rue to his word, Eric stayed out of her way, and she had little conversation with him after that first day. His van was parked between two of the old storage buildings not far from the delivery entrance. In the evening, while she was eating dinner with Chantal and Gordon, he used her shower.

From the beginning he managed to blend in with the workmen, and what he lacked in skill he made up for in muscle and tenacity. After two weeks she had to remind herself that he truly was Eric Dillon and not the man he had created; a long-haired, one-eyed foreigner who had introduced himself to everyone as Dev.

Several times each week he disappeared for part of the afternoon. Despite herself, she began to wonder where he went for those four- or five-hour stretches. The third time he disappeared it finally occurred to her that he must have a woman somewhere. A man like Eric Dillon was hardly going to give up sex just because he'd lost an eye.

She slammed her hammer down on a nail she was driving into the catwalk. Lately, when she should have been thinking about coming up with the money she needed to finish the coaster, she had been thinking about sex, and last night she'd had another disturbing dream, one in which a faceless man approached her, obviously with the intention of making love. She wanted that part of her buried with Dash, but her body seemed to have other ideas.

She shoved the hammer back into her tool belt, determined not to think about it. Even thinking about sex was a betrayal of what she and Dash had meant to each other.

That evening during dinner, Chantal and Gordon were abnormally quiet. Chantal picked at the too-salty tuna casserole she had prepared, then finally pushed it away and went to the refrigerator for a Pyrex casserole full of red Jello.

Gordon cleared his throat. "Honey, I've got something to tell you."

Chantal fumbled the casserole as she set it on the table. "No, Gordon. Don't say anything. Please..."

"I'm just about broke, so if you're after money, forget it." Honey pushed aside the soggy potato-chip crust with the vague hope of finding a small chunk of tuna.

Gordon banged down his fork. "It's not money, dammit! I'm going away. Tomorrow. They're hiring construction workers up near Winston-Salem, and I'm going to get a job."

"Sure you are," Honey scoffed.

"I mean it. I'm not going to work for you anymore. I'm tired of taking your money."

"Why do I find that hard to believe?" She shoved back her plate and said sarcastically, "What about your great career as an artist? I thought you weren't ever going to compromise yourself."

"I guess I've been doing that since you picked me up on that Oklahoma highway," he said quietly.

Honey felt the first prickle of uneasiness as she realized that he was serious. "What brought about this sudden change of heart?"

"These past few months have reminded me that I like hard work."

Chantal was staring down at the table. She sniffed. Gordon regarded her miserably. "Chantal doesn't want to go. She—uh—she may not be coming with me."

"I haven't made up my mind yet."

"He's bluffing," Honey said sharply. "He won't leave you behind."

Gordon gazed at Chantal, and his eyes were tender. "I'm not bluffing, Chantal. Tomorrow morning I'm driving out of this place with or without you. You have to make up your mind whether you're going to stand by me or not."

Chantal started to cry.

Gordon rose from the table and turned his back on them. His shoulders heaved, and Honey realized he was near tears, too. She hid her own growing panic beneath anger.

"Why are the two of you doing this? Just go! Both of you." She sprang to her feet and spun on her cousin. "I can't support you any longer. I've been trying to find a way to tell you, and it looks like this is it. I want you out of here tomorrow morning."

Chantal jumped up from her chair and confronted her husband. "See what I mean, Gordon? How can I leave her like this? What's going to happen to her?"

Honey stared at her. "Me? You're worried about leaving me? Well, don't be. I'm tough. I've always been tough."

"You need me." Chantal sniffed. "For the first time in as long as I can remember, you need me. And I don't have any idea how to help you."

"Help me? That's a laugh. You can't even help yourself. You're pitiful, Chantal Delaweese. If you wanted to help me, why didn't you take some of the responsibility off my shoulders when I was busting my rear on the Coogan show? Why didn't you do something to help out then instead of lying around on the couch all day? If you wanted to help me, why didn't you act like you cared about somebody other than Gordon? If you wanted to help me, why didn't you bake me a birthday cake that didn't blow up?"

To Honey's dismay, her eyes stung with tears. There was a long silence broken only by the harsh sound of her breathing as she struggled for control.

Finally, Chantal spoke. "I didn't do any of that because I sort of hated you then, Honey. All of us did."

"How could you hate me?" Honey cried. "I gave you everything you wanted!"

