oe O'Hara had been right—Leigh felt better within minutes of Sheila's sitting down beside her. Dressed in a chic black wool suit with her blond hair caught up in a smart chignon, Sheila was a breath of fresh, bracing air.

Matter-of-fact, compassionate, and wise, Sheila listened intently while Leigh told her everything that had happened since early Sunday morning. Leigh managed to do that without breaking down, but when she came to the end—and it was time to go on to the next most obvious topic—she suddenly felt as if a fist were clamping her vocal cords and an ocean of tears were building up behind her eyes. The problem with having unburdened herself to Sheila was that it was now virtually impossible to avoid confronting reality. In agonized silence, Leigh stared helplessly at her friend's sympathetic expression; then she hastily turned her face away and tried to focus on something else.

The doorway into a spacious dark-paneled room lined with books stared back at her. Logan used it as his office. The lights were off inside it; it was dark and empty.

Her life was dark and empty. The light had gone out of it, too.

Logan was gone.

He wasn't coming back.

She swallowed convulsively, and the words came out like a whisper, wrenched from her soul. "He's gone, Sheila. He can't come back."

"Why do you say that?"

Leigh slowly turned her head and looked directly at her friend. "He's been gone a week. I know that if he were still alive, he'd have found a way to get word to someone by now. You know him."

"Yes, I do," Sheila said firmly. "I also know he is extremely resourceful and levelheaded. He was alive and well on Sunday, and this is Saturday morning. That means he's been gone five full days, not one week. A man can live a lot longer than five days under worse conditions than a snowstorm."

Hope flared like a skyrocket in Leigh. Sheila saw the change in her features and smiled reassuringly. "You'd be thinking the same way I am if it hadn't been for your accident. You've not only had a double mental trauma, you've had a severe physical trauma. We need to start building your strength back up. Let's start taking some short walks together. I don't see patients on Mondays. You'll be up to a little exercise by then, won't you?"

Leigh wasn't really interested in doing anything that didn't involve finding Logan, but she knew Sheila was right. She needed exercise to build up her strength and stamina. "A very short, very slow walk," she stipulated.

"Thank God," Sheila said with a laugh as she put her teacup down on its saucer. "The last time we exercised together, I couldn't cross my legs without whining for days afterward. My patients started giving me advice on exercise. Besides being mortified, I was afraid they'd expect a discount on my fees!"

Leigh managed an actual smile, and Sheila glanced at her watch; then she hastily picked up her purse and stood up. "In fifteen minutes I'm seeing a patient who is chronically late for everything. I hope I haven't cured him of that yet." Leaning down, she pressed a kiss on Leigh's cheek. "I phoned in a prescription for antianxiety medication for you. Are you taking it?"

"I took one of the pills."

"Take them as I directed," Sheila said firmly. "They'll help you. They won't cloud your thinking; they will just enable you to think more normally."

"There is nothing 'normal' about the things that are happening," Leigh pointed out, and then she relented because it was 'easier. "Okay, I'll start taking them."

"Good—and please call Jason. He called me twice yesterday. He's beside himself because he hasn't seen you yet and doesn't know when you're going to resume your role."

That information made Leigh feel both guilty and unjustly harassed. "I haven't spoken to him since I left the hospital, but he leaves messages for me every day. He said Jane Sebring is doing an excellent job in my role."

At the mention of Leigh's gorgeous costar and understudy, Sheila grimaced with angry distaste. "She must be heartbroken that you didn't die in your accident. I hate that she's benefiting from your misfortune."

Leigh gaped at her. Sheila never made statements like that; she was a shrink and so she normally looked for explanations for people's attitudes rather than condemning them for their feelings.

"Don't get me started on that woman—" Sheila glanced at her watch again. "I'm going to be late; I have to run. You know how to reach me, day or night."

THE phone had been ringing regularly while Sheila was there. When she left, Hilda brought in the phone messages she'd taken, and Leigh leafed through them. Among the calls were two that Leigh felt she needed to return: one was from Michael Valente; the other was from Jason.

