light flicked on inside the house. Eric had been dozing, but his head snapped up. Music and muted conversation still drifted over from Liz's party next door. He glanced down at the illuminated dial on his watch and saw that it was nearly two o'clock. He had to be on the set in five hours. He should be home in bed instead of skulking in the shadows of Lilly Isabella's deck, waiting for her to return from the party.

Another light went on. Unzipping the dark green wind-breaker he had slipped into earlier, he wandered over to the sliding doors that led from the deck into the house and lit a cigarette. There were no curtains on the windows, and he could see the room inside. It held low contemporary furniture in neutral tones that served as a background for the wall of enlarged color photographs that dominated the room. Some

of them were portraits of Guy Isabella in various roles he'd played, others artistically posed male nudes. He rapped on the glass.

She appeared almost immediately. Her upper arm held a faint red mark from the silver slave bracelet she had just removed, and her feet were bare. When she saw who was standing on her deck, she gave him a mischievous grin and shook her head. He grabbed the back of one of the tubular deck chairs, turned it so it was facing the doors, and sank down into it.

She slid the door open and regarded him steadily for several seconds. "What do you want?"

"Bad question, sweetheart."

"You're a real tough guy, aren't you?"

"Not me. I'm gentle as a lamb."

"I'll bet. Listen, I'm tired and you're trouble. That's a bad combination, so why don't we just call it a night?"

He stood and flicked his cigarette over the rail into the sand. "Sounds like a good idea." Stepping past her, he entered the house.

She splayed one hand on the hip of her dark blue slacks. He saw that her fingernails were unpainted and bitten nearly to the quick. The flaw intrigued him.

"That's funny. I can't remember inviting you in."

He gestured toward several of the nude male photographs. "Friends of yours?"

"The Hall of Fame of my old lovers."

"I'll bet."

"You don't believe me?"

"Let's just say that most of them look like they'd be more comfortable in a steam bath than in bed with

a woman."

She sank down on the couch and stretched like a cat who had gone too long without stroking. "Funniest thing. That's what I've heard about you."

"Is that so?"

"You know how rumors fly about good-looking actors. You're all supposed to be gay."

He laughed, then took his time enjoying the generous lines of her body.

She had enough self-confidence to be amused instead of insulted by his perusal. "Is this where I'm supposed to surrender to your mesmerizing sexuality and take off my clothes?"

"I don't know if I'm ready to give up the pleasures of those steam baths."

She laughed, a rich, throaty sound. "Why do I have the feeling my guardian angel was looking the other way when I let you in the door?" She stood and yawned, this time lifting her silken blond hair from her neck. "You want a nightcap before you leave?"

He shook his head. "I have an early call."

"I'll tell you what, Mr. Dillon. If you want to stop by some time next week, I might be persuaded to open a bottle of Chateau Latour and play my Charlie Parker tapes for you."

He had no intention of making it that easy for her. "Sorry, I'm going on location."

"Oh?"

Flipping up the collar on his windbreaker, he walked over to the patio doors. "Maybe I'll call you when I get back."

Her head shot up. "And maybe I won't be available."

"I guess I'll have to take my chances." He let himself out, then grinned and lit a cigarette.

Dash was in the paddock inspecting the fetlock of one of the three Arabians he was now boarding along with four other horses when Honey arrived at the ranch. She got out of her car and walked toward him, her full prairie skirt whipping around her legs, the eyelet trim at the hem playing peek-a-boo with the hot afternoon breeze.

She wore the skirt with a white knit tank top, powder-blue sandals, and tiny gold balls in her just-pierced earlobes. In the week and a half that had passed since the party, Liz had taken her on two shopping trips, and she now had a new wardrobe of flouncy little dresses, slacks and tops that had cost a fortune, designer jeans, silk T-shirts, belts and bangles and shoes in every style and color. These past few nights she had found herself standing in her closet simply staring at the beautiful fabrics. It was as if she had spent years suffering from a particularly acute form of malnutrition, only to be confronted by a banquet table laden with food that was irresistible. No matter how much she looked, she couldn't get her fill.

