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Nothing in her experience matched the way her body responded to his, or her need to pleasure him. Seconds away from her orgasm, he sensed it. "Are you going to start yelling like you did last time?"

"Unless you stop it."

"Not a chance in hell," he groaned. He gripped her hips and held them in place.

She gasped from the delicious pressure that created deep inside her. "I mean . . . unless you stop me . . . I might yell."

464 Sandra Brown

His mouth captured hers in another kiss, which disintegrated at the onset of their simultaneous orgasms. He buried his face in the cleft of her breasts. Her soft, staccato sighs made dash marks of erotic sound in the darkness.

Then she collapsed onto his chest, nuzzling his neck. He held her for a long time. When eventually he set her away from him, he brushed her wet hair from her face, traced her cheekbone with the tip of his index finger, stroked her damp lips with his thumb.

He'd never demonstrated so much tenderness, and tears came to her eyes.

She whispered a single word. "Bondurant."

"You know," he said, "your voice alone makes me hard. It gets embarrassing."

Laughing softly, she leaned forward to take love bites out of his throat.

"So it's accurate to say that you're definitely in lust with me?"

When he didn't respond, she pulled back to look into his face. He squinted, indicating she hadn't quite nailed it.

"Love?" she ventured weakly.

He merely looked at her, his eyes answering with their trademark blue intensity.

"Really?" she whispered.

"Don't get too excited. I'll never remember your birthday, or Valentine's Day, or anniversaries," he told her. "I'm not the hearts-and-flowers type."

She placed her hands on his cheeks. "Will you cheat?"

"No." His tone left no room for doubt. "Never."

"Then I don't need hearts and flowers."

"What about sex?"

"Sex I need."

Later, they lay together on their sides, spoon-fashion on the wide bed.

The cool smooth skin of her bottom was nestled against the fuzzy warmth of his middle. His chin rested

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on the crown of her head. His arm was around her, his hand possessively covering her breast. Occasionally his thumb drifted across her nipple.

Occasionally she raised his hand to her lips and kissed the spot that still bore faint teeth marks where she'd bitten him weeks ago.

She grew drowsy. Then just before falling asleep she spoke his name.

"Hmm?"

"You want to hear something ironic?" He didn't say anything, but she knew by his stillness that he was listening. "I loved my father. Desperately."

Softly, into her hair, he whispered, "I know."

Epologue

-7he telephone on Barrie's desk rang. She glanced at the clock. Five minutes until she was due on the set. Time to take one quick call. It might be Gray. Frequently he called just before airtime to tell her to break a leg-preferably his, as soon as she got home.

Smiling at the possibility, she picked up the phone. "Barrie Travis."

"Saw you on TV yesterday. Did you color your hair?"

It was Charlene Waiters. "I had it highlighted. Do you like it?"

"No. You ought to change it back the way it was."

Barrie smiled. Charlene was almost as famous as she. Her name had appeared in every story, broadcast or print, about the collapse of the Merritt administration. The prison inmate now considered herself Barrie's colleague.

"How are you, Charlene?"

"I've got gas. They fed us beans at lunch."

"I'm sorry to hear that. Listen, I'm due on the set in-"

"You must be walking on air, on account of what all you started."

Six months had passed since Becky Sturgis's resurrection. Trials were pending for Merritt and Armbruster.

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Prosecutors were still organizing their cases. Defense attorneys were trying to scrape together a defense against overwhelming evidence and witnesses willing to give incriminating testimony in exchange for immunity or leniency.

"I don't take any pleasure in lives being destroyed," Barrie said.

"Although I hope this will serve to prevent such unconscionable abuse of power in the future."

"I wouldn't count on it, people being what they are."

Barrie glanced at the clock. Three minutes. She placed the phone in the crook of her neck and took a mirror and powder puff from her desk drawer.

There'd be no time for makeup. "It's been great talking to you, Charlene, but-"

"For myself, I wish they'd take the bastards out and hang 'em. After what they did to Becky, they shouldn't be allowed to go on breathing another day."

"If they're convicted, the justice system will punish them appropriately."

Charlene snorted her contempt of the system. "At least when I told you about Becky, you did something. It took you a while, but you finally got busy."

"Yes, well-"

"Not like her. She didn't do a damn thing."

"Well, she was in prison. As she said, there wasn't much-"

"Not Becky, nitwit. Mrs. Merritt."

Barrie set down her mirror and took the telephone receiver back into her hand. "Mrs. Merritt?"

"Ain't that what I said? Vanessa Armbruster Merritt."

Surely she'd missed something. With one eye on the clock, one on her mirror, and Charlene chattering in her ear, she'd missed a vital segue.

"Are you saying you told Vanessa Merritt about Becky Sturgis?"

468 Sandra Brown

"Duh t"

"When, Charlene?"

"When what?"

"When did you speak with her-when did you tell her about Becky Sturgis and her baby?"

"Let's see now. It was after Becky told me, of course. Must have been shortly after Mrs. Merritt became First Lady."

"Charlene, if this is one of your tales-"

"You're my friend. I don't tell tales to my friends.."

Barrie's mind was spinning. "Let me be sure I understand. You told Mrs.

Merritt, the First Lady, about Becky Sturgis-about her involvement years ago with David Merritt?"

"All of it. Just like I told you. I told her that David Merritt had killed Becky's kid and that the senator had covered it up for him."

Barrie placed her elbow on her desk and rested her forehead in her palm to stop the room from whirling.

"I wrote her letter after letter," Charlene went on, "warning her that she was married to a killer, but she ignored me. At least I thought she did.

Then one day, she calls me up here at the prison. Gave a false name, of course, but left a number where I should call her back collect. We talked for half an hour or more. Pissed off the ladies waiting in line to use the phone, but I told them to screw off."

The clock on Barrie's desk was ticking, but not as loudly as her heart.

She swallowed a surge of nausea.

An assistant producer poked her head through the door of her office.

"Barrie? Ninety seconds."

Barrie acknowledged the notice. "Charlene, didn't you tell anyone that the First Lady had called you?"

"Course I did!" she exclaimed. "But you think they believed me?"

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The woman who'd been Robert Redford's college sweetheart and had borne Elvis's love child? Who would have believed her?

"So. . ." Barrie couldn't hold a thought. "So. . ."

"Barrie?" The assistant producer reappeared. "You okay? We're on in one minute."

"I'll be right there." Then she said to Charlene, "So after you told her the Becky Sturgis story, what did she say?"

"She said to keep it between us and stop writing her letters or she'd sic the FBI on me. I said she could come down here, meet Becky, and hear the story for herself, but she said no, she couldn't do that. She said it had happened a long time ago and that it probably wasn't true anyway. Made me mad as hell, me going to all that trouble to get in touch with her, and her not even heeding my warning. Less than two years later, she comes up pregnant. After what I told her, she still went and had a baby with that man. She must be crazy."

Vanessa Armbruster Merritt was anything but crazy.

Barrie, please help me. Don't you know what I'm trying to tell you?

What if her motive was plain ol', everyday spite?

I did not kill Robert Rushton. She did!

About that, David Merritt had been telling the truth.

She's the crazy one.

And in the words of Charlene Waiters, jailhouse philosopher, Crazy people can get away with just about anything. You'd he amazed.

In a voice barely audible, Barrie asked, "Did you ever hear from Vanessa Merritt again, Charlene?"

"Only once. When she called and suggested that I call you."