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Chapter One

Jacqueline Belpre hung up the telephone on her littered desk and stared at the man who was standing before her. He was splendid in his navy blazer and pale gray slacks. His black hair waved gracefully back from his broad, tanned forehead. He smelled of expensive, sensuous cologne which was at the same time characteristically discreet.

Handsome enough, she appraised, and obviously not poverty-stricken. He was a refreshing change. Most of the men who came into her office at Osprey Builders were dressed in tattered blue jeans, dirty T-shirts, and work boots, layered with grime and reeking of sweat and surreptitious beers.

"I'm Christopher Warden," he introduced himself, unsmiling, as though she should already know his reason for being there and possibly his life story. He placed a long cardboard carrying tube on her desk and tugged nonchalantly at the collar of his pale blue shirt, which was open at the throat, showing a wisp of black hair.

"Jacqui Belpre," she said, eagerly extending her hand across the space between them as she got to her feet. As president and chief salesperson of Osprey, it behooved her to appear outgoing and friendly, even if this character showed all the cordiality of a prickly pear.

"Leisure Discovery," he said, barely touching her hand with his. "We would like you to bid on our latest project."

"Oh, yes," Jacqui said, picking up the tube, reading the label and putting it down again. "The luxury cottages on your Egret Island property. I've heard people talking about that, and I'd like to bid, but I just don't have the time to devote to a presentation before your deadline. If you'll excuse me, I have to get out to my model house at the Shelter Cove development."

"Miss Belpre, I also have a personal matter to discuss with you," Christopher Warden said, a note of urgency in his clipped Bostonian tone, quite unexpected on the west central Gulf Coast of Florida, north of the Tampa Bay area.

"I beg your pardon?" Jacqui asked, studying his serious gray eyes, cold and immutable as granite.

Christopher Warden cleared his throat and commanded her attention. "I could have had a messenger deliver these specifications, or ignored your firm completely, Miss Belpre," he said with growing agitation, drawing himself up to his full height, which was an impressive six foot two of three, she judged. "But there is the matter between your brother and my sister."

Jacqui froze midway in reaching for the case that held the plans for the house she was going to inspect. "My brother--and your sister?" she asked. "I was certainly not aware they even knew each other. I have heard of Leisure Discovery, of course, Mr. Warden but I have never before heard of you or your sister, or a matter between her and Kyle. And with all due respect, I have no time to discuss anything now."

"I must insist!" Christopher Warden said forcefully, his square jaw set.

"Then you'll just have to come along and we can talk in my car, because if I don't get out to Shelter Cover in ten minutes, I'll miss two important appointments," Jacqui said, slinging her leather bag over her shoulder. "In this business, time is money, and I'm not one to waste either."

"Miss Belpre," Christopher Warden protested, "I don't have time--"

"Do you want to discuss the so-called matter, or not?" Jacqui asked, tapping her blueprint tube against her desk impatiently.

"I think it is of utmost importance," he said gravely, his Bostonian accent becoming even more pronounced.

Jacqui reached for her father's hard hat, which had hung on a hook in the office for the past three years since he and her mother had been lost in a boating accident in the Gulf of Mexico. She dusted its chipped red paint with the palm of her hand and then wiped her hand on the seat of her blue jeans. Forcefully, she thrust the hat at Christopher Warden and grabbed her own hard hat from the top of the filing cabinet.

Striding past him, Jacqui paused at the desk of Yvonne Halpern, her secretary, who occupied the front room of the office, itself a model home. "Yvonne," she said, "I'll be out at Shelter Cove to see Dorothea Grace and the landscaper, then I'll be right back. Call Ted Marks back and tell him that the Simpsons can have this place in two weeks."

Yvonne Halpern, a heavy-set widow who had worked for Osprey Builders for the past five years as an indispensable asset to the operation, sagged backwards in her swivel chair. "But what are we going to do for an office until the other house is ready?" she asked, looking up at Jacqui, frowning.

"We'll just have to get the other model ready in two weeks," Jacqui told her, reaching for the front door. "I have no other choice."

Jacqui was already making a mental list of the phone calls she would have to make when she returned to the office after her rounds. Outside, in the woodchip-covered lot, Jacqui's aged four-wheel drive wagon sat high on its all terrain tires, its body color barely discernible under the dust on its sides. She made it clear to Christopher Warden that it was not necessary for him to hold the door to the driver's side for her, and there was never a question of who was going to drive "the Beast." She switched on the ignition and muscled the car into gear.

"Now," she said, backing out into the street, "what is this terribly earthshaking matter about my brother and your sister?"

"Well," Christopher Warden said, clearly intimidated by her driving, "it seems your brother has--ah--befriended my sister, and I would rather their relationship not go any further."

"Any further than what?" Jacqui prodded, looking both ways at an intersection and then turning left.

"She assured me they are just friends," Christopher Warden said, bracing himself in the seat, his chin showing definite tension.

"But you don't trust Kyle?" Jacqui asked, coming right to the point. "Or your sister?"

"Really, Miss Belpre!"

Jacqui glanced at him again, then back at the palm-lined street ahead of her. "Your sister has a name, I suppose?"