Some of the clothes even seemed to be taking on a life of their own. A few hours ago she had fingered a shimmery little ice-blue evening gown, an updated version of a flapper's dress, and had fought a nearly irresistible urge to put it on, even though she was planning to drive out to see Dash. The gown was hardly designed for a casual afternoon visit to a dusty ranch, but she'd barely been able to resist. Slip me on, the shimmery blue gown seemed to say. If he sees you wearing me, he won't be able to resist you.

Her hand felt clumsy as she lifted it to wave at him. "Hi!"

He nodded but didn't stop what he was doing. She gripped the top rail of the fence and watched. The sun felt good on her back and arms, but it didn't ease her tension. They hadn't spoken since the night of the party.

He finally finished inspecting the horse and walked over to her, all sweaty and smelling of the stable. He took in her feminine attire but didn't comment on the absence of her customary baggy jeans and faded T-shirt. One part of her wished that she had worn the blue evening gown after all.

"Nice of you to tell me you were stopping by," he said sarcastically.

"I called, but nobody answered." She slipped her foot off the bottom rail. "Why don't I go inside and make you some lemonade? You look hot."

"Don't bother. I don't have time to be sociable today."

She gazed at him steadily. "You're really mad at me, aren't you? You've given me the deep freeze ever since Liz's party."

"Is there any particular reason why I shouldn't?"

"Dash, I'm not Janie. There wasn't any reason for you to turn into Father Avenger."

She had uttered the statement mildly, but his temper immediately flared. "I turned into your friend is what I did. You were smearing yourself all over that boy like a bitch in heat. It was one of the most disgusting things I ever saw in my life. And I don't even know why I bothered to stop you. I'll bet he was on the phone to you that same night, and you were in bed with him by morning."

"It was a little later than that."

He cursed softly, and an emotion that almost seemed like pain furrowed his forehead. "Well, you got what you wanted, didn't you? I just hope you're ready to live with yourself knowing you gave it away

so cheap."

"That's not what I meant. I meant that he didn't call me that night. He called me the next day. But I haven't gone out with him."

"Now why is that? I'm surprised that somebody so anxious to explore life's mysteries didn't just get right down to it."

"Please. Don't be so mad." She tried to curb her tongue, but a devil inside prodded her on. "I wanted to talk to you about it first."

He snatched off his hat and slapped it against the side of his jeans, sending up a puff of dust. "No. Uh-uh. I'm not going to turn into your damn sex therapist."

As if she had moved outside her body and was standing on the side observing, she heard herself say,

"Liz told me I should go to bed with him."

His eyes narrowed and he slammed his hat back on his head. "Oh, she did, did she? Now why am I not surprised? The way I remember it, she was pretty free with her favors, too."

"What a rotten thing to say. As if you weren't?"

"That doesn't have the slightest thing to do with it."

"You make me sick." Turning on her heel, she stomped away.

He grabbed her arm before she'd taken two steps. "Don't you walk away from me when I'm talking to you."

"Mount Rushmore finally wants to talk," she scoffed. "Well, forgive me very much, but I'm no longer in the mood to listen."

The stable hand was watching them curiously, so Dash pulled her toward the house. The moment they were out of sight of the paddock, he lit into her.

"I never thought I'd see the day when you'd misplace your integrity, but that's just what you're about to do. You seem to be losing all sight of who you are. There's right and there's wrong, and you're not the kind of person who should be jumping into bed with somebody you don't love."

He spoke so fiercely that some of her anger faded. No one except Dash Coogan had ever given a damn about what she did. As she saw the lines concern had drawn in his face, her temper dwindled into a warm, cozy flame. Without thinking about what she was doing, she lifted her hand and flattened her

palm against his shirt where she could feel his heart thudding beneath the damp cotton.

"I'm sorry, Dash."

He jerked away from her. "You should be. Start thinking before you jump into things. Think about the consequences."

The way he recoiled from her touch made her angry ail over again. "I'm going to the doctor for birth control pills," she shot back at him.

