t was dusk when Carter Reynolds hung up the telephone in his office at home and swiveled around in his chair, gazing out the large circular window behind him. The San Francisco skyline stretched out before him, shrouded in fog—mysterious, exciting. In two weeks, he had to exchange all this for the monotonous blue skies of Palm Beach in March, a pilgrimage that his family had taken for generations, a tradition that his grandmother would not allow him to forsake.

In recent years, he'd come to regard the biannual trips to Palm Beach as increasingly irksome, unavoidable intrusions on his life, but after this last phone call, the trip was suddenly ripe with life-altering possibilities. For nearly an hour, he remained where he was, contemplating a complex variety of scenarios; then he swiveled around and pressed a button on the telephone that activated the house intercom. "Where is Mrs. Reynolds?" he asked the servant who answered.

"I believe she's resting in her room before dinner, sir."

"And my daughter?"

"I believe she is with Mrs. Reynolds, reading to her, sir."

Pleased that the women were together, he stood up and headed for the third floor, where forty years ago, his grandfather's architect had decided the family's suites should be located. Ignoring the elevator, he walked up a broad staircase with an ornate black wrought-iron railing; then he turned to the right, down a paneled hall where portraits of his ancestors brooded back at him from their heavy, richly carved frames.

"I'm glad the two of you are together," he said when Paris answered his knock and let him in. The room made him feel claustrophobic with its maroon brocade draperies perpetually drawn over the windows to block out the light and the cloying scent of lavender hanging in the air. Trying not to let it depress him, he looped his arm over Paris's shoulder and smiled at his grandmother, who was seated in a baroque chair beside the fireplace. With her white hair in a chignon and her frail body garbed in a gray dress with a high collar held together by a large filigree and ruby broach, Edith Reynolds looked like a well-to-do Whistler's Mother, except her spine was more rigid.

"What is it, Carter?" she demanded in her imperious voice. "Do be quick, will you. Paris was reading to me, and we're in a very good part of the story."

"I have exciting news for you both," he said, waiting politely for Paris to be seated.

"Sloan just called me," he told them. "She's had a change of heart. She's decided to join us in Palm Beach and stay with us for two weeks."

His grandmother relaxed back in her chair, and Paris shot out of hers, their expressions as opposite as their physical reactions to the news.

"You've done well," his grandmother told him with a regal inclination of her head and a slight thinning of her lips that was the closest she ever came to a smile.

His chestnut-haired daughter stared at him like a tense thoroughbred about to bolt over the gate. "You—you can't just walk in here and spring this on me at the last minute! I thought she wasn't coming. This isn't fair. I shouldn't have to deal with this. I don't want to go to Palm Beach!"

"Paris, don't be ridiculous. Of course you're going to Palm Beach." He turned toward the door, his last words spoken politely but with the quiet force of an edict. "And while we're there," he added, turning to face her, "I will expect you to spend as much time as possible with Noah. You can't expect to marry a man when you avoid him at every possible opportunity."

"I haven't been avoiding him; he's been in Europe!"

"He'll be in Palm Beach. You can make up for lost time while you're there."

Courtney Maitland perched on the arm of a leather chair in front of her brother's desk, watching him load files into two briefcases. "You just got back from Europe and you're already leaving again," she complained. "You spend more time away than you spend here at home."

Noah spared a glance for his fifteen-year-old half-sister, who was wearing a tight, shiny, black spandex skirt that barely covered her upper thighs and a hot pink tank top that barely covered her breasts. She looked like a pretty, sulky, overindulged teenager with an appalling taste for lewd clothes, all of which was true of her in his opinion. "Where the hell do you shop, anyway?" he demanded.

"I happen to be dressed in the height of fashion—my fashion," she informed him.

"You look like a hooker."

Courtney ignored that. "So how long are you going to be gone this time?"

"Six weeks."

"Business or pleasure?"

"A little of both."

