ESSICA HAYWARD STEPPED OFF THE TREADMILL IN THE WORKOUT room that was part of the master bedroom suite and grabbed a towel, looping it around her neck. Clad in thin white shorts and a clingy red-and-white tank top, she walked into the bedroom, feeling energized and restless and alone. Her husband wasn't due home until the following day, but even if Charles had been there, he wouldn't have been able to give her what she wanted.

She wanted sex… hot, rough, mind-drugging, demanding, passionate sex. She did not want the sort of lukewarm, polite, predictably boring sex that Charles called "making love." She didn't want to make love at all; she wanted to make madness. She didn't want Charles…

She wanted Cole.

Furious with herself for helplessly lusting after an arrogant, disobliging, macho employee who was nowhere near her social equal, she went over to the bar built into the closet and took an expensive bottle of chardonnay out of the cooler. She opened it and poured some into a gold-rimmed glass; then she walked over to the windows that overlooked the back lawn and the stables off to the left. Closing her eyes, she conjured up a vivid image of Cole, his shoulders broad and heavy with muscle, his skin sleek with sweat as he drove into her with the tireless brute force she preferred most of the time.

Her thighs tightened involuntarily against the delicious recollections, and she tossed down the rest of the wine in her glass and turned away from the window. Tugging off the towel, she stopped long enough to run a brush through her hair, then she picked up the bottle of wine and another glass and brought them with her.

Her daughter's bedroom door was closed, but a strip of light was visible beneath it, and Jessica moved cautiously along the hall, then down the back stairs.

Outside, the night was hot and sultry, heavy with the scent of gardenias blooming in beds along the path that led to the stable. Moonlight lit the flagstone path that wound through the oaks, but Jessica didn't need it to find her way; she'd made this nocturnal journey many times in her dreams and often enough in reality. Balancing the bottle of wine and two glasses, she slipped in a side door of the stable, glad when the air-conditioning touched her damp skin.

Without bothering to turn on the main corridor lights, she walked quietly around the corner and stopped in his doorway. His back was turned, and she watched in anticipation as he stripped off his shirt and tossed it aside. The soft glow of light from the lamp on his desk highlighted the rippling muscles of his shoulders and tapered back, and when he reached for the snap on his jeans, her breath came a little faster.

Perhaps that almost imperceptible sound alerted him, because he swung around and pinned her with a look that was at first alarmed and then annoyed. "You scared the hell out of me, Jessica!"

Jessica held up the glasses and wine bottle and strolled into his room as if she owned it, which she did. "I saw the lights on down here and since neither of us seemed to be able to sleep, I thought we could share this."

"As a matter of fact, I'm tired and I don't expect to have any trouble sleeping."

"There's no need to snap my head off," Jessica said as she perched on the edge of his desk and crossed one long, slender leg over the other, letting her sandal dangle from her lacquered toes. "I haven't seen you in ages, and I decided to come for a visit, that's all," she added as she leaned sideways and poured wine into both glasses.

"Really, that's all?" Cole said sarcastically as his gaze took in her scanty tank top, revealing shorts, and seductive smile. Deliberately, he reached for his shirt, but she shook her head, her smile turning hard and determined.

"Don't get dressed, darling. I like looking at you just the way you are."

"Jessica," he said sharply, "we aren't going to go through all this again. It's over, done with, finished. I told you, I'm tired."

"That's a very disrespectful way to speak to your employer," she said, sliding off the desk and reaching for his cheek.

"Dammit, knock it off!" Cole snapped, jerking his head aside. For the moment, that was the only evasionary tactic available to him. As a last resort, he was prepared to physically force her out of his way, but he really didn't want to touch her. For one thing, he wasn't certain whether touching her would ignite her formidable temper or worse—ignite her passion. The bed was behind him, and short of physically lifting her out of his way, he was trapped for the moment. Jessica realized he was trapped, and she moved forward, a smile of victory on her face.

"Jessica—" Cole warned darkly. "You're married, for God's sake!"

"I know that," she replied, pulling off her top and tossing it behind him on the bed.

"I like your husband," Cole said, trying unsuccessfully to sidestep her.

She gazed at him in wide-eyed wonder as she reached behind her back to unclip her bra. "I like him, too," she said.

If his predicament hadn't been so sordid and so dire, Cole would have laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of it: a beautiful woman was stripping in front of him, using her body to block his escape, while she innocently professed to like her husband, whom she was trying to cuckold. "I'm not in the mood for a striptease," he warned her.

"You will be pretty soon," she promised, the bra straps sliding down her arms.

"You don't even know the concept of marital fidelity, do you?" he said, putting his hands on the straps to stop them from sliding off her wrists.

"I'm always faithful when Charles is in town," she said, her eyes turning hot, her hands sliding up the matted dark hair on his chest. "Only he's not here tonight, and you are, and I'm bored."

"Then take up a hobby," Cole said as he clamped his hands on hers.

She laughed low in her throat, wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, and began rubbing herself against his thighs.

Cole was not enticed, not excited, and he was losing his temper and patience. "I'm warning you," he said, grabbing her wrists and yanking them free. "Don't make this hard for both of us."

She shifted her hips sensuously against his and laughed suggestively in her throat as she deliberately misinterpreted his words. "No, I wouldn't say it's very hard. I'd say it's very big, but not—"

Fluorescent light suddenly burst down the corridor outside his room as someone turned on the main stable lights, and Cole clamped his hand over her mouth.

"Cole?" Charles Hayward called out in a deep, friendly voice from thirty feet away. "I saw your light on and decided to have a look at our new resident. What do you think of him?"

Beneath Cole's hand, Jessica's lips began to tremble and her eyes were huge with panic.