"You're what? You're doing what?" Before she could respond, he launched into a tirade about young people and sexual promiscuity and was so obviously outraged that she almost wished she hadn't baited him. Even so, she couldn't stop herself from prodding him further.

"I'm ready to have sex, Dash. And I'm not going to be casual about protecting myself."

"You're not ready, dammit!"

"How do you know? I think about it all the time. I'm—edgy."

"Edgy isn't the same thing as being in love, and that's the question you have to ask yourself. Are you in love?"

She gazed into those hazel eyes that had seen it all and the word yes sprang to her lips, only to be bitten back before it could escape. The truth she had been trying so hard to shut out of her conscious mind refused to be contained any longer. At some point along the way, without knowing exactly when it had happened, her child's love for Dash Coogan had changed into a woman's love. The knowledge was new and old, wonderful and terrible. She couldn't meet his eyes so she gazed at the brim of his Stetson, just above his ear.

"I'm not in love with Scott," she said carefully, her voice sounding thin to her own ears.

"Then that should settle the issue."

"Were you in love with Lisa when you slept with her? Do you love those women who leave makeup smears in your bathroom sink?"

"That's different."

Heartsick, she turned away from him. "I'm going home."

"Honey, it really is different."

She looked back at him, but this time he was the one who wouldn't meet her eyes. He cleared his throat. "I'm sort of worn out when it comes to women. But it's not the same with you. You're young. Everything's new for you."

Her response was flat. "I haven't been young since I was six years old and I lost the only person who ever loved me."

"You're not going to find love in some stranger's bed."

"Since I haven't been able to find it anyplace else, I guess I might as well give it a try." She shoved her hand in her pocket and pulled out her car keys, angry with herself for sounding so self-pitying.

"Honey—"

"Forget it." She began walking to her car.

"If you'd still like to make some lemonade, I wouldn't object."

She looked down at the keys in her palm and wanted to cry. "I'd better go. I've got some things to do."

It was the first time since they'd known each other that she was the one to walk away. As she looked back up, she saw that she had surprised him.

"You bought some new clothes."

"Liz and I have gone shopping a couple of times. She's making me over."

For some reason this seemed to reignite his anger, and his hazel eyes grew as hard as flints. "There wasn't anything wrong with the way you were."

"It was time, that's all."

As she climbed behind the wheel of the car, he held on to the top of the door so she couldn't close it. "You want to drive over to Barstow with me on Friday? A friend of mine wants to show me some quarter horses he's raising."

"Liz and I are going to the Golden Door for a week."

He looked at her blankly.

"It's a spa."

A muscle ticked in his jaw, and he released his hold on the door. "Well, now. I sure wouldn't want you to miss an intellectual experience like that."

She started the car. Her tires spit gravel as she sped down the drive.

He stood in front of the house and watched until the rooster tail of dust grew too small to see. A spa. What in the goddamn hell had gotten into Liz, taking Honey to someplace like that? She was just a kid. Smaller than a peanut. Not even as old as his daughter.

And the thought of her in bed with some good-looking young stud fill him with rage.

He turned his back to the road and stalked toward the stable. He told himself it was natural to feel protective toward her. For the past three years, he had been the closest thing she'd had to a father, and he didn't want to see her get hurt.

That was the reason he was upset. He cared about her. She was tough and fragile and funny. She had a conscience as big as all outdoors, and she was the most generous person he knew. Look at the way she treated that band of parasites she called a family. She was smart, too. Damn, she was smart. Good-hearted and optimistic, always certain there were at least three pots of gold at the end of every rainbow. But her optimistic nature made her vulnerable. He hadn't forgotten the crush she'd had on that bastard Eric Dillon, which was exactly why he didn't want to see her jumping into bed with the first young stud who caught her eye.

Now if the boy were somebody decent, someone who really cared about her and wasn't just looking to put a celebrity notch on his bedpost, he'd feel different. If she fell in love with somebody decent who would be good to her and not hurt her, he'd—

Smash the sonovabitch's face in.

