oney kissed first Rachel and then Becca on their foreheads. "Night, girls."

"Sleep tight," Becca murmured, before snuggling down into the covers.

"Night, Honey." Rachel blew three loud kisses.

Honey slipped out of the bedroom while Eric said his good nights. She had been flattered when the girls had insisted she participate in their bedtime ritual, but now that it was over, she felt empty and alone. Dash had been wrong not to let her have a child.

Eric addressed his daughters from the doorway behind her. "Honey and I are going to take a little walk outside. We won't go far. The window's open, so I can hear if you call."

"Make sure you come back, Daddy," Rachel said.

"I will, Rach. I promise. I'll always come back." The emphatic quality of Eric's response indicated that this was a frequently repeated ritual between the two of them.

Honey didn't want to take a walk with him, but he was already at her side lightly clasping her elbow and leading her to the door. It was the first time that he had touched her.

The night was warm and the moon hung so low in the sky it looked as if it had been stolen from the backdrop of a high school prom. Eric had left his jacket and tie inside, and his shirt gleamed blue-white in the light.

"You were great with the girls. Rachel's so demanding that most adults tend to overlook Becca."

"It was my pleasure. You've done a good job with them, Eric."

"These past few months have been tough, but I think we're on more solid ground now. Lilly's given me full custody."

"That's wonderful, although a lot of men would regard that as more of a burden than a pleasure."

"I love being a father."

"I know you do." Once again she thought of how much she had always wanted to have a family of her own and to create for someone else the childhood she wished she'd had. The desire to be part of a group of people who loved each other had been the driving force behind her life for as long as she could remember, and she was no closer to obtaining it than she had ever been. Only during her marriage to Dash had she known what it was to be part of someone else, and the gift of love he had given her had been so precious that her life had ended when she lost it.

They walked for a few moments in silence until they reached the clearing that bordered the lake. Eric glanced back at the Bullpen. His actor's voice, usually so much under his command, sounded ragged. "Don't take that coaster ride tomorrow, Honey."

The prom-night moon hung behind him, outlining his head and shoulders in silver and making him look larger than life, just as he did on the screen. But this was no movie star who stood before her, only a man. An awful war began inside her—the irresistible urge to slide into his arms battling against the despair that even considering such an act of betrayal produced.

"Eric, I've given up everything to do this. I don't have anything left."

"You have a career waiting for you."

"You know more than anyone how much that frightens me."

"But you made your deal with me anyway," he said bitterly. "You sold your soul to the devil so you could take your magical mystery ride."

I sold my soul to an angel, she thought, but she couldn't risk saying any soft words to him, so she kept silent.

He gave a snort of disgust. "I can't even come close to filling Dash's shadow, can I?"

"It's not a competition. I don't make comparisons like that."

"Lucky for me, because it's not hard to figure out who'd be the loser." He spoke in a voice that held no trace of self-pity; he was merely reciting facts. "Dash will always wear the white hat, with a shiny tin star pinned to his vest. He stands for everything good, everything noble and heroic. But I've always walked too close to the dark side."

"Those are movie parts. They don't have anything to do with real life."

"Who are you trying to convince, Mrs. Coogan? Me or yourself? It comes down to one simple, inescapable fact. You've already had the best man, and you're not going to settle for second best."

"Don't even think that about yourself," she said miserably. "You don't have to take second place to anyone."

"If that's true, why is it so important for you to ride that coaster tomorrow morning?"

She had lost the vocabulary to explain. In the light of his relentless hostility, her belief in the power of a roller coaster ride seemed ridiculous. She had tried and failed to make him understand that she wanted back the faith in God she had lost, the belief that love was a more powerful force in the universe than evil. She could never make him understand her certainty that she could once again find hope in the

eternal on that ride, and, in the process, say her good-byes to Dash. In frustration, she spoke words that were damaging instead of healing.

"I have to find him! Just one more time."

His eyes darkened with pain, and his voice was a hoarse murmur. "I can't compete with that."

"You don't understand."

"I understand that I love you and I want to marry you. And I understand that you don't feel the same way about me."

A rush of emotion so intense that it left her weak coursed through her. Eric was a man who had erected a million defenses against the hurts of the world, and all of them had come tumbling down. It made her love him more—this beautiful, tortured man who had been born with too much sensitivity to walk unscathed through the evils he saw around him. Except she wasn't free to love him. Her heart was still shackled by another love, one that she couldn't let go.

She turned her face up to his. "Eric, I'm sorry. Maybe after tomorrow morning I can think about the future, but—"

"No!" he exclaimed. "I'm not going to compete with a ghost any longer. I want something better than that."

"Please, Eric. This doesn't have anything to do with you."

