That Man Callahan!

THAT MAN CALLAHAN! Catherine Spencer

He's trouble with a capital T! Mike Callahan is sexy, handsome, magnetic--and out to win at all costs! Isobel Whitelaw is cool, calm, professional--and determined to keep Mike Callahan at arm's length! "From the moment he marched into my office, demanding and ruthless, I knew that man Callahan was trouble! Of course, he had every right to defend his nephew, but not at the expense of my peace of mind. Then he started to invade every corner of my life. And he just wouldn't take no for an answer. Having been burned before, I thought I was immune to love, desire and the whole romantic package. But determination must be Mike Callahan's middle name...!" DANGEROUS LIAISONS

CHAPTER ONE IF SHE hadn't been winding down toward the end of a day that had started over twelve hours earlier, the name Mike Callahan might have triggered a warning signal. However, by a quarter past six and with lunch but a distant memory, Isobel's mind was sluggishly bogged down with so many small-print details of other people's lives and trials that she could understandably have been excused for not recognizing her own name, let alone his. Of course, if Myrtle, her secretary, had been at her desk, the problem wouldn't have arisen. Myrtle had a phenomenal memory and would have known at once who he was. But she also had a filling that needed replacing and had left early to visit her dentist. "I'll tell him to phone Myrtle in the morning and make an appointment for another time, if you like," the company receptionist who'd announced his arrival offered. "It's past office hours, after all." Isobel squinted at her watch and shook her head. "Never mind, Julie. I've already missed the last commuter bus, and his business might be urgent." "Do you want me to stay, as well—just in case? I mean, everyone else left over an hour ago, even Myrtle, and—" Eyes darting covertly to her own watch, the young woman left the sentence dangling. "Heavens, no!" Isobel waved her on her way. "Send him in, then beat it. No reason for both of us to work overtime, especially since you've almost certainly got more interesting things planned for this evening than hanging around here baby-sitting me." "Are you sure?" "Quite sure," Isobel said, firmly believing her own words.

The first indication that perhaps she'd spoken too soon followed almost immediately. His footsteps heralded his approach, and before she had time to sweep aside the papers littering her desk, he was across the threshold, the sheer size of him managing to reduce her spacious corner office to claustrophobic proportions. He invades my territory—a lament pretty, voluptuous Julie frequently uttered in reference to men who made a practice of hanging too far over her desk or crowding her in the elevator—might have been tailored for him. Except this man didn't invade, he commandeered, laying claim to his present surroundings with a predatory arrogance that had Isobel cowering on the inside. Outwardly, they presented a study in contrasts, she all cool, impeccable pearl-gray shantung shot with rose, and he blatantly, startlingly male in a white T-shirt that fit almost as snugly to the well-muscled planes of his torso as his faded Levi's clung to his narrow hips. He was exactly the kind of man who terrified her—tall, strikingly handsome, decidedly physical and about as far removed from her pinstripe-suited colleagues as it was possible to get. Black curly hair, cut short, swept across a wide brow. Eyes that shifted from gray to blue with the fickle speed of an April sky stared past their lush fringe of sooty lashes with an odd blend of candor and cynicism. As for his mouth... even with the lips unsmilingly compressed, it was purely beautiful and left Isobel dumbstruck. Just as the silence threatened to become embarrassing he ended it and, if the body and face were reminiscent of a young Clint Eastwood, the voice was pure Presley, sliding in sultry cadence across Isobel's nerve endings. "Thanks for agreeing to see me," he purred. "I confess I'm surprised."

"Oh?" She swallowed nervously and hoped it was the fact that she hadn't tasted solid food in sue hours that left her feeling downright light-headed. "I'm Mike Callahan." He frowned slightly and repeated what she'd already learned from Julie, as if doing so would explain something significant. It didn't. "I'm Isobel Whitelaw," she replied, her brain continuing to idle in neutral. "I know who you are." The confrontational tone of his reply sent a tremor of anxiety skittering down her spine. Except for the office cleaners and the night watchman, all of whom were somewhere else in the building, she was, as Julie had remarked, alone with a man whose demeanour suddenly assumed a distinctly hostile cast. "Apparently so, Mr. Callahan," she acknowledged, then added pointedly, "but I don't know who you are." "Andrew Bishop's my nephew," he said, and at that her brain clicked into gear and raced to make up the distance it had lost. Momentarily too disturbed to reply, she simply gaped at him. A gleam of satisfaction lightened the sullen blue-gray of his eyes as he witnessed her discomposure. "Does my name still mean nothing to you, Ms. Whitelaw?" he jeered softly. Now that she had something tangible on which to focus—other than his appearance, that was—her uneasiness fled, shunted aside as her professional persona took charge. "It means that I cannot talk to you. Your being here, demanding an interview, is most irregular, and I must ask you to leave."

Legs planted firmly apart, he leaned tanned hands on the desk, everything about him, from his stance to his tone of voice, exuding defiance. She caught a fleeting whiff of pleasantly astringent after-shave tinged with some sort of motor oil. "I'm not going anywhere," he informed her, "until I've had my say." "You will leave at once, Mr. Callahan," she repeated firmly, "or I shall be obliged to call security and have you thrown out." His beautiful mouth split in a grin to reveal flawless teeth. "Don't be silly, Ms. Whitelaw. If you do that, I'll simply wait for you outside and we'll have this discussion on the street." "But that's the whole point," she said. "We have nothing to discuss. I am representing Miss Griffiths, as I'm sure you know, so if your nephew has decided that he, too, needs a lawyer, I'm afraid he'll have to look for one elsewhere." "I sincerely hope things won't come to that," Mike Callahan drawled. "I have very little respect for a profession whose most outstanding talent appears to be circumventing the laws that govern the rest of us." She lifted her gaze to his and left it there, despite the unnerving bolt of lightning that seemed to arc between them. "Then what in the world prompted you to come here to see me today?" "I thought it fair to warn you that your client is not the squeaky-clean victim she pretends to be. If you take any sort of pride in your reputation, you'll be well- advised to drop Miss Bobbie Griffiths before she makes you the laughingstock of every other lawyer in town." "I pride myself on being a good judge of character and have no intention of abandoning Miss Griffiths." Isobel stood up and dusted

off her hands with a finality that she hoped impressed him. "And now, as I intimated a moment ago, this interview is at an end. Good day, Mr. Callahan." If she had thought he'd accept dismissal with good grace, she soon learned differently. Not only did he refuse to budge, he stood directly in the path from the desk to the door, thereby blocking her exit, too. Short of trying to brush him aside—a ludicrous notion, considering he towered over her by a good eight inches and outweighed her by at least seventy pounds—she was a prisoner until such time as he chose to remove himself. "What sort of lawyer protects a sleazy little number like Bobbie Griffiths?" he snapped. "My sort, Mr. Callahan," Isobel replied frostily. "Miss Griffiths has very little money and selected my name from the list provided by Legal Aid, an organization endorsed by the Law Society of British Columbia to ensure that those of limited assets not be deprived of their right to representation in a court of law. I am happy to work pro bono on her behalf." He grimaced. "Which mouthful of rehearsed bafflegab, reduced to plain English, means she's a charity case. Tell me, does it help you sleep any better at night knowing you're accepting minimal fees from taxpayers' money to represent a woman who wouldn't know the truth if it jumped up and bit her in the face?" "In this country, everyone is entitled to the services of a barrister, regardless of his or her crime," Isobel retaliated, which was foolish of her because the only way to deal with a man like Mike Callahan was to refuse to enter into argument with him. Yet it seemed important to make him recognize her integrity, a notion that was, surely, even more absurd. The opinion of this boorish, ignorant stranger shouldn't matter. The fact that it did, however, prompted her to continue,

"Since, in this case, my client is the innocent party, I feel doubly justified in agreeing to take her case." "What if I tell you that the only innocent here is you? That you're being hoodwinked by a practiced deceiver and you'll end up making a fool of yourself in court? Would that make you reconsider?" "No," Isobel said. "Although you are entitled to your opinions, they are irrelevant to me. You are not my client, Mr. Callahan, nor is your nephew—and quite frankly, even if I was not already committed to representing Miss Griffiths, I would refuse to take your nephew's case." "You wouldn't get the chance," he shot back. "Bobbie Griffiths might have picked your name out of a hat the way some people choose winners in a horse race, but I'll be damned before I let Andy settle for that." The grin that she'd admired a few moments earlier resurfaced, and this time there was nothing remotely charming about it. "Do the taxpayers a favor, honey, and tell your client to drop her suit, or else—" Isobel didn't take any more kindly to threats or blackmail than she did to being called "honey" by arrogant strangers. "Or else what, Mr. Callahan?" she rapped out. "Or else you're in for some very nasty surprises. I'll hire the best legal mind money can buy to defend my nephew against the ludicrous charges brought against him. Before I'm done, I'll blow you and your tarty client out of the water." Having at last delivered the threat he'd come to impart, he left, spinning on his heel and disappearing down the hall with a muted stamp of feet on the thick carpet. Isobel waited until she heard the ping of the arriving elevator and the swish as its doors closed on her departing visitor before she moved. Then, instead of preparing to

follow his example, she groped for her chair and sank into it, dismayed to find her hands shaking. It was the first time in her career that she'd felt like this, as if she was floundering in quicksand. Whatever disasters had scarred her private life, she'd always managed to keep her professional competence intact. But Mike Callahan had stirred her separate halves together until neither one stood firm, and she had a sick feeling he would continue to do so. He reminded her of Richard, that was the problem. Big, domineering, threatening. A diamond in the rough willing to go to any lengths to assert his superiority. Sexy, handsome, magnetic. Shockingly inappropriate, the words swam into her mind before she could block them. Swiveling in her chair to face the window, she leaned on the sill and looked down fifteen floors just in time to see him stride out of the building. Even from this height, he stood out from the crowd, an unsettling combination of easy grace and barely contained electric energy. It was now close to seven, the time when the night face of the city began to emerge. Already, the sidewalk cafes were doing a brisk business serving Campari and soda to the smart set. As Mike Callahan swung past a clutch of tables covered in bright red and white checkered cloths, a couple of young women craned their necks to admire the view he presented from the rear. Their shared smiles of approval at what they beheld sent an unpleasant heat shimmying through Isobel's body—as if she was jealous, for God's sake! Grabbing her briefcase, she stuffed in the papers spilling from it and snapped it closed. Air-conditioning notwithstanding, the heat of the July sun must be addling her brain!

*** He'd parked the truck in a narrow alley between two high-rise office towers. The warmth of the day, trapped in the concrete canyon, rose up to envelop him in diesel- scented waves. Beneath his feet, the blacktop felt spongy. High above, the glare of the sun was reflected from the thousands of windows soaring toward the sky. God, he hated the city, the smells, the frenetic gaiety that never quite managed to dispel the aura of despair clinging to the shadows flitting through the back lanes. Ahead of him, a man not much older than himself shuffled along, a pitiful relic of humanity pushing before him a rusted-out shopping cart that held all his worldly possessions. An old dog tethered by a length of frayed rope slunk along at his heels. There but for the grace of God...! Mike scowled and shoved the thought aside. God's grace had nothing to do with it. It was a man's own drive and pride that rescued him from the gutter. He ought to know. He'd climbed free, and he'd made damned sure his sister and nephew did, too. And no itty- bitty lady lawyer with big brown eyes and long, sexy legs was going to reverse the process. Andy was not going to wind up with a criminal record he didn't deserve, and if that meant Mike's going head to head with cocksure Ms. Isobel Whitelaw, he was more than ready. Some people might be cowed by her lofty manner, but she hardly intimidated a man like him. He reached his Ford F250 just as the man and his dog turned out of the alley and onto the street. Even shaded by the sun, the truck's cab still had absorbed a disagreeable amount of heat. By the time the airconditioning had made the interior bearable and Mike had driven the few yards along the alley to the road, another three or four minutes had passed—or as long as it took for him to get as far as the corner and witness firsthand the altercation taking place there.

The problem appeared to have arisen over the derelict's dog, which cowered in a heap, obviously terrified by the roar of passing traffic. Its owner was yanking savagely on the tattered length of rope, leaving the animal in danger of being choked to death, and the unimpeachable Ms. Isobel Whitelaw, barrister, solicitor and upholder of the law for the underprivileged, was preparing to clout the homeless man over the head with her briefcase. Mike didn't know who he felt sorriest for, the dog or its owner. Drawing in next to the curb, he lowered the truck window and leaned out. "Need a referee?" he inquired. Momentarily distracted, Isobel glanced toward the sound of his voice. The man seized his chance to aim a kick at the dog, which let out a yelp. Dark brown hair flying in disarray, Isobel swung into action again. "Unhand that animal!" she ordered, aristocratic voice rising clearly above the din of traffic. "Mind yer own business," came the reply, followed by the shriek of brakes as a car narrowly missed sideswiping the trio. "All right, that's enough!" Deciding that it was time to intervene before a real tragedy occurred, Mike shoved open the door and stepped down to the sidewalk. The man sized him up through bloodshot eyes, uttered something unfit for Isobel Whitelaw's pristine ears and chose to cut his losses. Letting go of the rope, he abandoned the dog to its fate in the traffic, grasped the handle of his rusty cart and took off the way he'd come. Forgetting herself so far as to clutch at Mike's arm and hide her face against his shoulder, Isobel let out a faint scream of distress as the dog lunged forward. But the mutt possessed an uncanny instinct for survival. With surprising agility for such a moth-eaten creature, it

leaped past both of them and through the open door of the truck, cleared the gear shift and landed with a thump on the passenger seat. Mike watched the entire operation in bemused silence, captivated more than he cared to admit by the delicate perfume of Isobel's hair spilling across his T-shirt. Only after the dog had circled in its tracks a couple of times and made itself thoroughly comfortable on the leather upholstery of his brand new cab did he tell her, "You can open your eyes now. The danger's past." Isobel lifted her head and turned huge, soft eyes on him. He saw the pulse racing in the hollow of her throat, heard the shaken breath issue from between her lips and felt the sudden weight of her body as relief sent her leaning into him. Her sigh rippled delicately over his chest. "Oh! I was so afraid—" Then, realizing she was draped all over him with unseemly familiarity, she straightened her shoulders, stood firmly on her own two feet and clutched her briefcase to her bosom like a shield. "That man should be charged with abuse," she announced, only the merest tremor in her voice attesting to her earlier distress. Mike tried and failed to hide a grin. "Seems to me the same could have been said about you, Isobel Whitelaw, if I hadn't shown up and saved the day." "On the contrary, it was all your fault that that poor animal almost got killed in the traffic. If you hadn't come barging onto the scene, that disgusting man wouldn't have let go the leash." "And you would have brained him with your briefcase. You were wielding it in a very threatening manner." Two spots of color, as pink and pretty as cherry blossoms, flared to life in her cheeks. "Was I really?"

"Definitely," he assured her gravely. "I had no idea you were prone to such violence." She tilted her chin and offered him her profile, affecting an attitude of disdain that collapsed entirely when she caught sight of the dog tucked comfortably inside the cab of his truck. "Oh, precious!" she exclaimed, promptly forgetting Mike's existence and leaning forward to stroke a loving hand over the animal's head. "Oh, angel, you're safe!" One of the things Mike liked best about the F250, apart from its roomy proportions, was that the floor of the cab sat almost two feet above the road, thereby affording the driver an unparalleled view of most other traffic. That same feature turned to another sort of advantage now as Isobel sprawled across the driver's seat in an effort to reach the dog. It was doubtless very politically incorrect for him to allow his gaze to slide up her calf and settle admiringly on the length of thigh exposed when her slim-fitting skirt slid up past her knees, but the sight was too delectable to ignore. Her assets, he decided, far exceeded her reputed skill in the courtroom. A woman in her early twenties, one of those militant anti-man individuals from the look of her, stopped on her way past and flung him a disapproving glare. '' Pervert!" she snorted. Coming as close to a blush as he ever had in his life, Mike dragged his gaze away from Isobel's delicious hindquarters and cleared his throat. "Ahem! Um, Ms. Whitelaw?" "Yes?" Far too enamored of the animal to spare a mere man like him a second glance, she tossed the word over her shoulder."What do you propose to do with the dog?"

At last he'd said something to catch her attention. "Do with him?" she echoed, wriggling backward until her high-heeled pumps hit the road, then turning to face him. "To be honest, I really hadn't thought that far ahead." "I see. Well..." Mike cleared his throat again. "We could take him to the city's animal shelter." Her eyes, dark brown and huge, regarded him with the pitiful horror of a baby deer whose mother had just died. "You can't be serious," she whispered. "You know what'll happen to him if we do that." "Not necessarily. Once all that matted fur's cleaned up a bit, he might find a good home." "No, he won't, he's too big. People never want dogs his size." Mike shrugged philosophically. "Well, we can't very well turn him loose in the traffic, so I guess you'll just have to take him home with you." She started to say something, then stopped and nibbled softly on her lower lip. "I live in White Rock," she finally confessed, referring to the ritzy seaside community that hugged the United States border some thirty miles south of the city limits, "and travel to work by bus. I don't think they'll allow me to take him—" "I'll be happy to drive you home." Happy for more reasons than one! They were in the heart of downtown Vancouver. If he adhered to the speed limit, a thirty-mile drive beyond the city limits translated into almost an hour alone with her as his captive audience. Delightful to look at though she certainly was, he'd forget her physical charms the minute she was out of sight.

The charges brought against his nephew by that conniving minx, Bobbie Griffiths, however, were not so readily dismissed. As if she guessed the direction of his thoughts, Isobel shook her head. "Oh, no, I couldn't possibly inconvenience you like that. I'll take a taxi." Inconvenience, nothing! It was a heaven-sent opportunity that he wasn't about to pass up. He nodded to where the dog investigated the fleas undoubtedly playing hopscotch in its ratty fur. "I rather doubt that you'll find one willing to take your friend." She worried her lip a bit more. "Probably not." "Well, then?" He extended his palm. "Unless you can come up with a better idea... ?"

She feared, from the minute she agreed to Mike Callahan's offer, that she'd come to regret it. If persuading the dog to move to the bench behind the front seats wasn't enough to convince her, the farce involved in hoisting her body inside the cab certainly was. She wasn't dressed for the occasion. And hiking up her skirt with one hand while she hung on with the other to a man she barely knew, then attempting to clamber- modestly—aboard, hardly befitted her role as counsel for the opposition. She had no business being in his company at all, let alone permitting physical contact with him. To his credit, though, Mike Callahan didn't attempt to engage her in conversation as he drove clear of the city. Instead, he donned a pair of Serengeti sunglasses and focused all his attention on the road. He was a very conservative driver, which surprised her, but at least she didn't fear for her safety as they neared the city limits.

Relaxing a little, she groped in her briefcase and searched out her glasses, not just to cut the sun's glare as it slid low over Georgia Strait, but also to allow her to sneak a glance at him without his knowing. She'd been wrong to think he reminded her of Richard, who'd turned out to be as crude and destructive as the bulldozer he operated, crushing and flattening with brute force what he could not understand or appreciate. Mike Callahan's profile was too strong, his jaw too determined. Whatever else his faults, and she was sure he had plenty, he didn't look the type to have to abuse a woman in order to prove his manhood. She was unprepared for him to turn his head unexpectedly and catch her staring. "Something wrong?" he asked, raising his eyebrows. "No—no, I was just admiring..." What? His nose? His incredibly attractive mouth? Isobel! "Your vehicle. It's very luxurious, fitted out more like a Mercedes than a truck, and very comfortable." "Uh-huh." He adjusted his side mirror and glanced conscientiously at the traffic getting ready to pass him on the approach to the Oak Street Bridge before he shifted into third gear. "That's one of the reasons I bought it." "And the other?" Talking was better, after all, as long as the topic remained harmlessly neutral. "Room to haul stuff around. Right now, I've got an outboard engine for my boat stowed under the canopy in the back." That explained both the whiff of motor oil Isobel had detected earlier and Bobbie Griffiths's disparaging reference to what he did for a living. "A beach bum, roaming around picking up other folks' trash," she'd claimed, but it struck Isobel that if the condition of the truck was

any indication, business must be booming. "What sort of boat?" she inquired politely. "Twenty-eight footer," he said nonchalantly. "Nothing special." Highway 99 south opened up in front of them. True to form, he chose the slow lane, tootling along at a sedate seventy-five kilometers an hour in a ninety-kilometer speed zone. "Do you know how to get to White Rock?" she said, thinking perhaps unfamiliarity with the route was slowing him down. "Yes, Isobel. What makes you ask?" His use of her first name, and the conspiratorial tone as he uttered it, flushed a quiver of alarm through her. "Because at the rate we're traveling, Mr. Callahan, I won't be home before nine o'clock," she chided him. Supremely undaunted, he laughed, displaying all those immaculate teeth. "Never mind, we can use the time for other things." Alarm surged into near panic at that. "What sort of— other things?" He poked his middle finger against the bridge of his glasses and nudged them more firmly into place on his handsome nose. "Nothing banned in decent society, so don't sound so terrified. I simply fancy some straight talk." "About what?" "Oh, this and that—and Andy." She knew then she should have trusted the instinct that had told her not to get into his vehicle in the first place. She also knew what she

had to do to correct the error. "Absolutely not. Pull over at once and let me out." He slammed on the brakes with stunning expertise, sliding the truck in a perfectly controlled skid to the shoulder of the highway. "Whatever you say, ma'am. Out you go, and don't forget the pooch." She had forgotten! "But how am I—who's going to offer me a ride home, with him... ?" Mike Callahan lifted his broad shoulders in a beautifully elegant shrug. "Search me. I certainly wouldn't if I saw you standing on the side of the road trying to hitch a lift." "But you can't just abandon us!" "Hey," he said, "you're the one who wants out, and if you think I'm fool enough to insist differently and leave myself open to charges of taking you hostage, I must look a lot dafter than I realized." He didn't look daft, he looked gorgeous, a small detail that was utterly irrelevant to the situation in which she found herself. "I've changed my mind," she said meekly. "I'd like you to drive me home, after all. But I refuse to talk to you." His mouth tilted in a small, victorious smile. "That's all right, Isobel, I'll do the talking. All you have to do is listen." It occurred to her that she could be thoroughly childish and stick her fingers in her ears, but she suspected that deep voice of his would trickle past the obstacles like syrup flowing over pancakes. All she could do was plaster an impassive expression on her face and stare resolutely out the side window in the hope that he'd quickly tire of so unresponsive an audience.

As was becoming all too usual where he was concerned, though, she underestimated her opponent. He talked, and against her will, she listened.

CHAPTER TWO "WHEN I found two uniformed police on my doorstep, waving a search warrant under my nose, my first reaction was to tell them they'd come to the wrong place," Mike Callahan began. "When they told me that they had reason to believe a baby girl was hidden on the premises, it was all I could do not to burst out laughing. I had no compunction at all about allowing them into the boat house because I knew there'd been a mistake." Isobel feigned interest in the passing scenery, turning her face at right angles to the windshield so that, in the event that he happened to glance her way during his discourse, he'd have to content himself with a view of the back of her head. The cottonwoods and poplars lining the highway swayed in the whisper of breeze that had sprung up with evening as though nodding agreement with his every word. Behind her, the dog snored blissfully. "It was only when I saw Andy's expression that I began to have doubts. He had the look of a trapped animal—a bit like our friend the mutt back there, just before you rescued him. Hopeless, helpless. Know what I mean?" She stiffened and immediately wished she hadn't when he said, "Yes, I had a feeling you might." "I do not know what you mean because I am not listening to you," she snapped. "Of course you're not," he agreed amiably, "but I won't let that discourage me, so, to continue, suddenly all my instincts were on full alert. Something was up and I knew it, just as surely as I know when a job is going sour on me. 'Whose is the baby?' I asked, not for a moment expecting Andy to say, 'Mine, Mike. Mine and Bobbie's.'"

Wrong, Mr. Callahan! He's not the father. Isobel had to bite her tongue to keep from setting him straight on the facts. "Naturally, the minute her name was mentioned, I knew the reason for my uneasiness. Bobbie Griffiths spells more trouble than any assignment I've ever undertaken," he declared, with the same faith a four-year- old says that Santa Claus will pay a visit on Christmas Eve. This time, Isobel couldn't help herself. She had to set him straight on this one point, at least. "Only a very insensitive person would equate the everyday annoyances of his job with a young mother's distress at having her baby stolen. The two hardly compare." "What do you know about my job, Isobel?" Mike Callahan inquired mildly. "I know you're a beachcomber who scours the seashore for salvage. Hardly what I'd call stressful under any circumstances." "A beachcomber?" he repeated, choking on a laugh. "I've been called some things in my time, but I have to say that's about as—" "Am I misinformed?" she asked sharply. She felt his gaze rake over her. "I'm surprised you'd even bother to ask," he finally said. "You seem to think you have the right answers to everything pertaining to this case, courtesy, no doubt, of the inimitable Miss Griffiths. Tell me, did she happen to mention how come my nephew lives with me instead of with his parents?" As a matter of fact, Bobbie hadn't disclosed that small item, and Isobel, much against her better judgment, suddenly found herself itching to discover it. Not for the world would she betray her curiosity, however. Instead, she shrugged and resumed her scrutiny of the wayside trees and shrubs.

Mike Callahan accepted her silence with equanimity and told her anyway. "Andy's father took off twenty years ago, just after his son's first birthday. No one's seen or heard from the guy since. My sister was seventeen at the time, and while I think she was better off without him, she didn't agree. It took her a long time to get over him, and for a while her life went from bad to worse—not that it had ever been all that great. Ours was not what you'd call an upwardly mobile family when we were children." He paused, and Isobel thought she detected a certain rancor in his silence, as though, like Richard, he found the reality of his background a particularly bitter pill to swallow: "Eventually, she got her act together and went back to finish high school and train for a career, but trying to juggle all that and be a parent was a bit more than she could handle," he continued. "Andy came to live with me when he was fifteen and had become what is politely termed unmanageable. He'd dropped out of school and was getting into the sort of adolescent scrapes that, left unchecked, can seriously jeopardize a kid's future." Again, Isobel couldn't contain her silence. "Mr. Callahan, you really ought to be confiding all this to your own lawyer. You're hardly doing your nephew any favors, sharing his misdemeanors with me." "So glad you're taking in every word, Isobel," he replied maddeningly. "But before you decide I've won your case for you, let me assure you I'm telling you this not to add fuel to the suit your client is bringing against Andy but to show you how hard he's worked to overcome his early disadvantages. He is not stupid, nor is he criminally inclined. Within a short time of moving in with me, he resumed school, made the honor roll and entered university eighteen months later, a full year ahead of other kids his age. He completed his undergraduate degree earlier this summer and won a scholarship that

will finance him all the way through veterinary medical school, starting in September. He's spending the intervening time assisting a local vet and working pro bono for the SPCA." She heard the smirk that accompanied the pro bono and was hard-pressed herself not to smile. But to do so would indicate that she was doing more than listen to every word—she was drinking it in with an avidity that was entirely improper. And Mike Callahan must never be allowed to guess that. "Last summer," he went on, appearing to have overcome completely his earlier diffidence behind the wheel if the speed and skill with which he wove the truck through the thinning traffic was any indication, "Andy met Bobbie Griffiths at a local community dance. Don't ask me what he saw in her. I've tried to figure it out myself and I come up empty-handed every time. But he fell under her spell, and for most of the winter they were joined at the hip—quite literally, it would seem. Unknown to me, when he learned she was pregnant, he offered to marry the little...madam. Thank God she turned him down." "It takes two, Mr. Callahan," Isobel felt obliged to remind him. "Don't lay all the blame on her shoulders." 'Tm the one supposed to be doing all the talking, not you," he reminded her, and again she heard the smile in his voice. "However, I'll concede the point. If he found the wench so irresistible, he should have shown the good sense to take proper precautions." "She is not a wench!" "She's no shy, retiring virgin who thought babies sprouted under the rhubarb in the back garden, either, Isobel. Andy wasn't the first to sample her charms, and I'm damned sure he wasn't the last."

She had to admire Mike Callahan's belief in his nephew, which was exceeded only by the tenacity with which he pursued the question of the young man's innocence. "Then why are you so sure he's the baby's father?" "Because at first, before she came up with a better idea, Bobbie Griffiths told him he was and asked him to cough up money for an abortion. He refused, and although by then he knew he wasn't in love with her, he was prepared to stand by her. But, as I mentioned, she wanted no part of that. So then he offered to support her financially for the duration of her pregnancy, and to continue supporting the child after that. The way he explained it to me was that it was time to put an end to the cycle. His mother had been a neglected child, his own father had abandoned him, and he was damned if he was going to repeat the pattern with this child." "Very commendable, I'm sure, but that still doesn't prove he's the father." "I'd tend to agree with you, but, having seen the baby, I admit this is probably one time Bobbie Griffiths was telling the truth. The kid is unmistakably a Callahan. What I don't believe is that Andy kidnapped her." "The baby was found hidden in his home without her mother's knowledge or permission. What would you call it?" "I'd call it rescuing a helpless infant from a neglectful and possibly abusive parent. Only after she refused to speak to him on the phone did Andy go to Bobbie's house to try to iron out some sort of arrangement for their daughter's future. When he got there, he found the baby alone and crying, in a playpen in the garden, in the full glare of the afternoon sun. She needed changing and was covered in a heat rash. The only other thing in the playpen was a bottle of stale infant formula. No one answered his repeated knocking at the door,

probably because the TV was blaring so loudly that an earthquake could have passed unnoticed." "And you consider that reason enough for him to abduct the child?" "Well, what the hell would you have done in his place? Leave her in the state she was in? Hope that her mother would remember she was there before she died of sunstroke, or some lunatic decided to steal her?" "The way your nephew did, you mean?" He slammed an irate hand on the leather console between the two front seats, startling Isobel into swinging around to face him. "He's her father, damn it!" he roared, blue eyes blazing. "He has some rights, too, and before I'm through, you're going to recognize them." Old habit had Isobel wanting to cower as far away from him as she could get, to throw up her arms to protect herself from the blows of those big, powerful hands. It took several seconds for her to remember that this was Mike Callahan. Yesterday had gone, and so had Richard. "Find some other outlet for your frustration, Mr. Callahan," she advised him shortly, "but don't direct it at me, because I won't tolerate it." He dragged in a breath and irritably stabbed his fingers through his hair. "I'm sorry—but what the hell else do you suggest?" "Hire your nephew—" "A lawyer, I know. Don't you have any other theme song?" "Yes. If he was sincerely worried about the child, he could—and should—have turned the case over to the social services department. That's what they're there for."