The craving for a drink hit him hard. He pulled off his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his shirtsleeve. He had just turned forty-three. He had three ex-wives and two kids. Already in his lifetime he'd lost more money than most people ever dreamed of making. Life had thrown him a second chance when he'd stopped drinking, but when it came to women there was an empty place inside him that had been formed when he was a child being moved from one family to another. He couldn't love the same way other men loved. Women wanted intimacy and fidelity from a man, qualities he had proven time and again that he couldn't give.

Disgusted, he slammed his hat back on. She was just like a pesky little termite, gnawing her way bit by bit through his different layers. But he couldn't deny that she made him feel young again. She made him believe that life still held possibilities. And he wanted her. Damn did he want her. But he'd put a bullet right through his brain before he'd let himself hurt that little girl.

"Lilly, sweetheart."

Eric watched Guy Isabella weaving through a rain forest of long silver streamers trailing from the huge crimson and black helium balloons that bobbed at the vaulted ceiling of his Bel Air home. Impeccably dressed in formal wear, he smiled at Lilly and then looked at Eric with distaste. Obviously, Eric's tuxedo didn't make up for his stubbly jaw.

Everything about Lilly seemed to glow at the sight of her father. She hugged him and kissed his cheek. "Hi, Daddy. Happy birthday."

"Thank you, angel." Although he was speaking to his daughter, his attention was still on Eric.

"Daddy, this is Eric Dillon. Eric, my father."

"Sir." Eric carefully concealed his contempt as he shook Isabella's hand. Blond and boyishly handsome, both Guy Isabella and Ryan O'Neal had spent most of the seventies competing for many of the same roles. But O'Neal was a better actor, and from what Eric had heard, Guy had hated his guts ever since Love Story.

Guy Isabella represented everything Eric detested about motion picture actors. He was a pretty face, nothing more. He was also said to have a problem with alcohol, although that might not be anything more than rumor since Eric had also heard that he was a health nut. His worst sin in Eric's eyes was professional laziness. Apparently Isabella didn't think it was important to work at his craft, and now that he was pushing fifty and no longer capable of playing male ingenues, the parts were getting more difficult to come by.

"I saw that spy movie you made," Isabella said to him. "It was a little too gritty for my taste, but you did some fairly good work. I understand you're filming something new now."

Isabella's condescension set his teeth on edge. What right did an aging male bimbo have to pass judgment on his performance? Still, for Lilly's sake, he tempered his reply. "We finish shooting next week. It's gritty, too."

"Too bad."

Eric turned away to study the house. It was built in the style of a Mediterranean villa, but with a heavy Moorish influence that indicated it had been constructed in the twenties. The interior was dark and opulent. He could imagine one of the old silent-screen vamps being at home with the narrow stained-glass windows, arched doorways, and wrought-iron grillwork. The living room had priceless Persian rugs on

the floor, custom-made chairs with leopard-skin upholstery, and an antique samovar over the fireplace. A perfect place for a man with a Valentino complex.

Isabella was still regarding Eric's unshaven jaw with disapproval. His cologne smelled heavily of musk, which mingled with the aroma of the whiskey in the heavy crystal tumbler he was carrying.

"I'll tell you what I like, Dillon. Your TV show. My people are trying to put together something like that for me, but you've got to have a special kid."

"Honey's hard to duplicate."

"Damn cute. She gets you right here, you know what I mean. Right in the heart."

"I know what you mean."

Isabella finally turned his attention to Lilly, who was dressed in pale raspberry silk and asymmetrical silver jewelry. "So how's your mother, kitten?"

Lilly filled him in on the latest news from Montevideo, where her stepfather was ambassador, while Eric surveyed the gathering. It was an old Hollywood crowd made up of megastars from the fifties and sixties, former studio heads, agents. Everyone eminently respectable. He wouldn't have been caught dead here if it weren't for Lilly.

Tonight marked their third date, and he hadn't even kissed her. Not because he didn't desire her or because he was bored with her, but because he liked being with her so much. It was a new experience for him to be both physically and mentally attracted to a woman.

