for you.”

Though she wrinkled her nose at the combination, she reminded herself that beggars couldn’t be choosers. “When we find the treasure,” she said recklessly, “I’ll buy you a bottle of champagne.”

Their fingers brushed as he handed her the first sandwich. “I’ll hold you to it.” He picked up his own sandwich and a quart of milk. “Let’s eat on deck.”

He wasn’t certain if he wanted the sun or the space, but it wasn’t any easier to be with her in that tiny cabin than it had been the first time, or the last. Taking her assent for granted, Ky went up the stairs again, without looking back. Kate followed.

“It might be good for you,” Kate commented as she took the first bite, “but it still tastes like something you give five-year-olds when they scrape their knees.”

“Five-year-olds require a lot of protein.”

Giving up, Kate sat cross-legged on the deck. The sun was bright, the movement of the boat gentle. She wouldn’t let his digs get to her, nor would she dig back. They were in this together, she reminded herself. Tension and sniping wouldn’t help them find what they sought.

“It’s the Liberty, Ky,” she murmured, looking at the plank again. “I know it is.”

“It’s possible.” He stretched out with his back against the port side. “But there are a lot of wrecks, unidentified and otherwise, all through these waters. Diamond Shoals is a graveyard.”

“Diamond Shoals is fifty miles north.”

“And the entire coastline along these barrier islands is full of littoral currents, rip currents and shifting sand ridges. Two hundred years ago they didn’t have modern navigational devices. Hell, they didn’t even have the lighthouses until the nineteenth century. I couldn’t even give you an educated guess as to how many ships went down from the time Columbus set out until World War II.”

Kate took another bite. “We’re only concerned with one ship.”

“Finding one’s no big problem,” he returned. “Finding a specific one’s something else. Last year, after a couple of hurricanes breezed through, they found wrecks uncovered on the beach on Hatteras. There are plenty of houses on the island that were built from pieces of wreckage like that.” He pointed to the plank with the remains of his sandwich.

Kate frowned at the board again. “It could be the Liberty just as easily as it couldn’t.”

“All right.” Appreciating her stubbornness, Ky grinned. “But whatever it is, there might be treasure. Anything lost for more than two hundred years is pretty much finders keepers.”

She didn’t want to say that it wasn’t any treasure she wanted. Just the Liberty’s. From what he said before, Kate was aware he already understood that. It was simply different for him. She took a long drink of cold milk. “What do you plan to do with your share?”

With his eyes half closed, he shrugged. He could do as he pleased now, a cache of gold wouldn’t change that. “Buy another boat, I imagine.”

“With what two-hundred-year-old gold would be worth today, you’d be able to buy a hell of a boat.”

He grinned, but kept his eyes shaded. “I intend to. What about you?”

“I’m not sure.” She wished she had some tangible goal for the money, something exciting, even fanciful. It just didn’t seem possible to think beyond the hunt yet. “I thought I might travel a bit.”

“Where?”

“Greece maybe. The islands.”

“Alone?”

The food and the motion of the boat lulled her. She made a neutral sound as she shut her eyes.

“Isn’t there some dedicated teacher you’d take with you? Someone you could discuss the Trojan War with?”

“Mmm, I don’t want to go to Greece with a dedicated teacher.”

“Someone else?”

“There’s no one.”

Sitting on the deck with her face lifted, her hair blowing, she looked like a finely crafted piece of porcelain. Something a man might look at, admire, but not touch. When her eyes were open, hot, her skin flushed with passion, he burned for her. When she was like this, calm, distant, he ached. He let the needs run through him because he knew there was no stopping them.

“Why?”

“Hmm?”

“Why isn’t there anyone?”

Lazily she opened her eyes. “Anyone?”

“Why don’t you have a lover?”

The sleepy haze cleared from her eyes instantly. He saw her fingers tense on the dark blue material that stretched snugly over her knees. “It’s none of your business whether I do or not.”

“You’ve just told me you don’t.”

“I told you there’s no one I’d travel with,” she corrected, but when she started to rise, he put a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s the same thing.”

“No, it’s not, but it’s still none of your business, Ky, any more than your personal life is mine.”

“I’ve had women,” he said easily. “But I haven’t had a lover since you left the island.”

She felt the pain and the pleasure sweep up through her. It was dangerous to dwell on the sensation. As dangerous as it was to lose yourself deep under the ocean. “Don’t.” She lifted her hand to remove his from her shoulder. “This isn’t good for either of us.”

“Why?” His fingers linked with hers. “We want each other. We both know the rules this time around.”

Rules. No commitment, no promises. Yes, she understood them this time, but like mortality during a dive, they could easily be forgotten. Even now, with his eyes on hers, her fingers caught in his, the structure of those rules became dimmer and dimmer. He would hurt her again. There was never any question of that. Somehow, in the last twenty-four hours, it had become a matter of how she would deal with the pain, not if.

“Ky, I’m not ready.” Her voice was low, not pleading, but plainly vulnerable. Though she wasn’t aware of it, there was no defense she could put to better use.

He drew her up so that they were both standing, touching only hand to hand. Though she was tall, her slimness made her appear utterly fragile. It was that and the way she looked at him, with her head tilted back so their eyes could meet, that prevented him from taking what he was determined to have, without questions, without her willingness. Ruthlessly, that was how he told himself he wanted to take her, even though he knew he couldn’t.

“I’m not a patient man.”

“No.”

He nodded, then released her hand while he still could. “Remember it,” he warned before he turned to go to the helm. “We’ll take the boat east, over the wreck and dive again.”

An hour later they found a piece of rigging, broken and corroded, less than three yards from the cannon. By hand signals, Ky indicated that they’d start a stock-pile of the salvage. Later they’d come back with the means of bringing it up. There were more planks, some too big for a man to carry up, some small enough for Kate to hold in one hand.

When she found a pottery bowl, miraculously unbroken, she realized just what an archaeologist must feel after hours of digging when he unearths a fragment of another era. Here it was, cupped in her hand, a simple bowl, covered with silt, covered with age. Someone had eaten from it once, a seaman, relaxing briefly below deck, perhaps on his first voyage across the Atlantic to the New World. His last journey in any event, Kate mused as she turned the bowl over in her hand.

The rigging, the cannon, the planks equaled ship. The bowl equaled man.

Though she put the bowl with the other pieces of their find, she intended to take it up with her on this dive. Whatever other artifacts they found could go to a museum, but the first, she’d keep.

They found pieces of glass that might have come from bottles that held whiskey, chunks of crockery that hadn’t survived intact like the bowl. Bits of cups, bowls, plates littered the sea floor.

The galley, she decided. They must have found the galley. Over the years, the water pressure would have simply disintegrated the ship until it was all pieces spread on and under the floor of the ocean. It would, in essence, have become part of the sea, a home for the creatures and plant life that dwelt there.

But they’d found the galley. If they could find something, just one thing with the ship’s name inscribed on it, they’d be certain.

Diligently, using her knife as a digging tool, Kate worked at the floor of the sea. It wasn’t a practical way to search, but she saw no harm in trying her luck. They’d found crockery, glass, the unbroken bowl. Even as she glanced up she saw Ky examining what might have been half a dinner plate.

When she unearthed a long wooden ladle, Kate found that her excitement increased. They had found the galley, and in time, she’d prove to Ky that they’d found the Liberty.

Engrossed in her find, she turned to signal to Ky and moved directly into the path of a stingray.

He saw it. Ky was no more than a yard from Kate when the movement of the ray unearthing itself from its layer of sand and silt had caught his eye. His movement was pure reflex, done without thought or plan. He was quick. But even as he grabbed Kate’s hand to swing her back behind him, out of range, the wicked, saw-toothed tail lashed out.

Her scream was muffled by the water, but the sound went through Ky just as surely as the stingray’s poison went through Kate. Her body went stiff against his, rigid in pain and shock. The ladle she’d found floated down, out of her grip, until it landed silently on the bottom.

He knew what to do. No rational diver goes down unless he has a knowledge of how to handle an emergency. Still Ky felt a moment of panic. This wasn’t just another diver, it was Kate. Before his mind could clear, her stiffened body went limp against him. Then he acted.

Cool, almost mechanically, he tilted her head back with the chin carry to keep her air passage open. He held her securely, pressing his chest into her tanks, keeping his hand against her ribcage. It ran through his mind that it was best she’d fainted. Unconscious she wouldn’t struggle as she might had she been awake and in pain. It was best she’d fainted because he couldn’t bear to think of her in pain. He kicked off for the surface.

On the rise he squeezed her, hard, forcing expanding air out of her lungs. There was always the risk of embolism. They were going up faster than safety allowed. Even while he ventilated his own lungs, Ky kept a lookout. She would bleed, and blood brought sharks.

The minute they surfaced, Ky released her weight belt. Supporting her with his arm wrapped around her, his hand grasping the ladder, Ky unhooked his tanks, slipped them over the side of the boat, then removed Kate’s. Her face was waxy, but as he pulled the mask from her face she moaned. With that slight sound of life some of the blood came back to his own body. With her draped limply over his shoulder, he climbed the ladder onto the Vortex.

He laid her down on the deck, and with hands that didn’t hesitate, began to pull the wet suit from her. She moaned again when he drew the snug material over the wound just above her ankle, but she didn’t reach the surface of consciousness. Grimly, Ky examined the laceration the ray had caused. Even through the protection of her suit, the tail had penetrated deep into her skin. If Ky had only been quicker…

Cursing himself, Ky hurried to the cabin for the first aid kit.

As consciousness began to return. Kate felt the ache swimming up from her ankle to her head. Spears of pain shot through her, sharp enough to make her gasp and struggle, as if she could move away from it and find ease again.

“Try to lie still.”

The voice was gentle and calm. Kate balled her hands into fists and obeyed it. Opening her eyes, she stared up at the pure blue sky. Her mind whirled with confusion, but she stared at the sky as though it were the only tangible thing in her life. If she concentrated, she could rise above the hurt. The ladle. Opening her hand she found it empty, she’d lost the ladle. For some reason it seemed vital that she have it.

“We found the galley.” Her voice was hoarse with anguish, but her one hand remained open and limp. “I found a ladle. They’d have used it for spooning soup into that bowl. The bowl—it wasn’t even broken. Ky…” Her voice weakened with a new flood of sensation as memory began to return. “It was a stingray. I wasn’t watching for it, it just seemed to be there. Am I going to die?”

“No!” His answer was sharp, almost angry. Bending over her, he placed both hands on her shoulders so that she’d look directly into his face. He had to be sure she understood everything he said. “It was a stingray,” he confirmed, not adding that it had been a good ten feet long. “Part of the spine’s broken off, lodged just above your ankle.”

He watched her eyes cloud further, part pain, part fear. His hands tightened on her shoulders. “It’s not in deep. I can get it out, but it’ll hurt like hell.”

She knew what he was saying. She could stay as she was until he got her back to the doctor on the island, or she could trust him to treat her now. Though her lips trembled, she kept her eyes on his and spoke clearly.

“Do it now.”

“Okay.” He continued to stare at her, into the eyes that were glazed with shock. “Hang on. Don’t try to be brave. Scream as much as you want but try not to move. I’ll be quick.” Bending further, he kissed her hard. “I promise.”

Kate nodded, then concentrating on the feeling of his lips against hers, shut her eyes. He was quick. Within seconds she felt the hurt rip through her, over the threshold she thought she could bear and beyond…. She pulled in air to scream, but went back under the surface into liquid dimness.

Ky let the blood flow freely onto the deck for a moment, knowing it would wash away some of the poison. His hands had been rock steady when he’d pulled the spine from her flesh. His mind had been cold. Now with her blood on his hands, they began to shake. Ignoring them, and the icy fear of seeing Kate’s smooth skin ripped and raw, Ky washed the wound, cleansed it, bound it. Within the hour, he’d have her to a doctor.

With unsteady fingers, he checked the pulse at the base of her neck. It wasn’t strong, but it was steady. Lifting an eyelid with his thumb, he checked her pupils. He didn’t believe she was in shock, she’d simply escaped from the pain. He thanked God for that.

On a long breath he let his forehead rest against hers, only for a moment. He prayed that she’d remain unconscious until she was safely under a doctor’s care.

He didn’t take the time to wash her blood from his hands before he took the helm. Ky whipped the boat around in a quick circle and headed full throttle back to Ocracoke.

Chapter 7

As she started to float toward consciousness, Kate focused, drifted, then focused again. She saw the whirl of a white ceiling rather than the pure blue arc of sky. Even when the mist returned she remembered the hurt and thrashed out against it. She couldn’t face it a second time. Yet she found as she rose closer to the surface that she didn’t have the will to fight against it. That brought fear. If she’d had the strength, she might have wept.

Then she felt a cool hand on her cheek. Ky’s voice pierced the last layers of fog, low and gentle. “Take it easy, Kate. You’re all right now. It’s all over.”

Though her breath hitched as she inhaled, Kate opened her eyes. The pain didn’t come. All she felt was his hand on her cheek, all she saw was his face. “Ky.” When she said his name, Kate reached for his hand, the one solid thing she was sure of. Her own voice frightened her. It was hardly more than a wisp of air.

“You’re going to be fine. The doctor took care of you.” As he spoke, Ky rubbed his thumb over her knuckles, establishing a point of concentration, and kept his other hand lightly on her cheek, knowing that contact was important. He’d nearly gone mad waiting for her to open her eyes again. “Dr. Bailey, you remember. You met him before.”

It seemed vital that she should remember so she forced her mind to search back. She had a vague picture of a tough, weathered old man who looked more suited to the sea than the examining room. “Yes. He likes…likes ale and flounder.”

He might have laughed at her memory if her voice had been stronger. “You’re going to be fine, but he wants you to rest for a few more days.”

“I feel…strange.” She lifted a hand to her own head as if to assure herself it was still there.

“You’re on medication, that’s why you’re groggy. Understand?”

“Yes.” Slowly she turned her head and focused on her surroundings. The walls were a warm ivory, not the sterile white of a hospital. The dark oak trim gleamed dully. On the hardwood floor lay a single rug, its muted Indian design fading with age. It was the only thing Kate recognized. The last time she’d been in Ky’s bedroom only half the dry wall had been in place and one of the windows had had a long thin crack in the bottom pane. “Not the hospital,” she managed.

“No.” He stroked her head, needing to touch as much as to check for her fever that had finally broken near dawn. “It was easier to bring you here after Bailey took care of you. You didn’t need a hospital, but neither of us liked the idea of your being in a hotel right now.”

“Your house,” she murmured, struggling to concentrate her strength. “This is your bedroom, I remember the rug.”

They’d made love on it once. That’s what Ky remembered. With an effort, he kept his hands light. “Are you hungry?”

“I don’t know.” Basically, she felt nothing. When she tried to sit up, the drug spun in her head, making both the room and reality reel away. That would have to stop, Kate decided while she waited for the dizziness to pass. She’d rather have some pain than that helpless, weighted sensation.

Without fuss, Ky moved the pillows and shifted her to a sitting position. “The doctor said you should eat when you woke up. Just some soup.” Rising he looked down on her, in much the same way, Kate thought, as he’d looked at a cracked mast he was considering mending. “I’ll fix it. Don’t get up,” he added as he walked to the door. “You’re not strong enough yet.”

As he went into the hall he began to swear in a low steady stream.

Of course she wasn’t strong enough, he thought with a last vicious curse. She was pale enough to fade into the sheets she lay on. No resistance, that’s what Bailey had said. Not enough food, not enough sleep, too much strain. If he could do nothing else, Ky determined as he pulled open a kitchen cupboard, he could do something about that. She was going to eat, and lie flat on her back until the doctor said otherwise.

He’d known she was weak, that was the worst of it. Ky dumped the contents of a can into a pot then hurled the empty container into the trash. He’d seen the strain on her face, the shadows under her eyes, he’d heard the traces of fatigue come and go in her voice, but he’d been too wrapped up in his own needs to do anything about it.

With a flick of the wrist, he turned on the burner under the soup, then the burner under the coffee. God, he needed coffee. For a moment he simply stood with his fingers pressed against his eyes waiting for his system to settle.

He couldn’t remember ever spending a more frantic twenty-four hours. Even after the doctor had checked and treated her, even when Ky had brought her home and she’d been fathoms deep under the drug, his nerves hadn’t eased. He’d been terrified to leave the room for more than five minutes at a time. The fever had raged through her, though she’d been unaware. Most of the night he’d sat beside her, bathing away the sweat and talking to her, though she couldn’t hear.

Through the night he’d existed on coffee and nerves. With a half-laugh he reached for a cup. It looked like that wasn’t going to change for a while yet.

He knew he still wanted her, knew he still felt something for her, under the bitterness and anger. But until he’d seen her lying unconscious on the deck of his boat, with her blood on his hands, he hadn’t realized that he still loved her.

He’d known what to do about the want, even the bitterness, but now, faced with love, Ky hadn’t a clue. It didn’t seem possible for him to love someone so frail, so calm, so…different than he. Yet the emotion he’d once felt for her had grown and ripened into something so solid he couldn’t see any way around it. For now, he’d concentrate on getting her on her feet again. He poured the soup into a bowl and carried it upstairs.

It would have been an easy matter to close her eyes and slide under again. Too easy. Willing herself to stay awake, Kate concentrated on Ky’s room. There were a number of changes here as well, she mused. He’d trimmed the windows in oak, giving them a wide sill where he’d scattered the best of his shells. A piece of satiny driftwood stood, beautiful as a piece of sculpture. There was a paneled closet door with a faceted glass knob where there’d once been a rod, a round-backed rattan chair where there’d been packing crates.

Only the bed was the same, she mused. The wide four-poster had been his mother’s. She knew he’d given the rest of his family’s furniture to Marsh. Ky had told her once he’d felt no need or desire for it, but he kept the bed. He was born there, unexpectedly, during a night in which the island had been racked by a storm.

And they’d made love there, Kate remembered as she ran her fingers over the sheets. The first time, and the last.

Stopping the movement of her fingers, she looked over as Ky came back into the room. Memories had to be pushed aside. “You’ve done a lot of work in here.”

“A bit.” He set the tray over her lap as he sat on the edge of the bed.

As the scent of the soup reached her, Kate shut her eyes. Just the aroma seemed to be enough. “It smells wonderful.”

“The smell won’t put any meat on you.”

She smiled, and opened her eyes again. Then before she’d realized it, Ky had spoon-fed her the first bite. “It tastes wonderful too.” Though she reached for the spoon, he dipped it into the bowl himself then held it to her lips.

“I can do it,” she began, then was forced to swallow more broth.

“Just eat.” Fighting off waves of emotion he spoke briskly. “You look like hell.”

“I’m sure I do,” she said easily. “Most people don’t look their best a couple of hours after being stung by a stingray.”

“Twenty-four,” Ky corrected as he fed her another spoon of soup.

“Twenty-four what?”

“Hours.” Ky slipped in another spoonful when her eyes widened.

“I’ve been unconscious for twenty-four hours?” She looked to the window and the sunlight as if she could find some means of disproving it.

“You slipped in and out quite a bit before Bailey gave you the shot. He said you probably wouldn’t remember.” Thank God, Ky added silently. Whenever she’d fought her way back to consciousness, she’d been in agony. He could still hear her moans, feel the way she’d clutched him. He never knew a person could suffer physically for another’s pain the way he’d suffered for hers. Even now it made his muscles clench.