"The way you turned in our passenger to the animal shelter authorities, you mean? That's what they're there for, too, but I witnessed firsthand how you chose to bypass their help." She opened her mouth to fire back a withering riposte and found nothing more impressive waiting to fall out of it than a feeble, "That was different." "Only if you hold a dog's life more highly than a human's. Don't misunderstand me, I admire you for taking a stand. God knows, there are too many people who choose to look the other way rather than get involved. What puzzles me is that you refuse to recognize the same motivation in Andy that clearly drives you." "I didn't break the law, Mr. Callahan, and therein lies the difference." "Couldn't you have thrown in a heretofore and a couple of whomsoevers, Isobel?" he murmured snidely. "That therein sounds so lonely all by itself." Choosing to ignore his gibe, she indulged in one last question, after which, she promised herself, she really would button her lip. "If you're as confident of your nephew's innocence as you'd have me believe, why are you so afraid of his case going to trial?" "Apart from my utter lack of faith in the justice system, you mean?" He geared down to exit from the highway to the quiet, winding road that followed the seashore into the heart of White Rock. "Because his scholarship is for admission to an American university, and you don't have to be an expert on immigration lawto know that he'll never be allowed across the border with a trial pending. Kidnapping is a serious crime by any country's standards."

"He should have thought of that before he took Bobbie's baby," Isobel said virtuously. "Take the next right, then a left. I live in the condominium development at the bottom of the hill."

Her self-righteous dismissal of Andy's predicament, coupled with the manifest opulence of the gated community in which she lived, really got his goat. He wanted to say something to shake her out of her complacence but knew that he couldn't afford the self-indulgence of being outrageous. His time with her was just about up. The best he could hope for now was that what he'd said would ferment in her mind and lead her to examine more closely Miss Bobbie Griffiths's version of the truth. That wasn't likely to happen if he antagonized her. It might even make things worse for Andy. So he sighed and said, "Perhaps he should have, but sometimes we do things on the spur of the moment that don't always turn out for the best." "Mature, responsible people don't," she retorted, tempting his anger yet again. "They take control of their impulses. Don't bother driving any farther. I can walk from here." He pulled up before the elaborate wrought-iron gates and .sneaked a last glance at her fabulous legs as she reached into the backseat and tried to grab hold of the dog's rope leash. "Hang on and I'll give you a hand getting down," he offered. "Please don't," she said, wriggling out and hauling the dog with her. "I can manage quite well on my own and you've already done enough." Not about to give her the chance to dismiss him a second time, he was on the verge of turning the truck in a semicircle and driving away

when a man in a burgundy uniform popped his head out of the little gatehouse set in the brick wall surrounding the chichi complex. "Evening, Ms. Whitelaw," he began, all amiable, respectful smiles until his gaze fell on the dog, at which the congeniality evaporated. "Goodness gracious, I hope you're not proposing to bring that thing inside, madam!" "Actually," Isobel began, somehow managing to maintain her dignity despite the fact that she was practically airborne by the dog as it made a beeline for the laurel hedge growing next to the gate, "I thought—" "Sorry, madam. The bylaws state quite clearly that ownership of animals is not allowed under any circumstances." "But he's-" Face rigid with outrage, the guard or whatever he called himself said, "No dogs," in the same tone of voice that anyone else might have decreed, "No vermin." She had finally met her equal when it came to nitpicking rules and regulations. Fascinated, Mike shifted the truck into neutral and hung out of the window, unwilling to miss a word. Having thoroughly sniffed the gate area, the dog decided to investigate the flower bed flanking the brick perimeter wall, behavior that drew another round of attack from the guard. "But he's been in the truck such a long time," Isobel pleaded. "He needs to stretch his legs." "Truck, madam?" At the mention of the word, the guard shifted his attention to Mike, bathing him in almost as much disfavor as he'd bestowed on the dog.

"I left the Mercedes at home today," Mike said, plastering on his most ingratiating grin. "Thought I'd give it a rest." The man was impervious to humor. "Is this gentleman a friend of yours, Ms. Whitelaw?" She swallowed and refused to meet Mike's gaze. "Yes. He very kindly offered to drive me home when he learned I missed my usual bus and had over an hour to wait for the next." "So the animal is yours, sir?" Mike was all set to answer when Isobel beat him to it. "Yes," she said, turning huge, pleading eyes his way. "That's right, isn't it... Mike?" Oh, he was tempted to give her back a dose of her own medicine! To make honesty and propriety the issue, and to hell with what it might cost the dog. To reduce Isobel to begging and, at the end of all that, to drive off and leave her to the dilemma in which she found herself. But he couldn't, because those eyes melted his heart. And because, by coming to her rescue once again, he had the upper hand when it came to repayment of favors. So he ducked his head in acknowledgment and aimed another grin at the gate man. "That's right. He's my old pal, er..." "Basil," Isobel supplied, seizing the victory before he could change his mind and snatch it away again. "And it quite clearly states in the strata bylaws that visitors are allowed to bring their pets to visit provided they don't remain overnight. I'd appreciate it if you'd please open the main gate, Mr. Brewer, and allow my guest to drive through."

"Basil?" Mike murmured, once she and the dog had clambered into the cab and the guard had reluctantly allowed them entry to the grounds. "Gee, Isobel, where did you come up with a name like that?" She compressed her lips and stared straight ahead at the brick-paved lane that wound between manicured gardens and stands of mature cedars to the crescent of three-story condominiums lining the top of the cliff overlooking Semiahmoo Bay. "One of us had to say something," she huffed, "and I didn't hear you come up with anything brilliant. Take the right fork here and you'll see the visitor's parking area under the trees." "I won't need to park," he said, enjoying himself hugely. "I'll just drop you and Basil off, then I'll be on my way. It's after eight and I've got a long drive ahead of me before I get home." "You can't leave the dog with me," she said in a small voice. "You heard the rules." He feigned astonishment. "You mean you seriously expected I'd take Basil off your hands? I thought that was just a ruse to get him past the prison warden." "Mr. Callahan, please!" "Mike," he said. "I beg your pardon?" She swung those velvet, pansy- dark eyes his way again. "A minute ago, I was Mike and a friend," he said, swinging the truck to a stop. "What have I done to be demoted so soon?" She half-turned to look at the dog in the back, affording Mike another sneak preview of her knees. That, added to the rustle of silken

underthings sliding against her skin and the drift of her perfume, made dangerous inroads on his determination to exploit the situation to his advantage. Her voice, soft and uncertain, was the last straw. "If you don't help me, I don't know what I'll do." "Tell you what," he said grudgingly. "We'll help each other. You invite me in for dinner, and I'll take the dog home with me until we decide what to do with him." She worried her lower lip, and nothing he could summon in the way of self-reproach could persuade him not to stare at her mouth and engage in outrageous fantasies. "I don't think I can do that," she said. He shrugged, steeling himself to withstand another onslaught from her beautiful, bottomless brown eyes. "Then I don't think I can take the dog." Beautiful and bottomless narrowed in outrage. "That's blackmail, Mr. Callahan!" He smiled sunnily. "I know, Isobel." She inhaled deeply, then shot out her breath in a surge of frustration. "Very well, I'll feed you, but I can tell you now that it won't be anything fancy." "I didn't expect it would be. Today's career women generally seem to have little use for the domestic arts that were their mothers' stock in trade." "I happen to be an excellent cook," she informed him. "I just don't feel obligated to demonstrate the fact to you. The way to a man's heart might be through his stomach, but the day I stoop to that sort of ploy will be the day I've met the man I can't live without. And you, Mr. Callahan, are not that man, nor ever likely to be."

"Well, gee, isn't that too bad?" He jumped down from the truck and came around to help her slither out, a feat she accomplished with astonishing grace considering that Basil, in his eagerness not to be left behind, managed to wind his rope leash several times around her ankles. "A pleasantly full stomach always makes me much more cooperative but, if that's how you want to play the game, Isobel, I'll have to adjust my terms accordingly." Isobel silently ground her teeth and wished for the umpteenth time that she'd never agreed to grant him an interview. He had nerve to spare and about as much conscience as a rattlesnake. That he was disgracefully good-looking, winsomely charming when he chose to be and possessed of a certain sly intelligence did not alter the fact that he was no gentleman. In fact, he was a scoundrel.

Keeping one eye on the cream sauce heating in a double boiler on the stove, she rinsed lettuce leaves and set about preparing a dressing to serve with the salad. She supposed she ought to be glad that he'd taken the dog down to the beach for a run and left her alone to make dinner. Her kitchen was a gourmet's dream, equipped with every \ possible device a cook could ask for, but it was designed for one. Six-foot-plus of Mike Callahan hovering over her shoulder would have been a bit more than she could handle. The water for the pasta came to the boil. If he hadn't wandered too far down the beach, she could serve dinner in fifteen minutes, stuff him with food and have him out her door before ten. Only an hour more of his company. She could handle that, couldn't she? Of course she could! Snatching up a towel, she dried her hands and went out to the deck to check his whereabouts. Dusk had fallen but enough light remained in

the western sky for her to see clear out to the tide line. There was no sign of Mike Callahan or Basil. Basil! She groaned silently. What had possessed her to choose that name, instead of something traditional, like Rover or Duke? She knew why. Basil Roper had been on her mind ever since last weekend, when he'd hinted again at proposing. It had taken all the social finesse at her command to divert the thrust of the conversation elsewhere. Not that Basil was a bad marriage prospect. He'd make a good husband, a civilized, stable, considerate husband. Isobel just wasn't sure that she wanted him to be hers. From the corner of her eye, she saw movement, followed shortly thereafter by a yip of canine joy. A length of driftwood flew through the air and floated on the water. Basil retrieved it, dropped it at Mike Callahan's feet and shook himself mightily. If possible, he looked more bedraggled than ever. But he was alive and full of tentative happiness, a sight that suddenly made worthwhile all the problems inherent in Isobel's association with Mike Callahan. Whatever his faults, the man had helped her rescue the dog. Waving the towel, she called out, "Dinner's just about ready." "I'd offer you beer," she said, when he strolled into the long, high-ceilinged area that served both as dining and living room, "but I'm afraid it's not something I normally keep on hand, and you're probably not the type to enjoy wine." "Wine?" He wrinkled his brow and rasped his finger across the faint trace of stubble on his jaw. "That's the stuff you drink in fancy stemmed glasses instead of straight from the bottle, isn't it?" "As a rule, yes," she allowed, not liking at all the smile inching across his mouth.

"Well, what the heck! It's been an extraordinary day all round, so why not finish it off in style? By all means, let's enjoy a glass of wine and watch the moon rise." She should have kept her mouth shut. At this rate, she'd be lucky to get rid of him by midnight. "Actually, that's not such a good idea. We're having creamed lobster with fettuccini, which really calls for a white wine and I don't have any in the refrigerator. It would mean waiting for a bottle to chill." He smiled ingenuously and came to stand far too close to her. "That's okay, Isobel, I'm not in any tearing hurry. There are, after all, worse ways to spend the evening." His breath winnowed over her, snaking inside the collar of her blouse and stealing down between her breasts. If he had reached out a finger and touched her, the violation could not have shocked her more. "Stay away from me!" She heard the shrill edge in her voice, saw his eyes widen with surprise and knew he must think her neurotic. But she couldn't help herself. He was trespassing inside the invisible barrier she held around herself, and the results were terrifying. Old, crippling memories sprang to life, creating a tide of physical responses she was helpless to repress. A huge fist of revulsion rose up inside her to clench viciously at her heart, her stomach, her womb. The taste of fear soured the back of her throat. "Stay away from me," she said again, backing toward the kitchen. Although his eyes darkened to purple-gray, signifying some sort of emotion, he said not a word. Nor did he attempt to come closer. Basil, sensing the tension, roused himself from his spot on the carpet and came to huddle at Mike Callahan's feet.

That the dog's sympathy lay with the transgressor instead of with her underlined the lesson she'd learned so painfully in the course of her marriage—that, with the exception of her professional contacts, her family and a few good friends, she merited little in the way of respect or loyalty from the opposite sex. But that was all right. For the most part, she hadn't much use for them, either. "What I mean," she said, regaining a modicum of composure as her panic receded, "is that I don't need any help." "I wasn't offering any," Mike Callahan replied mildly, "though if you change your mind, all you have to do is ask."Her hands were still shaking as she escaped into the kitchen, but she managed to submerge a bottle of Pinot Blanc in an ice bucket and reduce the flame under the lobster sauce without incurring disaster. By the time she returned to where he waited for her, she was outwardly collected again. He wasn't where she'd left him but had wandered into the small solarium that opened off the far end of the room and was inspecting a gardenia plant. "Seems you're quite a gardener," he remarked, as she set out glasses and a bowl of nuts on a side table, next to the tray holding the wine. "It's one of my hobbies," she said. "Do you know anything about tropical plants, Mr. Callahan?" "No," he said. "But I do know that your insistence on catting me Mr. Callahan is beginning to get on my nerves." "You are the opposition," she said. "I have no business calling you anything at all. You have no business being here. And I would have refused to let you in had it not been for Basil."

"Exactly. Something untoward occurred as a result of which we're no longer adversaries in a legal battle. Our relationship has expanded to include another dimension." "We do not have a relationship," she informed him tartly. "Apart from the dog, we have absolutely nothing in common." v

Association, then." He shrugged and nodded to the ice bucket. "Would you like me to open the wine for you, if I promise not to rip out the cork with my teeth?" He thought she was a snob and she flushed, because, in away, she was. Not because she thought she was better than people like him but because she didn't know how to connect with them. Small talk for the sake of filling silence had never been something that had come easily to her. Perhaps that was why, when she'd fallen in love, she'd chosen a man who appeared as ungregarious as she was. By the time she'd learned the difference between sullen taciturnity and companionable silence, she was married and more isolated in her loneliness than ever. "Isobel?" Mike Callahan fixed her in a questioning gaze. "Would you like me to uncork the wine?" "By all means," she said. "And please help yourself to nuts." His laughter rolled over her, rich and warm and infectious. "I think I already did when I got involved with you. Are you this prickly and standoffish with everyone?" "Just with you," she said, surprised to find a fledgling smile trembling on her lips. "You're off-limits." "Because of Andy, you mean?"

Not entirely, she could have told him. It's your animal charm that has me most worried, and the fact that, given half a chance, the fool in me would find it irresistible. She pretended to be busy examining her plants and answered only when she had put the safety of a thorny bougainvillea between her and him. "It's not that I'm unsympathetic to what you're trying to do for your nephew. Actually, I admire you for your loyalty. But from an ethical standpoint, I cannot comment on his situation. Please try to understand. And trust me when I tell you that the best thing you can do for him is hire a good lawyer." He poured the wine, half-filling the glasses. "Bobbie Griffiths is luckier than she deserves to have found you," he said. "Mike, please!" "Okay, okay!" He spread his palms in surrender. "It was worth pushing my luck to hear you call me something other than Mr. Callahan." "A few other names have occurred to me since you came barging into my office," she said, "but I pride myself on being a lady." Carrying both wineglasses, he wove a path through the foliage surrounding her. "Here, Isobel. Stop hiding in your private jungle and join me in a toast." His fingers skimmed hers, briefly, impersonally. It was ludicrous for her to imagine otherwise and sheer madness to wonder how those same fingers might impart a caress. "Toast to what?" she inquired, schooling herself to ignore the sunburst of heat shimmering through her at the thoughts she'd entertained.

He knit his elegant black brows in thought. "How about to dogs in distress and damsels who come to their rescue?" She tilted her head consideringly. "I can drink to that with a clear conscience." He smiled at her, an engaging, intimate smile that somehow wasn't quite as threatening as she might have found it half an hour before. "Then here's to you, Isobel. May Basil enjoy many more happy years because of you. Now tell me about these plants. What's this one that smells so heavenly?" "A gardenia, and this one here is a tuberose " She didn't notice when dusk slipped into night or when the moon rose to the east or stardust speckled the sky. She didn't notice that the distance she'd so carefully put between her and Mike Callahan on the couch gradually lessened until they were sitting far too close to each other. She didn't even notice when the conversation veered away from plants and strayed into more personal zones. Not until it was too late did it occur to her that one didn't normally entertain a near-stranger by candlelight. It took the smell of lobster sauce and noodles singeing on the stove to bring her back to her senses, and by then all sorts of damage had been done.

CHAPTER THREE BOBBIE Griffiths wilted in the chair across from Isobel's and sniffed mournfully. "I don't understand any of this, Miss Whitelaw. How come Andy Bishop isn't behind bars where he belongs? He stole my baby, after all." Isobel rotated her pen between the forefinger and thumb of each hand and tried very hard to forget Mike Callahan's description of her client as a sleazy little number. "Why do you suppose he did that, Bobbie?" "He's obsessed with me." The plump, pretty shoulders shrugged disparagingly. "Thinks, because we had a couple of dates, that he's got a right to interfere in my life." "But doesn't it strike you as odd that he'd claim to be the baby's father if he's not? Usually, it's the other way around, with the man trying to evade his responsibilities and the mother calling for court action to prove paternity." She wouldn't know the truth if it jumped up and bit her in the face. The unwelcome characterization flashed through Isobel's mind again. Was it just her imagination, fueled by Mike Callahan's off-the-record comments, or did Bobbie's wide, innocent eyes turn suddenly shifty, their green depths sharpened by a cunning that left them disturbingly unattractive? Fixing her client in an unblinking stare, Isobel repeated the question she'd asked at the first interview. "Who is your daughter's father, Bobbie?" "I told you already—my boyfriend is, but he had to leave town before I knew I was in the family way, and didn't leave no forwarding address."

"But there are ways of tracing people. He shouldn't be allowed to walk away from his parental responsibilities. If I had a name to go on, I could instigate—" "No! It wouldn't do no good!" "That's where you're wrong. The law has ways of dealing with fathers in default of child support." Bobbie's bright coral lips thinned. "I don't want nothin' like that," she asserted sullenly. "I just want to be left alone with my baby. And I want Andy Bishop put away where he can't bother me no more." The intercom buzzed, temporarily sparing Isobel having to explain that it took more than one party's say- so to put another party behind bars. The intricacies of the legal system were not easily defined to a woman of Bobbie's unquestionably limited intellect. "Joseph Raines from Hardy, Raines and Best on line three, boss," Myrtle announced, when Isobel answered. "I tried telling the old goat that you don't like being interrupted when you're with a client, but he says it's to do with the Bobbie Griffiths case so I thought I'd better check to see if you'd prefer to speak to him right away." "Yes," Isobel said, well aware that, over the last two days, the seeds of doubt Mike Callahan had planted in her mind regarding Bobbie's credibility had done more than take root; they'd begun to sprout. Damn the man, anyway! "Good morning, Joe," she said, when Myrtle switched the call through. "Morning, Isobel. My, but your secretary's a dragon." "I pay her to be," she replied. "What can I do for you?" "I hear we're on opposite sides in a case of alleged baby snatching."

"Not alleged, Joe," she countered, thoroughly certain of her ground in this instance, at least, since Bobbie's story had been corroborated by police evidence. "Your client admits to having stolen the child. Seems quite proud of himself, in fact." "Heh, heh," the revered old lawyer chortled. "Well, I didn't interrupt your morning to argue that particular point. Right now I'm more interested in establishing my client's motives and clearing his good name as speedily as possible so that he can go forward with his career. What I want to know from you is, how soon do you expect to get on the court calendar?" "Not before the end of October—possibly later. You know as well as I do what a backlog of cases there is waiting for trial dates." "Can't wait that long, m'dear," Joseph informed her genially. "Leaves too much time for mischief making, which could lead to very lengthy proceedings, and I'd like to retire while I'm still young enough to cast a line. There's a wily old trout with my name on his gills waiting for me in a lake up north. Heh, heh!" The phone clicked in her ear with telling finality, leaving Isobel in no doubt that, all pleasantries aside, she'd just been dealt a warning. Joseph Raines prided himself on seldom losing a case, and he wasn't about to spoil his record at this late date in his career. "I'm afraid you're not going to get your wish, Bobbie," she said, dropping the receiver in its cradle. "Far from leaving you alone, Mr. Bishop has hired one of the most respected lawyers in town to make sure he doesn't go to prison. I'm afraid he's all set to fight us every step of the way." "That means he can keep coming around and poking his nose into my business," Bobbie yelped. "Well, I won't stand for it! You got to get one of them restraining orders brought against him, Miss Whitelaw."

Isobel regarded her client silently for a moment, more than ever beset by doubts of the woman's integrity. "It's your job," Bobbie insisted, sensing her hesitation. "You're supposed to protect me. That's what they told me when I got your name from Legal Aid." "Very well." Isobel pressed the intercom. "Myrtle, will you come in for a minute, please? I'd like you to take some notes." She waited until Myrtle sat with pencil poised, then brought to bear on Bobbie her most severe glare—the one she liked to think brought hostile witnesses to their knees. "I want you to tell me again how Mr. Bishop managed to steal your baby, and please make sure you don't leave out anything. All the facts must be presented before a judge will grant a restraining order." "He walked in and took her, that's how," Bobbie said. "Bold as brass, he was." He found the baby alone and crying, in a playpen in the garden… She needed changing and was covered in a heat rash… Mike Callahan's voice, rolling into her memory with the ease of molasses over a hot spoon, taunted Isobel unmercifully. "And exactly where were you when the baby disappeared, Bobbie?" she inquired. "At home, just like I said." "Are you telling me that Mr. Bishop actually broke into your house and stole the child from under your nose?" "Well, no, not exactly. I forgot to tell you the kid was outside, sleeping in the playpen, when he got her."

Isobel compressed her lips. "What else might you have forgotten to tell me, Bobbie?" "Nothin'. And I'd've told you that part, too, if I hadn't been too scared to remember.""Scared? Of what?" "That something worse might happen next time. His uncle don't like me, Miss Whitelaw. I knew, as soon as the baby went missing, that he was behind it somehow. He don't think I'm good enough to bring up a kid, any more than he thought I was good enough to be seen with his nephew. You got to protect me from that man, as well." "The uncle has no legal right to interfere in this matter. Andrew Bishop is not a minor, and even if he was, if he is not your daughter's father, her well-being is none of his or his family's concern." "Does that mean you'll still help me, even though I didn't exactly tell the truth?" What she'd done, exactly, was tell an outright lie, but Isobel didn't have the heart to make an issue of it. Poor, simple Bobbie, with her cheap clothing and narrow ambitions, was no match for the determined Mr. Callahan. Someone had to act on the poor girl's behalf or he would indeed chew her up into small pieces and spit her out, legal right to interfere or not. "I'll help you," she said, "on one condition—that there'll be no more 'forgetting' or covering up the truth." Bobbie's smile burst through, stopping the tears that threatened to smear her thickly applied mascara. "Cross my heart, Miss Whitelaw! I'll do anything you say, as long as I get to keep my little girl. She means the whole world to me."

"All right." Isobel nodded. "I'll take care of the restraining order and you can rest easy. Andrew Bishop will not be bothering you again before we go to court. Mr. Raines will see to that. He doesn't stand for any nonsense from his clients." The question was, why, if she believed all that, did Isobel feel as though, in following her advice and hiring a lawyer to speak on his nephew's behalf, Mike Callahan had severed an important personal connection? It wasn't as though she liked the man, after all. On the contrary, if he wasn't annoying her beyond measure, he was terrifying her. Witness two nights ago when, for one appalled moment, she'd thought he was going to kiss her. She'd leaped up from the couch and practically sprinted into the kitchen. When he'd followed and asked what he could do to help, she had not immediately realized he was referring to their dinner, charred beyond recognition, and not the utter disarray of her emotions. "You can't help," she'd said. "It's a lot more complicated than it seems." "Nonsense!" he'd scoffed, and carrying the pot to the sink, had scraped the burned noodles down the food disposal unit. "You keep bread and cheese in the house, don't you? We'll make do with that, instead." But not even solid food in her stomach had been enough to quell her turmoil. Nor, if she was honest, had the passing of time. Here she was, two days later, still thinking about him when she should have had her mind on other things. How had it happened that a perfect stranger had beguiled her like that, dusting the evening with magic and filling her with the unexpected, unacceptable longing to drown in his gaze? How had she come by the absurdly fanciful notion that he was about to kiss her? And

worse—oh, worse by far!—how could she have allowed herself to respond as she had, dissolving into a pool of warm, panic-stricken anticipation? "Okay," Myrtle said, reappearing in the doorway after showing Bobbie out, and bringing Isobel back to earth with a bang, "want to tell me what that was all about, Isobel? Since when have you needed me to sit in on an interview with a client?" A lot of people were fooled by Myrtle's rhinestone- rimmed glasses and bright red nail lacquer into believing she was a middle-aged air head with not too many brains, but not Isobel. In her opinion, Myrtle was the best legal secretary on the continent, and under the hennaed hair lurked a mind as shrewd as any lawyer's. Isobel had the utmost respect for her instincts where other people were concerned. "What's your impression of that young woman, Myrtle?" "I'd say her middle name ought to be Pinocchio. If her nose gets much longer, she'll need a wheelbarrow to cart it around." Isobel's heart sank. "That's pretty much what the uncle said, too." "The uncle in question being the Mr. Mike Callahan who stopped by uninvited the other day while I was strapped in the dentist's chair?" "Yes. How'd you find out he was here?" "Julie told me." Myrtle sighed forlornly. "And from the way she described him, I'd say I missed a golden opportunity to snag a specimen par excellence." Isobel laughed. Fifty-five and never married, Myrtle regarded as gorgeous any man under seventy who had all his own teeth. That Mike Callahan rated so highly merely meant that he had a full head of

hair, too. "I wouldn't go that far," she said. "He struck me as pretty ordinary." Did he? a niggling little voice in her head snickered. In that case, why haven't you been able to get him off your mind ever since? It wasn't the man she couldn't forget, she reasoned, it was the dog. She was worried that Mike Callahan might not abide by his promise to keep Basil until a suitable home could be found for him. And it was that concern, plus the fact that he'd forgotten to take his sunglasses with him when he left her condominium, that prompted her now to ask, "By the way, Myrtle, do you know if he happened to leave a number where he could be reached?" "As it happens, he did." Myrtle disappeared into her cubbyhole of an office and reappeared almost at once with a business card between her fingertips. Isobel waited until her door was closed and she was alone again. Then, quickly, before she lost her nerve, she dialed the number engraved in black on the pale gray parchment. The phone was picked up after the third ring and a voice she immediately recognized answered. Beachcombing must be slow this morning if he had nothing better to do than hang around waiting for the phone to ring, she thought, and swallowed to relieve the dryness in her throat. "Mr. Callahan, it's Isobel Whitelaw." "Isobel!" he purred. He ought to be imprisoned for turning her name into a caress like that. And she ought to be committed for acting the way she did. Her only consolation was that he couldn't see the blush that swept up her throat

or the nervous tension betrayed by her white-knuckled fist clutching the receiver. "What can I do for you, Isobel?" His voice stroked across the distance, wound itself around her brain and tied it into knots. "I hope I'm not disturbing you—" "You're not," he said. "Oh, well...good. It's just that, with it being the middle of the morning and all, I thought perhaps—" "You're not disturbing me, Isobel. In fact, I'm glad you called—as long as you don't want to discuss Andy's case. If that's what this is all about, you'll have to speak to our lawyer." The amusement he couldn't hide restored a little starch to her moral fiber. "Mr. Raines has already contacted me, Mr. Callahan, and for me to try to circumvent him in dealing with your nephew would be most unethical." "A simple no would have sufficed, Isobel," he observed dryly. Already regretting the impulse that left her at the mercy of such a rude man, she plunged on, anxious to conclude a conversation that had been ill-advised to begin with. "I just wanted to make sure Basil is all right. He looked so pathetic and bedraggled the other night." "Basil is doing quite well—except for one thing." "There's something wrong with him?" Concern for the dog eclipsed her self-consciousness.

"I'm not sure that's exactly how I'd describe it, but we do have a problem. It's certainly something that makes finding him another home extremely difficult." "Mike," she said urgently, completely forgetting to retain the formal mode of address to which she'd so far tried to adhere, "promise me you won't send him to an animal shelter, no matter what!" "I hope it won't come to that," he said, "because I already checked with my nephew, and you were right. Basil will almost certainly be destroyed if he ends up there." For the first time in more than thirty-six hours, soulful brown eyes displaced moody blue in Isobel's memory. "Oh, please! I couldn't bear that." "I'm not exactly doing handsprings at the prospect myself, Isobel. Basil deserves a kinder fate." There followed a long moment of silence as though Mike Callahan was giving weighty consideration to other options, then he said, "Do you think you could come up here on the weekend—say, Saturday afternoon—and see for yourself the extent of the problem? We can discuss the situation and perhaps between us come up with a solution. You know what they say about two heads being better than one." "Oh, I couldn't! I mean, it's not a good— I planned to get my hair cut and I usually visit my..." At once appalled and tempted by the idea, she fumbled through a string of reasons for not doing as he suggested, but he cut them short. "I'm only asking for an hour or two of your time, Isobel," he pointed out reasonably, "and you are, after all, the one that decided the dog needed rescuing, and I did bail you out by agreeing to give him a temporary home. Don't you think you owe me the favor of acceding

to this one small request on my part, instead of forcing me to contemplate a solution that would distress us all?" She'd known from the first that he was a scoundrel, so she shouldn't have been so surprised he'd resort to blackmail to get his own way. Choosing to ignore the fact that it was her desire to see him again that had prompted her to phone him in the first place, she drummed up a token protest. "I don't like being manipulated, Mr. Callahan," she declared. "Your point, however, is well taken so, if you'll give me directions for finding your place, I'll be there around four on Saturday if that's convenient, at which time I hope we'll resolve this matter to our mutual satisfaction and Basil's lasting well-being." "My goodness, Isobel," came the laconic reply, "you certainly have perfected the art of using ten words where one will do. How's a simple guy like me supposed to understand what you're talking about?" Simple? In a pig's eye, Isobel thought, slamming down the phone.