"Remember when you made me enter the Miss Paxawatchie County contest because you were trying so hard to keep us off welfare? Well, it's like me and Gordon have been on welfare all these years. Not because we needed help like somebody with lots of kids and no way to feed them. But because it was easier to take a free handout than work. We lost our dignity, Honey, and that's why we hated you."

"It wasn't my fault!"

"No. It was ours. But you made it so easy."

Gordon turned back to Chantal, his expression miserable. "I need you, too, Chantal. You're my wife. I love you."

"Oh, Gordon." Chantal's lips trembled. "I love you, too. But you can take care of yourself. Right now, I don't think Honey can."

Honey's throat closed tight with a nearly uncontrollable rush of emotion. She fought against it, struggling to keep her dignity. "That's the stupidest thing I ever heard you say, Chantal Booker Delaweese. A woman belongs with her husband, and I don't want to hear another word about you staying here with me. As a matter of fact, I'll be glad to have you gone."

"Honey..."

"Not one more word," she said fiercely. "I'm saying my good-byes right now, and both of you had better be out of here first thing tomorrow." She grabbed her cousin and drew her into her arms for a crushing hug.

"Oh, Honey..."

She pulled away and extended her hand toward Gordon. "Good luck, Gordon."

"Thanks, Honey." He took her hand, and then he hugged her, too. "You take care, you hear?"

"Sure." Moving away, she headed toward the back door, where she forced a smile that made her jaw muscles ache, then rushed outside.

She ran across the park. Her hair came free and flew about her head, lashing her cheeks. Her feet thudded on the hard ground. As the trailer came into sight, she gasped for air, but she didn't stop running.

She stumbled on the step and caught herself just before she fell. When she got inside, she pushed the door shut and leaned back against it, using her body to stave off the monsters. Her chest heaved, and she tried to calm herself, but she had passed the point of reason, and her fear consumed her.

For months she had been telling herself she wanted to be left alone, but now that it had happened, she felt as if she had been cast loose in space, aimlessly whirling, disconnected from all human life. She was no longer part of anyone. She had no family left. She lived alone in the land of the dead, only her obsession with Black Thunder keeping her alive. But Black Thunder had no plasma, no skin, no heartbeat.

Gradually, she became aware of the noise of water running. At first she couldn't think what it was, and then she realized that Eric was using her shower. Normally he was gone by the time she returned from her dinner, but she had come back earlier than usual.

She pressed her hands to her temples. She didn't want to be alone. She couldn't be alone.!!!I can't bear it anymore, Dash. I'm so afraid. I'm afraid of living. And I'm afraid to die.

Her teeth began to chatter. She stepped away from the door, holding onto the counter for support. The fear was sucking at her bones, gobbling up little bits of her. She had to make it go away. She needed a connection with someone. Anyone.

Numbly, she turned toward the short, narrow hallway and stumbled the few short yards that took her to the bathroom door. She told herself not to think. Just to keep herself alive.!!!Forgive me. Oh, please, forgive me.

The knob turned in her hand.

Steam enveloped her as she entered. She pressed the door shut behind her and stood against it, struggling to breathe.

He had his face turned to the nozzle, his back toward her. His body was too large for the rectangular shower stall, and when he moved, his shoulders bumped into the sheets of cheap plastic that formed the walls, making them rattle. She could discern the outline of his back and buttocks through the steam-clouded walls, but none of the details. His body could have belonged to any man.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she kicked off her shoes. Then she crossed her arms over her chest and peeled both her sweatshirt and T-shirt over her head. Her bra was lacy and delicate, pale shells of mint green, the remaining token of femininity she hadn't been willing to abandon to the world of hard hats, work boots, and Skil saws. With a dull sense of inevitability, she unsnapped her jeans and pulled them slowly down over her legs, revealing the fragile pair of panties that matched her bra.

Her legs had begun to shake and she steadied herself with a hand on the rim of the sink. If she didn't find a human connection, she would break apart. A connection with anyone.

Her reflection floated before her in the steam-fogged mirror above the sink. She could make out tangled hair, the indistinct outlines of her features.

The water stopped running. She whirled around. Eric turned in the shower stall and went absolutely still as he saw her standing there.

She said nothing. The steamy plastic panels continued to blur the distinguishing lines of his features in a way that comforted her. He could be any man, one of the faceless men in her dreams, an anonymous man whose only purpose was to take away her fear of being alone and unloved.