"It has everything to do with me," he said fiercely. "I can't build my life with someone who's looking backwards." He shoved his fists into his pockets. "Bringing the girls here was a terrible mistake. They've had enough instability in their lives. I knew how much they'd like you, and I shouldn't have taken this risk with them. If it were just me, maybe I'd stand around and hold your hand for the next ten or twenty years while you decide whether or not you're going to climb out of the grave. But they've been cheated too many times, and I can't let anyone in their lives who doesn't have something better to give all of us than leftover love."

She wanted to shut out his pain. If only she didn't understand so well what he was feeling. "Don't you realize I want to give you something better than that?" she cried. "Don't you realize how much I want to love you back!"

Again, the bitter twist to his mouth. "Tough job, isn't it?"

"Eric—"

"Don't take that ride tomorrow morning," he said quietly. "Choose me, Honey. This time choose me instead of him."

She saw what it had cost him in pride to ask, and she hated herself for the pain she was giving him. "I'll do anything else you ask me," she said desperately. "Anything but that. It's the one thing I can't give up."

"And it's the only thing I want."

"I need that ride to set me free."

"I don't think you want to be set free. I think you want to hold on to Dash forever."

"He was the center of my life."

The beautiful planes of his face were bleak, bereft of hope.

"When you take your ride tomorrow morning, I hope you have your epiphany—or whatever it is you're expecting to happen—because otherwise you'll have paid an expensive price for nothing."

"Eric, please—"

"I don't want your pity. And I don't want your leftovers. Love has to be freely given, and if I can't have that, I don't want anything." His eyes held a sad dignity. "I'm tired of walking on the dark side, Honey. I want to walk in the light for a while."

He turned away from her. Her skin felt as cold as the grave as he walked back to his children and left her standing alone in the still, silent heart of her dead amusement park.

That night when she couldn't sleep, she pulled on her work clothes and made her way to Black Thunder. Fog had rolled in during the night, and the coaster was an eerie sight. The geometric lacework of the bottom half had an unearthly sulfurous glow from the yellow security lights that hung inside the frame. But the upper half had disappeared into the swirling fog, so that the tops of the great hills looked as if they had been snapped off.

She hesitated for only a moment before she began to climb to the top. Streamers of fog enclosed her, and before long, she could no longer see the ground. She was alone in the universe with the coaster she had given up everything to build.

When she reached the top, she sat on the track and drew up her knees. The night was as silent as death. She let herself drift far above the earth in a world of wood and fog. She found herself remembering the little girl she had been, the child who had once ridden the great wooden roller coaster straight through the valley of death. But she was no longer a child. Now she was a woman, and she couldn't hide the fact that she loved him.

Just Eric. Not the dangerous stranger with the black eye patch, not the pirate clown she had convinced herself it was safe to love, and not the millionaire movie star. His identities had been stripped away. There were none left for him to hide behind. Nothing left behind which she could hide her own feelings about him.

She pressed her cheek against her bent knee, huddling miserably into herself as tears leaked from the corners of her eyelids. He was right. Her love for him wasn't a free and joyous offering, as love should be. Instead, it was shadowed by the past, by the love she couldn't forget, the man she couldn't give up. Eric deserved something better than the leftover love she was offering. But the only way she could hope to free herself from the past was to ride the coaster, and if she did that, she would lose him forever.!!!Dash, I need your wisdom. I can't go on if I can't put you to rest. Tell me how I do that without betraying everything we meant to each other.

But the barrier of death remained impenetrable, and once again, he refused to speak to her.

She stayed at the top of the lift hill throughout the night. In the inky blackness before dawn, the silence was broken by the shrill screams of a child. The sound was distant—it came from the other side of the park—but that didn't make it any less chilling as over and over again Rachel Dillon screamed out the terror of lost innocence.

The sky was pearly gray, poised at that precise moment just before the full break of morning. Tony Wyatt, the board operator who would be running Black Thunder that day, walked toward Honey through the wet grass. The fog from the night before had lifted, and steam rose from the Styro-foam coffee cup he held. As he nodded, he looked as if he were barely awake.

"Mornin', Miz Coogan."

She stepped down off the bottom rungs of the ladder and greeted him. Her body ached from weariness. She was chilled, and her eyes were scratchy from lack of sleep. "I already walked the track," she said. "Everything looks fine."

"That's good. Heard a weather report driving over. It's going to be a nice day." He headed off to the station house.

Honey stared up at the coaster. If she took her ride, she would lose Eric, but if she didn't take it, she would never be able to come to terms with her past.

"Honey!"

Startled, she spun around and saw Rachel flying through the trees toward her. She was dressed in jeans and a pink sweatshirt that was turned wrong side out. Her hair hadn't been brushed and her expression was fierce with anger.