He lived in West Vancouver, out beyond the lighthouse. There were no acres of flat golden sand there such as were found in White Rock, no milk-warm pools left behind by the tide. Instead, the mountains rose steeply from the shore, heavily forested except where suburbia had claimed a foothold. A long, twisting drive shaded by cedars and arbutus ended at a slab of rock large enough to accommodate a double garage and a parking pad. Isobel was glad to see his truck standing there. Expecting heavy tourist traffic in the city, she had miscalculated badly the time it would take her to cover the distance and had arrived almost three quarters of an hour early. It would have been annoying had he not

been home. That he was simply meant they could conclude their business that much sooner. A flight of granite steps led down to a sprawling house. Beyond, on the ocean side, a smaller building perched at the top of a gangway that sloped down to a dock. The bell didn't appear to be working, but the front door to the house stood wide open, affording her a clear view past a wide entrance hall to a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows in the room beyond. "Hello?" she called. "Anyone home?" The drowsing heat of midafternoon was all the response she received. Below, though, down by the water, a dog barked and voices rose and fell. She was debating following the sounds when a door slid open somewhere on the far side of the house and footsteps approached. Before she had time to call out again, a young man turned a corner into the hall and caught sight of her. "Oh, hi!" About nineteen or so, he was tall, rather thin, very tanned, and had the sort of open, friendly grin that made him instantly likable. "You must be Mike's date," he decided. "He's down at the boat house." Of course! He'd mentioned that was where the police had found the baby, and beachcombing would have to be very profitable indeed for him to be able to afford a house like this. "I should have realized," she said. "I'm sorry to have disturbed you." "That's okay. He'll be back in a couple of minutes. He sent me ahead to finish cleaning the place up a bit." The grin flashed again, this time stirring a sense of deja vu in Isobel. "He's a bit behind on the housekeeping and he wants to make a good impression." "You mean, he actually lives here?'

"Well, sure! Where'd you think?" He ushered her inside and down the hall to the long, wide room she'd seen from the front door. "The mess you see is all his. I keep mine in the boat house." As the pieces fell into place, Isobel experienced a pang of dismay. This personable young man scooping a pile of clean laundry from the breakfast bar that separated the kitchen from the rest of the room had to be the nephew accused of kidnapping, and anyone looking less like a baby snatcher was hard to envision. She was about to introduce herself when Mike Callahan appeared. A smear of black grease streaked his forehead, and judging by the prints on his T-shirt, he'd used it rather unsuccessfully as a towel to clean off his hands. But these were inconsequential details that intruded only peripherally on the impact of the man himself. It would take more than a bit of grime to detract from that muscular frame and startlingly handsome face. When he saw Isobel, he skidded to a halt and scowled. "You're early.""I'm afraid so," she said. "Sorry if I'm inconveniencing you." Brushing aside her apology, he said, "I see you two have met.""We haven't actually got around to introducing ourselves," she said, "but I gather this is—" "My nephew." His tone was brusque, to say the least. "Andy, this is Isobel. She's the woman who found Basil." "So you're the one!" Andy grinned again. "Did Mike tell you—" The look Mike sent him flashed all sorts of warnings. "Shouldn't you get going if you want to drop anchor before dark?" he cut in sharply.

"Oh...yeah, sure." Andy raised a hand in casual farewell. "Nice to meet you, Isobel. Maybe I'll see you again some time." Probably in court, Isobel thought regretfully, and waited until he was out of earshot before asking his uncle, "What was all that cloak-and-dagger mystery about?" "I didn't think you'd find it ethical to be socializing with the accused," he retorted. "And furthermore, he doesn't know who you are." "By that, I take it you mean he doesn't know I'm the lawyer representing Bobbie?" "Exactly. And I didn't want to spoil what's left of his weekend off by telling him." "Then why did you ask me over here in the first place?" "He was supposed to leave this morning for a couple of days' sailing, but we ran into a problem with the boat engine." He eyed his filthy hands and added wryly, "I don't normally roam around looking like a grease monkey, especially not when I'm expecting a guest." "I see. And where is Basil?" "Sleeping on the dock. Look, can we hold off the inquisition until I've had a chance to clean up? Why don't you grab something cold to drink and sit out on the terrace? There's beer in the refrigerator, and cider— oh, but I forgot. You don't drink stuff like that, do you?" That he was the one so clearly discombobulated for a change gave her confidence a great boost. "Cider would go down very nicely," she conceded graciously.

"Fine. It'll take me about fifteen minutes to shower and shave, then we'll get down to business." He waved a grimy hand in the direction of the kitchen. "Make yourself at home." She did, choosing not to go out to the terrace, as he'd suggested, but to take stock of the big, multipurpose main room instead. It was not the sort of setting she had imagined for him. The ceiling soared, supported by massive beams. The floors were oak, the walls whitewashed plaster. It was a place full of light and shade, of casual bachelor comfort and low-key luxury. Intrigued, she scrutinized the professionally framed photographs on the walls, exquisite shots of an underwater world beautiful beyond imagining. On the mantelpiece above the stone-fronted fireplace stood a row of conch shells and a graceful old porcelain water pitcher, obviously retrieved from the ocean floor, as evidenced by the remains of tiny barnacles clinging to its surface. Half-hidden under the curve of the stairwell was a baby grand piano, and next to it a library of CDs that betrayed an eclectic love of music, especially jazz. Oriental rugs sprawled across the expanse of floor between two huge leather sofas. A Tiffany lamp perched on a glass side table, complemented by a stained glass panel suspended by chains over one of the windows. Then, ludicrously, a stray sock draped over the toaster in the kitchen, dropped by accident, no doubt, when Andy had scooped up the laundry, and on top of the refrigerator a poinsettia that had died somewhere around the middle of February by the looks of it. And planted in a Chinese jardiniere, a set of golf clubs topped by a wide-brimmed straw hat. Between kitchen and living room was the dining area, dominated by an oak refectory table. Antique silver candlesticks flanked a bowl

containing two wrinkled apples and the skeleton stem of a bunch of grapes. If all that didn't provide fascination enough, there was the view. Sweeping and majestic, it flowed past the windows in an unbroken tide of brilliant blue ocean and purple horizon, except where the trunks of lofty cedars intervened. A person could wile away half a lifetime admiring the spectacle and not grow tired of it. "Find the view arresting, do you?" Laced with irony, the question floated down the spiral staircase. Blinded by the brilliance from outside, Isobel's eyes took a moment to adjust to the shadow of him coming toward her. What she saw as he swam into focus set a hundred alarm bells ringing inside her head. He sparkled with cleanliness, from the dampness clinging to his hair to the fresh soap smell of his skin. Narrow ecru Levi's encased his legs, and a short-sleeved white shirt hung unbuttoned over his chest. Barefoot, he ambled toward her, casually fastening the strap of his watch. "Ready for a refill on the cider?" "No." Chagrined, she heard her voice whimper the reply, but if her vocal cords seemed temporarily impaired, her vision more than made up for it, regaining its powers of observation with dismaying ease. Never mind that it was considered rude to stare; she could no more drag her gaze away from the sculpted planes of his chest than she could have stepped out blindly into busy traffic. Get away from me, she begged silently. And for pity's sake, finish dressing. I'm not used to all that bronzed masculine flesh staring me in the face.

He neither heard nor cared. He continued to advance, and she, like the ninny she undoubtedly was, continued to retreat until she was pressed against the window and left with no avenue of escape. "You look a bit pale, Isobel," he observed, coming to a halt far too close to her. Around him she felt pale—pale and every bit as uninteresting as her ex-husband had claimed she was. That Mike Callahan was laughing at her, again, did nothing to reaffirm her self-confidence. Would it have been different if she'd met him first, before Richard? Would she have let herself warm to him, respond openly instead of in secret, terrified that he might guess that she found him attractive? Or had Richard been right? Was she a freak of nature, all dressed up in a woman's body—and not a very good body at that? "And you're very tanned," she squeaked. "Don't you know the sun's bad for you?" "In my line of work, it's hard to stay in the shade all the time." One more step and he'd be touching her. She'd find herself sandwiched between that broad male chest and the panes of glass at her back. The only question was, which would prove the most unyielding? Extending one arm, he leaned his palm against the frame of the window beside her head. The movement sent his unbuttoned shirt skimming lightly against her breasts and teased her nostrils with a faint drift of freshly applied male cologne."Oh, my goodness, that reminds me…" Quickly, before panic immobilized her, she ducked beneath his arm and scurried to the other side of the dining table where she'd left her bag. "I brought back your sunglasses. You left

them at my place the other night, and I'm sure you're anxious to have them returned." "Why?" he asked, stalking her with unhurried grace. Too flustered to wonder at his question, she said the first thing that came into her mind. "Well, they are Serengetis." As usual when she felt inadequate to the situation, her tone betrayed a hauteur that was nothing more than a cover-up for insecurity, but it didn't surprise her that he interpreted it as condescension. "And more than a beach bum like me can afford to own, right?" he inquired sardonically. She might have thought so, until she'd seen where he lived. The pity of it was, she didn't keep the thought to herself. "You can obviously afford a great deal, if your home is any indication." He eyed her broodingly. "Do you run a mental check on the assets of every man you meet, Isobel, or is it something you reserve for types like me?" "And what type is that, Mr. Callahan?" "Rough, crude, socially inferior." He shrugged and stroked absently at his bare chest. "Am I right so far?" Mesmerized, her gaze followed the slow movement of his hand. "I don't recall ever having said anything like that." "But you've thought it," he declared positively. "You thought it before you so much as laid eyes on me and you're thinking it now. And what's really sending you off the deep end with a splash is that, even though I'm not the right type of man for a woman like you, you're attracted to me."

"And just how did you reach that farfetched conclusion?" she snapped, annoyed beyond measure that, on top of being endowed with more than his fair share of good looks, he was blessed with penetrating insight, too. He smiled, a slow, conspiratorial smile. "You're here, aren't you?" "Only because you coerced me into coming, and because I'm worried about Basil." "Oh," he said, tracking her remorselessly around the table. "Is that why you're hyperventilating like a terrified rabbit staring down the sights of a double-barreled shotgun?" "I am neither terrified nor hyperventilating," she panted. His fingers shot out and settled at the spot beneath her jaw where her pulse raced madly. "Yes, you are, Isobel,", he assured her, his thumb stroking softly up her throat. "Your poor little heart's running amok, and please don't expect me to believe it's been doing this since our phone call yesterday. You'd be in the coronary care unit of the nearest hospital if that was the case." She was going to faint and it couldn't happen soon enough! "Please take your hands off me," she begged. He paused then and examined her critically. "Good God, you really are terrified," he murmured, the blue of his eyes darkening with awareness and perhaps even a little kindness. "For crying out loud, Isobel, why?" "Because I was married to a man like you once," she said, too shell-shocked to prevaricate, "and I promised myself I'd never make the same mistake again. So please, stop this... this flirting game, or whatever you want to call it, and keep your distance."

CHAPTER FOUR WHATEVER Mike had expected to hear, it hadn't been that. "Let's get one thing straight right now," he snapped, angry that she'd make such an invidious comparison on the strength of so brief an acquaintance. She didn't quite flinch at his tone, but there was a strange dazed expression in her eyes that he recognized as poorly concealed fear. Somehow he had brought about the recurrence of an old and powerful nightmare. "Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to shout like that. It's just that... well, I wish I could say I'm flattered by your remark." "I'm sorry, too," she whispered, clutching her bag in trembling hands and sinking down on one of the chairs next to the table. The metamorphosis was astounding. If he hadn't witnessed it for himself, he wouldn't have believed it possible. That aloof, competent, slightly superior shell cracked open just enough to reveal a frighteningly defenceless creature inside. Backing toward the kitchen, he groped blindly for the breakfast bar, anxious to put it between her and him. Emotionally fragile women who gazed out at the world with-the eyes of an injured fawn made him nervous. "Look," he said, casting about for a miracle cure and coming up woefully short, "can I get you something? A glass of water, maybe?" She shook her head. "Well, how about coffee? I make good coffee. Would you like that?" "No, thank you." "What, then? There must be something. Please, I insist."

She offered him a smile as pale as winter sunshine. "All right, tea would be nice—if you'll have some, too." "Sure. Coming right up." He filled the kettle and groped in the cupboard, hoping there were tea bags somewhere inside so that he could deliver on his promise. All the time, she perched on the edge of her seat, those big, fathomless eyes of hers watching him with a wariness that condemned him for another man's guilt. Finally, he could stand it no longer. "Look," he said, "if being in the same room with me makes you this ill at ease, perhaps we should forget the tea and just get down to business, then you can leave and be on your way." In a flash she was her usual self again, her touch-me- not facade so firmly in place that he was left wondering if he hadn't been mistaken in thinking she'd looked so lost and vulnerable only moments before. "I think that's a very good idea," she said snottily. "I really do feel very uncomfortable around you." "How sad," he mocked, turning off the flame under the kettle. "And here I thought I was being so charming, not to mention accommodating." "Whether or not you are charming is very much a matter of opinion, Mr. Callahan," she replied, "particularly since you seem so often inclined to remind me that I'm in your debt. Not, I might add, that I'm in any danger of forgetting it. I'm well aware that you helped me out of a tight spot by agreeing to keep Basil for a few days." "You don't know the half of it," he said. "You did a lot more than land me with a dog I didn't want. And for a lot longer than a few days, too!""Really?" She tilted her aristocratic little nose a fraction higher, seemingly regaining her composure in direct proportion to the rate at which he was losing his. "And why is that?"

He was about to tell her, graphically, for the sheer satisfaction of making her blush, then decided to take a different tack. "Come and see for yourself, Isobel," he said, indicating the open glass door. Suspicion rife in her every movement, she followed him to the back garden and along the path to the top of the flight of rough-hewn stone steps that connected the boat house with the rest of the property. Halfway along the wharf, Basil dozed away the afternoon in a patch of sunlight. "Can you manage the steps in those things?" Mike inquired, eyeing her strappy little sandals with an affectation of grave concern. "I don't want to find myself at the end of a lawsuit because you slip and break an ankle." "I consider myself fully warned and will proceed with due caution, Mr. Callahan." That was what ticked him off, he suddenly realized. Not that she'd compared him unfavorably to her ex, nor that she'd manipulated him into helping her out of a tight spot, nor even that she called him 'mister.' It was the tone she employed, as though using his first name and suffering his company were infinitely beneath her dignity. Yet she was willing to defend that trashy Bobbie Griffiths. "If I could read, I'd ask for that in writing," he drawled sarcastically. She tossed him a lofty glance of disapproval and picked her way down the remaining steps with the precise grace of a forest creature, placing one dainty foot in front of the other. The onshore breeze took her full skirt and lifted it playfully around her knees, leaving a delicious length of slender calf exposed. He was so busy trying not to notice that he almost slipped himself.

Basil heard them coming and met them halfway along the wharf. With utter disdain for her fine linen skirt, she knelt on the weathered boards and wrapped her arms around the animal's neck. "He looks all right to me," she said, genuine warmth in her tone. "Better than all right, in fact. He looks absolutely wonderful. I barely recognize him as the same bedraggled darling we rescued." "Andy spent the better part of yesterday bathing him and combing the mats out of his coat, that's why." She buried her face in the silky fur. "He smells divine! And he's so handsome! Aren't you, precious?" "I don't know if 'handsome' quite fits the description," Mike said, put out beyond measure that she was so completely at ease with the animal, yet held him off as if she feared he might turn rabid at a moment's notice. "What do you mean?" She sat back on her heels and shot him a suspicious glare. "What's all this about, Mr. Callahan? Is there really something wrong with Basil or is this just another of your little tricks to coerce me into listening while you extol your nephew's virtues?" "I never said there was anything wrong with the dog," Mike corrected her. "I said we had a problem." "Problem. We don't have any problems, do we, darling?" she crooned, pressing a kiss on Basil's long, black nose and gazing adoringly into his sparkling brown eyes. Basil gazed back, tongue lolling, tail thumping. What the hell! Mike thought. She needed taking down a peg or two. "Look a little closer, Isobel. Basil is not what you think he.. .she... is. And if you're not sure exactly what I mean by that, then I suggest you take a refresher course in basic anatomy."

She grew very still at that, and even though her face remained half hidden in Basil's fur, there was no mistaking the delicate flush that stained her cheeks. "Basil is... female?" "Indeed. And is carrying the pups to prove it." That shot her composure into the stratosphere! She reared back so suddenly, she almost went sprawling. In her ensuing struggle to retain her balance, her skirt slid up to reveal a brief glimpse of delectable thigh. "Basil's pregnant?" ' Mike swallowed and fixed his mind firmly where it belonged—on Basil's predicament. "I'm afraid so." "Oh, dear!" "Precisely." "What are we going to do about it?" "Not we, Isobel. You. She's your dog, not mine." "But..." Once again the distressed, helpless woman at the mercy of a cruel world leaped to centre stage and turned liquid brown eyes his way. "I'm not allowed to keep one dog, let alone a whole—" "Litter of pups. Yes, well, I'm not running a kennel," he retorted, unmoved. "I have a job that frequently takes me away from home. In fact, I'm off first thing Tuesday morning and won't be back before Saturday at the earliest. Unless you're prepared to do your part in looking after Basil while I'm gone, all he—she—will have to look forward to is a quick end to her misery. No one in his right mind is going to adopt a pregnant dog. As for the animal shelter, Andy checked and there's no way they can house a nursing mother. Not only are their facilities already overcrowded, too many sick and

unhealthy animals are brought in for them to be able to offer the sort of environment for a newborn litter to thrive." "What are you saying?" He turned away from the reproach in Isobel's eyes, the quaver in her voice. Andy's future lay on the line; it was time to play hardball. "That unless we can come to some sort of arrangement, we might be left with no other choice but to have her put down." "No!" The quaver of distress was gone, replaced by the sort of steel he'd witnessed in her dealings with Basil's original owner. "I don't care what it takes, I absolutely will not allow that to happen." "All right, then." He feed her in a very direct stare. "Let's go back to the house and hammer out a deal."

He thought he was so smart, thought she didn't know he was manipulating her in the hope that he could soften her up as far as the case against his nephew was concerned. But she was smart, too, smart enough to let him think he was succeeding when, in fact, she was gathering ammunition for her own use in the case. Heaven knew, Isobel needed all the help she could find. And that, plus her very real concern for Basil, she decided, were the only reasons she'd entertain furthering her association with Mike Callahan. They were sitting outside on the flagstone terrace, tossing out possible solutions to the predicament. At least, she was sitting tossing out solutions; he was stretched out, hands behind his head, eyes squinting against the late afternoon glare of the sun, busily rejecting each suggestion practically before it had time to cool on her lips.

"Couldn't Andy look after Basil when you're away at work?" she asked, knowing ahead of time what the answer would be."No, he can't," Mike Callahan said, bestirring himself enough to take a draft of the beer at his side. "Why not?" His glance slid lazily sideways and flowed over her. "I'm surprised you'd even ask, all things considered. Aren't you the one who labeled him irresponsible and ill-advisedly impetuous?" "But you didn't agree." "No, I didn't—and don't—but that's beside the point. In addition to the work he does during the day at the animal shelter, he quite often pulls the night shift at the local veterinary clinic, too. Accumulating a certain number of hours of practical experience is a prerequisite before he starts veterinary college in September. For that reason, he sometimes doesn't make it home more than once or twice a week." "I see. Well, how about finding a house sitter?" "At this short notice? I think not. I don't want just anyone roaming around my house—or looking after Basil, come to that. In her condition, she requires special care." "Tell me, Mr. Callahan," Isobel cooed, certain now of exactly where all this shilly-shallying was leading, "since we appear to have run out of other options, and since I can't keep Basil at my place, would you consider allowing me to house-sit while you're away?" Trying very hard to look ingenuous, he inched into an upright position and turned toward her. "Now, why didn't I think of that?" he breathed, his awed performance somewhat spoiled by the gleam of triumph in his eyes. "It's the perfect solution."

"Then aren't we lucky that I hit on it?" 'I'll say! If you'd asked me this morning, I'd've bet a hundred dollars that I'd never have found someone I can trust to take over for me.'' And she was willing to bet a month's salary that Andy would find time to make it home for a few hours every evening during his uncle's absence and show himself to be the very model of upright circumspection and moral rectitude, bearing up cheerfully despite the unjust accusations leveled at him by his erstwhile lover. Did Mike Callahan really think Isobel was too dim-witted to see through his ploy? Apparently, he did. In fact, he was so pleased with himself that he couldn't hide it. He looked at her and grinned, revealing his perfect teeth in all their dazzling glory. "Amazing how things work out sometimes, isn't it, Isobel?" "Amazing," she echoed dryly. "I'll come here right after I'm finished work on Tuesday and stay until you get back from wherever you're going." "Saudi Arabia," he said. "Saud—" She bit off the question just in time, unwilling to let him know he'd truly surprised her for once. But that Bobbie had been wide of the mark when she'd dismissed him as nothing but a beachcomber was becoming more and more apparent. "Yes, and it's anyone's guess where I'll go after that." If the Mona Lisa had been a man, he'd have smirked with exactly the same degree of mystery Mike Callahan produced. "I never know until the phone rings." "Really," Isobel murmured. "How interesting."

"Andy reckons Basil isn't due for another three to four weeks, so it's possible I might have to call on your services more than once." He shrugged and stretched, treating her to a private viewing of his quite spectacular physique. "Some months, I seem to spend more time away than I do at home." "I understand perfectly," she said, not understanding at all. Exactly what kind of work did he do? Something physical, obviously; he hadn't acquired that well-honed muscle tone from sitting behind a desk. But she was coming to appreciate that he was no slouch when it came to brains, either. For a man she kept trying to dismiss as an intellectual lightweight like Richard, Mike Callahan was showing himself to be extraordinarily articulate. "Don't you agree, Isobel?" "Hmm?" Jolted into awareness by his question, Isobel realized she'd been so busy staring at him and trying to figure out what made him tick that she hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about. "I'm sorry, I missed that." He smiled knowingly, as though to say he understood that she could hardly take her eyes off such a magnificent specimen. She wanted to slap him! "I said that, once the pups are weaned, we'll be facing the much more difficult task of finding homes for them as well as Basil." "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," she replied, easing out of the chair and brushing down her skirt. "Now, perhaps, before I leave, you'd like to give me a quick tour of the house and show me how everything works?"

"Sure." He ambled ahead of her, the very picture of lean, masculine grace. "Unless—" Apparently struck by a brain wave, he stopped and turned so abruptly that she almost collided against him. Putting up a hand and bracing it against his chest to steady herself, she felt the warmth of his skin through the fabric of his shirt, the strong, unhurried thump of his heart. He glanced down and examined her fingers splayed across his skin, then very deliberately looked at her. The afternoon shrank until nothing was left of it but the intense color of sea and sky contained in his gaze. She wanted to tear herself free but found herself drowning in warmth, instead. He had beautiful eyes, she thought dreamily, blue as tropical lagoons, with lashes long and thick enough to serve as palm fronds around the edges. "Isobel?" His voice, so rich and dark, bathed her. It was a most disturbing experience, calling up tremors of the same familiar panic he'd aroused the other night. "What?" she said, shaking herself free. "Would you care to stay and have dinner with me? It's well after five and unless you have other plans, I could fire up the barbecue, thaw a couple of steaks, and we could—" "I have other plans, Mr. Callahan," she said firmly, stepping around him and tossing her next words over her shoulder. "Speaking of which, I also have plans for the weekend after next, a charity gala that I can't possibly miss. So if you expect to be away then, too, I'm afraid we'll have to find someone else to look after things, at least for the Saturday night."

Clearly, he was unaccustomed to rejection. A certain chill glimmered in his eyes and was reflected in his voice when he answered, "I'll work around your social calendar, never fear. And now, since you're in a hurry to get away, let's take that tour." Her first impression of his house, that of simple comfort underscored by discreet luxury, had been accurate. The upper floor consisted of three bedrooms, each with its own bathroom and balcony overlooking the water. "The big one at the end of the hall's mine," Mike Callahan said. "I'm sure you won't want to sleep in there."The mere thought set off the most alarming reaction in her. "No," she assured him, beating a hasty retreat toward the stairs. "That would be a gross invasion of your privacy, and one of the smaller rooms will be fine. In fact, I've seen enough up here. It's the kitchen I'm more interested in, and things like where to find the main fuse box." Easy words at the time but, once she'd taken up temporary residence, the curiosity that had plagued her from the moment Mike Callahan had marched into her life steadily increased, fed by the glimpses of the private man that she encountered at every turn in his house. Had some professional decorator advised him, or was it his inspired choice to furnish the guest rooms in shades of restful, pearlescent celadon? The assortment of magazines and recent best-sellers that she found beside the bed, the jar of bath beads on the deck of the tub, were they his idea—or that of the woman in his life? Because there was a woman, perhaps more than one. Isobel found half a bottle of perfume and a lipstick in the cabinet above the sink in her bathroom and, in the saucer of a china candlestick on a nightstand, a thin, gold ring set with amethysts, its size and design unmistakably feminine. Not that it mattered, she told herself. He could keep a harem for all she cared.

But if that was true, why did she find it increasingly difficult to pass by the closed door of his bedroom door each night? How could she explain the shameful temptation to snoop? Resisting wasn't all that difficult for the first two days - because, just as she'd expected, Andy showed up. "Hi!" he said the first time, all clean-cut, boyish charm. "I had to stop by the boat house to pick up a couple of things and just thought I'd check to see how you're doing. You and Basil okay?" "Fine," she assured him. "Don't worry about us." "I'm not," he said, crouching down to pat Basil. "Just don't want you to feel lonely here, all by yourself." The next time, he brought half a chocolate cake. "My boss's wife baked it," he said, plunking it down on the kitchen counter. "I'll be happy to share it with you, if you'll supply the coffee." She couldn't stand the deception a minute longer. "Would you still be happy if I told you that I know what's going on here, Andy?" "Going on?" he repeated, all wide-eyed innocence. "I know that you know that I'm Bobbie Griffiths's lawyer, and that your uncle put you up to the idea of dancing attendance on me so that I couldn't fail to see firsthand what a thoroughly decent guy you are." He blushed disarmingly. "He didn't have to twist my arm too hard, Isobel. I really like you, even if I do wish you weren't representing Bobbie, and I am concerned that you're okay here on your own."

She shook her head and smiled. "Thank you. For what it's worth, I like you, too, and you didn't have to bribe me with chocolate cake to get me to admit it." "In other words, stop bugging you, right?" She shrugged and wished she didn't feel so torn. "It doesn't help to be put in the middle like this. I've got a job to do, and it complicates things if I become too involved on a personal level." "Okay. I'll get out of your hair." He grinned. "Mind if I take some of that cake with me? I didn't have much time for dinner.'' On Friday night, he stayed away. About seven-thirty, the phone rang and a woman's throaty contralto asked for Mike. "Well, who are you?" the caller wanted to know when Isobel replied that he was out of town and not expected home before the weekend. "The house sitter taking care of the dog," Isobel replied. "Oh, really?" The voice at the other end shimmered with amusement. "His ingenuity never ceases to amaze me. Well, when he gets back, tell him Lydia called, will you? He's got my number." Yours and who else's? Isobel thought sourly, hanging up, and to her shame found herself thumbing through the black leather book she found next to the phone. They were there just as she'd expected, names like Amanda and Chloe and Bettina. Circumstantial evidence, perhaps, but it confirmed her worst fears. Mike Callahan was a womanizer—and she cared that he was far more than she wanted to admit. "You're a real pip, Isobel," she chastised herself. "Didn't three years of marriage to Richard teach you anything?"

Hoping the fresh sea air would clear her mind, she took Basil for a leisurely stroll along the beach. When she got back to the house she poured herself a glass of wine, selected a CD of a Rachmaninoff concerto for piano and orchestra, then climbed the stairs to get the mystery novel she'd started reading in bed the night before. As it had every time she'd passed it in the past three days, the door to Mike's room beckoned. What made her weaken this time? The passionate, stirring music swelling through the house? Her curiosity to learn more about the man, fueled by her having snooped through his private phone book? Or sheer, unadulterated insanity? Whatever the reason, she stopped and put her hand on the knob. After that, there was no turning back. Almost of its own volition, the door swung wide. The summer night swathed the room in shades of gray and taupe, touching objects with an almost ghostly light. It was, as he'd mentioned, a very large room, occupied by a very large bed—no doubt so that he could conduct his amorous pursuits in comfort. Heaven knew, there were enough pillows heaped on it to equip a hospital. As for the bedspread... "Good grief!" she muttered, sinking down and weighing the thick silken fringe that bordered it in the palm of her hand. "Is this why he goes to Saudi Arabia— so that he can scavenge the treasures of Scheherazade?" She had no idea she was no longer alone in the house until a shadow fell across the doorway and a familiar voice purred lazily, "Talking to yourself, Isobel? Or is there someone else in my bed with you?"

