XTERIOR. PASTURE FENCE NEAR THE RANCH HOUSE—DAY

Dash and Janie are standing by the fence. Dash holds a crumpled letter in his fist.

JANIE

Did Blake write you? When's he coming home on leave?

DASH

This letter isn't from Blake. It's from your grandmother.

JANIE

(excited)

My grandmother? I didn't even know I had one of those!

DASH

Do you remember all the stuff I told you about your ma?

JANIE

(cheerfully)

I remember. You said she was the sweetest thing you'd ever met and you couldn't figure out how she gave birth to a spawn of Satan like myself.

DASH

She was sweet, Janie. But I also told you she was an orphan, and that was a lie.

JANIE

A lie? Why'd you lie, Pop?

DASH

Your mama's parents kicked her out of the house when she was only seventeen years old. They were pretty strict people. She wasn't married. And she was pregnant with you.

JANIE

(puzzled)

You mean you and Ma had to get married?

DASH

I married your ma because I wanted to. There wasn't any have to about it.

He gazes down at the letter.

DASH

Apparently your grandfather died lost year, and your grandmother's getting old. She wants to see you, so she hired some private detectives to track us down. According to this letter, she'll be here day after tomorrow.

JANIE

Wow! I can't believe this. Do you think she'll have one of those buns on top of her head and bake pies?

DASH

Janie, there's somethin' I got to tell you. Maybe I should have told you a long time ago, but—I

don't know—I couldn't seem to bring myself to do it. Now I guess I don't have any choice. Your grandmother knows the truth, and if I don't tell1 you, she will.

JANIE

You're starting to make me nervous. Pop.

DASH

I'm sorry, Janie. I don't know how else to say this but straight out. Your Ma was already pregnant with you when I met her for the first time.

JANIE

But that doesn't make sense. How could—Are you trying to tell me—Do you mean that you're not really my father?

DASH

I'm afraid that's about the size of it.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid." Honey slammed the covers holding the final script of The Dash Coogan Show.

"I hope you're not talking about me." Dash came through the door of the motor home where Honey was curled up on the couch. He wore jeans and cowboy boots with a tweed sports coat. A silver and turquoise thunderhead bolo glimmered at the collar of his denim shirt.

Although they'd been married for five years, her heart gave the funny jump-skip that still happened when he came up on her unexpectedly. She didn't think she'd ever get enough of looking at that legendary face—those rough-hewn features so elemental that they seemed to have been carved by the wind and then baked by the desert sun.

He pocketed the key he'd used to open the door, leaned down, and kissed her. "I know I haven't taken all those fancy college classes like somebody I could mention, but I don't consider myself stupid."

She laughed and wrapped her arms around his neck to pull him closer. "You're sly as a fox, you old cowboy."

He kissed her again, sliding his hands beneath the baggy powder-blue knit sweater she was wearing with a short white denim skirt. "I thought you were going to work on that paper you got due."

"I am. I just—" She released him. "Yesterday I was straightening up that mess you call a den, and I found the scripts from our final season. I decided to bring the last one along to reread. See if the Fatal Episode was as bad as I remembered."

He took off his sports coat and tossed it over a chair. "You could have asked me. I'd have told you it was even worse than you remembered."

She rose from the couch and walked a few steps to the coffeepot she kept going whenever she went on location with Dash. They were in a rough East Los Angeles neighborhood where he was shooting a low-budget television movie about a Texas cop on assignment with the LAPD. She handed him a mug and then poured another for herself. Leaning back against the small counter, she crossed her ankles, which were encased in the powder-blue socks she was wearing with her white Keds. When she had gotten dressed that morning, Dash had told her she looked all of thirteen and he would appreciate it very much if she didn't get him arrested for something unsavory like statutory rape.

She took a sip of coffee. "I don't know why the writers thought that kind of stupid explanation about Dash not really being Janie's father would make audiences forget they were watching a married couple pretend to be father and daughter."

He sat down on the couch and leaned back. When he stretched out his legs, his cowboy boots reached halfway down the center of the motor home. "By the time the Fatal Episode aired, we didn't have any viewers left anyway, so I guess it didn't matter."

"It mattered to me. I hated the idea that they tried to save the show by deciding that Dash and Janie weren't really father and daughter. That was even stupider than Bobby's dream on Dallas."

"It was Pam's dream, not Bobby's. And nothing could be that stupid."

A police siren from the street outside penetrated the thin shell of the motor home. Dash scowled. "Damn. I don't know why I let you talk me into bringing you along today. This neighborhood's too dangerous."