“That must’ve been some shot he gave me.”

“He gave you what you needed.” His eyes met hers.

For the first time Kate saw the fatigue in them, and the anger. “You’ve been up all night,” she murmured. “Haven’t you had any rest at all?”

“You needed to be watched,” he said briefly. “Bailey wanted you to stay under, so you’d sleep through the worst of the pain, and so you’d just sleep period.” His voice changed as he lost control over the anger. He couldn’t prevent the edge of accusation from showing, partly for her, partly for himself. “The wound wasn’t that bad, do you understand? But you weren’t in any shape to handle it. Bailey said you’ve been well on the way to working yourself into exhaustion.”

“That’s ridiculous. I don’t—”

Ky swore at her, filling her mouth with more soup. “Don’t tell me it’s ridiculous. I had to listen to him. I had to look at you. You don’t eat, you don’t sleep, you’re going to fall down on your face.”

There was too much of the drug in her system to allow her temper to bite. Instead of annoyance, her words came out like a sigh. “I didn’t fall on my face.”

“Only a matter of time.” Fury was coming too quickly. Though his fingers tightened on the spoon, Ky held it back. “I don’t care how much you want to find the treasure, you can’t enjoy it if you’re flat on your back.”

The soup was warming her. As much as her pride urged her to refuse, her system craved the food. “I won’t be,” she told him, not even aware that her words were beginning to slur. “We’ll dive again tomorrow, and I’ll prove it’s the Liberty.”

He started to swear at her, but one look at the heavy eyes and the pale cheeks had him swallowing the words. “Sure.” He spooned in more soup knowing she’d be asleep again within moments.

“I’ll give the ladle and the rigging and the rest to a museum.” Her eyes closed. “For my father.”

Ky set the tray on the floor. “Yes, I know.”

“It was important to him. I need…I just need to give him something.” Her eyes fluttered open briefly. “I didn’t know he was ill. He never told me about his heart, about the pills. If I’d known…”

“You couldn’t have done any more than you did.” His voice was gentle again as he shifted the pillows down.

“I loved him.”

“I know you did.”

“I could never seem to make the people I love understand what I need. I don’t know why.”

“Rest now. When you’re well, we’ll find the treasure.”

She felt herself sinking into warmth, softness, the dark. “Ky.” Kate reached out and felt his fingers wrap around hers. With her eyes closed, it was all the reality she needed.

“I’ll stay,” he murmured, brushing the hair from her cheek. “Just rest.”

“All those years…” He could feel her fingers relaxing in his as she slipped deeper. “I never forgot you. I never stopped wanting you. Not ever…”

He stared down at her as she slept. Her face was utterly peaceful, pale as marble, soft as silk. Unable to resist, he lifted her fingers to his own cheek, just to feel her flesh against his. He wouldn’t think about what she’d said now. He couldn’t. The strain of the last day had taken a toll on him as well. If he didn’t get some rest, he wouldn’t be able to care for her when she woke again.

Rising, Ky pulled down the shades, and took off his shirt. Then he lay down next to Kate in the big four-poster bed and slept for the first time in thirty-six hours.

* * *

The pain was a dull, consistent throb, not the silvery sharp flash she remembered, but a gnawing ache that wouldn’t pass. When it woke her, Kate lay still, trying to orient herself. Her mind was clearer now. She was grateful for that, even though with the drug out of her system she was well aware of the wound. It was dark, but the moonlight slipped around the edges of the shades Ky had drawn. She was grateful for that too. It seemed she’d been a prisoner of the dark for too long.

It was night. She prayed it was only hours after she’d last awoken, not another full day later. She didn’t want that quick panic at the thought of losing time again. Because she needed to be certain she was in control this time, she went over everything she remembered.

The pottery bowl, the ladle, then the stingray. She closed her eyes a moment, knowing it would be a very long time before she forgot what it had felt like to be struck with that whiplike tail. She remembered waking up on the deck of the Vortex, the pure blue sky overhead, and the strong, calm way Ky had spoken to her before he’d pulled out the spine. That pain, the horror of that one instant was very clear. Then, there was nothing else.

She remembered nothing of the journey back to the island, or of Dr. Bailey’s ministrations or of being transported to Ky’s home. Her next clear image was of waking in his bedroom, of dark oak trim on the windows, wide sills with shells set on them.

He’d fed her soup—yes, that was clear, but then things started to become hazy again. She knew he’d been angry, though she couldn’t remember why. At the moment, it was more important to her that she could put events in some sort of sequence.

As she lay in the dark, fully awake and finally aware, she heard the sound of quiet, steady breathing beside her. Turning her head, Kate saw Ky beside her, hardly more than a silhouette with the moonlight just touching the skin of his chest so that she could see it rise and fall.

He’d said he would stay, she remembered. And he’d been tired. Abruptly Kate remembered there’d been fatigue in his eyes as well as temper. He’d been caring for her.

A mellow warmth moved through her, one she hadn’t felt in a very long time. He had taken care of her, and though it had made him angry, he’d done it. And he’d stayed. Reaching out, she touched his cheek.

Though the gesture was whisper light, Ky awoke immediately. His sleep had been little more than a half doze so that he could recharge his system yet be aware of any sign that Kate needed attention. Sitting up, he shook his head to clear it.

He looked like a boy caught napping. For some reason the gesture moved Kate unbearably. “I didn’t mean to wake you,” she murmured.

He reached for the lamp beside the bed and turned it on low. Though his body revolted against the interruption, his mind was fully awake. “Pain?”

“No.”

He studied her face carefully. The glazed look from the drug had left her eyes, but the color hadn’t returned. “Kate.”

“All right. Some.”

“Bailey left some pills.”

As he started to rise, Kate reached for him again. “No, I don’t want anything. It makes me groggy.”

“It takes away the pain.”

“Not now, Ky, please. I promise I’ll tell you if it gets bad.”

Because her voice was close to desperate he made himself content with that. At the moment, she looked too fragile to argue with. “Are you hungry?”

She smiled, shaking her head. “No. It must be the middle of the night. I was only trying to orient myself.” She touched him again, in gratitude, in comfort. “You should sleep.”

“I’ve had enough. Anyway, you’re the patient.”

Automatically, he put his hand to her forehead to check for fever. Touched, Kate laid hers over it. She felt the quick reflexive tensing of his fingers.

“Thank you.” When he would have removed his hand, she linked her fingers with his. “You’ve been taking good care of me.”

“You needed it,” he said simply and much too swiftly. He couldn’t allow her to stir him now, not when they were in that big, soft bed surrounded by memories.

“You haven’t left me since it happened.”

“I had no place to go.”

His answer made her smile. Kate reached up her free hand to touch his cheek. There had been changes, she thought, many changes. But so many things had stayed the same. “You were angry with me.”

“You haven’t been taking care of yourself.” He told himself he should move away from the bed, from Kate, from everything that weakened him there.

He stayed, leaning over her, one hand caught in hers. Her eyes were dark, soft in the dim light, full of the sweetness and innocence he remembered. He wanted to hold her until there was no more pain for either of them, but he knew, if he pressed his body against hers now, he wouldn’t stop. Again he started to move, pulling away the hand that held hers. Again Kate stopped him.

“I would’ve died if you hadn’t gotten me up.”

“That’s why it’s smarter to dive with a partner.”

“I might still have died if you hadn’t done everything you did.”

He shrugged this off, too aware that the fingers on his face were stroking lightly, something she had done in the past. Sometimes before they’d made love, and often afterward, when they’d talked in quiet voices, she’d stroke his face, tracing the shape of it as though she’d needed to memorize it. Perhaps she, too, sometimes awoke in the middle of the night and remembered too much.

Unable to bear it, Ky put his hand around her wrist and drew it away. “The wound wasn’t that bad,” he said simply.

“I’ve never seen a stingray that large.” She shivered and his hand tightened on her wrist.

“Don’t think about it now. It’s over.”

Was it? she wondered as she lifted her head and looked into his eyes. Was anything ever really over? For four years she’d told herself there were joys and pains that could be forgotten, absorbed into the routine that was life as it had to be lived. Now, she was no longer sure. She needed to be. More than anything else, she needed to be sure.

“Hold me,” she murmured.

Was she trying to make him crazy? Ky wondered. Did she want him to cross the border, that edge he was trying so desperately to avoid? It took most of the strength he had left just to keep his voice even. “Kate, you need to sleep now. In the morning—”

“I don’t want to think about the morning,” she murmured. “Only now. And now I need you to hold me.” Before he could refuse, she slipped her arms around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder.

She felt his hesitation, but not his one vivid flash of longing before his arms came around her. On a long breath Kate closed her eyes. Too much time had passed since she’d had this, the gentleness, the sweetness she’d experienced only with Ky. No one else had ever held her with such kindness, such simple compassion. Somehow, she never found it odd that a man could be so reckless and arrogant, yet kind and compassionate at the same time.

Perhaps she’d been attracted to the recklessness, but it had been the kindness she had fallen in love with. Until now, in the quiet of the deep night, she hadn’t understood. Until now, in the security of his arms, she hadn’t accepted what she wanted.

Life as it had to be lived, she thought again. Was taking what she so desperately needed part of that?

She was so slender, so soft beneath the thin nightshirt. Her hair lay over his skin, loose and free, its color muted in the dim light. He could feel her palms against his back, those elegant hands that had always made him think more of an artist than a teacher. Her breathing was quiet, serene, as he knew it was when she slept. The light scent of woman clung to the material of the nightshirt.

Holding her didn’t bring the pain he’d expected but a contentment he’d been aching for without realizing it. The tension in his muscles eased, the knot in his stomach vanished. With his eyes closed, he rested his cheek on her hair. It seemed like a lifetime since he’d known the pleasure of quiet satisfaction. She’d asked him to hold her, but had she known he needed to be held just as badly?

Kate felt him relax degree by degree and wondered if it had been she who’d caused the tension in him, and she who’d ultimately released it. Had she hurt him more than she’d realized? Had he cared more than she’d dared to believe? Or was it simply that the physical need never completely faded? It didn’t matter, not tonight.

Ky was right. She knew the rules this time around. She wouldn’t expect more than he offered. Whatever he offered was much, much more than she’d had in the long, dry years without him. In turn, she could give what she ached to give. Her love.

“It’s the same for me as it always was,” she murmured. Then, tilting her head back, she looked at him. Her hair streamed down her back, her eyes were wide and honest. He felt the need slam into him like a fist.

“Kate—”

“I never expected to feel the same way when I came back,” she interrupted. “I don’t think I’d have come. I wouldn’t have had the courage.”

“Kate, you’re not well.” He said it very slowly, as if he had to explain to them both. “You’ve lost blood, had a fever. It’s taken a lot out of you. It’d be best, I think, if you tried to sleep now.”

She felt no fever now. She felt cool and light and full of needs. “That day on the beach during the storm, you said I’d come to you.” Kate brought her hands up his back until they reached his shoulders. “Even then I knew you were right. I’m coming to you now. Make love with me, Ky, here, in the bed where you loved me that first time.”

And the last, he remembered, fighting back a torrent of desire. “You’re not well,” he managed a second time.

“Well enough to know what I want.” She brushed her lips over his chin where his beard grew rough with neglect. So long…that was all that would come clearly to her. It had been so long. Too long. “Well enough to know what I need. It’s always been you.” Her fingers tightened on his shoulders, her lips inches from his. “It’s only been you.”

Perhaps moving away from her was the answer. But some answers were impossible. “Tomorrow you may be sorry.”

She smiled in her calm, quiet way that always moved him. “Then we’ll have tonight.”

He couldn’t resist her. The warmth. He didn’t want to hurt her. The softness. The need building inside him threatened to send them both raging even though he knew she was still weak, still fragile. He remembered how it had been the first time, when she’d been innocent. He’d been so careful, though he had never felt the need to care before, and hadn’t since. Remembering that, he laid her back.

“We’ll have tonight,” he repeated and touched his lips to hers.

Sweet, fresh, clean. Those words went through his head, those sensations went through his system as her lips parted for his. So he lingered over her kiss, enjoying with tenderness what he’d once promised himself to take ruthlessly. His mouth caressed, without haste, without pressure. Tasting, just tasting, while the hunger grew.

Her hands reached for his face, fingers stroking, the rough, the smooth. She could hear her own heart beat in her head, feel the slow, easy pleasure that came in liquid waves. He murmured to her, lovely, quiet words that made her thrill when she felt them formed against her mouth. With his tongue he teased hers in long, lazy sweeps until she felt her mind cloud as it had under the drug. Then when she felt the first twinge of desperation, he kissed her with an absorbed patience that left her weak.

He felt it—that initial change from equality to submission that had always excited him. The aggression would come later, knocking the breath from him, taking him to the edge. He knew that too. But for the moment, she was soft, yielding.

He slid his hands over the nightshirt, stroking, lingering. The material between his flesh and hers teased them both. She moved to his rhythm, glorying in the steady loss of control. He took her deeper with a touch, still deeper with a taste. She dove, knowing the full pleasure of ultimate trust. Wherever he took her, she wanted to go.

With a whispering movement he took his hand over the slender curve of her breast. She was soft, the material smooth, making her hardening nipple a sensuous contrast. He loitered there while her breathing grew unsteady, reveling in the changes of her body. Lingering over each separate button of her nightshirt, Ky unfastened them, then slowly parted the material, as if he were unveiling a priceless treasure.

He’d never forgotten how lovely she was, how exciting delicacy could be. Now that he had her again, he allowed himself the time to look, to touch carefully, all the while watching the contact of his lean tanned hand against her pale skin. With tenderness he felt seldom and demonstrated rarely, he lowered his mouth, letting his lips follow the progress his fingers had already begun.

She was coming to life under him. Kate felt her blood begin to boil as though it had lain dormant in her veins for years. She felt her heart begin to thump as though it had been frozen in ice until that moment. She heard her name as only he said it. As only he could.

Sensations? Could there be so many of them? Could she have known them all once, experienced them all once, then lived without them? A whisper, a sigh, the brush of a fingertip along her skin. The scent of a man touched by the sea, the taste of her lover lingering yet on her lips. The glow of soft lights against closed lids. Time faded. No yesterday. No tomorrow.

She could feel the slick material of the nightshirt slide away, then the warm, smooth sheets beneath her back. The skim of his tongue along her ribcage incited a thrill that began in her core and exploded inside her head.

She remembered the dawn breaking slowly over the sea. Now she knew the same magnificence inside her own body. Light and warmth spread through her, gradually, patiently, until she was glowing with a new beginning.

He hadn’t known he could hold such raging desire in check and still feel such complete pleasure, such whirling excitement. He was aware of every heightening degree of passion that worked through her. He understood the changing, rippling thrill she felt if he used more pressure here, a longer taste there. It brought him a wild sense of power, made only more acute by the knowledge that he must harness it. She was fluid. She was silk. And then with a suddenness that sent him reeling, she was fire.

Her body arched on the first tumultuous crest. It ripped through her like a madness. Greedy, ravenous for more, she began to demand what he’d only hinted at. Her hands ran over him, nearly destroying his control in a matter of seconds. Her mouth was hot, hungry, and sought his with an urgency he couldn’t resist. Then she rained kisses over his face, down his throat until he gripped the sheets with his hands for fear of crushing her too tightly and bruising her skin.

She touched him with those slender, elegant fingers so that the blood rushed fast and furious into his head. “You make me crazy,” he murmured.

“Yes.” She could do no more than whisper, but her eyes opened. “Yes.”

“I want to watch you go up,” he said softly as he slid into her. “I want to see what making love with me does to you.”

She arched again, the moan inching out of her as she experienced a second wild peak. He saw her eyes darken, cloud as he took her slowly, steadily toward the verge between passion and madness. He watched the color come into her cheeks, saw her lips tremble as she spoke his name. Her hands gripped his shoulders, but neither of them knew her short tapered nails dug into his skin.

They moved together, neither able to lead, both able to follow. As pleasure built, he never took his eyes from her face.

All sensation focused into one. They were only one. With a freedom that reaches perfection only rarely, they gave perfection to each other.

Chapter 8

She was sleeping soundly when Ky woke. Ky observed a hint of color in her cheeks and was determined to see that it stayed there. The touch of his hand to her hair was gentle but proprietary. Her skin was cool and dry, her breathing quiet but steady.

What she’d given him the night before had been offered with complete freedom, without shadows of the past, with none of the bitter taste of regret. It was something else he intended to keep constant.

No, he wasn’t going to allow her to withdraw from him again. Not an inch. He’d lost her four years ago, or perhaps he’d never really had her—not in the way he’d believed, not in the way he’d taken for granted. But this time, Ky determined, it would be different.

In his own way, he needed to take care of her. Her fragility drew that from him. In another way, he needed a partner on equal terms. Her strength offered him that. For reasons he never completely understood, Kate was exactly what he’d always wanted.

Clumsiness, arrogance, inexperience, or perhaps a combination of all three made him lose her once. Now that he had a second chance, he was going to make sure it worked. With a little more time, he might figure out how.

Rising, he dressed in the shaded light of the bedroom, then left her to sleep.

When she woke slowly, Kate was reluctant to surface from the simple pleasure of a dream. The room was dim, her mind was hazy with sleep and fantasy. The throb in her leg came as a surprise. How could there be pain when everything was so perfect? With a sigh, she reached for Ky and found the bed empty.

The haze vanished immediately, as did all traces of sleep and the pretty edge of fantasy. Kate sat up, and though the movement jolted the pain in her leg, she stared at the empty space beside her.

Had that been a dream as well? she wondered. Tentatively, she reached out and found the sheets cool. All a fantasy brought on by medication and confusion? Unsure, unsteady, she pushed the hair away from her face. Was it possible that she’d imagined it all—the gentleness, the sweetness, the passion?

She’d needed Ky. That hadn’t been a dream. Even now she could feel the dull ache in her stomach that came from need. Had the need caused her to fantasize all that strange, stirring beauty during the night? The bed beside her was empty, the sheets cool. She was alone.

The pleasure she awoke with drained, leaving her empty, leaving her grateful for the pain that was her only grip on reality. She wanted to weep, but found she hadn’t the energy for tears.

“So you’re up.”

Ky’s voice made her whip her head around. Her nerves were strung tight. He walked into the bedroom carrying a tray, wearing an easy smile.

“That saves me from having to wake you up to get some food into you.” Before he approached the bed, he went to both windows and drew up the shades. Light poured into the room and the warm breeze that had been trapped behind the shades rushed in to ruffle the sheets. Feeling it, she had to control a shudder. “How’d you sleep?”

“Fine.” The awkwardness was unexpected. Kate folded her hands and sat perfectly still. “I want to thank you for everything you’ve done.”

“You’ve already thanked me once. It wasn’t necessary then or now.” Because her tone had put him on guard, Ky stopped next to the bed to take a good long look at her. “You’re hurting.”

“It’s not bad.”

“This time you take a pill.” After setting the tray on her lap, he walked to the dresser and picked up a small bottle. “No arguments,” he said, anticipating her refusal.

“Ky, it’s really not bad.” When had he offered her a pill before? The struggle to remember brought only more frustration. “There’s barely any pain.”