He and Lilly had so many things in common. Both of them had been raised in affluence. She knew art and literature, and she understood his passion for acting. She was an irresistible combination of beauty and brains, aloofness and sensuality. Even more important, she had an air of worldliness that allowed him to relax when he was with her instead of worrying that somehow he would hurt her.

"Isn't he wonderful?" she said as her father left to greet a guest.

"He's something, all right."

"Most divorced men would have passed their daughters off onto their ex-wives, but my mother was never very maternal and he was the one who raised me. It's the funniest thing, but in a way you remind me of him."

Eric reached for his cigarettes without comment. Lilly's relationship with her father was her one drawback, but he had to admire her filial loyalty.

"Of course, you're dark and he's blond," she went on. "But both of you belong in the Greek god category." She lifted a champagne glass from the tray of a passing waiter and gave him a mischievous smile. "Don't let this go to that swelled head of yours, but each of you has a certain—I don't know—an aura or something." She dipped the tip of her index finger into her champagne glass and then brought it

to her lips, where she sucked it. "Oh, sorry, you can't smoke in here."

He gazed around with irritation and saw that no one else was smoking. He remembered that Isabella was supposed to be a health nut. "Let's go outside then. I need a cigarette."

She began leading him along the limestone paved foyer to the back of the house. "You smoke too much."

"I'm quitting as soon as this movie's over."

"And the check's in the mail." She lifted one of her expressive eyebrows at him. He smiled. She never let him get away with bullshit, another thing he liked about being with her.

He gazed up at the coffered ceiling. "How long has your father lived here?"

"He bought the house right after he and my mother were married. Louis B. Mayer used to own it, or King Vidor. Neither of them remembers which one."

"Sort of a weird place to grow up."

"I guess."

She led him into the kitchen where she nodded absentmindedly at the help before she took him out through a service door. The grounds, lush with mature vegetation, sloped sharply in the back. Water splashed gently in a hexagonal-shaped fountain covered in blue-and-yellow-patterned tiles. He caught the scent of eucalyptus, roses, and chlorine.

"I want to show you something." Lilly was whispering, even though the grounds were deserted. He lit his cigarette. She danced ahead of him down along a curved path that ran roughly parallel to the house, her silver-blond hair flying, her skirt swirling around her long legs. He grew aroused just watching her. She was beautiful, but not fragile. And definitely not an innocent.

Recessed lights hidden in the landscaping softly illuminated the leafy branches of the magnolia and olive trees they passed. As the slope grew steeper and the red-tiled roof of the house slipped out of sight, she turned back and took his arm. They rounded a curve and another house came into view—a tiny replica of Snow White's cottage.

He laughed softly. "I don't believe it. Was this yours?"

"The perfect playhouse for a Hollywood kid. Dad had it built for me when he and Mother got divorced. I guess it was my consolation prize."

The story-book cottage was half-timbered and made of stucco with rustic patches of brick showing through. A small chimney rose from one end of a mock thatched roof. The front held a set of diamond-paned windows framed by wooden shutters.

"The window box used to be filled with geraniums," she said, letting go of his arm and walking up to the cottage. "Daddy and I planted them together every year." She pushed the latch on the wooden double door, and the hinges creaked as it opened. "Most of the original furnishings are gone now, and the place is mainly used for pool storage. You'll have to duck."

Eric took one last drag on his cigarette before he tossed it away. Bending, he entered the cottage. The ceiling was just above his head even though he wasn't standing completely upright.

"Give me your matches."

He passed them over and heard her moving about. A few seconds ticked by and then the interior was filled with flickering amber light as she lit a pair of candles on the mantelpiece of a miniature stone fireplace.

He shook his head in wonder as he looked around. "I don't believe this place."

"Isn't it wonderful?"

The ceiling of the playhouse cottage was beamed and sloping, high enough for him to stand upright at the center but falling off at the sides. A muted but still colorful mural of elves, fairies, and forest creatures frolicked across the walls. The muralist had painted rustic cracks along with several patches of bricks, as if the plaster had broken away in places. Even the cans of pool chemicals and the neatly stacked pile of lounge cushions didn't spoil the cottage's enchantment.