Honey rolled her eyes. "Here we go again. Papa Dash being overprotective."

"Overprotective! Do you have any idea how many drug murders and gang shootings have happened around here just in the last few months? And this two-bit production company didn't hire any security people. They probably don't even have a city permit to film."

"Dash, I've kept the door locked, and I'm not going out. You know I have to write my English lit paper, and this is a perfect place to do it because there aren't any distractions. If I were home, I'd be out riding, or digging in the flower bed, or baking you a chocolate cake."

He sputtered some more, and she gave him a sympathetic smile. She tried not to tease him too much about his overprotectiveness because she understood that he couldn't help himself. No matter how certain he was of her love, he could never completely set aside the little boy buried inside him who was afraid the person he loved most was going to be snatched away.

"It's my fault," he grumbled. "I like having you around so much I lose my common sense. Rub my neck, will you? That fight scene yesterday got me all stiff."

He turned sideways, and she went over to the couch, where she knelt in back of him. She pushed her

hair behind one ear. As she cocked her head, it tumbled forward on the opposite side and fell in a honey-colored waterfall over his shoulder. He leaned against her and she began massaging the muscles of his shoulders, closing her eyes for a moment to absorb the solid, familiar feel of him. Their marriage had brought her more happiness than she had ever believed possible, and even all the professional and financial difficulties that had followed had never made her regret what they had done.

"I'm too old for these cops and robbers pictures," he grumbled.

"You won't be fifty till summer. That's hardly ancient."

"Right now I feel like it is. Maybe trying to keep up with the sexual excesses of my twenty-five-year-old child bride has something to do with it."

She buried her lips in the side of his neck while her hands trailed down along the front of his shirt to the waistband of his jeans. "Want to knock off a quickie?"

"Didn't we do that early this morning?"

"Anything that happens before six o'clock counts for the day before."

"Now why's that?"

"It's all a matter of relativity. I learned about it in that philosophy class I took last year." She slipped her fingertips inside his waistband. "It's far too complex for me to explain to an ignorant cowpoke, so I'm afraid you'll have to take my word for it."

"Is that so?" He leaned forward so abruptly that she upended over his shoulder.

"Hey!"

He caught her in his lap before she could sprawl to the floor. "It seems to me somebody's getting a little too smarty-pants to fit into her britches."

She squirmed into a more comfortable position in his arms and gazed up into that wonderful face.

"Are you ever sorry you married me?"

He cupped her breast and gently kneaded it. "About a hundred times a day." And then the teasing light faded from his green eyes and he drew her against him with a muffled groan. "My sweet little girl. Sometimes I think my life didn't start until the day I married you."

She lay contented against him. Maybe their marriage was even more precious to her because it wasn't perfect. They'd had so many problems right from the beginning: their guilt over the demise of the TV series, the humiliation they had suffered from the press, the fact that his daughter hated her guts.

Most of their problems hadn't gone away. They'd only recently emerged from their financial troubles. Instead of sheltering the money she'd brought into their marriage, she'd used most of it to put a big dent in his IRS debt. He'd been furious when he'd found out, but she didn't regret a single penny. The debt was finally paid off, and they had begun to set aside money for the future.

A worse problem was the beating his professional career had taken as a result of their marriage. It saddened her to see him forced to accept roles in second-rate television movies such as the one he was shooting now. He shrugged off her concern by saying he'd never been much of an actor anyway, and any work was good work.

Maybe he wasn't a versatile actor, but to her mind, he was something even better. He was a legend, the last of the solitary individualists who wore a white hat and stood for decency. No matter how much they had needed the money, she wouldn't let him accept any parts that tarnished that image.

As her nose brushed against his shirt collar, she knew that the biggest conflict between them—the one that never went away—was Dash's refusal to let her have a child. The issue lurked like an unwelcome visitor in all the invisible corners of their existence together. She yearned for his baby, dreamed of bassinets and snap-legged sleepers and a sweet little down-covered head. But he said he was too old for

a baby and that he'd already proven he didn't know how to be a father.

She no longer believed his excuses. She knew he was afraid something would happen to her in childbirth, and he needed her too much to take the risk. What she didn't know was how she could fight a fear that was rooted in love.

He poked his finger through one of her curls. "I almost forgot to tell you. Apparently there was a news report about Eric Dillon on television a couple of hours ago."

"That arrogant little bastard."

"Dillon's at least six feet tall. I don't know why you call him little."

"Six feet is still four inches shorter than you. That makes him little in my book."

"That's a pretty narrow definition of short, especially coming from somebody who can't even reach the top shelf of her kitchen cupboards."

