"My God, you're stunning," said one of the Texas mafia, a dark-haired young woman named Sydney. She was a director. It was said in a tone of observation rather than compliment, her gaze frankly assessing. "You'd look amazing on film—wouldn't she. guys?—you've got one of those transparent faces."

"Transparent?" I held my hands up to my cheeks reflexively.

"Shows everything you're thinking," Sydney said.

Now my face was flaming. "God. I don't want to be transparent."

Gage was laughing quietly, sliding his arm around the back of my chair. "It's okay," he told me. "You're perfect the way you are." He leveled a narrow glance at Sydney. "If I ever catch you trying to put her in front of a camera—"

"Okay, okay," Sydney protested. "No need to get rabid, Gage." She grinned at me. "I guess you two are in pretty deep, huh? I've known Gage since the third grade, and I've never seen him so—"

"Syd." he interrupted, his gaze promising death. Her grin only widened.

Jack's girlfriend, a bubbly blonde named Heidi, steered the conversation in a new direction. "Jaa-aack," she said with a playful pout. "You said you'd buy me something from the silent auction, and I haven't gotten to look at the tables yet." She glanced at me significantly. "They say there's some cool stuff up for bidding... a pair of diamond earrings, a week in St. Tropez..."

"Shit," Jack said with a good-natured grin. "Whatever she picks out is going to put one hell of a dent in my wallet."

"Don't I deserve a nice present?" Heidi asked, and tugged him up from the table without waiting for an answer.

Gage, who had stood politely when Heidi rose from her chair, saw that I had finished

my dessert. "Come on, sweetheart," he told me. "We might as well go look too."

We excused ourselves from the table and followed Jack and Heidi into the mansion. One of the main rooms had been set up for the silent auction, rows of long tables littered with booklets, baskets, and item descriptions. Fascinated, I browsed along the first table. For each numbered item there was a leather folder with a bid list inside. You wrote down your name and the amount of your bid, and if someone wanted to top you, they added their name and a higher number underneath yours. At twelve o'clock, all bidding would be closed.

There was a certificate for a private cooking class given by a famous TV chef...a golf lesson from a pro who had once won the masters...a rare wine collection...a personal song written and recorded for you by a British rock star.

"What looks good?" came Gage's voice over my shoulder, and I had to fight the urge to lean back against him and pull his hands up to my breasts. Right there, in a room full of people.

"Damn." I rested my fingertips lightly on the table, closing my eyes for a second.

"What is it?"

"I'll be glad when we get through this stage and I can think straight again."

He stayed right behind me. sounding amused. "Stage of what?"

My nerves sizzled as I felt his hand settle at my side. "There are five stages of dating." I told him. "The first is attraction.. .you know, the chemistry and the sort of h-hormonal high when you're together. The next stage is exclusivity. And then you settle into reality, when

the physical attraction dies down..."

His hand moved to the highest curve of my hip. "And you think this"—a subtle stroke that sent my nerves jumping—"is going to die down?"

"Well," I said weakly, "it's supposed to."

"You let me know when we get to the reality stage." His voice was dark velvet. "I'll see what I can do to get your hormonal high going again." He finished the caress with a proprietary pat on my hip. "In the meantime...would you mind if I left you just for a few minutes?"

I turned to face him. "Of course not. Why?"

Gage looked apologetic. "I've got to say a quick hello to a friend of the family—I saw him in the other room. I went to high school with his son. who died not long ago in a boating accident."

"Oh, that's so sad. Yes, I'll stay here and wait for you."

"While you're at it, pick out something."

"What kind of something?"

"I don't care. A trip. A painting. Whatever looks good. Anyone who doesn't participate in the auction will get raked over the coals in the paper tomorrow for not giving a crap about the fine arts. It's up to you to save me."

"Gage. I'm not going to be responsible for spending all that money on...Gage, are you listening to me?"

"Nope." He smiled and began to walk away.

I looked down at the brochure nearest me. "We're going to Nigeria." I threatened. "I hope you like elephant polo."

