Hot Shot

Chapter 21

The money came rolling in. Slick, green, fast money. Hot money. New money. Money aching to be spent.

The seventies whirled into the eighties, and the greatest industrial joy ride of the twentieth century picked up speed. Silicon Valley was awash in electronic gold as capitalism struck its finest hour.

Home video games had already captured the imagination of the American family, and by 1982, the idea of having a computer in the house no longer seemed strange at all. Firms sprang up overnight. Some of them collapsed just as quickly, but others left their founders with almost unimaginable riches.

In the posh communities of Los Gatos, Woodside, and Los Altos Hills, the electrical engineers stepped out of their hot tubs, stuffed their plastic pocket protectors into Armani shirts, hopped into their BMW's, and laughed like hell.

By the fall of 1982, the nerds owned the Valley. The bespeckled, pimply-faced, overweight, underweight, dateless, womanless, goofiest of the goofy, were the undisputed, unchallenged kings of the entire freaking Valley!

Man, it was sweet.

Yank pulled his Porsche 911 crookedly into a parking space at SysVal's main building and then headed up the walk toward the main entrance. He nodded absentmindedly at the two female account executives who had stopped in mid-conversation as he approached and gazed wistfully at the retreating back of his leather bomber jacket. Once inside the lobby, he determinedly ignored the security guard stationed behind the elliptical-shaped desk.

Everyone else who worked at SysVal had to show a plastic security badge to be admitted. Even Sam wore a badge. But Yank pretended the badges didn't exist, and Susannah had left orders that the guards were to admit him on sight.

Logically, he understood that those golden days of Homebrew were gone forever-the days of free and open information, of one for all and all for one. It was September of 1982. John Lennon was dead, Ronald Reagan was in the White House, and Uncle Sam had just busted up AT &T. The world was changing, and the Valley was filled with industrial spies intent on stealing the latest American technology and selling it to the Japanese, the Russians, or even a new start-up in the next industrial park. SysVal's astounding success had made it a prime target for those roaches of humanity. Yank understood all that. But he still wouldn't wear a security badge.

As he headed down the hallway toward the multimillion-dollar lab that had been built especially for him, he had the nagging sensation that he had forgotten something very important. But he dismissed his worry. What could be more important than solving the problem with the trace lines of solder on their new circuit board? They were too close. He had an idea…

Ten miles away, in the gilt and brocade bedroom of his Portola Valley home, lingerie model Tiffani Wade's carefully arranged seductive pose was ruined by the frown marring her forehead. "Yank? Yank, you can come back in now. I'm ready."

She called out three more times before she realized that no one was going to answer, then she sagged back into the pillows. "You son of a bitch," she muttered. "You've done it to me again."

Susannah shut off the Blaze III that rested on the credenza behind her desk and stretched. Somewhere in the building one of the employees fired off an air horn. She barely noticed. At SysVal, people were always firing off air horns or calling out Bingo numbers over the loudspeaker system, just so no one ever made the mistake of confusing them with IBM or FBT.

As if someone had overheard her thoughts, the loudspeaker began to squawk. "Mayday, Mayday. The Japanese have just attacked the parking lot. All employees driving domestic cars should immediately take cover. This is not a drill. I repeat. This is not a drill."

Susannah rolled her eyes. God forbid they should ever have a real emergency. No one would believe it.

SysVal's employees were primarily men in their twenties, and they prided themselves on being bad. In the six years since the company was founded, Sam Gamble's personality had become their model. Even the whiz kids at Apple Computer weren't as raunchy, as brazen, as wild as the rowdy bunch at SysVal. At Apple they held Friday afternoon beer blasts, but at SysVal they showed stag movies, too. The boys of SysVal strutted their stuff-their youth, their audaciousness, their sense of destiny. They were the ones who had made the magical little Blaze available to the world and helped humanity learn the beauty of personal computing. Like their brash, charismatic founder, they were young, invincible, immortal.

Taking off her glasses, Susannah rubbed the bridge of her nose, then looked across her office at a much-abused dart board with the Apple logo painted on it. She thought about the five of them-Jobs and Woz, Sam, Yank, herself. All of them college dropouts. Freaks, nerds, rebels, and one overly polite socialite. In the five years that had passed since the West Coast Computer Faire, everything they touched had turned to gold. It was as if the gods had blessed them with youth, brains, and unlimited good luck. On paper, anyway, she and her partners were worth over a hundred million dollars each, while at Apple, Steve Jobs was worth more than three hundred million. Sometimes the enormity of their success scared Susannah to death.

The battered Apple dart board gave visual evidence of the early rivalry between the two young companies, but in the past few years that had changed. With trie dawning of the 1980s, the Big Boys had finally lifted their heads and realized that they had been left behind. Late in 1981, IBM had introduced the IBM-PC. Apple Computer, in a display of bravado that Susannah still wished SysVal had thought of first, had taken out a full-page ad in the nation's newspapers. The ad said, WELCOME IBM. SERIOUSLY. A paragraph of copy had followed in which the brash young upstarts at Apple had assumed the role of the wise old men of the industry and spelled out for Mighty IBM all of the glories of personal computing-as if IBM were too inexperienced, too stupid, too wet-behind-the-ears, to figure it out for themselves. The sheer audacity of it had kept the business community laughing for months.

A custom-designed radio-controlled car zoomed into her office, did a three sixty in the middle of her carpet and zoomed out again with no sign of a human operator. SysVal's engineers were entertaining themselves again.

Rubbing her eyes, she pushed a stray lock of hair away from her face. Her hair was shorter now, cut in a breezy style that feathered around her cheeks and softened the sharp, aristocratic features of her face. Since no important meetings were on her docket for that day, she had dressed informally in a coral cowl-neck sweater and tight, straight-legged jeans. Two slim gold bangles glittered at one wrist and a wide gold cuff hugged the other. The third finger of her right hand sported a two-karat marquis-cut diamond that she had bought for herself. More, she had definitely concluded, was better than less.

On impulse, she reached for her telephone and dialed the number that connected her directly with Mitch's private office. But before the phone could ring, he walked through her door.

"Mental telepathy," she said, some of her tension slipping away merely at the sight of his solid, comforting presence. "I was just calling you."

He slumped wearily into the chair opposite her desk. "Somebody left a bra in the hallway."

"As long as the person who lost it isn't running around bare-chested, don't complain."

Of them all, Mitch had changed the least. The blunt planes of his face had hardened a bit, and a few strands of gray had begun to weave through the sandy hair at his temples. But his body hadn't lost any of its tone. At thirty-seven, SysVal's Executive Vice-President of Sales and Marketing was still as solid as the Buckeye wide receiver who had won a place in Woody Hayes's heart.

Mitch was the most respectable corporate officer SysVal had, a wonderful piece of white bread who thought nothing of flying across the country to watch one of his kids play soccer, and was recently honored as the Bay Area Jaycees' Man of the Year for his civic contributions. Over the years, he and Susannah had developed a deep friendship.

She saw at once that he was exhausted. He had been driving himself for months, trying to win a multimillion-dollar contract with the state of California to install the Blaze III in hundreds of its state offices. The contract would provide the capitalization SysVal needed to finish up the work on the Wildfire and launch their new business computer ahead of the competition. Unfortunately, SysVal's competition for the contract was FBT, and Cal Theroux had been lobbying hard for the Falcon 101, FBT's new personal computer. Although the entry of giant corporations like IBM and FBT had legitimized the personal computer, it had also made things a lot tougher.

"Be honest with me," he said, as he stretched out his legs. "Do you think I'm stuffy?"

"You? Perish the thought."

"I'm not joking. I want to know."

"You're serious?"

He nodded.

"Yes. You're definitely stuffy."

"Well, thank you. Thank you so very much." He glared at her, a picture of offended dignity.

She smiled. "Does this sudden soul searching have anything to do with your relationship with the beautiful, talented, and terminally obnoxious Jacqueline Dane?"

"Jacqueline is not obnoxious. She is one of the finest actresses in this country."

"As she is quick to point out. Did you see that television interview she gave last week where she went on and on about the importance of making serious films and doing serious work? She kept pushing her fingers through her hair like she had mange or something. I have never yet seen that woman give an interview where she hadn't managed to work in the fact that she has a degree from Yale. She bites her fingernails, too."

He gave her his best stony-eyed gaze. "I suppose you would prefer it if I started dating bimbos like Yank does."

"You and Yank could do each other big favors by trading women for a few months. Yank needs to date someone with an IQ that's higher than the speed limit, and you need to find a woman who can lighten up a little. Honestly, Mitch, I can't believe Jacqueline had the nerve to call you stuffy. I think her face would crack if she ever tried to smile."

"You just said I was stuffy," he pointed out.

"I'm allowed to say that because I'm one of the best friends you have, and I adore you. She, on the other hand, only cares about dead philosophers with names no sensible person can spell."

"I had my fill of party girls when I was married to Louise. I like serious women."

Susannah shook her head in disgust. There was simply no reasoning with him. In the past six years, Mitch had had long-term relationships with three women, all brilliant, beautiful, and sober-minded. Susannah still couldn't make up her mind which one of them she detested the most. At heart he was a family man, and Susannah was afraid he might actually marry Jacqueline Dane. And if her suspicions were right, the actress would jump at the offer. Mitch had a funny effect on women. For someone who was basically a stuffed shirt, he certainly didn't have any trouble finding bedroom companions.

She knew she was beating a dead horse, but she plunged in anyway. "Why won't you let me pick out some women for you? Really, Mitch, I know just the sort of person you need. Someone who's intelligent, but warm. Someone who won't try to mother you, since I know you hate that. A woman with a sense of humor to make up for the fact that you have absolutely none." It wasn't true. Mitch had a wonderful sense of humor, but it was so dry that most people didn't appreciate it. "A woman without much libido, since you're getting older and you probably don't have the sex drive you used to."

"That's it." He stood and glared at her. "My libido isn't any of your business, Miss Hot Shot."

"Touchy, touchy." She tried to imagine herself joking with a man about his sex drive six years ago and failed. SysVal had changed them all.

He finally smiled. "Now that you're filthy rich, you've turned into a real brat, do you know that?"

"We're all filthy rich. And I'm not a brat."

She noticed the strain that had been evident when he had come into her office had dissipated. The company was a pressure cooker of activity with a new crisis popping up every hour, and she and Mitch had long ago discovered that baiting each other worked as well as anything else to relax them both.

An angry male voice blared through the loudspeaker. "Whichever son of a bitch took DP27E's new HP calculator had better get the fucker back to the office right now!"

Mitch's expression grew pained, and he lifted a disapproving eyebrow toward the speaker. "Susannah?"

She sighed. "I'll put out another obscenity memo." They had learned years ago that it was useless to lock up the loudspeaker controls. There was nothing the SysVal engineers loved better than breaking through anything that bore even a passing resemblance to a closed system.

She asked him about his visit to Boston. Over the years, Mitch's children had visited him frequently, and she had grown fond of them. She kept a framed picture nine-year-old Liza had drawn for her on her desk next to a paperweight David had made in his sixth-grade art class.

Mitch walked over to her window. "I finally met Louise's new husband. He and I had a couple of beers and talked about the kids. He said they were getting along well, and he wanted me to know that he wasn't going to try to take my place with them. He saw himself as a big brother, not a father, that sort of thing. Heck of a nice guy."

"You hate his guts, don't you?"

"I wanted to slam my fist right through his face."

She gave him a sympathetic smile. Not for the first time, it occurred to her that Mitch was a much better friend to her than Sam had ever been.

They chatted for a few more minutes, and then Mitch left. Her stomach rumbled and she realized she was hungry. Maybe she could talk Sam into leaving early tonight. It would be wonderful to have dinner at home for a change and spend an evening alone together-something they hadn't done in longer than she could remember.

She got up from her desk, deliberately pushing away the painful knowledge that Sam wouldn't want to spend an evening alone with her. She had made it a habit not to dwell on the problems in her marriage when she was at work, but it was difficult. As she walked out of the office, she forced herself to think about the company instead.

SysVal had become one of the most glamorous privately owned companies in the world. Thanks to Mitch's brilliant financial strategies, the original four partners had each held onto a whopping fifteen per cent of the company. Susannah didn't like to think about how much money they had. The amount was almost obscene.

As she turned the corner into the next hallway, she ran into two of the engineers who were playing with the radio-controlled car. She chatted with them for a few minutes and admired their toy. When she finally moved on, she wasn't aware of the fact that they still watched her.

Even though Susannah wasn't beautiful, there was something about her that drove the young engineers at SysVal slightly crazy. Maybe it was those tight jeans-those long slim legs. Maybe it was the way she moved-tall and proud. But physical appearance was only part of their attraction to her. There was the aphrodisia of her wealth and the ever-increasing influence she held in a male-dominated industry. All in all, at the age of thirty-one, Susannah was a potent combination of style, sex, brains, money, and power, qualities that were irresistible to the brilliant young men who came from all over the world to work for SysVal.

They joked about what it would be like to sleep with her, but behind their sexual bantering lay a genuine respect. Susannah was tough and demanding, but she was seldom unreasonable. Not like some people.

Sam wasn't in his office.

Susannah moved on. SysVal headquarters occupied three large buildings, grouped together in an informal campus arrangement. Her office was in the main building, the center section of which was open, with glass block walls and partitions that didn't quite reach the ceiling. A Joan Jett song blared from one of the labs, and she passed a group of video games that occupied a cranny in the brightly painted hallway. At SysVal, the boundaries between work and play were deliberately obscured.

Lights were coming from the left, and she took a sharp turn in that direction. Although it was after six o'clock, the New Product Team was still meeting to talk about the problems they were having with the Blaze Wildfire, the revolutionary new business computer they hoped to launch within a year.

For all the future promise of Sam's Wildfire project, the Blaze III was SysVal's workhorse, the bread and butter of the company. The Blaze HI was the computer that America was buying for its kids, the computer that small offices were growing to depend on, and the computer that-along with its ancestors the I and II-had made them all rich.

Sam's voice punched the air and spilled out into the hallway from one of the conference rooms. She paused inside the doorway to watch him. Once just the sight of him had sent thrills of excitement through her body. Now she felt a sense of despair. Somehow she had to make things right again between them. But how could she do that when she wasn't even certain what was wrong?

He was straddling a chair backward, straining the fine woolen material of his charcoal slacks. His white shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbows, his collar was unfastened, and the heels of his Italian loafers were propped up on the chair rungs. A dozen young faces sat cross-legged on the floor around him, gazing up at him as he spoke, their expressions rapt while they listened to Brother Love's new-age Sermon on the Mount. Blessed is the microchip, she thought, for its users shall inherit the earth.

The employees both loved and hated Sam. With his evangelist's zeal, he inspired them to do the impossible, but he had no patience for incompetence and was brutal in his criticism. Still, very few of them left, even after suffering one of his humiliating public tongue-lashings. He gave them the sense that they had a mission in life. They were soldiers in the final crusade of the twentieth century, and even those who had grown to detest him continued to scramble all over themselves to please him.

She frowned as she watched those young, eager faces soaking up everything he said. An aura of hero worship had developed around Sam that bothered her. It might be good for the company, but it wasn't good for Sam.

Her presence in the doorway caught his attention. He turned his head and frowned at the interruption. She remembered how his face had once softened when he caught sight of her. When had it begun to change? Sometimes she thought that it went as far back as her father's funeral.

She gestured toward the kitchen at the back, signaling him that she would meet him there. He returned his attention to the group without making any acknowledgment. She straightened her shoulders and walked on with quiet dignity. Just before she reached the kitchen, she passed a woman with two very young children on their way to the large cafeteria. All of them wore visitor's badges, and the mother was carrying a picnic basket.

Her depression burrowed in deeper. It wasn't the first time she had seen something like this. SysVal's employees worked such long hours that spouses-usually wives-sometimes showed up with their children so they could provide some facsimile of a family dinner. SysVal didn't hire anyone who wasn't a workaholic, and the long hours were taking a toll on family life-something Sam hadn't taken into account when he constructed his Utopian vision of their company. But then, families weren't important to Sam. She touched her fingers to her waist, feeling the hollowness inside. How much longer was he going to ignore this pressing need she had for a child? Just because she was SysVal's president didn't mean she wasn't a woman, too.

She made her way to the refrigerator in the back of the kitchen and pulled out a carton of yogurt. But as she began to peel off the lid, her fingers faltered and her eyelids squeezed shut. What was she going to do about her mar-riage? Far too many times, Sam felt like the enemy, like another person for her to please, another person with an invisible checklist of qualities she had to live up to.

He shot through the door, wearily shoving his right hand through his short black hair. "Susannah, you're going to have to get on Marketing again. I'm sick of their bullshit. They either have to buy into the Wildfire-and I mean total commitment-or they can take their asses over to Apple. They're like a bunch of goddamn old ladies…"

She let him rant and rave for a while. Tomorrow he would undoubtedly storm the Marketing Department and throw one of his famous temper tantrums. Then she would have to clean up after him. Sam was thirty now, but in many ways he was still a child.

He collapsed into one of the chairs. "Get me a Coke."

She went over to the refrigerator and pulled out a can from his private stock. The top hissed as she popped it. She set it in front of him, then bent forward and brushed his mouth with a soft kiss. His lips were cool and dry. After he had been speaking to a group, she was always surprised that they weren't red hot.

She began to knead the tight muscles of his shoulders with her thumbs. "Why don't we take off early Friday night and drive down to Monterey? There's an inn I've been hearing about. Private cottages, ocean view."

"I don't know. Maybe."

"I think it would do us both good to get away for a while."

"Yeah. You're probably right." Despite his words, Susannah knew that Sam didn't really want to get away. He fed off the furious pace of the company. Even when he was at home he was thinking, working, lambasting people over one of their seven telephones. Sometimes she thought that Sam was trying to outrun life.

Her hands grew still on his shoulders. "It's a good time of the month. Full moon, baying wolf, ripe egg."

He pulled abruptly away from her. "Christ. Don't start the baby shit again, all right? Just don't start. You can't even find time to help me look for that new Oriental rug for the dining room. How do you expect to take care of a kid?"

"I don't like picking out rugs. I do like children. I'm thirty-one, Sam. The clock's ticking. SysVal is going to have on-site child care by the end of the year. That'll make a big difference to me and the rest of our female employees."

As soon as she had spoken, she wished she hadn't brought up the child-care issue. She had given him an excuse to divert their conversation from the personal back to the company, and she knew he would take advantage of it.

"I don't know why you act like this child care thing is all signed, sealed, and delivered. I'm not backing you, and I don't think Mitch will, either. It's not a corporation's responsibility to take care of its employee's kids, for chrissake."

"It is if the corporation wants to hang onto its female work force. I'm going to fight you on this one, Sam. I'll take it right to the Board of Directors if I have to."

"It wouldn't be the first time." He rose abruptly from his chair. "I don't understand you anymore, Susannah. You seem to fight me on everything."

It wasn't true. She still believed that of all of them, Sam had the truest vision of what SysVal could be. Because of him, the company had never been loaded down with hierarchies. The organization was fluid, lean, and profitable.

"I don't know, Susannah. You've changed. And I'm not sure it's all for the better." His eyes skimmed down over her clothing. He didn't like it when she wore jeans. He hated her shorter hair. If he overheard her swearing, he staged a major confrontation. She had finally realized that a big part of Sam wanted her back the way she had been when they had first met.

"Sam, we need to spend some time together without telephones ringing and people showing up at the front door. We have some problems we have to work out, and we need time alone to do it."

"You're turning into a broken record, you know that? I don't want to hear about it anymore. I've got enough on my mind without a load of crap from you."

"Excuse me. Uh-Sam?"

Mindy Bradshaw walked into the kitchen in such a gingerly fashion that the floor might have been covered with rattlesnakes. She was a thin, anemic-looking blonde, with baby-fine hair that fell like a veil over the sides of her face.

Mindy was one of the most recent additions to the New Product Team. Although she was bright, she lacked self-confidence and was frequently at the receiving end of one of Sam's more humiliating public tongue-lashings. Several times in the past few weeks, Susannah had seen her running from a meeting in tears, not exactly the behavior Susannah wanted to see from the company's minority female work force-a group of which she was fiercely protective. Despite Sam's abuse, however, Mindy continued to hang on to his every word and gaze at him as if-at any moment-he just might levitate.

Sam was obviously relieved at the interruption. "Yeah, Mindy, what is it?"

"Pete and I wondered-That is-"

"Christ, Mindy. Start all over, will you? Walk into the room like you own it for a change. Stand up straight, look me in the eye, and tell me to go to hell if you feel like it."

"Oh, no," she said breathlessly. "It's just-Pete and I have been crunching some numbers. We have some ideas about pricing on the BDI that we want to go over with you."

"Yeah, sure." He pitched his empty Coke can into the recycling bin and left the room without a backward glance.

Susannah walked listlessly back toward her office. These past few years had turned her into a fighter, but she didn't know how to fight this. On impulse, she took a detour that led to the east wing of the building. Maybe Yank was still working in his lab. Sometimes when she was rattled, she liked to drop in there and spend a few minutes with him. They seldom talked, but being with Yank was soothing. She enjoyed the quiet patience of his movements, the steadiness of his eyes when they actually focused on her. His presence settled her.

And then she hesitated. She wasn't going to get into the habit of using other people as a crutch simply because she couldn't solve her own problems. She returned to her office and flicked on her Blaze III. The light began to glow on the screen. For a moment, she regarded the machine with a mixture of love and bitterness. And then she lost herself in her work.

Long after midnight that same evening, Sam eased naked into the hot tub. The house that rose behind him was a stark ultramodern structure with a roof line that jutted at sharp angles like bats' wings against the night sky and held eighteen solar panels to provide energy. He and a team of architects had worked on the design for nearly a year, and it had taken another two years to build. Everything was the best. The interior held free-form couches upholstered in white suede and jagged-edged tables chiseled from rock-crystal selenite. The deck was made of marble and sculptured black granite. Rigidly geometric furniture constructed of cold-rolled steel glimmered faintly near the perimeter of the hot tub. The hot tub itself, made of black marble, was the size of a small swimming pool.

He had settled into a ledge contoured to fit his body. Although he was tired, he couldn't sleep. As the inky water swirled around him, he gazed down at the lights in the valley below and pretended that they were stars and that he was hanging upside down in the universe. He let himself float, concentrating only on the surge of the waters and the feeling of rushing through unexplored space.

He had more money than he had ever dreamed existed. He could buy anything he wanted, go anywhere, do anything. But something was missing. The water sucked at him and he raced deeper into space. Find it, a voice whispered. Look around you and find what's missing.

He was only thirty years old, and he didn't want life to be safe and settled. Where were the challenges? The thrills? SysVal wasn't enough anymore. And neither was Susannah.

A sound intruded on his thoughts. One of the doors that led out from the house to the deck had opened behind him. Susannah came into his line of vision. He watched with resentment as she pulled her silk robe tight and hugged herself against the night chill.

"You couldn't sleep?" she asked.

He settled deeper into the bubbling waters and wished she would go away.

"Would you like me to get in with you?" she said softly.

He shrugged. "Whatever."

She unfastened her robe and let it slide from her shoulders. She was naked beneath. There was a momentary shift in the rhythm of the water as she settled onto the ledge next to him.

"The water's hot."

"One hundred and two degrees, like always." He arched his neck and laid his head back in the water, closing his eyes to shut her out.

He felt her fingers on his arm. "Sam, I'm worried about you."

"Don't be."

"I wish you'd tell me what's wrong."

His eyes snapped open. "You're what's wrong! Why don't you leave me alone?"

For a moment she did nothing, and then she rose silently from the tub. Water glistened on her body. His eyes roved down over her small breasts, her waist, the soft auburn tuft. She didn't have any idea how hot she still made him. He grabbed her hand before she could move away and pulled her down. She lost her balance and landed awkwardly beside him.

He pushed her back onto the ledge. "Open your legs."

"I don't want to." She tried to twist away.

"Open them, damn it," he insisted.

"Sam, this isn't right. We need to talk. Sex isn't enough this time."

She started to get up. He clenched his teeth and moved on top of her. He didn't want to listen to her. He wanted to get the fire back, the challenge, the thrill of conquest. Wedging open her thighs, he thrust hard and buried himself inside her.

She wasn't ready for him and she winced, but he tilted up her hips and drove deeper.

She dug the heels of her hands into his chest, trying to push him away. "Dammit, Sam. Don't do this!"

He refused to let her up. The night-black water swirled around him like a witch's caldron. Steam rose from his shoulders as he arched his back and thrust again and again, cursing her in his mind. In the old days, she had made him happy… In the old days, life had been exciting… Everything had been new-the company-Susannah… In the old days, life had thrilled him.

He cried out when he came, shuddering violently and falling heavily on her. With a hard shove, she pushed him off her body and rose from the tub.

"Susannah…"

She spun around, steam coming from her body. Her light gray eyes blazed with fury. "Don't you ever do that to me again."

Naked and fierce, she stood over him. She was silhouetted against the sky, her head in front of the moon, so that a halo of silver light had formed around her wet hair and spilled down over her shoulders. Water sluiced like quicksilver over her skin. As he stared at her, her entire body glowed with an eerie moon-induced incandescence. She looked both holy and profane.

He hated the strength he saw there. The strength and power and courage that hadn't been there when they had first met. When had she gotten ahead of him? How had she learned secrets he didn't know?

A dam of emotion burst from inside him, and he shouted at her. "Why should I worry about how you feel? You don't care about me!"

She stared down at him, the moonlight forming an unearthly aurora behind her. "You don't even know what you want."

He wanted that click he used to feel, that sense that she would fill in his missing parts, that she would give him some of her serenity, polish off his rough edges, soothe his impatience. He wanted her to take away his fear of death. He wanted her to relieve his boredom, offer him a fresh challenge. Make life exciting again. And she wasn't doing it.

He rose from the hot tub and angrily slicked the water from his body with the flat of his hand. "If you haven't figured out what's wrong by now, I'm not going to explain it to you."

"You'll have to make peace with yourself," she said flatly. "I can't do it for you."

His anger swelled. "I should have known you would try to make it my fault. What's happened to us is your problem, Susannah. Yours, not mine."

He turned to stalk away from her, but he hadn't finished punishing her for not being able to help him. Spinning back around, he made a final cruel attack. "I'm warning you right now. You'd better not be playing any games with those birth control pills."

Her hand spasmed at her side. "You bastard."

Water was glistening on her cheeks, but he didn't know if it was from the hot tub or because she was crying. "If you get pregnant, I'll leave you," he said viciously. "I mean it."

She spun away from him and stalked toward the house, her robe lying forgotten on the deck.

"Things had better start changing around here," he shouted after her.

But she had disappeared inside, and he was left alone with himself.

Chapter 22

FBT had been caught with its pants down. All of its sophisticated forecasting tools, its graphs and charts and leather-bound strategy statements, its legions of MBA's and Ph.D.'s and decades of experience, hadn't been able to predict the public's growing fascination with the personal computer.

Personal computer. Just the name made the FBT executives cringe. What kind of name was that? It sounded like a douche, for godsake.

As the seventies had come to an end, the executives had kept themselves busy smiling and harumphing and doubletalking the press, referring to stable product line and the fickleness of the consumer products market. They had talked about FBT tradition, waxed poetic over the majesty of their giant mainframes and those eye-popping profits listed in crisp black ink in their annual reports. And the more they had talked, the more they had qualified and quantified away, the more the world's business community had laughed behind their backs at them for having been so woefully left behind by a bunch of wild-eyed kids.

For Cal Theroux it had been unbearable.

He was the one who had given FBT back its self respect with the launching of the Falcon 101 in January of 1982. It had been his baby from the beginning, and its success had given him the final leverage he needed to consolidate his power within FBT. Now Cal was riding the small computer's success all the way to personal glory.

On the other side of the office, his secretary was unpacking the last of his personal effects and arranging them in the bookshelves. She had been at the task for some time, and he was growing impatient. The ceremony that marked his appointment as the new chairman of FBT would begin in less than an hour, and he wanted a few moments to himself.

"That's enough for now, Patricia. When my wife arrives, send her in."

His secretary nodded and left.

Finally alone, Cal allowed himself the liberty of sliding back in his chair and contemplating his imposing surroundings. Some men were obsessed with sex, others with wealth. But for Cal, power had always been the ultimate prize.

He stroked the polished malachite top of the chairman's desk and touched the panel of switches that controlled the FBT fountains. Since the grounds were crawling with members of the press, he suppressed the urge to manipulate the switches as he had seen Joel do so many times. Even Paul Clemens had not been able to resist toying with those seven fountains during his reign as FBT chairman following Joel's death. They were the final symbol of command, and now they belonged to Cal.

The door opened and his wife Nicole entered. "Hello, darling." As she walked across the carpet toward him, her shoulders tensed almost imperceptibly. He knew she was awaiting his verdict on her appearance.

She looked reed-thin and stylish in a black suit with tan piping. Her dark hair fell in a smooth page boy that formed identical sickles over her ears and revealed the small diamond studs he had given her last week for their third wedding anniversary. Although she was only thirty-four, faint lines had begun to appear near her eyes. It would not be long before he would have to arrange plastic surgery for her.

"Take off the bracelet," he said, eyeing the silver bangle at her wrist with distaste.

She obeyed him instantly. Nicole's dedication to pleasing him was one of the qualities he liked most about her. He had chosen well. Not only was she the daughter of one of the more prominent members of the FBT Board of Directors, but she had been in love with him for years, even when he was engaged to Susannah. At the time, however, Joel Faulconer's daughter had been the bigger prize. His jaw tightened. How he would love to see that bitch's face when he took office today as FBT's chairman.

"It's a zoo in the lobby," Nicole said. "Half the world has shown up to watch you take office." She gazed around her at the well-appointed office. "I can't believe this has finally happened. I'm so proud of you, darling."

As she chattered on, he watched the adoration glimmering in her eyes, and he could almost pretend that he loved her. But he wasn't a sentimental man, and he no longer believed that he was capable of that sort of emotion. The closest Cal had ever come to love had been with Susannah, and that had led to the greatest humiliation of his life.

Even after six years, his stomach still churned when he remembered standing at the altar and watching her run away on that motorcycle. Instead of easing his desire for revenge, the passing years had fueled it. He had been patient for so long. While Joel was alive, the old man had prevented him from doing what needed to be done. In the years after his death, during Paul Clemens's reign, Cal's position had been precarious and he hadn't been able to allow himself the luxury of taking even the mildest risks. But with the success of the Falcon 101, all of that had finally changed.

His intercom clicked on, interrupting the monologue Nicole had been delivering on the suitability of the dress she had chosen for the reception that evening.

"Miss Faulconer is here."

"Send her in."

He could feel Nicole's resentment, and he smiled inwardly. His wife made no secret of the fact that she detested Joel Faulconer's daughter. But that was all right. His long-term friendship with Paige kept Nicole on her toes.

The door burst open and Paige breezed in, carefree and beautiful, her skin golden from the sun. She greeted Nicole with a cool cheek-press and headed toward Cal. "I can't believe you made me come back for this hideous ceremony. Calvin. One of the photographers goosed me on my way in through the lobby. He had a great ass, but even I draw the line at body odor." She slid into his arms. "No tongue, sweetie. Your wife is watching."

He brushed a suitably chaste kiss across her lips. Being with Paige was exhausting, but necessary. It was ironic that she, rather than Susannah, had provided the weapon that had allowed him to rise to his current position. From the beginning, Paige had hated the responsibilities that went along with the huge block of FBT stock she had inherited, and Cal had made certain he was always there to advise and comfort her. Within a year of Joel's death, Paige had given him her proxy so he could vote her shares in any way he wished. In return, he had promised not to burden her with the FBT responsibilities she detested. Heads, he won. Tails, he won.

"You know I wouldn't have asked you back today if it hadn't been absolutely necessary," he said.

She stuck out her lip in a playful pout. "But there are going to be speeches. I hate speeches."

"Really, Paige," Nicole said stiffly. "Life can't always be one of your parties."

"Who says?" Paige settled on the edge of Cal's desk and crossed her long legs. They were bare of stockings, he noted with disapproval. At least her raw silk suit was appropriate, although he doubted that she had bothered to put on a bra beneath it. He remembered with some nostalgia the time before Joel's death, when Paige had dressed conservatively and behaved with at least a modicum of dignity. That had changed within a year of her father's funeral-about the time he and Paige had made their agreement.

"I haven't bothered you for months," he said. "You know I wouldn't have asked you to fly in if it hadn't been absolutely necessary."

She regarded him evenly. "You couldn't miss having your picture taken with me today of all days, could you, Calvin? A photograph for all the world to see of Paige Faulconer symbolically passing on the mantle of her father's power."

Sometime Paige was smarter than he gave her credit for. He always tried to remember that.

Nicole fluttered near the doorway, obviously reluctant to leave the two of them alone. "I'm supposed to meet Marge Clemens. I'm afraid I have to go."

"I'll be down in a few minutes," he told her.

She had no choice but to leave. As the door shut, Paige regarded him with cynical amusement. "Poor Nicole. Doesn't she realize that if we had wanted each other, we would have done something about it long ago?"

She slid down off the corner of the desk. In a manner that was too offhand, even for her, she said, "I'm cutting out of the FBT dinner early tonight."

"Any reason?"

"Susannah sent me an invitation for some sort of party SysVal is holding." She tucked a wayward strand of blond hair behind her ear and wouldn't quite meet his eyes. "I decided to stop by."

Cal kept his voice carefully neutral. "You've received lots of invitations from Susannah over the years. I don't remember that you've ever been inclined to accept one. Why now?"

"I'm in town."

"The only person who detests Susannah as much as I do is you. Why now?" he repeated.

She hesitated for a moment and then, withdrawing a folded white card from her purse, passed it over for him to read. It was an invitation to a party SysVal was holding to celebrate having reached half a billion dollars in sales for their fiscal year. Handwritten at the bottom of the invitation in Susannah's neat script was the message, "How long are you going to keep running away from me, Paige? What are you afraid of?"

Paige snatched the card from him and shoved it back in her purse. "Can you believe it? That prissy bitch actually thinks I'm afraid of her."

"She's very successful," he said calmly, even though the word tasted like poison in his mouth. "Probably the most prominent female executive in the country today."

"And I ended up with FBT and all of Daddy's millions. Well, tonight I'm going to rub every one of them in her face."

The enlarged Blaze logo that took up much of the back wall was the first thing that caught Paige's eye as she entered SysVal's soaring lobby. As she stared at the logo, she thought of how much her sister had accomplished in six years, and she was so filled with envy that she felt dizzy. Her eyes darted through the crowd. When she saw no sign of Susannah, she forced herself to relax. If only she hadn't shown Cal the invitation, she could have backed out, but now it was too late.

A bar was set up off to the left. As she made her way toward it, she noted that SysVal's party guests favored denim and old running shoes. The beaded white satin gown that had looked so stunning at the FBT dinner she had just left was distinctly out of place here, but she didn't care. She had never been the sort of woman who needed to dress like everyone else to be comfortable.

Most of the guests were drinking beer, and the bartender had trouble finding the champagne she requested. While she waited, she thought about checking into a hotel instead of returning to Falcon Hill. The furniture was under dust covers and the house still bore the faint, sweet smell of death. Falcon Hill carried too many memories of that year when she had tried so desperately to make a home-running around baking pies and planting herb gardens like a demented Betty Crocker. She had even worn her sister's clothes. In the end it had been meaningless. She still hadn't been able to make her father love her.

She blinked her eyes hard and wished she hadn't come. After all of these years, why had she given in to the impulse to see her sister tonight? Maybe if she hadn't felt so rootless and alone after that horrible scene at her Malibu beach house three days ago, she would have tossed Susannah's invitation into the trash where it belonged.

She had actually thought she'd found Mr. Right. He was a documentary filmmaker, and they'd been seeing each other for six months. She should have realized that he was more interested in having her finance his new film than in everlasting love, but she had steadfastly ignored all of the warning signs. God, she was stupid. She had even been planning a wedding in her head.