"I notice that you're not debating the fact that I called him a bastard. Since he won his Oscar last month, he's probably even more insufferable than I remember."

"He wasn't that bad, Honey. You shouldn't blame him for the fact that you fell in love with him and he had to spend all his spare time hiding out from you."

"I did not fall in love with him, Dash Coogan. I just had a crush. You were the one I fell in love with."

He grinned. "I've been thinking. How do you feel about going up to Alaska this summer and doing some backpacking along the Chilkoot Trail?"

"That's a wonderful idea. I've always wanted to go to Alaska."

"We don't have to. I may not be a multimillionaire, but I can afford something better for you than a tent. If you want to go to Paris or something—"

"I do. But not with you. I can just hear you complaining about the traffic and the fact that everybody's speaking French. Maybe the next time Liz goes to Europe, I'll go with her."

"That sounds like a good idea."

They smiled at each other, both of them knowing she wouldn't go anywhere without him. She'd lived through an entire childhood without anyone to love her, and now that she had Dash, she didn't want to be with anyone else. She was dependent on him in a way that she had never permitted herself to be dependent on anyone, even when she was a child. He was both her greatest strength and her greatest weakness.

She shifted her weight to avoid the corner of his belt buckle where it was digging into her waist and remembered that she had interrupted him. "So what did you hear about Eric?"

"Oh, yeah. Apparently he tried to straighten out a curve on Mulholland last night. He was driving drunk, the stupid son of a bitch."

"I hope he's all right."

"I guess it was pretty serious. Some broken bones; I don't know what all. Luckily, no one else was involved."

"It's hard to feel a lot of sympathy for him, isn't it? He just won an Oscar. He's rich and successful, at the top of his career. And he's got two little girls. How could he be so self-indulgent?"

"Remember that he grew up with lots of money. I doubt he ever had to work too hard for anything. People like that don't have a lot of depth to them."

"It's funny, though, how somebody who's so obviously shallow can turn in the performances he does. Sometimes when I watch one of his films, he makes me shiver."

"That doesn't have anything to do with his performance. It's your leftover sexual attraction to him."

She laughed and threw herself against him, toppling him back against the couch so that he bumped his head on the wall.

"Damn little hellcat," he murmured against her mouth.

She pulled his shirttail from his jeans. "How much time do we have before you need to be back on the set?"

"Not much."

"Doesn't matter." The snap on his jeans gave way beneath her fingers. "You've been so quick on the trigger lately that I'm sure we can manage."

He reached back to close the open set of blinds on the motor home window. "Are you casting aspersions on my staying power?"

"I absolutely am."

His hands slid beneath her sweater and unfastened her bra. He brushed his thumbs over her nipples. "If you wouldn't wiggle around so much and make all those moaning sounds in my ear, I might last longer."

"I do not moan. I—" She moaned. "Oh, that's not fair. You know I'm sensitive there."

"And about a hundred other places."

Within minutes, he had located half a dozen of them.

Their lovemaking was filled with laughter and passion. As sometimes happened when they were finished and Honey lay against his chest, she could feel tears welling in her eyes.!!!Thank you for giving him to me, God. Thank you so much.

Dash locked the door of the motor home behind him when he left. She opened the blinds so she could watch him walk away with that rolling, bowlegged gait she loved. Her very own cowboy husband. If she could only convince him to let her have a baby, she'd never ask for anything else again.

The view from the window was grim and depressing. The production vehicles and motor homes were grouped together in what had once been the parking lot for the abandoned light-bulb factory across the street, where the crew was gathered to film today's scenes. The factory's brick walls held spray-painted obscenities and gang messages. As always happened on location, a small crowd had formed to watch the actors: kids truant from school, people who had wandered out from the local shops, an assortment of vagrants. A street vendor was even selling ice cream bars.

Still, she didn't let the festive atmosphere delude her. For once, Dash was right to be cautious; this was a dangerous neighborhood. When they'd gotten out of their car that morning, she'd seen a broken hypodermic needle lying in a weedy hole in the asphalt.

She turned away from the window and walked over to the table where she was working on the paper for her lit class. She regarded the notes she had made without enthusiasm. She was twenty-five years old, too old to be going to school. Maybe that was why she was having so much difficulty getting started on this paper. Since she had no specific career goal in mind, she took classes more to fill time than for any other reason. All she wanted from life was to be Dash Coogan's wife, the mother of his child, and to play Janie Jones for the rest of her life. But if she told Dash school had begun to seem pointless, she knew exactly what he would say.

"Damn right it is. Give that underworked agent of yours a phone call and get your cute little butt back to work in front of the cameras where you belong."