“Any pain’s too much.” He sat on the bed, and putting the pill into her palm curled her hand over it with his own. “When it’s you.”

With her fingers curled warmly under his, she knew. Elation came so quietly she was afraid to move and chase it away. “I didn’t dream it, did I?” she whispered.

“Dream what?” He kissed the back of her hand before he handed her the glass of juice.

“Last night. When I woke up, I was afraid it had all been a dream.”

He smiled and, bending, touched his lips to hers. “If it was, I had the same dream.” He kissed her again, with humor in his eyes. “It was wonderful.”

“Then it doesn’t matter whether it was a dream or not.”

“Oh no, I prefer reality.”

With a laugh, she started to drop the pill on the tray, but he stopped her. “Ky—”

“You’re hurting,” he said again. “I can see it in your eyes. Your medication wore off hours ago, Kate.”

“And kept me unconscious for an entire day.”

“This is mild, just to take the edge off. Listen—” His hand tightened on hers. “I had to watch you in agony.”

“Ky, don’t.”

“No, you’ll do it for me if not for yourself. I had to watch you bleed and faint and drift in and out of consciousness.” He ran his hand down her hair, then cupped her face so she’d look directly into his eyes. “I can’t tell you what it did to me because I don’t know how to describe it. I know I can’t watch you in pain any more.”

In silence, she took the pill and drained the glass of juice. For him, as he said, not for herself. When she swallowed the medication, Ky tugged at her hair. “It hardly has more punch than an aspirin, Kate. Bailey said he’d give you something stronger if you needed it, but he’d rather you go with this.”

“It’ll be fine. It’s really more uncomfortable than painful.” It wasn’t quite the truth, nor did he believe her, but they both let it lie for the moment. Each of them moved cautiously, afraid to spoil what might have begun to bloom again. Kate glanced down at the empty juice glass. The cold, fresh flavor still lingered on her tongue. “Did Dr. Bailey say when I could dive again?”

“Dive?” Ky’s brows rose as he uncovered the plate of bacon, eggs and toast. “Kate, you’re not even getting up out of bed for the rest of the week.”

“Out of bed?” she repeated. “A week?” She ignored the overloaded plate of food as she gaped at him. “Ky, I was stung by a stingray, not attacked by a shark.”

“You were stung by a stingray,” he agreed. “And your system was so depleted Bailey almost sent you to a hospital. I realize things might’ve been rough on you since your father died, but you haven’t helped anything by not taking care of yourself.”

It was the first time he’d mentioned her father’s death, and Kate noted he still expressed no sympathy. “Doctors tend to fuss,” she began.

“Bailey doesn’t,” he interrupted. The anger came back and ran along the edge of his words. “He’s a tough, cynical old goat, but he knows his business. He told me that you’d apparently worked yourself right to the edge of exhaustion, that your resistance was nil, and that you were a good ten pounds underweight.” He held out the fork. “We’re going to do something about that, professor. Starting now.”

Kate looked down at what had to be four large eggs, scrambled, six slices of bacon and four pieces of toast. “I can see you intend to,” she murmured.

“I’m not having you sick.” He took her hand again and his grip was firm. “I’m going to take care of you, Kate, whether you like it or not.”

She looked back at him in her calm, considering way. “I don’t know if I do like it,” she decided. “But I suppose we’ll both find out.”

Ky dipped the fork into the eggs. “Eat.”

A smile played at the corners of her mouth. She’d never been pampered in her life and thought it might be entirely too easy to get used to it. “All right, but this time I’ll feed myself.”

She already knew she’d never finish the entire meal, but for his sake, and the sake of peace, she determined to deal with half of it. That had been precisely his strategy. If he’d have brought her a smaller portion, she’d have eaten half of that, and have eaten less. He knew her better than either one of them fully realized.

“You’re still a wonderful cook,” she commented, breaking a piece of bacon in half. “Much better than I.”

“If you’re good, I might broil up some flounder tonight.”

She remembered just how exquisitely he prepared fish. “How good?”

“As good as it takes.” He accepted the slice of toast she offered him but dumped on a generous slab of jam. “Maybe I’ll beg some of the hot fudge cake from the Roost.”

“Looks like I’ll have to be on my best behavior.”

“That’s the idea.”

“Ky…” She was already beginning to poke at her eggs. Had eating always been quite such an effort? “About last night, what happened—”

“Should never have stopped,” he finished.

Her lashes swept up, and her eyes were quiet and candid. “I’m not sure.”

“I am,” he countered. Taking her face in his hands, he kissed her, softly, with only a hint of passion. But the hint was a promise of much more. “Let it be enough for now, Kate. If it has to get complicated, let’s wait until other things are a little more settled.”

Complicated. Were commitments complicated, the future, promises? She looked down at her plate knowing she simply didn’t have the strength to ask or to answer. Not now. “In a way I feel as though I’m slipping back—to that summer four years ago. And yet…”

“It’s like a step forward.”

Kate looked at him again, but this time reached out. He’d always understood. Though he said little, though his way was sometimes rough, he’d always understood. “Yes. Either way it’s a little unnerving.”

“I’ve never liked smooth water. You get a better ride with a few waves.”

“Perhaps.” She shook her head. Slipping back, stepping forward, it hardly mattered. Either way, she was moving toward him. “Ky, I can’t eat any more.”

“I figured.” Easily, he picked up an extra fork from the tray and began eating the cooling eggs himself. “It’s still probably more than you eat for breakfast in a week.”

“Probably,” she agreed in a murmur, realizing just how well he’d maneuvered her. Kate lay back against the propped-up pillows, annoyed that she was growing sleepy again. No more medication, she decided silently as Ky polished off their joint breakfast. If she could just avoid that, and go out for a little while, she’d be fine. The trick would be to convince Ky.

Kate looked toward the window, and the sunshine. “I don’t want to lose a week’s time going over the wreck.”

He didn’t have to follow the direction of her gaze to follow the direction of her thoughts. “I’ll be going down,” he said easily. “Tomorrow, the next day anyway.” Sooner, he thought to himself, depending on how Kate mended.

“Alone?”

He caught the tone as he bit into the last piece of bacon. “I’ve gone down alone before.”

She would have protested, stating how dangerous it was, if she’d believed it would have done any good. Ky did a great deal alone because that was how he preferred it. Instead, Kate chose another route.

“We’re looking for the Liberty together, Ky. It isn’t a one-man operation.”

He sent her a long, quiet look before he picked up the coffee she hadn’t touched. “Afraid I’ll take off with the treasure?”

“Of course not.” She wouldn’t allow her emotions to get in the way. “If I hadn’t trusted your integrity,” she said evenly, “I wouldn’t have shown you the chart in the first place.”

“Fair enough,” he allowed with a nod. “So if I continue to dive while you’re recuperating, we won’t lose time.”

“I don’t want to lose you either.” It was out before she could stop it. Swearing lightly, Kate looked toward the window again. The sky was the pale blue sometimes seen on summer mornings.

Ky merely sat for a moment while the pleasure of her words rippled through him. “You’d worry about me?”

Angry, Kate turned back. He looked so smug, so infuriatingly content. “No, I wouldn’t worry. God usually makes a point of looking after fools.”

Grinning, he set the tray on the floor beside the bed. “Maybe I’d like you to worry, a little.”

“Sorry I can’t oblige you.”

“Your voice gets very prim when you’re annoyed,” he commented. “I like it.”

“I’m not prim.”

He ran a hand down her loosened hair. No, she looked anything but prim at the moment. Soft and feminine, but not prim. “Your voice is. Like one of those pretty, lacy ladies who used to sit in parlors eating finger sandwiches.”

She pushed his hand aside. He wouldn’t get around her with charm. “Perhaps I should shout instead.”

“Like that too, but more…” He kissed one cheek, then the other. “I like to see you smile at me. The way you smile at nobody else.”

Her skin was already beginning to warm. No, he might not get around her with charm, but…he’d distract her from her point if she wasn’t careful. “I’d be bored, that’s all. If I have to sit here, hour after hour with nothing to do.”

“I’ve got lots of books.” He slipped her nightshirt down her shoulder then kissed her bare skin with the lightest of touches. “Probably lay my hands on some crossword puzzles, too.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“There’s a copy of Byron downstairs.”

Despite her determination not to, Kate looked toward him again. “Byron?”

“I bought it after you left. The words are wonderful.” He had the three buttons undone with such quick expertise, she never noticed. “But I could always hear the way you’d say them. I remember one night on the beach, when the moon was full on the water. I don’t remember the name of the poem, but I remember how it started, and how it sounded when you said it. ‘It is the hour’,” he began, then smiled at her.

“‘It is the hour’,” Kate continued, “‘when from the boughs the nightingale is heard/It is the hour when lovers’ vows seem sweet in every whisper’d word/And gentle winds, and waters near make music to the lonely ear’…” She trailed off, remembering even the scent of that night. “You were never very interested in Byron’s technique.”

“No matter how hard you tried to explain it to me.”

Yes, he was distracting her. Kate was already finding it difficult to remember what point she’d been trying to make. “He was one of the leading poets of his day.”

“Hmm.” Ky caught the lobe of her ear between his teeth.

“He had a fascination for war and conflict, and yet he had more love affairs in his poems than Shelley or Keats.”

“How about out of his poems?”

“There too.” She closed her eyes as his tongue began to do outrageous things to her nervous system. “He used humor, satire as well as a pure lyrical style. If he’d ever completed Don Juan…” She trailed off with a sigh that edged toward a moan.

“Did I interrupt you?” Ky brushed his fingers down her thigh. “I really love to hear you lecture.”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He traced her lips with his tongue. “I just thought maybe I could give you something to do for a while.” He skimmed his hand over her hip then up to the side of her breast. “So you won’t be bored by staying in bed. Want to tell me more about Byron?”

With a long quiet breath, she wound her arms around his neck. The point she’d been trying to make didn’t seem important any longer. “No, but I might like staying in bed after all, even without the crossword puzzles.”

“You’ll relax.” He said it softly, but the command was unmistakable. She might have argued, but the kiss was long and lingering, leaving her slow and helplessly yielding.

“I don’t have a choice,” she murmured. “Between the medication and you.”

“That’s the idea.” He’d love her, Ky thought, but so gently she’d have nothing to do but feel. Then she’d sleep. “There are things I want from you.” He lifted his head until their eyes met. “Things I need from you.”

“You never tell me what they are.”

“Maybe not.” He laid his forehead on hers. Maybe he just didn’t know how to tell her. Or how to ask. “For now, what I want is to see you well.” Again he lifted his head, and his eyes focused on hers. “I’m not an unselfish man, Kate. I want that just as much for myself as I want it for you. I fully intended to have you back in my bed, but I didn’t want it for you. I fully intended to have you back in my bed, but I didn’t care to have you unconscious here first.”

“Whatever you intended, I make my own choices.” Her hands slid up his shoulders to touch his face. “I chose to make love with you then. I choose to make love with you now.”

He laughed and pressed her palm to his lips. “Professor, you think I’d have given you a choice? Maybe we don’t know each other as well as we should at this point, but you should know that much.”

Thoughtfully, she ran her thumb down his cheekbone. It was hard, elegantly defined. Somehow it suited him in the same way the unshaven face suited him. But did she? Kate wondered. Were they, despite all their differences, right for each other?

It seemed when they were like this, there was no question of suitability, no question of what was right or wrong. Each completed the other. Yet there had to be more. No matter how much each of them denied it on the surface, there had to be more. And ultimately, there had to be a choice.

“When you take what isn’t offered freely, you have nothing.” She felt the rough scrape of his unshaven face on her palm and the thrill went through her system. “If I give, you have whatever you need without asking.”

“Do I?” he murmured before he touched his lips to hers again. “And you? What do you have?”

She closed her eyes as her body drifted on a calm, quiet plane of pleasure. “What I need.” For how long? The question ran through his mind, prodding against his contentment. But he didn’t ask. There’d be a time, he knew, for more questions, for the hundreds of demands he wanted to make. For ultimatums. Now she was sleepy, relaxed in the way he wanted her to be.

With no more words he let her body drift, stroking gently, letting her system steep in the pleasure he could give. With no one else could he remember asking so little for himself and receiving so much. She was the hinge that could open or close the door on the better part of him.

He listened to her sigh as he touched her. The second was a kind of pure contentment that mirrored his own feelings. It seemed neither of them required any more.

Kate knew it shouldn’t be so simple. It had never been simple with anyone else, so that in the end she’d never given herself to anyone else. Only with Ky had she ever known that full excitement that left her free. Only with Ky had she ever known the pure ease that felt so right.

They’d been apart four years, yet if it had been forty, she would have recognized his touch in an instant. That touch was all she needed to make her want him.

She remembered the demands and fire that had always been threaded through their lovemaking before. It had been the excitement she’d craved even while it had baffled her. Now there was patience touched with a consideration she didn’t know he was capable of.

Perhaps if she hadn’t loved him already, she would have fallen in love at that moment when the sun filtered through the windows and his hands were on her skin. She wanted to give him the fire, but his hands kept it banked. She wanted to meet any demands, but he made none. Instead, she floated on the clouds he brought to her.

Though the heat smoldered inside him, she kept him sane. Just by her pliancy. Though passion began to take over, she kept him calm. Just by her serenity. He’d never looked for serenity in his life. It had simply come to him, as Kate had. He’d never understood what it meant to be calm, but he had known the emptiness and the chaos of living without it.

Without urgency or force, he slipped inside her. Slowly, with a sweetness that made her weak, he gave her the ultimate gift. Passion, fulfillment, with the softer emotions covering a need that seemed insatiable.

Then she slept, and he left her to her dreams.

* * *

When she awoke again, Kate wasn’t groggy, but weak. Even as sleep cleared, a sense of helpless annoyance went though her. It was midafternoon. She didn’t need a clock, the angle of the sunlight that slanted through the window across from the bed told her what time it was. More hours had been lost without her knowledge. And where was Ky?

Kate groped for her nightshirt and slipped into it. If he followed his pattern, he’d be popping through the door with a loaded lunch tray and a pill. Not this time, Kate determined as she eased herself out of bed. Nothing else was going into her system that made her lose time.

But as she stood, the dregs of the medication swam in her head. Reflexively, she nearly sat again before she stopped herself. Infuriated, she gripped the bedpost, breathed deeply then put her weight on her injured foot. It took the pain to clear her head.

Pain had its uses, she thought grimly. After she’d given the hurt a moment to subside, it eased into a throb. That could be tolerated, she told herself and walked to the mirror over Ky’s dresser.

She didn’t like what she saw. Her hair was listless, her face washed-out and her eyes dull. Swearing, she put her hands to her cheeks and rubbed as though she could force color into them. What she needed, Kate decided, was a hot shower, a shampoo and some fresh air. Regardless of what Ky thought, she was going to have them.

Taking a deep breath, she headed for the door. Even as she reached for the knob, it opened.

“What’re you doing up?”

Though they were precisely the words she’d expected, Kate had expected them from Ky, not Linda. “I was just—”

“Do you want Ky to skin me alive?” Linda demanded, backing Kate toward the bed with a tray of steaming soup in her hand. “Listen, you’re supposed to rest and eat, then eat and rest. Orders.”

Realizing abruptly that she was retreating, Kate held her ground. “Whose?”

“Ky’s. And,” she continued before Kate could retort. “Dr. Bailey’s.”

“I don’t have to take orders from either of them.”

“Maybe you don’t,” Linda agreed dryly. “But I don’t argue with a man who’s protecting his woman, or with the man who poked a needle into my bottom when I was three. Both of them can be nasty. Now lie down.”

“Linda…” Though she knew the sigh sounded long suffering, Kate couldn’t prevent it. “I’ve a cut on my leg. I’ve been in bed for something like forty-eight hours straight. If I don’t have a shower and a breath of air soon, I’m going to go crazy.”

A smile tugged at Linda’s mouth that she partially concealed by nibbling on her lower lip. “A bit grumpy, are we?”

“I can be more than a bit.” This time the sigh was simply bad tempered. “Look at me!” Kate demanded, tugging on her hair. “I feel as though I’ve just crawled out from under a rock.”

“Okay. I know how I felt after I’d delivered Hope. After I’d had my cuddle with her I wanted a shower and shampoo so bad I was close to tears.” She set the tray on the table beside the bed. “You can have ten minutes in the shower, then you can eat while I change your bandage. But Ky made me swear I’d make you eat every bite.” She put her hands on her hips. “So that’s the deal.”

“He’s overreacting,” Kate began. “It’s absurd. I don’t need to be babied this way.”

“Tell me that when you don’t look like I could blow you over. Now come on, I’ll give you a hand in the shower.”

“No, dammit, I’m perfectly capable of taking a shower by myself.” Ignoring the pain in her leg, she stormed out of the room, slamming the door at her back. Linda swallowed a laugh and sat down on the bed to wait.

Fifteen minutes later, refreshed and thoroughly ashamed of herself, Kate came back in. Wrapped in Ky’s robe, she rubbed a towel over her hair. “Linda—”

“Don’t apologize. If I’d been stuck in bed for two days, I’d snap at the first person who gave me trouble. Besides—” Linda knew how to play her cards “—if you’re really sorry you’ll eat all your soup, so Ky won’t yell at me.”

“All right.” Resigned, Kate sat back in the bed and took the tray on her lap. She swallowed the first bite of soup and stifled her objection as Linda began to fiddle with her bandage. “It’s wonderful.”

“The seafood chowder’s one of our specialties. Oh, honey.” Linda’s eyes darkened with concern after she removed the gauze. “This must’ve hurt like hell. No wonder Ky’s been frantic.”

Drumming up her courage, Kate leaned over enough to look at the wound. There was no inflammation as she’d feared, no puffiness. Though the slice was six inches in length, it was clean. Her stomach muscles unknotted. “It’s not so bad,” she murmured. “There’s no infection.”

“Look, I’ve been caught by a stingray, a small one. I probably had a cut half an inch across and I cried like a baby. Don’t tell me it’s not so bad.”

“Well, I slept through most of it.” She winced, then deliberately relaxed her muscles.

Linda narrowed her eyes as she studied Kate’s face. “Ky said you should have a pill if there was any pain when you woke.”

“If you want to do me a favor, you can dump them out.” Calmly, Kate ate another spoonful of soup. “I really hate to argue with him, or with you, but I’m not taking any more pills and losing any more time. I appreciate the fact that he wants to pamper me. It’s unexpectedly sweet, but I can only take it so far.”

“He’s worried about you. He feels responsible.”

“For my carelessness?” With a shake of her head, Kate concentrated on finishing the soup. “It was an accident, and if there’s blame, it’s mine. I was so wrapped up in looking for salvage I didn’t take basic precautions. I practically bumped into the ray.” With an effort, she controlled a shudder. “Ky acted much more quickly than I. He’d already started to pull me out of range. If he hadn’t, things would have been much more serious.”

“He loves you.”

Kate’s fingers tightened on the spoon. With exaggerated care, she set it back on the tray. “Linda, there’s a vast difference between concern, attraction, even affection and love.”

Linda simply nodded in agreement. “Yes. I said Ky loves you.”

She managed to smile and pick up the tea that had been cooling beside the soup. “You said,” Kate returned simply. “Ky hasn’t.”

“Well neither did Marsh until I was ready to strangle him, but that didn’t stop me.”