"I hate him!" she cried, coming to a stop in front of Honey. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears, her mouth trembling, but mulish. "I'm not going home! I'm going to run away! Maybe I'll die and then he'll be sorry."

"Don't say that, Rachel."

"We were supposed to stay for the celebration, but Daddy woke us up this morning and said we're going to the airport. We just got here yesterday! That means I won't get to ride Black Thunder."

Honey tried to blunt her pain at the news that Eric truly was leaving by concentrating on Rachel. "He wasn't going to let you ride it anyway," she reminded her gently.

"I would have made him let me!" Rachel exclaimed. Her eyes slid along the length of the coaster. "I have to ride it, Honey. I just have to."

Honey felt as if Rachel's need were her own. She didn't try to understand the kinship she experienced with this child; she simply accepted it. As she stroked her between her shoulder blades, she felt like crying herself. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. I really am."

Rachel shook off her sympathy. "It's because of you, isn't it? The two of you had a fight."

"Not a fight. It's hard to explain."

"I'm not going! He said he'd give us a special treat to make up for leaving, but I don't want a special treat. I want to ride Black Thunder."

"Rachel, he's your father, and you have to do what he tells you."

"You're damn right she does!" Eric's voice rang out from behind them. "Get over here right now, young lady."

He strode angrily through the trees with Becca in his arms. When he reached the clearing, he set her on the ground and then straightened to glare at his other daughter.

Rachel glared right back, her small body unconsciously arranging itself in imitation of his, legs splayed, arms tense at her sides.

"No!" she shouted. "I'm not going to the airport with you! I don't like you!"

"That's tough. Get over here."

Honey's heart constricted in her chest. She saw by the exhaustion in his face that he had reached his limit. She wanted to plead with him not to leave, but she had no right. Why did he have to be so stubborn? Why did he insist on putting her to the test? But even as she asked herself the questions, she knew he had every right to expect all those things that she wasn't yet able to give.

"Now!" Eric bellowed.

Rachel began to cry, but she didn't move.

Honey took a half step forward, gripped by a sudden and unshakable certainty that Eric was wrong not to let Rachel ride Black Thunder. She forgot that she had no real connection to this child. She felt as if Rachel had come from her own body.

And at that moment, she knew what she had to do.

She grasped Rachel's hand and gazed over at Eric. "She has to ride Black Thunder first."

"The hell she does!"

"Don't stop her, Eric." Her voice dropped to a whisper, pleading. "Let her ride it for me. For herself."

All the angry tension seeped from his body, leaving him looking old and exhausted, a man who had fought one too many battles. "She's too young, Honey. She's only a baby."

Rachel's mouth snapped open to voice an indignant protest, but Honey squeezed her hand in a warning to be silent.

"She has to do this, Eric."

"I don't want her frightened."

"She's already been frightened. Her grandfather took care of that."

Turning her back to him, she knelt in front of Rachel. "I was just your age when I rode Black Thunder for the first time, and I was more frightened than I've ever been in my life. This ride is fierce. It wasn't designed for young children, sweetheart. The first drop is worse than any horror movie. You're so small that you'll come right off the seat, and the tops of your legs will slam against the lap bar. When you hit

the spiral, you'll feel as if you're going to be sucked straight down to the bottom of the lake. It's going to scare you to death."

"Not me," Rachel scoffed. "I wouldn't be scared."

Honey gently cupped her cheek. "Yes, you will."

"You rode it."

"My uncle made me."

"Was he bad like my Grandpa Guy?"

"No, not like that. He just didn't like little kids very much."

"Did you cry?"

"I was too scared to cry. The train took me to the top of the lift hill, and when I saw how far it was down, I thought I was going to die."

"Like when Grandpa Guy squished on top of me."

Honey nodded. "Just like that."

"I want to ride," Rachel said stubbornly.

"Are you absolutely sure?"

Rachel nodded, and then her eyes began devouring the coaster with an intensity that Honey understood all too well. Both she and Rachel knew what it was to feel defenseless in the world. They knew that women had to find courage in different places from men. Without looking at Honey or her father, Rachel broke away and ran to the station house.

"Rachel!" Eric rushed forward, but Honey threw herself at him.

"Please, Eric! This is something she has to do."

He looked at her, his eyes defeated, full of pain. "I don't understand any of this."

"I know you don't," she whispered, finally allowing the full force of her love for him to rush over her. "You're big and you're strong, and you see life differently."

"I'm going with her."

"No, Eric. You can't. She has to do this alone." She looked up into his eyes, straight through into his soul, begging him to trust her. "Please."