Slowly he turned his back to her, and the shower door made a hollow ping as he opened it. Reaching through with one dripping arm, he retrieved his towel from the wire hook outside. His eye patch dangled from a black cord beneath. Still standing in the shower, he passed the towel through his wet hair, pushing it away from his face, then reached for the black patch and secured it over his head to spare her the sight of his mutilated eye.

Her heart thudded relentlessly in her chest. The steam was beginning to make her skin glisten. Naked except for the fragile pieces of mint-green lace, she waited for him to emerge.

He stepped through the shower door, watching her as he rubbed the towel in slow circles over the dark, matted hair on his chest. The bathroom was small, and he was so close she could have touched him. But she wasn't ready to touch, and her gaze dropped to his sex. It lay heavy against his thigh, the heat distending him. This was what she wanted from him. Only this. The connection.

She kept her eyes averted from his face so that she would know him only as a body. His torso was perfectly sculpted, the musculature deliberately defined. She saw an angry red scar near his knee and looked away, not because she was repulsed, but because the scar personalized him.

He passed the towel over his buttocks and thighs. She could feel her hair curling in the steam, forming baby corkscrews around her face. Beads of moisture had gathered between her breasts. They dampened her thumb as she unfastened the front clasp on her bra and let the pale green lace drop away like fragile teacups.

She sensed his eyes upon her breasts, but she would not look at his face. Instead, she studied the indentation at the base of his throat where a trickle of water had collected. His arm moved toward her, the tendons strong and clearly defined. She caught her breath as he passed his hand over her breast.

The dark tan of his arm looked foreign and forbidden against the paleness of her skin. He flattened his palm against her rib cage, slid it down over her stomach and inside the waistband of her panties. Tendrils of fire licked at her nerve endings. Her body felt hot and swollen. He slipped down her panties.

As soon as she stepped out of them, she knew she had to touch him. Leaning forward, she dipped her mouth to the moisture that had cupped at the base of his throat. Her nostrils quivered as she caught the clean scent of his skin.

She pressed her nose to his chest, a nipple, turned her head toward his underarm, softly breathing him in.

Ribbons of her pale hair streamed over his damp chest, adorning his darker skin with gentle ornamentation. He flattened his hands over her back. She trembled at the sensation of once again being enclosed in a man's arms. He slid his hands down along her back to her buttocks, cupping them to draw her against him. She felt him hard and moist against her belly.

She waited for him to speak, to ask all the "why's" and "what's" that would send her flying away from him. But instead of speaking, his head dipped to the curve of her neck. She caught the backs of his thighs and squeezed them. Then she arched her neck and offered him her breasts.

He lowered his lips to her collarbone before claiming the swell of flesh below. Her skin was alive to sensation: the dampness of their flesh, the pleasuring pain of his whiskers, the soft whip of his wet, dark hair. And then she felt the demands of his mouth as he encompassed her nipple and drew it deeply inside. His eye patch brushed over her skin.

He reached between her legs from behind and opened her. She moaned and encircled his calf with her leg, trying to climb his body so that she could take him in. But he held her off, stroking her and touching her in ways that made her gasp with need.

Only once did she turn cold. When he put her away from him and reached for his pile of clothing on the floor.

Keeping her eyes averted from his face, she watched his hands, too befuddled by the urgency of her need to understand why he should be taking a wallet from his jeans. What he wanted there. And then as he slid out the small foil packet she understood and hated the necessity because faceless men should have no need for small foil packets. Faceless men should have bodies that blindly served, without the power to reproduce, without the dangers of disease.

She turned her back while he readied himself.

And then his hands came around her to toy again with her breasts until she sobbed. He turned her. She propped her arms over his shoulders as he lifted her, wrapped her legs around his waist. He pressed her to the thin bathroom wall so that her spine was flat against it.

"Are you ready?" he whispered, his voice smoky.

She nodded her head against his cheek and pressed her eyes shut as he pushed himself inside her.

Her hair tumbled down over his back, and her thighs clasped him with their work-strengthened muscles. She clung to him, whispering yes and yes. Her body was so starved, so desperate.

Gently, he used her.

Tears seeped from her eyes and trickled along his damp spine. He held her in his strong arms, stroked her so deeply, caressed her so tenderly. She cried out with her climax, and then gripped his shoulders tighter while he drove to find his own release. She stoically bore his weight as he leaned shuddering against her.