“I’m not you.” Kate lay back against the pillows, grateful that most of the weakness and the weariness had passed. “And Ky isn’t Marsh.”

Impatient, Linda rose and swirled around the room. “People who complicate simple things make me so mad!”

Smiling, Kate sipped her tea. “Others simplify the complicated.”

With a sniff, Linda turned back. “I’ve known Ky Silver all my life. I watched him bounce around from one cute girl to the next, then one attractive woman to another until I lost count. Then you came along.” Stopping, she leaned against the bedpost. “It was as if someone had hit him over the head with a blunt instrument. You dazed him, Kate, almost from the first minute. You fascinated him.”

“Dazing, fascinating.” Kate shrugged while she tried to ignore the ache in her heart. “Flattering, I suppose, but neither of those things equals love.”

The stubborn line came and went between Linda’s brows. “I don’t believe love comes in an instant, it grows. If you could have seen the way Ky was after you left four years ago, you’d know—”

“Don’t tell me about four years ago,” Kate interrupted. “What happened four years ago is over. Ky and I are two different people today, with different expectations. This time…” She took a deep breath. “This time when it ends, I won’t be hurt because I know the limits.”

“You’ve just gotten back together and you’re already talking about endings and limitations!” Dragging a hand through her hair, Linda came forward to sit on the edge of the bed. “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you know how to wish anymore? How to dream?”

“I was never very good at either. Linda…” She hesitated, wanting to choose her phrasing carefully. “I don’t want to expect any more from Ky than what he can easily give. After August, I know we’ll each go back to our separate worlds—there’s no bridge between them. Maybe I was meant to come back so we could make up for whatever pain we caused each other before. This time I want to leave still being friends. He’s…” She hesitated again because this phrasing was even more important. “He’s always been a very important part of my life.”

Linda waited a moment, then narrowed her eyes. “That’s about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Despite herself, Kate laughed. “Linda—”

Holding up her hands, she shook her head and cut Kate off. “No, I can’t talk about it anymore, I get too mad and I’m supposed to be taking care of you.” She let out her breath on a huff as she removed Kate’s tray. “I just can’t understand how anyone so smart could be so stupid, but the more I think about it the more I can see that you and Ky deserve each other.”

“That sounds more like an insult than a compliment.”

“It was.”

Kate pushed her tongue against her teeth to hold back a smile. “I see.”

“Don’t look so smug just because you’ve made me so angry I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” She drew her shoulders back. “I might just give Ky a piece of my mind when he gets home.”

“That’s his problem,” Kate said cheerfully. “Where’d he go?”

“Diving.”

Amusement faded. “Alone?”

“There’s no use worrying about it.” Linda spoke briskly as she cursed herself for not thinking of a simple lie. “He dives alone ninety percent of the time.”

“I know.” But Kate folded her hands, preparing to worry until he returned.

Chapter 9

“I’m going with you.”

The sunlight was strong, the scent of the ocean pure. Through the screen the sound of gulls from a quarter of a mile away could be heard clearly. Ky turned from the stove where he poured the last cup of coffee and eyed Kate as she stood in the doorway.

She’d pinned her hair up and had dressed in thin cotton pants and a shirt, both of which were baggy and cool. It occured to him that she looked more like a student than a college professor.

He knew enough of women and their illusions to see that she’d added color to her cheeks. She hadn’t needed blusher the evening before when he’d returned from the wreck. Then she had been angry, and passionate. He nearly smiled as he lifted his cup.

“You wasted your time getting dressed,” he said easily. “You’re going back to bed.”

Kate disliked stubborn people, people who demanded their own way flatly and unreasonably. At that moment, she decided they were both stubborn. “No.” On the surface she remained as calm as he was while she walked into the kitchen. “I’m going with you.”

Unlike Kate, Ky never minded a good argument. Preparing for one, he leaned back against the stove. “I don’t take down a diver against doctor’s orders.”

She’d expected that. With a shrug, she opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of juice. She knew she was being bad tempered, and though it was completely out of character, she was enjoying the experience. The simple truth was that she had to do something or go mad.

As far as she could remember, she’d never spent two more listless days. She had to move, think, feel the sun. It might have been satisfying to stomp her feet and demand, but, she thought, fruitless. If she had to compromise to get her way, then compromise she would.

“I can rent a boat and equipment and go down on my own.” With the glass in hand, she turned, challenging. “You can’t stop me.”

“Try me.”

It was said simply, quietly, but she’d seen the flare of anger in his eyes. Better, she thought. Much better. “I’ve a right to do precisely as I choose. We both know it.” Perhaps her leg was uncomfortable, but as to the rest of her body, it was charged up and ready to move. Nor was there anything wrong with her mind. Kate had plotted her strategy very well. After all, she thought grimly, there’d certainly been enough time to think it through.

“We both know you’re not in any shape to dive.” His first urge was to carry her back to bed, his second to shake her until she rattled. Ky did neither, only drank his coffee and watched her over the rim. A power struggle wasn’t something he’d expected, but he wouldn’t back away from it. “You’re not stupid Kate. You know you can’t go down yet, and you know I won’t let you.”

“I’ve rested for two days. I feel fine.” As she walked toward him she was pleased to see him frown. He understood she had a mind of her own, and that he had to deal with it. The truth was, she was stronger than either of them had expected her to be. “As far as diving goes, I’m willing to leave that to you for the next couple of days, but…” She paused, wanting to be certain he knew she was negotiating, not conceding. “I’m going out on the Vortex with you. And I’m going out this morning.”

He lifted a brow. She’d never intended to dive, but she’d used it as a pressure point to get what she wanted. He couldn’t blame her. Ky remembered recovering from a broken leg when he was fourteen. The pain was vague in his mind now, but the boredom was still perfectly clear. “You’ll lie down in the cabin when you’re told.”

She smiled and shook her head. “I’ll lie down in the cabin if I need to.”

He took her chin in his hand and squeezed. “Damn right you will. Okay, let’s go. I want an early start.”

Once he was resigned, Ky moved quickly. She could either keep up, or be left behind. Within minutes he parked his car near his slip at Silver Lake Harbor and was boarding the Vortex. Content, Kate took a seat beside him at the helm and prepared to enjoy the sun and the wind. Already she felt the energy begin to churn.

“I’ve done a chart of the wreck as of yesterday’s dive,” he told her as he maneuvered out of the harbor.

“A chart?” Automatically she pushed at her hair as she turned toward him. “You didn’t show me.”

“Because you were asleep when I finished it.”

“I’ve been asleep ninety percent of the time,” she mumbled.

As he headed out to sea, Ky laid a hand on her shoulder. “You look better, Kate, no shadows. No strain. That’s more important.”

For a moment, just a moment, she pressed her cheek against his hand. Few women could resist such soft concern, and yet…she didn’t want his concern to cloud their reason for being together. Concern could turn to pity. She needed him to see her as a partner, as equal. As long as she was his lover, it was vital that they meet on the same ground. Then when she left… When she left there’d be no regrets.

“I don’t need to be pampered anymore, Ky.”

His shoulders moved as he glanced at the compass. “I enjoyed it.”

She was resisting being cared for. He understood it, appreciated it and regretted it. There had been something appealing about seeing to her needs, about having her depend on him. He didn’t know how to tell her he wanted her to be well and strong just as much as he wanted her to turn to him in times of need.

Somehow, he felt their time together had been too short for him to speak. He didn’t deal well with caution. As a diver, he knew its importance, but as a man… As a man he fretted to go with his instincts, with his impulses.

His fingers brushed her neck briefly before he turned to the wheel. He’d already decided he’d have to approach his relationship with Kate as he’d approach a very deep, very dangerous dive—with an eye on currents, pressure and the unexpected.

“That chart’s in the cabin,” he told her as he cut the engine. “You might want to look it over while I’m down.”

She agreed with a nod, but the restlessness was already on her as Ky began to don his equipment. She didn’t want to make an issue of his diving alone. He wouldn’t listen to her in any case; if anything came of it, it would only be an argument. In silence she watched him check his tanks. He’d be down for an hour. Kate was already marking time.

“There are cold drinks in the galley.” He adjusted the strap of his mask before climbing over the side. “Don’t sit in the sun too long.”

“Be careful,” she blurted out before she could stop herself.

Ky grinned, then was gone with a quiet splash.

Though she ran over to the side, Kate was too late to watch him dive. For a long time after, she simply leaned over the boat, staring at the water’s surface. She imagined Ky going deeper, deeper, adjusting his pressure, moving out with power until he’d reached the bottom and the wreck.

He’d brought back the bowl and ladle the evening before. They sat on the dresser in his bedroom while the broken rigging and pieces of crockery were stored downstairs. Thus far he’d done no more than gather what they’d already found together, but today, Kate thought with a twinge of impatience, he’d extend the search. Whatever he found, he’d find alone.

She turned away from the water, frustrated that she was excluded. It occurred to her that all her life she’d been an onlooker, someone who analyzed and explained the action rather than causing it. This search had been her first opportunity to change that, and now she was back to square one.

Stuffing her hands in her pockets, Kate looked up at the sky. There were clouds to the west, but they were thin and white. Harmless. She felt too much like that herself at the moment—something unsubstantial. Sighing, she went below deck. There was nothing to do now but wait.

Ky found two more cannons and sent up buoys to mark their position. It would be possible, if he didn’t find something more concrete, to salvage the cannons and have them dated by an expert. Though he swam from end to end, searching carefully, he knew it was unlikely he’d find a date stamp through the layers of corrosion. But in time… Satisfied, he swam north.

If he accomplished nothing else on this dive, he wanted to establish the size of the site. With luck it would be fairly small, perhaps no bigger than a football field. However, there was always the chance that the wreckage could be scattered over several square miles. Before they brought in a salvage ship, he wanted to take a great deal of care with the preliminary work.

They would need tools. A metal detector would be invaluable. Thus far, they’d done no more than find a wreck, no matter how certain Kate was that it was the Liberty. For the moment he had no way to determine the origin of the ship, he had to find cargo. Once he’d found that, perhaps treasure would follow.

Once he’d found the treasure… Would she leave? Would she take her share of the gold and the artifacts and drive home?

Not if he could help it, Ky determined as he shone his headlamp over the sea floor. When the search was over and they’d salvaged what could be salvaged from the sea, it would be time to salvage what they’d once had—what had perhaps never truly been lost. If they could find what had been buried for centuries, they could find what had been buried for four years.

He couldn’t find much without tools. Most of the ship—or what remained of it—was buried under silt. On another dive, he’d use the prop-wash, the excavation device he’d constructed in his shop. With that he could blow away inches of sediment at a time—a slow but safe way to uncover artifacts. But someone would have to stay on board to run it.

He thought of Kate and rejected the idea immediately. Though he had no doubt she could handle the technical aspect—it would only have to be explained to her once—she’d never go for it. Ky began to think it was time they enlisted Marsh.

He knew his air time was almost up and he’d have to surface for fresh tanks. Still, he lingered near the bottom, searching, prodding. He wanted to take something up for Kate, something tangible that would put the enthusiasm back in her eyes.

It took him more than half of his allotted time to find it, but when Ky held the unbroken bottle in his hand, he knew Kate’s reaction would be worth the effort. It was a common bottle, not priceless crystal, but he could see no mold marks, which meant it had been hand blown. Crust was weathered over it in layers, but Ky took the time to carefully chip some away, from the bottom only. If the date wasn’t on the bottom, he’d need the crust to have the bottle dated. Already he was thinking of the Corning Glass Museum and their rate of success.

Then he saw the date, and with a satisfied grin placed the find in the goodie bag on his belt. With his air supply running short, he started toward the surface.

His hour was up. Or so nearly up, Kate thought, that he should have surfaced already if he’d allowed himself any safety factor. She paced from port to starboard and back again. Would he always risk his own welfare to the limit?

She’d long since given up sitting quietly in the cabin, going over the makeshift chart Ky had begun. She’d found a book on shipwrecks that Ky had obviously purchased recently, and though it had also been among her father’s research books, she’d skimmed through it again.

It gave a detailed guide to identifying and excavating a wreck, listed common mistakes and hazards. She found it difficult to read about hazards while Ky was alone beneath the surface. Still, even the simple language of the book couldn’t disguise the adventure. For perhaps half the time Ky had been gone, she’d lost herself in it. Spanish galleons, Dutch merchant ships, English frigates.

She’d found the list of wrecks off North Carolina alone extensive. But these, she’d thought, had already been located, documented. The adventure there was over. One day, because of the chain her father had started and she’d continued, the Liberty would be among them.

Fretfully, Kate waited for Ky to surface. She thought of her father. He’d pored over this same book as well—planning, calculating. Yet his calculations hadn’t taken him beyond the initial stage. If he’d shared his goal with her, would he have taken her on his summer quests? She’d never know, because she’d never been given the choice.

She was making her own choices now, Kate mused. Her first had been to return to Ocracoke, accepting the consequences. Her next had been to give herself to Ky without conditions. Her last, she thought as she stared down at the quiet water, would be to leave him again. Yet, in reality, perhaps she’d still been given no choice. It was all a matter of currents. She could only swim against them for so long.

Relief washed over her when she spotted the flow of bubbles. Ky grabbed the bottom rung of the ladder as he pushed up his mask. “Waiting for me?”

Relief mixed with annoyance for the time she’d spent worrying about him. “You cut it close.”

“Yeah, a little.” He passed up his tanks. “I had to stop and get you a present.”

“It’s not a joke, Ky.” Kate watched him come over the side, agile, lean and energetic. “You’d be furious with me if I’d cut my time that close.”

“Leave it up to Linda to fuss,” he advised as he pulled down the zipper of his wet suit. “She was born that way.” Then he grabbed her, crushing her against him so that she felt the excitement he’d brought up with him. His mouth closed over hers, tasting of salt from the sea. Because he was wet, her clothes clung to him, binding them together for the brief instant he held her. But when he would have released her, she held fast, drawing the kiss out into something that warmed his cool skin.

“I worry about you, Ky.” For one last moment, she held on fiercely. “Damn it, is that what you want to hear?”

“No.” He took her face in his hands and shook his head. “No.”

Kate broke away, afraid she’d say too much, afraid she’d say things neither of them were ready to hear. She knew the rules this time. She groped for something calm, something simple. “I suppose I got a bit frantic waiting up here. It’s different when you’re down.”

“Yeah.” What did she want from him, he wondered? Why was it that every time she started to show her concern for him, she clammed up? “I’ve got some more things to add to the chart.”

“I saw the buoys you sent up.” Kate moistened her lips and relaxed, muscle by muscle.

“Two more cannons. From the size of them, I’d say she was a fairly small ship. It’s unlikely she was constructed for battle.”

“She was a merchant ship.”

“Maybe. I’m going to take the metal detector down and see what I come up with. From the stuff we’ve found, I don’t think she’s buried too deep.”

Kate nodded. Delve into business, keep the personal aspect light. “I’d like to send off a piece of the planking and some of the glass to be analyzed. I think we’ll have more luck with the glass, but it doesn’t hurt to cover all the angles.”

“No, it doesn’t. Don’t you want your present?”

At ease again, she smiled. “I thought you were joking. Did you bring me a shell?”

“I thought you’d like this better.” Reaching into his bag, Ky brought out the bottle. “It’s too bad it’s not still corked. We could’ve had wine with peanut butter.”

“Oh, Ky, it’s not damaged!” Thrilled, she reached out for it, but he pulled it back out of reach and grinned.

“Bottoms up,” he told her and turned the bottle upside down.

Kate stared at the smeared bottom of the bottle. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “It’s dated. 1749.” Gingerly, she took the bottle in both hands. “The year before the Liberty sank.”

“It’s another ship, maybe,” Ky reminded her. “But it does narrow down the time element.”

“Over two hundred years,” she murmured. “Glass, it’s so breakable, so vulnerable, and yet it survived two centuries.” Her eyes lit with enthusiasm as she looked back at him. “Ky, we should be able to find out where the bottle was made.”

“Probably, but most glass bottles found on wrecks from the seventeenth and eighteenth century were manufactured in England anyway. It wouldn’t prove the ship was English.”

She let out a huff of breath, but her energy hadn’t dimmed. “You’ve been doing your research.”

“I don’t go into any project until I know the angles.” Ky knelt down to check the fresh tanks.

“You’re going back down now?”

“I want to get as much mapped out as I can before we start dealing with too much equipment.”

She’d done enough homework herself to know that the most common mistake of the modern day salvor was in failing to map out a site. Yet she couldn’t stem her impatience. It seemed so time-consuming when they could be concentrating on getting under the layers of silt.

It seemed to her that she and Ky had changed positions somehow. She’d always been the cautious one, proceeding step by logical step, while he’d taken the risks. Struggling with the impotence of having to wait and watch, she stood back while he strapped on the fresh tanks. As she watched, Ky picked up a brass rod.

“What’s that for?”

“It’s the base for this.” He held out a device that resembled a compass. “It’s called an azimuth circle. It’s a cheap, effective way to map out the site. I drive this into the approximate center of the wreck so that it becomes the datum point, align the circle with the magnetic north, then I use a length of chain to measure the distance to the cannons, or whatever I need to map. After I get it set, I’ll be back up for the metal detector.”

Frustration built again. He was doing all the work while she simply stood still. “Ky, I feel fine. I could help if—”

“No.” He didn’t bother to argue or list reasons. He simply went over the side and under.

It was midafternoon when they started back. Ky spent the last hour at sea adding to the chart, putting in the information he’d gathered that day. He’d brought more up in his goodie bag—a tankard, spoons and forks that might have been made of iron. It seemed they had indeed found the galley. Kate decided she’d begin a detailed list of their finds that evening. If it was all she could do at the moment, she’d do it with pleasure.

Her mood had lifted a bit since she’d caught three good-sized bluefish while Ky had been down at the wreck the second time. No matter how much Ky argued, she fully intended to cook them herself and eat them sitting at the table, not lying in bed.

“Pretty pleased with yourself aren’t you?”

She gave him a cool smile. They were cruising back toward Silver Lake harbor and though she felt a weariness, it was a pleasant feeling, not the dragging fatigue of the past days. “Three bluefish in that amount of time’s a very respectable haul.”

“No argument there. Especially since I intend to eat half of them.”

“I’m going to grill them.”

“Are you?”

She met his lifted brow with a neutral look. “I caught, I cook.”

Ky kept the boat at an even speed as he studied her. She looked a bit tired, but he thought he could convince her to take a nap if he claimed he wanted one himself. She was healing quickly. And she was right. He couldn’t pamper her. “I could probably bring myself to start the charcoal for you.”

“Fair enough. I’ll even let you clean them.”

He laughed at the bland tone and ruffled her hair until the pins fell out.

“Ky!” Automatically, Kate reached up to repair the damage.

“Wear it up in the school room,” he advised, tossing some of the pins overboard. “I find it difficult to resist you when your hair’s down and just a bit mussed.”

“Is that so?” She debated being annoyed, then decided there were more productive ways to pass the time. Kate let the wind toss her hair as she moved closer to him so that their bodies touched. She smiled at the quick look of surprise in his eyes as she slipped both hands under his T-shirt. “Why don’t you turn off the engine and show me what happens when you stop resisting?”