The bartender finally handed her a glass of champagne. She decided to cancel her plans and leave tomorrow for her new villa in Sardinia. She could spend some time with Luigi or Fabio or one of the other minor Italian princes who drank Bellinis with her at the Hotel Cervo's piano bar in the evening and accompanied her back to her villa to spend the night. She had bought five houses in the past three years, each time throwing all of her energy into renovations and decorating, certain that this was the house that would finally make her happy. But happiness was proving to be one commodity that the millions her father had left her couldn't buy.

The lobby was crowded, but she found a spot along the side wall of windows where she could study the other guests. The men had already begun to notice her, which was predictable. It never took long. She looked through the windows toward the parking lot. In the reflection of the glass, she saw one of the party's male guests break away from his friends and come toward her. He had wild-looking hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and a knobby Adam's apple bobbing up and down in his throat. Terrific, she thought wearily. Just what she needed.

He planted the flat of his hand on the window next to her head, a cool operator leaving a big sweaty palm print on the glass. "I never forget a pair of beautiful eyes, and yours are gorgeous. My name's Kurt. Haven't we met somewhere before?"

"I doubt it, Kurt. I make it a practice never to talk to weenies."

He tried to smile as if she'd made a joke, but when her expression remained cool, his lips began to droop at the corners. "I, um, do you want me to get you a drink?"

She lifted her full champagne glass, making him feel even more awkward and stupid.

"Uh, how about some food? There's, uhm, some real good meat balls."

"No, thank you. But there is something you can do for me."

The muscles of his face lifted into an eager, puppy dog grin. "Sure."

"You can fuck off, Kurt. Would that be all right?"

He flushed and mumbled something before slinking away with his tail between his legs.

She bit down on the inside of her lip, making a little raw place. He had been harmless, and she could have let him down easily. When had she become so unforgivably cruel?

"Quite a performance." A crisp, male voice spoke from behind her.

She never forgot a handsome face, and it didn't take her long to place Mitchell Blaine. The day of her father's funeral had been a blur, but she could still remember him standing at Susannah's side. He was blunt-featured, good-looking. And proper. God, was he proper. She bet he had a drawer full of perfect attendance Sunday school pins stuck away at home.

"Glad you liked it," she replied.

"I didn't like it at all. He's a nice kid."

Screw him. Screw everybody. Not a bad idea, as a matter of fact. She drained her glass. "You want to get out of here and go to bed with me?"

"Not particularly. I like women in my bed. Not children." His eyes were light blue, cold and unsmiling.

Anger rushed through her. "You bastard. Nobody talks to me like that. Do you know who I am?" Her words echoed in her ears-petulant and obnoxious. She wanted to erase them so she could say different words, words that would turn her into someone else, someone sweet and warm.

"I imagine you're Paige Faulconer. I was told that you'd been invited."

She maintained her lofty bitchy pose. "And doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"Just that the gossip I've heard is true."

"What gossip?"

"That you're a spoiled, rude little girl who should have been turned over somebody's knee a long time ago."

"Kinky. Want to give it a try?" She gave him a phony, moist-lipped smile.

"I think I'll pass. I already have two children, and I don't need another."

She didn't let him see by so much as a flicker of an eyelash how humiliated she felt. Instead, she let her words drip with condescension. "You're married. How unfortunate."

"Why? I can't imagine what possible difference that could make to you."

She swept her eyes down over his body, then lingered for one long moment on his proper, gray-flannel-clad crotch. "I don't do married men."

To her astonishment, he laughed, a short bark of sound. "But I'll bet you do everybody else, don't you?"

His amusement infuriated her. Nobody laughed at her. Nobody. But before she could come up with a sufficiently cutting reply, he touched her chin with his index finger and said softly, "Ease up, honey. Life's good."

"Mitch?"

The expression that softened his blunt features as he turned his head toward the woman who had come up behind him was so warm and affectionate that Paige felt sick. She turned, too, and all the old emotions surged through her, making her bitterly regret giving into the loneliness that had led her here tonight.

She and Susannah had only seen each other a few times since their father's death, not enough for her to grow accustomed to the changes in her sister. Susannah's hair was shorter-barely reaching her jaw line-and her carriage was more relaxed. She looked free and funky, not at all like old uptight Miss Goody-Two-Shoes. Tonight she was wearing chunky gold hoops with a persimmon-colored blouse and beige slacks cinched at the waist with a fish-scale belt. But the expression on her face as she caught sight of Paige was the same as ever-tense, wary, overly conciliatory.

"Paige! No one told me you'd arrived. I'm so glad you came. Have you met my partner, Mitchell Blaine?"

"We've met," Mitch said.

Paige's lips curled in a sleek cat's smile. "I offered to go to bed with him, Susannah, but he turned me down. Is he gay?"

Susannah got that old tight look on her face, the one she use to wear every time Paige and Joel were trapped together in the same room. "Paige-"

"I'm not gay," Mitch replied. "I'm just discriminating." He brushed his lips against Susannah's cheek, squeezed her shoulder, and walked away.

"I wish you hadn't done that," Susannah said softly. "Mitch is a good friend-probably the best friend I have."

"If you don't want me to insult your friends, you shouldn't send me nasty little invitations."

"It got you here, didn't it?"

Paige lifted a glass of wine from the hand of one of the male guests who was passing and gave him a sexy smile as a reward. She tilted her head back toward her sister. "I don't think I've ever seen so many nerds gathered together in one place in my life."

"Talented nerds. Some of the most brilliant people in the Valley are in this room tonight."

"And you seem to fit right in. But then, you were always pretty much of a nerd yourself, weren't you, Susannah?"

Susannah smiled-patient, saintly Susannah. "You haven't changed, have you, Paige? You're still as tough as nails."

"You bet I am, sis."

"I wanted you to meet Sam, but he seems to have left."

Paige had avoided meeting Sam Gamble for six years, and she had no interest in doing so now. Besides, she had spotted him when she had first come into the lobby. He had been on his way out, and he had been surrounded by fawning people, just as Cal had been surrounded at the FBT reception. Although Gamble had acted as if he weren't aware of all the attention he was receiving, she hadn't believed it for one minute. Men like her sister's husband always knew exactly what they were doing. That's why they bored her.

"I recognized him when I first came in."

"He's very special," Susannah said. "Difficult, but special."

There was a burst of laughter, and someone began playing the Brady Bunch theme song over the loudspeaker. Quickly, Paige drained her wineglass. She couldn't handle this any longer.

"Sorry I can't stay, Susannah, but I've got to get back to Falcon Hill and count all the money Daddy left me."

Susannah flinched, but she didn't give up. "Let me show you around first."

"Don't take this the wrong way," Paige sneered, "but a company tour isn't exactly my idea of a good time."

Her sister stubbornly stayed by her side as Paige headed for the door. "Then let's get out of here," Susannah said, following her outside. "Come on. We'll go for a drive."

"Forget it."

"Afraid I'll eat you up?"

Paige came to a halt in the middle of the sidewalk. "I'm not afraid of you."

"Prove it." Susannah caught her arm and began steering her toward a late model BMW parked close to the building. "We'll take a drive, and I'll show you my house."

Paige jerked her arm away. "I don't want to see your house. I don't want to have anything to do with you."

Susannah stopped at the side of the car. The lights in the parking lot reflected off the hoops swinging at her ears and sent golden lights shimmering through her deep auburn hair. Susannah's new prettiness felt like another wound to Paige.

"You are afraid of me. aren't you, Paige?"

Paige gave a hollow laugh. "What is this? A grown-up version of I-dare-you? That was always my game, not yours."

Susannah opened the door on the driver's side and nodded toward the interior. "It's a good game. If you're not chicken, get in."

Paige knew that she didn't have to give in to Susannah's childish taunts, but she hated the smug look on her sister's face. The night stretched ahead like a hundred years, and she told herself that anything was better than going home alone to Falcon Hill. Shrugging indifferently, she got in. "Why not? I guess I don't have anything better to do at the moment."

Susannah carefully concealed her satisfaction as she pulled out of the parking lot. The more trouble she had with Sam, the more important it became to her to establish some sort of connection with her sister. Paige was her only blood relative, and surely they were both old enough by now to find new ground for a relationship. As she pulled out of the industrial complex onto the highway, she kept the conversation light. Paige answered in monosyllables or not at all. Some of Susannah's satisfaction began to fade. Paige's hostility seemed to be growing stronger instead of easing.

They left the highway and drove up into the hills. After several miles, Susannah turned into the drive that led to her house. A thick wall of shrubbery offered privacy from the road. Ahead of her the roof line rose in forbidding angles against the sky, and once again she realized how much she detested the harsh chill of this house. It was a cold temple dedicated to the worship of high technology, designed by a man who had always been obsessed with having the best.

"Cozy," Paige said sarcastically.

"Sam designed it."

"Didn't your big bad husband let you have any opinions?"

Susannah tried not to jump at the bait. "Houses aren't important to me."

Paige's evening gown rustled as she got out of the car. Instead of walking toward the pair of bronze doors that marked the entryway, she took the lighted path that led to the back of the house. Susannah followed, feeling increasingly uneasy. The beads on Paige's gown glittered like ice chips. Everything about her radiated hostility, from the stiff line of her neck to the harsh rhythm of her stride.

They cleared the side of the house and were met with the breathtaking view of the Valley. Paige stalked up the granite steps onto the bottom level of the deck and stared out at the lights. "I'll bet you're really proud of yourself, aren't you, Susannah?"

There was an ugly sneer in Paige's voice that made Susannah want to turn away. This had been a terrible idea. Why had she ever thought she could change the path of their relationship? "I've worked hard," she replied, trying to keep her tone neutral.

"I'll just bet you have," Paige spat out. "How much of that work did you do on your back?"

Susannah was stunned into silence by her sister's maliciousness.

"Now you can spend your days and nights counting your new money and laughing at Daddy in his grave."

All of Susannah's determination to renew their relationship disappeared, replaced by her own rage. "Don't say that. You know it's not true."

"It's true, all right," Paige retorted. "You showed him, didn't you? Too bad he's not still alive so you can throw your success in his face."

"I didn't do this because of him. I did it for myself."

"You're so goddamned sanctimonious. So smug and self-righteous." Paige spoke with deadly quiet, but her words struck Susannah like small bursts of venom.

She gripped the keys she still held in her hand. "Stop right there, Paige. You're acting like a child, and I've heard enough from you."

But Paige didn't want to stop. The poison stored inside her bubbled to the surface and burst forth in short, caustic spurts. "You've always been perfect. Always right. So much better than everyone else."

"That's enough! I've tried for years to establish some sort of adult relationship with you, but I'm not going to try any longer. You're spoiled and selfish, and you don't care about anyone but yourself."

"How would you know?" Paige shouted. "You don't know anything about me. You were too busy stealing my father to ever try to understand me."

"Get out of here!" Susannah threw the keys at Paige. "Take my car and get out of my sight." Turning her back on her sister, she walked rapidly toward the door on the far side of the deck.

But Paige wasn't finished. Propelled by years of self-loathing, she came after her, running almost, ready to pummel Susannah with more hatred. Susannah couldn't bear anymore. She shoved the door open.

"Do you have any idea how much I've always hated you?" Paige shouted, rushing into the house behind her. "I'm his real daughter! Not you. But I couldn't compete with your perfection act. Do you understand that a day doesn't go by when I don't wish that you'd never been born."

Susannah stalked through the back hallway and down the steps. Paige was still at her side when she dashed into the living room.

"Why did you have to come live with us?" Paige cried. "Why did you have to be so much better than me?"

Susannah gasped and then the gasp turned into a soft, kittenlike mew.

On a white suede couch in the center of the room, Mindy Bradshaw was jerking her skirt down over her naked thighs, while Sam fumbled awkwardly with his trousers.

Susannah mewed again. She could feel her hands opening and closing at her sides. The world reduced itself to the scene before her and the awful mew of pain that kept rising from her throat. And then her lips began to move, to form words. They came out tinny, like the computerized voice of i robot.

"Excuse me," she said.

The apology was idiotic, obscene. Susannah staggered blindly out of the room. She knew her legs were working because the walls were moving past her. She walked up one ramp and down another, past the massive mantelpiece of stainless steel. After every four or five steps, that awful sound kept sliding out. She tried to stop it, tried to clamp tier lips together, but it wouldn't be contained.

Someone touched her elbow. For a moment she thought it was Sam and tried to shake him off. Her arm was clasped more firmly, and she realized that Paige was at her side.

It was easier to concentrate on her sister than on the abscenity she had just witnessed. The lesser pain of Paige's hatred seemed almost a safe harbor in comparison to the starkness of Sam's betrayal.

Susannah felt her lips quivering again. Sam and Mindy. Sam was having sex with Mindy. Her husband. The man she had loved so blindly for so very long.

She realized she was in the kitchen. An awful pain traveled from her throat down through her stomach, a pain that crushed her heart and filled her breasts like bitter milk.

Paige spoke hesitantly. "Let's get out of here."

"Go away." Susannah shoved the words through a narrow passageway before her throat closed on a sob.

Paige's fingers grasped her arm. They were icy cold, distracting Susannah from her desperate need to draw another breath.

"Let me take you somewhere."

Susannah couldn't tolerate pity, especially coming from someone who hated her so much. "Just leave me alone," she said almost desperately. "I don't ever want to see you again."

Paige released her arm as if she had been burned and closed the keys Susannah had thrown at her in her fist. "Suit yourself. I'll send your car back in the morning."

Susannah stood at the kitchen windows and stared out into the darkness. Seconds ticked by. Paige's icy white dress whipped past. Before long, footsteps clicked on the floor behind her.

She kept her eyes on the blackness beyond the window. It was as dark as the inside of her grandmother's closet, as malevolent as a shed on the edge of the desert.

"The old silent treatment, Suzie? It's so goddamned typical of you, I don't know why I'm even surprised."

Her breath caught on a sob. He had gone on the attack. Why hadn't she realized that was what he would do? The pain was so fierce, she didn't think she could bear it. She gathered herself together as best she could and turned slowly to face him.

His black, straight hair fell over his forehead and stuck out near his ear just the way it did when she ran her fingers through it as they made love. Except this time it had been Mindy's fingers that had rumpled that beloved hair.

"I sent Mindy away," he said, as if that would make everything all right.

Tears were sliding over her lips. She tasted their salt and thought of how hard she had been fighting for her marriage, of the baby she had wanted so badly. "Was Mindy the first?" The question slipped out unwanted, but the moment she heard the words, she knew she had to have an answer.

He combed one hand through his hair. She could almost see him gathering his forces for the struggle-relishing the fact that there would be a struggle. This was what he did best-charging blindly at an insurmountable obstacle and pounding away until it gave. Her chest shuddered as she tried to hold back another sob.

"It doesn't make any difference. How many doesn't matter. Infidelity. Fidelity. Those are just words. That's not what you and I are about."

He was angry, defensive, electric with restless energy. He began to pace the kitchen, his body vibrating with tension as he dodged the black granite islands. "We've never tried to push our marriage into someone else's mold. That's why it's worked for us. We're smarter than that. We know what we want…"

He talked and talked and talked.

"… the two of us are bigger than convention. We can do anything together. That's what's made us strong. What happened tonight is little shit, Suzie. Maybe I shouldn't have done it, but it's not important. Don't you see? It's little shit. It's not goddamned important!"

Her hands closed over a ceramic bowl on the counter in front of her. With a slash of her forearm, she sent the bowl crashing to the floor at his feet and expelled the questions that were killing her. "I want to know if she was the first! Were there others? How many others?"

Some of his belligerence began to fade in the face of her agony. For the first time he looked frightened.

"How many?" she screamed.

He was an idealist, a man dedicated to speaking the truth, and he kept to his code. "A couple of times on the road," he mumbled. "A girl I used to go with. What difference does it make? Don't you understand? This doesn't have anything to do with us."

"Yes, it does!" she screamed as she snatched up another bowl and threw it across the kitchen. "We're married. When people are married, they don't fuck other people!" She punished him with the tough, nasty obscenity that she knew he would hate.

"Stop it!" He lurched toward her, his expression vicious. "Stop doing this!"

She hissed with pain as he caught her shoulders and then, without warning, backhanded her across the cheek.

She slammed up against one of the counters. With a gasp of pain, she lifted her fingers to her face. Her nose was running. She dabbed at it with the back of her hand. As she drew it away, she saw a smear of blood.

He saw it, too. His eyes widened, stricken at what he had done. He took a step forward. "Suzie, I-"

The sight of her blood chilled her. She moved backward.

His face crumpled like a child's. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I-God, how could you do this to me? How could you make me do something like that?"

She walked past him with uneven steps, crossing the kitchen and making her way to the foyer. The closet was tucked behind a slab of polished granite that looked like a tombstone. She pulled out the small traveling bag she kept packed with basic necessities. Her cheek throbbed and her hands trembled as she snagged the strap, but a deadly calm had settled over her.

"Don't do this." Panic rang in his voice as he came up behind her. "Don't you leave me! I mean it, Suzie. If you leave, don't plan on coming back. I mean it, do you hear me?"

Tears were running down her cheeks. She turned toward him, and when she spoke, her voice was as rusty as an old saw. "You've made a mistake, Sam. Don't you see? I've turned into your vision of me. And the woman you've created won't put up with you any longer."

Chapter 23

Susannah rushed from the house. Dimly, she remembered that she had no keys and that Paige had taken her car, but she didn't care. She would walk. Nothing could make her go back in that house.

She fled past a row of shrubbery and saw her car still parked in the drive. Paige sat behind the wheel, waiting like a vulture to pick the bones from her carcass. Susannah bit back a sob. She couldn't bear any more. Why hadn't Paige gone away? Didn't her sister have a speck of compassion left?

The front door banged open behind her. "Suzie!"

She heard his voice calling out to her just as he had the day he had stolen her away from her father. She stumbled, righted herself, and rushed awkwardly forward. He called out for her again. She saw Paige reach over from behind the steering wheel and push open the passenger door.

"Suzie!" he cried.

Paige's gloating seemed the lesser evil. Thrusting her traveling case into the car, she jumped in after it. Sam reached her just as Paige threw the car into reverse. She glimpsed his contorted face at the window, and then they hurled backward down the drive.

She knew Sam's ruthless determination, and she waited with dread for him to run for his car and give chase. But he stood in the glare of the headlights without moving. She felt an absurd surge of gratitude that at least he was giving her this. Then she remembered Mindy and realized that Sam wasn't letting her go out of compassion, but because he had given Mindy his car.

The tires squealed as Paige spun onto the road and raced down the mountainside toward the highway. As times, she barely seemed to have the car under control. Maybe they would die. The prospect didn't seem so terrible.

As they moved out onto the freeway, a broken sound slipped from Susannah's lips. Her cheek still stung from his blow. Her throat was burning and her eyes were filled with hot tears. Small spasms began to wrack her body.

She had no idea how much time passed before they stopped. Numbly, she lifted her head and saw that they were at the airport. Paige walked around the front of the car and opened the door to pull her out.

"I can't-Please, Paige."

Paige gripped her arm firmly. "You'll do what I say."

Susannah tried to push her away, but her limbs had no strength. Although it was late, people were still milling around. She realized with paralyzing certainty that Paige was going to parade her in front of everyone in the airport and that she couldn't do anything to stop her.

She was wrong. Her sister led her into a private lounge and immediately brought her a cup of coffee. Her stomach rebelled at the smell and she pushed it away. Paige searched through her case and pulled out the passport that Susannah always kept there. She slipped it into her own purse, then went over to a phone bank and began making calls. A little later she returned.

"There's a British Airways flight leaving for Heathrow in an hour. I've booked us seats. We'll pick up a plane to Athens from there."

"Athens?" she repeated dully. "I can't go to Greece. I have a job."

"Your job will hold for a few weeks. I've got this house on Naxos." For the first time, Paige hesitated. "It's nice there. The sun's hot and everything's white and pure." And then her mouth grew sullen, as if she didn't really care whether Susannah accepted or not.

Susannah covered her cheek with her hand. "I can't possibly go away. I have responsibilities." Even as she forced out the words, she couldn't imagine going to work on Monday and facing Sam again.

Paige stared out into the middle of the lounge and plucked at one of the bead-spangled flowers on the skirt of her evening gown. "I have these cats. They're silly, really. Not pedigreed or anything. But I want to show them to you."

A strange combination of belligerence and yearning mingled in Paige's voice. She continued to pick at the beads on her skirt. Susannah stared across the lounge and tried to take in what had happened to her, but the pain kept her mind from working. Suddenly, it seemed perfectly reasonable that she should fly halfway around the world to see Paige's cats. At least she wouldn't have to go to work on Monday.

The rocky islands of the Cyclades lie spattered over the turquoise waters of the Aegean like so many pebbles flung by a giant fist. Birthplace of ancient myths and legends, the islands are a mecca for lovers of Greek antiquity. The spirit of Narcissus is said to have been reincarnated on Mykonos, Thira is suspected to be the lost continent of Atlantis, and Naxos was the refuge of Ariadne after she saved Theseus from the labyrinth of her father, King Minos.

Susannah had been to the Greek islands several times before, although never to the island of Naxos. As the battered jeep made its way inland from the dusty airstrip, a white-hot sun hovered in the bleached sky overhead. They had left the tourist town of Chora with its discotheques and Coca-Cola signs far behind and were crossing the heart of the island. Susannah was barely aware of the breathtaking contrasts around her-the stark moonscape of rocky hills silhouetted against the brilliant blue green of the sea. Squat windmills perched near slopes terraced with vineyards, fruit, and olive trees. The gears of the old jeep ground ominously as they made their way through the steep twisting streets of the villages, some so narrow that the driver had to stop and wait for a donkey to pass because there was not enough room for both animal and vehicle to travel side by side.

Susannah's eyes scratched like sandpaper against splintered wood and her body ached with exhaustion. They had been traveling forever. She was no longer even certain what day it was, and she couldn't remember why she had ever agreed to come on this trip.

Paige sat silently next to her. The fierce glare of the late afternoon sun turned her tumbled hair into tarnished silver. In her rumpled, soiled evening gown, she looked beautiful and dissolute, like a ruined playgirl left over from a Fitzgerald novel. She had handled passports and tickets, the delay at Heathrow, the complex arrangements to get to Naxos, all the business of traveling that Susannah normally managed so expertly. In all that time Susannah hadn't spoken a word to her.

It was evening when they reached the cottage on the eastern side of the island. Susannah stumbled numbly into the room Paige indicated. She was aware of the sound of the sea and clean lavender-scented sheets. Then she slept.

When she awoke late the next morning, sunlight was trickling through the closed shutters and throwing hyphens of light on the white stucco walls of the room. Her body felt heavy and sore as she made her way into the tiny bathroom. She showered, then slipped into a pair of seersucker shorts and a light blue halter top she found lying across the foot of the bed.

She winced as she stepped out into the rustic interior of the cottage's main room and a blaze of sunlight hit her full in the face. A sharp pain pierced her temple. She made her way over to the open screenless windows and saw that the white stucco cottage clung precariously to a barren hillside overlooking the sea. Even though she had vacationed on the Aegean several times before, she had forgotten the depth of the water's jewellike tones. It spread before her like a bottomless pool of azure tears.

She turned back to the room and tried to find some sense of peace in the simplicity of her surroundings. An earthenware bowl of peaches sat on the scrubbed wooden table, while a basket of geraniums caught the sunlight in one of the windows. The windowframes, shutters, and door were all painted the same bright cerulean blue as the Aegean, and the thick stucco walls of the cottage were so crisp and clean, they looked as if they had just been whitewashed. She felt as if she had been plunged into a world where only three colors existed-the dull gray-brown tones of the bare hillside, the blazing white of stucco and sky, and the rich, cerulean blue of sea, shutters, and doorway.

A fat tabby walked across the flagstone floor and rubbed against her ankles. "That's Rudy," Paige said, coming into the room from outside. "Misha's taking a nap on the patio."

Paige wore a faded bandanna top and a pair of cutoff's so threadbare that her skin beneath was visible in several places. Her feet were bare, her face free of makeup, and she had snared her hair into an untidy ponytail. Even so, she looked beautiful.

Susannah couldn't believe that she had put herself in the position of being dependent on Paige. She had to get out of here. As soon as possible, she had to leave.

"You look like shit," Paige said, picking up the blue and white striped dish towel that hung next to the stone sink in the kitchen and using it to pull a fragrant loaf of brown bread from the oven. "Go keep Misha company on the patio. The table's all set and breakfast is almost ready."

"You shouldn't have bothered," Susannah said coldly. "I've made a mistake. I have to get back."

Paige set a sweating pitcher of fruit juice on top of a tray that held two blue glass goblets. "Carry this out. I'll be there in a few minutes."

For the moment it was easier to do as she was told than to argue. Susannah stepped through the door onto a patio paved with smooth brown pebbles. She squinted while her eyes adjusted to the light and the breathtaking view of sky and sea below. An old olive-wood gateleg table holding handwoven place mats, ceramic plates, and cutlery was sheltered from the sun by a lacy network of jasmine trees growing up from the other side of the stucco wall. Wooden chairs sat at each end, their rush seats covered with plump blue pillows. Flowers spilled over the tops of fat pottery crocks, and the old stone head of a lion provided a spot of shade for a sleeping cat.

The animal looked up as Susannah set the tray on the table. Then he stretched, yawned, and went back to sleep. Paige began bringing out food: mugs of coffee, a bowl of eggs soft-boiled in their speckled brown shells, a majolica plate arranged with a sunburst of melon slivers. She cut the bread she had just baked into thick slices and then spread one with butter. It melted into little amber puddles as she held it out to Susannah.

Susannah shook her head. "I'm sorry. I don't feel like eating."

"Give it a try."

Susannah couldn't remember the last time she had eaten-not on the plane, certainly. She hadn't eaten at the party. Her stomach rumbled as the warm, yeasty scent pricked her nostrils. She took the bread, and as she bit into it, she discovered that the simple act of chewing provided a momentary distraction from the pain that wouldn't go away. She sipped at a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and ate part of a melon slice. When her stomach began to rebel, she cuddled a mug of coffee and gazed out at the sea.

With the meal over, the awkwardness between them increased. In the past she would have broken it with inconsequential chatter, but she no longer cared enough about her relationship with Paige to make the effort. The fantasy of sisterly love had died along with everything else. Paige began to tell Susannah about the cottage and how she had restored it. Then she fetched a San Francisco Giants baseball cap for herself and a straw hat for Susannah and announced that they were going to walk down to the beach.

Susannah followed, simply because she couldn't summons the energy to do anything else. Paige led the way around to the side of the house where there was a gentler drop to the beach than the sheer cliff face that fell from below the patio. Even so, the descent exhausted Susannah. Paige walked over the rocks and hot sand to the water's edge, then dipped her toes in the sea.

"You didn't say anything about breakfast. How did you like my homemade bread?"

"It was delicious," Susannah replied politely. What had she done wrong? her brain screamed. Why had Sam gone to other women?

Paige kicked at a wave. "I love to cook."

There was a long pause. Susannah realized that she needed to say something. "Really? I hate it."

Paige looked at her strangely. "You always took over the kitchen on the cook's days off."

"Who else was going to do it?"

Paige leaned over and picked up a small smooth stone. "I might have."

"Maybe," Susannah said bitterly. "Or maybe you would have just told me to go to hell."

It was the first time she could remember inflicting the initial blow, but Paige didn't respond. Instead, she pulled off her baseball cap and tossed it down on the beach.

Susannah gazed up the hillside. The cottage seemed miles away. "I think I'm going to climb back up and take a nap. Then I need to make arrangements to get back."

"Not yet." Paige unsnapped her cutoffs. "We're going to swim first."

"I'm too tired to swim."

"It'll do you good." Paige pulled off her cutoffs to reveal lacy white underpants. She slipped them down with her thumbs and then unfastened her top. "This is my very own nude beach. Nobody ever comes here."

As Paige discarded her clothes, Susannah looked at her sister's body. Paige's breasts were larger than her own. Her waist was trim and her stomach flat. She was golden all over. Sam would have liked Paige's body. He liked big breasts.

"Come on," Paige taunted, dancing backward into the waves. "Or are you chicken?" She slapped the water, sending a splatter of drops in Susannah's direction.

Susannah was pierced with a desperate longing. She wanted to forget what had happened, to be young and carefree and splash in the waves like her sister. She wanted to touch the childhood that had been denied her, to go to a place where betrayal didn't exist. Instead, she shook her head and climbed the hill back to the cottage.

That afternoon, Paige went off to the village on a battered moped while Susannah lay in the shade of the jasmine trees and punished herself. She should have cooked more meals for Sam. She should have shared his passion for that awful house.

A chill settled over her that even the Greek sun couldn't dispel. Hadn't these last six years taught her anything? Why was she so quick to assume blame for the problems in their marriage? Sam had been betraying her for a long time-and not just with other women. He had been passing judgment on everything she did and criticizing her when she didn't live up to his invisible spec sheet. He had scoffed at her need for a child, ignored her attempts to repair their marriage. And like a little boy, he had looked to her to fix all the problems he had within himself. She had endured Sam's bad temper, his arrogance, and his small cruelties. But if she endured his infidelity, he would have swallowed her whole.

They ate an early dinner and went to bed not long after dark. In the morning she told herself to make arrangements to return to San Francisco, but she dozed on the patio instead. One day slipped into the next. Paige fed her and made her walk down to the beach every morning, but otherwise she left her alone. Toward the end of the week, she produced a second moped and decreed that Susannah was riding into the village with her to help shop for dinner. Susannah protested, but Paige was insistent, so she did as she was told.

On the way, Paige pulled into a lovely old olive grove that had been part of the island for centuries. As they wandered silently through the trees, Susannah breathed in the fresh scent of earth and growing things. She rubbed her palm over her slim waist and pressed that barren flatness. The tears she had been repressing pricked her eyes. Now there would be no baby to grow inside her.

She stopped under a twisted old tree and stared off into the distance. Paige plopped down in the shade. The afternoon was so still, Susannah felt as if she had found the end of the world. If only she could locate exactly the right place, she might be able to drop off the edge.

After days of barely speaking at all, words began to tumble from her lips. "I didn't know he was sleeping with other women. I knew we had problems, but I thought our sex life was all right. I really did."

"It probably was."

Susannah turned on her. "It couldn't have been or he would have stayed faithful."

"Grow up, Susannah. Some people don't feel alive unless they're having sex with half the world." Paige's face took on a closed, hard expression.

"But he loves me," she said fiercely. "Despite everything he says and everything he's done, he loves me."

"What about you?"

"Of course I love him!" she cried, furious with Paige for asking the question. "I gave up everything for him. I have to love him!" She sucked in her breath as her words hit her. What was she saying? Did she truly love Sam or was she still caught up in an old, worn-out obsession?

"I'm definitely not an expert on love," Paige said slowly. "But I think there are lots of different kinds. Some are good and some are bad."

"How do you tell the difference?"

"The good love makes you better, I guess. Bad love doesn't."

"Then what Sam and I had was definitely good love, because he made me better."

"Did he? Or did you do it yourself?"

"You don't understand. Daddy wanted me to be his perfect daughter. Sam told me I should be strong and free. I listened to Sam, Paige. I listened to him and I believed him."

"And what happened?"

"A miracle happened. I discovered that Sam's vision was right for me. It was a perfect fit."

"That should have made him happy." Cynicism edged Paige's words.

Susannah blinked against the sting of tears. "But it didn't. A big part of Sam liked the old Susannah Faulconer. Deep inside, I don't think he wanted me to change at all."

"I like the new Susannah."

The unusual softness in Paige's voice pierced through Susannah's misery, and she looked at her sister as if she were seeing her for the first time. Against the sunlight, Paige's profile was as soft and blurred as an angel's. "Did I treat you so terribly when we were growing up?"

Paige plucked at a blade of grass. "You treated me wonderfully. I hated you for it. I wanted you to be awful to me so I could justify how awful I was to you."

Something warm opened inside Susannah like a loaf of her sister's bread. The awful chill that wouldn't go away thawed a little.

"I thought if you were out of the way, Daddy would love me," Paige said. "But he never did. Not really. You were everything to him. Even after you left, he let me know I couldn't compete. The irony of it was that I did so many things better than you-the meals were more imaginative, the house prettier. But he never saw that. He only saw the things I didn't do well."

Paige's unhappiness touched a chord inside Susannah. "After the way you've taken care of me, I can't imagine you not doing anything well."

Paige shrugged off the compliment. "Look at my checking account some time. And I'm completely disorganized. I hate everything connected with FBT business. Daddy should never have left the company to me. I don't know what I would have done without Cal."

Susannah looked away.

"He's been a good friend to me, Susannah," Paige said earnestly. "You really humiliated him."

"I know that. And the selfish part of me doesn't care. Isn't that awful? I'm so glad to have escaped marrying him that I'm willing to feel guilty about what I did to him for the rest of my life."

"Even though escaping Cal meant that you married Sam?"

Susannah stared at the dappled shadows on the ground. Nothing had changed, but some of the turmoil inside her seemed to have eased. "I could never regret having had Sam in my life. In a funny way, he created me, just like he created the Blaze. In the end I guess his vision of me wasn't right for him. But it was right for me."

"Are you going back to him?"

The pain that was never far away spread through her again. She was a fighter, and she didn't take her marriage vows lightly. In the deep quiet of the olive grove, the vow she had made on her wedding day came back to her as clearly as if she had just spoken it. I promise to give you my best, Sam, whatever that may be. As the words echoed in her mind, she knew that she had done exactly that, and she finally understood the time had come to begin fighting for herself.

"No," she murmured. "No, I'm not going back."

"That's good," Paige said softly.

For dinner that night, Paige fixed a cheese pie with fresh marjoram and tossed a handful of pine nuts into a dish of green beans. As Susannah ate her sister's wonderful food, she began to feel at peace with herself. Something important had happened in the olive grove. Maybe she had finally completed the task she had begun when she'd run away from home. Maybe she had found herself.

The next morning after breakfast, Paige once again dragged her down to the beach. As she stripped off her clothes, she said, "This time you're going in the water. No more excuses."

Susannah began to protest, but she stopped herself. How much longer was she going to wallow in self-pity? Reaching for the tie at the back of her neck, she unfastened her halter top, then pulled off her clothes until she was as naked as her sister.

"I've got bigger boobs than you," Paige called out in a deliberately taunting voice as Susannah waded into the surf.

"I've got longer legs," Susannah retaliated.

"Giraffe legs."

"Better than duck legs."

The water was sun-warmed and wonderful, the surf gentle. Susannah bent her knees and settled down so that the water covered her shoulders. The sea was gentle and soothing. For a while, anyway, it made her feel well again.

"You can't stay out too long," Paige said, flipping over onto her back. "You're a real paleface. Not to mention other parts of you." A wave passed in a swirl of foam beneath her. "What should we have for dinner tonight?"

Susannah turned on her back to float. "We just finished breakfast."

"I like to plan ahead. Lamb, I think. And a tomato and cucumber salad with feta crumbled on the top. Stuffed eggplant-You're starting to drift out. Come back in."

Susannah obediently did as she was told.

That evening they worked together in the kitchen. Paige opened a bottle of Skeponi, a local wine, and poured two glasses for them to sip while they worked. "Slice that cucumber thinner, Susannah. Those things look like hockey pucks."

"I'm not enjoying this," Susannah grumbled after she produced another slice that was too thick to meet her sister's approval. "Why don't you cook while I straighten out your checkbook?"

"You're on," Paige said, laughing.

Five minutes later, both sisters were happily occupied-Paige with a hollowed-out eggplant and a mixture of pine nuts, herbs, and currants; Susannah with her pocket calculator and what she quickly labeled "the checkbook from hell."

Just as they were getting ready to eat, Susannah heard the sound of a moped approaching the cottage. Paige stiffened. The moped stopped, and several seconds later someone knocked. As Paige opened the door, Susannah glimpsed a handsome young Greek with thick curly hair. Paige immediately stepped outside, but Susannah could hear bits of conversation through the open window.

"… in village today. Why you not come to me?"

"I have company, Aristo. You shouldn't have come here."

The conversation went on for several minutes. When Paige reentered the cottage, the old hard look had settled over her face. "One of my legion of lovers," she said tightly, picking up the last of the serving dishes and carrying them to the old kitchen table.