"That's the way you described that trip to Paraguay when you took me with you," she said with an eloquent shudder. "It rained all the time, and your 'business' friends carried machine guns."

"No they didn't. Their bodyguards had machine guns."

"Your business friends had guns, too. Handguns. I saw them."

"You were hallucinating."

"Okay, you're right, and I'm wrong. It was Peru where your 'business' associates had handguns poking out of their jackets, not Paraguay."

"Now I remember why I stopped taking you on business trips with me. You're a pain in the ass."

"I'm observant." A paper slid off his desk, onto the floor, and Courtney swept it up and handed it to him.

"The result's the same either way," he said as he took the paper, glanced at it, and added it to the items in his briefcase. "However, as it happens, I'm going to Palm Beach this trip, not Paraguay or Peru. Palm Beach—you remember—we have a house there? We go there every year when you're on winter break. Your father is there now. And you and I will be there tomorrow."

"I'm not going this year. Dad will spend all his time on the golf course. You'll spend all your time behind closed doors either in a bunch of meetings or telephone conferences, and when you aren't doing that, you'll be aboard the Apparition—having meetings and phone conferences."

"You make me sound duller than dirt."

"You are dull—" He glanced up at her, and the almost imperceptible change in his expression made Courtney hastily correct herself. "I mean you lead a dull life. All work, no play."

"A vivid contrast to your own life. No wonder you can't see the merit in mine."

"What lucky lady is going to be the fleeting object of your sexual attention while you're in Palm Beach?"

"You are begging for a spanking."

"I'm too old to spank. Besides, you aren't my father or my mother."

"That reaffirms my faith in God."

She decided to change the subject. "I saw Paris at Saks Fifth Avenue yesterday. They're leaving for Palm Beach, too. You know, Noah, if you aren't careful, you're going to wake up one morning married to Paris."

He tossed a gold fountain pen and pencil into one of the briefcases and snapped it shut; then he spun the combination lock. "That would be the shortest marriage on record."

"Don't you like Paris?"

"Yes.".

"Then why not marry her?"

"For starters, she's way too young for me."

"You're right. You're forty and that's over the hill."

"Are you trying to be obnoxious?"

"I don't have to try; it comes naturally. If Paris were over the hill, like you, would you marry her then?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Mind your own damned business."

"You are my business," she said sweetly. "You're the closest thing to a sibling I have."

It was a deliberate effort to soften and manipulate him, and Noah knew it. It was also somewhat effective, so he said nothing and decided to save his breath for the battle he was bound to have with her over going to Palm Beach. Her father was thinking of staying down there permanently and enrolling Courtney in school there, but Noah had no intention of getting involved in that war.

"Don't you want to get married to anyone?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I've been there, done that, and didn't like it."

"Jordanna turned you against marriage completely, didn't she? Paris thinks Jordanna turned you off on all women."

He glanced up from the files he was sorting through, a frown of impatience gathering on his forehead. "She thinks what?"

"Paris doesn't know about the women you take with you on the yacht, or the ones who sneak out of your hotel rooms that I see on those rare occasions when you take me somewhere with you. She thinks you're wounded and noble and celibate."

"Fine. Let her go on thinking that."

"Too late. Sorry. I told her all about them. The whole terrible, lurid truth."

Noah had been scribbling a note for his assistant, and he didn't stop writing or lose his concentration. "I'm taking you with me to Palm Beach."

"No way! You can't."

He stopped writing and focused the blast of a gaze on her that made his contemporaries shrivel. "Watch me," he said softly. "Now, start packing." I won't.

"Fine. I'll take you just the way you are, and you can live in that disgusting outfit you're wearing. You decide."

"You're bluffing."

"I don't bluff. You should know that better than most people, after all these years of confrontations."

"I hate you, Noah."

"I don't give a damn. Now, get packed and meet me downstairs in the morning."

She slid off the arm of the chair, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. The tears were futile. He was impervious.