Dash persisted in believing that she was a great actress despite the fact that she'd only played one part. She wished he were right and her talent was genuine instead of a gimmick. Not even to him would she confess how much she missed acting.

Occasionally when he was away from the ranch, she read scenes from plays aloud: everything from Shakespeare to Neil Simon and Beth Henley. But it was always a disaster. She sounded phony and stilted, Eke an actor in a junior high play, and any fantasies she had about going back in front of the cameras quickly dissolved. In the past five years she'd lived through a humiliating amount of abuse from the press and the public. The only thing they hadn't been able to take away from her were her performances as Janie Jones, and she wouldn't let anything tarnish that.

She settled at the table to work, but she couldn't seem to concentrate. Instead, she found herself thinking about her last phone conversation with Chantal. As usual, Chantal had wanted money, this time so she and Gordon could take a cruise.

"You know I can't afford that," Honey had said. "I don't have a source of income now, and I've been telling you for the past year that I can't keep up the payments on your house much longer. Instead of cruises, you need to start thinking about finding some place less expensive to live."

"Don't start nagging me, Honey," Chantal had replied. "I can't take any more pressure now. Me and Gordon have both been under a lot of stress these last six months, ever since those doctors told me about my fallopian tubes and all. It's hard facing the fact that I can't ever have a baby."

Chantal had said the one thing guaranteed to win Honey's sympathy, and she had immediately softened. "Chantal, I'm sorry about that. You know I am. Maybe I should send you to another doctor. Maybe—"

"No more doctors." Chantal had said. "They've all told me the same thing, and I can't stand any more of those examinations. Besides, Honey, if you can find the money to pay all those doctor bills, I don't see why you can't come up with enough for a cruise."

Last night when Honey had mentioned the conversation to Dash as the two of them were getting ready for bed, he'd started badgering her again.

"Chantal's just using you. To tell the truth, I think she's more relieved than sorry that she can't get pregnant. She's too lazy to have a baby. Don't you realize that by making Gordon and Chantal so dependent on you, you've robbed them of the chance to become productive people? I know you always think you know what's best for everybody else in the world, but that's not necessarily true."

She'd slapped down her hairbrush and glared at him. "You don't understand, Dash. It's not in Chantal's nature to be productive."

"It's in anybody's nature if they're hungry enough. And what about Gordon? He's got two arms and two legs. He's perfectly capable of carrying his own weight."

"But you don't understand how it was when I first came to L.A. Gordon threatened to take Chantal away from me. She was all I had, and I couldn't let that happen."

"He was manipulating you, is what he was doing."

"That may be, but I can hardly turn my back on Chantal now that Sophie's gone. It's been three years since Sophie died, and she still hasn't gotten over it."

"If you ask me, you've mourned your Aunt Sophie a lot longer than Chantal ever did."

"That's a dirt-rotten thing to say."

He'd begun noisily brushing his teeth, effectively shutting off further conversation. She'd stomped into the bathroom and closed the door, not wanting to admit even to herself that he was at least partially right. Sophie's death seemed to have hit her harder than Chantal. But it had been so unnecessary, so lacking in dignity. Her aunt had choked on the wing bone in some store-bought fried chicken Gordon had heated up in the microwave.

At least Buck Ochs was gone. Sophie hadn't even been cold in her grave before he'd brought home a hooker. To Gordon's credit, he'd thrown Buck out, and the last Honey had heard, Sophie's former husband had gone to work in a park near Fresno.

She pushed away thoughts of her family and forced herself to get to work on her paper. Two hours later, with her notes organized and the first few pages written, she rose to pour herself a fresh mug of coffee. As she glanced through the back window, she saw Dash walking across the narrow, dirty street toward the motor home.

Once again, her heart gave that silly hop-skip. She looked at her watch and saw that it was nearly four o'clock. Maybe he was done for the day and they could go home early. With a smile, she set down her coffee, unlocked the door, and stepped outside.

The late afternoon was hot and humid, more like July in South Carolina than May in southern California. The vans and trucks surrounding her were jammed so close together that the air couldn't circulate, and everything smelled of gasoline and exhaust fumes. As Dash crossed from the street into the parking lot, she waved at him.

He lifted his arm to wave back, but halfway up, his hand stalled. He was close enough that she could see him frown. Just then, she heard the muffled sound of a woman's cry. She turned sharply.

Off to her right, two of the larger motor homes were parked parallel to each other, forming a narrow, dark tunnel less than five feet across. She saw a flash of movement toward the rear of the vehicles and took a quick step forward.