Susannah brought over the wine bottle and poured them each a second glass. "You want to talk about it?" she asked cautiously.

Paige's tone immediately grew caustic. "What's there to say? Unlike you, I've never been Miss Pure and Innocent."

It was Paige's first attack. Susannah set down her wineglass. "What are the new ground rules between us, Paige?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"If it weren't for you, I'd probably be curled up in a ball someplace. You've taken care of me in a way no one else ever has. But does that mean we can only get along if I need you? Not if you need me?"

Paige toyed with one of the wrinkled oily olives in her salad. "I like taking care of people. I just never get the chance."

"You're getting the chance now, and I'm not ready to give it up." Her voice broke a little. "I feel battered, Paige. You've given me sanctuary. I'm not used to needing people, and it scares me to think about how much I need you right now."

Paige's eyes filled in response. "I always wanted to be just like you."

Susannah tried to smile, but couldn't quite manage it. "And I wanted to be like you-a rebel giving the world the finger."

"Some rebel," Paige scoffed. "I don't want my life to be this way. I'm tired of running all over the world and having sex with men I can't stand."

"Then why do you do it?"

"I don't know. Sex lets me connect, you know. Except I don't connect at all, and that makes me hate myself."

And then she told Susannah about the boy who had raped her when she was sixteen. She spoke of Aristo and Luigi and Fabio and the string of lovers who existed like spoiled meat everywhere she went. She talked about the filmmaker she had imagined she was in love with and the abortion she couldn't quite forget.

Afterward, they were silent. Susannah thought of the roles they had been assigned from the time they were small children. Paige played the rebel daughter while she took the part of the obedient conventional one. But all along it should have been the other way around. They were like two sisters who had gotten their parts mixed up at some cosmic version of Central Casting.

Paige abruptly shattered the silence. "I'm starved."

Their dinner had long grown cold, but they fell on it anyway, both of them suddenly lighthearted from the connection they had made with each other.

"You know what I really want?" Paige said, stuffing a gooey chunk of eggplant into her mouth with her fingers. "I want to mother the whole world. Sort of like a slutty version of Mother Teresa."

Susannah, who hadn't imagined she would even be able to smile again, burst out in laughter. They drank more wine and Paige told terrible jokes and they cleaned up the dishes together. Afterward, Paige moved a small lamp into the center of the kitchen table. She gave Susannah her old mulish look. "I bought something for us in the village. If you start laughing again, I won't speak to you for the rest of my life."

"All right. I won't laugh."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

Paige reached into one of the cupboards and pulled out a cheap coloring book along with a brand new package of Crayola crayons.

Susannah hooted with laughter. "You want us to color?"

Paige gave her a snotty look. "Do you have a problem with that?"

"Oh, no. I think it's a wonderful idea." Without thinking about what she was doing, she swept her sister into her arms and hugged her so tightly that Paige let out a yelp.

They settled down at the table, chairs butted up next to each other as the two Faulconer sisters bent their heads over the coloring book. Susannah worked on the left page, her sister on the right. Paige fancifully shaded her cartoon cow in pinks and roses, then added a comically oversized hat. Her artistic eye held no regard for the thick black outlines of the drawing, even as her homey soul craved strong, respectable borders.

Susannah neatly outlined all the separate parts of her lady pig before she dutifully filled in the blocks of color. Constriction was fine in coloring books, she discovered, but it wouldn't do at all in real life.

"Not fair, Susannah. You wore the point down on the blue crayon. I can't stand it when the points aren't sharp."

And because Susannah cared more about pushing life to its limits than she did about crayons, she gave Paige the sharp ones and used the dull, blunt nubs herself.

It was an arrangement that made them both blissfully happy.

Chapter 24

Mitch stood at the edge of the patio and gazed down at the secluded beach from behind a pair of silver-rimmed aviator's sunglasses. A sweat stain had dared to form a patch on the back of his pale blue knit shirt, and his gray slacks were rumpled from the long plane trip. But fresh clothes were the furthest thing from his mind as he watched the two women playing in the surf below.

Paige's body, with its full centerfold breasts, was the more voluptuous, but it was Susannah's lean, thoroughbred form that held his attention. Water glittered like crystals on her shoulders, her breasts, and the flat plane of her belly. It slithered down the small of her back and glossed her small, sweet ass as she waded at the edge of the waves.

He knew he shouldn't watch, but the sight of her held him in a grip that was so powerfully erotic, he couldn't turn his head away. Thou shalt not covet thy partner's wife, a voice whispered. But he had been coveting his partner's wife for a very long time.

He didn't know exactly when in the past few years friendship had turned to love or affection had become desire. There was no specific moment he could point to and say-now! Right now I know that Susannah Faulconer is the woman I've been looking for my entire life. He certainly hadn't wanted to fall in love with her. It was messy. Inconvenient. It absolutely violated his moral code. But just the sight of her filled him with a piercing sweetness that transcended anything he had ever felt for a woman.

Except now that her farce of a marriage was finally over, that sweetness had been distorted by anger. For years he had kept his emotions firmly leashed when he was around her. He had never slipped, not once. But when he had heard what had happened, something inside him snapped. He wanted to shake her for her stupidity, for all those wasted years she had held on. He wanted to shake her until he rattled loose whatever it was inside her that had made her an emotional slave to Sam Gamble.

And now he would have to comfort her. He would have to be good old Mitch, patting her back and pretending to be sad right along with her. He would have to be her compassionate and understanding friend when he didn't want to be a friend at all, when he wanted to kick up his heels and shout, "Good riddance."

That's what he wanted her to do, too. He wanted her to look up into his eyes and say, "Thank God that's over. Now you and I have a chance."

But Susannah wasn't frivolous with her emotions, and he knew that wouldn't happen-not for a very long time, if ever.

The recent turn of events at SysVal made everything more complicated. As he remembered the crisis that had arisen so abruptly, he wondered what he would do if she weren't ready to go back with him.

Paige looked up at the cottage, interrupting his thoughts. He could tell by the way her body grew still that she had spotted him, but he didn't back away. Susannah continued to play in the waves, so he knew that her sister hadn't shared the news that they had an observer. If Paige wasn't going to tell, neither would he. He continued to watch.

Susannah was astonished to see the back of a man's head and shoulders rising above one of the patio chairs as she came up from the beach. He turned and smiled at her, the sun glinting off the metal rims of his aviator glasses as he stood.

"Well, if it isn't SysVal's lost lady."

"Mitch! What are you doing here?"

"I was in the neighborhood."

She rushed toward him and then remembered that she was naked beneath her beach towel. Clutching it more tightly in her fist, she leaned forward and kissed a jaw that bore an uncharacteristically rakish stubble.

His hand pressed flat against the small of her back for a moment and then he released her. "I've been worried about you. It's been three weeks."

Had it been so long? September had slid into October and she had barely noticed. "You came this far just because you were worried?"

To her surprise, the corners of his mouth tightened in the subtle sign that indicated he was upset. "You could have telephoned, Susannah. You must have known-" He broke off as something just behind her caught his attention.

Susannah turned her head to investigate, and to her dismay saw Paige standing on the edge of the patio, the beach towel wrapped low on her hips, her breasts as brown and bare as one of Gauguin's Tahitian women.

"Well, well, well," Paige said. "If it isn't Mister-Black, is it?"

"Blaine," he said. He gazed at her for a moment, and then dropped his head so that it was obvious he was deliberately staring at her breasts through his sunglasses. "You're looking well, Paige."

Susannah was embarrassed. And then she wondered why she should be uncomfortable. These two were both pros. Mitch certainly knew what he was doing, and Paige had to work out her devils in her own way.

Paige looked over at Susannah, obviously expecting her to intercede in some way. Susannah lifted an eyebrow. You got yourself into this, sister mine. Now you can get yourself out.

She could see Paige begin to grow flustered. Mitch stubbornly refused to redirect his gaze. Paige made an elaborate show of yawning as if all this were too, too boring for words. "I'm thirsty," she said. "I guess I'll go get us something to drink."

Susannah had to suppress the urge to applaud her sister's feistiness. Paige knew she had lost the battle, but she was going down fighting.

Paige, however, had one final salvo to deliver. "You really should have come swimming with us, Mr. Blaine, instead of standing up here spying. It would have been so much cooler." With a smug glance at her sister, she disappeared inside the cottage.

Susannah rounded on Mitch. "You were spying on us?"

He slowly pulled off his sunglasses and folded in the stems. "Not spying exactly."

"Then what, exactly?"

"Just sort of watching."

"I don't believe this! Mitch, how could you do something so slimy?"

"Aw, come on, Susannah. Ease up, will you?" He stuffed his glasses in his shirt pocket. "What would you have done if you were a healthy heterosexual male who just happened to stumble on the sight of two beautiful naked women cavorting in the water?"

She saw his point, but she didn't have too much fondness for any member of the male sex at the moment, and she refused to give in. "I'm not beautiful, and I'm not a woman. I'm your business partner."

"Ri-i-ght. And for a business partner, you've got a terrific-"

He broke off as he found himself on the receiving end of one of the more chilling of her glares-the glare that, five years ago, she had reserved for anyone who had the audacity to ask SysVal to pay its bills on time.

He studied her for a few moments and the teasing light faded from his eyes. Once again, she observed an almost imperceptible tightening at the corner of his mouth. "Are you okay?" he asked.

She shrugged, then sat down on one of the rush-seated chairs, keeping her towel tucked securely beneath her arms. With the tip of her finger, she traced a bright terry-cloth stripe that ran across the tops of her thighs. "Did you know, Mitch?"

He wandered over to the stucco wall and looked down at the sea. "Know what?"

"About Sam and Mindy? About the others?"

The breeze lifted his hair as he turned back to her. He nodded.

She felt as if she had been hit with a new betrayal. "Sam's infidelity was common knowledge, wasn't it? Everyone knew but me."

"I wouldn't say it was common knowledge, but…"

Slowly she rose from the chair and gazed at him. "We're friends. Why didn't you tell me?"

He studied her and said quietly, "I thought you knew."

She felt sick at her stomach. Was this the opinion Mitch had of her? Did everyone see her as some spineless creature who turned a blind eye to Sam's wanderings? "Don't you know me better than that?"

"Where Sam is concerned, I don't know you at all."

He seemed to be condemning her, and she resented it. "You're blaming me, aren't you?"

"Sam is one of the greatest visionaries in our business, but when it comes to personal relationships, everyone knows he's pretty much a loser. I guess what I don't understand is why you're the only one who was really surprised. Why is that, Susannah?"

Hurt welled inside her. She couldn't believe that Mitch was attacking her. "I didn't ask you to come here, and I don't want you prying into my life."

He glared at her, the corners of his mouth growing tighter by the second. And then something seemed to give way inside him. "Aw shit." He closed the distance between them in two long strides and wrapped her in his big, bear arms.

She needed his comfort, and she was more than willing to forgive him. Wrapping her own arms around his waist, she laid her cheek against the solid wall of his chest where she could hear his heart pumping beneath her ear. "I loved him, Mitch," she whispered. "I loved him and I didn't want to know."

He drew her closer, rubbing his hands up and down her back through the towel. "I know, honey," he murmured, his voice sounding slightly hoarse. "It'll be all right."

As he spoke, the motion of his chin scraped her temple. His fingers rose above the top edge of the beach towel and touched her skin. She closed her eyes, drawing comfort from his presence in a way she had never been comforted by Sam.

And then something changed. His body began to grow tense. The muscles in his arms hardened until she felt as if she were being imprisoned instead of sheltered. A warning bell went off inside her. His leg pressed against the center line of her thighs as if he were trying to push them apart. She had never been so aware of his greater strength, never before felt threatened by it. This was Mitch, she told herself. It was only Mitch. And then he crushed the beach towel in his fists.

"Mitch!" She rescued the towel and pushed herself away at the same time.

He let her go so abruptly that she stumbled. She trapped the towel before it could fall and righted herself. "Mitch, what-" But as she raised her eyes to his face, she couldn't remember what she had been about to say.

"Yes, Susannah?" he asked calmly.

He looked as solid and unflappable as ever. She began to feel stupid. What was wrong with her? Mitch didn't present any threat. Was this going to be another legacy that Sam had left her-the sense that all men were dangerous?

"Hors d'oeuvres, anyone?" Paige appeared with a tray of cheese, black olives, and crackers.

Her head had begun to ache, and she was grateful for her sister's interruption. Excusing herself, she went into the cottage to shower.

Paige-out of pure mischievousness, Susannah was certain-insisted Mitch stay with them in the cottage. That evening she outdid herself with a meal of plump prawns saut‚ed in butter and herbs, rice pilaf, Greek salad, and a chewy loaf of fresh, warm bread. Mitch was effusive with his compliments, and Paige's cheeks took on a rosy flush. Neither of them paid much attention to Susannah.

Over bowls of apple cobbler drizzled with cream, Mitch entertained them with a story about Yank losing his new Porsche at a shopping mall. He was so amusing that before long Susannah relaxed and joined in. The tension between Susannah and Mitch dissipated, and they were soon trying to top each other, telling Paige stories about Yank.

When they began describing Yank's habit of misplacing his girlfriends, Paige accused them of exaggerating. "Nobody's that much of a nerd."

Susannah and Mitch looked at each other and laughed.

But Susannah's lighter mood vanished after dinner when Mitch broached the subject of her return to California. She knew she couldn't stay here forever-she had already been away much too long-but the thought of returning made her insides twist. "I'm not ready. I can't go back yet."

His brow furrowed and he looked as if he were about to say something more, but he merely took a sip of coffee and asked Paige about the island. The strain between them was back.

For the next two days, Mitch and Paige baited each other until Susannah wanted to slap them both. Mitch continued to bring up the subject of Susannah's return, but she refused to discuss it. He began to make vague allusions to a new problem at SysVal. She ignored him. For the past six years she had dedicated herself to the company. Someone else could take over for a while.

By the third day, Mitch could no longer postpone his departure. "We need you in California, Susannah," he said once again, as he handed over his suitcase to the driver of the jeep that was taking him to the airstrip in Chora. "Come with me. We can get a later plane." Once again, she had the sense that he was holding something back.

"Soon," she replied quickly. "I won't stay much longer."

"When? Damn it, Susannah-"

Paige quickly intervened, jumping into the fray like a mother bear defending her cub. Using tactics that were distinctly her own, she brushed her small body against Mitch's big one and gave him her poutiest smile. "So long, Mitch. Look me up whenever you decide you're man enough to go skinny dipping with me."

Instead of ignoring Paige's baiting, he smiled. For a moment his eyes flicked to Susannah, and then he cupped Paige by the back of her neck and gave her a long, deliberate kiss.

When Susannah saw his tongue slip into her sister's mouth, she looked away. She was well aware that Mitch had a strongly sexual nature tucked away beneath his endless supply of navy-blue suits, but it made her uncomfortable to witness it.

Mitch pulled back and slapped Paige's rear. "Keep it warm for me, lamb chop. One of these days, I just might run out of interesting things to do and take you up on your offer."

He brushed Susannah's cheek with a friendly kiss and climbed into the jeep. Paige shaded her eyes with her hands and watched the vehicle disappear. "Mitch Blaine is definitely one hell of a man."

It was the first time Susannah had ever heard her sister speak about any male without cynicism. She suppressed a stab of jealousy because Paige was forming a relationship with Mitch while her own friendship seemed to be showing mysterious signs of strain.

"I should have gone back with him," she said stiffly. "I don't know what's wrong with me. I can't stay here forever."

Paige draped a comforting arm over her sister's shoulders. "Give yourself a little more time."

Time didn't help. Another week passed, but whenever Susannah thought of returning to California, her heart began to race. One afternoon, she stood at the stone sink washing up their luncheon dishes while Paige went into the village, and as she dried a serving bowl, she told herself she had to do something soon. It wasn't fair to impose upon Paige much longer. For the first time, she let herself think about leaving SysVal and going to another company. Her misery was so encompassing that she didn't hear the jeep pulling up outside the cottage.

Yank hated to travel. He could never find his tickets and his boarding passes disappeared. He picked up the wrong luggage and always seemed to end up next to crying babies. Occasionally he became so absorbed in his thoughts that he missed his boarding call altogether and the plane took off without him. As a result, SysVal had an unwritten policy that he was never to be sent on a business trip alone. But Mitch hadn't been able to retrieve Susannah, and they certainly couldn't send Sam. That meant Yank had to do the job.

His coworkers would have been surprised to know how efficiently he had managed the complicated trip to the island of Naxos. They still didn't understand that he was able to function quite well when he chose to. It was just that most of the time he didn't choose to.

As he got out of the jeep in front of the cottage, he made a precise currency conversion in his head and then tipped the driver exactly fifteen percent of the fare, counting out the drachmas and organizing them into precise piles in the palm of his hand. When he was done, he carefully slipped his wallet back into his pocket so he wouldn't lose it and picked up his suitcase. It was leather and monogrammed with matching Y's. A former girlfriend had given it to him as a present for his thirtieth birthday. Later, his accountant told him that she had charged it on one of Yank's own credit cards.

While he walked up the path to the cottage, he organized his thoughts and mentally prepared himself for the task of retrieving Susannah. This was a job he couldn't afford to bungle. It was too important to all of them.

She answered the door after his first knock. She appeared so tired and sad that Yank wanted to hug her, but of course he didn't. All the feeling he had held for her since the evening Sam had brought her to the Homebrew meeting rushed through him like a bombardment of electrons.

"Yank!" Susannah's mouth grew slack with astonishment. She glanced past his shoulder to see who had brought him. He could almost feel her dread that it might be Sam.

"Hello, Susannah." He watched as she tilted her head to the side to look behind him again. "I'm alone."

"Alone?"

He nodded.

Her forehead wrinkled. "Did someone come part of the way with you?"

"I came all the way alone."

"Ail the way to Greece?"

"Could I come in, Susannah? And if it isn't too much trouble, I'd very much like something to drink."

"Of course." She stepped aside to admit him, but she couldn't resist one last peek outside before she shut the door.

"I think we have some Greek beer," she said. "But-Why are you here, Yank?"

"I've come to get you," he said simply. "I've come to take you home."

The sun was in Paige's eyes, so for a moment she thought the man standing with his back to her on the patio was Mitch. A flash of pleasure washed through her at the idea of engaging in another round of sexual dueling with the delectably stuffy Mr. Blaine. But then she realized that the man looking out toward the sea was much leaner than Mitch and even taller-maybe four or five inches over six feet.

As he turned toward her, she caught her breath. What an incredibly arresting man! His brown hair was side-parted and well-cut. His features were unusually sharp: bladed cheekbones, a thin straight nose, finely chiseled lips-all of it topped by a pair of light brown eyes that were widely spaced and compelling. He was casually dressed in a charcoal shirt with a pair of chinos and a webbed belt. A nearly empty bottle of Greek beer was clasped in his hand, and a gold watch with a leather strap encircled his wrist. All in all, he was an extremely tempting piece of male flesh.

She took a step toward him and stopped as a prickle of unease traveled up her spine. He was looking at her so strangely, almost as if he were taking her apart and examining the separate pieces-the iris of an eye, the curl that brushed her cheek, her chin, a breast. He shifted his gaze to her other breast, regarded it with great concentration, and then moved his eyes down over her torso to her hips. Instead of being insulted, she felt curiously flattered.

"Should I turn around so you can see the rest?"

"Not unless you'd like to." His voice was so deep and soft that it almost seemed to have blown in off the sea.

The door of the cottage opened and Susannah came out with a glass of ice water. She looked tense and frazzled. "Paige, you're back. I didn't hear the moped."

"Just got here." Paige set down the string bag of produce from the market and once again glanced curiously toward their visitor.

"Paige, this is Yank Yankowski. Yank, my sister Paige."

Paige nearly choked. This was Yank? This was the dopey genius that Susannah and Mitch had told her all those stories about? Had Susannah gone blind or had she simply lost her mind?

Paige let her gaze drift appreciatively over Yank. "No wonder big business fascinates you, Susannah. Do you have any more male partners tucked away?"

Susannah looked at her blankly.

Paige returned her attention to Yank and saw that his eyes had grown unfocused. He began patting his pockets, muttering something indecipherable, and then-without a word to either of them-walked past them into the cottage.

Paige watched him with amazement. "What on earth-"

"He's working on something. He does that all the time." Susannah took a sip of her ice water and set it down. Her hand shook ever so slightly. "Paige, don't let him take me back."

"What are you talking about?"

"Yank's come here to take me back. I-I'm not ready yet."

Paige regarded her curiously. "Then don't go. I've told you that you can stay as long as you like."

"You don't know the way he is. When he has his mind set on something, it's impossible to distract him. He's like Sam, except different. He's so gentle. Kind. It's difficult to explain."

"That's ridiculous, Susannah. He can't take you back unless you decide to go with him."

Susannah didn't look convinced. "I never expected him to show up here. Yank doesn't travel by himself. He can't manage things."

"He seems to have managed things just fine." Paige shook her head in amusement. "I can't believe that's the same man you and Mitch were telling me all those dopey stories about. Susannah, he's incredibly sexy."

Susannah seemed vaguely startled. "Well, he's changed a lot since we started the company. He's certainly a lot better looking than he was when I met him. AH the women he's had in his life these past few years have put him together. I guess it happened so gradually that those of us who are with him all the time barely noticed."

"What do you mean, 'put him together'?"

"They've done his clothes shopping for him and thrown out the awful stuff he used to wear. He had this terrible crew cut right out of the 1950s, and these ugly black glasses with Coke-bottle lenses. His girlfriends cleaned him up, organized his wardrobe, and made him get contacts-that sort of thing, But it's all surface cosmetics. Yank is still Yank. And-" She shivered slightly. "Sometimes he can be scary."

It was the first thing Susannah had said about Yank Yankowski that made any sense to Paige.

As she had done with Mitch, Paige invited Yank to stay the night and fed him a delicious dinner. To Yank's credit, he managed to keep up his end of the conversation throughout most of the meal and only faded out on them a time or two. After the dishes were cleared, he asked Susannah to show him the beach.

She made a great play out of pushing the cork back into a bottle of wine they hadn't quite finished. "Let's do it tomorrow. I'm a bit tired tonight."

"I'd very much like to see the beach now," he said quietly.

"It's late, Yank. And it's a steep climb."

"There's a full moon. We can see quite well."

Susannah shot Paige a pleading glance, and her sister's maternal instincts took over. She set down her dishrag and touched Yank's arm lightly. "Beach tours are my specialty. If you treat me right, I might even let you cop a feel behind the rocks."

Susannah's hands stilled on the cork as Yank's mouth curved in a slow sleepy smile that was almost mesmerizing. Paige was right. Yank had turned into an incredibly attractive man, and she had barely been aware of it.

Paige wove her fingers through his and pulled him toward the doorway. "Don't wait up for us," she called over her shoulder. "I'm not letting him back until I've had my way with him."

For all her bravado, Paige felt awkward the moment the cottage was behind them and they were alone. There was something spooky about him-as if he knew all sorts of things other people didn't. She didn't like being put at a disadvantage with Yank, but she wasn't quite certain how to take control.

The moon lit their way, shining silver on the harsh rocks as they headed down the path to the beach. The night was warm and still, and the waves lapped softly at the shore. She walked to the edge, pretending to be mesmerized by the water, while she tried to ignore the fact that Yank was studying her quite openly.

His scrutiny made her increasingly uncomfortable. She fell back on her old tricks. "Did anyone ever tell you that you're incredibly sexy?"

"Yes."

"Susannah thinks you're a nerd."

"I know."

"Doesn't that bother you?"

"Do you think it should?"

"How would I know? If you want to go through life having everyone think you're weird, I guess that's your problem."

He laughed softly.

His amusement irritated her. It suggested that he understood something she could not even begin to perceive. In retaliation, she reached for the tail of her T-shirt and began to pull it up over her bare breasts. "Let's go in for a swim."

He caught her hands, stilling her movement in a surprisingly firm grip. "No, I don't want you to take off your clothes in front of me."

"God, not another one. First Mitch and now you. What are you? A couple of Buddhists or something?"

"Maybe Mitch understands, too. Seducing either one of us isn't the right thing for you to do. Not now."

"Who made you God? How do you know what's right and wrong for me?"

"I just know, that's all. It occurred to me at dinner exactly how all this might turn out. If we're very, very lucky, of course."

"How what will turn out? What are you talking about?"

He brushed the side of her cheek with his hand in the gentlest gesture she could ever remember receiving from a man, and she looked into eyes that were as wise and compassionate as the eyes of a dime-store Jesus. "You mustn't give yourself to anyone for a while, Paige. Not sexually. It's quite important."

She slapped away his gentle touch with the flat of her hand. "I'll 'give myself to anybody I like! God, you really are a nerd! From now on, you mind your own goddamn business, do you hear me? Fuck you, mister. Just… fuck you."

He gave her a sweet sad smile and turned away to watch the waves.

Susannah made certain she was in bed before Yank and Paige returned from the beach. She couldn't bear the thought of another discussion about leaving. As she plumped her pillow, she remembered Paige's astonishing reaction to Yank's appearance. Her sister's sexual sparring with Mitch hadn't been at all surprising-Mitch was an incredibly attractive man-but Paige had seemed just as captivated with Yank.

She shut her eyes and tried to relax so she could sleep, but her eyelids kept jumping open. To distract herself, she began to imagine what it would be like to make love with Yank. Try as she might, ail she could picture was Yank getting distracted at the crucial moment.

And then, to her utter shame, she felt a flash of desire. For the first time it occurred to her that sexual frustration was something she would have to learn to live with. She was a sensual woman, and that part of her wouldn't go away just because she no longer had a husband to satisfy her. At the same time, she was so bruised that she couldn't imagine ever again making the deep emotional commitment that she needed before she could go to bed with someone.

A picture of Sam hovering over her as they made love took shape in her mind. The pain that accompanied it was so sharp she bit down on her lip. Don't think about it, she told herself. Think about someone else.

She pondered the bleak sexless years ahead. Once again she tried to envision herself with Yank, but the picture wouldn't take hold. Another picture took its place, one of herself and Mitch. Fantasy was a harmless pursuit, so she gave herself permission to strip off the black trunks that he had worn on the beach. She imagined his shape and size, and her limbs began to feel pleasantly lax. She let him pick her up and lay her down on a blue silk sheet. She conjured up the scent that he carried with him of starched shirt and clean skin. Her body felt heavy and languid.

She groaned and buried her face into the pillow. As her eyelids squeezed shut, Sam's mouth took shape in her mind. Sam's mouth-hard and determined-whispering a lifelong litany of traitorous love words.

She got up very early the next morning, still groggy from her awful night. Holding her sandals in her hand so she wouldn't make any noise, she slipped across the front room toward the door so she could get away before Yank awakened. Later she would be ready to face him, but not yet.

"Susannah?"

She moaned with frustration as Yank slipped out of his bedroom. His hair was tousled and he had pulled on the wrinkled chinos he had been wearing the night before. The rest of him was uncovered. She didn't realize until that moment that she had never seen Yank without a shirt. His chest was lean almost to the point of boniness, but there was a tautness about his flesh that made his thinness appealing.

"I'm going into town," she said, anxious to get away before he stopped her. "I thought I'd get some pastries for breakfast."

"We don't actually need any pastries." He walked over to the kitchen table, where he picked up a ripe peach from a bowl of fruit and bit into it. He chewed slowly, then looked down at the peach as if he had never seen one before. "It would be easiest on you, Susannah, if you simply resigned yourself to going back with me this afternoon."

"This afternoon? That's impossible."

"Would you prefer to wait until tomorrow morning?"

"No, I-"

"This afternoon, then." He made the statement with ominous finality.

"Yank, I don't want to go back. Not yet. Don't press me on this."

"Someone has to press you. I was very disappointed with Mitch. He should have brought you back last week."

"I'm not a piece of cargo! Listen to me, Yank. The thought of facing Sam-I just can't do it yet."

"Of course you can. You're quite strong, Susannah. You need to remind yourself of that."

She didn't feel at all strong. She felt like a little girl with a string of broken balloons woven through her fingers. "Being forced to face Sam a dozen times a day is a little more than I can handle right now."

"The company depends on you."

She threw down her sandals. They skidded across the floor and banged into the leg of a chair. "Forget about the company! I'm sick of hearing about it. If we believe the Gospel according to Gamble, SysVal is just as important as Christianity. I don't buy that anymore. We're making a computer, for God's sake. A machine. That's all." She waved her hand toward the ceiling. "See! The sky didn't fall. I spoke blasphemy and nothing happened."

Yank looked strained, as if being near such an outpouring of emotion had exhausted him. He dropped the peach pit into the waste basket. "SysVal isn't three kids in a garage anymore. It's a company filled with people who have to pay their mortgages and support their families."

"I'm not responsible for that. All those people aren't my responsibility."

"Yes, they are. You're essential to SysVal."

"I'm the most replaceable of the partners, and you know it."

"You're the least replaceable. I'm surprised you don't realize that. From the very beginning, you're the only one of us who has always been able to see the whole picture. The rest of us only see parts."

"That's ridiculous. Mitch sees it all."

"Better than I do. Better than Sam, maybe. But Mitch's business background has given him biases you don't have. And Mitch and Sam give each other energy, but they don't really understand each other. Without you interpreting for them, they can't even talk."

It was a long speech for him. He began to stare off into space, and she assumed that he had worn himself out. But he was merely taking a few moments to arrange the rest of his thoughts properly. "You're not a visionary like Sam or a marketing strategist like Mitch. You can't design like I do. But you understand people, and you're the one who keeps us on track. If it weren't for you, SysVal would have been lost in chaos long ago. You have this way of keeping order."

The part of her that wasn't miserable was gratified that Yank thought so highly of what she did. Somehow, his praise meant more to her than any compliments she had ever received from either Sam or Mitch.

"Mitch wants you to come back when you're ready, Susannah. He told me quite explicitly that I was not to force you to return."

"I'm a free human being," she said with what she hoped passed for conviction. "You can't force me."

"That may be, but freedom is relative. I have information that Mitch has ordered me not to divulge. If you knew this information, you would immediately return."

Although she had known Mitch was keeping something back from her, for the first time she grew alarmed. "What information? What are you talking about?"

"It's quite disturbing, Susannah."

"Don't you dare do this to me! If you know something I should know, tell me. I don't care what Mitch says."

"Oh, I intend to tell you. I was quite surprised that Mitch thought he could bully me like that."

"What's happened, Yank? What's this all about?"

Yank wandered over to the window and looked out at the view for a few moments. Then he turned back to her. "A few days after you left, Sam began to lobby our Board of Directors."

"That's not unusual. Sam is always lobbying the board for something."

"This time his goal was quite different."

Susannah felt a chill of apprehension deep in the pit of her stomach. "What do you mean? What's he done?"

"Susannah, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but Sam is trying to convince the board to sell SysVal."

Chapter 25

When Paige awakened, Susannah told her what had happened and tried to convince her sister to return to San Francisco with them. But Paige shrugged her off, insisting she had already made plans to go to Sardinia. She immediately began the business of closing up her cottage and arranged for a jeep to come and get all three of them. Their relationship was still so fragile that Susannah was reluctant to press her. At the same time, she felt so emotionally intertwined with her sister that she didn't want a lengthy separation. What if they fell back into their old antagonistic pattern?

Their parting at the airport wasn't as difficult as it might have been because Yank disappeared at the last moment and both of them had to set off after him. Paige found him with a group of passengers ready to board a flight to Marrakech. She took him back to the proper gate just as Susannah had given up all hope of locating him.

He absentmindedly passed his ticket and boarding pass over to Susannah, then turned back to Paige. "Please remember that request I made when we were on the beach. It's very important."

Susannah looked at them curiously, trying to figure out what Yank was talking about.

Paige ran her fingers along her purse strap. "What's it worth to you?"

"Worth?"

"Yeah. Are you willing to put your money where your mouth is?" Her eyes swept over him insolently. "And I'll just bet your mouth has been in some very interesting places."

Yank flushed. "You're suggesting I make the same agreement?"

"Why not? Misery loves company."

"I hadn't thought that far ahead."

"Maybe you'd better."

"You have a point. Although-"

"Do you agree?"

He considered her question for a few moments and then nodded.

Susannah was mystified by the conversation, but her speculation was stopped short as the loudspeaker announced the final boarding call. Neither she nor Paige seemed to know quite what to say. Susannah smiled shakily. "Thanks. Thanks so much for everything."

Paige shrugged off Susannah's gratitude. "I owed you one."

Yank had begun to wander away. Susannah grabbed him and steered him toward the gate. Just before they passed through, she gave Paige a final wave.

Paige stood in the middle of a bustling crowd of tourists and watched her sister and Yank Yankowski disappear. As they slipped out of sight, a deep ache passed through her like a dark wave on her private beach. Something important was slipping out of her life, and she didn't have the faintest idea how to get it back.

On the trip from Athens to Heathrow, Yank told Susannah what he knew about Sam's sudden determination to sell the company. He offered the details in his customary systematic fashion, laying out the facts as he knew them and refusing to speculate on anything he wasn't certain of.

Sam wanted to sell SysVal to Databeck Industries, an international conglomerate. Databeck had offered to buy SysVal a year ago, and at the time Sam had scoffed at them, even though several of the board members had urged that the offer be considered. No matter how hard she searched, she could find only one explanation for Sam's change of heart. He wanted to get back at her for leaving him. The idea that he would sacrifice the company that meant everything to him just to punish her sent a chill to the very marrow of her bones. How could she have thought she knew someone so well and not have known him at all?

They had to lay over for several hours at Heathrow before their plane left for San Francisco. When they finally boarded, Yank fell asleep quickly, but Susannah couldn't rest. Instead of concentrating on the crisis at SysVal, she kept imagining herself walking into the lobby. Everyone would be watching her. She envisioned the pity in their faces, imagined the whispers behind her back. The images were unbearable, and she forced herself to concentrate on the implications of Sam's turnabout.

They all had been so certain that nothing like this could ever happen. The four partners each held fifteen percent of the company, giving them a controlling sixty percent. The other board members held the remaining forty. They had always felt so safe with this arrangement. But if Sam could unite the board, and if he then threw his fifteen percent in with them, nothing that she, Yank, or Mitch could do would keep the company from being sold.

They arrived in California at six in the morning. Even though it was early, Susannah asked Yank to drop her at Mitch's house. He lived in a charming California-style ranch that sprawled over several acres in Los Altos Hills. As he opened the door, she saw that he was clad only in a pair of running shorts. Sweat gleamed on his arms and darkened the pelt of sandy hair on his chest. He looked surprised to see her, but he was so hard to read that she wasn't certain whether he was pleased or not. The strange, erotic fantasy she'd had about him when she was in Greece slipped back into her mind, and for a moment she couldn't quite meet his eyes.

"Welcome home," he said, stepping aside to admit her. "I just got back from my run." He took her traveling case and led her into the living room. Normally it was one of her favorite places in the house, a happy hodgepodge of Ameri-can Southwest and French Riviera. Chairs and couches were upholstered in nubby, neutral-colored fabrics brightened up with throw pillows printed with colorful geometries. The stucco walls held large canvases splashed with tropical flowers, and tables with curly wrought-iron legs were placed at convenient intervals. But the pleasure she usually felt at being in such cheerful surroundings eluded her.

He set down her case next to one of the couches. "Give me a minute to take a shower and then we'll talk. There's a pot of fresh coffee in the kitchen."

She stopped him before he could leave the room. "You should have told me what Sam was doing when you came to Naxos." She hadn't intended to sound so condemning, but there still seemed to be some mysterious strain between them and she couldn't help it.

"You had plenty of chances to ask questions," he replied. "I don't remember hearing any."

"Don't you play games with me, Mitch. I expect better of you."

He picked up a wadded T-shirt from one of the end tables and began to rub his damp chest with it. "Is that an official reprimand, Madame President?"

A month ago she couldn't have imagined being intimidated by him, but now there was something so forbidding about the way he was looking at her that she had to force herself to hold her ground. "You can take it any way you want."