CHAPTER FIVE GUILT, shock, fright, all took their toll, robbing Isobel of rational thought or action. "My God, don't you ever knock?" she yelped, springing up as if she'd uncovered a poisonous snake. "At my own bedroom door?" Mike reached out and turned on the light. "Not as a rule, no. Are you alone?" "Of course I am! What are you doing here?" "The last I heard, this is where I live." "I don't mean that," she said, aware that her cheeks were scarlet and wishing he'd left her to suffer her embarrassment in the dark. "I mean, what are you doing here so soon? You aren't supposed to get back until tomorrow." He slung a well-traveled suitcase on the foot of the bed and rubbed a weary hand across his eyes. "I got the job done sooner than I expected. Sorry if that inconveniences you." "It doesn't." She tugged at the belt holding her kimono closed and tried her best to look unperturbed. A hopeless task, really, considering her face continued to blaze like a beacon. "Good," he said. "Now it's your turn to answer some questions. For a start, how's Basil been?" "Fine," Isobel replied, not liking at all the sound of that ominous For a start. "Didn't you see her when you came in? She's downstairs." "Asleep on the couch." He nodded. "Yeah, I saw. Makes herself at home, I must say, but she's not much of a guard dog. I could have

been an ax murderer breaking in for all she cared. Next question. What were you doing in here, bouncing up and down on my bed?" If she hadn't felt the effects for herself, Isobel wouldn't have thought it possible for her blush to deepen. "I was not bouncing!" "Jiggling up and down, then?" "Certainly not!" He strolled toward her, a sneaky, unprincipled smile curling the corners of his beautiful mouth. "Then what, Isobel?" he inquired gently. "I thought I... heard a noise... in here, and I came to investigate." "It would have had to be elephants dancing to have made themselves heard over the din of the music. You were playing the stereo so loud downstairs, you hadn't the faintest idea I'd even come into the house." "That's because you crept in." "No; no." He shook his head, his smile growing. "I called out the minute I opened the front door, and kicked it closed behind me." For a woman trying to worm her way out of a tight spot, Isobel's performance was pathetic; for a lawyer, it verged on abysmal. She was used to thinking on her feet, for pity's sake! What was wrong with her now? "You seem to have all the answers, you tell me," she said, reassembling what was left of her composure. "Hell, I don't really give a damn. I just enjoy watching you squirm, you do it so beautifully." He stifled a yawn. "But I admit I'm pleased you weren't planning a romp between the sheets—"

"What!" "Because I've been traveling for the last eighteen hours and I'm beat." She ought to have seized the chance to escape. If her brain had been working at a fraction of its normal speed,she'd have had her bags packed and been on the road to White Rock before his words had time to cool on the air. But mental agility hadn't been her forte from the beginning where he was concerned, so it didn't come as much of a surprise to hear herself say, with far more sympathy than he deserved, "You do look rather tired." "Rather tired?" He grimaced and flexed the muscles in his shoulders. "More like dead on my feet!" "Is there anything I can do? Fix you a sandwich or something? Or would you rather just roll into bed?" He wasn't so tired he couldn't drum up another dissolute smile. "Exactly what are you suggesting, Isobel?" "Hot milk," she shot back. "You're worn out, remember?" "Hot milk?" He made a face. "Thanks, but that's not my speed. If you're determined to cater to me, though, a beer would go down rather well, and I wouldn't say no to a sandwich. Airline food isn't fit for camels." He wasn't in the bedroom when she came back twenty minutes later, but the door to his bathroom stood open and she could hear the sound of water gurgling down the drain. "Here's your sandwich and beer," she called out. "Enjoy, and sleep well." She'd placed the tray on the nightstand next to the bed and was turning to leave when she heard him say, in a voice that would have

cajoled the Sphinx into revealing..her secrets, "Don't go just yet, Isobel." Spinning around, she found him framed in the bathroom doorway, a terry-cloth robe belted loosely at his waist. His hair clung to his head in tight, wet curls, and he smelled of soap and fresh, clean man. But if the grime of travel had been washed away, the gray of exhaustion had not. He looked... Discouraged. Defenceless. As if he needed someone. As if he needed her. "I thought you were tired," she said, forcing the words past the tightening in her throat. "I thought-" "I just got my second wind. Stay and talk to me." Moving to the bed, he hefted his suitcase to the floor, slumped on the edge of the mattress and patted the space beside him. "Keep me company while I eat my sandwich. Tell me what you've been up to while I was gone. Remind me that there are still nice places in the world with wide, clean beaches and seas unpolluted by greed." If she'd been asked to stick her head inside a hungry tiger's mouth, she'd have refused. But when it came to Mike Callahan, her survival instincts were sadly lacking. How else could she account for her next move? "All right. Just for a minute or two," she demurred, her misgivings swept aside by an unholy urge to smooth away the lines of fatigue bracketing his mouth. To forestall any such foolishness, she sat on her hands. "Let's see, apart from work, I've had a nice relaxing few days getting to know Basil. And Andy." Mike did a laudable job of looking surprised—in between ravenous bites of the roast beef sandwich she'd prepared for him. "You've spent time with Andy? How come?"

"He somehow found time to stop by almost every day, just to check up on me." "What can I say?" Mike lifted his shoulders in an eloquent shrug. "That's the kind of guy Andy is. Decent and concerned." "Everyone has some good qualities, Mike," she remarked, pointedly damning with faint praise in the hope of achieving at least one small victory. He stopped with the remains of his sandwich midway to his mouth. The look he turned on her—an April-sky- after-the-showers sort of look, full of wonder and innocence—gave rise to an eddy of warmth in the pit of her stomach that owed nothing to triumph and a very great deal to confusion. "Do you realize what you just did?" he asked softly. "What?" "You called me Mike." She swallowed and croaked, "Well, that's your name, isn't it?" He nodded and held the glass of beer to her lips. "Take a sip," he invited, his voice sounding almost as cracked as hers. "It'll relieve the dryness." Normally, she'd have declined but, normally, she didn't feel as if she was being consumed by fire. Obediently, she parted her lips and let him tilt a little of the liquid into her mouth. It trickled down her throat, cool and slightly bitter. "Again," he said, and she, mesmerized by his voice, his eyes, his proximity, complied.

This time, though, a few drops missed the mark and dribbled down her chin. She fumbled to free a hand in order to wipe them away but he was ahead of her, his fingers at her face doing all those things she'd wanted to do to his. Sliding up to her mouth in slow motion, tracing the outer curve of her lower lip, and then, without warning, its silken inner smoothness. Surprise brought her teeth down on his fingertip, imprisoning it. He didn't try to pull it free. Instead, he flexed j.t suggestively, touched it to the tip of her tongue. And all the time, his gaze held hers, the clear guileless blue of April suddenly shot through with smoky purple intent. He tasted.. .erotic. How, she didn't know, since she was, in Richard's own inimitably cruel words, "a semi- virgin, too frozen and incompetent even after three years of marriage to know how to please herself, let alone a man." But the texture of Mike's fingertip, its scent, its shape, were an aphrodisiac on her tongue. The results were devastating and so far out of her realm of knowledge that she hadn't the faintest idea how to cope with what happened next. A bolt of sensation surged the length of her, reminding her of the time she'd taken a hot air balloon ride. That same muted roar of heat as the flame shot upward, propelling the craft away from solid ground, devoured her. "Oh..." She sighed, and wondered why her eyelids persisted in closing; why, when her spirit was soaring, her limbs were filled with delicious lethargy; and most disturbing of all, why a faraway beat throbbed relentlessly, low in her womb. His other hand came to cup her head and without her realizing quite when or how, her hands escaped their confinement and pressed against him, slipping inside the terry-cloth robe and discovering the fine shadow of hair covering his chest. His heart, she realized

distantly, was pummeling his ribs, its rhythm wild and erratic. Or was it his breath, laboring to flow without impairment? And God help her, was that really her tongue caressing his finger, swirling hot and slick around its tip? "Oh...oh..." she moaned again, caught between humiliation and ecstasy. But she must have made some fatal error, because slowly, inexorably, he was withdrawing his finger, leaving her openmouthed and strangely, unaccountably, hollow inside. "What did I..." she began, forming the words with difficulty around her distress. And then any thought of asking him what she'd done wrong fled her mind altogether because he was kissing her, his lips covering hers, possessing them, seducing them, and nothing, „ nothing had ever before felt so right. Nothing? How much she had to learn! And he, a combination of devil and angel, was bent on teaching her. His hand threaded through her hair, slid to her nape, her throat, and then, uninvited, traversed her cleavage to lay claim to her breasts. Those impassive symbols of femininity that all her life she had regarded as mere accessories to motherhood suddenly came into their own. Wanton, delirious, they bloomed beneath his touch, arched shamelessly for his homage. And rewarded her with damp betrayal between her thighs. Somewhere at the back of her mind a tiny voice rose in panic. What if he finds out? it whimpered. What will he think? Hold your knees together, for God's sake, and stop being so spineless! She tried, but the lines of communication between brain and body were hopelessly muddled. Spineless translated itself woefully out of

context, literally robbing her of the stamina to resist when he leaned into her. Supple as a willow branch, her back swayed down to meet the mattress. He followed, leaning over her, his mouth urgent at her throat. He was not going to stop there, she knew that. He was going to go on for as long as she allowed him to. He would learn all her secrets—all. And the most damning would be her pitiful inability to please or be pleased. "Mike!" she began, her hands fluttering around his shoulders, indecisive as butterflies. He reached up and laced his fingers with hers, drew her arms outward in a graceful arc until she lay spread- eagled beneath him. Closed his lips over the fabric covering her breast and took the silk-sheathed nipple into his mouth. She thought she would die; wished it and feared it because, at some atavistic level, she recognized the tension creeping over her, laying slow claim to every inch of her body. Understood its throbbing, relentless message even though she'd never consciously heard it before. Completing the circle, he brought her hands down to her sides. Persuaded them past his taut waist to his hips. "Hold me," he begged against her heart. "Please, Isobel." As if he had to beg! As if she wasn't starving to close her arms around him, to feel his weight crushing her, to seal off every tiny crack of air or light that dared try to keep them apart! Except, shockingly, that wasn't quite what he meant. He wanted more—an intimacy she dared not give. Because he thought that, in bestowing that most erotic touch, she would intensify his pleasure.

And she knew he was wrong. She knew, too, that while she could pretend satisfaction, he couldn't. Nature just hadn't made a man that way and would callously expose both his disappointment and her ineptitude. A different heat invaded her then, one born of regret. She turned her head into the bedspread, painfully aware of the light shining on her face and revealing its blushes. "I can't...don't know...how..." He raised his head just long enough to look at her. No one had ever regarded her with quite such searching honesty. It allowed for nothing less in return. Not that she could have dissimulated; her emotions—disarray, embarrassment, desire—created conflict enough without adding lies to the list. He took her hand, brought it to his mouth so that he could kiss its palm, then placed it against himself, there where he needed her touch the most. "You can, and do, darling," he said. Finding herself in possession of a ticking time bomb could not have paralyzed Isobel more. She stared at him in frozen, wide-eyed horror and braced herself for the inevitable, for the lip-curling male sneer—Nor like that, idiot! He closed his eyes and sank his forehead to hers. "Ah..." he breathed. As if, tutored or not, she'd somehow found a way to ease his aching. And then he was kissing her again, deeply, ravenously, and it ceased to matter what her hands were doing to him because his were everywhere on her, stoking those damnable fires to roaring heights. She felt the silk of her kimono slip away, felt the mild abrasion of his palms against the bare skin of her ribs, her stomach, her thighs. He was too close to learning all about her. Just as she'd unintentionally captured his finger in her mouth, so now she brought

her knees sharply together and trapped his hand in the very spot she had most wished to protect from invasion. She let out a stifled moan, which, without warning, suddenly escalated to a subdued cry as his finger trespassed inside the leg of her panties with awesome effect. She had known from his first touch that she could not trust her body to behave, but that her mind should forsake her, too, struck her as the ultimate betrayal. Coherent speech forsook her for other, alien sounds. But. they were not so foreign that he could not decipher their meaning. He heard the pleading she could not subdue, the sobbing anticipation she did not understand, and he responded with a kind of magic that held her in thrall to his slightest touch. Where moments before she had been a mass of jangled tension and fear, suddenly she was liquid acquiescence. At the outset he had initiated and she had followed; suddenly they were together, giving and receiving without let or hindrance. When he lifted her so that her head rested against the pillows, she tugged at his belt so that the bathrobe fell from his shoulders and revealed him in all his glorious naked masculinity.. She saw the dazed blue of his eyes as though the sky contained in their depths was blinded by too bright a sun. She heard the drumroll of his heart, the hissing constraint of his breathing. That annoying little voice that was her conscience tried to mutter that it was too soon, too rash and legally unwise to indulge in intimacy with the opposition, but the warnings fell on deaf ears. He was there, taking her, moving within her, and if the moon had toppled into the sea, she would not have cared. She heard heartbreak in her voice when she called his name, saw the sweat beading his forehead as he drove them both to delirium. The

tension grew, tightening within her, building to a finale more fearfully exquisite than anything she could have imagined. Where was she? Alone and about to die? Or was he there with her, prepared to leap rashly over the same killing precipice and consider the world well lost to this stolen moment of love? "Mike!" she wailed, a cry of delicious despair that tangled with his groan of exultation. And then she fell apart, splintering into a thousand brilliant fragments of pleasure. When at last the night stole back, Mike's body lay so heavily on hers that her first thought was that she had killed him. "Oh, dear heaven!" she whispered, stroking his hair. "Oh, Michael... my darling..." "Hm?" he purred at her ear, wrapping her in his arms and pulling her with him as he turned on his side so that she was sandwiched against him."You're alive," she said inanely. "Thank God!" She felt the laughter rumble sleepily through him. "No thanks to you, woman. You damn near killed me." They were not the words she wanted to hear. She was too sensible and mature to expect him to make avowals of undying love, but it would have been nice if he'd managed a tender word or two to commemorate the most electrifying moment in her life, a sign, however small, that what they'd shared was more than just another notch on his bedpost. "Are you sorry?" she asked him. Foolish, foolish woman! What did she expect him to reply? "Probably wasn't very smart," he murmured. "Probably..." She waited, breath suspended, for his final word, the verdict that would shoot her to heaven or consign her to hell. "What? Tell me."

"A damn-fool thing to have let happen, Isobel, but it's too late now…" How could she have known hell was such agony? How have prepared herself? "You're sorry you asked me to stay, aren't you?" she cried softly, hopelessly. The arm he'd flung across her hips grew slack, slithered over her upper thigh and fell away, more eloquent than any verbal rejection. Boredom incarnate in the shape of a soft snore escaped gently through his hps, as sleep claimed him. Mondays had never been Isobel's favorite day of the work week, but that Monday following Mike's return struck an all-time low. It seemed prophetic that, after weeks of sunshine, a Pacific disturbance swept across the southwest coast of British Columbia overnight on the Sunday, bringing gloomy skies and veils of rain with it. She was not in the most receptive mood when Myrtle bounced into her office with the vigor of a woman half her age, a smile on her face that more than made up for the gray outside, and whispered dramatically, "He's here in the flesh, I've laid eyes on him, and 'tall, dark and handsome' doesn't begin to do him justice!" Isobel couldn't contain the quickening in her heart, nor the image that blazed across her mind at the mention of the word flesh, but she'd damned well die before she'd let Myrtle or anyone else know it. "To whom are you referring, Myrtle?" "Mr. Michael Callahan, as if you don't know!" Myrtle giggled girlishly. "Sad that I'm not twenty years younger. Not that it would make any difference. It's you he wants to see, not me." "Really?" Isobel pulled her daily planner closer and pretended to examine it. "I don't see his name down here. Does he have an appointment?"

"He does now." "Yeah, and I don't like to be kept waiting." Overbearing as ever, he barged into the room, trailing drops of water behind him. "You and I need to talk, Isobel." "I'll bring coffee. You must feel ready for a cup in this weather," Myrtle said, as if he'd just endured the freezing cold of the Yukon instead of a mild Vancouver summer rain. "Cappuccino coming right up." "Pity I'm not the marrying kind. If I were, I'd look for a woman of your sterling qualities," Mike said, but although he smiled at Myrtle as he spoke, Isobel had no doubt that the words were aimed at her, and their message could not have been clearer: he was the perennial bachelor, proud of it, and she'd better not get any ideas to the contrary. "I didn't realize you were on such familiar terms with my secretary," she said coldly, once they were alone. "Clients usually call her Ms. Freeman." "Not everyone's hung up on formalities the way you are, Isobel," he replied, helping himself to one of the visitor's chairs without waiting to be invited. "Now, want to tell me why the hell you took off from my place at the crack of dawn on Saturday and haven't answered your phone since?" "I did not take off at the crack of dawn on Saturday. I left on Friday night. You were sound asleep at the time." Although she hadn't meant to, she sounded like a woman wronged, full of accusation and reproach, a fact he was quick to seize on.

"Ah, so that's why you pulled a disappearing act! I had the nerve to fall asleep instead of spending half the night telling you how fabulous you are in bed!" He sighed in mock despair and propped his feet on the edge of her desk, quite unfazed by her glare of disapproval. "Gad, where were my manners?" "You don't have any," Isobel informed him. "Take your feet off my desk." He did, so suddenly that he startled her. "What's really eating you, Isobel? What did I do or say that you felt you had to go running off in the middle of the night and remain hidden until now?" That annoying inability to think on her feet struck again, leaving her floundering for an answer. "The simple truth will do," he said quietly. She had learned years ago in her professional capacity that truth was seldom simple. Just how intricate it could be, however, had never struck her quite as forcefully as it did now, in this very personal context. Complete, unguarded honesty was out of the question. Not only would it land her in more trouble than she already found herself, it would also expose her for the unsophisticate she was. And while he might well find that amusing, she could not have endured it. So she settled for partial truth. "You made me break one of my iron-clad rules," she declared witheringly, as though he was responsible for her having committed an unpardonable social faux pas. "You made me forget that sex has nothing to do with love, respect or compatibility. I was handy and you were hungry—" She paused, forcefully restraining herself from adding, And now that you've tried out the merchandise, you grab the

first chance you get to trumpet abroad that you're not the marrying kind. "You're not the only one with an aversion for marriage," she said instead. "Having tried it, I can assure you it's definitely not something I'm in any hurry to experience again. But nor am I the one-night-stand type, either." "And I am?" "If your little black book is any indication, yes!" she shot back, her fine resolution to remain coolly controlled blown to smithereens by his air of injured innocence. "Frankly, Mr. Callahan, I don't know how you manage to keep all the names straight." "Oh, for Pete's sake, don't start in on the Mr. Callahan routine again! And how do you know whose names I keep in my little black book?" "Except for Lydia, I don't," she lied, poppies blooming in her cheeks. "She happened to call while you were away." "And if I'm romping around in bed with you, then it automatically follows that I'm doing the same withher?" His hoot of laughter scorched across the desk and seared her with blistering contempt. "That's the most classic case of faulty logic I've ever heard! And considering you're a lawyer, you make a pathetic liar." Don't do this, she wanted to cry. Don't strip me of my professional pride. It's all I've got left. But why should she care if he found her foolish, gullible, stupid? He was nothing, nobody. What he thought didn't matter. But he clearly thought it did. "The plain truth is, Isobel," he pronounced, "that you're jealous, though I'm damned if I know why. It's not as if you and I are-"

"You and I are nothing to each other and never could be," she snapped, saying it for him because she thought it would hurt less that way. "We come from entirely separate worlds and have absolutely nothing in common." He digested that for a moment, then said, "We have Basil. And an interest in getting to the bottom of the Bobbie Griffiths mystery." "Mystery?" She offered him her coolest smile, the one she produced when opposing counsel thought he'd confounded her with logic. "You watch too much television. There's no mystery surrounding Miss Griffiths. It's an open-and-shut case." "Is it?" Mike murmured cryptically. "We'll see." "Indeed we will. So if that's all you came to say..." "No, it's not all, nor even close." He leaned forward, his blue eyes suddenly reflecting shades of the skies outside. "Look, neither of us planned Friday night but the bottom line is that it happened. Perhaps it wasn't very wise—" "There's no perhaps about it," she said frigidly, because that was the only way she could hide her pain. "It was downright foolish." "Because of the risks? I know. And I want to reassure you that—" "I'm not likely to be pregnant, if that's what's worrying you, and even if I was, I certainly wouldn't look to you to do anything about it." "I wasn't talking about that sort of risk, Isobel," he said mildly. "Making love spontaneously, as we did, can incur much greater hazards than an unplanned pregnancy—though just for the record, I wouldn't walk away from my share of the responsibility if that was to happen. But I think we both know there's more involved these days,

and I just wanted you to know that I am.. .careful. As a rule. Friday night was an exception." "Yes, it was." She swallowed, hating that the validity of his concerns laid bare their lovemaking for what it had really been: foolhardy, self-indulgent and no more romantic in the cold light of day than a casual pickup in a bar. '-'You need have no fears about me, either." He fixed his gaze on her again, the expression in his eyes a daunting mix of kindness and regret. "Do you think I don't already know that?" he inquired softly. "You might want to sweep the whole night under the carpet and forget it ever happened, but I remember it very well. A man would have to be a complete fool to think for a moment that you're the promiscuous sort." In other words, inept! She couldn't bear it. Springing up from her chair, she crammed her hands full of legal binders and headed for the door, her only thought being to escape into the washroom down the hall before she burst into tears in front of him. "Pity you're not always this perceptive," she said. "You could have spared us both the embarrassment of this conversation. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have more pressing things to do than sit here rehashing the events of a night that we both bitterly regret." His voice floated after her, empty, indifferent. "Of course." The haze of tears threatened to become a flood. Blindly, she reached for the door. "By the way," she choked out, "I won't be able to house-sit for Basil again, but I'll find someone who will if you happen to be called out of town. Just leave a message with Myrtle."

"Did I hear my name?" Myrtle, cappuccino coffees in hand, filled the open doorway and eyed the binders Isobel carried. "Where are you going with those, Isobel?" "They're ready for f-filing." Oh, damn the senseless tears! "Then why didn't you buzz me so that I could take care of them the way I usually do? Here, I'll trade you coffee for them." "Can't, sorry." Little rivers rolled along her lower eyelids, threatening to flood at any moment. "Got to fly. Just remembered an important appointment. Show Mr. Callahan out, will you? We've finished everything we had to say."

And that, Mike decided, pretty well summed him up— something to be thrown out with the coffee grounds. "I don't think your boss likes me, Myrtle," he remarked. "Don't jump to unwarranted conclusions," the secretary said. "She's a complicated woman, and no wonder, considering all she's been through." It struck Mike that what he was doing was about as low as eavesdropping or intercepting someone's mail. "I know what you mean," he lied sympathetically. "That ex-husband of hers really did a number on her, didn't he?" "And how! Poor Isobel carries the scars to this day." Myrtle rolled her eyes behind their diamante frames and plunked his coffee on the desk in front of him. "You might as well stay long enough to enjoy this now that it's made."

"All right," he said, "but only if you'll join me. It didn't sound as though the boss will be back any time soon for hers, and it would be a shame to waste good coffee, don't you think?" Myrtle sized him up from behind her fancy glasses. "All right. What shall we talk about?" "Isobel?" He arched his brows inquiringly. She smirked and lowered herself into the other visitor's chair. "Isobel," she agreed. "What would you like to know?"

CHAPTER SIX THE gods were smiling on him, no doubt about it. If he'd happened upon Isobel's personal diary, he couldn't have learned more about her than he did in the next half hour. "Just one thing puzzles me, Myrtle," he said afterward, as the secretary walked him down the hall toward the elevator. "Why'd you tell me all this? We hardly know each other, after all." She grinned. "I know all I need to know. As for my reasons, let's just say it's past time someone gave Isobel's social life a jump start. She's twenty-eight, not seventy— and a sight too young to be happy staying home babysitting a stray mutt, no matter how lovably pregnant it might be. She should be out on the arm of a dashing man, and quite frankly the candidates her family tries to set her up with wouldn't set a pensioner's heart to pumping." "Too old?" he inquired, slowing his step while she made a sudden, brief foray into her office. "Too proper," she answered, reappearing at his side as quickly as she'd left. "Ivy League all the way and as starched as the shirts they wear. What are you doing Saturday night?" "Why?" he asked, taken aback at the sudden change of topic. "The Happy Kennels Adoption Society is holding a big fund-raiser at the Dogwood Golf Club and I happen to have a couple of unsold tickets going cheap." She dropped him a slow wink and tendered two small cards with all the flourish of a magician producing rabbits out of a hat. "I also happen to know that a certain junior partner in this firm, one who has a passion for dogs, will be attending."

He fingered the invitations dubiously, instinct telling him that if he accepted them, he'd be opening the door to a whole lot of complications he really didn't need. Already he was more intimately involved with Isobel than he'd ever planned to be. "What makes you think I care?" "Why else are you hanging around giving me the third degree about my boss and keeping me from my work?" "I like talking to you, Myrtle." "And I like the way you part your hair," she replied acidly. "Don't play games with me, Michael Callahan. The sparks between you and Isobel are enough to light up a city twice the size of Vancouver. The question is, are you man enough to do something about them?" He rocked back and forth on his heels and angled a sly smile her way. "If I go, will you be my date?" Her laugh ricocheted off the walls. "Not a chance, sonny! It could cost me my job. Find yourself another stool pigeon."

By the weekend, the weather had settled into high summer again. Planters of pink geraniums and sapphire lobelia hung from the railing of the covered veranda outside the banquet room of the Dogwood Golf Club, their colors refreshed and restored to full glory by the recent rains. Inside, small brass hurricane lamps cast soft light over arrangements of champagne tea roses and lilies adorning the linen-covered tables. Throughout the cocktail hour, a pair of strolling minstrels playing classical guitar entertained the guests with excerpts from Bach and Villa-Lobos.

Resolved not to let anything or anyone spoil the evening, Isobel turned her thoughts resolutely away from Mike Callahan, who'd made a complete nuisance of himself all week. Not because he'd pestered her with his presence; on the contrary, it was his silence that had perturbed her—that, and the fact that she couldn't stop wishing he'd call. But tonight was going to be different. She was surrounded by family and friends, in particular Basil Roper, who was the least threatening man in the world and about as different from Mike as a goldfish from a shark. Tonight, Mr. Callahan would not be allowed to intrude. "Isn't this pleasant, Brian?" Isobel's mother remarked to her father, smiling fondly at their four offspring and respective partners as they took their places at the table reserved in their name. "Pity Anthony and Denise couldn't be here, as well. We're so seldom all in the same room at the same time any more." "Or in the same country, come to that." Judith, the eldest who, in tandem with her husband, headed a respected team of archaeologists, leaned forward, gold hoop earrings swinging wildly. "Did Tim mention that we're off to Ecuador on Tuesday? A new site near the Colombian border and completely untouched. We're very excited." It began then, that well-bred, good-humored sibling rivalry that always surfaced when members of the clan gathered. It was inevitable, Isobel supposed, given that all five Whitelaws had followed their parents' example as successful professionals, with all but one adhering even more closely to family tradition by choosing like- minded mates. She sat back, an interested smile plastered on her face, and let the conversation float past unhindered, a habit she'd acquired and perfected during the debacle that had been her marriage to Richard.

No one would notice her silence; they were all too busy trying to upstage each other. "It's my night off," John Home, the anesthetist married to the second-eldest Whitelaw announced, "but Sara's on call. One of her patients is due to deliver any day now." Kathryn, former debutante and the latest in-law to be welcomed into the family, sighed. "I can't wait to have a baby! Will you be my doctor when the time comes, Sara?" "As long as it doesn't come too soon, I'm sure she will," Foster, her husband and the youngest of the brood, chipped in. "We've only been married five months, sweetheart, and I thought we'd agreed we should establish ourselves financially before taking on the added expense of children." Kathryn pouted prettily, just to let everyone know that she wasn't entirely serious. "But I want it all and I want it now! After all, sweetness, you were touted in the latest business quarterly as 'a financial wizard possessed of such extraordinary insight it amounts to genius.'" She beamed proudly and stroked a possessive hand down his cheek. "Foster will be president of his investment company and a millionaire before he's thirty, mark my words. Within two years, we'll be able to afford all the things we want, including three children and a nanny." And meanwhile, Isobel thought, there are the Bobbie Griffiths of this world, abandoned by the fathers of their children and struggling to provide a modest home for one child. Dinner was served, fat local prawns in Pernod, chilled watercress soup, salmon Wellington with asparagus spears, endive salad and raspberries freshly picked that afternoon. And accompanying each course, the specter of Bobbie at home in her too-small house, most

likely making do with cheap hamburger. It was enough to kill Isobel's appetite. "Not hungry?" Basil inquired kindly, watching her pick at her food. "How about a dance instead, then?" The floor was not crowded. Unlike Isobel, most of the guests were doing justice to their meal. Yet although no one paid particular attention to her, she felt conspicuous, exposed somehow, as if unseen eyes followed her every step. It was a most unsettling sensation. "I'm not sure this was such a good idea," she said, feeling uncommonly clumsy. "I feel as if everyone's watching me trip over my feet." "People are much too busy deciding how much they're prepared to bid when the auction starts," Basil said, keeping faultless time to the music. "Forget about them." But that was easier said than done. Although other couples gradually took to the floor in increasing numbers, Isobel's impression of being watched persisted. As though sensing her flagging interest in him, Basil pressed her closer. "You're looking very lovely tonight, Isobel. That color—turquoise, isn't it?—-suits you." With some distaste Isobel realized his hands were as soft as a woman's and that he was growing a bit of a paunch. Nothing like Mike with his chiseled, work-toughened body I her alter ego piped up. Irritated, she slapped the thought aside. She'd sacrificed brains for brawn once before, and look where it had landed her.