He chuckled and left me amid the rows of auction items. I saw Heidi and Jack examining some items several tables away, until more people entered the room and blocked my view. I studied the tables carefully. I couldn't figure out what in the world Gage would want. A fancy limited-edition European motorcycle...no way was I going to let him risk losing a limb. A Nascar experience in which you got to drive a six-hundred-horsepower stock car on a super speedway. Ditto. Private chartered yacht trips. Jewels with names. A private lunch with a beautiful soap opera actress.. .As if, I thought sardonically.

After a few minutes of dedicated searching, with lively melodic arias in the background. I found something. A high-end massage chair with an intricate control panel promising at least fifteen different kinds of massage. I decided Gage could give it to Churchill for a Christmas present.

Picking up a pen, I began to write Gage's name on the bidding sheet, but the ink wouldn't come out. The pen was a dud. I shook it and tried again with no luck.

"Here," said a man beside me. setting a new pen on the table. He used the flat of his hand to roll it closer. "Try this one."

That hand.

I stared at it dumbly, while the fine hairs on the back of my neck lifted.

A big hand, the nails sun-bleached, the long fingers scattered with tiny star-shaped scars. I knew whose hand it was, I knew it from a place that went deeper than memory. But I couldn't make myself believe it. Not here. Not now.

I looked up into a pair of blue eyes that had haunted me for years. Eyes I would remember to the last day of my life.

"Hardy," I whispered.

CHAPTER 22

I was paralyzed as I tried to take him in, this stranger I had loved so dearly. Hardy Gates had grown into all the promise of his younger years. He was a big, bold-looking man. Those eyes, blue upon blue, and the glossy brown hair, and the beginnings of a smile that sent a ripple of wonder through my soul...All I could do was stare at him, submerged in fearsome pleasure.

Hardy was still as he looked back at me. but I sensed the vibration of hard-running emotion beneath his exterior.

He took my hand gently, as if I were a small child. "Let's find a place to talk."

I clung to him. not caring that Jack might see us leave, not really aware of anything

except the clasp of those callused fingers. Hardy drew me away by the hand, away from the tables, to the waiting darkness of the outside grounds. We skirted the crowd, the noise, the lights, cutting around to the side of the house. It seemed the light tried to follow, stretching

weakening tendrils after us. but we headed into the shadows of an empty portico.

We stopped in the lee of a column as thick as an oak trunk. I was winded and trembling. I don't know who moved first, it seemed we reached for each other at the same time. I was seized full-length against him, mouth to mouth, bruising each other's lips with kisses too hard for pleasure. My heart thundered as if I were dying.

Moments of silent ravaging, and then Hardy tore his mouth away, whispering it was all right, he wasn't going to let go. I began to relax in his arms, feeling the heat of his mouth as he followed the tumble of wetness on my cheeks. He kissed me again, slow and easy, the way he had taught me so long ago, and I felt safe and young and suffused with a desire so straightforward it seemed almost wholesome. His kisses tapped into deep mines of memory, and the years that had separated us fell away as if they were nothing.

After a while Hardy cuddled me in the loose sides of his tux jacket, his chest hard beneath the intricately tucked shirt.

"I had forgotten how this feels." I said in an ache of a whisper.

"I never forgot." Hardy touched the shape of my waist and h*ps through the folds of the white silk gown. "Liberty. I shouldn't have come to you like this. I told myself to wait." A catch of laughter. "I don't even remember crossing the room. You were always beautiful to me, Liberty.. .but now.. .1 can't even believe you're real."

"How did you get to be here? Did you know you'd see me? Did you—"

"There's too much to tell you." He rested his cheek on my hair. "I thought you might be here, but I wasn't sure...."

He spoke in the voice I had craved for so long, deeper now than in his youth. He was here at the invitation of a friend, he said, also in the oil business. He told me about starting work on the drilling rig—difficult and dangerous—and the contacts he'd made, the opportunities he'd watched for. Eventually he'd quit the rig and started a small company with two other men, one a geologist, the other an engineer, with the goal of finding new pay zones in mature oil fields. At least half the oil and gas in every field in the world was overlooked, Hardy said, and there was a fortune for those willing to go after bypassed pay. They had raised about a million in financing, and on their first try in a spent Texas field, they'd found a new zone worth an estimated two hundred and fifty thousand barrels of recoverable crude.