He yanked his T-shirt on, then pulled it down over his chest. "I tried every way I knew to talk you into coming back, Susannah, but I wasn't going to force you if you weren't ready. We've got a big fight ahead of us, and your personal problems are going to make it more complicated. If Yank and I couldn't have one hundred percent from you, I wanted you out of our way."

He was acting like she was an encumbrance. "That wasn't your decision to make," she snapped. "What's wrong with you, Mitch? When did you turn into the enemy?"

Some of his stiffness faded. "I'm not your enemy, Susannah. I don't mean to be abrupt. Sam's called an informal meeting of the board tomorrow at three o'clock. My guess is that he intends to tighten the screws."

"Forget it," she said fiercely. "He can call any meeting he wants, but his partners aren't going to be there to see the show. I'm not going to meet with anybody on the board-formally or otherwise-until I've had a few days to ask some questions. Without us, they can't have much of a meeting."

"We have to confront the board sooner or later."

"I know that. But I'm taking the ball into my court for a while. Make sure that you're unreachable tomorrow afternoon at meeting time. I'll take care of Yank."

Mitch seemed to be thinking over what she'd said. "I'll give you a couple of weeks, Susannah, but no more. I don't want anyone to think we're running. That'll hurt us nearly as badly as what Sam is doing."

She didn't like the fact that he was questioning her judgment, but at least some of his stiffness had dissipated. What was happening to the two of them? She'd grown to take Mitch's friendship for granted, and she couldn't imagine losing it, especially now when she felt so fragile. The burst of adrenaline that had kept her going had begun to fade, and she sat down on the couch.

He saw that she was exhausted, and went to get her a cup of coffee. As she sipped it, he told her he had reserved the town house SysVal owned for its traveling executives so she had a place to stay until she got resettled. He had also reclaimed her car from the airport and stored it in his garage. His thoughtfulness made her feel better.

Forty-five minutes later, she climbed the stairs to the town house's second floor, slipped into the freshly made bed and fell into a troubled, dream-ridden sleep. She awoke around noon and telephoned home to make certain Sam wasn't there. When she received no answer, she dressed and drove over.

She half expected to find the locks had been changed, but her key worked without any difficulty. The house looked the same-cold and uninviting. She went into the bedroom with its steel-framed furniture and gray suede walls. Everything was exactly as she had left it. Everything except-

Her eyes widened as she saw a small oil painting hanging on the wall between their matching bureaus. It was a seascape in soft feminine pastels that were at odds with the room's cold gray interior. She had found the painting a year ago in a gallery in Mill Valley and immediately fallen in love with it. But Sam had hated it and refused to let her hang it. This was the first time she had seen it since she had come home from a business trip and discovered that he had sent it back.

She sagged down on the side of the bed and stared at the painting. Tears welled in her eyes. How could he be taking the company away from her on one hand and, at the same time, giving her this painting? The pastels blurred through her tears, swimming together so that the painting seemed to be in motion. The waves of the seascape heaved toward the shore in watery blue and green swells.

She thought of Sam's wave-the wave of the future he had told her about all those years ago. That wave had swept over them just as he had promised, and just as he had promised, they had been changed forever. She stared at the painting, and the great vat of grief that had been sealed shut inside her opened up, sending dark eddies through every part of her. She hugged herself and stared at the painting and rocked back and forth on the edge of the bed while she truly mourned the death of her marriage.

And with the death of her marriage, she mourned the death of the child she had hoped to bear, that dark-haired, olive-skinned child of feisty spirit and soaring imagination who would never be born. She hugged that child to her breast and loved it with all her might, pouring years of maternal care into a few brief moments. She cried it a bleak lullaby, that unconceived child of her imagination, and let her heart tear apart as she laid it in its grave.

When she left the house, she felt as old and empty as a hollowed-out stone.

Chapter 26

Walking into SysVal that same afternoon was one of the hardest things Susannah had ever done. She wore an unadorned black knit, garbing herself in its severe lines as if it were a suit of armor. As she flashed her pass at the front desk, the security guard wouldn't quite meet her eyes. A group of jeans-clad workers conversing in the lobby stopped talking as she came toward them. They looked down at the floor; they looked at the walls. The company grapevine was powerful, and Mindy Bradshaw obviously hadn't kept her mouth shut. By now every SysVal employee must know that Susannah had walked in on Sam and Mindy making love.

As she moved through the halls, several of the men called out cautious greetings, as if she were a terminal cancer patient and they didn't know what to say. She nodded graciously and kept walking-spine straight as a ramrod, posture so perfect she would die before she bent. She had been San Francisco's Deb of the Year in 1965. She had been trained in the old ways to retain her dignity regardless of provocation and to hide her emotions behind a mask of serenity.

As she neared her office, her palms began to perspire, but she didn't lower her head by so much as a fraction of an inch. Ahead of her a technician ducked into an office so he could avoid the embarrassment of having to greet her. The corners of her mouth began to quiver, and she realized then that she couldn't carry it off. She was no longer San Francisco's perfect socialite or SysVal's efficient president. She was a woman who had learned to feel and bleed and care. Her steps faltered. She couldn't do it. She simply couldn't go through with this.

Her muscles were so tightly wound that she jumped when a voice sounded over the loudspeaker. It was a voice that had never before been heard over the SysVal system because it belonged to the man who had been trying for several years to have that same system disconnected. It was Mitch, clearing his throat and speaking in the dry, businesslike fashion of someone whose idea of fun was spending an evening reading sales forecasts.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the security desk has informed me that our president and chief operating officer, Susannah Faulconer, has just arrived back in the building. I feel compelled to address all of you today and set the record straight. The rumors that Ms. Faulconer has been hiding out in Las Vegas and dancing in a nude review are absolutely untrue, and anyone repeating such rumors will be dismissed at once. We have it on good authority that Miss Faulconer was not nude. She was respectably clad in a leopardskin G-string." And then the music of "The Stripper" blared out.

Heads popped out of offices. A hoot of laughter went up around the building. Susannah wanted to kill Mitch, to kiss him. He had known how hard it would be for her to come back, and this was his strange-and typically SysVal way-of making it easier. After the strain of their encounter that morning, this gesture of friendship meant everything to her.

Mitch's announcement pushed away the awkwardness and gave people something to say to her. For the next few hours, everyone teased her unmercifully. But there was still an edge of caution to their laughing remarks. Normally when she was away from the office for even a day, Sam's name would have come up a dozen times within an hour of her return. Now no one mentioned him.

More than anything, she wanted to put off seeing him. But she knew she couldn't hide away forever, and the longer she postponed meeting with him, the more difficult it would become. When Helen, her secretary, brought in the most urgent of her mail, Susannah forced herself to look up from her notepad and ask as coolly as she could manage, "Is Sam in today?"

"Gee, I-Yes, I think so."

"Good," she said briskly. "Call his office. I'd like to see him as soon as he can get free."

She forced herself to concentrate on her work. So much urgent business had piled up while she was gone that it was difficult even to prioritize it. And there were small irritations. When she turned in her chair to flick on the Blaze III she kept on her credenza, she was annoyed to discover that it had been replaced with a newer III. The machines were identical, but she had a sentimental attachment to her old Blaze. It was one of the thirteen original test models that Sam had insisted be put into use for a few months before the Blaze III was released to the general public, so that all the bugs could be worked out ahead of time.

When she asked Helen what had happened to her old computer, she was told that a technician had come for it. "He transferred all of your files to the new machine, so it shouldn't be a problem."

"Get hold of him and tell him I want my old Blaze back," she said. She didn't care if she was being illogical. She'd had enough changes forced upon her in the past month, and this was one she could control.

Helen nodded and then told her she had a call from Mitch. Susannah picked up her phone. "A nude review? Couldn't you have done better than that?"

"I'm an engineer, not a poet. I thought I told you not to come in to work until tomorrow."

"Too much to catch up on."

He hesitated. "Susannah, I'm afraid I've got more bad news. I don't like hitting you with everything on your first day back, but I just got a call from Sacramento."

She rested her forehead on the tips of her fingers, bracing herself for the next disaster.

He said, "The people we're dealing with in the state government got wind of the rumors that SysVal is up for sale, and that tipped the scales in favor of FBT and the Falcon 101."

She rubbed her temple with her thumb. A multimillion-dollar contract was lost; Sam wanted to sell the company. A month ago they had been sitting on top of the world. Now everything was coming apart.

She spent the next two hours on the phone to Sacramento, talking to everyone she could reach and trying to convince them that the rumors were untrue. The officials were polite but unbending. They had made the decision to go with FBT's Falcon 101 instead of the Blaze III, and that decision was irreversible. She turned to her computer and began crunching numbers, trying to determine how this financial setback would affect the new Blaze Wildfire project.

Sam came to her office around five. She sensed his presence in the doorway before she looked up.

"Hi, Suzie."

For so many years every part of her had jumped alive whenever she caught sight of him, but now she felt numb. She swiveled slowly in her chair and for a few brief moments saw him as others did, those who hadn't fallen under his spell. He looked tired and nervous. He needed a haircut, and his slacks and shirt were wrinkled, as if he'd fallen asleep in them.

"Did you go over to the house?" he asked as he walked into her office.

"I stopped in to pick up my things."

"You can't run away if we're going to get this worked out."

Now that she had left him, he finally wanted to work out their problems. She could almost have predicted this would happen, so why was it so hurtful? "We're not going to get our problems worked out. It's over, Sam. I've had enough."

He drove his hand through his hair, plunged his fist into the pocket of his slacks. "Look, Susannah. I'm sorry. I fucked up real bad. I know that. But it doesn't have to be the end of everything. If I'd known it was going to be such a big deal to you-"

"I don't want to talk about it!" She fought for composure. Years of bitter experience had taught her how easy it was to get caught up in Sam's twisted logic, and her emotional control was too fragile for her to argue with him now. "These are business hours, Sam, and we're going to talk business."

Rising from behind her desk, she forced herself to come around to the front. "Mitch just told me that we lost the contract with the state of California because they heard a rumor that we're going to sell SysVal. Tell me why you sandbagged us like this."

He flopped down in a chair, stretching his legs out and hunching his shoulders like a sullen schoolboy. "It's obvious, isn't it? It's time for us to sell. The economy is heading for a recession, and companies are going belly-up all over the Valley. We've been lucky, but I don't think we should push it. That contract with the state was fool's gold, anyway."

"And so, without consulting any of your partners, you took it upon yourself to approach the rest of the board about selling SysVal."

"What was I supposed to do?" he replied belligerently. "You'd run away, remember? How was I going to consult you?"

She wouldn't let him draw her into a fight. "What about Mitch and Yank? They didn't run away."

"Mitch and Yank don't understand things, not like you do. Listen, Susannah, this may seem like it's come out of nowhere, but everything's going to be okay. We can take all that we've learned and start a new company-something a lot better than SysVal. We've gotten too big too fast. This time, we'll keep ourselves even leaner and trimmer. Think how much we know about manufacturing. We can automate everything. Robotics is exploding. We'll save millions in labor costs. With our track record, we'll have every investor in the country standing in line to back us."

He was saying the right words, but the energy wasn't there. His eyes weren't shining with any mystic vision of the future. She sensed that he was throwing up some sort of elaborate smoke screen. Stalling for time, she walked over to the window and gazed out on a small, grassy courtyard. It was pretty, but uninspired compared to the elaborately landscaped grounds at FBT's Castle.

"What's this really about, Sam?" she asked quietly. "Are you trying to get back at me? Is that what you're doing?"

"No! God, don't you know me any better than that? What kind of a shit do you think I am?"

She didn't say anything.

He got up from the chair, looked down at the carpet and jabbed the leg of her desk with the toe of one of his custom-made Italian loafers. "Suzie, don't do this. Don't throw everything away because of what happened. I got rid of Mindy. I didn't think you'd want her around, so I fired her. And I went back to the shop and got that painting you wanted."

He was laying small gifts in front of her like a child who had misbehaved and wanted to make up with his mother. The betrayed wife in her felt a vindictive satisfaction that Mindy had been fired. The female corporate president noted the injustice and knew she would have to correct it right away.

She wasn't going to discuss their marriage, and she certainly wasn't going to discuss Mindy. "Why do you want to sell SysVal?"

"I told you. We've made a fortune, and we need to get out now. You have to listen to me, Suzie. It's all going to crash down. I can feel it. We need to get out while we can."

The old passion was back in his eyes, and it stirred a sense of apprehension within her. "You know something that you're not telling me."

"When did you get so goddamn suspicious? There aren't any hidden secrets here, Susannah. Just look at the fucking economy."

"We're not selling SysVal."

"The hell we're not. The rest of the board will go along with me. They're bean counters, Susannah. They don't like it when I get nervous. In the end, you won't have any choice. You'd better trust me on this, because if you don't, you're going to end up looking like a fool."

"I don't think so. I think you're the one who'll look like a fool."

"We went into this together, and I'm going to see to it that we go out together." He strode past her toward the door. "Don't fight me on this one, Susannah. I'm warning you. If you fight me, it'll be the last big mistake you make with this company."

At three o'clock the next afternoon, when SysVal's Board of Directors convened, Mitch, Susannah, and Yank were conspicuously absent. Sam paced the floor of the boardroom while one of his assistants scurried to locate them. The assistant returned with the news that Mitch had made an emergency trip to Boston and that Susannah and Yank were nowhere to be found. The board overruled Sam's objection and voted to postpone their meeting.

Sam stalked out into the corridor. He couldn't believe she was defying him like this, that she was being so goddamn stubborn about everything. He should have known she would freak if she ever found out he slept with other women. She didn't understand that sort of shit didn't mean anything. She didn't understand that she was the only woman he wanted to spend his life with.

When he reached his office, he pushed through the line of people waiting in the reception area to see him and told his assistants they had fifteen minutes to find out where she was. Then he shut himself in his private office. She wanted a baby. Okay, he'd tell her a baby was okay. Maybe having a kid was what he needed. Maybe it would settle him down.

He realized he was sweating. Jesus, he was scared. Everything was happening so fast. Somehow he had to convince his partners to sell SysVal. And he had to get Susannah back. Not because of the company, either. Because of him.

Now that he was seeing things a little more clearly, he realized that it wasn't all her fault he wasn't happy. Maybe most of it was his fault. But she knew how crazy he got sometimes. She should have understood that he was just going through a hard time. She knew he loved her. He needed her. And if she left him, she was going to take all his missing parts with her.

"I don't mind coming with you, of course," Yank said to Susannah as they explored the empty bedroom of a newly built, multimillion-dollar luxury condominium that came complete with indoor pool, solarium, and a spectacular view. "But I don't need a babysitter. I wish you had trusted me to make myself unavailable this afternoon."

Susannah glanced at her watch. It was four o'clock. The meeting should have broken up by now. She gave Yank an apologetic smile. "I couldn't afford to take a chance that you'd get distracted today and forget the time."

He didn't return her smile. He merely gazed at her, his expression inscrutable.

Feeling uncomfortable, she looked away. There was something so mysterious about Yank. She never knew what he was thinking. She doubted anyone did.

The realtor had left them alone so Susannah could go through the house a second time. This afternoon had seemed as good an opportunity as any to find a permanent place to live. She gazed unenthusiastically through the arched windows to the mountains beyond. "I guess this is all right."

"It seems adequate. Furnishings will add a lot, of course."

Susannah thought of the gaudy gilt and brocade interior of Yank's house, a decorating scheme favored by one of his early girlfriends.

A noise sounded below-the bang of the door being pushed open and then slammed shut. She caught her breath as she heard a pounding on the stair treads. Yank frowned.

Sam burst into the room. "I can't believe this. It's like I don't know who to trust anymore."

Susannah's control snapped. "Don't you talk to me about trust."

"You have a house, Susannah!" he exclaimed. "My house. Our house. You don't need another one."

"I don't want to talk about this now, Sam. I want you to leave."

He stalked toward her. Yank stepped forward, moving without any appearance of haste, but effectively blocking Sam before he could reach her. "You'd better leave, Sam," he said quietly. "Susannah doesn't want you here."

"Get out of my way!" Sam punched at Yank's chest, trying to push him aside. But Yank was wiry, and although he swayed to the side, he didn't budge. A vein in the side of Sam's neck began to pulse as he shouted, "I thought you were my friend. You should have been at the board meeting today. Instead, you were helping my wife leave me."

"Yank came with me because I asked him to," Susannah said. Sam's rage was embarrassing. Once again she had a sense of detachment as she studied him, a feeling that she was seeing him with newer, wiser eyes.

"I'll just bet he jumped all over himself trying to help you out," Sam retorted nastily.

Yank pressed his eyes shut and his mouth twisted with pain. "I think I'm going to have to give up on you, Sam. Susannah and I-we're both going to have to give up on you."

Sam winced and for a moment his face seemed to crumple.

"I saw a lawyer this morning," she said quietly. "Nothing you do now will make any difference." Clearing a wide berth around him, she walked out into the hallway.

"Don't do this, Susannah," he called from the doorway. "Come home with me right now."

But she wasn't going into battle with him, and she walked away.

Instead of returning to SysVal, Sam found himself driving to his mother's house. She was sunning herself in the backyard, wearing a bikini in some shiny bronze fabric that didn't look as if it had ever seen water. The headset of a Walkman was strapped over her ears, and her eyes were closed beneath a pair of sunglasses with the gold script letters A.G. glued to the bottom of one lens.

Even though he had offered to buy Angela a new house anywhere she wanted, she had refused to move out of the old neighborhood. She said she liked living here because she knew all the neighbors and her old ladies depended on her. He'd told her that she didn't have to work anymore-he had more money than he knew what to do with-but she said she liked her independence. He'd even offered to buy her a first-class salon that she could run any way she wanted, but she'd said she didn't want to work that hard.

As he reached down and shut off the Walkman, her eyes snapped open. "Hi, baby." She pushed her sunglasses on top of her head and sat up a bit. Her stomach wrinkled a little as she moved, but she still had a great body for someone who was forty-nine.

"Don't you look snazzy," she said, as she always did. "If anybody had told me when you were eighteen that you'd be running around someday in eighty-dollar neckties, I'd have told them they were crazy."

He took the webbed chair next to her, noticing as he sat that rust had formed around the screws on the arms. "Clothes aren't important."

"Try giving them up."

He stretched out his legs, looked up at the sky and closed his eyes. "Did you talk to Suzie?"

"She called me yesterday."

"She's got this stupid-ass idea that she's moving out."

"Uh-huh."

"Well?"

"You want some spaghetti?"

"So what did you tell her?"

"I didn't tell her anything. Suzie's a grown woman."

"So what did she say to you?"

"She said she's leaving you, Sammy."

He pushed himself out of the chair. "Yeah, well that's what she thinks. See, she wants a kid."

"I know. She wants a husband, too. You're getting what you deserve, kiddo. I've been trying to tell you that for a long time."

"You know, you really piss me off. You're my mother, not hers. You're always taking her side. Right from the beginning."

"I'm my own woman, Sammy. I call it like I see it."

He splayed his hand on his hip and glared at her. "Yeah? Well, you see it all wrong. She's important to me, you know. I need her."

Angela sighed and reached out to touch him. "Oh, baby. You're so hard to love."

"Databeck tendered an excellent offer, Susannah," Leland Hayward said over lunch at a pretty cafe in Ghirardelli Square. The venture capitalist was still one of SysVal's most influential board members. In addition to Hayward and the four founding partners, SysVal's board consisted of bankers and investors who had been brought in as they needed expansion capital. They were, by nature, conservative men, and as Susannah had visited privately with each one over the past four days, she had been dismayed to discover how nervous they were. Even Hay-ward, who was accustomed to taking risks, was worried.

He sprinkled Sweet'N Low into his coffee and shook his head. "You have to understand that when someone who's as much of a wildcatter as Sam starts getting cold feet and says we should sell, I have to listen."

"The company is solid," she insisted. "There's no reason to sell."

"You're behind schedule on the development of the Wildfire. You've just lost the contract with the state of California. That doesn't seem so solid to me."

"We only lost the contract because of the rumors about the sale."

"Maybe. Maybe not."

Susannah understood only too well. If she or Mitch had expressed worry over the financial state of the company, the board members would have been concerned, but not frightened. But when a swashbuckler like Sam said he wanted out, the board was thrown into a panic.

They finished their coffee and prepared to leave. As Leland rose from his chair, he frowned. "By the way, Susannah, I'm not too happy with your service people right now. They picked up my computer a few weeks ago when I was on vacation, and they haven't returned it or brought me a replacement."

Susannah pulled out the small notebook she kept in her purse and jotted a reminder to herself. SysVal policy dictated that any employee who received a complaint was responsible for following through on it. No one at SysVal-from the Chairman of the Board to the newest member of the typing pool-was exempt.

"I liked that machine," Leland went on. And then he chuckled. "Having one of those Blaze III test models made me feel like a pioneer."

Susannah looked at him curiously. "You had one of the test models?"

"Sam gave it to me. He found out I hadn't been using a computer and said I was a disgrace to the company. It took me a while to get used to it, but now I can't get along without it."

Susannah thought of her own missing computer and wondered if someone in Engineering had pulled in all thirteen of the original test models to troubleshoot them. She reassured Leland that she would have a replacement machine sent over that afternoon, and once again asked him to reconsider his position.

"I've learned to trust my instincts," he said. "And right now my instincts are telling me that SysVal is in trouble."

She returned to her office frustrated and depressed. Her secretary handed her a pile of phone messages and she flicked through them, hoping to find something from Paige. For days, she had been leaving messages with the maid at Paige's villa in Sardinia, but so far she had heard nothing.

She was still thinking about her sister the next morning when Lydia Dubeck, an eager young MBA from Harvard who was one of the company's newest directors, poked her head into her office. "It's the darndest thing, Susannah. No one in Engineering seems to know anything about a recall of those thirteen test models. There aren't any work orders, and no one has heard about any problems. I guess that's good news."

Susannah was still troubled. "Sam's assistants should have a list of all the people who have one of those computers. Have someone get hold of it and find out the status of every machine."

But when Lydia caught up with her late that afternoon, she looked tired and irritated. "I don't know what the big deal is. Sam's apparently the only one who has a list. You'd think it was some sort of state secret. None of his assistants will give it to me, and he was in one of his moods when I finally ran him down."

Susannah didn't have to ask what that meant. Lydia had obviously received one of Sam's famous tongue-lashings. She thought for a moment, and decided that it was unwise to go into battle with Sam over something that was probably trivial, especially when a much bigger fight loomed ahead. "Thanks for trying, Lydia. Forget it for now."

She spent the rest of the afternoon in meetings. When the last one broke up at six, she decided to see if Mitch was still around so she could run some new ideas about financing the Wildfire past him.

His office was more formal than any of his partners' offices. The windows were draped in a cream and maroon stripe, the chairs deep-seated and comfortable. Various civic awards hung on the walls, along with framed photos of his children.

He was deeply engrossed in a meaty-looking report lying open on his desk, and she paused for a moment to study him. Gold cuff links glimmered discreetly at his wrists. His collar button was securely fastened, his necktie neatly knotted. As he looked up at her, the lenses of his hornrimmed glasses flashed in the light of his desk lamp. For a moment she tried to reconcile this bastion of corporate respectability with the man who had soul-kissed her sister.

"You want to go get some dinner?" she asked.

"Sorry. I'm meeting Jacqueline." He quirked an eyebrow as she made a face at him. "You're welcome to come with us, Susannah. Jacqueline enjoys your company."

"Thanks, but I think I'll pass. I'm not in the mood to discuss dead philosophers tonight." She settled down in the chair across from his desk and kicked off her heels. "Are you going to marry her?"

He immediately turned stuffy. "Really, Susannah."

"Well, are you?"

The loudspeaker crackled in the hallway outside. "Attention everyone. We have a lost pig in the building. Anyone spotting a two-hundred-pound porker answering to the name of Yoda should notify security at once."

Mitch sighed and Susannah cast her eyes to the ceiling. "Oh, Lord, I hope they're kidding," she said.

"Around here you never know."

Susannah's smile died on her lips as she thought how much this company meant to her, especially now that her marriage was over. "God, I love this place. I don't want to lose it, Mitch."

He took off his glasses and slowly folded in the stems. "I don't want to lose it, either, but it's not the worst thing that could happen. If we sold SysVal, we'd all end up with more money than we could spend in six lifetimes."

Susannah had refused to think about defeat herself, and she hated the idea that Mitch had even considered it. "This isn't just about money. We've built a wonderful company, and nobody is going to take it away from us."

"Sam has a lot of support, Susannah. Don't try to kid yourself about that."

"We have support, too. You know as well as I do that most of the board members don't even like Sam."

"Maybe not. But when he starts screaming 'fire,' they certainly start thinking about running for the nearest exit."

She poked her feet back into her shoes. Not for one moment had she considered the possibility that Mitch might change sides, but now she was no longer so certain. "I'm getting the feeling that you have some sort of contingency plan in mind, and I don't like it. We're not going to lose this company."

"That's emotion speaking, not logic. We have to be ready for anything. As much as we may want to deny it, we need to face the fact that we might not win."

She jumped up from her chair. "You face the fact. You and that computer brain of yours. I'm going to be too busy trying to keep us together."

"Susannah, you're overreacting."

The fact that he was right didn't make her any more conciliatory. She had imagined Mitch fighting at her side forever. Now she realized that might not happen. If at some point Mitch decided that the battle wasn't winnable, he would regroup. And that might very well put him on the other side.

Her fingers closed tightly around the papers she was carrying. "You're either with me or you're against me, Mitch. There's no middle ground. If you're with me, don't waste my time waving yellow flags. And if you're against me-then you'd better stay the hell out of my way, because this is one fight I'm not going to lose."

He slapped down the report he had been reading and stood. "SysVal isn't life and death, Susannah. It's only a company."

"No! It's an adventure." She threw SysVal's Mission Statement in his face, speaking Sam's words from the depth of her heart. '"We have set out together on an adventure to give the world the best computer humankind can produce. We will support and stand by our products, placing quality and integrity above all else. We relish the adventure because it gives us the opportunity to put ourselves to the test of excellence.' I believe it, Mitch. I believe every word."

"Don't confuse rhetoric with real life."

"It's not rhetoric. We have to have standards. Not just as a corporation, but as human beings. Otherwise, we've wasted our lives."

She stalked out the door and down the hallway. The tight bonds of their partnership seemed to be unwinding in front of her. She found herself heading for Yank's lab. It was late, but he would probably still be there. She would only stay a few minutes so she could watch him work. Just a few minutes in Yank's presence would steady her.

Chapter 27

The SysVal town house where Susannah was staying was located at the end of a narrow road and tucked away on a hillside thick with redwood and oak. She had just carried her first cup of Saturday morning coffee out onto the small private patio to enjoy the solitude when she heard her door bell ring. Setting down the cup, she went inside to answer it. As she crossed the small kitchen on her way to the foyer, she found herself hoping it was Mitch. Sometimes he stopped by on Saturday mornings, and she needed a chance to mend her fences with him, especially after their argument last week. But when she opened the door, she found her sister standing on the other side.

"Paige!"

"Don't slobber. It's only been a couple of weeks."

Susannah pulled her sister into the small foyer and gave her a hug. "Long weeks. I missed you."

Paige hung in her arms a moment longer than necessary, then pushed herself away. "Sardinia was a bore. I flew in last night." She tossed the strap of her purse over the banister, then glanced around at the foyer and into the living room. "This place is a dump."

The town house wasn't palatial, but it was hardly a dump.

Even so, Susannah didn't argue. "Temporary housing. I can't find anything I want to buy. How did you find me?"

"I called Mitch. What's wrong with him, anyway? He sounded funny on the phone."

"He was probably in bed with Jacqueline Dane." Susannah was surprised at how sharp she sounded. "Come on into the kitchen. You can fix us some breakfast."

"Me! I'm company."

"I know, but you're a better cook than I am."

Paige grumbled the entire time she was preparing their breakfast, but Susannah noted that she still made the effort to hunt through the shelves for cinnamon to add to the French toast, and that she refused to put the bread slices on the griddle until they had soaked in the egg batter a full ten minutes.

Susannah sank her teeth into the first bite. "Ambrosia. It's almost worth putting up with your nasty temper just to taste your cooking."

Paige ate a few bites, then set down her fork. Her hair tumbled forward, spilling like rumpled silk over the shoulders of her expensive designer blouse. She looked deeply unhappy.

"What's wrong?" Susannah said, putting down her own fork.

"Nothing, really. Nothing and everything. I don't know. What happened between you and that bastard you married was awful, but those weeks in Greece… They were nice, that's all."

Paige wasn't demonstrative, and Susannah knew this was the closest she could get to a statement of affection. "You're right," she said. "They were nice." She toyed with the handle of her fork while she chose her words carefully. "Paige, all that time we were together in Greece, you played the big sister and I got to be the little sister. I loved it. But right now I need to be the big sister again for a few minutes."

"Terrific," Paige said scornfully. "This is just what I need after traveling halfway around the world."

Susannah reached out and cupped her sister's arm. "You have a gift that's in short supply these days, kid. You're a natural-born nurturer. But you keep turning your back on that gift, acting like it's not important. And I think that's why you're so unhappy. Why don't you give yourself a chance?"

"A chance to do what?" she said fiercely. "I don't have a husband or kids. Men are jerks. The ones who aren't gay are sex maniacs."

"Paige, it's 1982. Marriage isn't the only way you can fulfill yourself. Why don't you stop whining about how awful your life is and start looking around you? There are hospitals full of sick children who could use a little of your attention. There are schools that need teacher aides, community centers looking for volunteers."

"I'm one of the richest women in California, Susannah. I can't just call up the Girl Scouts and tell them I want to help sell cookies."

"I don't know why not. Money should give you freedom instead of hemming you in. Figure out for yourself what you want to do and then do it."

Before she could go on, the telephone rang. She went over to the counter to answer it.

"Hi, baby doll. It's me."

At the sound of Angela's voice, Susannah smiled. She was grateful that her estrangement from Sam hadn't marred her relationship with his mother. Angela had changed very little in the past six years. She continued to fight off her birthdays as if each one were a lethal dose of poison, and she was having a high-voltage relationship with a man nine years younger than herself who adored her.

"Sorry to bother you, honey, but I had a broken water pipe in the garage sometime last night-one of the pipes that goes to a shampoo sink. Anyway, a neighbor got the water turned off, but everything's a mess."

Susannah was puzzled. It wasn't like Angela to worry her with household emergencies. She listened as Angela detailed her problems getting a plumber.

"Is there something I can do to help?" she asked.

"I tried to get hold of Sam, but he didn't answer."

If Sam wasn't home this early on a Saturday morning, he obviously hadn't spent the night in his own bed. This time the ache was less noticeable.

Angela went on. "I just thought someone should know about it because of all those computers that are stored on the other side of the wall. I'm afraid the water might have gotten to some of them."

"What computers?"

"The ones Sam sent over a few weeks ago. Part of a new project or something. He was worried about security."

Susannah had no idea what Angela was talking about. Why would Sam be storing SysVal equipment in a garage? She reassured Angela that she would take care of it. They chatted for a few more minutes. Susannah hung up, then began punching in the number of SysVal's switchboard.

Her finger stalled before she completed the call. Something wasn't right.

"Paige, I have to run out for a while. It can't be any fun for you staying alone at Falcon Hill, and there's a perfectly good extra bedroom here. Why don't you pack a suitcase and move in with me for a few weeks?"

"You just want a free housekeeper," Paige grumbled. But Susannah could see that she was pleased with the invitation. By the time she left for Angela's, Paige had started making out a grocery list.

Angela let Susannah into the garage and left to meet a friend in the city. The garage smelled damp from the broken water pipe, but still familiar. A rush of nostalgia came over her as she remembered the hope and excitement of those early days. This part of the garage was now used only for storage. Boxes of beauty supplies took up the shelves that had once held those first SysVal computer boards. The abandoned burn-in box housed crimped rolls of old hairstyle posters. Her eyes swept from the burn-in box to the dusty workbench and then to the wall that divided the beauty shop from the rest of the garage.

Two rows of cartons marked with the Blaze logo had been stacked there. She carefully counted them. There were thirteen.

Flipping on all the lights so that she could see better, she stepped through a shallow puddle of water and made her way over to the boxes. The flaps weren't sealed. Pulling them back, she saw a silver-gray computer inside. It wasn't packed in molded Styrofoam like a new machine, but had been stored unprotected. With some effort she wrested it from the carton and set it on the floor. Although she could see that it had been used, she didn't have a list of serial numbers, and she had no way of knowing for certain if it was one of the thirteen test models or not.

Pushing up the sleeves of her sweater, she opened the next carton and continued to unpack the machines. Perspiration formed between her breasts and tendrils of hair stuck to her damp cheeks. She was breathing heavily by the time she maneuvered the eleventh computer from its box.

Her eyes swept over the case and then stopped as she found what she had been looking for-a brightly colored sticker mounted crookedly on the side of the metal housing. In hot pink letters it announced boss lady. One of her assistants had put the sticker on the machine as a joke. This was her missing computer.

She called Yank from the telephone in the beauty salon. He was awake but vague. She repeated her instructions twice, hoping he would follow them. Then she sat down in the quiet garage along with the ghosts of her past and waited.

He arrived more quickly than she had expected. Without asking any questions, he set four of the computers on the workbench, including Susannah's old machine, and turned them on. Two of the machines were completely dead, and their screens remained dark. Two of them, including her computer, responded normally.

He tilted one of the nonfunctioning machines onto its side and unscrewed the case. "Somebody's been here first," he said. "The board is missing."

Susannah peered inside and saw that the printed circuit board that held many of the computer's components had been removed.

Yank moved the two machines that were still working over to the old burn-in box and left them running. Then he turned his attention to the computers on the floor. "Let's see what we've got here. One by one."

By the time they were finished, they discovered six dead machines and seven that still worked. Two of the dead machines still contained their circuit boards. Yank removed them and began testing them.

She pulled up one of the old metal stools and watched him, taking care not to disturb his concentration, even though she itched to question him. Eventually her back began to ache. Slipping off the stool, she went into the Pretty Please Salon, where she made a pot of coffee.

She was walking back into the garage with two steaming mugs in her hand when a banging noise erupted from one of the working computers that had been plugged into the burn-in box. Startled, she moved closer, only to realize that the awful noise was coming from her old machine. It sounded as if the disk drive head was slamming back and forth. Coffee splashed over the side of the mug and spilled on the back of her hand as the noise grew worse. Instead of behaving like a sweetly engineered piece of high-tech equipment, her beautiful little Blaze was banging away like an old Model T.

Abruptly, the machine grew quiet and the screen went dark. A tiny wisp of smoke curled from the case.

"Interesting," Yank murmured, with typical understatement.

"Interesting? My God, Yank, what happened?"

"It died," he said.

She wanted to scream at him to be more specific, but she knew it wouldn't do any good.

He pulled her old machine from the burn-in box and carried it to the workbench. As he tilted it onto its side, he said, "Why don't you go on? This is going to take a while."

She hesitated, then decided she would go crazy just standing around watching Yank and waiting for him to say something. When Yank knew what was wrong, he would tell her. Until then, not even the threat of torture could pull an opinion from him.

She picked up her purse. "Work on this by yourself, Yank. When you find out what's happening, report to me directly. Don't talk to Sam. And don't talk to Mitch, either." She felt guilty for cutting Mitch out, but she wanted a little time to absorb the facts first before she told him what was happening.

He studied her closely, but didn't comment.

She had an appointment with her attorney that afternoon to discuss the divorce. Paige went with her, and afterward they did some shopping together. Although Susannah enjoyed her time with her sister, her mind was back in the Gamble garage trying to sift through what she had seen.

Only one moment of tension marred their afternoon together. As they were driving back to the town house, Susannah, in an attempt to encourage her sister to look for organizations where she could be useful, mentioned some of the local charities SysVal had involved itself with over the past few years. Perhaps it was because she was so worried about what she had discovered in the garage that she didn't guard her tongue carefully enough.

"I don't know whether or not you're aware of it, Paige, but ever since Father died, FBT has been doing a lousy job of getting money into the community. It's gotten even worse lately. Cal's great on high-profile grants-museums, symphonies-but he won't involve the company with drug programs, alcoholism, the homeless-anything that's down and dirty."