"You're rather pensive all of a sudden," Basil went on, his breath moist at her ear. It took all her effort not to cringe from him. "Do you ever get the urge to do something other than head a large corporation, Basil?" she asked, leaning back in his arms and trying very hard to project interest in his answer. "Ever think about making radical changes in your life?" As a diversionary tactic, it backfired badly. "Yes," he replied without hesitation. "I think about being forty- two and ready to exchange my swinging bachelor existence for marriage. To you." Right words, wrong man\ Stealthy as a thief lurking in the shadows, the idea blazed across Isobel's mind before she could extinguish it. Misinterpreting her start of dismay, Basil tightened his hold. "It can't come as that much of a surprise, surely? I've never tried to hide how I feel about you, Isobel. The only thing I'm not sure of is how you feel about me. She was spared having to answer by another couple barreling into them from the rear. "So sorry," a voice drawled, sounding anything but. No, not a voice, the voice. The one that had bedeviled her for the last week; the one that had purred in her ear so beguilingly that she'd neglected to pay heed to the larceny it suggested and had allowed it to seduce her into abandoning her common sense. Isobel turned her head sharply, recoiled from the impact as her gaze collided with Mike Callahan's, and knew at once why she'd felt so microscopically exposed the minute she'd set foot on the dance floor. He'd been watching her all along, tracking her progress, just as he'd engineered this little collision, and she ought to have been filled with

suspicion, resentment, apprehension—anything but the unholy joy that sped through her at the sight of him. "Well, for heaven's sake, Isobel!" he exclaimed with blatantly phony astonishment, looping a casual arm around his beautiful dance partner and hooking his other hand into the side pocket of his trousers. "Imagine seeing you here—though I suppose, all things considered, it shouldn't come as that much of a surprise. We do have a certain canine in common, after all." "Hello," she bleated, desperate to wrench her eyes from the sight of him and finding the task quite beyond her. It would have been absurd to say she wouldn't have recognized him—she'd have known him anywhere, any time—but that his image could alter so drastically by the simple expedient of changing his wardrobe left her stunned. The man was a clothes horse, superbly turned out from head to foot. His dinner jacket didn't so much cling to his shoulders as caress them. His trousers hugged his hips, drawing subtle attention to his flat stomach and long sweep of leg. His shirt kissed the contours of his chest with the same intimacy she had enjoyed, and she was shot through with insane jealousy at having been supplanted. "Oh, Lord!" she sighed on a tiny, appalled breath. She really must be losing her mind. He, on the other hand, was in full command of his. "I'm forgetting my manners," he declared, all imperturbable cosmopolitan charm. "Chloe, this is Isobel Whitelaw. Chloe," he continued, slightly sotto voce and with a demonic gleam in his eyes, "is a very old friend, Isobel. You might have noticed her name in my little black book." Some-friend! Isobel was tempted to snap back, seeing the look Chloe turned on him, the way she leaned into him as if they shared a very private, very funny joke.

When Chloe acknowledged Isobel, however, her voice, her smile, were warm and sympathetic. "Lovely to meet you, Isobel. I hope you take everything this man says and does with a grain of salt." "Not quite everything," Isobel managed, wishing she could wipe clean the slate of memory with one swift stroke. She didn't want to remember how it had been when she was with him—what she had done, what she had allowed him to do. It created too much agony, too much turmoil. But although her emotions sank into further disarray, his remained completely unruffled. "Aren't you going to introduce us to your escort, Isobel?" he chided, gesturing to Basil. "You're acting as if he's invisible." She'd been hoping he was! Hoping he'd somehow get tangled up with the other couples circling about them and swept to the edge of the dance floor, thereby sparing her what his continued presence rendered unavoidable. "Basil," she said, face flaming, "this is Mike Callahan." If nothing else, she had the satisfaction of knowing she'd put a minor dent in Mike's urbane facade. He extended his hand and uttered, "Basil?" in a choked sort of voice. "Are you a friend of Isobel's?" Basil, who hadn't a malicious bone in his body, shook hands with Mike and acknowledged Chloe with a gallant little bow. "A very good friend, and hoping for more," he said. "Why, you old dog!" Mike chortled, fully recovered, and received a jab in the ribs from Chloe for his sins. "Well, it's nice to know she's in such good hands. Maybe you'll save a dance for me later on, Isobel, for old times' sake?"

"Callahan... Callahan..." Basil gazed after Mike as he fox-trotted Chloe merrily away. "The name rings a bell. How did you come to meet him, Isobel?" "Through a case I'm handling. I hardly know him at all, really." Except for how his skin feels in the heat of passion, or the way his heart races and how his mouth tastes, and God knows how many other thoroughly intimate, unforgettable details! "It's odd that I feel as if I should know him, then. I have a good head for names and faces, as a rule. I'll have to check my files and see if we've ever done business with him." Basil shook off his preoccupation and took her in his arms once again. "Never mind, let's get back to what we were talking about before." "Please let's not," she begged, knowing that if there'd ever been the slightest chance of her and Basil finding happiness together—and in all truth, there probably hadn't been—Mike Callahan, by design or default, had blown it to smithereens days ago. "I'm sorry, Basil, I can't make—" "No, I'm the one who should apologize," he said. "My timing is terrible. It's obvious you've got things on your mind that you don't feel you can share with me, and I don't mean to add to the pressure. Let me say that the offer was not made lightly and will stand for as long as you wish." He was too kind, too decent, too civilized. A courtly man, not the kind to importune a woman. Fight for what you say you want, she felt like screaming at him. Make my heart believe what my head knows to be true—that I need a man like you, not someone who rides roughshod over my feelings. "The auction's about to start," he said. "How about a glass of champagne while we watch?"

Was-this how God intended things to be, she wondered sadly. With men hearing but never somehow listening, and women unable to express their deepest needs? It was a well-heeled crowd, and the bidding raced along fast and furious. A handmade patchwork quilt fetched seven hundred dollars, a bottle of vintage port a hundred and eighty. A year's supply of fresh flowers delivered to the winner's door every week went for fifteen hundred, and a porcelain doll from the Victorian era, fully outfitted from her laced-up stays to her leather boots, brought in another two thousand. But it was the deluxe weekend trip for two to San Francisco, all travel and accommodation included, that was the highlight of the evening. Isobel's father and Foster were among the many who vied for it but gave up when the price rose past the thirty-five-hundred mark. The final bid went to someone at the other end of the room. "Not that it matters, as long as the money rolls in for the society," Foster remarked sportingly. "Cheer up, Kathryn. I'll take you to San Francisco any time you want." "As I will take you, Marion, my love," Brian Whitelaw said, leaning over to kiss his wife's cheek. Watching her parents, still so much in love forty-one years and five children later, Isobel felt a tug at her heart. Would there ever be a man in her life who'd treat her with the tender passion her father showed her mother? Would she one day have children who'd grow up believing that "they all lived happily ever after" was the natural outcome of every marriage? And would they one day discover that that was the exception, not the rule; that, in fact, far too many marriages supposedly made in heaven ended up in hell?

"I don't need to bid at auction to take you to San Francisco, Isobel," Basil offered in a low voice. "If you decide to be my wife, we'll honeymoon there for a month if that's what you'd like." "Maybe some day, Basil." "What's wrong with right now?" It was as close as Basil could come to being pushy, and even though she'd thought that was what she wanted of him, now that she'd got it, it was so far removed from what she really craved that she felt an overwhelming urge to burst into tears, right there in front of everyone at the table. Swallowing past the lump in her throat, she attempted a smile. "Because right now," she said, gamely trying to lighten the mood, "I'm going to powder my nose." And quickly, before she made a spectacle of herself, she rose from her seat and wove a path through the tables to the ladies' room in the foyer. It was blessedly empty. Stumbling to one of the velvet stools in front of the long, mirrored dressing table, Isobel plucked a tissue from a box and blew her nose. "You are a fool," she informed her blotchy-eyed image. "Take a long, hard look at yourself, then try to pretend you're proud of what you see—a supposedly mature, intelligent woman acting like a teenager and believing herself in love with a stranger because she's been unwise enough to make love with him. An unsuitable stranger, moreover. Grow up, for God's sake, before you find yourself knee- deep in another disastrous entanglement." That's right, her alter ego jibed. Turn your back on romance and settle for marriage to Basil instead, then you can spend every night cuddled up against his nice spare tire and forget you ever knew what real muscle— or real passion—felt like.

Another woman came into the room. "Are you feeling all right dear?" she inquired kindly, taking in Isobel's hollows-eyed appearance. "You look rather peaked. Was it the prawns at dinner, do you think?" "No," Isobel murmured, attempting to repair her makeup. "Something else disagreed with me over a week ago, and I'm having a hard time shaking off the effects." The woman drew a commiserating breath. "Dear me, I do hope you feel better soon." You and me both, Isobel thought, preparing to leave, and wondered if she could manage to put a brave face on things and fool her family for the rest of the evening. She didn't get the chance to find out. Mike was waiting for her when she emerged from the ladies' room. "You took so long in there, I was beginning to think you'd fallen in," he observed with a marked lack of propriety, though why she should have expected anything different from a man like him was beyond Isobel's understanding. "Can't you find something else to do besides waylay women and level unseemly hypotheses at them?" she fumed. "Good God, what a mouthful!" he said, towing her willy-nilly onto the dance floor. "What's up, Isobel, didn't you get enough to eat at dinner?" "Leave me alone," she said, tugging weakly to free herself. But the way he snagged her fingers in his took all the starch out of her annoyance. Just being touched by him again was the closest she'd come to happiness since she'd wriggled free of his sleeping embrace the weekend before.

Blithely ignoring her words and all too accurately reading her thoughts, he swirled her into his arms. The band played "The Tennessee Waltz," and except for the hurricane lamps on the tables and the red-streaked remains of the sunset bathing the sky beyond the windows, the room was seductively dim, reducing the other couples on the floor to wraiths swaying gently to the music. "This is more like it," Mike murmured, sandwiching Isobel firmly against his torso. Of course, she should have put a stop to things right then and there. If she'd possessed an ounce of moral fiber, not to mention survival instinct, she'd have wrenched herself free and stomped off the floor. Maybe even slapped his face for good measure, and to hell withmaking a scene in public. But such action required energy, and once again she had fallen under a spell of lassitude that had her wilting against him like a flower too long deprived of water. "This thing you've got on," Mike murmured, his fingers stroking up from the small of her back to her waist then down again. "It's called a dress," she said, her attempt to wither him with scorn emerging more like an invitation for him to strip the gown off her. "It feels as smooth as your skin. And that perfume you're wearing..." He inclined his head, nuzzled her neck experimentally and sent a hundred tiny explosions of delight scooting to the peaks of her breasts. "Carolina Herrera." She sighed. "Exquisite," he decreed, his lips brazenly closing on her earlobe. "Tell me the real reason you ran away from me last week, Isobel."

"I already have." Her voice seemed to float over a great distance. Afraid he might not be able to hear, she turned her face to his. "It was a foolish...impetuous..." His mouth nudged hers. At least, she tried to tell herself he made the first move. But the fact of the matter was, she didn't know for sure who was responsible because his proximity left her so limp with desire that she collapsed against him inch for inch, from her head to her knees. If he kissed her first, there was no question but that she kissed him back with equal fervor. With a sigh and a melting urgency. And just like the first time, it felt absolutely right. His hand strayed up her back and crossed the boundary between lace and skin. Strayed down again and inched around her ribs to the soft side swell of her breast. That same telltale flush of heat that had confused her the week before pooled within her again, refuting any claim she might have made to being in control. She clutched at the silk lapel of his jacket and knew she was lost. "Come home with me tonight," he whispered urgently against her mouth. "No," she quavered, inhaling the taste of him as if it was the elixir of life. "That's not a good idea." But he heard the lack of conviction in her words. "You and I both know that isn't true, Isobel." "What about Chloe—and Basil? We can't just... abandon them. It wouldn't be right." The final bars of "The Tennessee Waltz" drew to a melancholy end. The lights came up again, dispelling the magic, and Isobel found herself flanked by Judith and Tim on one side and John and Sara on the other, all four agog with curiosity.

She thought about introducing them to Mike, but was afraid. Would they, like her, be too ready to compare him unfavorably to Richard? She couldn't have borne it, not for herself and most especially not for him. He deserved so much better. So she turned her back to them and found herself face to face with him instead, with his gaze tracking her features and discerning the truth she had hoped to hide from him. "No," he said, regretfully loosing his hold. "It wouldn't be right, would it?" The damnable thing was, she didn't know whether he was referring to Basil and Chloe or to her own miserable cowardice. Chloe leaned her head against the back of the car seat. "Well, Michael!" she exclaimed softly, and although he couldn't see the smile playing around her mouth, he could hear it in her voice. "Well, well, well! If I didn't know you better, I'd say you are smitten." He pretended to concentrate on his driving. "Traffic's heavy for this hour of the night, isn't it?" Chloe was neither fooled nor distracted. "Are you, Michael? Because if you're not, stop fooling around with Isobel's feelings. She doesn't play at love the way you do and won't understand the rules." "Who said anything about love?" he snorted irascibly. "Damn it, Chloe, stop reading something from nothing." "No. This is one time I won't pretend I don't see what you're up to. You overwhelmed her tonight. I felt sorry for the man she was with." "Basil." He felt the laughter churning deep inside at the memory. "The little minx, setting me up like that! I don't know how I kept my face straight."

"You didn't," Chloe informed him. "You turned a most unflattering shade of puce and snickered unbecomingly, whereas Isobel..." "Well? Go on," he urged, when she lapsed into silence. "What was your impression of Isobel?" "Shy, elegant, a stunning example of grace under pressure." Chloe paused as if weighing her words. "And lovely. Lovely...and fragile. I hope, my dear old friend, that you'll bear that in mind before you allow things to progress much further. What you might perceive as a passing fancy could well destroy her. She struck me as very vulnerable." "She's as tough as nails. I'm going to have to play hardball over this business with Andy and the baby." "I'm not talking about her professional expertise, I'm talking about her heart. You've broken more than your share, but this one..." He heard the slide of silk over leather as she turned in the seat to look at him. "This one, Michael, is made of glass. Don't smash it, please." "I never intentionally—" "Of course you don't. You never fall in love, either, which is why you don't understand how much it can hurt." "I don't believe in love." "Of course you do. Why else are you jumping to Andy's defence over this kidnapping charge? You're just too cowardly to admit it, that's all." He gave a snort of laughter. "Me, cowardly?"

"Yes. That's why I've steadfastly refused to allow our relationship to evolve into anything more serious than a mild flirtation." "You think I don't.. .that I'm not fond of you?" "You're fond of me, I'm fond of you, and that's as far as it'll ever go. I knew it almost immediately, and because I'm selfish where my heart's well-being is concerned, I opted for friendship knowing it would endure where infatuation would fade. Isobel, though, is different. She isn't calculating like me, Michael. You only have to look at those eyes, that mouth, to know her emotions will always rule the day when it comes to romantic love. I would hate for her to discover that what she thinks she's found with you is nothing more than an illusion." In his mind's eye, he saw again the people hemming them in on the dance floor—family members, obviously. There was no missing the resemblance—and no missing, either, their bristling curiosity about the man cavorting in public with one of their own. Isobel's reluctance to introduce him rankled more than he cared to admit. "Sometimes, I don't think she even likes me, let alone.. .well, you know." "You can't even say the word, can you?" Chloe laughed. "God help you, Michael, if this is the real thing at last!"He pulled the car to a stop outside the canopied entrance to her apartment building and came around to open the passenger door. "It's not," he assured her. "It's just—hell, I don't know what it is, but it's not love. For Pete's sake, I don't even know which day she was born or if she still goes by her married name or what size shoe she wears." "Then why were you trying to give her a tonsillectomy on the dance floor?" He allowed himself a shamefaced grin. "Damned if I know."

"That's your whole trouble in a nutshell," Chloe said, kissing him on the cheek. "You don't know the first thing about yourself, let alone her. Thanks for a lovely evening, darling, and remember what I said." Could she be right? he wondered, heading west along the highway. Was he afraid of love? Or just too smart to believe it could survive day-to-day living? The speedometer needle crept up, passing seventy. To his right, the north shore mountains loomed black and oppressive against the night sky, the strip of four-lane highway their only connection to the city lights reflected on the sea to his left. A bit like him and Isobel, sharing nothing in common but the fast track to passion. And when that ran out, what then? Him going his way, and her going hers? Chloe was right. Best to end things now before complications set in. A good thing Isobel had shown enough sense not to take him up on his request to spend the night. Except, if that was so, why did he feel like hell?

CHAPTER SEVEN ISOBEL pretended not to care that she didn't hear a word from Mike for the next six days. She had refused to abscond from the banquet with him, after all. But truth to tell, she was besieged by the niggling fear that he'd finally taken her at her word and dropped his pursuit of her. It didn't help matters that Myrtle seemed to have reached the same conclusion, albeit by a different route. "It's been a while since we heard anything on the Pinocchio front," she remarked the following Friday. "I'd have thought old Joseph Raines would have been pressing for all sorts of concessions by now. Either he's losing his touch or he's got something up his sleeve that's going to clear his client, and please don't take offense, boss, when I say I hope it's the latter. I just can't swallow the notion that a nephew of Mike Callahan's would deliberately go out and kidnap a baby without very good reason." Although increasingly inclined to believe the same thing, Isobel chose to play devil's advocate, as much for the illicit pleasure of talking about Mike as for any other reason. "Why is it that you're such an ardent fan of Mike Callahan, who's done nothing that I'm aware of to merit your admiration, yet you can't say a kind word about Bobbie? Is it just that you think she tells fibs?" "Fibs?" Myrtle's hoot of laughter bespoke her derision. "Isobel, the woman's an unblushing liar." "What's she said or done to give you that impression?" "It's what she hasn't said that bothers me." "Such as what? Give me an example."

"How about the classic 'I want blood money from the man what done me wrong'?" Isobel poked the end of her pencil through her hair meditatively. "I admit I'm a bit bothered by that myself, but it's not enough to hang her." "Then how about the way she never quite manages to look me in the face, as though she's afraid I'll cotton on to some deep, disgusting secret she's harboring in her overendowed bosom? Call me neurotic, if you like, but I cannot bring myself to trust people with shifty little green eyes that look like overcooked peas. As for why I'm one of the divine Mr. Callahan's fans..." Myrtle's expression, which had fallen into disapproving lines, underwent a sunny transformation. "Where's it written that you're the only one allowed to worship at the shrine?" "I beg your pardon?" "Dear," Myrtle replied cozily, "did you think perhaps I haven't noticed the stars in your eyes, the roses in your cheeks, the lilt in your voice, that the mere mention of his name inspires? Or that it has escaped my notice how much time you've spent gazing inattentively into space practically from the moment you met him?" "I don't—I'm not—" Chagrined, Isobel wished she'd never encouraged the conversation. "Are you implying I'm neglecting my work?" "Certainly not. I'm congratulating you on your vastly improved taste in men." "Hardly a compliment, considering the disastrous choice I made the last time."

"Listen, Isobel," Myrtle ordered, hitching one hip on the corner of the desk and swinging a scarlet-shod foot, "it's time you forgave yourself for that mistake and moved on with your life. Mike Callahan is not Richard Bailey, couldn't be in a million years, and you're a fool if you don't snap him up while you have the chance." "What if he doesn't want to be snapped up? He's not exactly beating a path to my door." Myrtle tried to look guileless, which was tantamount to a cat pretending it wasn't interested in the mouse caught under its paw. "Oh? And when was the last time you spoke to him?" "Saturday night. He showed up at the Dogwood Club affair." "Well, thank God for that!" Myrtle fanned herself with a legal brief. "I was beginning to fear my little scheme went to waste." "Scheme?" "Yes," Myrtle confided smugly. "I sold him my last two tickets for the sole purpose of throwing the pair of you together, and I would hate to think the gesture backfired." Isobel groaned softly, remembering the reactions of everyone at the table when she'd slunk back with her freshly applied lipstick all smeared from Mike's kisses. "Who is that man?" Kathryn had squeaked. "Isobel, he was all over you on the dance floor!" "What man?" she'd parried, too flustered to weigh the consequences of such a response.

Sara, who'd never been able to hold her face straight on command, had dissolved into giggles, and Judith, normally the most sober of individuals, had joined her. Their parents had exchanged significant glances, as much as to say, "Uh-oh, here we go again!" while poor Basil had looked as if he'd just been kicked in the teeth. And all for what? An affair that had fizzled out and left behind nothing but heartache and conflict. Although Isobel's professional allegiance lay with Bobbie Griffiths, her personal sympathies leaned increasingly toward Andy. By all rights, she ought to disqualify herself from the case, yet to do so would sever one of her few remaining ties to a man who had apparently found it quite easy to walk out of her life. "I'm very much afraid it did backfire, Myrtle," she confessed. "I haven't seen or heard from him since, and it's been almost a week." "Well, this is the nineties, dear, and the last I heard it was perfectly acceptable for a woman to be the one to make the first move." Myrtle nudged the phone closer. "Why don't you call him and find out what's going on?" There was no good reason not to act on the suggestion. None, that was, except for Isobel's pride, which still took quite a beating when, finally, Mike did get around to calling her at the office late the following Tuesday. "Glad I caught you before you left," he began, not bothering to preface his remark with any sort of greeting. "Basil's in labor and I thought you might want to know." "In labor? But she's not due for another week!"

"Try telling her that. Anyhow, I'm not too happy with the shape she's in so I'm taking her to the local pet clinic. If you're interested, meet me there." He gave directions for finding the place, and that was it—a brusquely delivered message with nothing to indicate the bearer had ever exhibited the least tenderness or passion toward the recipient. Isobel stared at the dead phone in her hand and tried to dismiss the leaden sense of premonition creeping over her. It was worry about Basil that had made him sound so curtly impersonal, that was all. Once she saw him, everything would be all right again. And if it's not? her pessimistic alter ego enquired. The answer came in the form of a sharp, wrenching pain, as if her heart had suddenly fallen loose, then been caught at the last minute by an unforgivingly cruel fist. So much for growing older and wiser, the infuriating inner voice jeered. You're as much at the mercy of your hormones now as you were the day you threw in your lot with Richard Bailey. Face it, Isobel, you enjoy being a victim. That she was crushed by such self-revelation was humiliation enough. Not by so much as a flick of an eyelid would she let Mike guess the extent of the damage he'd imposed. He would never know how close she'd come to making a fool of herself over him.

She took a taxi to the animal hospital. Situated at the end of a quiet cul de sac, the building was rather pretty with a huge copper beech shading the outside kennels and a bank of well-tended shrubs flanking its entrance. Behind, a gently sloping ravine bright with

wildflowers lent the whole scene a tranquillity markedly at odds with the atmosphere inside. The tension arced the moment she set foot within the airy waiting room, and Isobel knew it was only a matter of time before it exploded. Mike leaned against the wall at one end, thumbing through a magazine. He looked up at the sound of the door opening, flicked an impassive glance at her, uttered a laconic hi, then turned his attention to the page in front of him. But if his greeting was brief, his body language spoke volumes. There was none of that come-hither masculine charm to send her into a state of delicious suspended panic. Instead, the unsmiling mouth, the cool blue eyes, the rebuffing angle of back and shoulder that allowed for no more than a quarter profile of the handsome face trumpeted unvarnished, unprovoked hostility. Isobel had thought herself prepared for his indifference, but she was not prepared for this. "Hi," she managed, trying to swallow the bitter pill of hurt tainting her mouth. "How's Basil?" "Not doing so well. They've decided on surgical intervention both for her sake and the pups'." "A Caesarian, you mean? Oh, poor angel! I wish I'd been able to get here sooner.'' Concern for the dog paramount in her mind, she crossed the floor and came to stand next to Mike without thought for how he might view the move. If she'd worn a placard announcing she was suffering a full-blown attack of the bubonic plaque, he couldn't have made his aversion any plainer. Deliberately widening the gap that separated them, he deigned to toss another scathing glance over his shoulder and drawled, "Yeah, well, I'm surprised you bothered showing up at all."

"Why? She's just as much my concern and responsibility as she is yours.'' "No one would think it, considering you haven't bothered to phone once in well over a week to find out how she's been doing." Was this what had provoked his antagonism? The fact that she hadn't phoned? "I've been terribly busy at work," she lied, too ashamed and proud to admit she'd been more concerned with trying to control her infatuation for him than she had been with Basil's welfare. "Are your sleazy clients the only things you get really cranked up about, Isobel?" Mike inquired scornfully. "No," she snapped. "Furthermore, my clients are not sleazy." He snorted disparagingly and buried his nose in his magazine again. Annoyed enough not to care whether he wanted her touching him or not, Isobel plucked at the sleeve of his jacket. "What's really bothering you, Mike Callahan? Why are you trying so hard to pick a fight with me?" He regarded her hand with clinical detachment, then allowed his gaze to travel the length of her arm to her shoulder and settle at last on her face. For the longest time, he simply looked at her, his blue eyes fathomless. Then he sighed and said, "Because it's a damn sight easier than trying to be your friend. You push a man to radical extremes, Isobel Whitelaw, and I don't like how it makes me feel." "Not being in control all the time, you mean?" "Something like that," he acknowledged dismissively, and immersed himself again in the article he was so conscientiously pretending to read.

The old Isobel, the one with enough good sense to steer clear of making the same mistakes twice, would have accepted his churlishness as proof positive that he simply wasn't her type. She would have removed herself to another area of the room, found her own reading material behind which to hide and drawn a protective veil of reserve around herself. The new Isobel was too bent on self-destruction to follow so sane a route. Instead she ripped the magazine from his hands, flung it aside, planted a fist on each hip and, in a voice so belligerent she barely recognized it as her own, demanded, "You just can't stand it, can you, that I won't let you walk all over me? Not only have I refused to drop a client whom you don't think is fit to shine your nephew's shoes, I've also had the gall to reject you. Is that why I'm being made to jump through hoops now? Just to show me that you're the one who calls all the shots?" "I'm not making you jump through hoops, Isobel," he said wearily. "I'm just tired of being treated like a bad habit—something you're willing to indulge in private and deny in public. Oh, I admit it ticks me off that you're still standing by the Griffiths woman and buying her story when she's doing her damnedest to ruin Andy's life. Hell, what family wants to see one of their own involved with someone like that?" It was a not-unfamiliar question. We don't understand what you see in him, Isobel, her family had said when she'd announced her intention to marry Richard. He's handsome enough but what on earth will you find to talk about once the animal magnetism wears thin? She'd learned soon enough. The silence had been so deafening Richard had resorted to abuse to shut it out. "But what I find unforgivable," Mike went on, "is your cowardice in facing up to what's going on between you and me, and I'm damned if

I'll let you keep getting away with the sort of stunt you pulled the other Saturday, just so that you can feel better about yourself." "I don't know what you mean," she said faintly. "Yes, you do," he jeered. "Part of you can't resist the thrill of steaming up the sheets with a man like me, but the other, larger part won't let you admit it publicly. Or did you think I hadn't noticed that you were too ashamed to introduce me to your family when they were obviously itching to know who and what the hell I was to you?" "I was not ashamed!" she cried. He laughed scornfully. "Yes, you were. And do you know-what that makes you, Isobel? Little more than a first-class tease. And I'm not so desperate that I have to settle for that kind of woman." The shot blitzed out of the blue so unexpectedly and with Such mortal power to wound that she staggered under its assault. Her hand shot to her mouth to contain her gasp of shock. For a small eternity, she and Mike both remained frozen in time, gazes locked in stunned disbelief at the ugliness uncoiling between them. Finally, Isobel could bear it no longer. Wheeling away, she crossed to the window and stared out blindly. "Thank you for sharing that small piece of information with me," she said tightly. She heard the soft, rubber-soled sigh of his footsteps following her across the tiled floor. Felt the impact of his agonized regret before he formed the apology that couldn't begin to heal the damage. "Isobel, I don't know where the hell that came from," he said contritely, cupping her shoulder in his hand. "It was a cheap, lousy shot and completely uncalled for."

She shook him off and forced her trembling legs to carry her to the notice board at the other end of the waiting room, as far away from him as possible. He could not know what it cost her to ignore the rampant thunder of her heart, to close off those avenues of hope that made a person want to believe again in love, and ask without inflection, "How much longer do you think it'll be before we get word on Basil?" "Search me. I'm sure they'll let us know as soon as there's anything to report." He'd followed her. She could feel the warm drift of his breath on her neck, detect a trace of the after-shave he wore. How painfully and thoroughly the scent of him resurrected the memory of their intimacy. As if she needed any reminders, after what he'd just said! "Isobel," he said wretchedly, "I'm deeply sorry." "Me, too. We didn't rescue that poor, sweet animal from certain death for her to be lost to us now. But it's not your fault, so please don't think I blame you." Mike swung her around with just enough vehemence to bring the lurking tears into prominence. His face swam into view, the blue of his eyes a point of brilliant focus in an otherwise bleary image. "Cut it out!" he ordered. "I'm not talking about Basil, and you know it." She didn't know what prompted her to defy him and continue in the same vein. Some need to immolate herself for past foolishness, perhaps? "No, you're talking about how little I appeal to you in bed. Well, just for the record, you're not the first to say so. My ex-husband beat you to that by several years." Mike swore with amazing creativity then, one stark vulgarity after the other. The problem was, each rolled off his tongue like an endearment

to blunt the edges of her pain and inveigle her forgiveness. How else could she explain the way she let him wrap his arms around her and press her head to his chest? "Don't ever do that again," he murmured, when at last he ran out of obscenities. "Don't ever compare me to that bastard you were once married to. I am no more like him than you are like any woman I have known before. And that's the problem in a nutshell." He stroked the pads of his fingers over her mouth, traced them up her cheek to the tip of her ear and followed the movement with solemn, attentive eyes. "We're each beyond the other's frame of reference and we haven't the faintest clue how to deal with the fact." Isobel thought he might have kissed her then had the nurse-receptionist not appeared and announced, "Mr. Callahan, Dr. Miller is ready to talk to you and your wife now if you'll come into the consulting room." You and your wife. It was an innocent mistake that Mike rushed to correct. "No," he said, swinging to face the woman. "We're not—that is, Ms. Whitelaw and I are.. .well, we're..." Truly at a loss for the first time since she'd met him, he swung to look at Isobel, who saw her own sense of confusion and shock mirrored in his eyes. Go on, she silently urged him. Tell her what we are to each other, then perhaps I'll be able to understand it, too! He shook his head, as if he hoped to dislodge a thoroughly preposterous definition. "Never mind," he finished, grabbing Isobel's elbow and propelling her toward the consulting room. "We'll sort that out later. Right now, let's find out if poor old Basil's going to make it." ' 'She's a very young dog," the veterinarian told them. "Not much more than a year old, I'd say, but the fact that you assumed she was

much older doesn't surprise me. She's been badly neglected, poor thing, and by rights never should have been bred at all. Considering her age and generally poor state of health, I'd have predicted she'd give birth to one pup, two at the outside, but she fooled me. You've just inherited a pack of eight little stalwarts built like gorillas. Judging by their size and energy, the fathers must have been a combination of German shepherd, retriever and possibly Great Dane. Small wonder she needed help bringing them into the world." "What do you mean, fathers?" Mike asked, looking more than a little stunned. "Surely there can't be more than one?" "I'm afraid there can be and almost certainly was, which accounts in part for the large litter, and that, in turn, is definitely one reason the mother's in such poor shape. Her prenatal care, before you found her, was minimal. I frankly doubt she'll be able to provide enough milk to feed all eight offspring. I hope you're prepared to give around-the-clock supplemental feedings." "Yes," Mike said. "When can we take her home?" "Not for about a week. She hemorrhaged rather badly during surgery, and I'd like to have her where I can keep an eye on her until I'm sure there won't be further complications." Isobel found herself clutching Mike's hand anxiously. "But she is going to be all right, isn't she?" "I'm guardedly optimistic, but the next two days are critical." The doctor closed the chart and beckoned them to a second door at the back of the consulting room. "If you'd like to take a look at your new family, come this way, but keep the visit short and quiet. Basil needs her rest. By the way..." The solemn face broke into a grin. " Where'd you get the name?"