Finally he nodded, the movement so full of reluctance that she knew what it had cost him and loved him all the more for it. "All right," he said. "All right."

She drew him toward the station house, and they passed beneath Gordon Delaweese's painting. Rachel had climbed into the first car, and her face was animated with a combination of excitement and apprehension. At the same time, she looked incredibly small and defenseless in the empty train.

Honey's hand trembled as she checked to make certain Rachel was secure under the lap bar. "It's not too late to get out."

Rachel shook her head.

Leaning down, Honey kissed her forehead. "When you're done," she whispered, "the nightmares will be gone forever."

Honey wasn't even certain if Rachel had heard. Her small fingers were white as they gripped the bar, and Honey saw that her excitement had been replaced with fear. Which was exactly as it should be.

She stepped back from the train to stand at Eric's side. Tension radiated from him, and she could sense the force of will he was exerting to hold himself back. Rachel was his most precious possession. She knew he didn't understand, and she was humbled at his trust in her.

She turned toward Tony, who was waiting at the control board, oblivious to the drama that was being played out before him. Then she nodded.

She and Eric rushed out from under the roof of the station house in time to watch the train begin its climb up the great lift hill. Behind them, Becca sat cross-legged in the grass watching her sister. Rachel's bright pink sweatshirt made her highly visible at the front of the long train of empty cars.

“Ride it for me, sweetheart,” she thought. “Set me free, too.”

Eric slipped his hand into hers. His fingers were cold, and she gripped them tightly. She could feel Rachel's terror in her own body as the car ground relentlessly toward the top of the hill. Her heart began to race, and she was perspiring. When Rachel reached the top and saw the drop, she would once again be forced to face her grandfather.

The car hung suspended at the apex of the hill, and Honey went rigid with fear, a fear that she knew was her own as much as Rachel's. And then as the train plunged down the drop and swooped into the second hill, she understood it all. She saw that she was Rachel and that Dash was her. That people who loved were always part of each other. She saw that her love for Dash didn't prevent her from loving Eric. Instead, it made it possible.

A joyous sunburst opened inside her. She turned to Eric. His face was tense with concern as his eyes followed the racing pink blur that was his daughter, fearing that she would try to stand, that she would fall out, that the coaster he had helped build would not carry her safely back to him. But Black Thunder did not desert those it sheltered anymore than God did, not even in the darkest of hours.

Honey's own fear had left her, and she understood how simple her love for Eric was. It held no dark corners, no psychological complexities. He was not a father to her. He wasn't her superior or her teacher. He didn't possess a lifetime of experiences of which she knew nothing. Eric was simply Eric. A man who had come into the world with too much feeling. A man who was as vulnerable as she, as needful of love.

She wanted to laugh and sing and enfold him in the universe of her love. He began to run, and she realized the train had cleared the spiral over the lake and was speeding back to the station. She followed him beneath the roof, her heart dancing.

The train screeched into the station. Rachel's face was stark white, her hands frozen around the bar, all her defiance gone.

Eric ran to her, and as the train braked to a stop, he reached out. "Baby..."

"Again," Rachel whispered.

"Yes!" Honey shouted out the word. Laughing, she threw herself at Eric. "Oh, yes, my love. Yes!"

The train left the station with Rachel Dillon in its front seat while Eric held Honey in his arms and felt those soft, full lips claiming his own.

At that moment he gave up trying to understand the drama these females he loved were playing out. Maybe women were even more different from men than he had assumed. Maybe they had to find the courage to face life in a different way.

Honey had smeared herself against him almost as if she were trying to inject herself into his body. Her mouth opened under his, and he knew that she was offering him all of her love, her loyalty, all the passion with which she attacked life. This woman who occupied his soul was giving him everything. And at that moment the jealousy he felt toward Dash Coogan slipped away forever.

"I love you!" Honey said against his lips. "Oh, Eric, I love you so much."

He groaned her name and lost himself in her mouth. They kissed while Rachel left her nightmares behind on the hills of Black Thunder.

"I think I've been waiting for you forever," he murmured.

"Do you still want to marry me?" she asked.

"Oh, yes."

"I want a baby."

"Do you? I'm glad."

"Oh, Eric... This is right. I finally know this is right."

He couldn't get enough of her mouth. It was sweet and rich, promising him love and abundance. It carried him through space, through time, into a place where only good existed. And as he settled into that miraculous place he heard a rough, weary voice, so deep it could have come from God's belly.!!!It's about time you took what was yours, pretty boy. I was just about ready to lose patience with you.

Startled, he drew back from her. Her eyes, still drugged from their kiss, opened and she looked at him quizzically. Feeling foolish, he reclaimed that sweet, soft mouth.

The train raced by and, for a few moments, all of them touched eternity.