For all her generosity and freedom in lovemaking, she’d never been the initiator. Ky found himself both baffled and aroused as she smiled up at him, her hands stroking slowly over his chest. “You know what happens when I stop resisting,” he murmured.

She gave a low, quiet laugh. “Refresh my memory.” Without waiting for an answer, she drew back on the throttle herself until the boat was simply idling. “You didn’t make love with me last night.” Her hands slid around and up his back.

“You were sleeping.” She was seducing him in the middle of the afternoon, in the middle of the ocean. He found he wanted to savor the new experience as much as he wanted to bring it to fruition.

“I’m not sleeping now.” Rising on her toes, she brushed her lips over his, lightly, temptingly. She felt his heartbeat race against her body and reveled in a sense of power she’d never explored. “Or perhaps you’re in a hurry to get back, and uh, clean fish.”

She was taunting him. Why had he never seen the witch in her before? Ky felt his stomach knot with need, but when he drew her closer, she resisted. Just slightly. Just enough to torment. “If I make love with you now, I won’t be gentle.”

She kept her lips inches from his. “Is that a warning?” she whispered. “Or a promise?”

He felt the first tremor move through him and was astonished. Not even for her had he ever trembled. Not even for her. The need grew, stretching restlessly, recklessly. “I’m not sure you know what you’re doing, Kate.”

Nor did she, but she smiled because it no longer mattered. Only the outcome mattered. “Come down to the cabin with me and we’ll both find out.” She slipped away from him and without a word disappeared below deck.

His hand wasn’t steady when he reached for the key to turn off the engines. He needed a moment, perhaps a bit more, to regain the control he’d held so carefully since they’d become lovers again. Even since he’d had her blood on his hands, he had a tremendous fear of hurting her. Since he’d had a taste of her again, he had an equal fear of driving her away. Caution was a strain, but he’d kept it in focus with sheer will. As Ky started down the steps, he told himself he’d continue to be cautious.

She’d unbuttoned her blouse but hadn’t removed it. When he came into the narrow cabin with her, Kate smiled. She was afraid, though she hardly knew why. But over the fear was a heady sense of power and strength that fought for full release. She wanted to take him to the edge, to push him to the limits of passion. At that moment, she was certain she could.

When he came no closer to her, Kate stepped forward and pulled his shirt over his head. “Your skin’s gold,” she murmured. “It’s always excited me.” Taking her pleasure slowly, she ran her hands up his sides, feeling the quiver she caused. “You’ve always excited me.”

Her hands were steady, her pulse throbbed as she unsnapped his cut-offs. With her eyes on his, she slowly, slowly, undressed him. “No one’s ever made me want the way you make me want.”

He had to stop her and take control again. She couldn’t know the effect of those long, fragile fingers when they brushed easily over his skin, or how her calm eyes made him rage inside.

“Kate…” He took her hands in his and bent to kiss her. But she turned her head, meeting his neck with warm lips that sent a spear of fire up his spine.

Then her body was pressed against his, flesh meeting flesh where her blouse parted. Her mouth trailed over his chest, her hands down his back to his hips. He felt the fury of desire whip through him as though it had sharp, hungry teeth.

So he forgot control, gentleness, vulnerability. She drove him to forget. She intended to.

They were tangled on the narrow bunk, her blouse halfway down her back and parted so that her breasts pushed into his chest, driving him mad with their firm, subtle curves. She nipped at his lips, demanding, pushing for more, still more. Waves of passion overtook them.

His need was incendiary. She was like a flame, impossible to hold, searing here, singeing there until his body was burning with needs and fierce fantasies.

Her hands were swift, sending sharp gasping pleasure everywhere at once until he wasn’t sure he could take it anymore. Yet he no longer thought of stopping her. Less of stopping himself.

His hands gripped her with an urgency that made her moan from the sheer strength in them. She wanted his strength now—mindless strength that would carry them both to a place they’d never gone before. And she was leading. The knowledge made her laugh aloud as she tasted his skin, his lips, his tongue.

She slid down his body, feeling each jolt of pleasure as it shot through him. There could be no slow, lingering loving now. They’d pushed each other beyond reason. The air here was dark and thin and whirling with sound. Kate drank it in.

When he found her moist, hot and ready she let him take her over peak after shuddering peak, knowing as he drove her, she drove him. Her body was filled with sensations that came and went like comets, slipped away and burst on her again, and again. Through the thunder in her head she heard herself say his name, clear and quick.

On the sound, she took him into her and welcomed the madness.

Chapter 10

She was wrong.

Kate had thought she’d be ready, even anxious to dive again. There hadn’t been a day during her recuperation that she hadn’t thought of going down. Every time Ky had brought back an artifact, she was thrilled with the discovery and frustrated with her own lack of participation. Like a schoolgirl approaching summer, she’d begun to count the days.

Now, a week after the accident, Kate stood on the deck of the Vortex with her mouth dry and her hands trembling as she pulled on her wet suit. She could only be grateful that Ky was already over the side, hooking up his home-rigged prop-wash to the boat’s propeller. Drafted to the crew, Marsh stood at the stern watching his brother. With Linda’s eager support, he’d agreed to give Ky a few hours a day of his precious free time while he was needed.

Kate took the moment she had alone to gather her thoughts and her nerve.

It was only natural to be anxious about diving after the experience she’d had. Kate told herself that was logical. But it didn’t stop her hands from trembling as she zipped up her suit. She could equate it with falling off a horse and having to mount again. It was psychological. But it didn’t ease the painful tension in her stomach.

Trembling hands and nerves. With or without them she told herself as she hooked on her weight belt, she was going down. Nothing, not even her own fears, was going to stop her from finishing what she’d begun.

“He’s got it,” Marsh called out when Ky signaled him.

“I’ll be ready.” Kate picked up the cloth bag she’d use to bring up small artifacts. With luck, and if the prop-wash did its job, she knew they’d soon need more sophisticated methods to bring up the salvage.

“Kate.”

She didn’t look up, but continued to hook on the goodie bag. “Yes?”

“You know it’s only natural that you’d be nervous going down.” Marsh touched a hand to her shoulder, but she busied herself by strapping on her diving knife. “If you want a little more time, I’ll work with Ky and you can run the wash.”

“No.” She said it too quickly, then cursed herself. “It’s all right, Marsh.” With forced calm she hung the underwater camera she’d purchased only the day before around her neck. “I have to take the first dive sometime.”

“It doesn’t have to be now.”

She smiled at him again thinking how calm, how steady he appeared when compared to Ky. This was the sort of man it would have made sense for her to be attracted to. Confused emotions made no sense. “Yes, it does. Please.” She put her hand on his arm before he could speak again. “Don’t say anything to Ky.”

Did she think he’d have to, Marsh wondered as he inclined his head in agreement. Unless he was way off the mark, Marsh was certain Ky knew every expression, every gesture, every intonation of her voice.

“Let’s run it a couple of minutes at full throttle.” Ky climbed over the side, dripping and eager. “With the depth and the size of the prop, we’re going to have to test the effect. There might not be enough power to do us any good.”

In agreement, Marsh went to the helm. “Are you thinking about using an air lift?”

Ky’s only answer was a noncommital grunt. He had thought of it. The metal tube with its stream of compressed air was a quick, efficient way to excavate on silty bottoms. They might get away with the use of a small air lift, if it became necessary. But perhaps the prop-wash would do the job well enough. Either way, he was thinking more seriously about a bigger ship, with more sophisticated equipment and more power. As he saw it, it all depended on what they found today.

He picked up one last piece of equipment—a small powerful spear gun. He’d take no more chances with Kate.

“Okay, slow it down to the minimum,” he ordered. “And keep it there. Once Kate and I are down, we don’t want the prop-wash shooting cannonballs around.”

Kate stopped the deep breathing she was using to ease tension. Her voice was cool and steady. “Would it have that kind of power?”

“Not at this speed.” Ky adjusted his mask then took her hand. “Ready?”

“Yes.”

Then he kissed her, hard. “You’ve got guts, professor,” he murmured. His eyes were dark, intense as they passed over her face. “It’s one of the sexiest things about you.” With this he was over the side.

He knew. Kate gave a quiet unsteady sigh as she started down the ladder. He knew she was afraid, and that had been his way of giving her support. She looked up once and saw Marsh. He lifted his hand in salute. Throat dry, nerves jumping, Kate let the sea take her.

She felt a moment’s panic, a complete disorientation the moment she was submerged. It ran through her head that down here, she was helpless. The deeper she went, the more vulnerable she became. Choking for air, she kicked back toward the surface and the light.

Then Ky had her hands, holding her to him, holding her under. His grip was firm, stilling the first panic. Feeling the wild race of her pulse, he held on during her first resistance.

Then he touched her cheek, waiting until she’d calmed enough to look at him. In his eyes she saw strength and challenge. Pride alone forced her to fight her way beyond the fear and meet him, equal to equal.

When she’d regulated her breathing, accepting that her air came through the tanks on her back, he kissed the back of her hand. Kate felt the tension give. She wouldn’t be helpless, she reminded herself. She’d be careful.

With a nod, she pointed down, indicating she was ready to dive. Keeping hands linked, they started toward the bottom.

The whirlpool action created by the wash of the prop had already blasted away some of the sediment. At first glance Ky could see that if the wreck was buried under more than a few feet, they’d need something stronger than his home-made apparatus and single prop engine. But for now, it would do. Patience, which came to him only with deliberate effort, was more important at this stage than speed. With the wreck, he thought, and—he glanced over at the woman beside him—with a great deal more. He had to take care not to hurry.

It was still working, blowing away some of the over-burden at a rate Ky figured would equal an inch per minute. He and Kate alone couldn’t deal with any more speed. He watched the swirl of water and sediment while she swam a few feet away to catalog one of the cannons on film. When she came closer, he grinned as she placed the camera in front of her face again. She was relaxed, her initial fear forgotten. He could see it simply in the way she moved. Then she let the camera fall so they could begin the search again.

Kate saw something solid wash away from the hole being created by the whirl of water. Grabbing it up, she found herself holding a candlestick. In her excitement, she turned it over and over in her hand.

Silver? she wondered with a rush of adrenaline. Had they found their first real treasure? It was black with oxidation, so it was impossible to be certain what it was made of. Still, it thrilled her. After days and days of only waiting, she was again pursuing the dream.

When she looked up, Ky was already gathering the uncovered items and laying them in the mesh basket. There were more candleholders, more tableware, but not the plain unglazed pottery they’d found before. Kate’s pulse began to drum with excitement while she meticulously snapped pictures. They’d be able to find a hallmark, she was certain of it. Then they’d know if they had indeed found a British ship. Ordinary seamen didn’t use silver, or even pewter table service. They’d uncovered more than the galley now. And they were just beginning.

When Ky found the first piece of porcelain he signaled to her. True, the vase—if that’s what it once had been—had suffered under the water pressure and the years. It was broken so that only half of the shell remained, but so did the manufacturer’s mark.

When Kate read it, she gripped Ky’s arm. Whieldon. English. The master potter who’d trained the likes of Wedgwood. Kate cupped the broken fragment in her hands as though it were alive. When she lifted her eyes to Ky’s they were filled with triumph.

Fretting against her inability to speak, Kate pointed to the mark again. Ky merely nodded and indicated the basket. Though she was loath to part with it, Kate found herself even more eager to discover more. She settled the porcelain in the mesh. When she swam back, Ky’s hands were filled with other pieces. Some were hardly more than shards, others were identifiable as pieces left from bowls or lids.

No, it didn’t prove it was a merchant ship, Kate told herself as she gathered what she could herself. So far, it only proved that the officers and perhaps some passengers had eaten elegantly on their way to the New World. English officers, she reminded herself. In her mind they’d taken the identification that far.

The force of the wash sent an object shooting up. Ky reached out for it and found a crusted, filthy pot he guessed would have been used for tea or coffee. Perhaps it was cracked under the layers, but it held together in his hands. He tapped on his tank to get Kate’s attention.

She knew it was priceless the moment she saw it. Stemming impatience, she signaled for Ky to hold it out as she lifted the camera again. Obliging, he crossed his legs like a genie and posed.

It made her giggle. They’d perhaps just found something worth thousands of dollars, but he could still act silly. Nothing was too serious for Ky. As she brought him into frame, Kate felt the same foolish pleasure. She’d known the hunt would be exciting, perhaps rewarding, but she’d never known it would be fun. She swam forward and reached for the vase herself.

Running her fingers over it, she could detect some kind of design under the crust. Not ordinary pottery, she was sure. Not utility-ware. She held something elegant, something well crafted.

He understood its worth as well as she. Taking it from her, Ky indicated they would bring it and the rest of the morning’s salvage to the surface. Pointing to his watch he showed her that their tanks were running low.

She didn’t argue. They’d come back. The Liberty would wait for them. Each took a handle of the mesh basket and swam leisurely toward the surface.

“Do you know how I feel?” Kate demanded the moment she could speak.

“Yes.” Ky gripped the ladder with one hand and waited for her to unstrap her tanks and slip them over onto the deck. “I know just how you feel.”

“The teapot.” Breathing fast, she hauled herself up the ladder. “Ky, it’s priceless. It’s like finding a perfectly formed rose inside a mass of briars.” Before he could answer, she was laughing and calling out to Marsh. “It’s fabulous! Absolutely fabulous.”

Marsh cut the engine then walked over to help them. “You two work fast.” Bending he touched a tentative finger to the pot. “God, it’s all in one piece.”

“We’ll be able to date it as soon as it’s cleaned. But look.” Kate drew out the broken vase. “This is the mark of an English potter. English,” she repeated, turning to Ky. “He trained Wedgwood, and Wedgwood didn’t begin manufacturing until the 1760s, so—”

“So this piece more than likely came from the era we’re looking for,” Ky finished. “Liberty or not,” he continued, crouching down beside her. “It looks like you’ve found yourself an eighteenth-century wreck that’s probably of English origin and certainly hasn’t been recorded before.” He took one of her hands between both of his. “Your father would’ve been proud of you.”

Stunned, she stared at him. Emotions raced through her with such velocity she had no way of controlling or channeling them. The hand holding the broken vase began to tremble. Quickly, she set it down in the basket again and rose.

“I’m going below,” she managed and fled. Proud of her. Kate put a hand over her mouth as she stumbled into the cabin. His pride, his love. Wasn’t it all she’d really ever wanted from her father? Was it possible she could only gain it after his death?

She drank in deep gulps of air and struggled to level her emotions. No, she wanted to find the Liberty, she wanted to bring her father’s dream to reality, have his name on a plaque in a museum with the artifacts they’d found. She owed him that. But she’d promised herself she’d find the Liberty for herself as well. For herself.

It was her choice, her first real decision to come in from the sidelines and act on her own. For herself, Kate thought again as she brought the first surge of emotion under control.

“Kate?”

She turned, and though she thought she was perfectly calm, Ky could see the turmoil in her eyes. Unsure how to handle it, he spoke practically.

“You’d better get out of that suit.”

“But we’re going back down.”

“Not today.” To prove his point he began to strip out of his own suit just as Marsh started the engines.

Automatically, she balanced herself as the boat turned. “Ky, we’ve got two more sets of tanks. There’s no reason for us to go back when we’re just getting started.”

“Your first dive took most of the strength you’ve built up. If you want to dive tomorrow, you’ve got to take it slow today.”

Her anger erupted so quickly, it left them both astonished. “The hell with that!” she exploded. “I’m sick to death of being treated as if I don’t know my own limitations or my own mind and body.”

Ky walked into the galley and picked up a can of beer. With a flick of his wrist, air hissed out. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I lay in bed for the better part of a week because of pressure from you and Linda and anyone else who came around me. I’m not tolerating this any longer.”

With one hand, he pushed dripping hair from his forehead as he lifted the can. “You’re tolerating exactly what’s necessary until I say differently.”

“You say?” she tossed back. Cheeks flaming, she strode over to him. “I don’t have to do what you say, or what anyone says. Not anymore. It’s about time you remember just who’s in charge of this salvage operation.”

His eyes narrowed. “In charge?”

“I hired you. Seventy-five a day and twenty-five percent. Those were the terms. There was nothing in there about you running my life.”

He abruptly went still. For a moment, all that could be heard over the engines was her angry breathing. Dollars and percents, he thought with a deadly sort of calm. Just dollars and percents. “So that’s what it comes down to?”

Too overwrought to see beyond her own anger, she continued to lash out. “We made an agreement. I fully intend to see that you get everything we arranged, but I won’t have you telling me when I can go down. I won’t have you judging when I’m well and when I’m not. I’m sick to death of being dictated to. And I won’t be—not by you, not by anyone. Not any longer.”

The metal of the can gave under his fingers. “Fine. You do exactly what you want, professor. But while you’re about it, get yourself another diver. I’ll send you a bill.” Ky went up the cabin steps the way he came down. Quickly and without a sound.

With her hands gripped together, Kate sat down on the bunk and waited until she heard the engines stop again. She refused to think. Thinking hurt. She refused to feel. There was too much to feel. When she was certain she was in control, she stood up and went up on deck.

Everything was exactly as she’d left it—the wire basket filled with bits of porcelain and tableware, her nearly depleted tanks. Ky was gone. Marsh walked over from the stern where he’d been waiting for her.

“You’re going to need a hand with these.”

Kate nodded and pulled a thigh length T-shirt over her tank suit. “Yes. I want to take everything back to my room at the hotel. I have to arrange for shipping.”

“Okay.” But instead of reaching down for the basket, he took her arm. “Kate, I don’t like to give advice.”

“Good.” Then she swore at her own rudeness. “I’m sorry, Marsh. I’m feeling a little rough at the moment.”

“I can see that, and I know things aren’t always smooth for you and Ky. Look, he has a habit of closing himself up, of not saying everything that’s on his mind. Or worse,” Marsh added. “Of saying the first thing that comes to mind.”

“He’s perfectly free to do so. I came here for the specific purpose of finding and excavating the Liberty. If Ky and I can’t deal together on a business level, I have to do without his help.”

“Listen, he has a few blind spots.”

“Marsh, you’re his brother. Your allegiance is with him as it should be.”

“I care about both of you.”

She took a deep breath, refusing to let the emotion surface and carry her with it. “I appreciate that. The best thing you can do for me now, perhaps for both of us, is to tell me where I can rent a boat and some equipment. I’m going back out this afternoon.”

“Kate.”

“I’m going back out this afternoon,” she repeated. “With or without your help.”

Resigned, Marsh picked up the mesh basket. “All right, you can use mine.”

* * *

It took the rest of the morning for Kate to arrange everything, including the resolution of a lengthy argument with Marsh. She refused to let him come with her, ending by saying she’d simply rent a boat and do without his assistance altogether. In the end, she stood at the helm of his boat alone and headed out to sea.

She craved the solitude. Almost in defiance, she pushed the throttle forward. If it was defiance, she didn’t care, anymore than she cared whom she was defying. It was vital to do this one act for herself.

She refused to think about Ky, about why she’d exploded at him. If her words had been harsh, they’d also been necessary. She comforted herself with that. For too long, for a lifetime, she’d been influenced by someone else’s opinion, someone else’s expectations.

Mechanically, she stopped the engines and put on her equipment, checking and rechecking as she went. She’d never gone down alone before. Even that seemed suddenly a vital thing to do.

With a last look at her compass, she took the mesh basket over the side.