"Alaine," he said, taking pains to be distinct. "With an A."

"I see," Jacqui said, raising her chin so that the glare of the morning sun would not blind her as it bounced off the dusty brown hood of the car. "How old is she?"

"Seventeen," he said. "As I understand it, they met when she fell while she was jogging past a house where he was working."

"A likely story." Jacqui laughed, appreciating his discomfort. "Are you going to tell me you think Kyle tripped her?"

"No, of course not!" he said arrogantly. "He merely went to her aid. She sat there and rested for a while, and he brought her over to the hotel on his lunch break."

"On his motorcycle?"

"Yes," Christopher Warden said, with obvious distaste.

"I take it this was when he was working over on Sullivan Drive about a week ago Saturday, I think it was," Jacqui said after some quick reviewing of Kyle's recent schedule.

"Yes. The next day they went to a public beach to swim, Saturday evening they went to a place called the Purple Pelican, and swimming again the next day."

"And you just assume wedding bells are in the offing?"

"I should certainly hope not!" Christopher Warden snorted derisively.

"Seventeen is too young for marriage," Jacqui agreed sympathetically. "However, I can't see where you have anything to worry about."

"Miss Belpre, Alaine has been here only a month," Christopher Warden said, his facial muscles tense under their even brown tan. "I have gotten her into a high school, but she has not made many friends there yet. I realize that she doesn't meet many people her own age living in the hotel with me, but--"

"She's living in Leisure Discover with you?" she asked, with incredulous disapproval.

"Yes. Our parents are getting a divorce," he sighed, with the shame he might have expressed if he were confessing to an ax murder. "Alaine chose to leave both of them and come to live with me. It's the type of flighty thing she would do."

"Hm! I think she was pretty smart," Jacqui appraised, knowing that Christopher did not want her to make any judgments about his family and would resent anything she said on the subject with some justification, but she could not resist. "I can't think of anything more depressing to a young girl than having to listen to two smug self-righteous Bostonians argue over who is at fault for a break-up. Why not come to Florida and live with a brother who works in a plush resort hotel complex with a golf course, tennis courts, two pools and all sorts of exciting performers coming in to entertain?"

"It is not that simple," Christopher interjected.

"Of course not," Jacqui agreed.

"Mother wanted her to stay home, finish her last year of school--"

"At a proper girls' school, no doubt?"

"Of course. She is certainly not ready to associate with--"

"I want to caution you, Mr. Warden," Jacqui said, taking the sandy short-cut road to Shelter Cove. "I think very highly of Kyle, not only because he is my brother. But if you were to get to know him, you would find him to be every bit the gentleman you might choose for your sister in Boston or Cambridge or any other good address in New England."

"Hardly!" Christopher spat out angrily. "A masonry worker?"

"And a darned good one!" Jacqui defended. "There is nothing wrong with honest work, or an honest worker!"

Christopher Warden brushed dust from the cuff of his blazer. "Nonetheless, Miss Belpre, I want you to tell your brother to leave my sister alone."

"Oh, you do, do you?" Jacqui scoffed. "Well, I make it a point not to interfere with my brother's affairs of the heart, and he reciprocates. I told him and my younger sister Janice when I had to take over the family three years ago that I would not meddle in their lives so long as they didn't go outside the rules our parents had set for us. I will discuss the matter with Kyle for my own information, and give him advice if he wants it. But I will not presume to order him to stop seeing your sister, and that is final."

"I should have known you would be too wrapped up in your business to do anything decisive about Kyle," Christopher accused.

"If this is the attitude you are going to take," Jacqui said, fighting to control both her temper and her vehicle as it traversed the worst of the undulating track, "I suggest you pack up your sister and ship her back to Boston, where she can at least be miserable among people she knows."

They had reached Signal Drive, the main street of the Shelter Cove development. Jacqui had counted herself lucky to have gotten the fifth lot on the left, which had a large live oak tree in the back to shade the house's patio, and a few straggling oaks clumped in the front yard.

There was feverish activity all along the street, where houses were being readied for the opening of the Parade of Homes four weeks away. Among the bungalows that copied the popular Spanish style with red-tiled roofs and wrought-iron trimmings, the colonials with quaint little shutters and the contemporaries with angled redwood siding and handset stone, Jacqui's model stood out with a distinctive half-timbering reminiscent of Elizabethan architecture.

She pulled into the driveway beside a dry-wall finisher's van with every available door standing open. Clamping her hard hat onto her head she grabbed up the plans for the house and jumped out of the car. "You may as well have a look around," she told him. "I have to talk business with some people before I head back to the office, but I won't be very long. Ah! There are the landscapers down at Chesterfield's."

Christopher Warden seemed reluctant to move, even to put the hard hat on his head. At last he got out of the car and followed Jacqui across the uneven bare dirt yard to the dooryard of the house. She vowed to ignore him as she pulled the notebook and pen from her purse and began her inspection of the dry-walling in the living room, dining room and kitchen. "How am I going to have this place done in two weeks?" she mused, looking out the dusty kitchen window at the ravaged backyard.

"Miss Jacqui!" a heavily accented voice called from the front door.

