The Vietnamese birth defects had been reported very early in the Saigon papers, but the military administration had called it VC propaganda. American servicemen had been told the spraying was harmless to humans and animals. Another instance of war contractors placing profits over people. Legal research of the chemical companies after the war had proven they'd known about dioxin's deadly consequences as early as 1957. Carey always had the urge to kill when he thought of the chemical companies' derivative sovereign immunity defense which argued they had been employed by the government as war contractors and, like the government, couldn't be sued. The defense so often used by war criminals: “We were only following orders.”

Brushing a hand over his forehead, he forced away his black thoughts. Count your blessings, he reminded himself. But a twinge of guilt colored his own happiness. How lucky he was and how unlucky so many of his friends were.

“Headache?” Molly inquired, their daughter deep in thought as she mentally cataloged her birthday list.

He smiled. “Hell, no… too much happiness,” he said softly. “I'm not used to it. But,” he added with a small smile, “I'm damn well going to enjoy getting used to it.”

“You're glad I stopped at Ely Lake to look you up?”

“Do fish swim?” he said, glancing at her with a quick lift of his eyebrows and a flashing grin. “I'm considering shackling you and Pooh to my wrist. That's how glad.”

“That's pretty glad,” she teased, “for an independent man.”

“What time is it?” he murmured in return, insinuation clear in his voice.

She looked at the dashboard clock. “Almost nine.”

“Good.”

“It's too early,” she warned.

“When.”

“Bedtime's at nine-thirty.”

“I think I can wait.”

“You have to.”

There was a moment of considered silence before he said, “Maybe…”

“Carey!” Her whisper was hushed, but in the single breathy word, beneath the small indignation, was piquant anticipation.

“You make the hot chocolate, and I'll do the bedtime story.” Urgency threaded lightly through his words, but then his expression changed, his dark eyes surveying the young girl between them and he very quietly added, “May I?”

It was the first time in his life he'd ever tucked a child into bed, the first time he'd told a bedtime story, and the first time he'd had to fight back tears since Dhani Maclntosh. Molly was in the habit of telling an extemporaneous story which drifted off on tangents like an Alice in Wonderland narrative. So Carey picked up the plot and added some creative color of his own with wizards and princesses and a quest for a treasure in emeralds.

“Thanks, Carey,” one sleepy young girl murmured as the chapter ended, “you're nice.”

He wanted to crush her in his arms and tell her he loved her, tell her he was her father, map out their entire future together, but Molly wanted to proceed more slowly until they knew each other better. Instead, he said, “You're nice, too, Pooh… the very nicest little girl I know.” Bending low, he kissed her lightly on the forehead. “Sleep tight.”

She was staring thoughtfully at him when he straightened, her face framed by the pink-flowered pillow. “Your eyes are a lot like mine.”

The plain words hit him like a jolt, and in a flurry of mental activity he discarded the first dozen unsuitable answers that came to mind. “Lucky me,” he finally said.

“And you play a mean game of pinball.” She spoke the words with a quiet gravity, and he had an irrational sensation he was being graded. An overwhelming feeling of panic assailed him, fear that he would somehow fail this young child's test. He desperately hoped that she would not dislike him once she knew the truth. She meant too much to him.

He smiled. “You and I'll have to teach your mom someday.”

Her little nose curled up. “She won't.”

“Maybe we can coax her to come to London. My house there has a room full of game machines. We'll tell her she can have tea with the queen,” he teased.

“She'd like that. Could she really? I know you're teasing, but somebody has tea with the queen 'cuz I saw a picture once with everyone in big hats outside a red brick mansion. Mom would die of happiness. Why do you have a house in London?”

“Because my dad had one, and now I've got it. I can't promise the queen, but I can line up a duchess or two if we can convince your mom to come.”

“Hey, way to go… we'll work on her together.” Her eyes were alight.

“I'd like that,” Carey softly said.

Molly drove Carey out to the airport, and for the first time in her life she encountered paparazzi upclose and personal. A crowd of photographers were stretched out along the chain-link fence surrounding the airstrip for private planes. The scene reminded her of all the telecasts she'd seen on TV for visiting dignitaries or rock stars or the astronauts returning from some space mission. It was unnerving. As they stepped from the car the crowd seemed to surge into the fence, and dozens of shouted questions sailed across the twenty yards of tarmac.

“What's her name?”

“Is she American?”

“Is she going back with you?”

“Is she why you shut down production?”

“Hey! Turn this way, lady!”

“Would you call this one serious, Count?”

“How serious?”

Ignoring the uproar of questions with a calm based on years of experience, his arm protectively around Molly's waist, Carey guided her away from the clamoring photographers to the sanctuary of the hangar.

“Carey!” Molly whispered, the turbulence of sound following them inside. “Does this happen often?”

“Ignore it,” he replied casually, used to deflecting the attention aroused by his looks, wealth, and reputation.

“Ignore it?” she inquired with mild incredulity. The swell of noise followed them into the quiet of the hangar like a thin wave of haphazard exclamation marks. “How does one become that blasй?”

“Practice.”

She looked up at him in astonishment. “How long does it take,” she quietly asked, a private person in an increasingly public world of instant telecommunications and computer trail dossiers, “to practice up?”

Glancing down at her, he smiled. “Thirty-three years,” he said. “Don't worry, I'll have someone bring your car in here so you won't have to see them again. Oh, shit!” he swore, and pushed Molly behind him just as a flash exploded from close range. “Jesus! Paolo, don't you ever give up?”

