There was a sharp knock on the door. Theresa and Maddy both called, "Come in!" then laughed with sheer joy, because they knew it could only be Zack.

Maddy realized the instant she saw him that this was going to be one of the tough times…

He walked straight to them with a determined smile on his face, dropping one hand to squeeze Theresa's shoulder as he found the nape of Maddy's neck with the other. Maddy could feel his fingers burrow through her hair like small creatures looking for warmth and comfort. She sensed the tension in him-tension that showed in the set of his jaw, the lines around his mouth and between his eyes, tension that radiated from him like heat.

"Hi, squirt. Whatcha doin'?" He planted a quick but noisy kiss on Theresa's cheek as he leaned forward to see.

"I'm makin' a snake!" Theresa proudly announced, and, raising her sock-covered arm, added in a fearsome growl, "An' I'm gonna eat you up!"

"Oh, yeah? Well, Mr. Snake, you don't look big enough to me!"

"Well… I can eat your nose! Grum grum grum …" Theresa's "snake" opened its bright pink mouth and engulfed Zack's nose.

"Ouch! Hey, my poor old nose has had enough grief! Gimme a break!"

The roughhouse that ensued routed Corry and swept Theresa and her snake off the stool and, along with most of the puppet materials, onto the floor. Zack wound up flat on his back with Theresa bouncing triumphantly on his stomach, proclaiming, "Got you now! An' I'm gonna chomp your nose off!"

"Ow! Help! Uncle! I give up! Enough already, doggone it! Maddy!"

"Don't look at me," Maddy said, laughing as she held up her hands. "You got yourself into that."

"You showed her how to make the confounded snake!"

"The snake was all her idea." Maddy shrugged with elaborate innocence. "Don't ask me why, but give a kid a sock and tell him to make a puppet, and he always comes up with a snake. Or maybe a sea serpent. Maybe a dinosaur…"

"What I don't understand-" Zack grunted, then disengaged himself at last and held Theresa at arm's length while he got to his feet "-is why kids are always so cotton-pickin' carnivorous. Ouch!" Theresa's snake was busily chomping its way up Zack's leg.

Maddy relented and, sweeping Bosley onto her arm, wrapped the dragon's soft tail loosely around Theresa's neck.

"Hey, honey," she crooned in Bosley's Mae West voice, nudging Theresa's cheek with the dragon nose. "That's no way to treat a handsome man."

Theresa giggled and squirmed delightedly as the dragon's crest tickled her neck.

"Look, kid," Bosley went on, "you can catch more flies with honey… you know what I mean?"

Theresa wrinkled her nose and looked perplexed. "Catch flies? Yuck!"

The dragon sighed. "Honey, have you got a lot to learn! Pay attention." Maddy moved the dragon sinuously up Zack's arm, bumped its head under his chin, and fluttered its eyelashes. "Hello, big boy," she crooned. "Why don't you… come up and see me sometime?"

Zack blinked and looked dazed, then glanced down at Theresa and rose to the occasion. "Any time you say, shweetheart," he muttered out of the side of his mouth in a passable Bogie impression. He pointed to his cheek. "How's about a little kiss?"

"Oooh, honey," Bosley murmured, and, lowering her lashes, planted a demure kiss on Zack's cheek.

Theresa was delighted. "I want to kiss Zack!" she cried, bouncing up and down. "I mean, my snake wants to. Can I, please? Can I?"

Zack gave Maddy a smug look and bent down so Theresa could reach him. "Put er there, shweetheart," he said, pointing to his other cheek.

Theresa tilted her head to one side and pushed her tongue self-consciously into one cheek as she raised a suddenly shy "snake" to touch Zack's face.

He closed his eyes and sighed. "Now, that's my kind of snake," he said. He caught the puppet around its "neck" and gave it a resounding smack on its pink felt nose.

Theresa grinned up at Maddy, a look of purely feminine conspiracy. Maddy burst out laughing. "Time to clean up the mess," she said as she hung Bosley back on her stand. "Dottie will be here to pick you up any minute. And no arguments," she added firmly as Theresa showed signs of balking. "That's the deal. We make messes, we clean em up. Everybody helps."

"Zack too?"

"Of course."

"Hey, I didn't do any of this!"

"Yes, you did," Theresa said. "You knocked everything off on the floor-didn't he, Maddy?"

"Oh, for Pete's sake…" Zack grumbled as he squatted down and began gathering scraps of felt. "Hey-" He winked at Theresa and tugged one of her pigtails. "I have a great idea. After we get this all cleaned up, you want to go get a pizza?" He looked up at Maddy and lifted his eyebrows. She opened her mouth, then closed it again, because Theresa was solemnly shaking her head.

"Can't," she declared. "It's Vickie Frownfelter's birthday, and we're having a cake, with candles, and ice cream. And you know what? I helped make the cake! She has to have lots of candles. She's sixteen! You know what? Next time I have a birthday, I'm going to have seven candles."

"Wow," Zack said. "I'm impressed. When's your birthday?"

"I don't know. I think it's January, but I'm not sure. I can't ever remember. But it's a long, long time." Theresa sighed wistfully.

"Tell you what," Zack said. He balanced on his heels to bring himself to Theresa's level. "This Friday is a birthday, did you know that? It's a birthday everybody gets to celebrate. Know what that is?"

Theresa shook her head.

"Fourth of July!"

Her face lit up and she clapped her hands. "Oh, yeah! And we get to have sparkles and firecrackers!"

"Right! How'd you like to go have a picnic and watch some fireworks?"

"Oh, boy! With you?"

"With Maddy and me." He swiveled to look up at Maddy, and she saw more in his eyes than a simple question. "How about it, Maddy?" And then, under his breath, "Can you swing it? Please?"