Gradually he withdrew and lowered her to the floor. His breathing was harsh and uneven. She saw his arm move and knew he was about to draw her close. Quickly, she backed away, not looking at him, not letting him touch her. Within seconds, she had left him alone while she closed herself in the small bedroom across the hallway.

Much later, when she emerged, he had disappeared. She could find no sign that he had even been there except for the droplets of water still clinging to the walls of the shower. She dried them off before she stepped inside herself.

He couldn't take any more hurt!

Eric's knuckles were white as he gripped the van's steering wheel. Why had he let another wounded person into his life? He had been trying to get away from suffering, not plunge in deeper. He wanted to drive away, but he had not even been able to put the key in the ignition.

Her face was imprinted on the windshield in front of him: those luminous, haunted eyes, that full mouth trembling with need. God, he'd been dreaming about that mouth from the moment he had seen her again. It was soft and sensual, and it drew him as if it had magic powers. But he hadn't even kissed her, and he doubted she would have let him if he'd tried.

Instead of finding sanctuary in this dead amusement park, he had plunged himself deeper into hell. Why was he so drawn to her? She was cold and tough, with a grim, single-minded determination that was at odds with her small stature. Even the men on the construction crew shied away from her. They had been stung too often by her razor-sharp tongue. She was the same little monster she'd been that second season of the Coogan show, a hundred years ago.

Over the trees he could see the top of the lift hill. He didn't understand what there was about the coaster that obsessed her, but he had begun to hate those moments when he looked up from the ground and saw her small body entwined with the frame of the great wooden beast until she and the coaster almost seemed to be one. Her obsession frightened him.

Who was she? Not the needy, love-struck girl who had once reminded him of his little brother. Not the tough, sharp-tongued boss lady in the yellow hard hat, either. Sometimes when he looked at her, he thought he saw another woman standing slightly apart from her—a saucy, laughing woman with a loving heart and wide-open arms. He told himself the image was an illusion, a mental hologram he had created out of his own despair, but then he wondered if he might not be seeing the woman she had been when she was married to Dash Coogan.

Tonight, her beauty had clawed at his guts. The strength, the tragedy, the awful vulnerability. But they had come together like animals instead of human beings. Even when their bodies were locked together, they had given nothing of themselves to each other, so that in the end he could use her as she was using him, impersonally, as a safe receptacle.

But it hadn't worked that way. The thing that terrified him—the thing that made sweat break out on his body and his stomach clench—was the way she had made him feel.

For the space of time while he had held that fragile female body—a body that demanded nothing more from him than sexual release—he had felt all the fiercely protective layers he'd erected around himself slip away, leaving him ready to go to the ends of the earth to console her.

As he sat staring blindly through the window of the van, he knew that he should leave just as surely as he knew he was going to stay. But he would never let himself be so vulnerable to her again because he had no place left inside him to hold anyone else's pain. They said he was the best actor of his generation, and he was going to use his talent. From this moment on, he would wrap himself so tightly inside his identities that she would never again be able to touch him.

The next day Honey drove herself relentlessly, trying to shut out the events of the night, but as she inspected a section of track with the project foreman, the images washed over her. How could she have done it? How could she have betrayed her marriage vows like that? Self-hatred gnawed away at her, a bleak antipathy toward the person she had become.

For the rest of the day she threw herself into her work with a ferocity that, by evening, left her drained and weak. As she dropped to the ground and unfastened her tool belt, she heard someone approaching her from behind. Even before she turned, she could feel who it was and she tensed.

Eric regarded her with a face empty of any expression. Instead of feeling relieved that he wasn't forcing her to acknowledge what had happened, she felt chilled. If it weren't for the small aches in her body, she would think that she had imagined the whole thing.

"I understand that your cousin and her husband have left," he said in his carefully accented English. "Would you mind if I move my belongings into the Bullpen? It's more comfortable than my van."

She had tried to forget about the empty Bullpen. All day she had looked down at the vacated building expecting to see Gordon's truck parked there, but he and Chantal were gone.

"Suit yourself," she said stiffly.

He nodded and walked away.

When she returned to her trailer, she heated a can of beef stew for her own dinner and tried to block out her loneliness by running numbers on her calculator. The figures hadn't changed. She could meet her payroll through the first week of January, and then she would have to shut down.