"It's a little musty, but Dad keeps the place maintained. He knows I'd kill him if he let anything happen to it."

He couldn't tear his eyes away from her. In her pale raspberry gown with her silver-blond hair and exquisite features, she looked as enchanted as the figures in the mural.

She moved a cushion from the top of the stack to the floor. Sinking down on it, she leaned back against the others. "You're too big for the place. The boys I used to bring here were a lot smaller."

He lowered himself onto the cushion next to her, propping up one knee and loosening his tie. "Were there lots of them?"

"Only two. One lived in the next house, and he was boring. All he wanted to do was move the chairs around and make forts."

There was a husky, seductive quality in her voice that intrigued him. He turned her hand over in the lap of her gown and traced a circle in her palm with his fingernail. "And the other?"

"Uhm. That would have been Paulo." She leaned her head back against the cushions, her eyes drifting shut. "His father was our gardener."

"I see."

"He came here whenever he could." She drew her hand to the bodice of her gown and laid the tips of her fingers across her full breast.

His mouth went dry, and he knew he could no longer hold out against her. "What did the two of you do?"

"Use your imagination."

"I think"—he toyed with her fingers—"that you were naughty."

"We played"—she caught her breath as he stroked the center of her palm— "pretend games."

Leaning forward, he brushed his lips over the corner of her mouth. "What kind of games?"

The small, pointed tip of her tongue flicked out to lick the place he had kissed. "Uhmm... The usual ones children play."

"Such as?" He slid his finger over her wrist and along her inner arm.

"I was afraid of getting a shot. Paulo told me he could fix me up so I wouldn't have to go to the doctor."

"I like the kid's style."

"I knew what he was doing, of course, but I pretended I didn't." Her breath caught as his hand slipped down along her leg and crept under the hem of her dress. "It was all pretty comic."

"But exciting, too."

"Definitely exciting."

He rubbed her leg through her shimmery stocking, gradually moving higher until his thumb rested in the small cave at the back of her knee. "I like to play games, too."

"Yes, I know."

He stroked her lower thigh and then tensed with excitement as her stockings came to an end and he touched bare skin. He should have known that she wouldn't wear anything as ordinary as panty hose.

"And do you still hate going to the doctor?" he asked.

"It's not my favorite thing." At the slight pressure he was exerting, she eased her legs apart. The insides

of her thighs were firm and warm where he stroked them.

"But what if you're sick?"

"I—I'm hardly ever sick."

She gasped as his thumb brushed her through her panties.

"I don't know about that," he said. "You feel warm."

"Do I?" she asked breathlessly.

"You might have a fever. I'd better check." He slipped his finger inside the leg opening. She made a

small, moaning sound.

"Just as I thought."

"What?"

"You're hot."

"Yes." She squirmed beneath his intimate touch.

In the candlelight her lips were parted and her face flushed. His own excitement burned more fiercely as he saw how the sweet perversion of this fantasy had aroused her. Women had never been anything more than medicine to him, an over-the-counter drug to be taken at night in hopes that he'd feel better in the morning. He had never cared about his partner's satisfaction, only his own, but now he wanted to watch Lilly shatter beneath his touch, and he knew his own satisfaction wouldn't be complete without hers.

"I'm afraid I'll have to take these off." He met no resistance as he slipped the panties down over her hips. When they were off, he reached up and touched her breast through her dress. She moaned, and her forehead puckered in a frown, as if she were upset about something, but she pushed her breast against his hand, so he didn't stop.

"Your heart rate is fast," he said.

She didn't reply.

He found the zipper at the back of her dress. Sliding it down, he lowered the bodice and then removed her bra.

She lay, half sitting, half reclining in front of him, naked except for her shimmering stockings and the pale raspberry gown bunched at her waist, knees raised, legs open, wanton. He touched her breast and then gently squeezed on her nipple. She made an animal sound deep in her throat, almost a sound of distress, while at the same time she arched against his more intimate caress below, inviting him to touch more deeply.