A thin, swarthy-faced man wearing a ripped red T-shirt and shiny black pants was dragging a young Hispanic woman into the confined space. Horrified, Honey watched as the man rammed the woman against the side of the larger vehicle and made a grab for the purse she held clamped in her arms. The woman screamed, hunching her shoulders to protect the purse at the same time she struggled to free herself from him.

The woman and her assailant were less than thirty feet away, and, instinctively, Honey began to rush forward, but before she could go far, she heard the thud of running feet behind her. Dash shot past,

giving her a hard shove in the center of her back that sent her sprawling.

She gasped as her bare knees scraped on the asphalt and the heels of her hands slid over the rough surface. The pain was sharp, but not as sharp as the sense of dread that swept through her. She jerked her head back up.

From the ground she could see it all. She could see the pattern of bright yellow flowers on the skirt of the woman's dress, hear her cries for help as she foolishly clung to her purse.

Dash stood not far from the point where Honey lay, his back to her, legs braced. Her heart pounding, she opened her mouth to yell at him to be careful, not to play the hero, not to—

"Let her go!" Dash called out.

Time hung suspended, so that the most insignificant details would be forever etched in her mind with grotesque clarity. The veins of cracked asphalt that led to her husband's boots, the raveling hanging from the hem of his jeans. She felt the hot sun beating down on her back, smelled the asphalt, saw the long shadow cast by his tall frame. Dominating it all was the wild, drug-crazed expression in the eyes of the woman's assailant as he stood at the end of that dark tunnel formed by the production vehicles and spun to face Dash.

In one grotesque motion, the man snatched a snub-nosed pistol from the waistband of his shiny black pants and raised it. A horrible scream spilled from her throat as she watched the wild-eyed addict fire two shots.

Dash twisted and crumpled to the ground in a slow, awkward movement. A cloying gray fog enveloped her, making everything seem unreal. In the narrow tunnel the woman fell, too, a bright yellow blur, as the addict shoved her down and ran away, the purse lying forgotten at her side.

Dash's arm lay over the cracked pavement. Honey saw his bare wrist, the broad back of his hand. Sobbing like a wounded animal, she began to crawl toward him on her hands and her bloody, scraped knees. Through the gray fog, she told herself that everything would be all right. Just seconds ago she had waved at him. None of this was real because nothing this ghastly could happen without warning. Not so quickly, not without an omen.

She was barely aware of the shouts of the crew members as they came running from the other side of the street. She saw only her husband's fingers clawing at the asphalt.

She struggled to her knees beside him, her body shaking with wrenching sobs. "Dash!"

"Honey... I'm..."

Gripping his arms, she turned him so that his head and one shoulder were resting in her lap. A big stain was spreading over his chest like a sunburst. She remembered that he'd had a wound like this in one of his films, but she couldn't think which one it was.

She cupped his cheeks and whispered on a sob, "You can get up now. Please, Dash... Please, get up..."

His eyelids flickered, and his mouth began to work. "Honey..." He whispered her name on a horrible wheeze.

"Don't talk. Please, God, don't talk..."

His eyes locked with hers. They were full of love and bleak with pain. "I knew... I'd... break... your... heart," he gasped.

And then his outspread hand went limp.

Inhuman, wrenching sounds slipped from her throat. The asphalt was so black, his blood so red. His eyes stared up at her, open but unseeing.

One of the crew members touched her, but she shook him off.

She cradled her husband's head in her lap, stroked his cheek while she rocked and whispered to him. "You're going... to be fine. You're all right... My darling... My own... cowboy."

His warm blood seeped through her skirt, making her thighs sticky. She continued to rock him. "I love you, my darling. I'll... love you... forever." Her teeth were chattering and her body convulsing with shivers. "Nothing bad can happen. Not a thing. You're the hero. The hero never..."

She pressed kisses to his forehead, the ends of her hair dipping in his blood, tasting the blood in her mouth, muttering that he wouldn't die. She would die instead of him. She would take his place. God would understand. The writers would fix everything. She stroked his hair. Kissed his lips.

"Honey." One of the men touched her.

She lifted her head and her face contorted with fury. "Go away! Everybody go away! He's all right."

The man shook his head, his cheeks wet with tears. "Honey, I'm afraid Dash is dead."

She pulled her husband's beloved head closer against her breasts and rested her cheek against his hair. She spoke fiercely in a flood of words. "You're wrong. Don't you understand? The hero can't die! He can't, you stupid God! You can't break the rules. Don't you know? The hero never dies!"

It took three medics to pull her away from Dash Coogan's lifeless body.