"I'll be right there!" Cole called out as he pulled his hand from her mouth.

"Oh, my God! I have to get out of here!" Jessica said, her entire body rigid.

She was shaking so hard that Cole would have pitied her if she hadn't just put both of them in jeopardy. As he knew from Charles Hayward's past nocturnal visits to the stable, the man would walk down to the tiny kitchenette and make himself a cup of instant coffee; then he'd expect Cole to join him as he walked along the stalls, discussing each occupant. That had become a pleasant ritual for both men over the years, and normally Cole thoroughly enjoyed the visits, particularly when Hayward stayed on and the conversation drifted to other topics. Hayward was well-read and well-informed on a staggering variety of topics… that did not include his wife.

"Listen to me!" Cole said, his voice low and fierce as he snatched her discarded shirt and thrust it into her hands. "He's in the kitchenette, fixing himself a cup of instant coffee."

"Then he's blocking the only door out of here!" she panted. "I'm trapped!"

Cole didn't bother to comment on that. "Don't panic yet," he warned because she looked crazy with fear. "I'll close my door, and he won't come in here or see you."

"I have to get back to the house!"

"Cole?" Charles called out. "Do you want some coffee?"

"No. No thanks," Cole answered, already backing toward the door, using his body to block any view Charles might have of his room and the half-naked, wild-eyed woman standing in the middle of it, clutching her shirt to her bosom.

He left her there, closing the door behind him, and walked, barefooted and barechested into the kitchenette, where Charles had just finished stirring instant coffee into a cup of hot tap water. "Well," the older man said, looking at Cole with an expectant smile, "what do you think of the polo pony?"

"Not bad," Cole said; then he forced himself to come up with a lame joke. "I don't know how well he plays polo, but as a horse, he's a fine-looking animal." The polo pony was only a few stalls away from the doorway into Cole's room, and Cole was instinctively afraid that Jessica was going to try to bolt from the scene of her attempted crime and probably get herself caught in the process. "You might want to have a look at the chestnut mare's foreleg," he suggested, walking deliberately toward the far end of the stable.

Charles looked up in concern and instantly followed Cole down the wide hallway. "What's wrong with her leg?"

"She hurt it when she took a jump yesterday."

"Who was riding her?" Charles asked, all his sympathies with the splendid hunter-jumper whom he often preferred to ride.

"Barbara," Cole said.

"That figures," Hayward said with a disgusted grimace. "I try not to be impatient with Barb, but so far, she's not good at anything she does. Except talking on the telephone about boys. She does that very well."

Without replying, Cole opened the heavy oak stall door, and Charles followed him inside. Handing Cole his cup of coffee he bent down to personally inspect the big mare's bandaged leg. "Not too swollen," he said. "That liniment you mix smells like hell, but it does a great job. I still think you should become a vet," he added, straightening much more quickly than Cole would have liked and giving the mare a farewell pat. "I've never seen a man who had a better way with animals."

"They wouldn't be nearly as fond of me if I were shoving worming tubes down their noses," Cole said with a distracted glance down the hallway. His breath caught as Jessica's face appeared in the doorway of his room; then she made a wild dash across the hallway, holding her red-and-white top over her bare breasts. Cole swung around to block Charles Hayward from leaving the stall, and in the process he hit the coffee mug against the man's arm and sent coffee spewing over hay and trickling down Charles's shirt.

"What the—" Hayward began; then he choked off his startled exclamation and began brushing at the drops.

"I'm sorry," Cole said.

"That's okay, I'll get another one. Why don't you put our new resident on a longer line and see how he goes. I only spent a half hour looking him over in Memphis in a stall because that was all the time I had." He peered at Cole, who'd started to turn, and said, "Is anything wrong? You seem a little edgy tonight."

Cole shook his head in the negative and followed him down the hallway, actually beginning to believe that Jessica had made a safe escape and nothing worse would come of her antics tonight. His relief came a moment too soon. "That's odd," Charles Hayward said as he passed Cole's room. "I distinctly saw you close that door behind you tonight when you came out of your room."

"It probably swung open on its own—" Cole began, but his voice trailed off as Hayward came to a sudden halt, a puzzled smile still on his lips, his eyes riveted on something in Cole's room.

"I gather you were entertaining, and I interrupted," Hayward said. "And now the young lady's run off or in hiding—"

Cole's gaze followed his to the lacy white bra on the floor near Cole's rumpled bed, but before he could react, the older man had noticed something much more damning than the bra, and his expression went from startled, to accusing, to furious. "Aren't those my wineglasses?" he demanded; then he stepped forward and jerked the bottle of wine up to see its label. "And this is Jessica's favorite—"

"I borrowed it—" Cole began. "No, I stole it—" he said, trying to prevent the inevitable even as Hayward stalked toward the rear doorway of the stable, peering toward the flash of white racing toward the back door of the house.

"You son of a bitch!" Hayward exploded as he whirled and swung with his right arm, his fist connecting with Cole's jaw with stunning force. "You fucking bastard!"

Momentarily free of imminent discovery, Jessica fled to the house and up the stairs to her room, but when she peeked out the window, she saw her husband moving at an infuriated half-run from the stable toward the house. "Oh, my God," she breathed, quaking in terror as her comfortable life began to shatter around her. "What'll I do—?" she whispered, looking wildly around the dark room for some way to avoid disaster.

Down the hall, Barbara turned her stereo up another notch, and inspiration struck.

"Barbara!" Jessica cried, racing into her startled daughter's room and slamming and locking the door behind her.

Barbara looked up from the magazine she was reading, her expression first startled and then alarmed. "Mom— what's wrong?"

"You have to help me, darling. Just do what I tell you, and don't ask questions. I'll make it worth your while—"