As she went deep, a thrill went through her. She was alone. In acres and acres of sea, she was alone. The water parted for her like silk. She was in control, and her destiny was her own.

She didn’t rush. Kate found she wanted that euphoric feeling of being isolated under the sea where only curious fish bothered to give her a passing glance. Ultimately, her only responsibility here was to herself. Briefly, she closed her eyes and floated. At last, only to herself.

When she reached the site, she felt a new surge of pride. This was something she’d done without her father. She wouldn’t think of the whys or the hows now, but simply the triumph. For two centuries, it had waited. And now, she’d found it. She circled the hole the prop-wash had created and began to fan using her hand.

Her first find was a dinner plate with a flamboyant floral pattern around the rim. She found one, then half a dozen, two of which were intact. On the back was the mark of an English potter. There were cups as well, dainty, exquisite English china that might have graced the table of a wealthy colonist, might have become a beloved heir-loom, if nature hadn’t interfered. Now they looked like something out of a horror show—crusted, misshapen with sea life. They couldn’t have been more beautiful to her.

As she continued to fan, Kate nearly missed what appeared to be a dark sea shell. On closer examination she saw it was a silver coin. She couldn’t make out the currency, but knew it didn’t matter. It could just as easily be Spanish, as she’d read that Spanish currency had been used by all European nations with settlements in the New World.

The point was, it was a coin. The first coin. Though it was silver, not gold, and unidentifiable at the moment, she’d found it by herself.

Kate started to slip it into her goodie bag when her arm was jerked back.

The thrill of fear went wildly from her toes to her throat. The spear gun was on board the Vortex. She had no weapon. Before she could do more than turn in defense, she was caught by the shoulders with Ky’s furious hands.

Terror died, but the anger in his eyes only incited her own. Damn him for frightening her, for interfering. Shaking him away, Kate signaled for him to leave. With one arm, he encircled her waist and started for the surface.

Only once did she even come close to breaking away from him. Ky simply banded his arm around her again, more tightly, until she had a choice between submitting or cutting off her own air.

When they broke the surface, Kate drew in breath to shout, but even in this, she was out-maneuvered.

“Idiot!” he shouted at her, dragging her to the ladder. “One day off your back and you jump into forty feet of water by yourself. I don’t know why in hell I ever thought you had any brains.”

Breathless, she heaved her tanks over the side. When she was on solid ground again, she intended to have her say. For now, she’d let him have his.

“I take my eyes off you for a couple hours and you go off half-cocked. If I’d murdered Marsh, it would have been on your head.”

To her further fury, Kate saw that she’d boarded the Vortex. Marsh’s boat was nowhere in sight.

“Where’s the Gull?” she demanded.

“Marsh had the sense to tell me what you were doing.” The words came out like bullets as he stripped his gear. “I didn’t kill him because I needed him to come out with me and take the Gull back.” He stood in front of her, dripping, and as furious as she’d ever seen him. “Don’t you have any more sense than to dive out here alone?”

She tossed her head back. “Don’t you?”

Infuriated, he grabbed her and started to peel the wet suit from her himself. “We’re not talking about me, damn it. I’ve been diving since I was six. I know the currents.”

“I know the currents.”

“And I haven’t been flat on my back for a week.”

“I was flat on my back for a week because you were overreacting.” She struggled away from him, and because the wet suit was already down to her waist, peeled it off. “You’ve no right to tell me when and where I can dive, Ky. Superior strength gives you no right to drag me up when I’m in the middle of salvaging.”

“The hell with what I have a right to do.” Grabbing her again, he shook her with more violence than he’d ever shown her. A dozen things might have happened to her in the thirty minutes she’d been down. A dozen things he knew too well. “I make my own rights. You’re not going down alone if I have to chain you up to stop it.”

“You told me to get another diver,” she said between her teeth. “Until I do, I dive alone.”

“You threw that damn business arrangement in my face. Percentages. Lousy percentages and a daily rate. Do you know how that made me feel?”

“No!” she shouted, pushing him away. “No, I don’t know how that made you feel. I don’t know how anything makes you feel. You don’t tell me.” Dragging both hands through her dripping hair she walked away. “We agreed to the terms. That’s all I know.”

“That was before.”

“Before what?” she demanded. Tears brimmed for no reason she could name, but she blinked them back again. “Before I slept with you?”

“Damn it, Kate.” He was across the deck, backing her into the rail before she could take a breath. “Are you trying to get at me for something I did or didn’t do four years ago? I don’t even know what it is. I don’t know what you want from me or what you don’t want and I’m sick of trying to outguess you.”

“I don’t want to be pushed into a corner,” she told him fiercely. “That’s what I don’t want. I don’t want to be expected to fall in passively with someone else’s plans for me. That’s what I don’t want. I don’t want it assumed that I simply don’t have any personal goals or wishes of my own. Or any basic competence of my own. That’s what I don’t want!”

“Fine.” They were both losing control, but he no longer gave a damn. Ky ripped off his wet suit and tossed it aside. “You just remember something, lady. I don’t expect of you and I don’t assume. Once maybe, but not anymore. There was only one person who ever pushed you into a corner and it wasn’t me.” He hurled his mask across the deck where it bounced and smacked into the side. “I’m the one who let you go.”

She stiffened. Even with the distance between them he could see her eyes frost over. “I won’t discuss my father with you.”

“You caught on real quick though, didn’t you?”

“You resented him. You—”

“I?” Ky interrupted. “Maybe you better look at yourself, Kate.”

“I loved him,” she said passionately. “All my life I tried to show him. You don’t understand.”

“How do you know that I don’t understand?” he exploded. “Don’t you know I can see what you’re feeling every time we find something down there? Do you think I’m so blind I don’t see that you’re hurting because you found it, not him? Don’t you think it tears me apart to see that you punish yourself for not being what you think he wanted you to be? And I’m tired,” he continued as her breath started to hitch. “Damn tired of being compared to and measured by a man you loved without ever being close to him.”

“I don’t.” She covered her face, hating the weakness but powerless against it. “I don’t do that. I only want…”

“What?” he demanded. “What do you want?”

“I didn’t cry when he died,” she said into her hands.

“I didn’t cry, not even at the funeral. I owed him tears, Ky. I owed him something.”

“You don’t owe him anything you didn’t already give him over and over again.” Frustrated, he dragged a hand through his hair before he went to her. “Kate.” Because words seemed useless, he simply gathered her close.

“I didn’t cry.”

“Cry now,” he murmured. He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “Cry now.”

So she did, desperately, for what she’d never been able to quite touch, for what she’d never been able to quite hold. She’d ached for love, for the simple companionship of understanding. She wept because it was too late for that now from her father. She wept because she wasn’t certain she could ask for love again from anyone else.

Ky held her, lowering her onto the bench as he cradled her in his lap. He couldn’t offer her words of comfort. They were the most difficult words for him to come by. He could only offer her a place to weep, and silence.

As the tears began to pass, she kept her face against his shoulder. There was such simplicity there, though it came from a man of complications. Such gentleness, though it sprang from a restless nature. “I couldn’t mourn for him before,” she murmured. “I’m not sure why.”

“You don’t have to cry to mourn.”

“Maybe not,” she said wearily. “I don’t know. But it’s true, what you said. I’ve wanted to do all this for him because he’ll never have the chance to finish what he started. I don’t know if you can understand, but I feel if I do this I’ll have done everything I could. For him, and for myself.”

“Kate.” Ky tipped back her head so he could see her face. Her eyes were puffy, rimmed with red. “I don’t have to understand. I just have to love you.”

He felt her stiffen in his arms and immediately cursed himself. Why was it he never said things to her the way they should be said? Sweetly, calmly, softly. She was a woman who needed soft words, and he was a man who always struggled with them.

She didn’t move, and for a long, long moment, they stayed precisely as they were.

“Do you?” she managed after a moment.

“Do I what?”

Would he make her drag it from him? “Love me?”

“Kate.” Frustrated, he drew away from her. “I don’t know how else to show you. You want bouquets of flowers, bottles of French champagne, poems? Damn it, I’m not made that way.”

“I want a straight answer.”

He let out a short breath. Sometimes her very calmness drove him to distraction. “I’ve always loved you. I’ve never stopped.”

That went through her, sharp, hot, with a mixture of pain and pleasure she wasn’t quite sure how to deal with. Slowly, she rose out of his arms, and walking across the deck, looked out to sea. The buoys that marked the site bobbed gently. Why were there no buoys in life to show you the way?

“You never told me.”

“Look, I can’t even count the number of women I’ve said it to.” When she turned back with her brow raised, he rose, uncomfortable. “It was easy to say it to them because it didn’t mean anything. It’s a hell of a lot harder to get the words out when you mean them, and when you’re afraid someone’s going to back away from you the minute you do.”

“I wouldn’t have done that.”

“You backed away, you went away for four years, when I asked you to stay.”

“You asked me to stay,” she reminded him. “You asked me not to go back to Connecticut, but to move in with you. Just like that. No promises, no commitment, no sign that you had any intention of building a life with me. I had responsibilities.”

“To do what your father wanted you to do.”

She swallowed that. It was true in its way. “All right, yes. But you never said you loved me.”

He came closer. “I’m telling you now.”

She nodded, but her heart was in her throat. “And I’m not backing away. I’m just not sure I can take the next step. I’m not sure you can either.”

“You want a promise.”

She shook her head, not certain what she’d do if indeed he gave her one. “I want time, for both of us. It seems we both have a lot of thinking to do.”

“Kate.” Impatient, he came to her, taking her hands. They trembled. “Some things you don’t have to think about. Some things you can think about too much.”

“You’ve lived your life a certain way a long time, and I mine,” she said quickly. “Ky, I’ve just begun to change—to feel the change. I don’t want to make a mistake, not with you. It’s too important. With time—”

“We’ve lost four years,” he interrupted. He needed to resolve something, he discovered, and quickly. “I can’t wait any longer to hear it if it’s inside you.”

Kate let out the breath she’d been holding. If he could ask, she could give. It would be enough. “I love you, Ky. I never stopped either. I never told you when I should have.”

He felt the weight drain from his body as he cupped her face. “You’re telling me now.”

It was enough.

Chapter 11

Love. Kate had read hundreds of poems about that one phenomenon. She’d read, analyzed and taught from countless novels where love was the catalyst to all action, all emotion. With her students, she’d dissected innumerable lines from books, plays and verse that all led back to that one word.

Now, for perhaps the first time in her life, it was offered to her. She found it had more power than could possibly be taught. She found she didn’t understand it.

Ky hadn’t Byron’s way with words, or Keat’s romantic phrasing. What he’d said, he’d said simply. It meant everything. She still didn’t understand it.

She could, in her own way, understand her feelings. She’d loved Ky for years, since that first revelation one summer when she’d come to know what it meant to want to fully share oneself with another.

But what, she wondered, did Ky find in her to love? It wasn’t modesty that caused her to ask herself this question, but the basic practicality she’d grown up with. Where there was an effect, there was a cause. Where there was reaction, there was action. The world ran on this principle. She’d won Ky’s love—but how?

Kate had no insecurity about her own intelligence. Perhaps, if anything, she overrated her mind, and it was this that caused her to underrate her other attributes.

He was a man of action, of restless and mercurial nature. She, on the other hand, considered herself almost blandly level. While she thrived on routine, Ky thrived on the unexpected. Why should he love her? Yet he did.

If she accepted that, it was vital to come to a resolution. Love led to commitment. It was there that she found the wall solid, without footholds.

He lived on a remote island because he was basically a loner, because he preferred moving at his own pace, in his own time. She was a teacher who lived by a day-to-day schedule. Without the satisfaction of giving knowledge, she’d stagnate. In the structured routine of a college town, Ky would go mad.

Because she could find no compromise, Kate opted to do what she’d decided to do in the beginning. She’d ride with the current until the summer was over. Perhaps by then, an answer would come.

They spoke no more of percentages. Kate quietly dropped the notion of keeping her hotel room. These, she told herself, were small matters when so much more hung in the balance during her second summer with Ky.

The days went quickly with her and Ky working together with the prop-wash or by hand. Slowly, painstakingly, they uncovered more salvage. The candlesticks had turned out to be pewter, but the coin had been Spanish silver. Its date had been 1748.

In the next two-week period, they uncovered much more—a heavy intricately carved silver platter, more china and porcelain, and in another area dozens of nails and tools.

Kate documented each find on film, for practical and personal reasons. She needed the neat, orderly way of keeping track of the salvage. She wanted to be able to look back on those pictures and remember how she felt when Ky held up a crusted teacup or an oxidized tankard. She’d be able to look and remember how he’d played an outstaring game with a large lazy bluefish. And lost.

More than once Ky had suggested the use of a larger ship equipped for salvage. They discussed it, and its advantages, but they never acted on it. Somehow, they both felt they wanted to move slowly, working basically with their own hands until there came a time when they had to make a decision.

The cannons and the heavier pieces of ship’s planking couldn’t be brought up without help, so these they left to the sea for the time being. They continued to use tanks, rather than changing to a surface-supplied source of air, so they had to surface and change gear every hour or so. A diving rig would have saved time—but that wasn’t their goal.

Their methods weren’t efficient by professional salvor standards, but they had an unspoken agreement. Stretch time. Make it last.

The nights they spent together in the big four-poster, talking of the day’s finds, or of tomorrow’s, making love, marking time. They didn’t speak of the future that loomed after the summer’s end. They never talked of what they’d do the day after the treasure was found.

The treasure became their focus, something that kept them from reaching out when the other wasn’t ready.

* * *

The day was fiercely hot as they prepared to dive. The sun was baking. It was mid-July. She’d been in Ocracoke for a month. For all her practicality, Kate told herself it was an omen. Today was the turning point of summer.

Even as she pulled the wet suit up to her waist, sweat beaded on her back. She could almost taste the cool freshness of the water. The sun glared on her tanks as she lifted them, bouncing off to spear her eyes.

“Here.” Taking them from her, Ky strapped them onto her back, checking the gauges himself. “The water’s going to feel like heaven.”

“Yeah.” Marsh tipped up a quart bottle of juice. “Think of me baking up here while you’re having all the fun.”

“Keep the throttle low, brother,” Ky said with a grin as he climbed over the side. “We’ll bring you a reward.”

“Make it something round and shiny with a date stamped on it,” Marsh called back, then winked at Kate as she started down the ladder. “Good luck.”

She felt the excitement as the water lapped over her ankles. “Today, I don’t think I need it.”

The noise of the prop-wash disturbed the silence of the water, but not the mystery. Even with technology and equipment, the water remained an enigma, part beauty, part danger. They went deeper and deeper until they reached the site with the scoops in the silt caused by their earlier explorations.

They’d already found what they thought had been the officer’s and passenger’s quarters, identifying it by the discovery of a snuff box, a silver bedside candleholder and Ky’s personal favorite—a decorated sword. The few pieces of jewelry they’d found indicated a personal cache rather than cargo.

Though they fully intended to excavate in the area of the cache, it was the cargo they sought. Using the passenger’s quarters and the galley as points of reference, they concentrated on what should have been the stern of the ship.

There were ballast rocks to deal with. This entailed a slow, menial process that required moving them by hand to an area they’d already excavated. It was time consuming, unrewarding and necessary. Still, Kate found something peaceful in the mindless work, and something fascinating about the ability to do it under fathoms of water with basically little effort. She could move a ballast pile as easily as Ky, whereas on land, she would have tired quickly.

Reaching down to clear another area, Ky’s fingers brushed something small and hard. Curious, he fanned aside a thin layer of silt and picked up what at first looked like a tab on a can of beer. As he brought it closer, he saw it was much more refined, and though there were layers of crust on the knob of the circle, he felt his heart give a quick jerk.

He’d heard of diamonds in the rough, but he’d never thought to find one by simply reaching for it. He was no expert, but as he painstakingly cleaned what he could from the stone, he judged it to be at least two carats. With a tap on Kate’s shoulder, he got her attention.

It gave him a great deal of pleasure to see her eyes widen and to hear the muffled sound of her surprise. Together, they turned it over and over again. It was dull and dirty, but the gem was there.

They were finding bits and pieces of civilization. Perhaps a woman had worn the ring while dining with the captain on her way to America. Perhaps some British officer had carried it in his vest pocket, waiting to give it to the woman he’d hoped to marry. It might have belonged to an elderly widow, or a young bride. The mystery of it, and its tangibility, were more precious than the stone itself. It was…lasting.

Ky held it out to her, offering. Their routine had fallen into a finders-keepers arrangement, in that whoever found a particular piece carried it in their own bag to the surface where everything was carefully catalogued on film and paper. Kate looked at the small, water-dulled piece of the past in Ky’s fingers.

Was he offering her the ring because it was a woman’s fancy, or was he offering her something else? Unsure, she shook her head, pointing to the bag on his belt. If he were asking her something, she needed it to be done with words.

Ky dropped the ring into his bag, secured it, then went back to work.

He thought he understood her, in some ways. In other ways, Ky found she was as much a mystery as the sea. What did she want from him? If it was love, he’d given her that. If it was time, they were both running out of it. He wanted to demand, was accustomed to demanding, yet she blocked his ability with a look.

She said she’d changed—that she was just beginning to feel in control of her life. He thought he understood that, as well as her fierce need for independence. And yet… He’d never known anything but independence. He, too, had changed. He needed her to give him the boundaries and the borders that came with dependence. His for her, and hers for him. Was the timing wrong again? Would it ever be right?

Damn it, he wanted her, he thought as he heaved another rock out of his way. Not just for today, but for tomorrow. Not tied against him, but bound to him. Why couldn’t she understand that?

She loved him. It was something she murmured in the night when she was sleepy and caught close against him. She wasn’t a woman to use words unless they had meaning. Yet with the love he offered and the love she returned, she’d begun to hold something back from him, as though he could have only a portion of her, but not all. Edged with frustration, he cleared more ballast. He needed and would have, all.

Marriage? Was he thinking of marriage? Kate found herself flustered and uneasy. She’d never expected Ky to look for that kind of commitment, that kind of permanency. Perhaps she’d misread him. After all, it was difficult to be certain of someone’s intention, yet she knew just how clearly Ky and she had been able to communicate underwater.

There was so much to consider, so many things to weigh. He wouldn’t understand that, Kate mused. Ky was a man who made decisions in an instant and took the consequences. He wouldn’t think about all the variables, all the what-ifs, all the maybes. She had to think about them all. She simply knew no other way.

Kate watched the silt and sand blowing away, causing a cuplike indentation to form on the ocean floor. Outside influences, she mused. They could eat away at the layers and uncover the core, but sometimes what was beneath couldn’t stand up to the pressure.

Is that what would happen between her and Ky? How would their relationship hold up under the pressure of variant life-styles—the demands of her profession and the free-wheeling tone of his? Would it stay intact, or would it begin to sift away, layer by layer? How much of herself would he ask her to give? And in loving, how much of herself would she lose?

It was a possibility she couldn’t ignore, a threat she needed to build a solid defense against. Time. Perhaps time was the answer. But summer was waning.

The force of the wash made a small object spin up, out of the layer of silt and into the water. Kate grabbed at it and the sharp edge scraped her palm. Curious, she turned it over for examination. A buckle? she wondered. The shape seemed to indicate it, and she could just make out a fastening. Even as she started to hold it out for Ky an other, then another was pushed off the ocean bed.