Paige's expression grew distant. "I won't talk about anything that has to do with Cal. He's the one subject that's off limits between us. There aren't very many people on this planet I owe any loyalty to, but Cal stood by me when I didn't have anyone else, and he's one of them."

Susannah didn't say anything more.

When they got back to the town house, Susannah found a message from Yank asking her to come to the garage at seven that evening. Paige had already made plans for dinner with a friend. Susannah did some chores around the town house and then drove to Angela's.

The lights were on in the garage when she got there. As she let herself in, she saw that Yank was still hunched over the workbench, his shirt pulled tight across his back. For a fraction of a moment the years flew away and she was a runaway bride again, watching a skinny egghead genius at work. But then Yank turned toward her and the illusion slipped away. The face of the man before her was strong and arresting, full of character and an almost unearthly sweetness. This man was self-confident in the deepest, most private way.

"The others will be here soon," he said quietly.

She stopped in her tracks. "Others?"

"We're partners, Susannah. We have to solve this together."

She experienced a disturbing combination of anger and guilt. "I gave you a direct order, and you chose to disregard it."

"Yes."

"I told you not to talk to anyone until you'd talked to me."

"It was an improper order, Susannah. Mitch should be here soon. I didn't call Sam, however, until just a few minutes ago. It will take him a while to get here, so the three of us will have a little time to talk first."

Headlights flashed through the side window as another car pulled in. Moments later Mitch stalked through the door. "What's this about?" he asked abruptly.

"We have a problem, I'm afraid," Yank replied.

Mitch's eyes roamed the garage, taking in the computers, the workbench, and coming to rest on her. She hoped he didn't guess that he was here at Yank's invitation, not her own.

Yank cleared his throat and began to speak. "We produced thirteen test models of the Blaze HI because Sam wanted the computer in use for at least four months before it went on the market."

She could almost see Mitch mentally counting the machines scattered around the garage. "I remember. They've performed like champions. A few of the employees had them. Some of our customers. A couple went to elementary schools."

"Susannah had one in her office," Yank continued, "but it disappeared while she was in Greece. When she tried to find it, she discovered that hers wasn't the only one missing."

"Why didn't you tell me about this?" Mitch asked.

"In light of our other problems, I didn't think it was that important."

"Our test models disappear, and you don't think it's important?"

"It wasn't like that." She didn't like the way he was putting her on the defensive, so she recited the sequence of events coldly.

After she told of her phone call from Angela, Yank took over and described what he had found. He mentioned the missing circuit boards on some of the machines and recounted the failure he and Susannah had witnessed in her computer. "It was an amazing piece of luck for me to actually be able to watch Susannah's machine fail. If that hadn't happened, it would have taken me much longer to understand the problem. All of the trouble has its source in one of the ROM chips."

ROM-standing for "read only memory"-was a custom microchip containing instructions that allowed the computer to perform automatically a specific set of tasks. Susannah listened carefully as Yank detailed how he had pinpointed the source of the trouble.

While Mitch questioned him more closely, Susannah mentally reconstructed the process of making a ROM chip. First the SysVal engineers decided what specific jobs the chip was required to perform. Then they wrote a list of instructions for those tasks in machine language. When the instructions were complete, the listing was sent to a ROM chip manufacturing firm where the chip was produced. For years, SysVal had used an Oakland-based firm named Dayle-Wells. The firm was efficient, reliable, and stood by its work.

"We've had chip failures before," Mitch said, when he was finally satisfied with Yank's explanation. "It's not something we take lightly, but it certainly doesn't justify all this secrecy."

Susannah had been thinking the same thing. Each tiny Sen-Sen-sized microchip was housed in a rectangular casing about an inch long. The casing had always reminded her of a caterpillar because it had a series of pointed legs at the bottom that fit into minuscule slots on the computer board. It was a relatively simple matter to unplug a faulty chip and plug in a good one.

Once again Mitch turned his attention to Susannah. "I assume Sam is behind this. Do you think this is related to his rush to sell the company?"

"I can't imagine what the link is, but it's difficult for me to believe this is coincidental."

Mitch gestured toward the computers. "But why all the subterfuge? Just because one batch of chips fails doesn't mean that they're all bad. It's a problem, but it's not unsolvable."

"Remember that we're dealing with a ROM chip that contains software," Yank said, "and the possibility that I find alarming-"

But whatever Yank was about to say was cut short as Sam slammed into the garage. He looked wild, like a man on the brink of losing control. "Is it coincidence that I'm the last person here, or did my invitation have a different time printed on it from everyone else's?"

Mitch's features hardened. "You're lucky you got an invitation at all."

Sam turned on Susannah. For a moment, she almost thought he would strike her. Mitch must have thought so, too, because he took a step forward.

"This is your fault," Sam shouted. "You pick away and pick away without the slightest goddamn idea of what you're doing-always second-guessing me, thinking you know better."

"That's enough," Mitch interrupted. "Why don't you just cut through all the crap and tell us what's going on here."

Sam looked around at the empty cartons and the machines scattered everywhere. The tendons of his neck were stretched taut, his eyebrows drawn so close together they looked like a single line. "You should have done it my way. Ail of you should have trusted me. I was willing to take the responsibility. You should have let me do it. Why didn't you let me do it?"

"Because it's not your company," Susannah retorted.

His arm slashed the air. "It's not going to be yours, either, for very long because it's going up in smoke."

"A chip failure is hardly the end of the world," she countered.

"Oh, no? How many Blaze III's have we shipped since we introduced the machine?"

"Nearly two hundred thousand. But just because we have a bad part in the test models doesn't mean the ROM chip in every HI we've manufactured is bad."

"Wrong again," Sam sneered.

"How can you know that?" she asked. "You can't possibly-"

"They're all bad. Every III we've shipped is going to fail after one thousand hours of use. Statistically, that'll average out to about a year-less time under office use, more time under home use."

"One year!" She caught her breath while Mitch swore softly. She wanted to reject Sam's conclusion, but she couldn't. He would never have predicted something this dire if he weren't absolutely certain.

She tried to sort through the facts logically. They'd faced recalls before, but never one this massive. She began thinking aloud, hoping to reassure herself as she reassured them. "It'll be a huge headache, but we can deal with it. Dayle-Wells is a reliable firm. If they've made a bad chip, they'll take financial responsibility for it." In her mind, she was already envisioning the logistics of this kind of recall. Once the outer case was opened, the actual replacement of the ROM chip was a relatively minor procedure. The old one was simply unplugged from its slots and a new one inserted. But the sheer number of machines involved made the recall complex, and it had to be done before the faulty chip physically destroyed the computer by smashing the disk drive head.

"Little Miss Pollyanna," Sam scoffed. "Always looking for the bright side. Well, babe, this time there isn't one. Dayle-Wells isn't responsible for the bad chip. We are."

Mitch's head shot up. Susannah felt as if a cold fist had clutched her spine.

Sam began to pace. "The ROM listing Dayle-Wells received from us was buggy."

Mitch spun around. "That's impossible. We have a dozen safeguards built in to keep that sort of thing from happening."

"Weil, it happened this time. Five lines-just five lousy lines of bum code out of a hundred-but those five lines programmed a time bomb into the machines. Every Blaze III we've shipped will work for exactly one thousand hours, and then it will fail. The disk drive slams its head back and forth. It destroys itself and burns out the power supply. After that-nothing." His voice had a harsh, raspy edge. "One thousand hours from the date the computer is first turned on, every one of those III's is going down."

Yank spoke thoughtfully. "The first of those failures will be showing up any day now, if they haven't already. Others are going to take years."

Dates and numbers spun like a roulette wheel in Susannah's head. They had charts that were amazingly accurate at predicting computer-use time. At best, they had only a few months to prepare. Once again, she began to think aloud. "We can handle the recall. It'll be expensive-it'll definitely hurt-but it won't kill the company."

"Susannah's right," Mitch said. "We can set up some sort of centralized system. Move a few hundred of our people into temporary service positions and send them out into the field. Thank God it's just one chip. We take out the old one, plug in the new one. We can do it."

Sam hunched his shoulders and turned his back to them.

Yank's voice was strained. "No. No, I'm afraid we can't. Come here and take a look."

With a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach, Susannah got up from the arm of the couch and walked to the workbench. Mitch fell into step beside her. Sam stayed where he was with his back turned away from them. Whatever Yank was about to show them, Sam had already seen.

Susannah gazed down into the orderly, internal world of the Blaze III. Its microchips were laid out like rows of miniature houses on the neat little village streets of the green printed circuit board. With the tip of a pair of long-nosed pliers, Yank singled out one microchip. Susannah leaned forward to take a look.

"This is the bad chip," Yank said. "Look. It's soldered. The chip is permanently soldered to the board." He paused a moment, giving his words time to sink in. "We can't do a simple little chip swap. This particular part was designed to be permanent. That means we have to replace the whole circuit board on every Blaze HI we've ever made."

Susannah's bones seemed to have lost the ability to support her. She felt as if she had just been punched in the belly. They couldn't afford to replace the circuit board on every machine they had manufactured. The cost would be prohibitive.

They didn't look at each other. Susannah stared down at the circuit board, Mitch at the litter of tools on the workbench. Silence ticked away like a doomsday clock. All of them knew that Yank had just pronounced their death sentence.

Chapter 28

The four of them sat silently around Angela's kitchen table. Mitch held his reading glasses between his fingers and folded one stem in and out. Sam rolled an empty can of Coke between his open palms. Susannah rubbed her right temple with the pad of her thumb. She had just done the unthinkable. She had made the phone call that shut down the Blaze HI assembly line.

Yank stared off into space. He had taken himself to a place so far away he might not have been with them at all.

Mitch finally spoke. "I can't even conceive of how many hundreds of millions this is going to cost."

No one said anything. Even a giant company like IBM or FBT would have difficulty recovering from this sort of financial catastrophe, and a young company like SysVal simply didn't stand a chance.

Susannah's hand curled into a fist. If only some of the III's had been bad, they could have handled it, but the fact that the machines they had shipped last week, yesterday, the ones that had come off the line that very morning-the fact that all of them were bad-made the situation so hopeless her mind could barely absorb it.

Yank slowly re-entered their world. "Who wrote the bad code?"

The Coke can slapped between Sam's palms. "I don't know for sure. My guess is that it was one of the engineers who was working on the instructions for the chip. A guy named Ed Fiella. He only worked for us about six months, then he quit."

"Did you try to find him?"

"Yeah, but he disappeared, so I let it go. I couldn't ask too many questions or people would have been able to figure out that something was wrong."

"No one else knows about this?" Mitch asked sharply.

Sam shook his head. "Until today, I was the only one who had all the pieces."

Susannah rubbed the pulse in her temple. "How could you keep something like this secret?"

"I used a couple of independent engineers in Boston to run a few tests, some guys in Atlanta-people who weren't likely to bump into each other while they were out jogging. And I didn't let any of them know this involved anything more than a couple of prototypes."

Yank looked searchingly at Sam. "You realize that these failures aren't accidental. Everything happens too specifically. The machine works for a thousand hours and then it stops. And when it fails, it does it spectacularly. All that noise-the disk drive banging. That's too bizarre to be accidental."

"You're saying someone-this Fiella, probably-deliberately planted a bug in the ROM chip?" Susannah asked.

Sam nodded. "Just five lines of code, but that's all it took."

"We have so many checks and balances built into our procedures," she said. "A test team, code reviews among the engineers. How could this happen?"

"Maybe Fiella somehow managed to switch the listings at the last minute." Sam walked to the refrigerator and pulled out another Coke. "You know, I'm almost glad you found out. I was getting tired of having all of you look at me like I was Benedict Arnold or somebody."

Mitch slipped his glasses back on. "This is why you started pressuring the board to sell the company."

"If Databeck buys SysVal," Sam said, "the board swap is their problem. We're out clean and we have the money in our pockets to start a new company. Databeck is a big conglomerate. The loss will hurt them, but they can stand it."

"There are laws against that kind of thing," Susannah said wearily. "Once those machines start to die, they'll sue us for fraud."

Sam slammed his unopened Coke can down on the counter. "No they won't. That's the beauty. It'll be months before we see anything more than a few isolated failures, and I haven't left any loose ends. They couldn't even come close to proving that we had any previous knowledge of the defect."

Susannah dropped her eyes to the tabletop. "So we dump the company on them, take the money, and run."

"Something like that," Sam replied with a shrug.

She looked up from the table and stared him straight in the eye. "That's shit, Sam. That's really shit."

He gave her the black scowl he always used whenever she uttered a vulgarity. She looked away in disgust.

Mitch's tone was cool and impersonal. "We at least need to discuss the possibility of selling out to Databeck."

Susannah felt a prickling along the back of her neck, and she turned toward him angrily. "The only way Databeck will buy SysVal is if we don't tell them about the bug."

"They have a lot more resources than we do," he said calmly. "There's a slim possibility that they could save SysVal. We already know that we can't."

Her skin felt cold. Mitch was going to betray her, too. Her friend had become a stranger. She thought she knew him so well, but she hadn't known him at all. Feeling as if she had just lost something precious, she turned toward Yank. When she spoke, her voice trembled. "Yank, what do you think?"

He returned to her from a very distant place. His eyes met hers and his expression was deeply troubled. For a moment he did nothing, and then he gently, almost accidentally, brushed the tips of her fingers with his own. They tingled slightly, as if she had been touched by a greater power. "I'm sorry, Susannah," he said softly. "I'm still processing the information. I'm sorry, but I'm not ready to offer an opinion yet."

"I see."

"I'm not offering an opinion, either," Mitch said firmly. "I'm merely pointing out that we need to discuss all the options."

She didn't believe him. Mitch was a black-ink man, a homebred, bottom-line capitalist. They could discuss all the options in the world, but in her heart of hearts, she was certain he would eventually side with Sam.

Sam began to pummel them with facts and figures. Mitch grabbed one of Angela's scratch pads and took copious notes, filling up one page and then quickly flipping to the next.

Susannah listened and said nothing.

Eventually her silence grew oppressive to Sam. He planted the flat of his hand on the table and leaned down. "We've already seen what happens when we splinter, Susannah. For chrissake, we have to work together on this as partners. We have to speak with one single voice."

"And I'll bet you think that voice should be yours," she snapped.

"That's crap, Susannah. Why don't you stop taking potshots for a while and start acting like a team player?"

"All right." She stood up and walked over to the kitchen counter. "All right, I'll be a team player. I'll reduce all this discussion to one simple question-the only question. Are we going to tell Databeck about the bug or not?"

Mitch looked down at his notepad and drew the outlines of a box. He traced the border over and over again with his pen.

As always, Sam declared a spade a spade. "Databeck would snatch that offer back in a second if they knew about these machines. Unless we keep quiet, there isn't any offer."

"Then that makes our decision simple, doesn't it? Are we liars or aren't we?"

Mitch slammed down his pen. "Susannah, I have to tell you that I resent your condescending tone. You don't have any special pipeline to heaven."

"We had a mission," she said, her voice catching on the last word. "We set out on an adventure together, and we've always been true to it. We didn't lie. We didn't cheat or steal or take shortcuts. And we made money beyond our wildest dreams. But making money was never what the adventure was about. It was only part of it. The adventure was about pushing ourselves and finding our own excellence."

Mitch stood up. "Those are wonderful words, but we're trying to decide the future of thousands of people here."

"They're not just words!" she exclaimed, her heart pumping in her chest, as she tried desperately to make them understand. "We've been put to the test."

Mitch made a dismissive sound and scowled.

"People are put to the test everyday," she declared. "Just not as dramatically as it's happened to us. A clerk puts too much change in your hands. Do you give it back? A friend tells a racist joke. Do you laugh? Are you going to cheat on your taxes? Water down the liquor? When does a person take a stand? When do we say, 'Stop! That's enough! This is what I believe in, and I'll stand by it until I die.'"

The corners of Sam's mouth twisted sardonically. "Don't you love this? Listen to the rich girl talk. Only someone who has never been poor could be so morally pure."

The muscles in the back of her neck ached with tension and her palms were damp as she pleaded with them to understand. "Don't you see? We've slammed right up against the morality of our own lives."

"This is business," Mitch said. "We're merely discussing a business deal."

"No," she retorted. "It's a lot more than that."

He gazed at her with a combination of pain and wonder. "You want us to hang on even if those beliefs are going to take us on a death ride?"

"Yes. Yes, I do." She walked closer to him, until only the corner of the table separated them. "Ever since I was born, people have been telling me what the rules of life are. My grandmother, my father." She gazed over at the man who was still her husband. "And you, Sam. You, most of all. But none of those definitions ever seemed quite right to me. Now-today-right at this moment-I know exactly who I am. I know what I believe in. And I believe in our mission. I've always believed in it. Our mission statement isn't just what SysVal is about. It's what life is about. Quality, excellence, honesty, taking pride in what we do no matter what that might be, and standing by it. That's what makes life good."

Sam's face had grown rigid and Mitch looked shaken. She turned toward Yank so she could judge his reaction, and saw that his expression was as blank as a sheet of white paper. While she had been spilling out her soul, he had been in a world of his own, not paying the slightest bit of attention.

Sick at heart, she moved away. The edge of the counter dug into the top of her hip as she sagged against it. They were going to end the adventure. She could sense it. Their brave and daring adventure was going to be transformed into something loathsome and unclean. She wanted to hurt them for what they were doing, and the only way she could hurt them was to make them speak the truth aloud about themselves.

"I'm calling for a vote." Her voice was hollow. "Are we going to tell Databeck the truth or not?"

"A vote between the four of us means nothing," Mitch said. "It's obvious that we're going to be splintered."

"No! I want a vote. I'm putting all of us to the test. Right now. Right this moment. We've slammed against the wall, and each one of us has to take a stand. We have to declare what we believe in."

Mitch reached out toward her. The gesture was awkward, almost as if he thought he could stop her flow of words with his hand. She moved past his reach, determined to see this through to the end.

"Yank, how do you vote? Do we tell Databeck the truth about the machines or not?"

Yank blinked and looked faintly befuddled. "Well, of course we tell them. It would be dishonest not to."

She stared at him and absorbed his absolute certainty. At that moment, comprehension swept over her, an awareness so new and yet so old she couldn't believe that she hadn't understood it long go. The vision of excellence and integrity that Sam carried like an evangelist into the world had come from Yank. Sam had merely found the words to define everything that Yank believed in.

She gave Yank a shaky smile and looked at her husband.

As she stared into his eyes, one part of her still yearned to reach out to him, but she understood with absolute certainty that was no longer possible. "Sam? Please, Sam."

"Sometimes the end justifies the means," he muttered.

"What about our mission? Please," she begged him. "Think about our mission. Think about what it means."

"Too many people depend on us," he said flatly. "Too much money is involved. I vote no."

Some precious spark of optimism, a naive belief in the invincibility of the human spirit, died within her. Her throat felt tight and swollen as she turned to Mitch and uttered his name.

His face was pale, his words clipped. "This is ridiculous, Susannah. Completely meaningless. There are complexities here, subtleties that need to be examined and discussed."

All the confused emotions she felt for him were choking her. "I'm putting you to the test, Mitch," she whispered. "Do we tell them or not?"

He dropped his head. Stared down at the floor. As she saw the stoop to those broad shoulders she had so often leaned upon, she was overcome with a sense of her own arrogance. Who was she to hold Mitch up to judgment? He was a good man. She had no right to do this to him.

He spoke, his voice low-pitched and sad. "Yes. Yes, we tell them the truth."

A rush went through her-hot and cold at the same time, the birth of something new and strange.

Sam slumped against the wall. His shoulders hunched forward, his head sagged. Everything about him spoke defeat. She walked over to him, her sneakers making soft little squeaks on the floor, and this time she touched him, the lightest brush of her fingers against his hand. "We have a few months," she whispered. "Help us make a miracle."

"No," he said belligerently. "No, there aren't going to be any miracles."

She laced her fingers through his and squeezed them, trying to pass her strength to him as he had once passed it to her. "You can find one if you want to. You can do anything. I believe it, Sam. I've always believed it."

"You're a fool. A stupid, self-destructive fool." He dropped her hand and gazed at her with bleak angry eyes. "You'll have my letter of resignation on your desk Monday morning."

A murmur of protest slipped through her lips.

"I'm quitting," he said. "The terms of our partnership agreement give the three of you sixty days to buy me out. I'm going to hold you to it."

She wanted to be angry with him, but instead she experienced a splintering sensation of separation. Lifting her hand, she cupped the cheek of the man she had once loved so well and so unwisely. "Don't do it, Sam. Don't walk away from us. The adventure isn't over. Stay and fight with us."

But no sparks flashed in those deep dark eyes. Something essential had left him. He stood before her-a visionary with no vision, a missionary who had lost his faith. Gently, he removed her hand from his cheek. Then he turned on his heel and left them alone.

Chapter 29

Susannah was cold with fear. She couldn't imagine SysVal without Sam. He was SysVal. He was the energy that propelled them, the force that guided them. Yank was gathering up his tools, and Mitch absentmindedly fingered his car key. She couldn't stand to have them leave her. "Come back to my house. I filled the freezer yesterday. We can find something to eat."

Apparently they were no more anxious than she to be alone, because they immediately agreed to her suggestion.

They drove separately. Mitch and Yank parked in front, while Susannah drove into the single-car garage. As she came in through the kitchen, she heard Paige's throaty laughter in the foyer.

"Well, well, well. If this isn't my lucky day. Tell me. Have you boys ever considered a sexual threesome?"

Susannah quickly made her way toward the foyer. She heard Mitch give a chuckle that sounded thin at the edges. "Sorry, cupcake, I only work solo."

"It figures. I'll bet you leave your socks on, too."

Susannah arrived in time to see Paige sauntering over to Yank. "Feeling left out, slugger?" She began to move closer, only to have him shoot out his hand and grasp hers, giving it a solid shake that effectively kept her at arm's length.

"It's good to see you again, Paige."

Paige's presence proved a welcome distraction. She picked up their somber mood, but she didn't ask any questions. Herding them into the kitchen, she began putting together a platter of cold cuts and making sandwiches.

Paige's position as a major FBT stockholder prevented them from discussing the crisis that was uppermost in their minds, but all of them seemed to welcome the respite. The next day would be soon enough for them to pick over the bones and see what they could salvage.

Yank was quiet and distracted throughout the meal. In contrast, Mitch teased and bantered with Paige as if he hadn't a care in the world. Once again Susannah wondered what it was about her sister that produced such a transformation in her stodgy partner.

Over scoops of vanilla ice cream smothered with homemade butterscotch syrup, Paige shifted her attention to Yank. She gave him a mischievous smile. "Do you know why female pygmies don't like to wear tampons?"

"Oh, Lord," Susannah groaned, losing interest in her ice cream.

Paige waved her to be quiet while Yank appeared to think over the answer. When nothing was forthcoming, she leaned toward him. "They trip on the strings."

Mitch chuckled. Yank's forehead wrinkled as if he were trying to sort out the physics of the whole thing.

"Paige, that's gross," Susannah protested.

The three of them gave her varying looks of disapproval, until she felt like an old maid schoolteacher with a prim mouth and chin whiskers. Slapping down her napkin, she got up from the table. "You people can party all night if you want to, but I'm going to bed. There's a cleaning lady coming in the morning, so leave the dishes."

Mitch stood up. "It's getting late. I think I'd better be getting to bed, too."

Paige lifted one eyebrow mischievously. "Why not climb in with Susannah? Now there's a combination of live-wire personalities guaranteed to set the sheets on fire. I'll bet the two of you could bring up the temperature of a bedroom-oh, maybe one and a half degrees."

"Paige, shut up, why don't you?" She scowled at her sister and escorted Mitch to the door. Even though she knew it was silly, Paige's taunt had made her self-conscious. "In my office at eight on Monday, okay?"

He nodded and deposited a chaste kiss on her forehead. "You take care, hear? We'll work things out."

She shut the door behind him and walked upstairs to her bedroom. If only it were that easy.

In the kitchen below, Paige made a great show out of clearing the table. With far more force than was necessary, she snatched the dessert bowl out from under Yank.

He gently clasped her wrist. "You were rude to your sister."

"I'm always rude to Susannah. She wouldn't recognize me if I turned nice."

He maintained his grasp on her wrist. To punish him, she deliberately dropped down into his lap, where she wedged herself between the edge of the table and his thin, wiry body. "How's the celibacy trip going, lover boy? Ready to break your fast yet?" She wiggled the tip of her fingernail in between two of the buttons on his shirt and lightly scratched his bare skin.

He removed her hand.

She sighed dramatically and extracted herself from his lap. "Whenever I'm around you, I feel like Mary Magdalene trying to tempt Jesus."

"It's not the right time, Paige."

"And you're not the right man." She had intended to say the words lightly, but they came out with a sharp, vicious edge. She tried to cover up with a laugh, but it rang hollow.

He came up behind her as she walked over to the sink. "Please don't worry."

"Who me? Not a chance."

"Everything's quite difficult now. We have a crisis."

"Not my problem, slick. And by the way, our deal is off as of right now."

"That's not a good idea."

"Stick it, okay? I'm serving notice. Before the month is over, I'm going to tumble your good-looking buddy into a big double bed and screw his brains off."

He stood absolutely still. "You want to go to bed with Mitch?"

"Wouldn't any woman in her right mind?"

She waited for some reaction, prayed that he would yell at her or shake her or tell her he'd lock her in a room before he'd see her go back on the promise she'd made. Instead, he regarded her with great seriousness. And then to her astonishment, he leaned back in his chair and smiled in the deeply satisfied manner of a man who has the world under his absolute control.

"As long as it's Mitch, it's all right."

She wanted to slap his geeky, nearsighted face. He might just as well have stabbed a fingernail file right through the center of her heart. At that moment, she hated him, and so she gave him her bitchiest cat's smile. "Wanna watch?"

For a moment he looked so thoughtful that she wondered if he was actually considering the idea, but then he patted her arm and, as he got up to leave, told her she needed a good rest.

That night as she climbed into the guest-room bed, she heard the echo of the devil's laughter.

I can't get no…

I can't get no…

Sam's resignation lay on Susannah's desk when she arrived at work Monday morning. She stared down at it, unwilling to touch it with her fingers. The neat black and white letters swam in front of her eyes. She pushed the paper away and covered it with a folder. For now, at least, she would pretend that it didn't exist.

She managed to postpone the board meeting for another week while she brought in her key security people to begin tracing Edward Fiella, the engineer Sam suspected of being responsible for the bad code. Stressing the need for secrecy until they made a public announcement about the failures, she also had checks run on every employee at both SysVal and Dayle-Wells who had had any contact with the faulty ROM chip.

She spent the weekend preparing for the board meeting she had called for the following Monday. In hopes that bad news might be received better if it came in a brightly colored package, she dressed that morning in a hot pink suit draped at the neck with a boldly patterned Matisse scarf she had bought in the gift shop at San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art.

Mitch met her as she was walking toward the boardroom and fell into step beside her. "I just talked to Yank. Sam gave him his proxy."

Susannah didn't know what to say. Although she was glad that one of them had the proxy, she wished Sam had chosen Mitch. She would have trusted Yank with her life, but he was definitely a wild card when it came to a roll call. The men took their seats, and Susannah broke the news to them as calmly as possible. She might as well have detonated an atomic bomb in the middle of the conference table.

Leland Hayward's complexion turned gray, and he jumped up from his chair. "This is outrageous! How could something like this happen?"

"My investors are going to be wiped out," cried another board member as he fumbled in his suit pocket for a container of nitroglycerin pills. "What am I supposed to say to them?"

Mitch tried to calm the outbursts that had erupted around the table. "We have several months. Susannah and I remain hopeful that we can find at least a partial solution to our difficulty."

"Difficulty! This isn't a difficulty! It's a goddamn disaster."

They raged on, and Susannah made no effort to quiet them. For many of these board members, their jobs rode on the wisdom of their investment decisions, and the dramatic failure of SysVal would mark the end of their careers. They subtly let it be known that the partners should have kept the news of the computer failures to themselves and let the sale to Databeck go through.

"That's not what this company stands for," Susannah said. "You knew that about us from the beginning."

"Sam was going to let the sale go through," Hayward said in an accusatory voice. "Why didn't you let him do it? The board couldn't have been held responsible because he hadn't informed us. And where is Sam? Why isn't he here?"

She had dodged their previous questions about Sam's absence, but she could do it no longer, and she informed them of his resignation.

The absolute silence that fell over the table was worse than the men's anger. The news seemed to extinguish any dim hope they might have cherished of finding a way out of their disaster. The men didn't like Sam, but they believed in him.

The same emotion of despair had gripped her when she had seen Sam's letter of resignation lying on her desk, but something about their hangdog expressions sparked her anger. Sam wasn't superhuman. He didn't possess any special powers to save the company. There were other bright, inventive minds at SysVal, and one of those minds was her own.

Without clearly thinking through what she had to say, she rose from her chair and faced the board members squarely. "From the beginning, all of you knew that the SysVal adventure was one of high risk. But you were eager to go on that adventure as long as you could delude yourself into believing that the four founding partners were keeping the path safe for you. You were making so much money that it served you well to delude yourself. And so you told yourselves lies about us."

"What are you talking about?" Leland snapped. "What lies?"

"The lies that kept you comfortable so you could enjoy the fortunes you were making," she said angrily. "The lies about who we were. For all the faith you have in Sam's mystical abilities to solve any crisis, he's always frightened you. You didn't like that fear, and so in your minds you tried to overcome it by mentally transforming Mitch and Yank and myself into safe, conservative business partners who could balance out Sam's unpredictability. You didn't look at the three of us individually, only as we related to Sam. His arrogance disturbed you, so you found solace in my respectability. His inexperience terrified you, so you concentrated on Mitch's experience. When his flair for theatrics embarrassed you, you took comfort in Yank's solid silences. Always, it was Sam you turned to, Sam you believed in, and Sam you feared. You ignored the stories that I had run away from my wedding on the back of a motorcycle. You passed over any doubts you might have had about the stability of a man with Mitch's background throwing it all away to take up with three kids working out of a garage. You ignored Yank's radical genius and convinced yourself he was merely eccentric. Sam was the wildcatter. Sam was the swashbuckler. From the very beginning, you never understood that all four of us were the same. You never admitted to yourself that all four of us were renegades."

The board members were stunned by the passion of her words. Mitch leaned back in his chair and began to applaud, a lone set of hands clapping in the quiet room. Yank looked down at the notepad in front of him, a vague, satisfied smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"The adventure is not over, gentlemen," she said quietly. "We don't promise you that we can save this company. But we do promise you that no one-not Sam Gamble, not God Himself-has a better chance of saving SysVal than the three of us."

The meeting adjourned in a somber mood. As the members filed out of the room, Mitch came over to her and squeezed her shoulder. "Nice going, Hot Shot. What do we do now?"

"Now we get to work," she said.

SysVal teemed with the upheaval. Sam Gamble had disappeared, the Blaze III assembly line was shut down while a new ROM chip was being produced, and-incredibly-all work on the Wildfire project had been suspended. Everyone knew that something calamitous had happened, but no one was certain exactly what. The loudspeaker system was ominously silent.

Susannah and Mitch immediately went on the attack. To keep the public's confidence high in the Blaze HI so that customers would continue to buy new machines, they had to move boldly. They drafted a series of newspaper ads in which they openly admitted that they had a problem with the old machines and assured their customers that a recall would be handled in a timely fashion. Before they could run the ads, however, they had to be honest with their employees.

Two days after the board meeting, Susannah appeared on SysVal's closed-circuit television system and told their employees exactly what had happened. Looking directly into the camera lens, she affirmed SysVal's intention to stand behind its product. Then came the most difficult part-announcing salary and hiring freezes and acknowledging that layoffs were inevitable. Speaking from the depths of her heart, she reminded them of SysVal's heritage and the absolute necessity of standing behind their product.

"This is a company that has always thrived on turmoil," she concluded, addressing the single camera in the small, high-tech studio. "Turmoil brings pain, but it also brings growth. Instead of complaining about our fate, let us welcome this crisis as an opportunity to dazzle the world. If we face this test valiantly, we will have taken another giant step along the continuing path of the SysVal adventure."

As soon as she had finished, the studio telephone rang. Her assistant announced that Mitch was on the line.

"Good speech," he said when she took the receiver. "Life's strange, isn't it? You sound more like Sam all the time."

She tightened her grip on the telephone receiver. "Sam is part of all of us. I just hope we got the best part of him."

The expression on Sam's face when she had last seen him continued to haunt her. She had tried to call him several times, but there was never an answer and no one knew where he was. Angela had gone over to the house, but it was empty and she was clearly worried. That night, as Susannah was getting ready to pull out onto El Camino, she decided to investigate for herself. Her marriage was over, but she couldn't turn off six years of caring.

The house smelled stale as she let herself inside. The bronze lamps shaped like Egyptian torches that sat in the foyer were dark, the living room cold and vaguely malevolent, with its sharply angled ceiling. Once again she realized how much she hated the harsh planes and unyielding materials of this building.

The telephone let out a shrill ring and she jumped. It rang again and again, scraping at her nerves. She stood motionless until it stopped and the house was once again quiet, then she moved through the empty rooms.

The heat pump clicked on. As she entered the vaulted hallway that led to the back of the house, she saw a wedge of weak gray light lying across the black granite floor. She walked closer and pushed on the partially opened door.

Sam lay on top of the rumpled bedcovers. He was unshaven, his chest was bare, and his jeans were open in a vee at the waist. One elbow was crooked behind his head. His other arm lay listlessly at his side while he stared up at the ceiling with hollow eyes.

On the side of the bed, a young woman sat in bra and panties filing a fingernail with an emery board. She was dark-haired and beautiful, with full breasts and long thin legs. She saw Susannah before Sam did. As she jumped up from the edge of the bed, her emery board hung in midair like a conductor's baton. Sam's gaze traveled from the ceiling to Susannah. He didn't show a flicker of expression.

She breathed in the thick, stale scent of marijuana and sex. Her stomach curled. A layer of dust covered the black lacquered furniture. The blinds were shut tight against the outside world. On the floor around the bed abandoned food cartons were mixed with dirty dishes. The painting Sam had bought her leaned with its face against the wall, a hole the size of a fist punched through the canvas.

"Get out of here," she said harshly to the woman.

The woman opened her mouth to protest, but apparently decided Susannah was too formidable to oppose. She glanced hesitantly toward Sam. He paid no attention to her; his gaze remained fixed on Susannah.

Susannah was dimly aware of the woman scrambling to get into her clothes and stumbling past her. Only when she heard the sound of the front door closing did she step farther into the room. "What are you doing to yourself?"

He turned his head to the ceiling.

She kicked away a damp bath towel. "Hiding is a coward's game. It won't solve anything."

"Unless you want to fuck, get out of here."

She didn't flinch from his vulgarity, even though the thought of going to bed with him repelled her. It wasn't just that he was sleeping with other women; she simply could no longer bear the idea of his touch. "Your mother is worried about you. We're all worried."

"Sure you are."

He sounded like a surly little boy. Whatever lingering elements of respect she had held for him crumbled away. His childishness, his infidelity, his self-pity had all diminished him.

"Are you going to spend the rest of your life sulking because you didn't get your way?"

For a moment he didn't move, but then he began to lever himself slowly out of bed. The dim light coming through the windows cast a blue-black shadow over his unshaven jaw. His hair was tousled, his arms hung at his sides. He began moving toward her, and she could feel his rage. She told herself not to underestimate him.

"You're not anything without me," he sneered.

"Do you have any idea how tired I am of dealing with your hostility?"

His nostrils flared and his hard dark eyes glittered with anger. "You're nothing, you hear me? You were an uptight socialite when I met you, and that's still what you are. Except now you're an uptight socialite playing at being a working girl."

The words hurt. She told herself they weren't true-she didn't believe them-but she was insecure enough that they still pricked.

"Madam President," he scoffed. "You think you've made so many contributions to SysVal. What a fucking joke. SysVal was always mine! You were so goddamn laughable the other night, I could hardly believe it. Talking about 'mission' and 'adventure' like you invented the words. Jesus, I wanted to puke."