The woman who answered Michael Valente's phone had an attitude that verged on abrasive. Besides being coldly formal, she was needlessly inquisitive and noticeably mistrustful of the answers Leigh gave to her questions. She not only insisted on knowing what Leigh's call was in regard to, she insisted that Leigh give her phone number and address, and then she abruptly put the call on hold and left it there. Since Leigh's name had been plastered all over the news for nearly a week, and linked with Valente's since yesterday, it seemed a little difficult to believe any of those questions were really necessary. If the woman was his housekeeper, then she was under an iron edict to screen all his calls thoroughly and without exception. If the woman was his live-in girlfriend, then she had a whole lot of jealous insecurities about any female who called him. Either way, Leigh realized that Michael Valente must be a very difficult man to reach.

She was left on hold for so long that she was growing weary and exasperated and was about to hang up when he finally picked up the phone. "Leigh?"

For some reason, Leigh's nervous system reacted with a jolt to the sound of his voice and his familiar use of her first name. There was something very… distracting… about it.

"Leigh?" he said again into the silence.

"Yes, I'm here. I'm sorry, I was—distracted."

"Thank you for putting up with the inquisition and waiting for me to answer your call," he said. "My secretary thought you were another reporter who'd dreamed up a fresh angle to bring me to the phone. When I called you earlier, I was preoccupied with something else or I'd have given you my private phone number, which is what I meant to do. Have you had any word about Logan?"

"No, nothing," she said, wondering if he was always under siege from the media or if—God forbid—his situation at the office was the result of his kindness to her. She had an awful feeling it was the latter.

"Leigh?"

She gave a shaky sigh. "I'm sorry. You must feel like you're talking to a dead phone. I was hoping you always got plagued by the press, and that I'm not the reason for what's happening today." As soon as she said it, she realized her hope was absurd, and—worse—she'd just rudely referred to his unsavory reputation with the law and the media. She put her forehead in her hand and closed her eyes. "I'm so sorry," she whispered bleakly. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded."

"You have nothing to apologize for," he said, but his tone turned brisk and chilly. "I was wondering if I could stop by tomorrow sometime and pick up the documents I need from Logan's office. In the rush yesterday, I forgot about them."

In "the rush yesterday," he'd canceled his own schedule, located his pilot, put up with O'Hara's argument, lent her his helicopter, stayed with her in the freezing cold, tolerated humiliation from the police, and carried her back and forth through the snow at the cabin. In her weakened emotional state, Leigh couldn't seem to get over her seeming lack of gratitude, or ignore his reaction. "I'm just… so sorry," she said again, tearfully.

"For what?" he said wryly. "For reading about me in the newspapers? Or for believing what you've read?"

Leigh lifted her head, her brows furrowing, something niggling at the back of her mind. Something troubling. "For everything," she said absently.

"What time would be convenient for me to stop by tomorrow?"

"It doesn't matter. I'll be here all day unless I hear something about Logan."

When she hung up, Leigh looked at the phone for a moment, trying to focus on the cause of her uneasiness. Something about his voice. Voices without faces… A man's voice, pleasant at the time, but associated in her mind with uneasiness later, with danger… Excuse me, you dropped this…

Leigh shook off the thought of the man outside Saks. That wasn't Valente. That couldn't have been Valente. That was an insane notion—proof that she was teetering on the brink of mental and physical overload.

She decided to return Jason's phone call, and found herself cheered by his familiar, frenetic energy and genuine concern. "You can keep telling me you're fine," he proclaimed at the end of their call, "but I want to see you with my own eyes, darling. What time shall I be there tomorrow?"

"Jason, I'm really not very good company."

"But I am always good company, and I am going to share it with you tomorrow. Shall we say noon?"

Leigh accepted that he was going to be on her doorstep whether he was wanted or not, but she also realized she'd actually be glad to see him. She was dying of solitude and loneliness. "Noon is fine," she said.