"It's a long story," Mike told him. "Longer than either of us expected."

Did it take the puppies, tiny, blind, helpless, to clinch the bond that had begun to renew itself when he'd pulled her into his arms and poured out his regret? Or was it destiny refusing to let mere mortals ruin a good thing? Either way, the end she'd thought inevitable did not occur, after all. "We have unfinished business to attend to," Mike announced as soon as they stepped outside the clinic. Isobel didn't pretend to misunderstand. "Yes, we have." "I know a place up the Sound that's the perfect place to talk over problems," he went on, winding his hand around hers and leading her to his truck parked around the back of the building. "It's quiet, and they serve the freshest seafood you'll find anywhere. But if it's okay with you, I'd like to stop by the house first and change." He eyed her cream suit and matching pumps ruefully. "Beside you, I feel distinctly undepressed." He-was the only man she'd ever met who brought to blue jeans and T-shirt the same cachet that he gave to the tailored formality of a dinner suit, but if it was true that clothes made the man, then the more she saw of his wardrobe, the more she'd learn about him. And clearly there was much she didn't understand. "Would you care for a drink while you wait?" he asked when they reached his house. She shook her head. "No, thanks. I'd like to freshen up a bit myself, though, if you don't mind."

"You know your way around the place." He waved an expansive hand and started up the spiral staircase. "Help yourself and I'll meet you back down here in ten." In the powder room next to the front door, Isobel did her best to metamorphose from working woman to dinner companion. Thanks to the blend of raw silk and man-made fabric, her suit was blessedly wrinkle free. What her hair lacked in length it made up for in thick natural wave that required nothing more than a quick flick with a comb. Lipstick and perfume, travel-size toothbrush and paste she found in her handbag, but nothing as exotic as mascara or eye shadow. Thank goodness nature had been kind in the lash department! To say that she was prepared for the evening ahead when Mike came downstairs would have been a lie. The aftershock of his wounding accusation lingered less because of the pain it had inflicted than because, in her heart of hearts, she knew there was a grain of truth to what he'd said. Never mind that she'd been trying to protect herself; that didn't excuse using someone else, and she saw now that, without meaning to, she had used—and hurt—Mike. I am not like that bastard you married, he had insisted, and rightly so. Deliberate infliction of cruelty in order to gain the upper hand in a relationship was not the way Mike played the game. The pity of it was that she hadn't seen it before. Was it too late to go back and make things right? "Ready?" he asked, joining her in the front hall. Ever the chameleon, he had changed into gray slacks and summer-weight navy blazer, complemented by white shirt and striped burgundy tie. The resulting corporate image erased entirely any lingering notions of denim- clad beachcomber.

"Yes," she said, and followed him up the steps to the parking pad. "Oh, we're not taking the truck," he informed her when she stopped beside it. "I prefer something a bit more luxurious for social occasions and so, I'm sure, do you." He swung open the doors to the big garage with no more ado than when a king hauls out a crown for state affairs and casually gestured her toward the sleek black Lamborghini parked inside. "Hop in," he invited. There were patrons at only four other tables when he led her into the restaurant, but that was not the reason for the royal treatment he received. One by one, the staff showered him with attention. "A pleasure to see you again, Mr. Callahan." The maitre d' beamed and gave a deferential little bow. "Your usual table's waiting, of course." Oh, really? Isobel thought, taking a seat overlooking the spectacular waters of Howe Sound. How many other women had been brought here for a romantic dinner? "I have a wine I think you'll appreciate, monsieur," the sommelier disclosed a short while later. "A very special product from Argentina not normally available here...." "The swordfish and clams are excellent." Emile, their waiter, kissed his fingertips in mock ecstasy. "But the crab is delectable tonight. Just the way you like it, Monsieur Callahan." "I know it's not politically correct," Mike confided, leaning across the table and smiling into her eyes, "but will you trust me to order for us? I've eaten here before."

"Do tell," she replied dryly. The smile widened into a grin that did astonishing things to her heart rate. "There are some things that shouldn't be missed," he said. "And if you'll go along with me for the first three courses, I'll give you carte blanche for dessert." A spasm of pure, unadulterated desire clenched inside her at that. Oh, Lord, she thought, tipping her head in acquiescence and drowning in blushes, what chance had any woman against such formidable charm? "Go ahead." "Oysters on the half shell, endive salad and crab cakes," he decreed without hesitation. The wine arrived. "Interesting," Mike murmured, swirling the contents of his glass and inhaling the bouquet. "Reminiscent of a young Semillon, I'd say, Dominique." Isobel gaped. Wine! Isn't that the stuff you drink in fancy stemmed glasses instead of straight from the bottle? Hadn't he stood in her living room and uttered those very words less than a month ago? And shouldn't she have known better than to believe them? Catching her with her mouth hanging open, he grinned ingenuously. "If I keel over after the first swig, will you promise to bottle-feed Basil's brood?" She snapped her jaw closed and nodded. On the sidelines, the sommelier fairly danced with impatience. "The palate, monsieur?" he prompted. "Medium bodied," Mike decreed, tasting. "Nice and crisp with just a touch of oak complexity. An excellent choice, Dominique."Isobel raised her glass to Mike's, torn between pique and fascination. The

wine's complexity didn't begin to match his continued ability to surprise her, which was, when it came right down to it, the problem underlying their entire association. They had started in the middle, instead of at the beginning. She was half in love with a man about whom she knew little except his name and his prowess as a lover. She understood neither the hows nor whys that went into his makeup, and he wasn't much better informed about hers. It was truth-or-consequence time. "Tell me about your work," she said, as soon as they were alone again. "Exactly what does it involve?" "Salvage," he replied succinctly. "Tell me about your family. Are there any more or was that the whole gang at the bash the other night?" "There's one more brother, Anthony. He teaches college history in the States, is married to an accountant, and they have two children. What sort of salvage?" "Underwater. So you've got what? Three sisters and..." "Two sisters and two brothers. I'm number four in the pecking order. I don't understand what underwater salvage entails. Explain it to me." "It's exactly what you'd expect it to be—cleaning up other people's mess. Why do you think your marriage went sour?" "I acted on impulse, seduced by good looks into forgetting it's the meeting of the minds that welds a relationship. Have you ever been married?" "Nor. You realize that we're hopelessly and completely mismatched, don't you?"

"Yes. What are we going to do about it?" He took her hand and kissed her fingertips one by one. "Try to get it out of our systems, once and for all, I suppose. We can't go on like this." "And how do you propose we do that?" "I could take you home with me tonight and make love to you again…" Yes! her wayward heart sang, while her body shimmered with the knowledge that, when the meal was over, she'd ride with him in his sleek, lethal car through the soft summer night to his house, and there in the room where it had first occurred, the magic would happen all over again. "But I'm not going to." "No," she said, battling to overcome her disappointment. "No, that wouldn't solve anything." "That's not the reason, Isobel," he said softly. "A few hours snatched from two disparate, busy lives merely whets the appetite, and what we need is enough time and liberty to explore the wider dimensions of our relationship with no demands or distractions from the outside. Will you come away with me?" "I can't." Surely he knew that. Surely this was just another way he'd found to reject her, kinder than telling her to get lost, certainly, but just as effective? "I'm in the middle of several cases." "You work all weekend?" he asked. "Straight through from Friday night to Monday morning?"

"Sometimes." "Now? This weekend?" "Well...I suppose the most pressing case is Bobbie's." "And nothing's going to happen with that until the courts reconvene in September after the summer recess." He nodded at her speculative glance. "Joseph Raines already warned us we don't have a hope in hell of a court date before the end of October. So if that's the only thing holding you back..." "There's Basil.' "There's nothing we can do for her right now. She's confined to Dr. Miller's expert care for another week. We're talking about two days, Isobel, not a month," he argued, sensing her reservations. "Come on, what do we have to lose?" "What do we have to gain? A weekend isn't long enough to resolve anything." "It's long enough to confirm we're wrong for each other. Too long, probably. We're looking at what? Forty- eight, sixty hours? It might well turn out to be the deadliest stretch of purgatory either of us lives to tell about." He was wrong; it would prove nothing. But she wanted so badly to go with him, to indulge her craving for him, that she turned away from another truth just as valid— that the more time she spent with him, the closer she came to falling in love with him. "All right. Let's do it." "There's just one thing," he said, signaling for the bill. "During that time, we've got to be completely honest with each other—about our

feelings, our reservations, our expectations. And we've got to agree beforehand that we'll abide by those truths. Deal?" She dealt in truths of one kind or another every working day. And she knew what he was really demanding was that she wouldn't try to hold him; that when it was over, she'd let go gracefully and get on with the life she'd known before she met him. Well, half a loaf was better than none. "Deal," she said, shaking the hand he proffered across the table.

CHAPTER EIGHT HE PICKED her up after work on Friday. "Pack a pair of comfortable walking sandals," he'd said when she'd asked what she should bring with her. A month ago, she'd have been deceived into thinking such a suggestion fit the image of a man content with a crude cabin in the woods. But a lot had changed in the past month, including her perceptions of him as a rough- and-ready charmer with little claim to sophistication. So she prepared herself for any eventuality. "Ho, ho, ho!" Myrtle chortled, when Isobel arrived that morning at the office, suitcase in tow. "Off for a dirty weekend, are you? May one assume the rift has been mended and that Mr. Gorgeous is going along for the ride?" Isobel's blush confirmed both suppositions. Myrtle smirked. "I take it that you don't wish to leave a forwarding number in case something urgent pops up?" "I couldn't even if I wanted to," Isobel replied, fighting a lost cause for composure. "I don't know where we're going." "Sounds like a case of abduction by consent." The smirk blossomed into a full-blown leer. "How deliciously kinky!" The remark hounded Isobel for the rest of the day, so much so that she was several times tempted to call off the whole thing. What did it take for a woman of measurable intelligence to agree to disappear off the face of the earth with a man she'd known from the start was not and never could be her type?

The answer, of course, was the voracious sexual attraction between her and Mike that was never more apparent than when she found herself seated next to him in the first-class section of a Boeing 737 bound for San Francisco. "Here's to an unforgettable weekend," he murmured, clinking the rim of his champagne flute against hers. It wasn't a particularly original toast, but the voice, the gaze that went with it gave rise to that distinctive flush of desire that continued to shock and amaze her every time it let loose. "I'm not sure we want it to be unforgettable," she said, having a hard time not openly drooling. "Weren't we thinking more along the lines of us getting each other out of our systems?" "Were we?" His lashes drooped captivatingly. "Right now, all I can think of is getting you out of your clothes. I should have hired a private jet so that we wouldn't be disturbed." The heat swirled up her throat, choking her. "You're outrageous!" "And you," he replied, catching her hand and bending his head to kiss her palm, "are beautiful." "You don't have to say things like that. I know they're not true." His glance angled up, sky blue shot with warning purple thunderheads. "How do you know that, Isobel?" "Richard..." she began ill-advisedly. "Your ex-husband?" The thunderheads deepened. "I was hoping he wasn't part of the baggage you brought along on this little jaunt,

because I might as well tell you right now, I'm getting tired of having him gate-crash our parties." "Some things aren't easily left behind, Mike." He straightened and leaned back in his seat, crystal flute gimballed negligently between two fingers. "Then perhaps we should jettison him before we land. Tell me about him." "What do you want to know?" "Why you married him, for a start. Was it something your family arranged when you were still in the cradle?" "Heavens, no!" A startled laugh broke from her. "They'd have paid him to disappear if I'd asked them to. They never liked him." "So? What was the reason?" "I thought I was in love with him and didn't know that isn't a particularly sound reason to marry someone." "I see," Mike said carefully. "What exactly is a sound reason, then?" "Commonality friendship."

of

values,

interests,

expectations.

Respect,

"If that's all it takes, I could happily embrace polygamy. Where does passion enter into the picture, Isobel? Or doesn't it?" "Passion is a volatile thing with a powerful ability to destroy." "So now we get to the heart of the matter." He turned on that gaze of searching honesty that left her feeling as if her whole heart and soul

lay open to his inspection. "The passion turned ugly, is that it? Was he abusive?" "Yes," she whispered, ashamed to have to admit it. "Yes, he was." "Verbally? Emotionally?" She nodded and hoped it would be enough to satisfy his curiosity. It wasn't. He was too observant, too perceptive. "And physically?" She turned to the window, stared down at the rose- stained snow cone of Mount Rainier, up at the fading cobalt of the sky, and seized on the distraction. "My goodness, what a wonderful sunset!" "Never mind the goddamned sunset! Just tell me. Did he abuse you physically, Isobel?" "Not often." "Once is too often." She waited for him to go on, to tell her what others had been so quick to point out—that by staying with him as long as she had, she'd condoned Richard's actions; that people like her were what the professionals termed "enablers"; that some people enjoyed setting themselves up as victims, and she must be one of them. She waited for the contempt he wouldn't be able to hide. The silence spun out for so long that she was ready to snap from the tension of not knowing how he was going to respond. Finally, he unfolded the hinged table fixed to the side of his seat, a sharp, staccato sound amid the muted roar of the aircraft engines. "You're right," he said gravely, positioning his glass exactly mid-center on the

tabletop. "That sort of thing isn't easily left behind. How much do you trust me?" Her hesitation was slight but noticeable. "I don't know how to answer that. Trust you in what way?" "When we first met, you told me that I reminded you of Richard, and you've hinted at it several times since. You didn't say it in so many words, but it was obvious I made you very nervous. Are you afraid I might subject you to the same treatment he did? Because if you are--" "Oh, no! No!" Distressed, she leaned across and pressed her fingertips to his jaw, aching to kiss the sober curve of his mouth, to make him smile again. "I was— am—afraid of you, but not like that!" He imprisoned both her hands in his and held them at a distance to prevent their cajoling him into changing the subject. "Then how? And before you decide to sugarcoat your answer, remember the terms of agreement we reached when we decided to elope for the weekend. We might as well catch the first available flight home if you can't tell me the truth." How could she have settled for anything less when his eyes tracked her features so searchingly? "You... overwhelm me. You make me forget who I am—who you are." "Who am I, Isobel?" he interrupted. "Tell me what you think you know." She struggled for an honesty that wouldn't compromise her own vulnerability. "You're strong, forceful, the kind of man who wrestles life to the ground and overpowers it if it doesn't go the way you think it should." "Does that attract or repel you?"

"A little of both, perhaps." He reflected on her answer for a second, then asked, "And is that all?" "No. You're also unpredictable, charming and..." She looked at him, at his hands, his mouth, his face, and remembered how the evening had ended on Tuesday. The drive back to White Rock, so different from the first time he'd taken her home, with the Lamborghini lunging through the night like a jungle beast let loose from a cage. The severe beauty of his profile limned in the faint glow from the dashboard. The passion coiling between them, threatening to strike at the least provocation. And the way he had taunted it when at last he'd stopped the car under the trees near her front door and taken her in his arms. That kiss, so masterfully restrained, so powerfully moving and erotic... She swallowed, almost suffocating as memory turned into craving and sent the damnable hunger streaming through her. "And very...very sexy." "Like your ex?" "No," she assured him unequivocally. "Not in a million years. When you and I are together... like that... there isn't room for anyone or anything else." He leaned toward her. His knee nudged hers, and his eyes flamed with promise. "Then welcome to San Francisco," he said softly.

"Do you own all this?" Breathless with awe, Isobel leaned over the terrace wall and gazed down the length of Russian Hill to the moon-dappled splendor of San Francisco Bay.

"All what?" Mike teased, coming up behind her and resting his hands on her shoulders. "The city, the view, the house? None, I'm afraid. Disappointed?" "Are you serious? Everything's absolutely breathtaking. How did you find the house?" "I bought it for the weekend." His mouth settled softly in the curve of her neck. "Attended an auction at a certain golf club a couple of weeks back and came away the highest bidder on a weekend getaway for two." "You mean you're the one?" "Uh-huh." His lips grazed upward and planted a kiss behind her ear. "Do you lavish all your women with such extravagance, Michael?" she murmured. "No," he said, his lips and hands kindling the ever- present spark of excitement to sudden fire. "Only those who cause such a fever in my blood that I can't concentrate on anything else. I haven't accepted a single job in over three weeks, and it's all your fault. Come inside, Isobel, before you catch a chill." "I'm not the least bit cold," she said, teeth chattering with anticipation. "If I succumb to the uncontrollable urge to strip you naked, you will be," he vowed, persuading her toward the glass and wrought-iron doors that led into the living room. "And I'm not sure how much longer I can restrain myself." The house wasn't large, but it was exquisite in every detail. Pale Chinese rugs covered dark oak floors buffed smooth as antique silk.

There were fireplaces in the drawing room, dining room and bedroom, to ward off the chill and damp of winter fogs. With the exception of a tiny library where glass-fronted bookshelves prevailed, the walls were white throughout. Double en suite bathrooms adjoined the master bedroom, which, like the reception rooms, gave access to the terrace through arched glass doors fretted with lacy iron grilles. This was what a honeymoon should be all about, Isobel thought, making her way through the house to the bedroom. Soft music and flowers, champagne and candlelight. Delicate plaster ceiling moldings and original paintings. Four-poster beds and white embroidered sheets. A backdrop of timeless serenity to underscore a future of love and laughter long after the fury of passion was spent. "Except there is no future for us," she reminded herself, filling the oversize tub with water and sinking up to her chin in perfumed bubbles, "because none of this is real. It's just a lovely game of make-believe." True enough, but how fortuitous that she dressed for the part in a filmy white negligee trimmed with pink satin rosebuds and high-heeled peau de soie slippers. Because the man with the sultry blue eyes waiting for her when she came from the bathroom to the bedroom wasn't make-believe at all. He was vibrantly, powerfully real. And for the next two days, he was all hers.

Mike woke early from habit. Carefully, so as not to disturb her, he rolled to his side and watched her sleeping. She lay on her back, her breathing so light that her breasts barely rose beneath the sheet half-covering them. Her lashes smudged dark semicircles against the pale perfection of her cheeks. Her mouth, pressed sweetly closed, looked tender, as if his kisses had left her lips a little swollen.

Had he been rough in the heat of passion? Hurt her? Reminded her... ? When you and I are together... like that, she had said, there isn't room for anyone or anything else. He hoped he never met the ex-husband! What kind of brute had he been to crush her like one of her gardenia blossoms beneath his heel? What had been lacking in his masculinity that he'd sought to destroy her in order to feel like a man? Mike's gaze slipped lower. How narrow her waist, how fragile her hips. Would she be able to bear children? He blinked and looked away, startled by the intrusion of such a thought. If she could, they wouldn't be his. He hadn't been so crazy for her that he hadn't made sure of that. Bad enough he'd been careless the first time. The duvet he'd pulled over them—when had it been? Three o'clock, four, that they'd last made love?—had slipped to leave one of her feet exposed. Such a pretty thing it was with its finely arched instep and pink-painted nails as daintily formed as a baby's. He was an expert on that foot and its mate. He'd spent a lot of time kissing them both last night, and other parts of her, too. There was not an inch of her with which he was not intimately acquainted. There was not an inch of her that didn't taste erotically sweet— Enough! He was thirty-five, not eighteen. At this rate, he'd be burned out by breakfast, with most of the weekend still ahead. Propping a stealthy elbow on the pillow, he leaned his head against his hand, stared at the early morning sky outside and asked himself the same question he'd asked a hundred or more times since he'd met her. What in hell did he think he was doing?

"It takes outstanding skill and nerve to cope with this sort of job, and you're as good as they get," his instructor had told him when he'd finished his training. "You'll never be short of work, you'll make more money than you'll be able to spend in this lifetime, you'll travel all over the world, and wherever you go, you'll be treated like royalty—sometimes by royalty. But if you let all that go to your head, start partying and abusing your body instead of keeping your mind on your work, you'll be dead in three months. The mortality rate in this business is high. Extremely high. Most men don't last eight years." Well, he'd been at it nearly ten. By all rights, his time was up. He was pushing his luck with every commission he accepted. Was it time to quit? Was she the excuse he'd been looking for to leave it all behind? He switched his gaze to her and found she was awake and watching him. "That was a big sigh. What were you thinking about?" she asked, her voice, like her beautiful brown eyes, still heavy with sleep. "Nothing." He drew a finger down her nose. "What are you doing awake at this hour? It's not yet seven." "What are you doing awake?" "I was watching you sleep." She bit softly at his finger. "How boring for you! Do I snore?"He tried to smile and was horrified to find himself filled with a tenderness so acute that it left him close to tears instead. Good God, he really must be losing his grip! "You snore? Like pigs have wings! What do you fancy for breakfast?" She smiled like a princess offered her choice of all the riches in the world and pressed the tip of her finger against his heart. "You," she said.

Sex between them had been good from the start—unbelievably so. But this time was different. She was different. Unselfish. Spiritual, almost. Princess turned handmaiden, there to please, to gratify, without thought for her own pleasure. With the mists of passion clouding his mind and threatening oblivion, he struggled to retain control, subjugating himself to the role of third-party observer because that was the only way he could withstand the bewitching sweetness of her seduction. She bent over him, the dark mass of her hair falling forward to obscure her face. He felt the flutter of her lips against his chest, the brush of her eyelashes—alike in their softness, different in their texture. He felt her fingertips, fleet as hummingbird wings, shy, impudent, adept, consigning his acquiescence to perdition. "Ah, Isobel," he groaned, hauling her on top of him. "I'm not finished," she protested. "I very nearly am," he told her, clamping firm hands each side of her hips. "Lie still, for Pete's sake!" "But I want so much to please you." She uttered the words between kisses, squirming against him, driving him closer to-the edge. "I want you," he panted. "Right now, I want you more than life." "You have me." She wept, hovering above him, offering herself and, when he arched toward her, embedding him deep within herself. He tried to prolong the rapture, for her sake if not for his. But desire escalated into a raging hunger that he was unable to tame despite her assertion that he could wrestle the world into submission. He felt the shudder ripple over her, precursor of the climax she could not divert,

and rolled her beneath him as though doing so would protect her from the annihilation neither of them could hope to escape. Furiously he rode with her, sharing her fervor, surpassing it, racing on alone—where was she? Lost in the black tide swirling toward them? And then, at the last second, finding her there beside him, clutching at him within and without, her agony as intense as his, her disintegration just as complete. The noise was deafening, a mutual detonation that nothing but their hearts could hear. This, he thought hazily, must be death, because nothing he knew about life approached the rocketing pleasure that radiated through him.

The sun was high when at last they came out to the terrace. "About that breakfast I mentioned, an hour or so ago," Mike said, combing his fingers through her shower- damp hair. She leaned against him, replete. "What breakfast? I'm not hungry." "Show some mercy, woman," he scolded. "First you bring me to my knees, then you try to starve me." He beat his chest with clenched fists and leaped away from her in comic distress. "I need orange juice, eggs, coffee," he yodeled. "Well, now that the neighbors know you're here," she replied, laughing, "why don't you sit and try to recoup your strength while I see what I can come up with from the kitchen?"

"Are you kidding? I didn't bring you all this way to chain you to the stove. We'll send out for something." "No, please, that's sheer extravagance, and I'm more than happy to prepare a meal." He finally agreed to let her try out the fancy coffee maker, but overrode her other objections and phoned a nearby deli. Within half an hour freshly squeezed orange juice, strawberries, hot croissants and steaming fluffy omelettes stuffed with mushrooms were delivered to the door. They ate at a glass-topped table in the middle of the terrace, shaded by a sun umbrella and surrounded by pots full of scarlet and pink geraniums, purple-blue heliotrope and apricot roses. Behind them, a fuchsia bougainvillea climbed the stucco wall of the house. Below them, Alcatraz gleamed white in the dazzling blue waters of the bay. The fantasy continues, Isobel thought dreamily. "What would you like to do for the rest of the day?" Mike asked. "Shop? Be an unabashed tourist and go sight-seeing?" He leered over the rim of his coffee cup. "Stay home and unplug the phone?" "Faced with such difficult choices," she replied, "I think the smart thing to do is leave the final decision up to you .'But speaking of phones, may we please call Andy and make sure Basil and her brood are doing well?" "Good idea. And if everything's okay on the home front, then I suggest we wander down to Fisherman's Wharf and look for a place to eat lunch." "How can you even think about lunch, after the amount of food you've just consumed?"

"Easy. We'll take a little detour up to Union Square before we head downhill to the waterfront. Trust me, you'll be ready to eat again by the time one o'clock rolls around. I hope you brought along those comfortable sandals I recommended." It was as well that she had, because what followed more closely resembled a mountain hike than a walking tour of a city. "I've never ridden on a cable car," she announced wistfully, confronted by yet another steep incline. "Exercise is good for you and works wonders with my libido," Mike retorted unsympathetically, forced by a red light to stop at the next intersection. "Good God, woman, did you expect to spend the whole weekend lolling around in bed and wearing me down to a shadow of my former lusty self?" "No," she wheezed, embarrassingly conscious of the couple waiting next to them for the light to change and drinking in his every word. "Will you please keep your voice down?" "Tell you what." He tucked her hand in his and smiled so beguilingly that she'd have marched up Everest if he'd asked her to. "We'll cheat a little and take the Stockton Street tunnel. The scenery is a bit dismal, but it'll spare your poor aching limbs for the last stretch." At the other end, Union Square was a stone's throw away, bordered by expensive hotels, smart shops and street vendors selling everything from fake diamond jewelry to gorgeous fresh flowers. Mike bought a bunch of dewy Devon violets and pinned them to the bodice of her cream cotton dress. "Perfect," he decided, standing back to admire the effect. They window-shopped at Saks Fifth Avenue, spent an hour in a museum on Maiden Lane, strolled through Gump's, then wandered up

Grant to Sutter. Halfway to the intersection with Stockton, a display of antique jewelry in the window of a small shop caught Isobel's eye. "See anything you like?" Mike inquired, slowing his pace to match hers. "Just about everything." She sighed unguardedly. "I adore old jewelry. It speaks to the romantic in me." "Let's go inside, then, and see what else they've got." "Mike no! That's even more extravagant than sending out for breakfast." "I'm suggesting we look, not buy out the whole place." Ignoring her protests, he hustled her through the door. "Now, what sort of thing did you have in mind?" "I didn't," she muttered. "Please, let's just leave. You promised me lunch and I'm starving," she added slyly. The sales clerk smiled at them. "We charge nothing for browsing," she said. "In fact, we enjoy it as much as our customers. Is there something in particular you're looking for?" "No, but we'll know when we see it," Mike said, smiling back. "A ring, a necklace, a pendant?" "Not a ring." Their voices rang in uncanny unison. They looked at a string of amethyst beads, old crystal earrings, a jeweled comb, a jade bracelet. All were lovely, none was quite right. "Not romantic enough," Mike decreed.

At that the clerk reached into a showcase behind her. "If romance is the key, perhaps this is more the sort of thing you had in mind." She pushed forward a padded square of black velvet on which she'd placed a cameo brooch. Set in a gold frame circled with tiny diamonds, it was a thing of classic, old-world beauty. Mike glanced at Isobel, saw the enchantment she couldn't hide and nodded. "That's it exactly. We'll take it." "Have you lost your mind?" Isobel demanded, once they were out on the street again. "That's a very expensive trinket you just tucked inside my bag." "Don't think of it as expensive," he said. "Think of it instead as a souvenir of a weekend out of time. Wear it when you're old and gray and married to a nice, staid banker, and remember how it was when you were in your prime and here with me." It would have been socially gracious to thank him and accept, then, when he was looking the other way, to have bought a keepsake for him, too. But his words robbed the moment of its magic, and all she could focus on was that soon—too soon—this would all be over. The fantasy would come to an end, they would go their separate ways, and San" Francisco would become a place on the map that she'd visited one summer with a man who, for a short while, filled her heart and lent her life new meaning. Of course, she'd never come back again. How could she face the memories of a time when, for all the wrong reasons, she had been entirely, unconditionally happy? She looked up at Mike and was surprised to see the same desolation on his face that she was sure was on hers. "Were we crazy to think this would work, Mike?"

"Yes," he said soberly, not pretending to misunderstand her question. "I think perhaps we were. Let's go find a place to eat lunch. There's nothing like food to restore one's faith in farfetched dreams and schemes." He marched her through the tunnel and down the hill, catching her hand in his and trying hard to restore their earlier lightheartedness. "Dante's is the place," he decided, steering her toward Pier 39. It was just after two o'clock, and they had the restaurant almost to themselves. They sat by the window and ordered clam chowder, Caesar salad and Napa Valley chardonnay, followed by cheesecake that, to Isobel's mind, went beyond sinful to purely decadent. Outside, hundreds of moored pleasure boats rose and fell in rhythm with the lapping water. On the nearest dock a sea lion basked in the sun, occasionally rolling over with a muted honk of lazy pleasure. It was all memorable, and if it was not quite enough to erase the knowledge of tomorrow, it was enough to resurrect the pleasures of today. As long as the conversation flowed, the niggling doubts couldn't interfere. As long as Mike was making her laugh, she could forget his reference to her marrying some other man as unlike him as chalk from cheese. But then they came back to the house and he insisted she put her feet up for an hour. "So that you're up to the evening I've got planned," he explained, ushering her into the bedroom. "What about you?" "I've got a few phone calls to make." He lowered the blinds over the glass doors to cut the glare from the sun. "Business, I'm afraid. It never goes away. But I'll be all yours by the time you wake up."