Grabbing a soft blue cable-knit cardigan, she let herself outside. The night was clear, the sky dotted with silver stars. She hoped Chantal and Gordon were all right. It would be Christmas in less than two weeks. Last Christmas, she and Dash had camped in the desert and he'd given her handmade gold earrings shaped like crescent moons. She'd put them away in her jewelry box after he died because she couldn't bear looking at them.

She picked her way along the overgrown path that led to the lake and stood on the bank to gaze out over the water. The government had finally forced the Purlex Paint Company to stop its pollution, but it would be several years before the lake began to come to life again. Now, however, the darkness concealed its polluted condition, and moonlight formed silver streamers on its still surface.

She turned her back on the lake and let her eyes rise above the trees to the hills of Black Thunder, dimly visible in the moonlight. Everybody thought she was crazy to be rebuilding the coaster. How could she explain this unrelenting drive to find some sign that Dash was not lost to her? In saner moments she told herself that Black Thunder was only an amusement-park ride and that it held no mystical powers. But

her rational mind was silenced by the driving urgency that insisted she could only restore her soul by taking a ride through her nightmares on Black Thunder.

Her shoulders sagged. Maybe everybody was right. Maybe she was crazy. She could feel her eyes fill and the wooden hills wavered before her.!!!You damned old cowboy. You broke my heart, just like you said you would.

A movement in the pines distracted her. Alarmed, she saw the dark figure of a man standing there. He stepped out of the shadows, and she realized that it was Eric. She felt a jolt of panic at the idea of being alone with him.

As had become her practice when she wanted to hide her fear, she grew angry. "I don't like being spied on. You just wore out your welcome."

His single blue eye regarded her dispassionately as he came toward her. "Why would I be spying on you? Actually, I was here first."

"It's my lake," she retorted, dismayed at her own childishness.

"And you're welcome to it. From what I can see, nobody else would want it."

Even though they were alone, she realized that he was speaking to her with the faint tinges of a Middle Eastern accent. She also realized that if she continued to snap at him, he might think last night had some real meaning to her. She took a shaky breath and attempted to regain her dignity.

"The lake's starting to come back," she said. "A paint company used it as a dumping ground for years."

"This place is too isolated for you to be living alone. I found a vagrant hanging around the Bullpen this evening. Now that your relatives are gone, maybe you should consider renting a room in town instead of staying out here by yourself."

He didn't realize that he was more dangerous to her than any vagrant, and her slim hold on composure snapped. "I don't remember asking for your opinion."

The face that was so expressive on the screen slammed shut like a screen door with a too-tight spring. "You're correct. It's not my business."

Despite the accent he had thrown up like a barrier, memories of the night before rushed over her and she struggled against her panic in the only way she knew. "You hide behind that accent, don't you?" she said contemptuously. "And you're hiding more than your famous face. Well, you may forget who you are, but I don't, and I'm sick of you acting like some kind of nut case."

His jaw tightened. "The accent's automatic, and I'm hardly the nut case." She sucked in her breath, waiting for him to confront her with having come to him. But instead, he said, "I'm not the one who's building a roller coaster in the middle of nowhere. I'm not the one running around like some pint-sized version of Captain Ahab obsessed with her own goddamned Moby Dick."

"Better than Moby Dickless!" She wasn't obsessed. She wasn't! This was simply something she had to do so she could live again.

"What does that mean?" His accent was gone, his face shadowed.

She went on the attack, trying to sink her teeth into the softest part of his flesh, trying to make the kill first. "What kind of coward are you, running away just because you lost your stupid eye? At least you're alive, you bastard!"

"You little shit. You don't know what it looks like under here." He jabbed his fingers in the direction of the black patch. "There isn't an eye there. Just a mass of ugly red scar tissue."

"So what? You've got a spare."

For a moment he didn't say anything. Her stomach felt sick at what she was doing, but she didn't know how to take back the words.

His lips curled in mockery, and he spoke softly. "I always wondered what happened to Janie Jones, and now I know. Life threw her one too many hard knocks and now she's right back where she started—a bossy little bitch hiding behind a big mouth."

"That's not true!"

"Jesus. It's too bad Dash isn't still alive. I'd lay money he'd throw you over his knee and beat some sense into you just like he did when you were a kid."

"Don't you talk about him," she said fiercely. "Don't you even speak his name." Tears were glistening in her eyes, but he appeared unmoved.