She smiled at Theresa. "I'll ask Dottie." Love had turned all her insides to warm syrup. She didn't dare look at Zack.

"Oh, boy, a picnic!" Theresa was all bounces again. "I've never been on a picnic. Will there be boats?"

"Boats?" Zack looked blank.

"I saw a picture one time. There was a picnic, and kites up in the sky, and a pond with boats."

"Boats." Zack cleared his throat and looked helplessly at Maddy. She shrugged back. "Um… well, I'll have to see what I can do."

"You'd do just about anything for that child, wouldn't you?" Maddy murmured.

They had stood together on her doorstep and watched Dottie Frownfelter's station wagon lumber off through the dark tunnel of avocado trees. When they had turned back into the house and closed the door behind them, Zack had reached for her with a fierce and desperate need. But even while her body was responding to him without reservation, something inside her was aching for him, for the pain in him she couldn't heal…

"Yeah." Zack's sigh whispered through her hair. His arm tightened around her as he tucked her head under his chin.

"Zack, what is it? What's wrong?"

She felt a surprised chuckle vibrate through his chest. "How did you know?"

Oh, when a woman loves her man as much as I do, she just knows.

Maddy closed her eyes and turned her face to his chest, gently nudging. "Come on, tell me."

His deep breath lifted her head. She heard the familiar rasp of his fingers on his scalp as he ran his hand through his hair. "Ah, Maddy… I've just spent most of the day going round and round with people down at the county office-adoption-agency people, child-welfare people-you name one person who has anything at all to do with what happens to that kid, and I've talked to him. Or her. Dammit, Maddy, they all tell me the same thing: My chance of adopting Theresa through regular channels is right smack between slim and none!"

"Oh, Zack…"

"They say they have at least three couples- couples, Maddy-who are as qualified as I am, and have been waiting longer."

"But the fact that she knows you, loves you, surely that will be taken into consideration!"

"Yeah, I thought so. And it might, if she were a little older. But she's so young. They want her to have a mother, a complete set of parents. They feel it's… important to her emotional development, particularly at this stage. Well, sure it is, dammit! But so is having someone who really loves her!"

"Zack," Maddy said, resting her hand on the side of his face. "You knew you wouldn't have a very good chance with the adoption agency. I told you that. But you can still go talk to Theresa's aunt and uncle and see if they'll agree to a private transfer of custody. I know how you feel about them, her uncle especially. It would be difficult for you, I know, but-"

"Not difficult," Zack said woodenly, and closed his eyes. "Impossible."

"Zachary, that doesn't sound like you. I know how you feel-"

"You don't understand." He stared fiercely at her, then cast his gaze upward toward the skylight over her bed. "That guy wouldn't sign Theresa over to me in a million years. Hell, he'd probably punch my lights out if I showed up at his front door!"

"Oh, surely that's an exaggeration! Even if he knows who-"

"He knows," Zack said, laughing darkly. "Believe me, he knows who nailed him. Remember my fat lip? The one I had the day of the court hearing?"

Maddy gave a small, shocked gasp. "He hit you? Theresa's uncle?"

"Why does that surprise you? Maddy, the man hits people!"

"All right, then, he's probably gotten it out of his system. He was bound to be upset, especially that day-"

"Uh-uh," Zack said, looking both grim and rueful.

Maddy said with foreboding, "Uh-oh."

He nodded. "I'm not very good at turning the other cheek. I… uh, left him sitting in the courthouse fountain."

Maddy clapped her hand over her mouth, stifling a giggle. She knew it wasn't funny. "Oh, Zack," she whispered, and pressed her cheek to his.

"Maddy…" Anguish made his voice raw. His arms came around her so tightly, it hurt, and he pulled her over to lie on top of him. "I can't stand the thought of losing her. I can't…"

She held him as tightly as he held her, feeling the tension of grief tumble through him, trying to absorb his pain into her own body, feeling so terribly helpless.

"Zack," she whispered brokenly after a time, "I just wish there were something I could do to help you."

"Maddy…" Her name was a sigh. His hands stroked her hair, then her back. "You do help me, just being here." He went very still for a moment, then suddenly took her face between his hands and raised it so he could look into her eyes. His own eyes were very dark, very intense. Maddy's heart began, inexplicably, to pound. "Maddy, there is something you can do. You can marry me."

Zack knew the minute he said it, he'd made a mistake. He felt her body jerk, as if he'd struck her.

Timing, he thought. I have rotten timing.

He knew exactly how it had sounded to her, and what she was thinking. He couldn't even try to make it right without making it worse. If he tried to tell her now that he loved her, it would only sound, at best, like an afterthought, or a rationalization. At worst, it would sound like an out-and-out lie.

So he just went on stroking her hair and back, and repeated it. "Marry me, Maddy." This time he added, "I need you." That, at least, he was pretty sure she'd believe.

It seemed crazy to him to lie here like this with her every curve and hollow meshing intimately with his, and realize that he'd never told her he loved her. He wasn't sure why he hadn't told her. He'd known it himself, for an absolute certainty, since that morning when she'd burst from the water like Neptune 's daughter, radiant with joy and triumph.

Part of it was pure cowardice. He didn't know for sure how she felt about him, and wasn't quite up to exposing his own fragile ego to the possibility- however remote-of rejection. He knew she cared for him-she'd never have gone to bed with him otherwise-and there was no denying the physical chemistry between them. Even now, with all that he had on his mind, the sweet weight of her body on his was having a predictable effect.

But Maddy was so darned… susceptible! She was so compassionate, a sucker for anybody or anything in pain. Look at the way she'd had to insulate herself inside those puppets of hers in order to deal with battered kids. Look at the way she'd gone off the deep end for the first one of those kids to slip in under her guard!