No, he wouldn't, she realized sadly. Despite what she'd believed and what he said, he'd never be all hers, not even for a little while. He thought she'd be better off with a nice, staid banker, and if she was honest, she thought so, too. Honestly, her irritating alter ego jeered. Isobel, you don't have the guts to be honest. If you did, you wouldn't be lying here looking pale and uninteresting, and letting life lead you around by the nose. You 'd admit what it is you want, then get up off this bed and go after your dreams. "I have." She whimpered silently. "My whole life is going exactly according to plan." Horse bananas! You're like a child who thinks that if she closes her eyes, nobody else will be able to see her. You 're teetering on the brink of falling in love with Mike Callahan and too damned chicken to face up to the fact. Teetering on the brink? No, she thought, the tears drizzling down her face as the truth hit home. She was long past teetering; she had fallen headlong. For all that she'd thought herself too wise, she'd handed over her heart to a man who didn't want it. Instead of this pseudo honeymoon marking a beginning, it marked an end that she and Mike both had agreed was inevitable. Too late now to tell him she'd changed her mind. And much too late to chart a different course.

CHAPTER NINE "A DRESS will do," had been Mike's unhelpful suggestion when Isobel asked him what to wear for the evening ahead. So she'd chosen the teal-blue pleated silk chiffon she'd had the foresight to pack, and worn his cameo brooch pinned at the shoulder and her greatgrandmother's diamond studs in her ears. Just as well she went to so much trouble. He'd chartered one of the motor yachts that offered dining and dancing beneath the stars of San Francisco Bay. Festooned in tiny lights from stem to stern, it bobbed gently at its mooring, white-uniformed skipper and crew waiting to receive them when their limousine drew up shortly before eight. Mike did it again, created another idyllic setting. Champagne cocktails served on the canopied aft deck, with the best of Andrew Lloyd Webber playing in the background. The city skyline rising up against approaching dusk. The Golden Gate and Bay bridges backlit by another spectacular sunset. Then, with the faintly damp chill of evening closing in, dinner by candlelight in the main saloon, an elegant affair of gazpacho and crayfish mousse, artichokes and heart of- palm salad, followed by medallions of veal bathed in brandy and broiled to perfection over the live coals of a hibachi suspended over the stern of the boat. And seated across from her a man in a white dinner jacket and black tie, admiring her with eyes whose color matched her dress. A man who, by anyone's standards, rose a cut above the ordinary. Tall, dashing, intelligent, amusing and so utterly beautiful that it made her heart ache just to look at him. She tried to hide it, tried hard to backpedal to a time when she'd been in charge of her feelings, but it was no use. Despite all the reasons not to do so, she was falling more in love with him by the minute.

"I thought a secluded party for two would be preferable to joining a crowd of twenty," Mike said wryly, watching her chase the same morsel of veal around her plate at least four times before she tried to hide it under a mushroom, "yet I get the feeling you're not exactly enjoying my company. Is it something I said or did?" "No." She shook her head and attempted a smile that fell pitifully short of the real thing. "Not at all." "The food's not right? The wine's too dry?" He made big, mock-serious eyes at her. "You're feeling seasick?" "No. Everything's very.. .nice." "Very race?" He rested one elbow on the linen-covered table and regarded her soberly for a moment. "Okay, Isobel, out with it. What's wrong?" What was the point in pretending? Even if she could have continued the charade for another day, hadn't she promised to be honest about her feelings? "I want to go back to Vancouver," she said. "Why? Are you homesick?" He sat up a little straighter. "Or are you trying to tell me you've got me out of your system already?" "Just the opposite, I'm afraid. You're entrenching yourself more deeply. And I simply can't allow that to happen." "We can't always control destiny, Isobel," he said. "We don't have to get swept along helplessly by it, either, Mike. We can make choices." "And yours is to run away? How does that help?"

"If you found yourself in the path of a speeding locomotive, would you just stand there and let it mow you down?" "No. But I wouldn't close my eyes and pretend it wasn't there, either. I'd face up to the situation and figure out a way to come to terms with it. But we're not dealing with that sort of life-and-death crisis, we're dealing with feelings." "Precisely." She took a sip from her wineglass, morbidly fascinated by the way her hand shook in rhythm with her voice. "And mine are on the verge of running out of control." "In case you haven't noticed, mine aren't exactly comatose." Removing the glass from her hand, he twined her fingers in his. "You're not the only one with self- truths to unravel, my darling, so instead of cutting the weekend short, why don't we stay and try to work things out? What's the worst that can happen, after all?" "That one of us will get hurt." "I'm willing to take the chance." "You're not the one in danger." "Wrong, counselor," he said. "And you ought to know better than to leap to such unsubstantiated conclusions when you haven't the first idea of what's at stake for me in all this." "I'm more deeply involved with you than I ever intended, Michael." He wrapped her hand in both of his and kissed the tips of her fingers. "So?" "We're mismatched. You said so yourself, and you're right. Take away the sex, and what do we have left?"

"A mutual sympathy for underdogs, both human and animal?' "Please don't joke about this," she reproached him. "It's not funny." He let go of her hand rather abruptly. "It's not a tragedy, either, unless you choose to make it one. For crying out loud, Isobel, there's nothing dishonorable about having deep feelings for someone. Or is there? Is the real truth that you can't quite come to terms with the fact that I'm not a clone of all those tailored three- piece suits stalking around your office building?" Goaded by the sneer she heard in his voice, she spat out her reservations. "Even a three-piece suit wouldn't disguise the fact that you're ruthless in going after what you want, and that's what I can't come to terms with— the fear that I'm letting physical attraction blind me to the man inside, the one whose sympathy for the underdog stops short at anyone or anything that gets in the way of what he wants. You'd have me believe there's no risk attached to my becoming more deeply involved with you, but that's not true. What if Andy's found guilty and sent to prison? Where will that leave our relationship?" "This isn't about Andy, it's about us—about your feelings for me and whether or not you dare to run with them—so stop trying to shift the focus elsewhere." "I'm not, I'm just trying to be realistic. And the truth is that the physical aspect of our relationship is muddying other important issues like compatibility and trust. You and I are fundamentally opposite. We come from--" "Two different worlds?" he cut in scornfully. "Gee, didn't someone once write a song about that?" "Mike, please!"

"Please nothing! Your trouble, Isobel, is that you're too ready to be deceived by appearances. You look at me and you see something that doesn't quite measure up to your high social standards. That's the real problem here, isn't it?" "No!" she exclaimed. "That's unfair, and you know it." "What's unfair," he shot back, "is that you've never once been interested enough to find out for yourself exactly what sort of man I am. What's unfair is that you made a character judgment about me based on the opinion of someone like Bobbie Griffiths. Your mind was made up before you met me, and you've steadfastly refused to accept that you might have been misled, if not downright misinformed. Pity that you couldn't resist my animal magnetism, though. Kind of sullies your reputation in the eyes of those who really matter, doesn't it, that for all your lofty intellectual aspirations, you've fallen so low on the social scale that you're keeping company with a working stiff like me?" "I don't know what you're talking about." "Yes, you do, Isobel, because we talked about it before, that day at the vet's, but you managed to make me feel like such a heel that I backed off from the truth." He flung down his napkin and glared across the table at her. "I'm like the common cold, something that attacked without warning. Except that, instead of simply running my course and going away, I've had the nerve to develop complications, and that's really screwing things up for you, isn't it?" "You make me sound hard and calculating," she cried. "If I'd known this was how you'd react, I'd never have admitted to my true feelings. But we'd agreed to be honest and I thought it was only fair to let you know that things had changed for me."

"Pity you didn't consider they might have changed for me, too. You're not the only one taken by surprise, Isobel. Mid my share of lying awake beside you in the small hours of last night, wrestling with my own private demons." She stared at him, nonplussed. "Are you saying that your feelings for me run deeper than you first thought?" she whispered. He half-turned away from her, his expression bleak. "I'm saying I was willing to take a weekend to find out, instead of aborting the whole exercise because the results threatened to turn my life upside down." "Then why didn't you say so sooner?" She closed her eyes, remorse flooding through her. "Why did you have to preface it with hurtful insults?" "Because I'm not the type to lie down and let you walk all over me to prove myself worthy of your outpouring of grudging affection. The day I feel ready to tell a woman I'm in love with her, Isobel, it'll be one hundred percent or nothing, and I'm not about to offer the best I've got to someone who isn't sure she finds it good enough." He pushed away from the table. "Let's go. With any luck, we'll be able to reserve space on tomorrow's first flight back to Vancouver. No point in hanging around here now that we're not having fun any more, is there?" "Michael, no... please!" Before he could escape, she was out of her chair and at his side, her hands tangling with his hair, her mouth at his temple. He suffered her attentions in silence, only the shuttered expression in his eyes betraying his pain. Appalled at what she'd done, she slid down to his lap. "I've hurt you and I'm sorry," she said, interspersing the words with kisses. "Forgive me, please. If I sometimes sound arrogant, it's not because I think I'm better. It's because I'm afraid to believe in love."

"Because you have never been loved, that's why," he said, still refusing to meet her gaze. "What you and your ex-husband had, it wasn't love, it was rage and resentment and brute force—a violation of every standard by which decent men live. But I am not Richard. I don't get my kicks from making a woman unhappy." "You don't make me unhappy. It's not your fault that I'm insecure." She held him close, pressed kisses into his hair. "And inexperienced. I feel like a schoolgirl with you, Mike. Jealous, unsure, afraid. All those women's names in your phone book—" "Good God, did you commit every one to memory?" The question vibrated against her heart. "No, but there were a lot of them." "Three. Four at the most. And one of them's my sister." "I didn't know that, and I couldn't help myself. Couldn't help wondering if you were..." "What?" "I don't know how to phrase it." He gave a snort of reluctant laughter. "Hell, don't go all coy and tactful on me now. Just spit it out and have done with it." She debated hedging, but decided he was right. It was a bit too late to worry about damage control. In any case, he was softening toward her. She could feel it in the heavy pressure of his head against her breasts, in the way his hands were resting at her hips, in the rusty purr of his voice. "I was afraid you might be nothing but a philanderer," she said.

"Philanderer?" he echoed incredulously. "Good God, I thought that term died with Errol Flynn!" "A playboy, then. One of those men who can't commit to just one woman." "And now?" He raised his mouth to her throat, settled it at the spot where her pulse throbbed erratically. "It dossn't matter," she murmured, her breathing frayed and tattered. "That's the whole trouble. When I'm with you, nothing else matters. And I've never felt like this before—at the mercy of my emotions. If I were to react this way with my clients, in court—" His hands slipped to her hips, cupped the curve of her bottom and pulled her more snugly against him. "You're my lover, Isobel, not my lawyer. One has nothing to do with the other." She exhaled shakily. "Just as well," she breathed, aware of his fingers inching the pleated chiffon skirt of her dress up past her knees. Dear heaven, it was happening again, that inner trembling, that pooling heat she could neither subdue nor conceal. "Michael, the steward. What if he..." "He won't," Mike said, smoothing his palm over the strip of bare thigh above her silk stockings. "Not until I ring for him."

They caught the early flight home on Monday morning. He dropped her off outside the office just before ten and promised to call later with an update on Basil.

Myrtle had coffee ready and waiting. "Well, how was it?" she asked, eyes dancing behind the rhinestone- rimmed glasses. "Wonderful, marvelous or just plain out of this world?" "Very nice," Isobel said, trying hard to keep her lips primly compressed and failing completely. "In other words, sensational." "That just about covers it." Myrtle beamed. "Where'd you go?" "San Francisco. Spent the first day exploring the city and yesterday hot-air ballooning over the Napa Valley." Not to mention making love on the plush carpet in the saloon of the motor yacht on Saturday night, again on a picnic blanket under a secluded tree in the wine country, and all those other hours in between dusk and dawn when sleep had been the last thing on their minds.Thank heaven she'd come to her senses in time to persuade him to give their relationship another chance. Begging hadn't come easily to her, but it had been that or let pride destroy something that promised to enrich both their lives past anything she'd imagined possible. "So how's everything here?" Giving herself a mental shake, Isobel disciplined her thoughts to bear on business. "Anything interesting transpire while I was gone?" "Not much." Myrtle consulted the notepad she'd brought in with the coffee. "The police report on that hit-and-run accident came in, also the insurance claim on the vandalism at the day-care center. Mrs. McCallum wants to revise her will—again. Had another fight with her grandson or something. And Mark Vanderhorn of Jessup and

North phoned and would like you to call him back when you've got a minute. And just in case that's not enough to bring you back to earth with a vengeance, don't forget the retirement reception for Justice Carver at the Hyatt this evening." "I had forgotten," Isobel admitted. "That means I won't have time to go home and change. I hardly think what I'm wearing now or what I've got in my suitcase is appropriate." "Then you'll have to go shopping during your lunch break," Myrtle declared cheerfully. "Lucky you, if that's the extent of your problems. Oh, one other thing before I forget. Joseph Raines called. Said it's rather important and that he'll get back to you later this afternoon." If Isobel had been her usual alert self, she'd have paid attention to the twinge of uneasiness inspired by Myrtle's last tidbit of information. Joseph Raines was a master of understatement. What struck him as rather important was tantamount to critically urgent in anyone else's book. But her best intentions notwithstanding, she was still in thrall to the weekend just past—a lapse she bitterly regretted when Joe phoned again around two that afternoon. His opening remark, phrased as a question, was enough to trigger alarm bells in her mind. "Well, Isobel," he began, all sly geniality, "any chance your client—what's her name, Billie Griffiths?—might change her story in this matter of the kidnapped baby?" "Bobbie Griffiths," Isobel said, not for a minute fooled by his apparent befuddlement. "And if you're asking me if she's decided to drop the charges against your client, the answer's no." "Heh, heh!" The chuckle rolled out on oiled wheels, confident and full of malicious delight at the surprise its owner had waiting in the wings. Whatever news he had to impart, it wasn't good. Isobel could feel it in her bones. "Well, it has been known to happen, and I

confess—heh, heh!—I'd prefer for your sake that this was one of those times." "Really? And why is that, Joe?" "Because I like you, Isobel, my dear. I find you a refreshing change from some of the pompous dolts who pass for lawyers these days, and I'm not going to enjoy seeing you made a fool of in court." Doing her best to ignore the goose bumps crawling up her spine, Isobel aimed to project cool amusement. "Don't worry, Joe. I'm not about to let you do that." "Oh, not I, m'dear! The mere thought is anathema to me." "Then who?" Isobel asked sharply, tired of the games. "What is it you're trying to tell me?" He sighed as though loath to burden her with his revelation. "Brace yourself, Isobel. There's no easy or pleasant way to say this." "Just cut to the chase, Joe, and put me out of my misery." "Very well. A private investigator's report shows that, over this last weekend, your client met with a couple and finalized an arrangement in which she agreed to relinquish all claim to her baby in exchange for financial remuneration." "What!" "She made arrangements to sell her baby on the black market. If she has her way, the deal will be completed within the next week." Joseph sounded altogether too sure of himself for Isobel's peace of mind. "I don't believe you!" she exclaimed, less because that was the

truth than because it was the sort of response expected of her, given that she was supposed to be representing Bobbie. "Consider for a moment Mr. Bishop's repeated claim that he's the baby's father. If my client didn't want to be saddled with a child, why wouldn't she simply have let him assume all future responsibility?" "For the money, m'dear. The natural father doesn't have to buy the privilege of bringing up his own child if the mother cannot or should not be left to do the job herself. But with the shortage of available infants, childless couples who wish to adopt are prepared to pay plenty—a small fortune, in this case. Ms. Griffiths thought it all out very carefully. This was not a spur of the moment plan, I assure you." "You-sound very sure of yourself," Isobel said, well aware that the observation was absurdly redundant, given that Joe was never anything less than completely certain of his facts before he opened his mouth. "My dear, the whole seedy enterprise was captured on a videotape, which sits before me on my desk even as we speak. The evidence is quite conclusive, I'm afraid, particularly since, toward the end, your client became aware that she'd been caught red-handed and allowed her annoyance to incriminate her further." "I would like to see the tape." "Naturally. I will have a copy—" "The original, Joe, not a copy. And I want to know when the investigation of my client began." "She has been closely monitored for quite some time. How else would it have been possible to catch her in the act, as it were?" "And who ordered the investigation?"

"I'd have thought that was self-evident." And who could that be but Mike Callahan, the man who'd threatened, the day he'd first barged into her office, I'll hire the best... and blow you and your tarty client out of the water. He'd made no secret of the fact that he had little respect for lawyers, so she supposed it made a sick sort of sense that he'd try to humiliate her this way, the sneaky, manipulative, dishonest... Aargh! The words had not been invented to do justice to his utter duplicity—or her reckless stupidity. The romantic fantasy she'd found so captivating as recently as fifteen minutes ago lost its hazy, dreamlike edge as reality took over and brought the picture into painfully sharp focus. The whole reasoning behind their weekend getaway had been flimsy from the first, but she'd been too moonstruck to acknowledge it. Now she was paying the price. Dropping her forehead against the heel of her hand, Isobel released her breath in a slow hiss of rage. She'd been set up. Whisked out of town and plied with sex so that the wheels Mike Callahan had set in motion could turn without hindrance. He was a master of exploitation and she nothing but a tool at his disposal. How gullibly she'd swallowed the line about their having the right to some private time away from the demands of his business and her profession. How adroitly he'd manipulated the situation when she'd threatened to cut the weekend short, turning things around so that she was the one who'd groveled, begging him to give their relationship another chance! How he must have been laughing inside at her remorseful outpourings. I've hurt you, she'd said. Forgive me... it's not your fault.

Dimly, she realized that Joseph Raines was still talking, nattering on about her not being to blame, that he'd had his share of dishonest clients, too. "Don't lose any sleep over being hoodwinked, Isobel," he finished. "It's not worth it. What matters is that everything came to light before any permanent damage was done." "Yes," she said dully. "You're right. No permanent damage has been done." Except for her heart being trampled in the dust. And her self-esteem being in rags. And her trust being shattered. "I've spoken with my client already," Joe went on. "He's not interested in pressing charges, but he does want his child, and if Miss Griffiths attempts to throw any more obstacles in his path, she will find herself in court, and I doubt, once the facts are laid out, that a judge would look kindly on her reactions. I suggest, m'dear, that you advise her to cooperate." Myrtle, coming into the office shortly after the conversation with Joe ended, stopped short in the doorway. "You look like death warmed over, boss! What did that old goat Raines want with you?" "You were right about Bobbie Griffiths," Isobel admitted wearily. "She did have a secret agenda, and it's turned out to be pretty ugly." "And for that you've gone all green around the gills? Ye gods, Isobel, don't beat yourself up over her. She's not worth it. Anyway, what's she done that's so terrible?" Isobel shook her head, too disheartened to go over the details again. "I'll tell you later. For now, will you try to track her down and get her in here? I have a few things to say to her face before I wash my hands of the case once and for all."

"Sure. Anything else?" "Yes. If Mike Callahan phones, tell him I'm too busy to speak to him." "What if you're not—too busy, that is?" "I will be," Isobel declared emphatically. "I don't want to talk to him under any circumstances, ever again. Is that clear?" Myrtle rolled her eyes. "No. But I'm here to serve, not point out the error of your ways. Mr. Callahan will not intrude on your afternoon." Nor did he. Isobel's meeting with Bobbie Griffiths was uninterrupted and extremely unpleasant. "How did you ever manage to convince yourself you'd get away with this?" she demanded, when the woman eventually broke down and admitted the truth of her actions. "I was going to disappear," Bobbie muttered sullenly. "My boyfriend's being paroled from jail soon and then him and me were going to live where nobody would find us. He promised he'd marry me if I got rid of the kid and got enough money together for us to move somewhere else and make a fresh start. I reckon it was the least I could do to make up for having had a bit of a fling with Andy Bishop. I never would've looked at him twice, you know, if Petie hadn't been gone so long, but I got lonely." "Your boyfriend's in jail?" Isobel rolled her eyes in disbelief and waited for the other shoe to drop. "My God, Bobbie, was anything you told me the truth? You're lucky not to be winding up behind bars yourself. Fortunately, Andy Bishop's more interested in getting on with his life than he is in bringing charges against you. But before you pin your hopes on this boyfriend of yours, be aware that when a person's released from prison on parole, he's required to remain in

close touch with his supervising officer. Dropping out of sight isn't an option unless he wants to end up back where he's just come from." By the end of the interview, Isobel felt as if she'd been put through the heavy-duty cycle of a malfunctioning washing machine—wrung out, emotionally depleted and slightly unclean. The prospect of going to the Hyatt and putting on a party face for the retiring Justice Carver was a bit more than she felt able to cope with alone. However, going home to an empty condominium and drowning her sorrows in iced tea didn't exactly appeal, either. She picked up the phone, punched in the number of the private line at Basil's office and heaved a sigh of relief when he answered on the first ring. "Hi," she said. "I've got a social commitment I can't get out-of and feel in need of a friendly shoulder to lean on. How'd you like to escort me to a cocktail reception in half an hour's time, if I promise to take you out for dinner after?" Bless his sweet heart, he didn't cavil at the short notice or beleaguer her with questions. He simply said, "I'll be right over to pick you up." "I'm calling it a day, Myrtle," she announced, pausing briefly at her secretary's desk a few minutes later. "Thanks for holding my calls. Did I miss anything important?" "If by that you mean, did Mike Callahan phone, the answer is yes, more than once. He didn't seem to believe you were too busy to speak to him, probably because I had difficulty sounding sincere when I relayed the message." "Too bad for him. I don't owe him any explanations." "Too bad for you I won't accept that. What's going on here, Isobel?"

Heart contracting to the size and texture of a wizened old prune, she spun around and found him blocking the entrance to Myrtle's cubicle. It was the original Callahan model, blue-eyed, blue-jeaned, combative and not about to be thwarted. And it was obvious from the way he braced one arm to bar her exit that he wasn't going to let her go until she'd given him an answer to his question. Oh, the temptation to pour out her hurt and disappointment! To give in to the tears, to hurl accusations, recriminations. To make a bigger fool of herself than she already had! But she was a Whitelaw, and Whitelaws didn't make scenes, especially not in public. They conducted themselves with dignity. "I'd have thought it was obvious," she said, marshaling the dregs of her composure to concoct the biggest lie of her life. "I don't wish to continue our association." If she hadn't known better, she might have been fooled into believing he really was as baffled as he pretended to be. The speculative gray that softened the brilliance in his blue eyes might have struck her as genuine. She might have thought the sudden tightening of his beautiful, lying mouth symptomatic of hurt rather than cunning."Mind explaining that?" he inquired laconically. She sighed, as though beset by the utmost tedium. "I tried to tell you this on Saturday night, but you didn't want to hear it. Perhaps, at the time, I wasn't quite ready to accept it myself." "What the hell is all this leading up to, Isobel?" "I made a grave error of judgment when I confided to you that my feelings were growing more... serious. That is not the case." "Really? You could have fooled me. I'd have said, based on some pretty substantial evidence, that you and I were—"

"No!" She raised her hand in denial. "There is no 'we,' and I must ask you please to accept my decision as final." "And if I choose not to cooperate?" She sighed, a cool, regretful little gust of air quite at odds with the storm raging within. "I was hoping it wouldn't come to anything quite this painful," she said. "However, if you won't allow me to bow out gracefully, you leave me no choice but to be blunt. I allowed myself to get caught up in a beautiful fantasy, Michael, one which, sadly, does not stand up in the clear light of day. What we had—thought we had, in San Francisco, is not the stuff that reality is made of." "And when did this momentous realization take place?" "Practically from the moment I stepped back into this office and resumed my normal life." "I see. In other words, you made your choice." "Choice?" "On Saturday night you said people had choices, that they didn't have to be prisoner to their feelings. You've obviously managed to talk yourself out of yours." "If that was in fact the case," she said, her control growing more brittle by the minute, "you must surely agree that my feelings couldn't have been all that strong to begin with, to be so soon and easily dismissed." He lifted his shoulders in a cavalier shrug, as much as to say, Ho, hum, you win a few, you lose a few. Life's a real yawn some days. "Not if you say so, Ms. Whitelaw."

"I realize we have a few strands of unfinished business to tie off. Basil and her pups still require homes, and I won't renege on my responsibility to them." "But you have no regrets about ditching me?" Her palms were damp with sweat, her throat tight with anguish. It was all she could do to look at his beautiful face and continue the lies. "A few. I should never have allowed myself to become involved with you in the first place. I knew that at the time and unwisely chose to ignore the fact. The bottom line is—" "That I'm not quite good enough?" Was any man good enough if he resorted to deceit to win? If the means by which he achieved his ends included playing fast and loose with another person's feelings? Wasn't this just another form of abuse, and hadn't she had her fill of that already? "Not quite, no," she said.

CHAPTER TEN FACED with a number of choices, all of them likely to land him behind bars if he acted on them, Mike called on the iron will that was so integral to his way of life and drawled, "In that case, let's sever the connection right now. I'll take on the job of finding homes for Basil and the litter. Hell, I've done most of the work involved already, so what's one more item? And I'm not sure the kind of people you'd decide are suitable are the sort I'd particularly trust. Neither Basil nor her babies have a pedigree, after all, so it's unlikely they'd be well received in your circles." Aware of Myrtle's stricken face in the background, he raised his hand in a salute. "So long, Myrtle. It's been a real blast." Behind him the elevator doors swished open and closed again, and in that brief slice of time the answers Isobel had been unwilling to supply showed up in the shape of her escort from the Saturday night social shindig, all spit and polish and well-bred smiling charm. "Oh, hello!" he said affably. "Callahan, isn't it? We met at the Dogwood Club the other week." "We did?" Mike glowered and strode past, uncaring that his churlish attitude merely reinforced Isobel's low opinion of him. "Well, what can I say? Stuff happens sometimes. We just have to make the best of it." Balling-his hand into a fist, he gave the elevator button a savage chop. By contrast, the conversation taking place in Myrtle's cubbyhole of an office floated over the partition to his unwilling ears, so graciously civilized that he wanted to puke. "Sorry I'm a bit late for our date, Isobel."

"Never mind, Basil. You're here now, and that's what matters." Abandoning his wait for the next elevator car, Mike shoved open the door to the stairs and pounded the fifteen flights down to the street. He might have had little choice but to stand there while she lambasted him with polite rejections, but he'd be damned if he was about to tolerate being held captive audience while she dripped welcome all over What's-His-Face. Outside, the August heat hit him like a wall, heavy and humid. Leaves on the trees lining the street next to the courthouse hung listless and dusty. Across the harbor, a thin ribbon of yellowish smog backed up against the mountains, extending all the way past the lighthouse to where he lived. He had to get away, turn back to the one thing that never let him down. He couldn't accept a commission right then, of course—in his present frame of mind, that'd be nothing short of suicidal, and she wasn't worth dying for. But there was a place on the west coast of the island where the air was pure and the black coral reputed to be among the best anywhere, and he had a friend who'd been after him for weeks to go down and help film it. It was time to take him up on the offer. "Can I leave you to look after things here for a few days?" he asked Andy that night. "Basil's about ready to come home and might need help coping with the new family." "Sure. It'll be good practice for me," Andy said. About to forage in the refrigerator for a beer, Mike paused and looked over his shoulder, alerted by a certain smugness in his nephew's tone. "Has something happened that I should know about?"

"Nothing that can't wait a day or two. Go and have a good time—and be careful." "I always am. Not that there's much to worry about on this trip. No exotic gases or unpleasant surprises waiting below three hundred feet, just clean water and unspoiled marine life at a safe depth. It'll be a nice change." He left the next morning, loading the truck with his double tanks and dry suit and catching the eight o'clock ferry from Horseshoe Bay. It was another in a seemingly endless series of perfect summer days. Basil had tried, during their evening together, to talk to her about Mike. "Remember I said I knew his name from somewhere? Well, it came to me when I bumped into him just now. He's—" But she hadn't wanted to know. "Please, let's talk about something else," Isobel had begged, and so had only herself to blame for the shock she suffered when, three days after she'd sent Mike Callahan out of her life forever, a sober-faced Myrtle rushed her down to the company's employee lounge to catch the tail end of a televised news report. "A hero by anyone's standards, Mr. Callahan always recognized the risks inherent in his work, but it is unlikely he ever expected it would be here, in the waters he knew best, that he'd meet his greatest challenge. To repeat—Mike Callahan, internationally known deep-sea salvage diver, is fighting for his life after a freak accident in the waters off the west coast of Vancouver Island. Further bulletins will be issued as they become available. We now return to the program regularly aired at this time." "There must be some mistake," Isobel intoned, staring glassy-eyed at the TV screen. "Some other man with the same name."

But the photograph shown, obviously taken under happier circumstances on the deck of a boat in the blazing sun of some country half a world away, refuted her claim. There might conceivably be a hundred Mike Callahans, but only hers had that daredevil grin and eyes as blue and dazzling as the ocean behind him. "There's no mistake, Isobel. This is our man," Myrtle said hollowly. "I heard at the beginning of the report that he was flown to the Hyperbaric Unit at Vancouver Hospital late this morning. I assume you'll want to go over there?" "Yes... yes." "Then I'll call for a taxi." "I must cancel my afternoon appointments—" ''That's part of my job description, Isobel, not yours. You just concentrate on getting your hide over to that hospital. Mike needs you by his side." Unfortunately, not everyone agreed with that, as Isobel discovered when she arrived at the Hyperbaric Unit and asked for an update on Mike's condition. "Are you a relative?" the nurse behind the counter wanted to know. Wasn't she? Wasn't the woman he'd made such ardent love to less than a week ago related in a way that went beyond blood connections? "I'm a very ...we're very close." "I'm afraid that's not quite the same thing."