Shoe buckles, Kate realized, astonished. Dozens of them. No, she realized as more and more began to twist up in the water’s spin and reel away. Hundreds. With a quick frenzy, she began to gather what she could. More than hundreds, she discovered as her heart thudded. There were thousands of them, literally thousands.

She held a buckle in her hand and looked at Ky in triumph. They’d found the cargo. There’d been shoe buckles on the manifest of the Liberty. Five thousand of them. Nothing but a merchantman carried something like that in bulk.

Proof. She waved the buckle, her arm sweeping out in slow motion to take in the swarm of them swirling away from the wash and dropping again. Proof, her mind shouted out. The cargo-hold was beneath them. And the treasure. They had only to reach it.

Ky took her hands and nodded, knowing what was in her mind. Beneath his fingers he could feel the race of her pulse. He wanted that for her, the excitement, the thrill that came from discovering something only half believed in. She brought the back of his hand to her cheek, her eyes laughing, buckles spinning around them. Kate wanted to laugh until she was too weak to stand. Five thousand shoe buckles would guide them to a chest of gold.

Kate saw the humor in his eyes and knew Ky’s thoughts ran along the same path as hers. He pointed to himself, then thumbs up. With a minimum of signaling, he told Kate that he would surface to tell Marsh to shut off the engines. It was time to work by hand.

Excited, she nodded. She wanted only to begin. Resting near the bottom, Kate watched Ky go up and out of sight. Oddly, she found she needed time alone. She’d shared the heady instant of discovery with Ky, and now she needed to absorb it.

The Liberty was beneath her, the ship her father had searched for. The dream he’d kept close, carefully researching, meticulously calculating, but never finding.

Joy and sorrow mixed as she gathered a handful of the buckles and placed them carefully in her bag. For him. In that moment she felt she’d given him everything she’d always needed to.

Carefully, and this time for personal reasons rather than the catalogue, she began to shoot pictures. Years from now, she thought. Years and years from now, she’d look at a snapshot of swirling silt and drifting pieces of metal, and she’d remember. Nothing could ever take that moment of quiet satisfaction from her.

She glanced up at the sudden silence. The wash had stilled. Ky had reached the surface. Silt and the pieces of crusted, decorated metal began to settle again without the agitation of the wash. The sea was a world without sound, without movement.

Kate looked down at the scoop in the ocean floor. They were nearly there. For a moment she was tempted to begin to fan and search by herself, but she’d wait for Ky. They began together, and they’d finish together. Content, she watched for his return.

When Kate saw the movement above her, she started to signal. Her hand froze in place, then her arm, her shoulder and the rest of her body, degree by degree. It came smoothly through the water, sleek and silent. Deadly.

The noise of the prop-wash had kept the sea life away. Now the abrupt quiet brought out the curious. Among the schools of harmless fish glided the long bulletlike shape of a shark.

Kate was still, hardly daring to breathe as she feared even the trail of bubbles might attract him. He moved without haste, apparently not interested in her. Perhaps he’d already hunted successfully that day. But even with a full belly, a shark would attack what annoyed his uncertain temper.

She gauged him to be ten feet in length. Part of her mind registered that he was fairly small for what she recognized as a tiger shark. They could easily double that length. But she knew the jaws, those large sickle-shaped teeth, would be strong, merciless and fatal.

If she remained still, the chances were good that he would simply go in search of more interesting waters. Isn’t that what she’d read sitting cozily under lamplight at her own desk? Isn’t that what Ky had told her once when they’d shared a quiet lunch on his boat? All that seemed so remote, so unreal now, as she looked above and saw the predator between herself and the surface.

It was movement that attracted them, she reminded herself as she forced her mind to function. The movement a swimmer made with kicking feet and sweeping arms.

Don’t panic. She forced herself to breathe slowly. No sudden moves. She forced her nervous hands to form tight, still fists.

He was no more than ten feet away. Kate could see the small black eyes and the gentle movement of his gills. Breathing shallowly, she never took her eyes from his. She had only to be perfectly still and wait for him to swim on.

But Ky. Kate’s mouth went dry as she looked toward the direction where Ky had disappeared moments before. He’d be coming back, any minute, unaware of what was lurking near the bottom. Waiting. Cruising.

The shark would sense the disturbance in the water with the uncanny ability the hunter had. The kick of Ky’s feet, the swing of his arms would attract the shark long before Kate would have a chance to warn him of any danger.

He’d be unaware, helpless, and then… Her blood seemed to freeze. She’d heard of the sensation but now she experienced it. Cold seemed to envelop her. Terror made her head light. Kate bit down on her lip until pain cleared her thoughts. She wouldn’t stand by idly while Ky came blindly into a death trap.

Glancing down, she saw the spear gun. It was over five feet away and unloaded for safety. Safety, she thought hysterically. She’d never loaded one, much less shot one. And first, she’d have to get to it. There’d only be one chance. Knowing she’d have no time to settle her nerves, Kate made her move.

She kept her eyes on the shark as she inched slowly toward the gun. At the moment, he seemed to be merely cruising, not particularly interested in anything. He never even glanced her way. Perhaps he would move on before Ky came back, but she needed the weapon. Fingers shaking, she gripped the butt of the gun. Time seemed to crawl. Her movements were so slow, so measured, she hardly seemed to move at all. But her mind whirled.

Even as she gripped the spear she saw the shape that glided down from the surface. The shark turned lazily to the left. To Ky.

No! her mind screamed as she rammed the spear into position. Her only thought that of protecting what she loved. Kate swam forward without hesitation, taking a path between Ky and the shark. She had to get close.

Her mind was cold now, with fear, with purpose. For the second time, she saw those small, deadly eyes. This time, they focused on her. If she’d never seen true evil before, Kate knew she faced it now. This was cruelty, and a death that wouldn’t come easily.

The shark moved toward her with a speed that made her heart stop. His jaws opened. There was a black, black cave behind them.

Ky dove quickly, wanting to get back to Kate, wanting to search for what had brought them back together. If it was the treasure she needed to settle her mind, he’d find it. With it, they could open whatever doors they needed to open, lock whatever needed to be locked. Excitement drummed through him as he dove deeper.

When he spotted the shark, he pulled up short. He’d felt that deep primitive fear before, but never so sharply. Though it was less than useless against such a predator, he reached for his diver’s knife. He’d left Kate alone. Cold bloodedly, he set for the attack.

Like a rocket, Kate shot up between himself and the shark. Terror such as he’d never known washed over him. Was she mad? Was she simply unaware? Giving no time to thought, Ky barreled through the water toward her.

He was too far away. He knew it even as the panic hammered into him. The shark would be on her before he was close enough to sink the knife in.

When he saw what she held in her hand, and realized her purpose he somehow doubled his speed. Everything was in slow motion, and yet it seemed to happen in the blink of an eye. He saw the gaping hole in the shark’s mouth as it closed in on Kate. For the first time in his life, prayers ran through him like water.

The spear shot out, sinking deep through the shark’s flesh. Instinctively, Kate let herself drop as the shark came forward full of anger and pain. He would follow her now, she knew. If the spear didn’t work, he would be on her in moments.

Ky saw blood gush from the wound. It wouldn’t be enough. The shark jerked as if to reject the spear, and slowed his pace. Just enough. Teeth bared, Ky fell on its back, hacking with the knife as quickly as the water would allow. The shark turned, furious. Using all his strength, Ky turned with it, forcing the knife into the underbelly and ripping down. It ran through his mind that he was holding death, and it was as cold as the poets said.

From a few feet away, Kate watched the battle. She was numb, body and mind. Blood spurted out to dissipate in the water. Letting the empty gun fall, she too reached for her knife and swam forward.

But it was over. One instant the fish and Ky were as one form, locked together. Then they were separate as the body of the shark sank lifelessly toward the bottom. She saw the eyes one last time.

Her arm was gripped painfully. Limp, Kate allowed herself to be dragged to the surface. Safe. It was the only clear thought her mind could form. He was safe.

Too breathless to speak, Ky pulled her toward the ladder, tanks and all. He saw her slip near the top and roll onto the deck. Even as he swung over himself, he saw two fins slice through the water and disappear below where the blood drew them.

“What the hell—” Jumping up from his seat, Marsh ran across the deck to where Kate still lay, gasping for air.

“Sharks.” Ky cut off the word as he knelt beside her. “I had to bring her up fast. Kate.” Ky reached a hand beneath her neck, lifting her up as he began to take off her tanks. “Are you dizzy? Do you have any pain—your knees, elbows?”

Though she was still gasping for air, she shook her head. “No, no, I’m all right.” She knew he worried about decompression sickness and tried to steady herself to reassure him. “Ky, we weren’t that deep after—when we came up.”

He nodded, grimly acknowledging that she was winded, not incoherent. Standing, he pulled off his mask and heaved it across the deck. Temper helped alleviate the helpless shaking. Kate merely drew her knees up and rested her forehead on them.

“Somebody want to fill me in?” Marsh asked, glancing from one to the other. “I left off when Ky came up raving about shoe buckles.”

“Cargo-hold,” Kate murmured. “We found it.”

“So Ky said.” Marsh glanced at his brother whose knuckles were whitening against the rail as he looked out to sea. “Run into some company down there?”

“There was a shark. A tiger.”

“She nearly got herself killed,” Ky explained. Fury was a direct result of fear, and just as deadly. “She swam right in front of him.” Before Marsh could make any comment, Ky turned on Kate. “Did you forget everything I taught you?” he demanded. “You manage to get a doctorate but you can’t remember that you’re supposed to minimize your movements when a shark’s cruising? You know that arm and leg swings attract them, but you swim in front of him, flailing around as though you wanted to shake hands—holding a damn spear gun that’s just as likely to annoy him as do any real damage. If I hadn’t been coming down just then, he’d have torn you to pieces.”

Kate lifted her head slowly. Whatever emotion she’d felt up to that moment was replaced by an anger so deep it overshadowed everything. Meticulously she removed her flippers, her mask and her weight belt before she rose. “If you hadn’t been coming down just then,” she said precisely, “there’d have been no reason for me to swim in front of him.” Turning, she walked to the steps and down into the cabin.

For a full minute there was utter silence on deck. Above, a gull screeched, then swerved west. Knowing there’d be no more dives that day, Marsh went to the helm. As he glanced over he saw the deep stain of blood on the water’s surface.

“It’s customary,” he began with his back to his brother, “to thank someone when they save your life.” Without waiting for a comment, he switched on the engine.

Shaken, Ky ran a hand through his hair. Some of the shark’s blood had stained his fingers. Standing still, he stared at it.

Not through carelessness, he thought with a jolt. It had been deliberate. Kate had deliberately put herself in the path of the shark. For him. She’d risked her life to save him. He ran both hands over his face before he started below deck.

He saw her sitting on a bunk with a glass in her hand. A bottle of brandy sat at her feet. When she lifted the glass to her lips her hand shook lightly. Beneath the tan the sun had given her, her face was drawn and pale. No one had ever put him first so completely, so unselfishly. It left him without any idea of what to say.

“Kate…”

“I’m not in the mood to be shouted at right now,” she told him before she drank again. “If you need to vent your temper, you’ll have to save it.”

“I’m not going to shout.” Because he felt every bit as unsteady as she did, he sat beside her and lifted the bottle, drinking straight from it. The brandy ran hot and strong through him. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“I’m not going to apologize for what I did.”

“I should thank you.” He drank again and felt the nerves in his stomach ease. “The point is, you had no business doing what you did. Nothing but blind luck kept you from being torn up down there.”

Turning her head, she stared at him. “I should’ve stayed safe and sound on the bottom while you dealt with the shark—with your diver’s knife.”

He met the look levelly. “Yes.”

“And you’d have done that, if it’d been me?”

“That’s different.”

“Oh.” Glass in hand, she rose. She took a moment to study him, that raw-boned, dark face, the dripping hair that needed a trim, the eyes that reflected the sea. “Would you care to explain that little piece of logic to me?”

“I don’t have to explain it, it just is.” He tipped the bottle back again. It helped to cloud his imagination which kept bringing images of what might have happened to her.

“No, it just isn’t, and that’s one of your major problems.”

“Kate, have you any idea what could have happened if you hadn’t lucked out and hit a vital spot with that spear?”

“Yes.” She drained her glass and felt some of the edge dull. The fear might come back again unexpectedly, but she felt she was strong enough to deal with it. And the anger. No matter how it slashed at her, she would put herself between him and danger again. “I understand perfectly. Now, I’m going up with Marsh.”

“Wait a minute.” He stood to block her way. “Can’t you see that I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to you? I want to take care of you. I need to keep you safe.”

“While you take all the risks?” she countered. “Is that supposed to be the balance of our relationship, Ky? You man, me woman? I bake bread, you hunt the meat?”

“Damn it, Kate, it’s not as basic as that.”

“It’s just as basic as that,” she tossed back. The color had come back to her face. Her legs were steady again. And she would be heard. “You want me to be quiet and content—and amenable to the way you choose to live. You want me to do as you say, bend to your will, and yet I know how you felt about my father.”

It didn’t seem she had the energy to be angry any longer. She was just weary, bone weary from slamming herself up against a wall that didn’t seem ready to budge.

“I spent all my life doing what it pleased him to have me do,” she continued in calmer tones. “No waves, no problems, no rebellion. He gave me a nod of approval, but no true respect and certainly no true affection. Now, you’re asking me to do the same thing again with you.” She felt no tears, only that weariness of spirit. “Why do you suppose the only two men I’ve ever loved should want me to be so utterly pliant to their will? Why do you suppose I lost both of them because I tried so hard to do just that?”

“No.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “No, that’s not true. It’s not what I want from you or for you. I just want to take care of you.”

She shook her head. “What’s the difference, Ky?” she whispered. “What the hell’s the difference?” Pushing past him, Kate went out on deck.

Chapter 12

Because in her quiet, immovable way Kate had demanded it, Ky left her alone. Perhaps it was for the best as it gave him time to think and to reassess what he wanted.

He realized that because of his fear for her, because of his need to care for her, he’d hurt her and damaged their already tenuous relationship.

On a certain level, she’d hit the mark in her accusations. He did want her to be safe and cared for while he sweated and took the risks. It was his nature to protect what he loved—in Kate’s case, perhaps too much. It was also his nature to want other wills bent to his. He wanted Kate, and was honest enough to admit that he’d already outlined the terms in his own mind.

Her father’s quiet manipulating had infuriated Ky and yet, he found himself doing the same thing. Not so quietly, he admitted, not nearly as subtly, but he was doing the same thing. Still, it wasn’t for the same reasons. He wanted Kate to be with him, to align herself to him. It was as simple as that. He was certain, if she’d just let him, that he could make her happy.

But he never fully considered that she’d have demands or terms of her own. Until now, Ky hadn’t thought how he’d adjust to them.

* * *

The light of dawn was quiet as Ky added the finishing touches to the lettering on his sailboat. For most of the night, he’d worked in the shed, giving Kate her time alone, and himself the time to think. Now that the night was over, only one thing remained clear. He loved her. But it had come home to him that it might not be enough. Though impatience continued to push at him, he reined it in. Perhaps he had to leave it to her to show him what would be.

For the next few days, they would concentrate on excavating the cargo that had sunk two centuries before. The longer they searched, the more the treasure became a symbol for him. If he could give it to her, it would be the end of the quest for both of them. Once it was over, they’d both have what they wanted. She, the fulfillment of her father’s dream, and he, the satisfaction of seeing her freed from it.

Ky closed the shed doors behind him and headed back for the house. In a few days, he thought with a glance over his shoulder, he’d have something else to give her. Something else to ask her.

He was still some feet away from the house when he smelled the morning scents of bacon and coffee drifting through the kitchen windows. When he entered, Kate was standing at the stove, a long T-shirt over her tank suit, her feet bare, her hair loose. He could see the light dusting of freckles over the bridge of her nose, and the pale soft curve of her lips.

His need to gather her close rammed into him with such power, he had to stop and catch his breath. “Kate—”

“I thought since we’d be putting in a long day we should have a full breakfast.” She’d heard him come in, sensed it. Because it made her knees weak, she spoke briskly. “I’d like to get an early start.”

He watched her drop eggs into the skillet where the white began to sizzle and solidify around the edges.

“Kate, I’d like to talk to you.”

“I’ve been thinking we might consider renting a salvage ship after all,” she interrupted, “and perhaps hiring another couple of divers. Excavating the cargo’s going to be very slow work with just the two of us. It’s certainly time we looked into lifting bags and lines.”

Long days in the sun had lightened her hair. There were shades upon shades of variation so that as it flowed it reminded him of the smooth soft pelt of a deer. “I don’t want to talk business now.”

“It’s not something we can put off too much longer.” Efficiently, she scooped up the eggs and slid them onto plates. “I’m beginning to think we should expedite the excavation rather than dragging it out for what may very well be several more weeks. Then, of course, if we’re talking about excavating the entire site, it would be months.”

“Not now.” Ky turned off the burner under the skillet. Taking both plates from Kate, he set them on the table. “Look, I have to do something, and I’m not sure I’ll do it very well.”

Turning, Kate took silverware from the drawer and went to the table. “What?”

“Apologize.” When she looked back at him in her cool, quiet way, he swore. “No, I won’t do it well.”

“It isn’t necessary.”

“Yes, it’s necessary. Sit down.” He let out a long breath as she remained standing. “Please,” he added, then took a chair himself. Without a word, Kate sat across from him. “You saved my life yesterday.” Even saying it aloud, he felt uneasy about it. “It was no less than that. I never could have taken that shark with my diver’s knife. The only reason I did was because you’d weakened and distracted him.”

Kate lifted her coffee and drank as though they were discussing the weather. It was the only way she had of blocking out images of what might have been. “Yes.”

With a frustrated laugh, Ky stabbed at his eggs. “Not going to make it easy on me, are you?”

“No, I don’t think I am.”

“I’ve never been that scared,” he said quietly. “Not for myself, certainly not for anyone else. I thought he had you.” He looked up and met her calm, patient eyes. “I was still too far away to do anything about it. If…”

“Sometimes it’s best not to think about the ifs.”

“All right.” He nodded and reached for her hand. “Kate, realizing you put yourself in danger to protect me only made it worse somehow. The possibility of anything happening to you was bad enough, but the idea of it happening because of me was unbearable.”

“You would’ve protected me.”

“Yes, but—”

“There shouldn’t be any buts, Ky.”

“Maybe there shouldn’t be,” he agreed, “but I can’t promise there won’t be.”

“I’ve changed.” The fact filled her with an odd sense of power and unease. “For too many years I’ve channeled my own desires because I thought somehow that approval could be equated with love. I know better now.”

“I’m not your father, Kate.”

“No, but you also have a way of imposing your will on me. My fault to a point.” Her voice was calm, level, as it was when she lectured her students. She hadn’t slept while Ky had spent his hours in the shed. Like him, she’d spent her time in thought, in search for the right answers.

“Four years ago, I had to give to one of you and deny the other. It broke my heart. Today, I know I have to answer to myself first.” With her breakfast hardly touched, she took her plate to the sink. “I love you, Ky,” she murmured. “But I have to answer to myself first.”