"What in the hell are you doing here, Honey? Why is rebuilding that coaster so important to you?"

"It just is, that's all."

"Tell me, damnit!"

"You wouldn't understand."

"You'd be surprised at how much I can understand."

"I have to do it." She looked down at the hands she was twisting in front of her and her anger faded. "When I was a child that coaster meant a lot to me."

"So did my Swiss army knife, but I wouldn't give up everything to get it back."

"It's not like that! It's about—it's about hope." She winced, appalled by what she had revealed.

"You can't make Dash come back," he said cruelly.

"I knew you wouldn't understand!" she exclaimed. "And when I need lectures from you, I'll let you know! You're running away just as much as I am and for a lot less reason. I read the papers. I know you have children. Two little girls, right? What kind of father are you to disappear on them like this?"

He gave her a look so taut with restrained rage that she wished she'd kept her mouth shut.

"Don't make judgments about things you don't know anything about." Without another word, he stalked away from her.

For the next few days Eric only spoke to her when the men were around, and he always used the voice

of Dev, the construction worker. The voice began to haunt her dreams and make her body ache with sensations she didn't want to acknowledge. She kept reminding herself that Eric was a gifted and disciplined actor with complete control over any character he created, but the menacing-looking construction worker was assuming an identity separate from Eric in her mind. She did everything she could to stay away from him, but in the end her escalating money problems made that impossible.

On a Tuesday afternoon, four days after their confrontation by the lake, she made up her mind to approach him. She waited until the men stopped for lunch. Eric had been loading old sections of track into the back of a flatbed, and he pulled off his gloves as she came near.

She held out a brown paper bag. "I noticed you haven't been eating lunch, so I fixed this for you."

He hesitated for a moment, then took it from her. He was clearly wary, and it occurred to her that he had been avoiding her as much as she was avoiding him.

"I only brought along one thermos, though, so we'll have to share." She began to walk, hoping he'd follow. After a few seconds, she heard his footsteps.

She moved away from the men to the spot where the carousel had once stood. Not far away an old sycamore had fallen in a storm. She sat down on it, put the thermos on the ground, and opened her lunch sack. A moment later he straddled the trunk and pulled out the peanut butter sandwich she'd made that morning. She noticed that he bunched the plastic wrap around the bottom part to protect it from his grimy hands, and she remembered that he had grown up in a wealthy family where clean hands would have been required at the dinner table.

"I cut it into triangles instead of rectangles," she said. "It's the closest I come to gourmet cooking these days."

The corner of his mouth ticked in something that might have been his version of a smile. She felt a sharp pang as she remembered how much she and Dash used to laugh.

He gestured toward the barren circle of earth in front of them. "One of the rides must have been here."

"The carousel." The first time she had seen Eric, his eyes had reminded her of the bright blue saddles on the horses. She opened her own lunch bag, trying to overcome her uneasiness as she pulled out her sandwich. She knew this was a bad idea, but she hadn't been able to come up with a better one.

Slipping a corner of the peanut butter sandwich in her mouth, she chewed it without tasting, swallowed, then set it in her lap. "I have something I want to talk to you about."

He waited.

"I'm going to have to call off the restoration work if I can't come up with some cash in the next few weeks."

"I'm not surprised. It's an expensive project."

"The truth of the matter is, I'm broke. What I wanted to ask you—" The chunk of sandwich seemed to be stuck in her throat. She swallowed again. "I was thinking that you... That is, I was hoping you might—"

"You're not going to hit me for a loan, are you?"

Her carefully planned speech vanished from her mind. "What's so horrible about that? You must have a few million stashed away, and I only need around two hundred thousand."

"That's all? Why don't I just whip out my checkbook right now?"

"I'll pay you back."

"Sure you will. That coaster's going to be earning you a fortune. What do you figure? Maybe five bucks a week?"

"I'm not planning on paying you back from the coaster. I know it won't make a profit. But as soon as I finish Black Thunder and it's running again, I'm—" She stumbled on her words. This was going to be even harder than she had thought. As she spoke, she knew she was giving up the only thing she had left that was of any value to her. "I'm calling my agent this evening. I'm going back to work."

"I don't believe you."

She felt sick. "I have to. If acting is the only way I can get Black Thunder running, then I'll do it."

"Something good might come out of this after all."