Hardy explained enough that I understood he was already rich and going to get a lot richer. He'd bought his mother a house. He had an apartment in Houston, which would be his home base for a while. Knowing of his fierce hunger to succeed, to rise above his circumstances, I was glad for him and I said so.

"It's not enough," Hardy said, taking my face in his hands. "The biggest damn surprise of it all is how little it means once you've got it. For the first time in years I finally had a chance to think, to take a deep breath, and I..." A frayed exhalation. "I've never stopped wanting you. I had to find you. I started by going to Marva. She told me where you were, and..."

"And that I'm with someone." I said with difficulty.

Hardy nodded. "I wanted to find out if..."

If I was happy. If I still needed him. If it wasn't too late for us. If and if...

Sometimes life has a cruel sense of humor, giving you the thing you always wanted at the worst time possible. The irony of it split my heart open, setting loose more bitter regret than I could bear.

"Hardy," I said unsteadily: "if only you'd found me a little sooner."

He was quiet, holding me against his chest. One of his hands ran down my bare arm until he reached the tight curl of my fingers. Silently he lifted my left hand, running his thumb over the bareness of my ring finger. "Can you tell me for certain it's too late, honey?"

I thought of Gage, and I was swamped in confusion. "I don't know. I don't know."

"Liberty.. .let me see you tomorrow."

I shook my head. "I promised Carrington I'd spend the day with her. We're going to an ice-skating show at Reliant."

"Carrington." He shook his head. "My God, she must be eight or nine by now."

"Time passes," I whispered.

Hardy held my knuckles up to his cheek, pressed his mouth to them briefly. "What about the day after tomorrow?"

"Yes. Yes." I wanted to leave with Hardy right then. I didn't want to let him go and be

left to wonder if I had imagined him. I told him my number. "Hardy, please... go back inside first. I need a couple of minutes by myself."

"All right." His arms tightened around me briefly before he let go.

We drew apart and looked at each other. I was confounded by his presence, this man who was so like the boy I had known and yet so unlike him. I didn't know how the connection between us could still be there. But it was. We were the same, Hardy and me, we communicated from the same center, we had come from the same world. But Gage...the thought of him wrenched my heart.

Whatever he saw in my face caused Hardy to speak very gently. "Liberty. I'm not going to do anything to hurt you."

I gave a little nod, staring blindly into the darkness as he left.

But he had hurt me in the past, I thought. I had understood his reasons for leaving Welcome. I understood why he'd felt he had no choice. I didn't blame him. The problem was, I had gone on with my life. And after years of struggle and considerable loneliness, I had finally connected with someone else. My feet ached in my Cinderella shoes. I shifted my weight and wiggled my toes beneath the cutting Lucite straps. My Prince Charming had finally showed up, I thought wretchedly, and he was too damn late.

Not necessarily, my mind insisted. It was still possible for Hardy and me. The old obstacles were gone, and the new ones...

There is always a choice. It's a damned uncomfortable thing to know.

I ventured toward the light, fishing in the tiny purse hanging from my arm on a silk loop. I didn't know how I was going to repair the damage done to my makeup. The friction of mouth and skin and fingertips had erased the carefully applied film of color. I powdered my face, and used the tip of my ring finger to wipe smudges of liner from beneath my eyes. I reapplied my lip gloss. The tiny crystal near the corner of my eye was gone. Maybe people wouldn't notice. Everyone was dancing and drinking and eating; surely by now I wasn't the only one with faded makeup.

As soon as I reached the back terrace I saw Gage's dark form, tall and precise as a knife blade. He headed for me in a leisurely stride, catching my chilled upper arm in his hand.

"Hey," he said. "I've been looking for you."

I forced a quick smile. "Just needed a little fresh air. Sorry. Were you waiting long?"

Gage's face was shadowed. "Jack said he saw you leave with someone."

"Yes. I ran into an old friend. Someone from Welcome, if you can believe it." I thought I'd done a pretty good job of sounding casual, but Gage, as always, was terrifymgly perceptive. He turned me toward the light, exposing my face.

"Darlin'...I know what you look like when you've been kissed."

I couldn't say anything. The tiny muscles of my face twitched with guilt, my eyes turned wet with a pleading glister.