Rising, he went to her and laid his hands on her shoulders. Somehow the strength that suddenly seemed so powerful in her both attracted him yet left him uneasy. “Okay.” When she turned into his arms, he felt the world settle a bit. “Just let me know what the answer is.”

“When I can.” She closed her eyes and held tight. “When I can.”

* * *

For three long days they dove, working away the silt to find new discoveries. With a small air lift and their own hands, they found the practical, the beautiful and the ordinary. They came upon more than eight thousand of the ten thousand decorated pipes on the Liberty’s manifest. At least half of them, to Kate’s delight, had their bowls intact. They were clay, long-stemmed pipes with the bowls decorated with oak leaves or bunches of grapes and flowers. In a heady moment of pleasure, she snapped Ky’s picture as he held one up to his lips.

She knew that at auction, they would more than pay for the investment she’d made. And, with them, the donation she’d make to a museum in her father’s name was steadily growing. But more than this, the discovery of so many pipes on a wreck added force to their claim that the ship was English.

There were also snuff boxes, again thousands, leaving literally no doubt in her mind that they’d found the merchantman Liberty. They found tableware, some of it elegant, some basic utility-ware, but again in quantity. Their list of salvage grew beyond anything Kate had imagined, but they found no chest of gold.

They took turns hauling their finds to the surface, using an inverted plastic trash can filled with air to help them lift. Even with this, they stored the bulk of it on the sea floor. They were working alone again, without a need for Marsh to man the prop-wash. As it had been in the beginning, the project became a personal chore for only the two of them. What they found became a personal triumph. What they didn’t find, a personal disappointment.

Kate delegated herself to deal with the snuff boxes, transporting them to the mesh baskets. Already, she was planning to clean several of them herself as part of the discovery. Beneath the layers of time there might be something elegant, ornate or ugly. She didn’t believe it mattered what she found, as long as she found it.

Tea, sugar and other perishables the merchant ship had carried were long since gone without a trace. What she and Ky found now were the solid pieces of civilization that had survived centuries in the sea. A pipe meant for an eighteenth-century man had never reached the New World. It should have made her sad but, because it had survived, because she could hold it in her hand more than two hundred years later, Kate felt a quiet triumph. Some things last, whatever the odds.

Reaching down, she disturbed something that lay among the jumbled snuff boxes. Automatically, she jerked her hand back. Memories of the stingray and other dangers were still very fresh. When the small round object clinked against the side of a box and lay still, her heart began to pound. Almost afraid to touch, Kate reached for it. Between her fingers, she held a gold coin from another era.

Though she had read it was likely, she hadn’t expected it to be as bright and shiny as the day it was minted. The pieces of silver they’d found had blackened, and other metal pieces had corroded, some of them crystalized almost beyond recognition. Yet, the gold, the small coin she’d plucked from the sea floor, winked back at her.

Its origin was English. The long-dead king stared out at her. The date was 1750.

Ky! Foolishly, she said his name. Though the sound was muffled and indistinguishable, he turned. Unable to wait, Kate swam toward him, clutching the coin. When she reached him, she took his hand and pressed the gold into his palm.

He knew at the moment of contact. He had only to look into her eyes. Taking her hand, he brought it to his lips. She’d found what she wanted. For no reason he could name, he felt empty. He pressed the coin back into her hand, closing her fingers over it tightly. The gold was hers.

Swimming beside her, Ky moved to the spot where Kate had found the coin. Together, they fanned, using all the patience each of them had stored. In the twenty minutes of bottom time they had left, they uncovered only five more coins. As if they were as fragile as glass, Kate placed them in her bag. Each took a mesh basket filled with salvage and surfaced.

“It’s there, Ky.” Kate let her mouthpiece drop as Ky hauled the first basket over the rail. “It’s the Liberty, we’ve proven it.”

“It’s the Liberty,” he agreed, taking the second basket from her. “You’ve finished what your father started.”

“Yes.” She unhooked her tanks, but it was more than their weight she felt lifted from her shoulders. “I’ve finished.” Digging into her bag, she pulled out the six bright coins. “These were loose. We still haven’t found the chest. If it still exists.”

He’d already thought of that, but not how he’d tell her his own theory. “They might have taken the chest to another part of the boat when the storm hit.” It was a possibility; it had given them hope that the chest was still there.

Kate looked down. The glittery metal seemed to mock her. “It’s possible they put the gold in one of the lifeboats when they manned them. The survivor’s story wasn’t clear after the ship began to break up.”

“A lot of things are possible.” He touched her cheek briefly before he started to strip off his gear. “With a little luck and a little more time, we might find it all.”

She smiled as she dropped the coins back into her bag. “Then you could buy your boat.”

“And you could go to Greece.” Stripped down to his bathing trunks, Ky went to the helm. “We need to give ourselves the full twelve hours before we dive again, Kate. We’ve been calling it close as it is.”

“That’s fine.” She made a business of removing her own suit. She needed the twelve hours, she discovered, for more than the practical reason of residual nitrogen.

They spoke little on the trip back. They should’ve been ecstatic. Kate knew it, and though she tried, she couldn’t recapture that quick boost she’d felt when she picked up the first coin.

She discovered that if she’d had a choice she would have gone back weeks, to the time when the gold was a distant goal and the search was everything.

It took the rest of the day to transport the salvage from the Vortex to Ky’s house, to separate and catalog it. She’d already decided to contact the Park Service. Their advice in placing many of the artifacts would be invaluable. After taxes, she’d give her father his memorial. And, she mused, she’d give Ky whatever he wanted out of the salvage.

Their original agreement no longer mattered to her. If he wanted half, she’d give it. All she wanted, Kate realized, was the first bowl she’d found, the blackened silver coin and the gold one that had led her to the five other coins.

“We might think about investing in a small electrolytic reduction bath,” Ky murmured as he turned what he guessed was a silver snuff box in his palm. “We could treat a lot of this salvage ourselves.” Coming to a decision, he set the box down. “We’re going to have to think about a bigger ship and equipment. It might be best to stop diving for the next couple of days while we arrange for it. It’s been six weeks, and we’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s down there.”

She nodded, not entirely sure why she wanted to weep. He was right. It was time to move on, to expand. How could she explain to him, when she couldn’t explain to herself, that she wanted nothing else from the sea? While the sun set, she watched him meticulously list the salvage.

“Ky…” She broke off because she couldn’t find the words to tell him what moved through her. Sadness, emptiness, needs.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” But she took his hands as she rose. “Come upstairs now,” she said quietly. “Make love with me before the sun goes down.”

Questions ran through him, but he told himself they could wait. The need he felt from her touched off his own. He wanted to give her, and to take from her, what couldn’t be found anywhere else.

When they entered the bedroom it was washed with the warm, lingering light of the sun. The sky was slowly turning red as he lay beside her. Her arms reached out to gather him close. Her lips parted. Refusing to rush, they undressed each other. No boundaries. Flesh against flesh they lay. Mouth against mouth they touched.

Kisses—long and deep—took them both beyond the ordinary world of place and time. Here, there were dozens of sensations to be felt, and no questions to be asked. Here, there was no past, no tomorrow, only the moment. Her body went limp under his, but her mouth hungered and sought.

No one else… No one else had ever taken her beyond herself so effortlessly. Never before had anyone made her so completely aware of her own body. A feathery touch along her skin drove pleasure through her with inescapable force.

The scent of sea still clung to both of them. As pleasure became liquid, they might have been fathoms under the ocean, moving freely without the strict rules of gravity. There were no rules here.

As his hands brought their emotions rising to the surface, so did hers for him. She explored the rippling muscles of his back, near the shoulders. Lingering there, she enjoyed just the feel of one of the subtle differences between them. His skin was smooth, but muscles bunched under it. His hands were gentle, but the palms were hard. He was lean, but there was no softness there.

Again and again she touched and tasted, needing to absorb him. Above all else, she needed to experience everything they’d ever had together this one time. They made love here, she remembered, that first time. The first time…and the last. Whenever she thought of him, she’d remember the quieting light of dusk and the distant sound of surf.

He didn’t understand why he felt such restrained urgency from her, but he knew she needed everything he could give her. He loved her, perhaps not as gently as he could, but more thoroughly than ever before.

He touched. “Here,” Ky murmured, using his fingertips to drive her up. As she gasped and arched, he watched her. “You’re soft and hot.”

He tasted. “And here…” With his tongue, he pushed her to the edge. As her hands gripped his, he groaned. Pleasure heaped upon pleasure. “You taste like temptation—sweet and forbidden. Tell me you want more.”

“Yes.” The word came out on a moan. “I want more.”

So he gave her more.

Again and again, he took her up, watching the astonished pleasure on her face, feeling it in the arch of her body, hearing it in her quick breaths. She was helpless, mindless, his. He drove his tongue into her and felt her explode, wave after wave.

As she shuddered, he moved up her body, hands fast, mouth hot and open. Suddenly, on a surge of strength, she rolled on top of him. Within seconds, she’d devastated his claim to leadership. All fire, all speed, all woman, she took control.

Heedless, greedy, they moved over the bed. Murmurs were incoherent, care was forgotten. They took with only one goal in mind. Pleasure—sweet, forbidden pleasure.

Shaking, locked tight, they reached the goal together.

* * *

Dawn was breaking, clear and calm as Kate lay still, watching Ky sleep. She knew what she had to do for both of them, to both of them. Fate had brought them together a second time. It wouldn’t bring them together again.

She’d bargained with Ky, offering him a share of gold for his skill. In the beginning, she’d believed that she wanted the treasure, needed it to give her all the options she’d never had before. That choice. Now, she knew she didn’t want it at all. A hundred times more gold wouldn’t change what was between her and Ky—what drew them to each other, and what kept them apart.

She loved him. She understood that, in his way, he loved her. Did that change the differences between them? Did that make her able and willing to give up her own life to suit his, or able and willing to demand that he do the same?

Their worlds were no closer together now than they’d been four years ago. Their desires no more in tune. With the gold she’d leave for him, he’d be able to do what he wanted with his life. She needed no treasure for that.

If she stayed… Unable to stop herself, Kate reached out to touch his cheek. If she stayed she’d bury herself for him. Eventually, she’d despise herself for it, and he’d resent her. Better that they take what they’d had for a few weeks than cover it with years of disappoinments.

The treasure was important to him. He’d taken risks for it, worked for it. She’d give her father his memorial. Ky would have the rest.

Quietly, still watching him sleep, she dressed.

It didn’t take Kate long to gather what she’d come with. Taking her suitcase downstairs, she carefully packed what she’d taken with her from the Liberty. In a box, she placed the pottery bowl wrapped in layers of newspaper. The coins, the blackened silver and the shiny gold she zipped into a small pouch. With equal care, she packed the film she’d taken during their days under the ocean.

What she’d designated for the museum she’d already marked. Leaving the list on the table, she left the house.

She told herself it would be cleaner if she left no note, yet she found herself hesitating. How could she make him understand? After putting her suitcase in her car, she went back into the house. Quietly, she took the five gold coins upstairs and placed them on Ky’s dresser. With a last look at him as he slept, she went back out again.

She’d have a final moment with the sea. In the quiet air of morning, Kate walked over the dunes. She’d remember it this way—empty, endless and full of sound. Surf foamed against the sand, white on white. What was beneath the surface would always call her—the memories of peace, of excitement, of sharing both with Ky. Only a summer, she thought. Life was made of four seasons, not one.

Day was strengthening, and her time was up. Turning, she scanned the island until she saw the tip of the lighthouse. Some things lasted, she thought with a smile. She’d learned a great deal in a few short weeks. She was her own woman at last. She could make her own way. As a teacher, she told herself that knowledge was precious. But it made her ache with loneliness. She left the empty sea behind her.

Though she wanted to, Kate deliberately kept herself from looking at the house as she walked back to her car. She didn’t need to see it again to remember it. If things had been different… Kate reached for the door handle of her car. Her fingers were still inches from it when she was spun around.

“What the hell’re you doing?”

Facing Ky, she felt her resolve crumble, then rebuild. He was barely awake, and barely dressed. His eyes were heavy with sleep, his hair disheveled from it. All he wore was a pair of ragged cut-offs. She folded her hands in front of her and hoped her voice would be strong and clear.

“I had hoped to be gone before you woke.”

“Gone?” His eyes locked on hers. “Where?”

“I’m going back to Connecticut.”

“Oh?” He swore he wouldn’t lose his temper. Not this time. This time, it might be fatal for both of them. “Why?”

Her nerves skipped. The question had been quiet enough, but she knew that cold, flat expression in his eyes. The wrong move, and he’d leap. “You said it yourself yesterday, Ky, when we came up from the last dive. I’ve done what I came for.”

He opened his hand. Five coins shone in the morning sun. “What about this?”

“I left them for you.” She swallowed, no longer certain how long she could speak without showing she was breaking in two. “The treasure isn’t important to me. It’s yours.”

“Damn generous of you.” Turning over his hand, he dropped the coins into the sand. “That’s how much the gold means to me, professor.”

She stared at the gold on the ground in front of her. “I don’t understand you.”

“You wanted the treasure,” he tossed at her. “It never mattered to me.”

“But you said,” she began, then shook her head.

“When I first came to you, you took the job because of the treasure.”

“I took the job because of you. You wanted the gold, Kate.”

“It wasn’t the money.” Dragging a hand through her hair, she turned away. “It was never the money.”

“Maybe not. It was your father.”

She nodded because it was true, but it no longer hurt.

“I finished what he started, and I gave myself something.

I don’t want any more coins, Ky.”

“Why are you running away from me again?”

Slowly, she turned back. “We’re four years older than we were before, but we’re the same people.”

“So?”

“Ky, when I went away before, it was partially because of my father, because I felt I owed him my loyalty. But if I’d thought you’d wanted me. Me,” she repeated, placing her palm over her heart, “not what you wanted me to be. If I’d thought that, and if I’d thought you and I could make a future together, I wouldn’t have gone. I wouldn’t be leaving now.”

“What the hell gives you the right to decide what I want, what I feel?” He whirled away from her, too furious to remain close. “Maybe I made mistakes, maybe I just assumed too much four years ago. Damn it, I paid for it, Kate, every day from the time you left until you came back. I’ve done everything I could to be careful this time around, not to push, not to assume. Then I wake up and find you leaving without a word.”

“There aren’t any words, Ky. I’ve always given you too many of them, and you’ve never given me enough.”

“You’re better with words than I am.”

“All right, then I’ll use them. I love you.” She waited until he turned back to her. The restlessness was on him again. He was holding it off with sheer will. “I’ve always loved you, but I think I know my own limitations. Maybe I know yours too.”

“No, you think too much about limitations, Kate, and not enough about possibilities. I let you walk away from me before. It’s not going to be so easy this time.”

“I have to be my own person, Ky. I won’t live the rest of my life as I’ve lived it up to now.”

“Who the hell wants you to?” he exploded. “Who the hell wants you to be anything but what you are? It’s about time you stopped equating love with responsibility and started looking at the other side of it. It’s sharing, giving and taking and laughing. If I ask you to give part of yourself to me, I’m going to give part of myself right back.”

Unable to stop himself he took her arms in his hands, just holding, as if through the contact he could make his words sink in.

“I don’t want your constant devotion. I don’t want you to be obliged to me. I don’t want to go through life thinking that whatever you do, you do because you want to please me. Damn it, I don’t want that kind of responsibility.”

Without words, she stared at him. He’d never said anything to her so simply, so free of half meanings. Hope rose in her. Yet still, he was telling her only what he didn’t want. Once he gave her the flip side of that coin hope could vanish.

“Tell me what you do want.”

He had only one answer. “Come with me a minute.” Taking her hand, he drew her toward the shed. “When I started this, it was because I’d always promised myself I would. Before long, the reasons changed.” Turning the latch, he pulled the shed doors open.

For a moment, she saw nothing. Gradually, her eyes adjusted to the dimness and she stepped inside. The boat was nearly finished. The hull was sanded and sealed and painted, waiting for Ky to take it outside and attach the mast. It was lovely, clean and simple. Just looking at it, Kate could imagine the way it would flow with the wind. Free, light and clever.

“It’s beautiful, Ky. I always wondered…” She broke off as she read the name printed boldly on the stern.

Second Chance.

“That’s all I want from you,” Ky told her, pointing to the two words. “The boat’s yours. When I started it, I thought I was building it for me. But I built it for you, because I knew it was one dream you’d share with me. I only want what’s printed on it, Kate. For both of us.” Speechless, she watched him lean over the starboard side and open a small compartment. He drew out a tiny box.

“I had this cleaned. You wouldn’t take it from me before.” Opening the lid, he revealed the diamond he’d found, sparkling now in a simple gold setting. “It didn’t cost me anything and it wasn’t made especially for you. It’s just something I found among a bunch of rocks.”

When she started to speak, he held up a hand. “Hold on. You wanted words, I haven’t finished with them yet. I know you have to teach, I’m not asking you to give it up. I am asking that you give me one year here on the island. There’s a school here, not Yale, but people still have to be taught. A year, Kate. If it isn’t what you want after that, I’ll go back with you.”

Her brows drew together. “Back? To Connecticut? You’d live in Connecticut?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

A compromise…she thought, baffled. Was he offering to adjust his life for hers? “And if that isn’t right for you?”

“Then we’ll try someplace else, damn it. We’ll find some place in between. Maybe we’ll move half a dozen times in the next few years. What does it matter?”

What did it matter? she wondered as she studied him. He was offering her what she’d waited for all of her life. Love without chains.

“I want you to marry me.” He wondered if that simple statement shook her as much as it did him. “Tomorrow isn’t soon enough, but if you’ll give me the year, I can wait.”

She nearly smiled. He’d never wait. Once he had her promise of the year, he’d subtly and not so subtly work on her until she found herself at the altar. It was nearly tempting to make him go through the effort.

Limitations? Had she spoken of limitations? Love had none. “No,” she decided aloud. “You only get the year if I get the ring. And what goes with it.”

“Deal.” He took her hand quickly as though she might change her mind. “Once it’s on, you’re stuck, professor.” Pulling the ring from the box he slipped it onto her finger. Swearing lighty, he shook his head. “It’s too big.”

“It’s all right. I’ll keep my hand closed for the next fifty years or so.” With a laugh, she went into his arms.

All doubts vanished. They’d made it, she told herself.

South, north or anywhere in between.

“We’ll have it sized,” he murmured, nuzzling into her neck.

“Only if they can do it while it’s on my finger.” Kate closed her eyes. She’d just found everything. Did he know it? “Ky, about the Liberty, the rest of the treasure.”

He tilted her face up to kiss her. “We’ve already found it.”

From #1 New York Times bestselling author

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Nothing soothes a broken heart like love’s sweet refrain…

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From #1 New York Times bestselling author

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eISBN-13: 978-1-4603-4016-5

MYSTERY BOX SET

Copyright © 2014 by Harlequin Books S.A.

The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:

A WILL AND A WAY

Copyright © 1986 by NORA ROBERTS

MIND OVER MATTER

Copyright © 1987 by NORA ROBERTS

RISKY BUSINESS

Copyright © 1986 by NORA ROBERTS

THE ART OF DECEPTION

Copyright © 1986 by NORA ROBERTS

TREASURES LOST, TREASURES FOUND

Copyright © 1986 by NORA ROBERTS

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