Isobel wet lips so dry it was a wonder the skin didn't crack open, and tried to bring herself to ask the only question that had any relevance. "Please, can't you at least tell me if he's going to... if he'll..." "I'm sorry," the nurse said, compassion underlining the firmness in her voice. "I really cannot give you any more information, but I believe there is to be another press release later this afternoon. Perhaps you'll learn more then. In the meantime, I suggest you go home. There's certainly no point in your staying here." "No," Isobel said, refusing to budge. "No, I can't leave. I won't. I have to tell him..." She bit her lip, hard enough that she tasted blood but not enough to displace the other pain, the one that she would carry to her grave if she didn't get to see him again, to tell him she loved him and always would, no matter what he felt he had to do to protect his family. The outside door swung open to admit Andy and a woman in her late thirties. "Isobel!" he exclaimed. "How did you get here so fast? I only just phoned your office." "I saw the news report on television." Andy nodded and grasped her hand. "Listen, I'm sorry I didn't get around to calling you sooner, but—" "Is he going to die, Andy?" "Jesus, I hope not! The last we heard, he was holding his own. By the way, this is Lydia, my mother and Mike's sister." Lydia... the throaty contralto on the phone, amused, indulgent. Tell him I called... he's got my number....

"How do you do?" Isobel said, years of polite habit steering her past the urge to collapse in a soggy heap of tears at the woman's feet. "I'm very sorry about your brother's accident." "Thank you." Lydia regarded her curiously. "Have you known Mike long? I don't recall hearing him mention your name." "We met only a short time ago but we've grown... quite close and I'm anxious to know how he's doing." Lydia swiped wearily at the wisps escaping the knot of hair at her nape. "I'll let Andy fill you in while I go scrounge up some coffee for us. I don't know about you two, but I could use a jolt of caffeine." Isobel waited until they were alone before turning again to Andy. "I have to see him, Andy." The nurse overheard and immediately threw up another roadblock. "That's out of the question. Visitors are not admitted to the hyperbaric area under any circumstances. Even with family authorization, the best you'll be able to do is wait until the patient can be moved to the anteroom down the hall and visit him there, something that isn't likely to happen for at least another four hours." The outer door swung open again and the nurse immediately switched her attention to the latest arrival. "Oh, good, they were able to track you down, Dr. Home." "Yes," a familiar voice replied. "Some diver with a bad case of decompression sickness has been brought in, I hear. Got him set up yet?" "The patient's in the chamber, but..." The nurse cast a quick glance at Isobel and Andy and, lowering her voice, relayed information she clearly did not wish them to overhear.

Isobel, however, had more important things on her mind than eavesdropping. "John!" she exclaimed, rushing to her brother-in-law. He swung around at the sound of her voice, astonishment imprinted on his face. "What the blazes are you doing here, Isobel?" Quite how she'd explain to her family her involvement with Mike, should the occasion ever have arisen, was something she'd wondered about more than once in the past few weeks, but never had she imagined she'd simply blurt out, "They've got the man I'm going to marry in there and they won't let me see him. Tell them they have to, John!" "The man you're going to marry? The one we saw you with at the—" "Yes." "Good Lord, I had no idea!" John digested the news with a faint shrug, slipped his arm around her shoulder and led her past the nursing station toward a heavily secured door at the end of a wide corridor. "Mrs. Holloway, I'll take responsibility for allowing my sister- in-law.. ." "Of course." Although she clearly disapproved, the nurse nodded. "You realize that the closest you'll get to him is looking through one of the portholes," John warned, leading her into a room in the middle of which stood what looked very much like a dirty yellow submarine. "If he's conscious, he'll be able to hear you talk to him through the intercom, but there won't be any hand- holding or stuff like that. He's undergoing hyperbaric oxygenation, which, in layman's terms, means he's in a high-pressure chamber to increase the oxygen content of his blood."

"But how did this happen to him?" Isobel whispered, almost as ashamed as she was terrified. Blinded by a combination of cowardice and misplaced intellectual snobbery, she'd refused to show any interest in Mike's work, foolishly believing that the less she knew about him, the easier it would be to keep her affections under control and thereby avoid making another disastrous mistake like Richard. As if there was even the slightest resemblance between the two men! They were polar opposites in every way, with Mike so far beyond anything Richard could ever have amounted to that it was nothing short of heresy to entertain the comparison. Well, she was living with her punishment now, floundering so deeply in abysmal ignorance and guilt that she had no idea which questions to ask or what sort of answers to expect. "He surfaced too quickly from a dive," John said, scanning the chart someone handed to him. "Was down about eighty feet, it seems, and came shooting up without taking the time to decompress. That's resulted in his getting a very bad case of the bends brought on by expanding nitrogen bubbles blocking his capillaries and causing an embolism." "Embolism?" The very word struck terror in her heart. "Couldn't that be fatal?" "It's possible but not probable. In this sort of incident, most fatalities occur from accidents suffered when the victim isn't rescued and brought in for treatment soon enough. But the coast guard helicopter got him to us fairly quickly, so I'd say the chances are pretty good that he'll pull through. "The pressure inside the chamber is now at the same level as that at which he was diving," John went on. "He'll remain in there until that pressure's safely reduced to normal—about fifteen pounds per square

inch. Meanwhile, the nursing team will be monitoring him very closely, and I'm on standby in case an anesthetist is required." "You mean, you'll go into that... thing?" "No, I'm the doctor in charge and act as the nurse's contact in and out of the chamber. I'll stay for the first part of the treatment—just as a precaution until they stabilize him." Other hospital personnel, observing through two of the four portholes set in the side of the submarine, eyed Isobel curiously but made no comment. Beckoning her toward one of the two remaining windows, John pointed to the interior of the chamber. "There he is, Isobel. Unfortunately, he seems to be unconscious, so you won't be able to talk to him, after all." Up to that moment, Isobel had managed to hold herself together—not well, admittedly, but somehow she'd managed. All those facets of personality and upbringing that made her the person she was—the discipline, determination, pride—had joined forces and propelled her through the motions of reaching Mike's side with but one goal in mind—to infuse him, by the sheer force of her love, with the tenacity and will to go beyond survival all the way to recovery. How else could they ever find a tomorrow together? No one guessed at the silent thunder of a heart driven by dread, or the blinding anguish of uncertainty and fear, or the useless, merciless longing to turn back time, to unsay the hurts, to reveal the truths. No one guessed that the wires connecting her to sanity were stretched to the absolute limit. That simply to place one foot in front of the other required mammoth effort. That the shrieking fear inside her skull hammered for release. None of that became apparent until she came to a stop at the window of the chamber and looked at the scene within.

He lay on what appeared to be an ambulance stretcher, his big, strong, beautiful body covered only by a sheet. They had put some sort of breathing apparatus down his throat, and there were cables affixed to his chest and needles with tubes attached stuck into his arms. A nurse in a drab green coverall watched a cardiac monitor. Another checked his blood pressure. And all the time, they talked about him, casually tossing out jargon as if he was just another textbook case, their every word clearly heard via the intercom. "Pressure's a bit low," one observed. "Heart rate's a bit erratic, too," the other chipped in. "Hope he isn't going to arrest on us. Glad you're here, Dr. Home. We might need you." And that was when, without warning, Isobel disintegrated. Not quietly or discreetly. Not swabbing aside silent tears with a lace-edged hankie, but with a raucous, ugly tearing succession of sobs that erupted from the gaping hole that suddenly became her mouth and flowed into every tiny nook and cranny of the universe. And running through them, her anguished, horrified petitions. "Oh, please, God! Please, God! Please, God!" "Take her away," John commanded, pushing her aside. "Get her out of here." "Yes," someone said. "Come along, my dear." "No!" It was not the coolly controlled Isobel Whitelaw her brother-in-law knew, not the low-key, capable lawyer with whom Joseph Raines was familiar, who uttered the defiance. It was a creature in torment reaching into the pit of her grief and flinging forth the only weapon left at her disposal—denial, pure and simple. No, she would not leave him.

No, his heart would not stop, and he would not die. No, she had not meant to kill him with her self- protective lies. But firm hands closed around her and led her out of the room, away from the inert body of her love."Shock," the nurse at the desk murmured, swimming into Isobel's line of bleary vision and forcing her into a chair. "Drink this." Liquid, hot and sweet, trickled down her throat. Like a naughty child, she slapped aside the cup and sent coffee spattering over her skirt. "This is one reason we don't allow visitors in the unit," the nurse said, with weary resignation. "We've got enough on our hands without having to deal with hysterical girlfriends." Her rebuke accomplished what the coffee had not. "I'm sorry," Isobel said, her voice cracking like century- old tissue paper. "I just wasn't prepared to see him...like that. Or to hear them talking about his heart stopping." "Of course you weren't," the nurse said. "It's inconceivable to most people that a strong, healthy man in his thirties should have his life snuffed out so easily. All I can tell you is that, in Mr. Callahan's case, he isn't going to die. I, on the other hand, just might if I don't get a little cooperation from you. Do yourself and the rest of us a favor, young woman. Don't go pulling any more family strings to get yourself admitted to a place where you have no business being. Your man will be out of the chamber by early evening and probably up to a short visit with you before he settles down for the night." "Isobel?" Andy squatted in front of her and grasped her hands. "I bet you haven't had lunch. Let Lydia and me take you somewhere for a bite to eat."

"No," she said. "What if something happens to Mike while We're gone?" "I've got a cellular phone in my car," Lydia told her. "We'll leave the number with the nurse, and if there's any change, we'll hear about it as soon as it happens. Andy's right. You'll feel better if you eat something. We all will." *** They took her down the street to a little delicatessen that served freshly made sandwiches stuffed full of disgustingly healthy little things like alfalfa sprouts and tofu. "All right," she said, as they sat sipping iced tea while their orders were made up, "tell me how this horrible accident happened." "Mike had gone to the west coast of the island to film the black coral," Andy began. "But of course, you already knew that." "Not exactly." Isobel compressed her lips and blinked away the threat of more tears. "Actually, I haven't spoken to him since Monday afternoon, and he made no mention of it at that time." If Andy was surprised, he hid it well. "Oh. Well, this was something he'd wanted to do for a long time, a planned decompression dive at about two hundred and fifty feet, with Gordon Laskill, a friend who's also an experienced diver, and a couple of other guys. All perfectly normal and safe." "Just a minute." Isobel shook her head, struggling to absorb the information. "What's a planned decompression dive?" "You don't know?" This time, Andy's astonishment showed. "Sorry. I just assumed he'd talked to you enough about his work that you'd understand what I'm talking about."

"No," she said. She swallowed, the enormity of her ignorance about the man she claimed to love looming larger and larger in her conscience. "I know very little about him except that he's brave and strong and good. And that I love him with all my heart." "Well, they're the things that count, Isobel," Andy told her. "All the rest is just window dressing." "But I need to know—to understand. How else can I make sense out of all this?" "Okay. Well, he's probably one of the best known deep-sea salvage divers in the world. I guess he assumed you knew that already so he didn't bother explaining it." Wrong, she thought. To her lasting shame, she was the one who'd made incorrect assumptions. "Salvage diver," she said, rolling the words slowly on her tongue as if doing so would familarize her with them. "Yes. He's the guy they call when a disaster occurs at sea. Things like an oil tanker sinking and springing a leak. He'll go down and plug the hole. Or if a malfunction shows up in a submarine, he'll try to determine the problem. One time, he even got called to the Caribbean to recover the body of a man trapped in an underwater grotto because the next of kin couldn't claim on the life insurance until they produced evidence the policyholder had died." Andy's grin, so like Mike's, flashed briefly. "Cheerful sort of job, isn't it?" "It sounds dangerous." "It is. Extremely. It requires enormous skill and nerve." "But what happened this time? This wasn't that sort of dive, was it?"

"No, it was purely recreational—no hard suits or anything like that." "Hard suits?" "Yeah. Like a sort of articulated armor." He shaped a goldfish-bowl helmet with his hands. "A more sophisticated version of the kind of outfit all divers used in the old days before dry suits came into being. Past a certain depth, they're the only things that do the job." "I see. Go on." "From what we've heard, this morning he'd gone down with double tanks in the planned decompression dive I mentioned. That means that he'd decompressed when he came back to the surface, to avoid getting the bends." "But he got them anyway, so what went wrong?" "He went on another dive less than an hour later, which by itself was asking for trouble." "But surely he knew that?" "Oh, he knew," Andy said, making room on the table for the waitress to place their sandwiches. "I guess, though, that he felt he had no choice." "Why not? Why would he deliberately endanger his life like that?" "About two miles away, a power boat had capsized with a baby trapped inside. Mike and his group heard the Mayday on the dive boat radio and went to help. I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but the other boat's hull had turned turtle—overturned—in about eighty feet of water. The skipper and his wife had managed to escape, their eighteen-month-old son was sleeping in the forward cabin and they

couldn't get to him. Fortunately, he was wearing a life preserver, and the hope was that there'd be enough air trapped in the upturned hull to keep him alive long enough for someone to go down and get him out." "And Mike volunteered for the job." The tears streamed down Isobel's face unchecked. "It's what he does best, isn't it? Rescuing babies?" "Among other things. And with a child's life in the balance, we both know he wouldn't have turned away from the job. The trouble was, it took him longer than expected to get into the boat and find the boy. Once he had, he couldn't afford to take the time to decompress properly, or the baby would have drowned before he could get to the surface. So he deliberately broke the cardinal rule of all experienced divers and shot straight up in seconds flat. And now he's paying the price."Isobel couldn't see through the flood of her tears, but she could hear Lydia's indrawn breath and the husky anguish in Andy's voice and knew she wasn't alone in her grief. "I don't know why he had to rush off in such a hurry to make that damned film," Andy muttered. "Something to do with needing a change of scene in the worst possible way, he said." "He needed to get away from me," Isobel admitted brokenly. "It's my fault he's lying in that... that thing, fighting for his life." Lydia blew her nose. "Rubbish!" she announced. "You and my stubborn brother might have had a disagreement, but that's not the reason he chose to put his life on the line. He'd have made the same decision regardless of how much upheaval was taking place in his private life. Mike isn't the sort to walk away from someone else's crisis without offering to help resolve it. Take it from one who knows, Isobel."

"My mother's right, Isobel." Andy nodded agreement. "What makes you think you're responsible?" "He persuaded me to go away with him for a weekend in San Francisco," Isobel said incautiously. "Later—last Monday, to be exact—I discovered that he'd arranged it deliberately so I wouldn't be here to intervene in a plan he'd cooked up to entrap.. .a client of mine." "You mean Bobbie?" Andy asked. Isobel's sigh was full of regret. "Yes. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, Andy, but Mike hired a private investigator who caught Bobbie in the act of trying to arrange a black-market adoption for your little girl, and-" "Mike didn't hire the PI," Andy interrupted. "I did— with my mom's help. I'm sorry if it caused trouble between you and Mike, Isobel, but after you slapped me with that restraining order, I didn't have much choice. I knew I was the baby's father but I couldn't prove it without DNA tests, and I wasn't going to get those without a judge's ruling. When I heard it would be October before we could get a court hearing, I couldn't just sit on my hands and do nothing. Some sixth sense told me that would be leaving it too late. But I didn't tell Mike because I could see that you and he were... Well, let's say I could see that he'd end up being pulled two ways, and that didn't seem fair. I'm not a kid, and I decided it was time to take matters into my own hands." "Andy's telling the truth," Lydia confirmed. "My boss is the investigator in question, and I can assure you Mike didn't know a thing about it."

"You hired him?" Struggling to take it in, Isobel gaped at them. "But I assumed he had deceived me. I didn't even give him a chance to explain. I simply condemned him and told him—" I made a grave error of judgment— I should never have become involved with you in the first place— You are not quite good enough— She moaned and buried her face in her hands. "Dear heaven, how will I ever face him again?" Right on cue, Lydia's cellular phone rang. She pressed a button and listened attentively for a few seconds, then looked across at Isobel. "You'd better figure it out pretty fast," she said. "Mike's regained consciousness, and they expect to have him out of the chamber in a couple of hours, then we can go and visit him."

CHAPTER ELEVEN HE HAD been through an ordeal that would have left most men flat on their backs for a month. He was tired. It showed in his eyes, shaded smoky purple with a fatigue that left them barely interested enough in the world around them to remain open. It showed in the way his hand rested indifferently on the sheet covering him. But his voice was clear—too clear for there to be any mistaking what he said. "Go away, Isobel." "Mike," she begged, hovering beside the stretcher in the anteroom, aching to touch him but afraid to try. "Michael, I'm sorry. I was wrong. I love you. Let me prove it, please." "I don't want your apologies. I don't want your pity, and I sure as hell don't want your guilt-ridden avowals of love." He turned his head away and stared listlessly out the window. "I want you to go away." She started to cry, not with the raw edge of fear the way she had when she'd looked through the porthole and seen him lying in the hyperbaric chamber, but with the hopeless despair of someone who, too late, realizes she's thrown away something precious and unique. The tears simply filled her eyes and flowed silently down her cheeks in an unending stream of grief. "There's no need for that," he said wearily. "I haven't undergone any life-altering experiences since you told me to take a hike. I'm still the same man who's not quite good enough for you, the same man you were too ashamed to introduce to your family. Nothing's changed." "I've changed," she said, weeping.

"You'll get over it. All it'll take is a night on the town with good old Basil for you to remember who you really are. Now get out of here. I'm going to sleep." His chest rose in a little sigh and he closed his eyes with a finality that brooked no argument. Scrubbing at her tears, she gazed at him, committing his every feature to memory in silent farewell. His lashes fanned thick and spiky and black as soot above cheekbones that seemed more prominent than they had three days ago. Although slightly blurred by the stubble of new beard growth, his jaw remained strong even in repose. Someone—the inestimable Nurse Holloway, probably— had brushed his black hair too neatly. But it was on his mouth that Isobel's gaze lingered and refused to say goodbye. Its lips cleanly molded, its grin subdued for the moment, it held her poised between the heaven of having known him and the hell of having to lose him. How hard was she prepared to fight to keep him? And when was she going to stop running away from what she wanted most in the world? Steeling herself for a final rejection, she sought the answer. Softly, she pressed a kiss at the corner of that beautiful, sexy mouth. Except for a brief flicker of the eyelashes, he did not respond. Undaunted, she grew bolder and kissed him again, full on the mouth this time, and for longer. His lips remained cool and unmoved. Or so he would have had her believe. But somewhere within that big, invincible body, a faint spark flickered. She sensed it in the minute tremor that shook him, in the brief, helpless softening of his mouth. It wasn't much, but it was enough to give her the answer she'd been looking for.

"Sleep well, my darling," she whispered against his lips.

The doctors wanted to keep him hospitalized for three days, but he'd had enough by the next afternoon. "I'm not used to being inactive," he objected, when the truth of the matter was that lying around in bed left him with too much time to dwell on her. Lydia tried to put things right when she came to pick him up. "Isobel thought you were the one who hired Charlie to get the goods on Bobbie," she explained. "She thought that was why you took her to San Francisco for the weekend—to make sure she didn't catch on to what was going down here and try to put a stop to it." As if that made any difference! The bottom line was, Isobel had been right when she'd said they'd tried to build a relationship based on too much sex and not enough trust. Oh, the fantasy of "in love" might be there, but over the long haul it was the other kind of loving that endured, the one that grew from genuine liking and respect. And to pretend they shared that was absurd. He'd given it his best shot, but it had not been quite good enough for Isobel Whitelaw. "I feel that I've come to know her quite well in the last two days," his sister persisted, "and I really like her, Mike. I think you ought to give her another chance." "I decided to stop meddling in your affairs a long time ago, Lydia," he growled. "Now do me the favor of butting out of mine." "She's pretty torn up, little brother." "Shut up, Lydia! I'm not interested. Where'd they hide my things? I want out of here."

"What's your hurry?" She snickered. "The lovelorn shape you're in, you couldn't run up a flight of stairs." "You irritate the hell out of me, Lydia," he replied dourly. "You always did." "Just for that," she said, yanking open the door of the locker in the corner of the room and flinging his clothes at him, "you can get yourself dressed and catch a bus home, because you're not riding in my car." It was four o'clock before they were finally on the road, and by then the rush-hour traffic was in full swing. His sister was a terrible driver, hesitant about who had the right of way and puttering along with one foot on the brake except for those times when, without warning, she suddenly switched lanes and cut in too close behind the car in front. Within three blocks of leaving the hospital, he wished she'd stuck to her threat and left him to fend for himself on the bus. "Look," he said, certain they'd never make it across the congested Lion's Gate Bridge without mishap, "I feel as if I haven't had a decent meal in days. Let's stop somewhere for dinner. By the time we're done, the traffic will have eased up. Either way, we aren't going to be home before seven." "Okay," she said, oversteering so badly that the front wheels of the car climbed the curb as she made a right turn. "What do you fancy? Italian? Indonesian?" "How about a tranquilizer?" he muttered under his breath. As it turned out, it was closer to eight, with the sun already dipping below the horizon, before Lydia pulled up on the parking pad next to his garage. "I won't come in," she said, rather coyly, he thought. "I'm going to get an early night, even if you're not."

He didn't bother to argue. He needed to be alone, to let the quiet calm of his home bandage his wounded soul and soothe his bruised pride. He'd forgotten about Basil, but she hadn't forgotten him. Abandoning her squalling pups in the basket next to the kitchen window, she raced over to greet him the minute he let himself in the front door. "We're a fine pair, Bas," he muttered, fondling her long, floppy ears. "Both of us cast-offs and not knowing where we're headed next." Tongue lolling, eyes rolling, she grinned at him and gave a little yip. "Yeah, I know," he said. "You want to show off your babies." He followed her to the basket and squatted to admire the brood. "They're a fine-looking lot," he admitted, picking up one brawny specimen and cradling it in the palm of his hand. "You must be very proud." The puppy turned its head and nuzzled against his warmth. With the tip of his finger, he stroked the helpless bundle of fur, a curious tenderness welling up inside him at the thought of the uncertain future the little creature faced. Was this how it felt to be a parent, full of impotent yearning to protect, to make the world a better place, safe from danger and cruelty and want? Carefully returning the pup to its littermates, he straightened and turned away, assailed by such a spasm of desolation that, if he hadn't known better, he'd have thought he had the bends all over again. Why couldn't Isobel have shown a little faith? Damn, but it hurt to have come so close to finding the real thing, then have it snatched away again.

She'd spoiled everything, even this house. She was there in the shadows, her spirit swirling around him, calling to him. And he had no way to escape her because that other option, where he simply packed up his gear and set out on another crusade in some far-flung corner of the world, no longer appealed. He wanted to settle down. Be a husband. A father. The realization brought him up short and had him breaking out in a cold sweat. "I need some air," he muttered, swinging open the sliding glass door and, with Basil at his heels, he stepped out to the terrace. The sky was as unblemished as the skin of a ripely perfect melon. Not a breath of air rippled the sea, not a bird stirred. The world was at peace. Why the hell wasn't he? He knew why. And hated the knowledge. "Come on, old girl," he called softly to the dog. "Time to call it a day. Things might not seem any better tomorrow, but they can hardly get any worse." On his way through the main room, he absently picked an apple from the bowl on the dining table and was halfway up the stairs before it occurred to him to wonder who'd taken the trouble to lay in a supply of fresh fruit. The last he remembered, there'd been nothing but a couple of wizened oranges in that bowl. He stopped and turned, casting his head this way and that, the way a wild animal might try to sniff out an enemy. Neatly aligned on the spotless kitchen counter were about a dozen jars of what looked like homemade peach jam. There were flowers in the stone crock on the living room hearth, big showy dahlias creating a gaudy splash of color against the gray stone fireplace. The throw

cushions on the couches were plump and fat and inviting—not the way he'd left them at all. And there was a subtle smell.... He inhaled experimentally and couldn't decide if it was the jam or freshly baked fruit pie. One thing he did know. It wasn't Andy he had to thank for all this domestic comfort, because he could barely boil water. And it wasn't Lydia, either. It had been obvious from the way she'd been babbling over dinner that all her energies were geared toward fixing up a nursery for the granddaughter she was determined to care for until such time as Andy was able to take over the job. Bobbie Griffiths, it appeared, had finally come clean, admitted Andy was her baby's father and agreed to let him shoulder the responsibility of bringing up the child. And the damnable thing was, Mike couldn't find a grain of satisfaction in knowing that he'd been right all along and Isobel had not. Hell, she managed to come up with the wrong answers to just about everything, as far as he could see! But that still didn't answer the question of who'd been making herself at home in his kitchen. He scratched his head, feeling a bit like an oversize Grumpy surveying the efforts of Snow White. And suddenly he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. The way to a man's heart might be through his stomach but the day I stoop to that sort of ploy will be the day I've met the man I can't live without. No wonder he'd felt her spirit in the shadows! Turning on silent feet, he climbed the rest of the stairs and walked the length of the upper corridor to the closed door of his bedroom. In exaggerated slow motion, he saw has fingers reach out and fasten

around the knob. Watched it turn and felt the solid wood door swing smoothly open beneath his touch. The room within danced from a hundred points of light. Short squat candles, tall narrow tapers, votives in glass containers—they were everywhere, their flames reflected in the mirror, the darkened windows, the satin polish of the furniture. And she was in his bed.

She'd rehearsed a thousand ways to greet him but, when he at last appeared in the doorway, every coherent thought fled her mind and the only evidence she had that she wasn't brain dead was the fear racing through her. What was she going to do if he turfed her out into the night? For the longest time, he stood perfectly still, his eyes reflecting nothing but the flames of the candles. At length, he let the door swing closed and stepped farther into the room. Closer and closer he loomed until he was so near to where she waited in the bed that she could have reached out and touched him—if she'd dared. But his expression was unreadable, his posture so gracefully remote that she froze. Was he lover or adversary? She could not tell. With the familiarity of long practice, he felt with his knee for the edge of the mattress and lowered himself to sit with his back leaning against the foot of the bed and his elbows resting on his bent knees. And remained like that, staring at her unblinkingly. Unnervingly. Say something, idiot! that sarcastic inner voice prompted. Or do you plan to spend the rest of the night frozen in place like a piece of furniture? "Hello, Mike," she croaked.

He nodded a slight acknowledgment and continued to regard her with clinical interest. "I wanted to be the one to bring you home from the hospital," she babbled, "but Lydia thought it might be better if I waited here for you." "Lydia is a very meddlesome woman. So, for that matter, are you. How did you get in my house?" "I still have a key. I hope you don't mind that I'm here." "And if I do?" he asked softly. She looked down at her fingers twisting the ribbons of her white nightgown into convoluted spirals. She felt her heart leaping in her breast, the fear rising in her throat. "Then I don't know what I'll do," she said, her tongue suddenly sorting out the truth from all the rest. "But I think, if you turn me away now, that I might die." "Rubbish, Isobel. You'll have your friends, your career, your spotless reputation and your impeccable connections," he said, in that same soft way. "You will, in fact, have everything that's ever seemed important to you." "I will have nothing!" she replied fiercely. "Nothing, do you hear me? Because without you nothing else in my life matters. I love you, Michael, and I will do whatever I must to make you love me, too." He didn't reply to that. He simply watched her as if waiting to see how long she could propagate the lie without faltering. She couldn't bear it. Stretching toward him, she opened her arms. "Punish me all you like tomorrow, Mike," she cried, "but just for tonight, please pretend you love me!"

His response could not have dismayed her more. He held her gaze another long moment and then, with a groan, he lowered his head to his arms. Horrified, she stared at his shaking shoulders, heard the tortured sobs he tried so hard to contain and felt her throat close in similar anguish. "Michael," she implored him. He regained control very quickly, but when he raised his head, his eyes were haunted. "Don't," he said hoarsely. "Don't ever beg like that again. You are too fine to have to grovel to anyone, for anything. The love I feel for you... sweet heaven, Isobel, it doesn't come with conditions attached. It never has. Don't you know that by now?" Did he move first then, or did she? Was it intentional, or did they simply blunder toward each other and accidentally find each other's lips, each other's arms? Did it matter? Yes, it mattered. It mattered more than anything else in the world. Because only then did she dare believe in tomorrow.

They were married in the middle of October, three weeks after six of Basil's puppies had found homes. One went to live with Lydia and the baby, five others went to members of Isobel's family, and the remaining two, along with their mother, took up permanent residence with Mike and Isobel. "I suppose I'm going to have to dust off my degree and find myself a nine-to-five job," Mike said the day Isobel came home from shopping for a wedding dress. "How do you fancy having an environmental consultant for a husband? There's a crying need for people in my particular field of expertise."

Isobel couldn't believe her ears. "You've got a degree?" "Two, as a matter of fact," he said modestly. "One in marine biology and one in oceanography." "Why haven't you told me this before now?" "Because they're just bits of paper that don't mean anything in the greater scheme of things. A marriage license, however, is different, and I want it in writing so it's clearly understood by both parties that this contract is binding till death do us part. Care to draw up a prenuptial agreement for me, counselor, guaranteeing your undying love and devotion?" "I'll do better than that," Isobel told him, falling backward onto one of the leather couches and dragging him down after her. "I'll show you, every day, for the rest of our lives." Her father gave her away. "Without reservation, my dear," he said, just before they began the walk down the aisle. "This time, you've made the right choice. Mike is a fine man. You're going to be very happy." Her mother cried all through the ceremony. "Wouldn't you think," she sniffed, "that with five children, I'd be used to this by now? But there's still something about two people coming together to make a perfect couple that sets me off." Basil, who claimed to have suffered a bit of a blow when he heard Isobel was engaged, recovered rather quickly when he noticed Lydia sitting on the groom's side of the church with her granddaughter on her lap. "Rubbish, dear lady," Isobel overheard him say at the reception. "You're much too young to be a grandmother."

But it was the groom who captured the bride's most enduring attentions. Pledging herself to him before God and the world was the most completely right thing she'd ever done in her life. "I know a woman's wedding is important, Mrs. Callahan," he said, smooching with his bride on the dance floor later that evening, "but I have the most compelling urge to make love to my wife. Would you mind terribly if we cut the day short?" "Mind?" she murmured, inching her mouth up to meet his: "How could I possibly mind, my darling, when we have all our tomorrows still to come?"