She opened her mouth to defend herself, only to discover that she had no urge to do so. He was as pathetic as an overindulged child.

"I came to see if you were all right," she said. "Now that I know it's just self-pity bothering you, I'm leaving."

She turned to go, but he snatched her arm. "You got one more chance. I'm giving you one more chance to come with me."

"On a new adventure?" she shot back scornfully.

"Yeah. A new one. A better one. As soon as the word got out that I was leaving SysVal, every investor in this country wanted a piece of me. They're standing in line begging me to take their money. I'm the golden boy, babe. The goddamn dream child of capitalism."

His words sounded like braggadocio, but she knew they were true. An investor had even tried calling her that morning in hopes of locating him. She shook off his grasp. "You don't have the vaguest idea what the real adventure is. It's not just starting something-that's for kids. The real adventure is seeing it through. You bailed out at the toughest part, Sam. In your marriage and in your job."

For a moment she thought he was going to hit her, but she didn't flinch. Sam was a bully, and bullies had to be faced down.

"Get out of here," he said contemptuously. "Get out of here and learn what life's all about. Maybe then I might take you back."

She stared at him for one long moment. "I'm not coming back. Not ever."

Turning away from him, she left the house. As she stepped out into the cool, eucalyptus-scented air, she felt a sense of release. Whatever bonds of love and need had been tying her to Sam were finally destroyed. She was done forever with loving little boys.

Chapter 30

Hal Lundeen, SysVal's head of security, was one of the company's few employees over the age of forty. A former Oakland city cop, he was a confirmed pessimist who believed that no matter how bad a situation was, it could only get worse. The hunt for SysVal's saboteur was proving his adage.

It was December now, and he had been driving himself hard since October, when Susannah Faulconer had first called him into her office and told him about the sabotaged ROM chip. Every piece of evidence Lundeen had been able to gather pointed to Edward Fiella, He even thought he knew how the switch had been made. Fiella had apparently spilled a cup of coffee just as the messenger had arrived to pick up the ROM chip instructions that were to be delivered to Dayle-Wells. That's when the substitution had taken place. Unfortunately, finding Fiella had proved a lot more difficult than any of them had ever imagined.

Lundeen looked uncomfortable as he took a seat and gazed at the woman behind the desk. She wasn't going to be at all happy with what he had to tell her. "I'm afraid I've got some bad news about Fiella."

"Terrific," she muttered. "Did you lose him again?"

"Not exactly. We finally traced him to Philadelphia. Unfortunately, we were about ten days too late."

"He took off again?"

"No. Uh… he's dead."

"Dead!"

"Yeah. He was killed in an auto accident ten days ago."

"Oh, no." She rubbed her forehead with the tips of her fingers. "What happened?"

"A couple of drunk teenagers ran a stop sign. He was dead when the cops pulled him out of his car. Just one of those things."

"We can't seem to buy a piece of luck, can we? Did you find out anything else about him?"

"Yeah. The car the cops pulled him out of was a Mercedes 380 SL convertible. He bought it new a few weeks after he left SysVal."

"That's an expensive car. I didn't see any mention of it on his credit report."

"Funny thing about that. He paid cash."

She slid the pen between her fingers as she took in the implications of what he had said. "That pretty much eliminates the possibility that he was just a hacker sabotaging the chip for kicks, doesn't it?"

"I'd say so, Miss Faulconer. I'd say it blows that theory right out of the water."

Since only a founding partner could purchase another founding partner's shares, she, Mitch, and Yank had been forced to buy Sam out. The Blaze HI recall had severely depressed the price of Sam's fifteen percent, but the buyout was still costing each of them millions.

Susannah had been hit the hardest because she couldn't tap into any of the assets she and Sam owned jointly until her divorce was final. As a result, she was forced to deplete all of her financial reserves. She replaced her BMW with a Ford compact, and was staying in SysVal's town-house condominium on a semipermanent basis because she couldn't afford to buy anything else for a while. It was the way of the Valley, she joked ruefully to Mitch. A millionaire one day, a pauper the next.

But it was no joke. Before all this had happened, her net worth-on paper, anyway-had been close to a hundred million dollars. But as the new year arrived and she continued to pour every dollar she could lay her hands on into their dying company, she was practically broke.

The dreary, rainy months of winter slid into early spring. What had begun as a trickle of computer failures turned into a deluge. The company was hemorrhaging money. They sold off all nonessential assets-a conference center near Carmel, warehouses, land they had bought for expansion-but it was like trying to stop the flow of blood from a bullet wound with a wad of toilet tissue. By the end of June, Susannah felt as if each day they survived bankruptcy was a miracle.

As she drove home late one June evening, she wondered if Mitch and Yank would be at the town house when she arrived. Her partners had gotten into the habit of dropping by several evenings a week. Ostensibly, they met there so they could talk without the interruptions that plagued them during the day. But Susannah knew the real reason they showed up so frequently on her doorstep was simply because they knew there was a good chance Paige would be there, and Paige helped all of them forget their troubles.

She was their beautiful, blond-haired den mother. She pampered them and clucked over them, feeding their spirits as well as their bodies. When they felt too battered to go on, she restored them with her lively chatter. She was the major stockholder of their fiercest competitor, but they had stopped worrying about divulging company secrets in front of her. Paige had no interest in the business discussions that raged around her, merely in what everyone wanted to drink and eat.

Susannah's hands tightened on the car's steering wheel. She was torn between her love for Paige and the jealousy that had begun to grow inside her these past few months. If Mitch was there when she got home, he would be trading sexual innuendoes with her sister and grinning like an idiot. Frankly, she was getting sick of it. The two of them were just too revoltingly touchy-feely. Even a blind fool could see that they were ideal for each other. Yin and yang. The perfect mating of opposites. So why didn't they just get it on and put an end to her misery?

But she didn't want them to get it on. Even though she loved them both and saw how good they were for each other, the thought of them together made her insides feel raw. She hated her selfishness, but she couldn't seem to help it. She wanted her friendship with Mitch back the way it used to be, and his growing closeness with Paige was shutting her out.

She had been so upset about the situation that she had actually tried to talk to Yank about it a few weeks ago. He had given her his inscrutable smile and told her that everything had its proper time and she should be patient. She had wanted to slap him silly.

When she arrived home, she heard three voices coming from the dining room. Paige was feeding her partners just as she had expected. Susannah stood well back in the hallway and watched unobserved for a few minutes as Paige fussed over the men. She hopped up to go to the sideboard and choose special tidbits for their plates, fishing out mushrooms because Yank didn't like them, adding black olives because Mitch did. She was June Cleaver packaged in the body of the Playmate of the Month. As much as Susannah loved her, Paige's soft womanliness had begun to make her feel sexless. Paige was every man's fantasy woman-mother and sex goddess combined. How could she compete with that? Susannah wondered.

Not that she wanted to compete. It wasn't as if she were in love with Mitch or anything. She had already experienced the great love of her life, and look where that had ended up. It was just that she'd started to look at Mitch a little differently. Which was certainly understandable. She was a sensuous woman. Her body wasn't accustomed to celibacy, and Mitch was an incredibly attractive man. The past eight months had added more gray to his temples and deepened the brackets around his mouth, but, if anything, the changes had made him more appealing, certainly too appealing to be running loose around a woman who hadn't been intimate with a man for nearly a year.

He leaned back in his chair and stretched like a well-fed cat. She felt a peculiar giddiness creep over her as she watched his dress shirt stretch over his chest.

"Too bad we can't package you and put you up for sale, Paige," he said. "We'd make millions."

Paige crossed her arms on the table and leaned forward so that her breasts were propped up on them. "Exactly what part of me would you want to package? My cooking or my… other skills."

Mitch grinned, something he hardly ever did with anyone except her sister. "We're buccaneer capitalists. Whichever will bring us the best profit."

"Probably Paige's cooking," Yank said quietly.

Mitch shook his head in comic bewilderment. "I think you'd better start going out with women again, Yank. Ever since you quit dating, you've been losing your perspective."

"Holy men don't date." Paige's voice was silky. "Isn't that right, Yank? Holy men don't need women. They're above all that slipping and slopping around."

Yank gave her the sad, patient look he wore so frequently when they were together, and then mentally withdrew to his accustomed position on the sidelines. The bantering Paige directed toward Yank wasn't nearly as good-humored as her comments to Mitch, Susannah had noticed. Maybe that wasn't so strange. Yank and Paige were definitely from separate planets.

"Would it be possible for me to have another cup of coffee?" Yank asked.

Paige hopped up, her blond hair flying. Both men followed her round blue-jean-clad bottom as she rushed over to the coffeepot on the sideboard. As Susannah shrugged off her coat, she couldn't suppress another petty stab of envy. Even though she knew it was demeaning, she wished one of them would look at her bottom that way.

If only she could forget about the crisis at SysVal for a while and just be a woman. While she hung her coat away, she played a little fantasy in her mind in which she had her sister's breasts and they were barely covered by a black lace negligee. She saw herself sashaying up to Mitch and saying something sultry like, "Hey, big guy, remember me? How's about you and me go make ourselves some whoopie?"

But this particular fantasy wouldn't work. She kept seeing Mitch's face going pale with embarrassment. She heard his self-conscious throat clearing. "Susannah, I wouldn't hurt you for the world. You know how much I value your friendship. But Paige and I…"

"Could I have a little more coffee, too?" Mitch held out his cup for Paige to refill. He had glimpsed Susannah skulking about in the hallway, but he was pretending he didn't know she was there. Paige leaned over him and poured. He smiled at her. She was so damned good for his bruised ego. He loved having that sweet small body racing around catering to him. He enjoyed trading jibes with her smutty little mouth. There wasn't one morsel of honest sexual chemistry between himself and Paige, but apparently Susannah didn't realize it, and for the time being that was fine with him.

Susannah's feelings toward him seemed to be changing now that he had stopped playing Mitch the Buddy. He hoped so. It was about time he started getting under Miss Hot Shot's skin. Although she might not know it, he had declared war and was banking on her love of a challenge. He prayed he wasn't miscalculating. How much longer would it be before she began to understand what he had known for so long-that they were kindred spirits, like personalities who viewed the world in the same way and fit together exactly the way a man and woman should fit?

Her divorce wouldn't be final until the end of the summer, and he intended to use every moment of that time to pry her eyes open. Maybe it wasn't fair for him to play games with her when they were in the middle of such a devastating crisis, but he didn't care about fairness anymore. It was obvious by now that SysVal couldn't survive the summer. He was going to lose his company and his money, but he wanted to make damned sure that he didn't lose Susannah, too.

The only thing that worried him was Yank. Susannah kept disappearing into his lab to watch him work. It was a habit she had developed whenever she was upset about something. Mitch thought her feelings for Yank were brotherly rather than romantic, but he wasn't absolutely certain. And Yank was impossible to read. What if he was in love with Susannah? Being forced to compete with Yank wasn't something he could take lightly. The rest of the world might underestimate his partner, but Mitch had never made that mistake.

"Suze! I didn't hear you come in." Paige had spotted her sister in the hallway. "Sit down. I'll fix a plate for you."

Susannah greeted all of them and took a seat at the table. Within seconds, she was served a glass of chilled white wine and a fragrant helping of chicken provencal. Paige did everything but plump a cushion behind her back. Susannah's spirits sank lower. She felt like the world's lowest life form for being jealous of someone who took such good care of her.

"My kids are flying in the second weekend in July," Mitch announced. "I thought I'd have a barbecue for them that Saturday. You're all invited."

"Sorry, lover," Paige said. "Big bad duty calls. That's the night I have to hostess FBT's annual party at Falcon Hill. Not that I wouldn't rather spend it with you. God, I hate those things."

"Then why do it?" he asked.

"Cal does so much for me that when he asks something in return, I try to accommodate him."

Mitch and Susannah exchanged a glance. Neither of them approved of the amount of power Paige had transferred to Cal Theroux. Since he was a forbidden subject between the sisters, Susannah had asked Mitch to urge Paige to take more interest in FBT affairs and reclaim her voting rights. Paige had told him to mind his own business.

That evening after the men had left, Paige propped herself on the living room couch with a magazine, and Susannah carried her briefcase over to the armchair. When she opened it, she discovered a fat manila folder she had thrown in just as she was leaving. For a moment she couldn't remember what it was, and then she realized it was the file on Edward Fiella that the security department had finally returned to her office that day. She had tossed it in her case so she could give it one last perusal before it was put away.

She settled back in the armchair and then noticed that Paige was staring off into space, her expression troubled.

"What's wrong?"

Paige snapped back to reality. "Nothing."

"I thought we weren't going to shut each other out anymore. Are you having problems at the shelter?" For months now Paige had been volunteering her services at a shelter for battered women. She loved her work there, but sometimes being in the presence of so much suffering got to her.

Paige shook her head, then set down her magazine. "Nothing that noble. I was just wondering… How come you haven't started dating anybody? It's been nearly a year since you left Sam. Your divorce will be final before long."

"There hasn't been much time. Besides, I'm not exactly the world's best company these days. It's hard to be cheerful when you've just laid off another seven hundred people."

"But don't you miss being with a man?"

"I'm with men all day long," she replied, deliberately sidestepping the issue.

"That's not what I mean."

Susannah knew exactly what her sister meant, but she certainly wasn't going to tell her that she had been having embarrassing sexual fantasies about Mitch. Instead, she told her part of the truth. "It takes all of my energy just getting from one day to the next. I don't have anything left at the moment for an emotional involvement."

"What about sex? Don't you miss it?"

"I miss it a lot."

Paige looked deeply unhappy. "I know it's stupid, but in Greece Yank made me promise not to sleep with anybody for a while. I don't know why I agreed, except you know how he is. Right after I got back, I got mad and told him I was going to sleep with anybody I wanted. But I didn't. And last month when I flew over to Paris for a few days, I was definitely planning on having a good time. I have a friend there. He's a playboy, but he's nice. Anyway, I never called him. God, Suze, it's been forever."

"Celibacy must be catching. Even Mitch seems to have given up all those dreary women he used to date." The moment the words were out, Susannah wished she hadn't brought up his name. Of course Mitch had stopped dating. He was moving in on her sister. She recovered quickly. "Maybe you just needed some time off from men for a while."

"I guess. But I'm starting to think about sex a lot. Which is really ironic, because I didn't use to like it very much."

And then Paige got up from the couch, almost as if she wished she hadn't said so much. "I-I think I'd better sleep at home tonight. I have to meet with Cal early tomorrow about the FBT party. If I stay at Falcon Hill, I won't have to fight rush-hour traffic."

Susannah nodded. She knew she wasn't the best company right now and she didn't blame Paige for taking off. They walked to the door together. Paige grabbed her purse and jacket, kissed Susannah's cheek, and left the town house.

It was a beautiful night. The moon was full, the air sweet. As Paige drove home, she tried to concentrate on how pretty the sky was so that she wouldn't start to cry. But she had barely reached the highway before the tears were dripping down her cheeks. She hated to cry. It was weak and stupid and completely infantile. But from the time Yank Yankowski had walked into her life, it seemed as if she had been doing a lot of it in her private time. God. She had been like a crazy woman for months. Every time she opened Susannah's door and she saw him standing there, she felt as if someone had shot heroin straight into her veins.

All she had to do was shut her eyes and she could see him. She tried to read messages into every change of his expression, and to transform those short cryptic statements he uttered into complex sonnets of passion, but it never worked. She was too much a realist. Of all the jokes God had played on her, this was the biggest. She, a woman who could chose among the most fascinating men in the world, had fallen in love with the nerdy, absentminded geek who was so obviously in love with her stupid, blind sister.

Susannah carried the file on Edward Fiella upstairs. She decided that she might as well do some work, because she certainly wasn't going to fall asleep easily, not with all those dirty dreams waiting for her. After she had gotten ready for bed, she propped herself into the pillows and flipped open the file. She had been through this material months before, and she didn't really expect to find anything new, but she still wanted to take one last look.

There was a coffee ring on the first page, which held a copy of his employment application. She skimmed through the rest. They had hired Fiella right out of college. He had been with them six months and then left. She knew that he had a degree from San Jose State, and she glanced through his college history. No fraternities. No professional associations. The summer before he had graduated, he had taken a job programming the computer billing system at the Mendhan Hills Yacht Club.

Her eyes stopped moving at the reference to the yacht club. Why had she never noticed that before? She had visited the Mendhan Hills Yacht Club many times. Although it was a small club, it was one of the Bay Area's most prestigious.

And Cal Theroux had been a member for as long as she had known him.

Her pulse was racing. Moments before, the bedroom had seemed cool, but now she was burning up. Don't leap to conclusions, she told herself as she threw off the covers. Cal wasn't the only high-ranking FBT official who was a member of the club, and she couldn't make assumptions just because a former SysVal employee had been in the same room with a competitor. She reminded herself that FBT and SysVal hadn't been rivals until the Falcon 101 had gone on the market. Even then, winning the contract with the state of California had been far more important to SysVal than to FBT.

But all of the logical arguments in the world weren't enough to convince her. Snatching up her telephone, she called Hal Lundeen and told him what she had discovered.

It took two days for Lundeen to report back with the information she needed. He flipped open his notepad. "You definitely stumbled on to something, Miss Faulconer. Cal Theroux headed the committee at Mendhan Hills Yacht Club that put in the computerized billing system Fiella worked on. The two of them definitely knew each other."

Susannah's hand tightened around the pen she had been holding. Now she felt free to acknowledge her instincts. The moment she had seen the reference to the yacht club in Fiella's file, she had known in her guts that Cal was responsible for sabotaging the Blaze. She thought of all that hatred festering inside him for so many years. Had she really imagined he had forgotten what she had done to him? That he wouldn't, at some point, strike back at her?

"We need something that will stand up in court," she said. "It'll have to be more substantial than this."

"Give me a few more days, and let's see what I can dig up. The more I find out about your Mr. Theroux, the more I think he's a pretty slippery operator. He's left a lot of dead bodies at FBT on his way to the top."

As soon as Lundeen left her office, she called a meeting with Mitch and Yank and told them exactly what she had discovered. But both men had been trained in the scientific method, and neither was impressed with her conclusions.

"These are serious accusations," Mitch said, "and everything you have is circumstantial. If you're not careful, we'll be facing a lawsuit for slander on top of everything else. Unless Lundeen comes up with something more definite, I don't see how this will help."

"He'll come up with something," she said. "He has to."

But a week later Hal hadn't unearthed anything more than unpleasant anecdotes from former colleagues about Cal's ruthless but effective climb to the top of FBT.

Susannah stopped sleeping. She couldn't eat. The first week of July slipped into the second, and the weekend arrived. She spent all of Saturday at her desk. Mitch's children were in town, and he had taken them to a Giants game. Because Paige was committed to hostessing the annual FBT party that evening, Mitch had postponed the barbecue he had planned until the next afternoon. Susannah looked forward to seeing the children, but she dreaded watching Paige and Mitch together.

By seven that evening she was exhausted, but she didn't want to go home. She got up from her desk and wandered through the empty hallways. Many of the corridor lights were permanently dimmed, the offices unoccupied. She remembered when Saturday nights had been full of activity. Now her footsteps echoed hollowly on the tile floors. She peered into laboratories that only a year ago had been bursting with brash young engineers eager to strut their stuff. Now they were idle. No one announced loose pigs in the hallways or warned of Japanese invasions over the loudspeaker system. It was as if the whole brilliant, brazen world of SysVal had been an illusion.

She rested her cheek against the cool green wall. The adventure had come to an end. A sense of defeat settled over her so all-encompassing, she wanted to sink down along the wall and curl up against it. Cal Theroux had beaten her. Right now the party would be beginning at Falcon Hill. While he extolled FBT's accomplishments, he would be secretly celebrating SysVal's destruction.

She thought of the bright young kids who had arrived from all over the country to work at SysVal, of the thousands of lives his vengeance had upset. And in her mind, she kept seeing Cal dancing in the gardens of Falcon Hill.

She squeezed her eyes shut. From the beginning Mitch had called her Hot Shot, but she had never felt less deserving of that nickname. A real hot shot wouldn't stand by and let all the people she was responsible for be destroyed by a bastard like Cal Theroux. A real hot shot would do something, have some sort of a plan. A real hot shot would-

Her eyes sprang open. For a moment she stood without moving, barely breathing. Then she looked at her watch and began to run.

Chapter 31

The library at Falcon Hill was unchanged. Her father's heavy mahogany desk still dominated the room. Susannah stood next to it clutching the telephone receiver in her hand while she waited for someone to answer the phone ringing in the pool house near the gardens. She was dressed in a slim scarlet chiffon evening gown with a rhinestone-banded bodice. As she waited, she remembered the night she had walked into this same room and found Sam seated behind the desk staring up at the embossed copper ceiling. A party had been going on then, too.

"Yes?" The voice that answered the pool-house telephone was male with a foreign accent. Probably a waiter.

"One of the guests is needed in the library immediately," she said. "Mr. Cal Theroux. It's an emergency." She repeated Cal's name for the waiter, reiterated the fact that the matter was urgent, and hung up the telephone.

She took several deep breaths and fidgeted nervously with the rhinestone border on the long scarlet scarf that accessorized the gown. The library faced the side of the house, so she couldn't see the party going on in the gardens at the back, but she could hear the lush sounds of an orchestra playing. She glanced toward the antique humidor on the corner of the desk to reassure herself that the small tape recorder hidden within couldn't be seen.

Less than two hours had passed since she had left SysVal. In that time, she had tested the powerful little machine to make certain it was working properly, dressed in her evening clothes, and driven to Falcon Hill. Using one of the side entrances, she had made it to the library without running into her sister, or anyone else for that matter, since the staff was working out of the pool-house kitchen and the main house was deserted. Now all she had to do was wait.

She wandered restlessly over to the bookcases, reviewing what she planned to say to Cal. He wouldn't be expecting to see her, and she needed to use the element of surprise to her advantage. Once again, the socialite had to pull a hustle. She wished she had been able to reach Mitch so she could tell him what she planned, but he had been out with his children and hadn't answered the phone.

The door behind her opened. Slowly she turned. "Hello, Cal."

Surprised flickered over his features when he saw who was waiting for him, and his eyes narrowed. "What are you doing here?"

"Enjoying your party?" she asked, deliberately sidestepping his question. He was tanned and elegant in his tux, but his appearance repelled her. How could she ever have considered spending her life with this unscrupulous man? She wondered if his antiseptic lovemaking made his wife feel as unwomanly as she had once felt.

"What do you want, Susannah?"

She stepped forward, making no effort to conceal her hostility. "I want to see you sweat, you bastard."

He hadn't expected a direct attack. The woman he remembered had been obedient and aristocratic. She would never have dreamed of challenging him like this. "What are you talking about?"

"I didn't realize you were responsible until a few weeks ago," she said bitterly. "Isn't that ironic? It never occurred to me that you were capable of doing something so horrible."

He had regained control of himself. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"I'm talking about my computers, you bastard."

"What-"

"I'm talking about the Blaze III and a sabotaged ROM chip."

"You're ridiculous."

"I'm talking about thousands of lives that have been disrupted. About innocent people who have lost everything. I'm talking about a man so twisted that he didn't care who was hurt as long as he could get even with the woman who ran away from him."

She saw it then. A flicker of satisfaction crossed his features before he could hide it. "SysVal's problems are well-known," he said. "I suppose it's even understandable for you to look for a scapegoat. After all, it's easier to blame some mysterious saboteur for your troubles than to blame your own inept management."

Her stomach curled. "You're enjoying dancing on our grave, aren't you, Cal? How can you sleep at night knowing what you've done?"

"I sleep very well. Probably just as well as you slept after you decided to humiliate me in front of all my friends and business associates."

"I didn't run away from our wedding out of malice. What you've done is obscene."

He walked over to a chest that held an assortment of crystal decanters and poured himself a small brandy. There was a smugness in his every gesture, a sense of absolute confidence. He took a sip, then smiled, showing perfect white teeth. "I heard you left your husband. Sorry it didn't work out."

"Oh, it worked out. Not forever, I admit. But I wouldn't trade those years with Sam for anything."

He didn't like her response, and his jaw set. "There's a certain vulgarity about you, Susannah, that I didn't notice when we were together. I suppose I should be grateful that our wedding ceremony was never completed. I can't imagine having been forced to live with you."

"No," she said. "I can't imagine it, either. And now after all these years have passed, you finally have what you've been waiting for. I'm sure you know that SysVal is on the verge of bankruptcy."

He smiled, a sly fox's smile that made the hair prickle on the back of her neck. "Unfortunate."

"Unfortunate for both of us."

He swirled the liquor in his glass. "I doubt that it's going to affect me very much. Except in profits on the 101, of course."

"You're wrong. It's going to affect you quite a lot." She paused for a moment and then said softly, "I don't have anything more to lose, Cal. So I'm going to take you down with me."

The room grew quiet. Only the distant sounds of the orchestra penetrated the silence. He set down his glass. "You're bluffing. You can't hurt me."

Hustle, a voice inside her screamed. Hustle, hustle, hustle. "Oh, I can hurt you very badly. All of those people out there in the garden. All of the FBT executives and board members. The United States senators and newspaper publishers. All those important people." Her voice dropped to a whisper as she began her lie. "I'm going to go out there in just a few minutes and entertain them with a little story about treachery."

His face took on a grayish hue beneath his tan. "Susannah, I'm warning you-"

"I'm going to move from one group to the next. I'm going to tell them about the Mendhan Hills Yacht Club and your connection with a man named Edward Fiella. I'm going to tell them about that brand new Mercedes Fiella bought after he did his dirty little job for you. I'm going to lay out every piece of evidence we've gathered."

His features hardened. "You can't prove anything."

"It's a party, not a courtroom. I don't have to prove anything."

"That's slander. I'll ruin you."

"You already have."

Silence fell thick and heavy between them. She knew that she needed something more definite on the tape. He pulled an immaculate white handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to his forehead before slipping it back into his pocket. She could almost see the wheels turning in his head as he tried to find a way out. He couldn't know her threat to expose him to the people in the garden was a bluff. She intended to bring him to justice legally, not through gossip. But he needed to incriminate himself for her tape recorder before that would be possible.

"They'll think you're crazy." A small muscle had begun to tic near his eye. "No one will believe you."

"Some of them won't. But you've made enemies, Cal. A lot of them are out there right now. Your enemies will believe me."

His mouth twisted with suspicion. "Why are you warning me? Why not just do it?"

"I told you at the beginning. I want to watch you sweat. I want you to know what's going to happen to you. Just like I've known what would happen all these months while I've watched my company die."

"You little bitch." He gritted out the words.

"That's right, Cal. I'm the most vicious bitch you've ever met."

"I won't let you do this."

"You won't be able to stop me."

His forehead was damp with perspiration, and once again he pulled his handkerchief from his pocket.

"Did it feel good to ruin me?" she asked.

"I'm warning you-"

"Did it make your heart pump faster?"

"Shut up, Susannah!"

"Is that how you make yourself feel like a man?"

"God damn you!"

"We both know you don't get your kicks from women. Is that how you turn yourself on?"

"You goddamn bitch!" His face was full of venom as he lashed out at her. "It felt better than anything I've ever done in my life. I'm almost glad you found out. I wanted you to know. I wanted you to know exactly who was responsible for what was happening to you."

He had driven the crucial nail into his coffin, but she couldn't let him see her jubilation. She wouldn't make the mistake of celebrating until she held the tape in her hand.

"Enjoy your revenge while you can, Cal," she said quietly. "You don't have much time left." She began heading toward the door.

He followed her, just as she had anticipated. "Don't you walk away from me," he ordered.

"I don't have anything more to say to you." She wanted him to accompany her back out to the garden. He would stay at her side while she mingled with the guests, and when she didn't say anything incriminating, he would think she had lost her nerve. As soon as she was certain it was safe, she was going to return to the library and fetch the tape. Tonight she would make copies to mail to every member of FBT's Board of Directors.

She was reaching for the doorknob when she heard the sound of his breathing behind her. It was labored, as if he had run a great distance. A chill chased along her spine as his hand clasped her shoulder.

"Susannah…"

She shook him off and tried to take a quick step backward, but he caught her by the wrist. "You can't do this, Susannah."

Spinning around, she saw the panic in his eyes. It frightened her, and she tried to pull away. "Don't touch me."

He tightened his grip. "You're not going to do this!"

She had never known Cal to lose control, and the desperation in his face sent a cold shock through her. "Let go of me!" Balling her fist, she lashed out at him.

He caught her arm before she could connect, grabbing her so roughly that her neck snapped. She opened her mouth to scream, but the sound died as he pinned her against his body and grabbed her by the throat.

"Stop it!" he commanded.

She clawed at his arm and let out a terrible, garbled cry. The fact that she couldn't draw a deep breath intensified her panic. She kicked at him and jabbed him with her elbows, fighting for survival with an animal instinct.

"I'm not going to let you ruin me!" he exclaimed, sounding increasingly frantic.

Twisting her neck, she sank her teeth into his upper arm.

With a muffled cry, he struck her on the side of her head. The blow dazed her. She whimpered and sagged back against him, barely staying conscious as he dragged her out into the hallway.

"You can't… do this." His words came to her in a choppy, disjointed fashion, like the late night signal from a faraway radio station. She had the vague sense that he was talking to himself as much as to her, making up his plan at the same time he dragged her down the hall. "No… you can't… I won't… I know… I know what you'll do… You're going… to commit… suicide."

She gasped out a mutated version of his name, but she needed all of her energy to draw air into her lungs, and the sound didn't carry. He was strong, so incredibly strong. She remembered how proud he had always been of his body, how hard he had worked to keep himself in shape.

"What better place… to kill yourself… than the house where you were raised?" His breathing was heavy as he pulled her down the hallway. "Your company… is going bankrupt, your marriage is over." She kicked weakly at him, trying to break his powerful grip, but she was too dazed to do any damage.

"Paige told me she's been… worried about you. Everyone will understand."

She pushed another cry through the narrow passageway in her throat. He increased the pressure on her windpipe, but she continued to make as much noise as she could, even though the sounds were too feeble to carry out into the garden. She had never been so aware of the vastness of the house, and she prayed for someone to come inside.

The back door that led into the garage tilted in front of her. Keeping one arm around her throat, he tore several sets of car keys from the pegboard. She clawed at his arm, gasping for breath and trying to stay conscious. He dragged her down the steps into the garage and pulled the door shut behind them.

They were in the far wing of the house, well away from the gardens. Her old bedroom was above them, several guest rooms, parts of the house that hadn't been occupied in years. Even if she could scream, no one would hear her. Please God, she prayed, digging her fingernails into his arm. Let someone come to the garage. Please God.

Two cars were parked inside-Paige's Mercedes and a Chevy that the housekeeper used. The Chevy was the closest, and he pulled her toward it, snatching up a pair of work gloves on the way. Her muscles turned liquid with fear. Why did he need gloves?

The pressure on her throat eased. She coughed. "Cal… Don't…"

He began to drag her toward the Chevy. A fresh rush of terror gave her new strength. She lashed out at him, summoning every bit of energy she had left. She fought with vicious determination, using fists and teeth and feet. He cursed and wrenched her around. Before she could protect herself, his arm shot back and he struck her again.

An angry black whirlpool sucked at her, drawing her inexorably toward its viscous center. Someone was pulling at her, moving her body about. No! She wouldn't be shut in the closet. The fox head was there. The balloon man. She tried to fight, but something was happening to her arms. She couldn't lift them, couldn't move them. There were furs all around, suffocating her. Garish balloons swam in front of her eyes in a slow drifting dance. She wanted to watch them, but someone was breathing harshly in her ear. Her arms. Why couldn't she move her arms?

Scarlet and the glitter of rhinestones swam before her eyes. Her head sagged forward and then back. Gradually she realized that she was behind the wheel of a car. The housekeeper's old Chevy. The scarlet and rhinestone pattern swimming in front of her came into focus. It was the long scarf from her evening gown. Cal was wearing the work gloves and tying her wrists to the steering wheel with the scarf from her dress.

"No…" she gasped. She tried to move, but her limbs wouldn't work and something was wrong with her legs. Her ankles were tied.

Cal's breath rasped in her ears. He was leaning in through the open car door to secure her wrists. She saw the gray lightning bolt that shot through his hair, and struggled to stay conscious. Her wrists were throbbing and the rhinestones on the scarf were cutting into her skin. He had tied the scarf much too tight. Why was he tying her wrists? He had said she was going to commit suicide.

"Don't do this…" she murmured, her words slurred.

He stepped back to survey his work. And then, in a gesture that seemed almost tender, he pushed her hair back into place and straightened her dress. When he was satisfied, he rolled down the car window and shut the door.

Her throat was dry, her tongue felt swollen. She was still dazed from the blow and she had difficulty speaking. "Cal… don't do this."

"It didn't have to happen," he whispered. She heard remorse in his voice, but the wildness was still in his eyes. "I never intended to let it go this far. But I can't have you ruin me."

"I won't… tell. I promise."

"I'm sorry. Truly." He checked the scarf. Her hands had begun to cramp painfully, and they twitched when he touched them. "I'll come back and untie you," he murmured gently. "Afterward."

Afterward. After she was dead. Before anyone discovered her body. They would think she had killed herself. "No," she moaned.

He turned on the ignition and the Chevy's engine sprang to life. Helplessly she watched as he went over to Paige's Mercedes and turned it on, too. The powerful German engine roared. He stood by the car and straightened his tuxedo. For a moment the scene looked to her like a slick magazine ad. Expensive car. Expensive clothes. Expensive, evil man.

She screamed and began to struggle against the knots, trying to slide her wrists along the steering wheel so she could reach the gear shift. But the knots were too tight and her struggles were pushing the sharp prongs of the rhinestones deeper into her flesh. He walked toward the door that led into the house, returned the gloves to the shelf, and then removed his handkerchief from his pocket. Using it to turn the doorknob, he disappeared.

She refused to go silently to her death, and she cried out until her throat was raw. How long did it take to die of carbon monoxide poisoning? Maybe someone would come into this wing of the house. Maybe someone would hear her.

Her wrists wouldn't move. Sobbing, she began to throw herself against the steering wheel, trying to sound the horn. But it was recessed and she couldn't reach it with her body.

Her struggles were forcing her to consume the tainted oxygen at an alarming rate. She cried out as she saw blood beginning to seep through the scarf, and she realized that the rhinestones had cut into her flesh in a dozen places. She tried to hit the gear shift with her legs, but the rope around her ankles made it impossible for her to maneuver.

While she struggled, the automobile engines roared away in a death chorus. As she watched her blood seep in rusty patterns through the scarf, her life had never seemed more precious. She didn't want to die. When the police saw the blood on her wrists, they would know she hadn't committed suicide. And sooner or later someone would find the tape recorder. But bringing Cal to justice no longer seemed to matter.

Mitch's face swam in front of her eyes. As she faced death, she knew that she loved him. She had loved him for years, but since she was married, she had made herself believe it was merely friendship. He was good and kind and strong, everything a man should be. And the fact that he loved her sister didn't diminish her feelings for him at all.

The monster engines continued to spew out their poison. The blood trickled from the wounds in her wrists. How much time had passed? Was she starting to get sleepy? Please God, no. Don't let me get sleepy.

She wanted a baby. She wanted to tell her sister that she loved her. She wanted to bask in the light of Yank's gentle eyes. She wanted to see Mitch again. Even if she couldn't have him, she wanted to watch that wonderful face soften in a smile. Please, God, don't let me die.

And, gradually, a sense of peacefulness came over her. Her head wobbled and her forehead dropped against the top of the steering wheel. She needed to rest. Just for a little while. Just until she felt stronger.

And then she heard her father's voice.

Wake up, sweetheart. Wake up right now.

She saw Joel standing before her, holding out his arms. His face was as young and as golden as a prince's. He was real. He wasn't dead. He didn't hate her.

Her eyelids fluttered. Daddy? Daddy, where are you?

His smile faded and he looked angry with her. Just like the day she had run away with Sam Gamble. So fierce and angry.

Your arms, he shouted. Move your arms!