The short, stocky man dressed in mechanic's overalls shrugged negligently. “Smile, Count,” he said in heavily accented English, “and bring out the signorina so your fans can see her face, per favore.”

“One of these days, Cerelli, you're going to lose your teeth.” All the blandness was gone from Carey's voice. “Out of here, dammit! Now!” And Mr. Cerelli only snapped a half dozen more shots of Carey angrily striding toward him before prudently turning and fleeing.

“He's resourceful,” Molly said with a touch of irony when Carey returned.

“He's a pain in the ass,” Carey growled, watching the retreating figure.

“You must be profitable for him.”

“Hell, yes, but with Cerelli it's the damn challenge more than the money. I'd be happy to pay him double what he makes to stay off my back, but the bastard's refused. And like some goddamn ferret, he shows up anywhere!”

“Like at the Rembrandt Hotel?”

Carey's head snapped around.

Molly lifted her brows.

“Christ,” Carey muttered, “that picture must have been in every paper in the world.”

“Serves you right, keeping married duchesses out all night.”

Carey groaned. “Could we drop the subject?”

“I, on the other hand, have been quite virtuous,” Molly replied, mischief and a touch of resentment blending in her voice.

“Have the last ten years been a contest?” Carey asked.

“It appeared as though you were attempting to set records.”

“Are we having a fight? Because if we are, let's fight about something more interesting.” It was the primal masculine response to discord in general and inquiries into infidelity in particular.

“Weren't they interesting?”

Carey grimaced, considered briefly, and said, “Not particularly. Any more questions?” By now there was a certain terseness to his responses.

It fell, however, on the fearless ground of Molly's pride. “Only one,” she crisply replied. “Could you keep Cerelli away from me? I don't care to be in every paper in the world as your latest fling.”

“Okay. I'll have both his knees broken.”

“No!” she exclaimed. “You wouldn't, would you?” she finished, contrite and confused and feeling slightly out of her depth.

“Look, honey, I'll do what I can, but seriously even broken knees would only slow him down for a few weeks. Now,” he said “can we not argue?” Pulling her into his arms, he softly murmured, “Personally, I've never been happier in my life. And if the future goes according to my pollyanna plan, I intend to make you equally happy. Okay?”

His arms held her tightly, and she had to arch her neck to look up at him. It was cool inside the cavernous hangar, undisturbed by the morning sun held at bay outside the large open doors. For a moment she felt as though they were in some ancient pagan temple.

“Okay,” she murmured without further thought. Suddenly discord seemed trivial. Her smile was strong enough to banish images of a dozen irritating Cerellis.

“I'll be back as soon as I can,” he whispered, not wanting to leave.

“When?” she asked, not wishing to relinquish him, either.

“Tomorrow… the next day.” And then Allen's insistent reminder overrode his own potent wishes, and he amended, “Probably a couple of days. Do you want to come back with me?”

“Can't,” she breathed just before his lips brushed hers.

“I'll try and wait two days, then.”

“Why wait?” It was a breathy invitation, a flirtatious promise from a young woman who had until very recently relegated her own sexuality to a future place on a future list of future leisure time.

Carey's head came up, and his sweeping glance took in the quiet dim, interior.

“I haven't done it in the backseat of a car since that night at Lake Fourteen,” Molly teased, reaching up on tiptoe to nibble his earlobe.

Bending his head, he kissed her very hard. He'd also remembered that night, had recalled it fondly countless times. “Let me show you,” he said a moment later when his mouth lifted from hers, “the inside of my plane.”

“That is the smoothest line I've ever heard.”

“You're the only one who's ever heard it.”

“I find that charming,” she said, her chin resting on his chest.

“And I find you irresistible-Excessively so at this exact moment. Damn the photographers.” And, sweeping her into his arms, he carried her to the gleaming jet parked outside.

An hour later, Carey flew back to northern Minnesota and Molly drove home to face her busy schedule at the office. There were fewer photographers now; most had grown tired of waiting, and had left. So Molly didn't notice the gray sedan in the traffic behind her, following her on the freeway back into the city. Nor did she notice the man across the street from the Mart parking lot hastily fit a telephoto lens on his camera and run through twenty shots as she left her car to enter the building. From his vantage point near the wooden fence of Molly's small garden and yard, Paolo Cerelli noted with surprise and pleasure, the young girl walking toward the garden gate. An artist beneath his lucrative commercial profession, he immediately recognized the resemblance to the man he'd come to know intimately through the lens of his camera. “She's quite beautiful,” he murmured over the hum of the automatic shutter. “Like her father,” he added. That explained why production had been shut down so suddenly.

Cerelli had been following Carey for nearly a decade, since he'd appeared as the barefoot boy director-everyone's darling at Cannes-with his first full-length film and walked off with the prize. And Cerelli knew how serious Carey was about his movies. Once production began, he was thoroughly dedicated, even in his enfant terrible stage when women and drugs were taking a great deal of his time. Even then, the cameras rolled every morning with the young director on the set bright and early doing his job. Nothing had ever interfered with Carey's film-making. Until now.

After the pale-haired girl disappeared into the garden behind the fence, Paolo packed up his film and drove to the airport. He was anxious to express his newest photos to the sensational news magazine that paid him so well.