"What do you mean?"

"You should never have stopped performing, Honey. You didn't even give yourself a chance to find out what you could do."

"I can do Janie Jones," she said fiercely. "That's it. I'm a personality, just like Dash. I'm not an actress."

"How do you know that?"

"I just do. I used to listen to all that talk of yours about internal technique, affective memory, the Bucharest school. I don't know anything about those things."

"That's just vocabulary. It doesn't have anything to do with talent."

"I'm not going to debate this with you, Eric. All I'm saying is that I can pay you back. I'll have my agent put together some ironclad contracts—film roles, TV movies, commercials—anything that pays. By the time people figure out I'm not Meryl Streep and the job offers stop, you'll have your money back with interest."

He stared at her. "You'd sell your talent that cheap?"

"It's not exactly talent I'm selling, is it? Notoriety might be a better word."

His lips thinned. "Why don't you just pick up the phone and call one of the big men's magazines? They'd give you a fortune for a nude layout. Think about it. You'd have the money you need to finish rebuilding your roller coaster, and guys all over America could jerk off to naked pictures of Janie Jones."

He had made a direct hit, but she wasn't going to let him see it. "How much do you think they'd give me?"

He balled the paper sack and, with an exclamation of disgust, threw it on the ground.

"I'm kidding," she said tightly. "You were getting so sanctimonious."

"I wonder. If nude photos were the only way you could get the money, would you do it?"

"I guess I'd have to think about it."

"I'll bet you would." He shook his head in wonder. "Damn it, I think you'd actually do it."

"So what? My body doesn't mean anything to me anymore."

A subtle tension came over him, and she suspected he was remembering the way she had offered herself to him. She seized the chance to tell him indirectly that their lovemak-ing had no significance to her.

"My body isn't important, Eric. It doesn't mean anything! Now that Dash is dead, I just don't care anymore."

"I sure as hell think he'd care."

She looked away.

"He would, wouldn't he?"

"Yes. Yes, I guess he would." She drew a shaky breath. "But he's dead, Eric, and I have to rebuild this coaster."

"Why? Why is it so important to you?"

"It's—" She remembered the night by the lake. "I tried to tell you before, and you wouldn't understand. It's just something I have to do, that's all." A long silence fell as she attempted to get herself back under control.

He studied the scuffed toe of his work boot. "Exactly how much do you need?"

She told him.

He gazed out toward the clearing that had once marked the site of Kiddieland. "All right, Honey. I'll make a deal with you. I'll loan you your money, but on one condition."

"What's that?"

He turned to her, his single blue eye regarding her so intently she felt burned. "You'll have to sign yourself over to me."

"What are you talking about?"

"I mean that I'll own your talent, Honey. Every bit of it until the loan's paid off."

"What?"

"I choose your projects. Not you and not your agent. Only me. I decide what you can and can't do."

"That's ridiculous."

"Take it or leave it."

"Why should I? You'd never hand your career over to someone else."

"Not in a million years."

"But you expect me to."

"I don't expect anything. You're the one who wants the money, not me."

"What you're talking about is slavery. You could put me in hemorrhoid commercials or make me do auto shows at a hundred dollars a pop."

"Theoretically."

"I don't have any reason to trust you. I don't even like you."

"No, I don't expect you do."

He said the words so matter-of-factly that she was ashamed. Obviously, he didn't expect anything more from her.

Snatching up her uneaten lunch, she rose from the log and gave him a hostile glare. "All right. You've got a deal. But you'd better not cross me, or you'll regret it."

He watched her as she stalked away. Big talker, he thought to himself. She was still swinging those fists just as she had when she was a kid. Still daring the world to cross her. And had it ever.

He couldn't tolerate watching her shadowbox with ghosts much longer. And the worst ghost of all was that damned roller coaster. She had said the coaster was about hope, but he had the uneasy sense that she somehow thought Black Thunder could bring her husband back. He stood and picked up the remnants of his lunch. He couldn't imagine what it would be like to be loved as Honey loved Dash.

Even though he didn't have to be back in L.A. for two weeks his mind screamed at him to leave now. Take himself as far from the grieving Widow Coogan as he could get. That's what he should do. But instead of disengaging himself from her, he had just become even more entangled, and when he asked himself why, he could only come up with one answer.

In some strange way, he felt as if he had just taken a giant step toward finally earning Dash Coogan's respect.