No. She didn't want to move them. She was too tired. But he kept calling out to her over and over again.

Your arms! Move your arms!

The scarves were too tight. Her wrists were bleeding and she was sleepy. But he looked so angry-she didn't want to make him angry-he looked so angry that she tried once more. Gathering the small amount of strength she had left, she struggled against her bonds. For the last time, she pulled at the knots.

And her wrists began to move in their slippery path of blood. Pain clawed at her as she tried to slide them down along the steering wheel. Everything was spinning. She had to rest. She had to make the pain stop. Just for a moment.

Her fingers bumped against the gear shift, but she could no longer remember why it had been so important to reach it.

Wake up! Joel shouted. Wake up now.

She tried to focus, tried to remember what she had to do. With a rasping breath she tugged on the gear shift and awkwardly maneuvered the car into reverse.

But she had expended the last of her energy, and there was nothing left.

Your feet, he cried. Lift your feet.

He expected too much of her. He had always expected too much. Her feet were heavy. Much too heavy to lift.

Now! Now!

She pushed her clumsy feet against the accelerator.

The oxygen-eating engine roared. Her neck snapped as the car shot backward. It crashed through the garage door and catapulted out onto the driveway.

The slap of fresh, pure oxygen acted like a shot of adrenaline. She sucked the life-giving air into her lungs. Several minutes passed. Strength began to flow back into her body, and with the strength came agonizing shards of pain in her wrists.

She began to sob. Blood was smeared all over the steering wheel, and she couldn't loosen the knots that held her wrists. How much longer before Cal discovered her and finished what he had begun? The faint sounds of the orchestra drifted in through the window. The music sounded more beautiful than anything she had ever heard. Biting her lip against the pain, she worked the car into drive. Then she once again slammed her feet on the accelerator.

The car shot down a small bank and onto the side lawn. With her wrists tied, it was almost impossible to steer, but she wrenched the wheel to the right and rounded the back of the house. On the opposite side of the grounds, she could see a striped party canopy and white paper lanterns swinging from the trees. The car rocked violently as the right wheels rode up on the terraced slope of the hillside. For a moment she thought she was going to flip, and then she gasped as the wheels steadied on even ground.

A low wall of shrubbery loomed ahead. The car careened wildly as she plowed through it. She could see the people more clearly. They were turning toward her. A heavy urn planted with topiary scraped the side of the car. The vehicle shuddered but didn't stop. One of the garden's marble statues appeared on her right. She wrested her arms to the left, just missing it. Men in tuxedos and women in glimmering gowns watched in horror as she raced closer.

She lifted her legs to hit the brake, but her foot caught beneath the peddle. The fountain materialized ahead along with well-dressed party guests who were scattering in alarm. She sobbed as she freed her foot and slammed on the brake.

Stones flew up from the tires. The car fishtailed on the gravel path and skidded into the side of the fountain. Her body jolted as the engine shuddered to a stop.

She heard a woman screaming, the sound of people running, a man's voice, loud and incredulous. "It's Susannah Faulconer!"

Someone was struggling with the door on the passenger side and then crawling over the seat to help her. Hands touched her wrists and tugged at the knots on the scarf. She whimpered with the pain.

More voices.

"She's tied. Why is she tied?"

"I'll call an ambulance."

"She's bleeding."

"Don't move her. You shouldn't move her."

But her arms and legs were free, and she was being taken from the car. Held in someone's arms.

Mitch. Mitch had come to help her.

Her eyelids fluttered. She wanted to thank him. Tell him she loved him. She forced her eyes open and saw a lightning bolt of gray hair.

"Don't try to talk," Cal murmured as he held her against his chest. "Don't try to talk." And then in a louder voice. "I'm going to take her inside. She's in shock."

Susannah tried to cry out, but she was dazed. He was moving more quickly. The paper lanterns flashed by in the trees overhead. A scream rose inside her, but the only sound that passed through her lips was a weak whimper. "Paige…"

A flash of pink appeared at her side, a cloud of blond hair. "I'm here, Suze. I'm here. Don't try to talk. Oh, sweetie, don't try to talk."

"Stop him…" Susannah tried to force out the syllables. Cal's fingers dug more deeply into her ribs. "Don't let him… take me… inside," she gasped.

Paige stroked her head. "Stop who, sweetie? It's all right."

"She's in shock." Cal picked up his pace. He was at the back of the house, stepping onto the patio. "See to the guests. Make certain no one was hurt."

"Stop… him. He tried… to kill…"

"What's she saying, Cal?" Her sister brushed her arm. "Suzie, I can't understand you."

"She's hysterical, Paige."

"What's wrong, honey?" Paige murmured. "We'll take care of you."

Susannah pushed the words out. "He… tried to kill me."

"Don't listen-"

Paige's voice was flat. "Stop for a minute, Cal."

Cal kept moving. "She's been hurt. I have to get her inside. Go see to the guests."

"I said to stop!" Paige threw herself at him, the mother lioness protecting her cub.

Men appeared at her side. Cal let Susannah go, and Paige pulled her down onto a patio chaise. The world gradually steadied.

A crowd was forming around her. Through a breach she saw the buffet tables covered in rose-colored linen. Ice falcons with their wings spread in flight dripped into silver trays. Nicole Theroux, frightened and bewildered, was standing at Cal's side. Cal looked frantic, and people were staring at him. He tried to disperse the crowd, but no one moved. Susannah recognized several of the FBT board members and their wives, many of the same people who had witnessed her disastrous wedding.

Paige held her bleeding wrists and told her to lie down, but there was no time. Susannah turned to Paul Clemens, her father's friend. "Paul…" Her voice was as weak as an old woman's. "In the library. There's a tape recorder…" She told him where she had hidden it. The effort exhausted her.

Cal started toward the back door.

"You stay right here," Paul said sternly.

The men at the gathering were accustomed to taking command, and without a word being spoken, they began to step forward in a silent cadre. Cal looked at them, his face haggard as he tried to comprehend the fact that his world was being ripped apart. Before they could get close to him, he broke away and dashed toward the side of the house.

Several of the men gave chase, but Cal was running with a strength born of desperation, and he eluded them.

Paul had fetched the recorder, and he rewound the small tape. No one in the crowd spoke. Susannah held her sister's hand as the tape began to play.

Later there was a doctor and the police. Paige tucked Susannah into Joel's old bed, murmuring over the white bandages that encircled her wrists. The doctor had given her a sedative, but Susannah struggled to tell Paige something before she fell asleep.

"I saw him."

Paige gently stroked the damp, clean hair back off Susannah's forehead. "Who did you see?"

"Daddy." Susannah's eyes clouded with tears. "He came to me when I was dying. Oh, Paige, Daddy came to me."

Paige patted Susannah's hand. "Go to sleep, Suze. You go to sleep now."

Chapter 32

"I'm going to kill her!"

Pain had taken over every part of Susannah's body. She squeezed her eyes tight and wished that whoever was making so much noise in the hallway would be quiet. The sedative was powerful, and it took her a while to realize it was Mitch talking. Only a faint gray light seeped through the window. Why had he come to visit so early?

"How could she have done something so stupid?" His voice sounded like a jackhammer at dawn. "I mean it, Paige. As soon as she wakes up, I'm going to kill her."

"Shhh," Paige hissed. "You're acting like a wild man. Yank, make him be quiet."

After Mitch's angry bellow, Yank's murmurings were like a soft breeze. Susannah drifted back to sleep.

When she awakened several hours later, bright sunlight was streaming through her window. Intermingled with the stiffness in her muscles was a piercing sense of joy. She was alive for a new day.

The mattress sagged. She turned her head and saw Yank lowering himself to sit next to her. His clothes were wrinkled, his hair rumpled, his face lined with worry. At the sight of that dear sweet face, everything inside her broke apart. "Oh, Yank…"

Mitch had his hand on the doorknob when he heard Susannah's moan. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair standing in spikes on his head. He had been by her bedside all night and had just stepped out for a moment to help Paige deal with an overly aggressive reporter. Now he yanked open the door, overwhelmed with the irrational notion that her soft moan was a death rattle. He shouldn't have left, not even for a moment. He hadn't watched her carefully enough, and now she was going to die.

As he rushed into the bedroom, the scene in front of him gradually came into focus. She was curled up against Yank's chest as if he were the only man on earth. Mitch felt as if someone had given him a sucker punch right in the gut.

Yank lifted his head and saw him. He smiled his gentle smile. "Susannah's awake."

"Yes," Mitch said, his voice cracking with emotion. "Yes, I see."

Susannah stiffened against Yank. He laid her back on the bed. She turned toward Mitch.

"Hi, Hot Shot," he said, trying to make it easy for her by keeping his voice light.

She held out her hand. "Mitch."

He walked over to her, sat down on the side of the bed and curled her fingers through his. At the sight of the bandages on her wrists, he wanted to weep.

"I didn't think I'd ever see you again," she murmured.

He squeezed her hand tighter, pressed his eyes shut. "No more detective work, honey. Promise me."

Paige came into the bedroom leading a housekeeper and maid, all of them carrying trays ladened with food. "The police picked Cal up at a private airfield an hour ago, and the house is surrounded with three more television crews. No one is talking to anybody until everybody's had breakfast."

They didn't feel like eating, but none of them had the nerve to argue with Paige when the feeding urge was upon her.

In the aftermath of the scandal, FBT had a public relations nightmare on its hands, while Susannah became the Valley's Joan of Arc. Before a month had passed, her face had appeared on the cover of three national magazines. She sparred with Ted Koppel on Nightline and appeared on all three network morning news shows.

Would you buy a new computer from this woman?

You bet.

The publicity brought in an avalanche of orders for the Blaze III, and SysVal scrambled to get back to full staff to process them.

In the meantime, FBT struggled to extract itself from a public relations nightmare. Having its former CEO in jail waiting to go on trial for industrial sabotage and attempted murder definitely wasn't good for a company's image, and the corporation's stock tumbled to the price of a haircut. The state of California canceled its contract for the Falcon 101 and ordered the III. Investment money poured in to SysVal, as well as the initial payment on a huge financial settlement from FBT.

Although it was early evening, the SysVal parking lot was still half full as Sam pulled in. He turned off the ignition and sat in the car for a few minutes without moving. Six weeks had passed since Theroux had tried to kill Susannah. Sam had stayed away from SysVal while the worst of the media circus had gone on, but time was running out, and he had to make his move.

Since early spring he had devoted every minute to launching his new company. The concept was so beautiful, he couldn't believe he hadn't thought of it years ago. One night he had been handing over his credit card at a restaurant when it had hit him. He had stared down at that slim piece of plastic and felt as if the top of his head had blown off. What would happen if credit cards were embedded with microchips?

Aw, man… He had almost started to cry as he envisioned the beauty of it. The way the world did business would change forever. Ideas had flashed through his mind like lasers at a rock concert. An electronic credit card could handle bank transactions, dial a telephone, take care of parking meters and vending machines. A person's entire credit history could be stored on the card, their medical history, their fucking life history. The card could function as a door key, an ignition key, a security pass. His head had reeled. Jeezus…

He had more investors waiting in line to bankroll him than he needed. Money was no problem, but people were. He had gone on a raid, picking up some of the bright youngsters that SysVal had laid off, stealing a few programmers from Bill Gates at Microsoft, a top executive from Intel. He had seduced a marketing whiz away from Apple. The Valley was churning with bright, young talent, and he had gone after the best. By mid-summer, he had money and he had a staff.

Now he needed Yank.

As he pocketed his keys and began to walk across the lot toward the building, he thought how sweet life had turned for his former partners. Hardly a week passed without another story in the newspapers about them. He tried not to resent the fact that the press had cast him as a villain because he'd bailed out of SysVal when it was in trouble. Since he'd sold his partnership at a deflated price, the bail-out had cost him millions, but he'd still made a fortune and he didn't care. Money wasn't the game. The game was vision. SysVal had gotten old and respectable. He wanted a challenge, a new adventure. He liked to be in on the beginning of the game, not the end. Some people weren't capable of business as usual, and he was one of them.

God, he was glad to get out of there. He could feel his blood pumping again.

But he needed Yank working with him. He couldn't imagine going any further without Yank's engineering genius behind him. He knew he had to stay patient while SysVal rode the crest of its publicity wave, but before long the company would stabilize, and he could have everything he wanted. Yank would freak when he found out what Sam was working on, and as long as Yank was certain that SysVal was safe, Sam would have no difficulty convincing him to come to work for his new company.

But Yank wasn't all Sam wanted. As he approached the entrance, he shoved his hand impatiently through his hair. His divorce was going to be final soon, and he had to move quickly.

His heart began to beat faster. God, he loved a challenge, and this was going to be the biggest challenge of his life. He could get Susannah back. What was it she had once said about him? That he had the ability to make sensible people do impossible things. Now he had to convince her that he'd settled down. Life was exciting again. He no longer had anything to prove by screwing around with other women, and he was finally ready to cope with a kid. Those were his bargaining chips.

Maybe it was good that they'd had this time apart, because now he understood how much she meant to him. Before she'd left him, he had been bored, restless, and he'd blamed it on her. He'd lost sight of how smart she was, how sweet. He hadn't felt complete since the night she had walked out on him. She seemed to have taken part of himself with her.

The last few times he had tried to talk to her on the phone, she had brushed him off, so he had decided to use Yank to get to her. Drop in on him at work. Make it seem casual. He had to get more aggressive with Yank anyway. This way he could kill two birds with one stone.

He didn't have any trouble getting past the SysVal security desk. Even at seven in the evening, the halls were bustling with activity, and he shot the bull with some of his former engineers before he left to find Yank. Somebody said he was eating dinner.

As he made his way toward the small kitchen in the back of the building, the loudspeaker blared. "Whoever ordered thirty-six pizzas and a box of Milk Duds, pick your order up in the main lobby now."

He shoved his hand in his pocket. It felt good to be back. And then he scoffed at himself. That was the sort of nostalgic bullshit that kept people from moving forward.

As he approached the kitchen, he saw Yank and Susannah sitting across from each other at one of the blond wooden tables. A picnic basket was propped between them. Too fucking cozy for words.

Ever since he and Susannah had split up, he'd been worried about Yank's feelings for her. He knew that years ago Yank had had a crush on her, but he'd never taken it very seriously. He'd even gotten a kick out of the way Yank used to look at her. Now he wondered if he'd been too casual about the whole thing.

Susannah laughed and Yank smiled back at her. He looked like he wanted to eat her right along with the piece of chicken on his plate. Since when had Yank ever taken time out from the lab to eat dinner?

Susannah saw Sam first and her smile faded. Her lack of welcome hurt. Jesus, he still wanted her. She was part of him, for chrissake.

"Sam." Yank put down his fork, stood, and held out his hand. As Sam shook it, he sensed a wariness in Yank, and that hurt almost as much as Susannah's lack of welcome.

He heard someone moving behind him and realized they weren't alone. Susannah's sister Paige stepped forward opening a wine bottle with a cork screw. He had only seen her once before, the night she and Susannah had walked in on him with Mindy. He could tell right away that she was a real bitch.

"My, my. Don't you look spiffy with your pants on." She ran her eyes up and down his body.

He wanted to slap her right through the wall.

Susannah didn't reprimand her sister for the wisecrack, and that really pissed him off. It scared him, too. What if he couldn't make her care again?

"Have a seat, Sam," Susannah said. "I think we can come up with an extra piece of Paige's chicken."

He sat, but refused the food. As Susannah reached for her napkin, he saw the faint scars on her wrist and remembered what she had gone through the night Theroux had tried to kill her. He felt rage, and something else he didn't want to identify. Maybe some kind of guilt bullshit.

Yank asked Sam what he had been doing, and Sam began telling him about his new company. Before long, he had thrown off his sport coat and was pacing the room, his fingers splayed, his arms making arcs in the air as he talked and talked and talked.

Hallelujah and amen! Brother Love's traveling salvation show was back on the road.

Susannah watched him without much expression, but Yank hung on to his every word. When Sam finally stopped talking, he noticed that Yank's eyes had grown unfocused, and he could sense his old partner's excitement as he pondered the miracles of engineering necessary to transform a wafer-thin credit card into a tool that could interface with the world.

Even Paige had lost her superior look. She had set down her wineglass and was staring at him as if he had just dropped in from another planet.

Susannah had noticed Yank's reaction, too, and she immediately rounded on Sam. "What do you want? Why are you here?"

He had forgotten those hair-trigger reflexes of hers, and he realized too late that he had miscalculated by talking to Yank when she was present. God, she was feisty. He had only wanted to pique Yank's interest, not steal him away in front of her.

But he could feel his adrenaline pumping at the idea of going into a battle with her again. Jesus, he loved a good fight. He had too many yes-men around him now. Not enough scrappers like Suzie. She liked everything up front, so why not give it to her? Why not have his fight and let her know what he wanted? That way she couldn't ever accuse him of having gone behind her back.

"What do you think I want?" he asked, spinning around the only empty chair at the table and straddling it.

"Suppose you tell me."

"I want the best, babe. Just like always."

"You can't have him."

"Yank's a big boy. He should be able to make up his own mind."

"He has. He's staying here."

"SysVal's getting old and respectable. Yank likes new challenges."

Paige's eyes were going back and forth between the two of them as if she were watching a tennis match. Yank was regarding them thoughtfully.

Susannah threw down her napkin. "I heard you were making some personnel raids. I thought you'd have enough decency to know that Yank is off limits."

Sam turned to confront Yank. "Still letting other people do your talking for you?"

Yank gazed at him with those gentle, infuriating eyes. "I'm not the only person you want. Am I, Sam?"

For the first time, Sam hedged. "What are you talking about?"

"Susannah's been through enough," Yank replied. "When are you going to leave her alone?"

Sam propped his arm over the back of the chair, still keeping it casual. "I'm not trying to recruit her. I know Susannah won't leave SysVal."

"But that's not what you want from her, is it? You don't want her to work for your company. You want her back as your wife, your good luck charm."

Susannah pushed her plate away and stood up. "I want you to leave, Sam. We don't have anything more to say to each other."

But Sam barely heard her. All of his attention was focused on Yank. Yank, the nerd-the goofy genius. Yank, who forgot his socks and lost his women. How could Yank think-how could be even imagine that he had a chance-at a woman like Susannah?

Sam's lip curled. He wanted to be cruel, to slice them both to the quick. "If you think I'm going to play dead and leave the field clear for you, buddy, you'd better think again. All I need is one night in bed with her. One night in bed, and I'll have her back. Isn't that right, Suzie?"

Susannah tightened her hands around the back of the chair. "Get out of here right now."

"I'm afraid this can't go on any longer," Yank said abruptly. "Susannah, we have to put an end to Sam's delusions about you right now. He's obsessed with you, and it has to stop."

"The divorce will be final in a few weeks," she snapped. "That'll put a stop to it."

"A piece of paper doesn't mean shit." Sam knocked over the chair as he leaped to his feet. "Get a divorce! Get a million of them! I don't care. Marriage doesn't mean anything, and neither does divorce. I want you back with me. We belong together. That's the only thing that matters."

Susannah slapped her palms on the table. "That's enough! Get out."

"He isn't listening to you, Susannah," Yank said. "He refuses to listen. Sam doesn't understand about divorce papers. But he understands how to make a deal. Don't you, Sam?" Yank leaned slightly back in his chair.

Paige's eyes were huge in her face as she took in the scene these lunatics were playing out in front of her.

For a moment, Yank stared at a spot in the air directly in front of him, and then he said, "What about a contest? A contest and a deal."

Sam was poised, all his senses alert. "What kind of contest?"

"A contest between you and me. The winner gets Susannah. The loser steps aside forever."

"Are you out of your mind?" Susannah exclaimed. "Are both of you crazy!"

Sam laughed. "Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. You want the two of us to have a contest? If you lose, you'll stay away from her forever?"

Yank nodded slowly. "And if you lose, Sam, you leave her alone for the rest of your life."

Susannah made a choking noise, but neither of them paid any attention.

Sam immediately began to pace, hammering out the fine points. "You can't stay away from her if you're working with her every day. That means you'll have to get another job."

"Yes. All right. I won't sell out my partnership, but I'll get another job."

Susannah gasped.

Sam pressed his advantage. "With me."

"That's not part of the deal. The deal's about winning Susannah."

"I'm not a piece of property!" she exclaimed.

Sam ignored her. "And tell me exactly what you mean. The winner gets Susannah. What does gets mean?"

"You said you could have her back if you spent a night in bed with her," Yank replied. "Susannah will make love with whichever of us wins. Is that agreeable to you?"

"I will not!" Susannah cried. "Yank, I can't believe you're doing this!"

Yank gave her a stony look. "That's the agreement, Susannah. Do you understand it?"

She was starting to feel desperate. Yank was so serious, so determined. He was spooky when he was like this. She loved him, but she didn't desire him, and she wasn't going to go to bed with him. "No! No, I don't understand at all."

Yank turned toward Sam, who had stopped his pacing by the door. "Susannah will make love with whichever of us wins. The other one of us will leave her alone forever."

Sam's grin spread all over his face. Another challenge to face. Another barrier to smash. "Yeah. Yeah, I like this. Okay. I agree. What kind of contest?"

Yank looked at Sam as if he were the most thick-headed person left on earth. "Why, a video-game contest, of course. How else would we compete?"

"What?" Susannah shrieked.

"Oh, Jeezus." Sam began to laugh, collapsing against the doorjamb. "We're going to play a video game for her? Oh, Jeezus, I love this. The last buccaneers of the twentieth century fight a video game duel over their lady fair. What game? What game are we going to play?"

For the first time, Yank hesitated. "Why don't you chose?"

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Susannah knew what was going to happen. She told herself it didn't matter. It didn't matter because she wasn't going along with them anyway. But still, she took a quick step toward Yank. "No! No, Yank! He'll choose-"

"Victors," Sam said. "I choose Victors."

"Oh, God…" She sank back down into her chair. They were crazy. Both of them were crazy, and she was even crazier to sit here listening to them. Why should she care what game Sam chose? There was no reason for her stomach to have plummeted like that. Sam could beat Yank at Victors from now until doomsday, and she wouldn't get in bed with him. The game didn't matter. Sam's choice didn't matter. But what was Yank doing? Hadn't she gone through enough? Why was he putting her through this?

Next to her at the table, Paige sat stunned.

Both men headed for the door, Sam charged with energy, Yank moving at his customary deliberate pace. An old Victor's game had been put away in one of the small storage rooms. It was a dinosaur now. Its graphics were stone age, its sound primitive. But it was still a classic-right up there with Space Invaders and Pac Man. Victors was a classic. And Yank Yankowski had never played a single game in his life.

Chapter 33

The men wrestled the Victors game into an office near the storage room, then plugged it in and checked the controls to make certain it still worked. As Paige walked into the office, she saw that Susannah was already there. She had positioned herself as far away from the men as she could get and still be in the room with them. She looked shaken, as if these men really were deciding her future.

They said nobody could die of a broken heart, but as Paige looked from her sister to Yank, she didn't believe it. She was dying. And because she loved them both, she had to find the strength not to let either of them see it. The outcome of the video game might be meaningless as far as Susannah was concerned, but the fact that it was taking place at all had sent the dream world Paige had been building around herself crashing down.

For these past six weeks, ever since the night Susannah had almost died, Paige had been praying that she would fall out of love with Yank, but her heart continued to soar with joy whenever she looked at him. She was happy merely being in the same room with him, breathing his air and drinking in the sight of his gentle, dear face. She wanted to live every second of the rest of her life with him. Have his babies, wash his clothes, take care of him when he got sick. She wanted to sit next to him in a rocking chair when they were both old and hold his hand. She wanted to die with him and be buried next to him and believe in eternal life so she could be certain their spirits would live together forever. He was the only person who made her feel at peace in the deepest, most secret part of her soul.

Now, regardless of the outcome of this stupid video game, she had to accept the fact that she could never have him. Yank wanted her sister, and Paige had to get out of their way. The terror of knowing Susannah had almost been murdered was something Paige would never forget, and the guilt she felt for having placed so much trust in Cal had become a crushing burden. Since that night, Susannah had become even more precious to her. More precious to them all, Paige realized. Yank hovered at her side like a guard dog. Mitch had a haunted look in his eyes whenever Susannah was around. Poor Mitch. The tragedy had made him more serious than ever. He seldom smiled. He hadn't stopped by the house for weeks. All he did was work.

As Paige approached, Susannah gave her a wan smile. "I thought you'd gone home."

"No. No, I'm still here," Paige replied.

"This is crazy, isn't it? They're both crazy."

"Then why are you watching?"

"It's Yank. I can't-I can't understand why he's doing this."

"Because he loves you." The words stuck like great chunks of bread in Paige's throat.

Susannah shook her head. "That's not true. And he knows Sam will win. Why is he trying to push me back to Sam? I won't go, Paige. I don't care what Yank says or what he does. This time he won't get his way. I'm not going back to Sam."

Paige nodded numbly, unable to imagine any woman preferring a macho stud like Sam Gamble to a wonderful man like Yank.

The Victors game began to emit cheerful little beeps. Sam had unbuttoned his cuffs and was rolling up his white shirt-sleeves. "You'd better play a practice game, partner. I don't want you to say I didn't give you a chance."

Yank gazed at the game controls with distaste. "I don't think so. I don't like playing this game, Sam."

Sam slapped him on the back. "Tough shit, hombre. This was your idea."

Victors was the most complex of the early target games. It provided a miniature history of the development of weaponry, from the stone age to the atomic age. On the first screen, primitively shaped men threw stones at small four-legged creatures and dodged lightning bolts from the sky. On the second and third screens, they shot arrows at running men and then fired guns at a platoon of soldiers while they avoided return fire. The final screen featured a moving city skyline. The players controlled an airplane that dropped bombs down onto small targets as skyborne missiles moving in erratic patterns tried to blow up the plane. If the player survived all the screens, a mushroom cloud appeared with the final score and a message:

CONGRATULATIONS.

YOU HAVE SUCCESSFULLY WIPED OUT

CIVILIZATION.

NOW WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?

That message had knocked everybody out.

Sam had none of Yank's reluctance about playing a practice game. As he stood in front of the machine in a white shirt and trousers, with his necktie pulled loosely down from his open collar, Susannah remembered all those nights at Mom & Pop's. Mom & Pop's was now a vegetarian restaurant called Happy Sprouts. They hadn't been there in years.

"Okay, I'm ready," Sam said. "High score wins. Let's toss to see who goes first."

"Go ahead," Yank said gloomily. "You're ready. You might as well play."

Sam limbered his fingers and gave Susannah a cocky grin. Then he turned back to the machine. "Come on, baby. Don't let me down."

Paige couldn't help it. She stepped forward to watch. Susannah seemed certain that Sam was going to win. Maybe when that happened, it would trigger something inside of Yank. Maybe he would fall out of love with Susannah and in love with her. Maybe they would get married and live at Falcon Hill…

And maybe cows would fly over their wedding.

Sam Gamble was a superb video-game player, she'd give him that. He concentrated so intently on the screen and the controls moving beneath his hands that she doubted if anything could distract him. A lock of straight black hair tumbled down over his forehead as he moved through the first three screens with a ruthless efficiency. The machine beeped. The beeps got faster and faster. He hit the final screen. The muscles in his forearms spasmed as he maneuvered the controls. Missiles flew, bombs dropped. His face blazed with excitement.

Sam gave a victorious roar.

The mushroom cloud appeared and the screen flashed its message. He had scored 45,300 points out of 50,000.

He turned to Yank and grinned. "In my heyday, I made 48,000, but I guess I can't complain."

And then Paige watched while he ran his eyes over Susannah's body. The way he did it wasn't exactly creepy-Paige could see that, in his own way, he really did care about her sister. But still, the possessiveness in his appraisal made her skin crawl. Only someone who was entirely self-absorbed could be so arrogant. What a terrible man to have fallen in love with.

Yank, looking completely miserable, walked over to the machine. He sighed and stared at the screen. For a moment he did nothing, and then he turned back toward them as if he were about to say something. Apparently he reconsidered. Clamping his jaw tight, he returned his attention to the machine and pushed the button.

Sweet.

It was so sweet watching him work.

He kept his hands loose, his attention focused. Every motion was precise. He did nothing at random. One by one the screens surrendered to him. Every projectile found its target. Arrows flew, bullets whizzed. He dropped his bombs with deadly accuracy and dodged missiles before they even came close. It was as if he had envisioned every event before it could happen. Nothing was random. He was all-powerful, all-knowing. No man could be so perfect. Only God. Only the Mighty Creator Himself could play so perfectly.

Fifty thousand.

Fifty thousand perfect points.

"You son of a bitch," Sam said. Over and over. "You son of a bitch…"

"She's mine, Sam," Yank replied, looking even more miserable than before the game. "We have a deal, and you have to live up to it."

Sam stared down at the floor. Long seconds ticked by. He gazed at Susannah. "Do you really want him?"

"A deal is a deal," she whispered.

Paige could feel this great, awful sob rising up from the very bottom of her soul. She couldn't breathe for fear it would burst from within her. She had to hold it back and hide her grief in a deep secret place where it could never be discovered. Somehow, she had to find the generosity of spirit to give these two people she loved her blessing. And then she would disappear from their lives because she simply could not bear to watch them together.

"I love you, Suzie," Sam said hoarsely, with an expression of desperation on his face.

Slowly, sadly, Susannah shook her head.

Sam felt it then. Deep in his guts. He finally understood that he had truly lost her. That no sparkling oratory, no offensive he could launch, regardless of how brazenly conceived, how aggressively implemented, would ever bring her back. For the first time in his life, he had been defeated by a will greater than his own. And then he had a glimpse of something dark and unpleasant hovering on the edge of his unconscious. A glimpse of something Susannah had once tried to tell him-that vision wasn't enough. That it wouldn't stave off loneliness or keep old age at bay. That there was a kind of love in the world of which he was incapable. Susannah understood that love, but he didn't. And because he couldn't give it to her, he had lost her.

He blinked his eyes. Picked up his suit coat. Screw her. He didn't need Susannah. He didn't need anybody. The world of ideas stretched before him, and that was enough.

He ran the collar of his suit coat through his fingers. Then he lifted his eyes to Yank's. "Victors is your game, isn't it?"

Yank nodded slowly. "It was the last game I invented. Right before you made me leave Atari."

"Why didn't you ever tell us?"

"You all kept going on about it. I was embarrassed. I meant to tell you, but then I waited too long, and it got awkward."

Sam could have cried foul, but Yank was the greatest engineer he'd ever met, and he deserved respect. "It's a good game, Yank," he said huskily. "A real good game."

He turned to walk out the door.

And collided with Mitchell Blaine.

Mitch exploded into the office. His face was flushed, his blue dress shirt stuck to his chest with sweat. His light blue eyes held a savage, awful gleam none of them had ever seen before. "What in the goddamn everlasting hell is going on here?" he roared.

Paige's feet seemed to move of their own volition as she raced toward him and threw her small body into his arms. Safe, solid Mitch. He was as good as a daddy. The only force of stability in a world filled with familiar people gone crazy. She had telephoned him right away, as soon as she had realized they were actually going to play this crazy game. But he hadn't gotten here in time.

"You're too late," she said. "It's over."

Mitch circled Paige's shoulders and hugged her against him. His arm was strong and protective, like her father's should have been when she was a child. She wanted to cuddle up against him and let him keep the wolves away.

"Somebody'd better start talking fast," he hissed, hugging her close. "Right now. Susannah, tell me what happened."

She shrugged with all the nonchalance of SysVal's unshakable corporate president-the valiant female warrior who had taken on everything and everybody who had threatened her company. But as she watched her sister cuddled into Mitch's big arms, her bottom lip began to quiver. "Yank won me."

Mitch's eyes shot to Yank. He pierced him with an icy gaze as deadly as any of Victors' missiles. "What does that mean?"

"It's very simple, Mitch," Yank said. "Sam refused to accept the fact that Susannah no longer wanted him in her life, so he and I had a contest. Whoever won got to take her to bed. I won."

Somewhere in Mitch's solid thirty-eight-year-old body, the reflexes of an Ohio State wide receiver still existed. With a muffled roar, he released Paige, shot over the corner of the desk, and charged straight for Yank Yankowski.

Yank went down immediately.

Paige screamed, Susannah yelled, both women raced across the small office and threw themselves on Mitch, one of them pulling at his legs, the other at his arms.

"Get off!" Paige screamed, straddling his hips. "Get off, you'll kill him!"

Susannah grabbed a handful of blue Oxford-cloth dress shirt (light starch only) and pulled. "Stop, Mitch. No! Don't do this!"

Sam stood by the doorway and watched the four of them grappling on the floor. God, he was going to miss this place.

Susannah lost one of her high heels. Paige knocked a Rolodex to the floor and the cards went skidding everywhere. The glowing screen of the Victors game flickered above them.

Mitch shook off the women, pulled Yank to his feet, and slammed him against a dividing partition. The partition promptly collapsed, sending the men crashing into the next office.

Sam watched it all, took in the expressions on their faces, and finally understood how these people fit together. This was the vision that had escaped him, the one he had been too preoccupied to see. He shook his head at his own stupidity.

"Let him go, Mitch!" Susannah cried. She had a death grip on one of Mitch's arms. But something distracted her, a small movement in the periphery of her vision. She twisted her head and caught sight of Sam just as he was turning to leave the office.

He gazed back at her. She sucked in her breath as she saw the resignation in his eyes, and realized that he had finally let her go. "So long, babe," he said. "See you around."

For the briefest of moments, their eyes locked, and then she nodded her head in a final gesture of farewell toward her first true love. Good-bye, Sam Gamble. Godspeed.

His mouth curled in that old cocky grin, the grin of the motorcycle pirate who had stolen her away from her wedding and reshaped her destiny. Then he turned his back on all of them and set out to conquer another brave new world.

The loudspeaker began to play "Twist and Shout."

"Fight, dammit!" Mitch ordered. He sounded mean, but he was having difficulty summoning the will to smash in the face of an opponent who was proving to be so pathetically inept. "Fight me, you son of a bitch!"

But Yank was mystified when it came to physical violence. Although he found he rather liked the idea of finally being in a fight after all these years, he didn't really like fighting. There was no time to think anything through. No time to ponder or plan.

In actuality, Mitch was having more trouble with the women than he was having with Yank. The Faulconer sisters hung onto him like burrs. No sooner had he shaken off one than the other came back again. Paige had him by the neck, Susannah was pulling on his middle. His knee was starting to hurt, and he had banged up his elbow when the partition collapsed. What in the hell was he doing? He was thirty-eight years old, father of two, a member of the United Way Board of Directors. What in the sweet hell did he think he was doing?

He let go of Yank and loosened Paige's grip from around his neck. When Susannah realized he had stopped the fight, she relaxed the arm that had been clamped around his waist.

Yank was blinking his eyes. Mitch glared at him. "You're not taking Susannah to bed."

"No." Yank blinked. "No, I don't think that would be a good idea at all."

There was a long silence. Mitch stared at Yank. Then at Susannah. All the tension left his body like air from an overinflated balloon.

Yank continued to blink. "I'm sorry, but I seem to have lost my contact lens."

Then they were all down on the floor, relieved to have an excuse to pull themselves back together while they crawled around to find Yank's lens. Paige located it, still intact, under one of the Rolodex cards. Mitch straightened his necktie and rubbed his sore elbow. Susannah looked for her shoe.

"It's difficult…" Yank said, after he had inserted his lens and inspected a scraped knuckle. "It's difficult to see exactly how we might extract ourselves from this. Sam and I had a deal. I'm not proud of the fact that I didn't behave in an entirely honorable fashion. I should have told him I'd invented Victors, of course. But in any case, two wrongs don't make a right. Sam and I had a deal, and I have a certain obligation."

Now Susannah was the one who wanted to smack him. She stalked toward Yank, wobbling because she still hadn't found her shoe. "Yank, will you let it rest? It's over. The contest was meaningless."

To her astonishment, Mitch began to yell at her. "Shut up, Susannah! You may be dynamite when it comes to running a corporation, but you're hopeless when it comes to organizing your love life. I've let all this go on far too long. For six weeks I've been walking around with my tail tucked between my legs waiting for you to stop looking like you're going to break in half. Well, I've had enough!"

