She'd handed him a knife and a green pepper.

"I had something more macho in mind," he'd explained.

She'd given him the onion.

Noah opened the back door and walked out on the terrace, standing there. On his left was the umbrella table where she ate breakfast with Courtney and Douglas and himself for the first time. Courtney had been demanding the details of the evening before when Noah "crashed and burned," and Sloan had burst into infectious laughter. I don't know the first thing about flirting… If I'd had a telephone, I'd have called my friend Sara from the dance floor and asked her what to say.

Noah tore his gaze from the table and looked straight ahead. She'd met him there on the lawn near the terrace, late at night, after her party, looking like a barefoot angel with her sandals in her hand. "With respect to… those sorts of relationships… I haven't had what you… what some people might consider much experience. Actually, I've only had two of those relationships."

"Only two? What a pity. Dare I hope they were both very short and completely meaningless?"

"Yes," she'd whispered, laying her hand on his cheek. "They really were."

They'd ended up on the chaise lounge on his right that night, where he had behaved like a teenager, necking and petting. The beach stretched out in front of him. He'd met her on the beach the night Edith died; he'd come back from Miami early because he missed her. He'd walked her home after she made him help with the cooking. "I'm crazy about you." He had meant "I love you." Thank God he hadn't said that. It would be one more idiotic thing he'd have to berate himself for now.

Noah turned back and walked into the house. Of all the women he'd known, he wondered what streak of mental instability, what fluke of human chemistry, could have made her the one woman he'd wanted above all others.

He could not understand how he could have been so damned naïve. He would have bet everything he had that she was as in love with him as he had been with her. Actually, he had bet on her and in the end, she'd cost him a damned fortune. The unsavory publicity resulting from the FBI's search of his boats had damaged his reputation and, even though the FBI hadn't found anything, the mere fact that they'd suspected him would linger in people's minds for years to come.

Sloan Reynolds was as delicate and beautiful as an orchid; she was Mata Hari in a ponytail.

He stopped in the doorway of the family room and looked at the videotape sticking out of the VCR. For days after Paris and she were nearly killed, the television news programs had had a field day running film footage they'd gotten of Sloan doing her job as a cop. Even though Courtney regarded Sloan as a complete traitor, she'd been fascinated with what she saw on television and, with typical innocent insensitivity, she'd taped everything she saw and then badgered Noah to watch it.

According to Courtney, the Bell Harbor Police Department had been featured on an episode of a series about "Real Police in Action" or something like that. Sloan had been part of a drug bust that was filmed while it was actually happening.

The videotape beckoned to Noah. This was his last chance to see it before he left. Courtney and Douglas were visiting Paris, and he was alone in the house. He walked over to the television set, turned it on and inserted the tape.

The television screen lit up, the tape began to run, and Noah felt a new surge of fury when he remembered he'd actually volunteered to teach Sloan to shoot so the "delicate little angel" wouldn't be afraid of guns!

On the television screen, the "angel" was wearing a jacket with POLICE stenciled across the back, and she was crouched at the side of a police cruiser, a gun clasped between her hands, covering her buddies as they charged across the front lawn.

In the next film clip, Sloan wasn't merely covering her pals, she was in the lead, running toward a building and flattening herself next to the front door, gun clasped in her hands, held high.

Noah hit the OFF button. He despised her in that videotape.

But if she hadn't betrayed him, he would have thought she was utterly magnificent.

He remembered he'd left one report upstairs that he needed to take with him, and he went up to his office to get it so that he could leave. He was leafing through the files in his desk drawer when he heard voices coming down the hall. When he looked up Paul Richardson was standing in the doorway with Courtney on one side and Douglas on the other.

Douglas saw the ominous look in Noah's eyes. "Noah, would you just listen to what Paul has to say?"

In reply, Noah reached for the telephone and pressed the intercom button. "Martin," he said to his chauffeur/bodyguard, "I have an intruder in my office. Get rid of him." He shifted his gaze to his desk, found the report he was looking for, and stood up, moving around his desk. "When I walk past you, Richardson," he said as his father and sister wisely backed out of his way and a little down the hall, "if you so much as twitch, I will consider it an aggressive move, and I will delight in throwing your ass over that balcony. Do we understand each other?"

In response, the FBI agent stepped further into Noah's office, shoved the door closed, and turned the lock, effectively blocking out Douglas, Courtney, and Martin, who was bounding up the stairs. Leaning his shoulders against the door to further prevent anyone from getting it open, Richardson folded his arms over his chest, and regarded Noah impassively for a moment.

On the other side of the door, Courtney and Douglas could be heard reassuring Martin that he wasn't needed. Paul had no doubt that Noah was enraged enough and fit enough to take him on himself right now, but he was banking on the fact that Noah wouldn't want to expose a fifteen-year-old girl to a violent scene involving himself, even if she could only hear and not see it. He was also banking on his ability to diffuse Noah's wrath before he decided that Courtney had precipitated the scene and could pay the price by having to listen to a fistfight.

"Noah," Paul said finally in a relaxed, conversational tone, "I've had a lousy two weeks. In fact, I haven't been through anything like this in over five years."

Noah leaned his hip on the front of the desk, a muscle drumming in his clenched jaw, his attention on the door behind Paul as he listened for an indication that Courtney was still out there or that she'd gone.

Paul knew it, and so he talked a little faster, and a little friendlier. "Do you remember the Zachary Benedict case from five years ago?"

Maitland's gaze flicked contemptuously to him. No one was likely to forget the worldwide furor over the Academy Award-winning actor/director who'd been wrongfully convicted of killing his wife. Benedict had escaped from prison and taken a hostage named Julie Mathison, who'd fallen in love with him. Paul had recaptured him in Mexico when Benedict risked his freedom to rejoin Julie, and the violent scene in the Mexico City airport had been televised around the globe.