The mixture of conflicting emotions she was exhibiting bothered him but at the same time aroused him so fiercely he could hardly hold himself back. Her moans grew guttural in her throat, and tears began to leak from beneath her eyelids.

Alarmed, he drew back, only to have her sink her fingers into the muscles of his forearms and pull him closer. He continued his caresses, sweat dampening his shirt. As his body demanded its own release, he held back to watch the disturbing fusion of emotions that played across her face: pleasure and pain, feverish arousal and a disturbing anguish. Her passion dewed his hand, and his breathing echoed harshly in the enchanted interior of the cottage as she splintered beneath his touch.

He moaned and held her through the aftershocks. "Lilly, what's wrong?" He'd never seen a woman react with so much distress to lovemaking. When she didn't answer, he crooned softly to her. "It's all right. Everything's all right."

And then he decided he had imagined her distress because her quick hands began working at the zipper

on his trousers. When she had freed him, she grasped the loose ends of his bow tie in her fists and drew his mouth to hers, giving him her tongue. She stroked him until he lost all reason.

He fumbled in the pocket of his trousers for the foil packet he never went anywhere without and drew it to his teeth to rip it open with a shaking hand. She brushed it away. "No. I want to feel you."

Shifting her weight, she lowered herself upon him.

He was too far gone to heed the alarms that clanged in his brain, and only after he had spilled himself inside her did he feel a chill of foreboding. He had been attracted to her because she seemed so strong, but now he wasn't sure.

She began nibbling his ear and then she insisted on running back to the house to steal some food from the kitchen for them. Before long they were laughing together over lobster and petits fours, and his forebodings had evaporated.

The next day they went to a Wynton Marsalis concert together, and after that he continued to see her several times a week. Her beauty fascinated him, and they never ran out of conversation. They argued about art, shared a mutual passion for jazz, and could talk for hours about the theater. It was only when they climbed into bed that something was very wrong. Even as Lilly demanded that he bring her to orgasm, she almost seemed to hate him for doing it. He knew it was his fault. He was a bad lover. He had used women for so long that he had no idea how to be unselfish.

He redoubled his efforts to make certain that she was satisfied, giving her back rubs, kissing every part of her, caressing her until she begged him for release, but her distress continued unabated. He wanted to talk to her about the problem, but he didn't know how, and he realized that he could converse with Lilly on any topic except those intimate ones that mattered. As summer slipped into fall and nothing improved, he knew he had to put an end to it.

While he was making up his mind how to do it, she appeared unexpectedly at his house one night in early October just after he'd gotten back from the studio. He poured two glasses of wine and held one of them out to her. She took a sip. Once again he noticed her fingernails, bitten nearly to the quick.

"Eric, I'm pregnant."

He stared at her as a cold sense of dread crept through him. "Is this a joke?"

"I wish it were," she said bitterly.

He remembered that first night in the playhouse two months earlier when he hadn't used anything, and his gut tightened. Fool. What a goddamned fool.

She stared into the depths of her wineglass. "I've— Tomorrow I have an appointment for an abortion."

As quickly as her words sank in, rage exploded inside him. "No!"

"Eric—"

"No, goddamnit!" The stem of his wineglass cracked in his hand.

She gazed at him miserably, her light gray eyes swimming with tears. "There isn't any other way. I don't want a baby."

"Well, you have one!" He pitched the glass into the corner where it shattered, splattering its contents everywhere. "We have one, and there won't be any abortion."

"But—"

He could see that he was scaring her, and he tried to calm his breathing. Setting aside her glass, he grasped her hands. "We'll get married, Lilly. It happens all the time."

"I—I care about you, Eric, but I don't think I'd be a very good wife."

He attempted a shaky laugh. "That's another thing we have in common, then. I don't think I'll be a very good husband, either."

She smiled tremulously. He drew her into his arms and squeezed his eyes shut while he began to make promises to her, promises of roses and sunshine, daffodils and moonbeams, everything he could think of. He didn't mean any of it, but that made no difference. She had to marry him, because no matter what, he wouldn't be responsible for the death of another innocent.