"Don't you dare talk to me like that!"

"I'll talk to you any way I like. Right now, I'm in charge." He spun toward Yank. "Let's make a side deal."

"A side deal? Yes. Yes, I think that's a good idea."

Paige's heart began an arhythmic thumping against her ribs.

"How do you want to go about it?" Mitch asked, all business now that he was once again in control. "Your deal, your call."

Yank was thoughtful. "Perhaps you could make me a monetary offer for her. That should make it official."

Mitch had cut his teeth on making deals, and he knew how to go for a quick kill. "I'll give you five dollars."

"Five dollars!" Susannah lurched toward them. "Did you say five dollars?"

"That would be fine," Yank replied. "If you don't mind, I'd prefer cash. I lose checks."

Mitch reached for his wallet and flipped it open. "I only have a couple of twenties. Do you have change?"

Yank pulled out his own wallet and inspected its contents. "I'm sorry. I only seem to have a twenty myself. Paige?"

Paige nearly lost her balance as she scrambled for her purse. But her hands were trembling so much she couldn't find anything. In desperation, she emptied the contents out on the desk, sending lipsticks rolling and chewing gum flying. Frantically, she snatched up her wallet and pulled open the dollar-bill compartment, breathing so fast she was dizzy. "No, no, I don't," she sobbed. "Oh, God. I've only got a fifty. What good in the world is a fifty?" And then she turned to Mitch and screamed, "For God's sake, give him the twenty!"

Susannah had to make some attempt to reassert her dignity. In a voice as chill as the polar ice cap, she said, "If this is an auction, I'll put in twenty and buy myself back."

"It's not an auction," Yank said firmly. "That would be demeaning."

Paige started to choke. Yank tapped her gently on the back.

Mitch passed over the twenty. "I want my change back."

Yank nodded and drew Paige toward him. For a moment he closed his eyes as his bruised jaw came to rest on the top of her head.

Paige settled against his chest. And then she stiffened as she remembered everything he had put her through.

Yank had been fighting over Susannah. Three men had been fighting over her sister. Not one, but three! Didn't anyone remember that she was the pretty one? Didn't anyone remember that she was the one men went crazy over?

Yank remembered. He stared down at her, this beautiful blond creature he had fallen so desperately in love with. She was every girl who had passed him by, every girl who had laughed at his awkwardness and then ignored his existence. All his life he had stood on the sidelines and watched women like Paige Faulconer walk right past without even seeing him. But now that was over.

Who could ever have imagined that someone like Paige could have fallen in love with someone like him? And he knew she loved him. He had felt the way their souls matched up right from the beginning, that night on the beach in Naxos. But he had wanted the two of them to last forever, and so he had given her time and all the room she needed to adjust, even though from that very first evening he had wanted to bind her to him so tightly she could never get away.

And tonight he had frightened her to death. What he had done for Susannah had hurt her badly. She was in a huff. He could see that, all right. Now he had to make it up.

"Susannah, I won't be in to work for several days," he said. "Paige and I need some time alone together."

Paige curled her lip and flashed her eyes just like a prom queen who had been forced to dance with the ugliest boy in the class. "I wouldn't go anywhere with you if you were the last man on earth. You're a nerd! A complete and total nerd!"

Yank took his time to consider his options. He had a scientist's passion for the truth. Tricking Sam had made him miserable, even though he had done it for the best of reasons. He had offended his own moral sensibilities once tonight. He certainly couldn't offend them twice.

Could he?

"Very well, Paige," he said. "Susannah, would it be possible for you to drive me to the doctor's office? My arm is a bit sore. I'm certain it's not broken, however-"

Oh, Lord, he could hardly breathe as Paige cradled his arm and cooed over him and made him feel as if he were a bronzed California surfer god with sculptured muscles, a white zinc nose, and a brain too small to ever cause the slightest bit of trouble.

Susannah watched the two of them leave. They were wrapped together as if they'd been born that way. Silence hung thick and heavy in the office. Mitch stood by the doorway, one hand resting loosely on the hip of his navy-blue trousers, the other at his side.

Susannah was so nervous she could hardly think. For months she had been on a wild roller-coaster ride as she realized that she loved Mitch and tried to lock her feelings away because she thought he loved her sister. Now she wanted him to take her in his arms and speak all those tender phrases she yearned to hear. But he wasn't saying a word.

She filled up the silence with chatter. "There's not one thing wrong with Yank's arm. He's manipulating her. I swear, Yank's getting stranger all the time. And my sister…" Her voice faded. Didn't Mitch care for her? She told herself that he had to care, or he wouldn't have gone so crazy with Yank.

She studied a point on the wall just past his shoulder. "I thought you and Paige…"

Mitch didn't say anything. He just stood there and looked at her.

His look was definitely possessive. She remembered the five dollars, and she could feel her cheeks growing hot. Did he really think he'd bought her from Yank?

She lowered herself to the floor and made a great business out of looking for her shoe. Anything to avoid looking at Mitch. She peered under the desk, under the credenza, over by the doorway. Mitch's shoes were there. Unlike hers, they were on his feet. Polished black wing tips peeking out from between neatly creased navy-blue slacks.

The silence was growing more oppressive. Her cheeks still felt hot. She jumped as her shoe dropped in front of her.

Just as she picked it up, two strong hands pulled her to her feet. Mitch looked quite stern, perhaps a bit dangerous. "Your divorce isn't final yet. As soon as it is, you and I have an appointment in the bedroom."

At first she thought he said boardroom. You and I have an appointment in the boardroom. She was so shaken that she heard him wrong. And by the time she realized what he had actually said, he was on his way out of the office.

She gritted her teeth. Oh, no. It wasn't going to be all business. No way. If Mr. Stuffed Shirt thought it was going to be all business, he'd better think again. She flung her shoe at the door.

His reflexes were quick, and she hadn't been trying to hit him anyway, so the shoe missed him by a yard. That didn't seem to appease him, however.

He turned back to her, crossed his arms over his chest and said with a deadly quiet, "You've got thirty seconds, Susannah."

"For what?"

"To stop acting like a feather-headed female and decide what you want."

"I-I don't know what you mean."

"Twenty-five seconds."

"Stop bullying me."

"Eighteen."

"You're a real jerk, do you know that?"

"Fifteen."

"Why does it have to be me?"

"Twelve."

"Why can't you say it?"

"Ten."

"All right. I'll say it!"

"Five."

"I love you, you jerk!"

"Damn right, you do. And don't you forget it."

He still looked as mad as hell, but something warm and wonderful was opening inside of Susannah. She wanted to slide into his arms and stay there forever. What was it about Mitchell Blaine's arms that made a woman want to lose herself in them? Moving forward, she placed her open palms on his chest. She could feel his heart racing just as hard as hers. She shut her eyes and lifted her mouth toward his.

He groaned, caught her wrists and set her firmly away from him. "Not yet," he said hoarsely. "I bought you, and I'm in charge."

Her eyes snapped open. "You're kidding."

He gave her that narrow-eyed look he turned on competitors when he was bargaining for position. "Legally, you're still a married woman. And I'm not going to touch you until your divorce is final, because once I get started with you, I don't intend to stop."

She repressed a delicious shiver of anticipation, and then frowned. "It's going to be another month, Mitch. That's a long time."

"Use it well."

"Me?"

He gave her his best steely-eyed glare, but she saw these funny little lights dancing in those light blue irises. "You might as well know right now, Susannah, that I expect value for my money."

The sound that slipped through her lips was a garbled combination of laughter and outrage. She decided two could play his game. Recovering quickly, she sauntered back over to him and slipped her fingers underneath his necktie knot. "I know exactly what I've got to offer. You're the unproven commodity."

"Now that is exactly the sort of disrespect we're going to have to work hard to correct." His voice was as solemn as a judge's, but she wasn't fooled for a minute. "I want to see a change of attitude, Susannah. At least a semblance of subservience."

"Subservience?"

"I'm the man. You're the woman. As far as I'm concerned, that says it all. It had better be that way after we're married, too."

"Did you say married?"

"I'm considering it."

"You're considering it? Of all the arrogant-"

"First you pass the bedroom interview, Hot Shot. Then we'll talk about a contract."

As she sputtered for breath, his sober face shattered into the biggest grin she had ever seen. Before she could say another word, he walked away.

But she wasn't done with him. She rushed over to the doorway only to discover that he was already halfway down the hall. "Stop right there, Mitchell Blaine," she called out. "Do you love me?"

"Of course," he replied, without losing a step. "I'm surprised you even need to ask."

Then, as she watched, he took three long strides forward, leaped off the ground, and faked a perfect jump shot at the ceiling.

His shirttail didn't even come untucked.

Chapter 34

Yank and Paige left for Reno without bothering to change their clothes or pack a suitcase. Somehow, Paige had never imagined herself getting married in a silk blouse and pair of gray slacks, but no force on earth could have persuaded either of them to wait a day longer. The ceremony took place not long after midnight in a tacky little chapel with one of Elvis's guitars on display in a glass case. Yank had stared at the guitar for a long time and then said it reminded him of a woman he loved.

Paige didn't understand why one of Elvis's guitars would remind Yank of herself, but the service was ready to begin, and she didn't have time to ask any questions.

The wedding suites in the better hotels were already booked, and they had to settle for a smaller hotel. The bellhop showed them into a room that looked like a nightmare version of the inside of a Valentine candy box. The walls were covered in fuzzy zebra-striped wallpaper, and white fake fur rugs as thick as dust mops stretched from wall to wall. Festoons of shiny red and white satin draped the heart-shaped bed and were reflected in the gold-flecked mirror that served as a headboard.

"This is nice," Yank said in admiration.

Normally Paige would have laughed, but she was too nervous. What if Yank was disappointed in her? She had faked lovemaking with some of the best, but Yank was a lot more perceptive than most men. Still, she didn't envision lovemaking as being the most important part of their life together. Anybody who was as cerebral as Yank probably wasn't going to be the world's most competent lover, which was fine with her. She'd already gone to bed with the greatest, and it hadn't been all that wonderful.

Cuddling with him appealed to her the most-so warm and cozy. The cuddling and the cooking. She wanted to fill his thin body with her rich, wonderful food. Nurse his babies from her bountiful breasts. Unaccountably, her eyes filled with tears.

She had her back to him, but somehow he seemed to know she was crying. He gathered her in his arms and held her. "It's going to be all right," he said. "You mustn't worry."

She stood on her tiptoes and buried her face in his neck. "I love you so much. I don't deserve you. I'm not a nice person. I lose my temper. I swear too much. You're so much better than I am."

He tilted up her chin and stroked her blond hair back from her face with his fingers. His eyes were filled with wonder. "You're the most wonderful woman in the world. I still can't believe you're mine."

As he gazed at her, all the goodness in his soul infused her. And then he dropped his head and kissed her. Oh, so slowly. She had never been kissed like that. His lips touched hers so lightly that at first she could barely feel them. She was the one who deepened the pressure. She was the one who opened her mouth.

The kiss went on and on. He was a man of infinite patience, and he believed in doing a job well. He kissed her cheeks and her eyelids, laid her back on the bed and tilted her chin to the side so he could kiss her throat. He found the pulse that fluttered there and counted the beats with the touch of his lips.

She felt so languid, so warm. His lips trailed down the open vee of her blouse and lingered there. Her breasts began to throb, anticipating his touch. She wanted more of him. Her fingers worked beneath his shirt. He pulled her hands away and clasped them gently between his own.

"Would you like some champagne?"

She shook her head. She didn't want any champagne. She didn't want him to stop.

But he got up anyway. He went to the ice bucket and fiddled with the bottle. It took him forever to get it open. First he had to dry it with a towel, then he made a big deal out of removing the foil neatly. He unscrewed the wire cage as if he were working with a delicate piece of machinery. She wanted to scream at him to just open it, for Pete's sake, and get back to her.

While he poured a glass for himself, she propped herself up against the pillows. He asked her again if she wanted some.

"All right," she replied grouchily. "As long as you've got it open."

He brought the glasses over and stood by the bed looking down at her. The narrow gold wedding band looked beautiful on his long thin fingers. Her body once again began to grow warm and her irritation faded. The mattress sagged as he settled on the side of the bed and put the glasses on the nightstand.

"Don't drink yet," he said. "I want to think of a toast."

And he sat there.

She couldn't believe it. She wanted him to kiss her again and touch her breasts, but he was sitting there thinking up a dumb toast. And while he was thinking, he began doing this thing with the palm of her hand. Just lightly stroking it with his thumb. She had never had her palm stroked in that particular way. It was so unbelievably exciting. Before long, she began to squirm.

"Did you think of it yet?" she finally gasped.

"A couple more minutes," he said, transferring his touch from her hand to the sensitive skin of her inner arm.

She closed her eyes. Her lips parted. What was he doing to her? The stroking on her arm continued forever, and then his mouth brushed over hers again in another of his delicious kisses. This was good, she thought. Now they were getting back to business.

She moaned as he kissed the base of her throat. His fingers played with the top button of her blouse. After another few years had passed, he opened it. He kissed the spot of skin revealed there and then unfastened the next button. A button and then a kiss. A button and then a kiss.

Her breasts where they rose above the scalloped lace of her bra were covered in a rosy flush. When would he get to her bra? To her slacks?

He stopped. "I think I have the toast now."

She gritted her teeth. If he didn't get his mind back on what he was doing, she was going to toast him.

He handed her back her champagne glass. "To my wife, the most beautiful woman in the world. I love you."

It was sweet-really sweet-but hardly original enough to be worth the wait. She clinked her glass with his, downed her champagne, dropped her glass to the carpet and threw herself back in his arms.

He gently disengaged himself and slipped off her blouse.

She wanted to give a whoop of triumph. Yes! He finally had the idea. He'd finally remembered what he was supposed to be doing. Now the bra. Don't forget the bra.

He didn't forget. His agile fingers unfastened the clasp so smoothly it seemed as if it had dissolved in his hands. He slipped the lacy garment off her and laid her down on the bed.

And then he just looked at her. She lay back and he inspected her with his eyes. Her nipples grew hard and beaded under his scrutiny. He bent forward. She closed her eyes, waiting for the heat of his mouth on her breasts, and felt his lips settle…

… over the curve of her shoulder.

She gave a little sob of frustration. Her hands knotted into fists at her side while he played with her shoulder for another ten years. My breasts! she wanted to cry. Taste my breasts, my bubbles, my pretty pretty boobies.

But the booby she had married had discovered a patch of incredibly sensitive skin at the inside of her elbow and he was sucking on it.

"Your slacks are getting mussed," he said finally.

"Yes," she agreed. "Oh, yes." She began to unfasten them, but again he pushed her away. He slipped them down over her legs and started to fold them.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "Just throw them across a chair."

"They'll get wrinkled," he replied, as if a pair of wrinkled slacks were some sort of monumental crime against nature. Standing, he held them by the cuffs, snapped the creases, and began matching up the inseams with a geometric precision that would have made Euclid weep with joy.

Paige wanted to weep, but not with joy. Why couldn't he understand how difficult it was for her to get aroused? Her excitement could vanish any second. It always did. He needed to take advantage of her arousal before it slipped away. Didn't he understand that?

Apparently he didn't. He had to carry the slacks over to the closet and hang them up. And not just any hanger would do. It had to be a trouser hanger.

She whipped off her underpants while his back was turned and lifted one knee just a bit so that the sole of her right foot was pressed against the curve of her left calf.

When he turned around and saw that, his eyes opened wider. Determined to gain the upper hand, she let one arm fall languidly to the side of the bed and began rubbing the sole of her right foot up and down her calf. Yank walked back toward the bed. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. He abruptly took a detour.

She shot up on her elbow. "Where are you going?"

He walked over to one of the tables and flipped on another lamp. "It's hard to see in here," he said. "I like to see what I'm doing." And then he returned to the foot of the bed. Sliding his hands up and down her calves, he gently pressed her knees farther open.

Her mouth went dry. She looked up at him.

His hands rose to his shirt. But instead of taking it off, he began slowly rolling up the cuffs.

Her eyes flew to his face. For the first time, she saw the amusement lurking at the corner of his mouth.

"You're doing this on purpose," she gasped.

"I think," he said, "that no one has ever taken enough time with you."

Paige lived through a thousand glorious lives that night. Yank had been trained in the lessons of patience, and he believed in careful craftsmanship. He liked to form hypotheses and then test them. For example, if he used his tongue here and his hand there…

He was an engineer, an absolute genius when it came to working with small parts. And every one of her small parts surrendered to his intricate inspection and exploded under his skillful manipulation.

Who could have imagined he would actually have to smother her cries of fulfillment with his mouth? Who could have imagined that this absent-minded genius could bring her the satisfaction that had been eluding her all her life?

When he finally came to her, his eyes were glazed and his breathing as heavy as her own. She was hardly capable of rational thought, but she dimly realized what his patience was costing him and loved him all the more for it.

Even as he poised himself to enter her, he took care. He was her husband, her lover. But above all, he was an engineer. And good engineers never forced parts together that were of unequal size.

"All right?" he murmured.

"Oh, yes. Oh, yes," she gasped.

"My wife. My love."

She cried out with joy and passion as he entered her. He caught her cries in his mouth and they began to move together, rushing in harmony toward a place of perfect fulfillment.

As dawn streaked the sky, they lay satiated in each other's arms. "Why did you act like it would be okay if I went to bed with Mitch?" she whispered.

"Because I knew Mitch wouldn't go to bed with you."

"He would, too," she said indignantly. And then she smiled. "No, I guess he wouldn't have." Her fingers played with the textures of his chest. "I thought you loved Susannah."

He stroked her cheek. "I do. The same way you love her." He didn't see any need to tell her it hadn't always been that way, that there had been a time when he had been very much attracted to Susannah. She had been so different from the women he knew.

"Susannah's happiness is important to me," he went on.

"That's why I had to make Sam understand that he couldn't have her back. But in terms of physical attraction…"

When he didn't go on, Paige probed. "What? Tell me."

He looked troubled. "Please don't take offense at this, Paige. I love Susannah and I admire her. But don't you think she's a bit-plain?"

Paige gazed around her at the tacky wedding suite that Yank thought was so attractive. She giggled with delight and hugged him to her breasts. "Absolutely, Yank. Susannah is definitely too plain for you."

Everything about Mitch had begun to irritate Susannah. His clothes, for example. How many perfectly tailored navy-blue suits could a man own? How many navy and red rep ties? Couldn't he take a walk on the wild side just once and wear paisley?

And she hated the way he tapped his pen when he was annoyed, the way he leaned back in his chair and tugged on his necktie knot when he wanted to make a point. He took notes on absolutely everything-she hated that, too. What did he do with all those yellow legal pads once he filled them up? Did he rent a warehouse somewhere?

She fumed as she watched his gold pen scratch across the paper. He probably had one of those yellow legal pads on his bedside table so he could take notes on a woman's performance after they'd made love.

But she couldn't let herself think about that, and so she thought about how crazy he made her in meetings. They would be sitting around a conference table and he would be reading from his ten zillionth computer printout and talking about shipments and quotas and sales forecasts. Then, right in the middle of a sentence, he'd slip off those stupid horn-rimmed glasses and look over at her. Just a look. Just this macho-stud look like she was some sort of marked woman. God, it was irritating. It was so irritating, she would lose track of where she was and stumble around and then everyone would start looking at her.

"Susannah?"

She blinked her eyes. Jack Vaughan, their vice-president of Research and Development, was staring at her. Everyone was staring at her. She'd done it again. Mitch smiled and leaned back in his chair, making this stupid church steeple with his fingers.

"Susannah?" Vaughan repeated. "Do you have any questions about our figures?"

"No, no. They're fine." She suspected that everyone at the table knew she didn't have the slightest idea what figures they were talking about. A giant clock seemed to be ticking away in her head, marking this last week until her divorce was final. Why did Mitch have to be so stubborn? Why did he have to drive her crazy like this? She wasn't sleeping well at night. All of this waiting had worn her nerves to the breaking point.

The loudspeaker snapped on. "Attention unmarried females. Free gynecological exams are now being given in Building C. Ask for Ralph."

Susannah jumped out of her chair. "That does it! I'm going to have somebody's ass!"

Mitch looked pained.

Jack Vaughan closed his folder. "I think our meeting is adjourned," he said quietly.

She stomped toward the door. Mitch intercepted her before she could reach it with another one of his new tricks. He simply stepped in front of her and blocked her path with his body. It was nothing more than a macho power play, a completely juvenile way of reminding her that he was bigger and stronger than she was. Real tough-guy stuff.

"What do you want?" she growled, ignoring the fluttering in her stomach and the wonderful scent of his starched shirt.

He leaned down and whispered in her ear. "One more week, Hot Shot. Then I take what's mine."

She swallowed hard. He was getting to her. He was really getting to her.

Her divorce became final on a completely ordinary Wednesday. She sat through a session with her East Coast marketing people, and met with the management team that headed up their Singapore plant. Paige had called and asked if she could drop by in the afternoon, and Susannah had rescheduled a conference call to accommodate her.

She finished drafting a memo and looked at her watch. It was nearly time for Paige to arrive. She hadn't seen Mitch all day. Which was perfectly fine with her. He'd put her through hell this past month, and she planned to make him suffer for it. If he thought he could just jump in bed with her now that she was officially a free woman, she would very quickly set him straight. She might be free, but she had no intention of being easy.

Paige stuck her head in the door. "Hi."

It was so good to see her sister that some of Susannah's tension faded. Since her marriage, Paige's skin actually seemed to glow with contentment. And whenever Susannah saw Yank, he had this goofy smile on his face.

The honeymooners had settled in at Falcon Hill. The idea of Yank Yankowski serving as lord and master of Joel Faulconer's home made her smile. You might actually have liked him, Daddy, she thought. Once you got over the initial shock, of course. He's the best there is, and he's made Paige so happy.

Susannah took in her sister's pale raspberry suit, the pearls at her throat, the chignon, and the gray lizardskin pumps. "My, my. I'm impressed. Did you get all dressed up for me?"

"No. I did it for Paul. He gets nervous when board members wear blue jeans."

"Paul?"

Paige stepped aside, and Susannah saw that she wasn't alone. Paul Clemens, Cal's predecessor as FBT chairman, was with her. Susannah got up to greet him. They chatted awkwardly for a few minutes.

Realizing that this was to be more than a sisterly chat, Susannah directed them to the small conference table in the corner of her office. No sooner were they all seated than Mitch arrived.

Susannah's heart did one of those peculiar somersaults. He took the seat next to Paige.

"I didn't know this was going to be a formal meeting," she said coolly.

Paige fiddled with her pearls. "I'm the one who asked Mitch to be here. Look, Susannah, I'm sorry about this, but-"

"It's my fault," Paul Clemens interrupted. "Paige and I had a long talk yesterday and I asked her to set this up."

Susannah clasped her hands on the table. "Paul, you've been a friend for a long time, but if you're here in any sort of official capacity for FBT, I'm going to need one of our attorneys present."

"I'm retired, Susannah, although I still sit on the board. Let's just say I'm here in an unofficially official capacity."

"Hear him out, Suze," Paige said. "This is pretty important."

Susannah reluctantly agreed, and Paul began to outline the crisis FBT had been thrust into since the public revelations about Cal Theroux. The fact that a man who had been the chairman of FBT would soon have a prison term hanging over his head had made everything incredibly difficult. The more Susannah listened, the more alarmed she became. She had known that FBT was in trouble, but she had no idea their problems ran so deep. The giant corporation was, quite literally, on the verge of collapse.

Paul finished speaking, and she gazed at him with dismay. "I hope both of you understand that none of us at SysVal wanted to damage FBT. Our problem was with Cal, not the company."

"You've made that very clear in your public statements, and we all appreciate it," Paul replied. "But the fact is, the public perceives us as the bad guys in black hats, while you're Snow White. Companies don't want to do business with us anymore. It's as if we're tainted, and they're moving toward our competitors in droves. We've discontinued the Falcon 101, but that's had little effect. The price of our stock has become a sick joke. Every division of the corporation is in jeopardy."

Paige looked up from the pattern she had been tracing on the table with the tip of her finger. "Suze, this is my fault. I'm hopeless at managing my stock. When I attend FBT business meetings, my mind wanders; everything is so boring that I can't keep my thoughts focused. I never have the slightest idea how I'm supposed to vote. That's why I gave my proxy to Cal. And look what that led to."

"You didn't intend to hurt the company," Susannah said.

"But she did hurt it," Clemens interjected. "And neither Paige nor I want that to happen again. FBT has nearly three hundred thousand employees. Entire communities depend upon us. Many of the small towns where we have plants couldn't continue to exist if we closed down. And we're losing, Susannah. Everything is slipping away."

Paige leaned forward. "I want to give you my permanent proxy, Susannah. I want you to vote my shares."

"Paige, I appreciate the vote of confidence, and I want to help you, but that's one thing I can't do. It would be a direct conflict of interest. My board of directors would never permit it."

"They would if you resigned," Paul said quietly. "If you left SysVal, put your own shares in trust, and took over as chairman and CEO of FBT."

Susannah sat stunned. They wanted her to take control of one of the biggest corporations in the United States, to take her father's old position. A hand grasped hers under the table and squeezed. The solid comfort of that big hand steadied her.

Paul studied her with great seriousness. "FBT must regain moral credibility if it's to survive. Right now, you're the only one who can give it back to us."

Susannah shook her head. "I'm sorry. Truly I am. I'll help you any other way I can, but leaving SysVal is absolutely out of the question."

For the first time since he had come in to join them, Mitch spoke. "Susannah needs a few days. Let her have some time to think it over."

"I don't want time, I-"

"I don't think a few days will hurt," he said smoothly.

She wasn't going to get into an argument with Mitch in front of Paul Clemens, and so she nodded. "Very well. A few days." But even as she spoke, she knew that nothing in the world would make her leave SysVal.

She had no sooner gotten home that night than Mitch appeared at her door. He was still wearing his business suit, and he hadn't even loosened his necktie. As much as she had been anticipating this moment, now that it had come, she wanted to postpone it. The past month had been nerve-wracking, but as she stared at him standing on her doorstep, she finally admitted to herself that she had loved that primitive feeling of being sexually stalked by the man she loved.

How could the reality ever match the expectation? Mitch would be a good lover, but in her heart of hearts, she didn't believe that he would be a great one. He was too neat, too proper. As she gazed into his face, her stomach began to feel queasy. What if she shocked him? What if he liked women who were more restrained in the bedroom?

"I-I'm sorry," she stammered. "I can't invite you in. I've got a bad headache."

"You've got a yellow streak," he replied.

She slammed the door on him and went into the living room, where her hands trembled as she snatched up a magazine she had no intention of reading from the glass-topped coffee table. Why did she have to be such a sex maniac? As passionately as she felt about him, she would never be able to hold herself back. When he found out what she was really like, he would probably run from the house in terror. Maybe he'd send her a memo. FROM: Mitchell Blaine TO: Susannah Faulconer SUBJECT: Inappropriate Bedroom Conduct…

He walked into the living room and pocketed the key she had given him when she'd moved into her new home in mid-August.

"I want that key back," she said.

"No, you don't."

She stared at the lushly printed draperies Paige had picked out for her. She loved him so much and she wanted everything to be perfect, but this was real life, not a fairy tale. Remembering that they had something other than sex to discuss, she took a seat on the couch. At least she could postpone the inevitable a bit longer. "I'm not leaving SysVal."

"I don't think you have a lot of choice, Susannah."

"Don't say that!"

He sat down next to her and leaned back into the soft cushions. How could he be so relaxed when she was so uptight? "Somehow I can't picture you living the rest of your life with the fate of three hundred thousand people on your conscience," he said. "Not to mention all those small towns."

"I don't belong at FBT. It's old and stodgy and conservative."

"True. And it's been badly mismanaged ever since your father's death."

"You know as well as I do that they only want me as a figurehead. They'll expect me to use Paige's proxy as a rubber stamp for the majority opinion. Those men don't have the slightest intention of giving me any real power."

Mitch chuckled. "And aren't you going to have a wonderful time showing them the error of their ways?"

She switched tactics. "I don't have a college degree."

"I've got three of them. You want one?"

She tried another path. "I want to have a baby."

His face softened. "Do you? That's great. That is really great. I hoped so, but we haven't talked about it."

"We haven't talked about anything!" She jumped up from the couch. "Don't you understand? The president of SysVal can definitely be pregnant. At SysVal anything is possible. But can you honestly, in your wildest imagination, see the chairman of FBT breastfeeding through a board meeting?"

"Not the old FBT." He smiled, rising to stand next to her. "But the new FBT? The one with an updated product line, a streamlined management structure. The one with onpremises child care. Ah, Susannah…"

For a moment they let the vision sweep over them. It was a vision of a new corporation, one with a strong moral center and a commitment to the world it served. A corporation for the twenty-first century.

He took her hand. "You're thirty-two now, practically an old lady, and I'm thirty-eight. SysVal is a company for kids. We have so many talented people working for us that we barely know what to do with them. Let's get out of their way and let them run with it for a while."

"We both can't just walk out. That's impossible. And I'm not going to FBT without you. Our relationship aside, you're the best marketing man in the business."

"I'll stay at SysVal until the new team is in place and the board members' nerves have steadied. Then I'll join you."

He tilted up her chin with his fingers, and his eyes were soft with the depth of his feelings for her. "I love you, Susannah. Oh, God, I love you so much. All those years, watching you married to Sam. Sometimes I thought I was going crazy."

"I know, Mitch. Oh, my darling, I love you, too."

He dipped his head. A warm, hard mouth settled over hers. His big hands splayed over her back, ran up along her spine, tangled in her hair. His mouth was open, his kiss deep and aggressive. It was a man's kiss, a kiss that gave as well as took. Her breasts crushed flat against his chest as he pulled her closer. She accepted his tongue and gave him her own while she wrapped her foot around the leg of his trousers. He clasped her head between his big hands. It felt so right to be kissing him, so perfect to be in this solid, respectable man's arms. Oh, yes, she had been absolutely right to put little boys behind her.

His hand slid down over her breast. "Time's up, sweetheart," he said hoarsely. "I've been going crazy. I can't wait any longer."

At the touch of his hand on her breast, her nervousness came back in a rush. He was a good kisser, but kissing was only part of it. "Mitch, I'm not sure…"

He drew back and studied her for an agonizingly long moment. Then he tilted his head toward the hallway. "Upstairs, Susannah," he said quietly.

He didn't realize how important this was. He didn't understand that what happened next-or didn't happen-could put a shadow over everything. "Mitch, we may have some difficulty adjusting to-"

"Now."

She spun around and stalked away from him, marching toward the front staircase as if he held a gun at her back. Sometimes she hated engineers. She really did. Her shoes slapped on the carpeted treads. Since her fears weren't quantifiable, Mitch simply refused to recognize them. Everything had to be rational. The man didn't have one speck of intuitive power in his entire body.

She stomped into the bedroom and kicked off her heels. She could hear him behind her, moving at his customary unhurried pace, as if he were on his way to a staff meeting. As he came into the bedroom, she whirled around. "If this is a disaster, don't you dare blame me!"

He stared down at the carpet and shook his head. "I was going to try to be a nice guy about this, but I can see that's not going to work." He lifted his head and glared at her. "Get out of those clothes, Susannah."

She was so tightly strung that her temper snapped. "You go to hell!"

"That does it." He reached for his necktie and yanked at the knot. "I was going to be a nice guy. Not come on too strong. A little moonlight. A few roses." He tossed his tie down on her pretty bedroom chair and threw his suit coat on top of it. Standing there in his shirt-sleeves, he splayed his hands on his hips and let his eyes roam over her as if she were a slave girl placed before him for his inspection. "Apparently, I have to remind you that you've been bought and paid for."

Her heart jumped into her throat. Oh, Lord, he was playing with her. The game wasn't over. A surge of love and desire rushed through her as she realized that he understood how she felt after all. Her tension dissolved. She lifted her chin and pursed her lips in disapproval. "I was not bought."

"Money exchanged hands," he said flatly, stripping off his shirt. "You were bought. Now get out of those clothes so I can get you warmed up."

The man had no shame. She walked over to the bed and slid down on it. Then she drew her legs beneath her and gave him her most smoldering look. "No need to warm up something that's already hot."

For a moment she thought she had him.

He recovered quickly.

"Coming from you, that kind of comment doesn't surprise me at all." His undershirt joined his shirt in a pile on the floor. She swallowed hard at the sight of his chest, already anticipating how it would feel beneath her hands. He kicked off his wing tips and removed his socks. "You may fool other people, Susannah, but don't forget that I have three college degrees and I'm not so easily misled. Beneath that prim exterior of yours, you like it wild. And that's exactly how you're going to get it." In one strong motion, he whipped his belt from the loops of his trousers and snapped it in the air. "You're going to get it wild."

Oh, Lord… And she had been afraid that he wouldn't be able to keep up with her.

"Get up on your knees and take that dress off right now," he ordered.

Yes, sir. Oh, yes, my very dear sir. She scrambled to her knees and began working feverishly at her buttons. While she worked, he actually had the nerve to slide the length of the belt back and forth in his hand. The sparkle in his eyes almost ruined the effect, but it was still wonderfully menacing, and she was going to kill him if he laughed. Imagine being tied to this incredible man for the next forty years. Her lover, her friend, the other half of herself.

Still, she knew it wasn't good for him to get too full of himself-especially after everything she'd let him get away with these past few weeks. She had a little surprise in store for Mr. Macho. No stuffed shirt in a pinstriped suit was going to call her prim and get away with it.

Opening the last of the buttons, she stripped the dress over her head, revealing the deliciously naughty undergarments she had put on that morning in a fit of nervous anticipation-the soft peach demi-bra and panties, the matching garter belt and stockings.

Mitch's black leather belt fell to the carpet. "That's more like it," he said huskily. He didn't take his eyes off her as he pulled down his trousers.

Susannah swept her gaze along his muscular thighs and then burst out laughing. Mitch was wearing the tiniest pair of black zebra-striped briefs she had ever seen on a man.

She fell back into the pillows and hooted. "How long have you been wearing underwear like that?"

"For a while."

"Do you mean to tell me that during all those endless presentations we've sat through together, all those boring budget sessions, you've been wearing underwear like that?"

"I could ask the same question." He lowered himself to the bed beside her and lightly snapped a peach-colored garter.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and slid her fingers into his hair, pulling him down beside her. "Sometimes I don't wear anything at all," she whispered.

He groaned and gathered her into his arms. His mouth opened over hers as he gave her a ferocious, demanding kiss. Before long, their naughty underwear dropped to the floor.

As they explored the secrets of each other's bodies, their skin grew sleek with sweat. But they had waited so long for this moment that neither wanted it to end too soon, and they prolonged it with gentle warfare.

"You'd better be good," he growled.

"They don't come any better."

"We'll see about that."

Each fought for supremacy-first one rolled on top, and then the other. She bit his shoulder; he retaliated with a nip at the curve of her bottom. She entangled him in the covers and ran from the bedroom. He caught her on the stairs and tossed her over his shoulder to carry her back. Their behavior was disgraceful, woefully inappropriate for people in their positions, but no one was around to point that fact out to them.

He dumped her on the bed and sprawled on top of her, catching handfuls of her hair in his fists. She arched her back and penetrated his mouth with her tongue. His hands roamed her body and found its secrets.

When they could stand their fierce love play no longer, she opened her legs and he cradled himself between them. As he poised to enter her, she looked up at him with her soft eyes.

"This is forever, isn't it, Mitch?"

All the laughter, all the mischief faded. He gazed down at her kiss-bruised mouth, and his face was young and tender with the depth of his emotion. "Oh, my love. My sweet, sweet love. This is till the end of the world."

They weren't children. They had lived through other loves and other lives, and so they knew the gift of their joining was precious. He entered her aggressively, possessing her with the boldness of a man who could only find happiness with a woman of daring spirit. She accepted him fearlessly, filled with the wild joy of a soul that had found its mate. Their bodies fit together as if they had been designed on the day of their creation to make a perfect match. And when they cried out at the very end, they were still gazing into each other's eyes.