"Manuel!" she replied, returning to the living room. "Que pasa? I'm so glad you're here. Let me show you what I want in the front yard."

Manuel, grinning with straight white teeth under his luxuriant black mustache, pulled a small note book from his hip pocket and followed her out into the dooryard that was formed by the walls of the garage on one side and the front bedroom on the other. "I've got lots of ideas for you," he said.

"Good," she told him, "because I have to move into this house in two weeks."

Manuel grunted and glanced at his calendar in the front of his notebook. "If I can talk one customer into waiting a day or so, I can do this house two weeks from today," he said, scratching the stubble on his chin. "Best I can do, unless I have an extra man."

"Good enough," Jacqui agreed. "I want white stepping stones with white stone chips through the dooryard, then stones over to the driveway."

"In a nice curve?" Manuel asked. "You have so many angles in the house."

Jacqui agreed with a nod of her head. "Along the sides, woodchips and low-spreading junipers and some of those little shrubs with the grey-green leaves and white margins--"

"Pittsoporum?" Manuel supplied, knowing that Jacqui did not have a grasp of all the landscaping names yet. "Chesterfield is using a lot of pittsoporum," he warned her with a wave toward the Spanish-style house on lot eight.

"How about azaleas?" Jacqui asked, biting her thumbnail.

"Not compatible with junipers, Miss Jacqui," Manuel shook his head. "But I could put them in containers and take them out later. This is a fairy-tale house and I see roses, daisy chrysanthemums, and pink hibiscus there to hide the downspout."

"But the money," Jacqui cut in with protest. "That gets expensive."

"You'll make it up when you sell the house, right?" he asked with a wide grin. "I have white azaleas, red roses, pink hibiscus, and a couple of torgolusa junipers, the ones that row upright and branch in pretty curves."

"Ah," Jacqui sighed in appreciation of the mental picture she was getting of his plans. "All right, then, and sod the front yard, and clean out under those little trees. Take off a limb here and there."

"A few shrubs in front?" Manuel asked, making more notes in his book.

Jacqui nodded, thinking that each notation he made was costing more money, but the house had to look showy so that she would get as much business as possible from displaying it. She picked her way carefully past Christopher Warden, who was standing in the doorway of the house with his hands in his pockets.

"Now let's work out back," she said, crossing the living room and dining room to the sliding glass doors that led to the patio, which would be screened and covered with outdoor carpeting. "How about continuing the azaleas out here and grooming under that tree?"

"Is that all you want?" Manuel asked, checking the notes he had made.

"That's not all I want," she laughed, waggling a finger at him. "That's all I can afford."

"Ah, maybe I have some petunias I can throw in," he suggested thoughtfully.

"Can you drop an estimate by the office in a day or two?" she asked.

Manuel laughed. "You never trust me, do you? You sure are Ol' Jack's kid." He turned to Christopher Warden, asking, "Is this lady building a house for you?"

"Oh, no!" Christopher said, and raised a hand defensively and shaking his head. "I'll never hire a woman to build a house for me!"

"Well, If I could have a house built for me, I'd come to her," Manuel told him. "She does the best job for the money of anybody around here, and I see all the builders."

"Don't try to sell him a house for me," Jacqui said, checking a corner by running her hand along the place where pieces of dry-wall were joined. "I don't need the aggravation. I've got four homes going up right now," she told him, conscious that she was trying to impress Christopher.

"I have to get back over to Chesterfield's," Manuel told her. "I warned him that it is almost too early to put flowers in, but he wants color pictures taken tomorrow for the advertisement tabloid in Sunday's newspaper."

"Busy, busy," Jacqui said, watching him leave. She was relieved to see Dorothea Grace driving into the yard.

The interior decorator was a tall, slender woman in her late forties. Her blond hair helped a little by the hairdresser she frequented. She was highly respected in the area, and as a businesswoman she had an impeccable reputation. Jacqui sighed and lowered her voice. "Dorothea is one of the few people I know who can make that denim skirt and cotton blouse look absolutely elegant."

"Jacqui, darling," Dorothea's broad Atlantan drawl called as she came into the house. She immediately took off her dark glasses and smiled with warm brown eyes. "Surely you don't need me any more."

Jacqui adjusted her hard hat, which was becoming uncomfortably sweaty. "I have my doubts about what I am doing here," she explained. "Last year it was just a tremor, but everything I'm been looking at in the decorating magazines has changed so radically, I really feel that I need to ask your advice."

Dorothea looked around the rooms attentively. "What do you have in mind?"

"Briefly," Jacqui said, taking a deep breath, "blue, pink, and romance."

"You clever girl!" Dorothea crowed, proud of her former protégé.

"Manuel is carrying the romantic idea of a little Elizabethan cottage in the dooryard with pink and white," she explained, reaching into her enormous purse for her bundle of swatches. "I'm using this light neutral carpet, and slightly lighter walls, drapes in a pastel blue, and this floral for the upholstery."

"Um! So far, I love it," Dorothea approved, fanning the swatches in her manicured hand and fingering the swatch of carpet.

"What I really want to ask you about is the master bedroom," Jacqui said, leading her through the family room. "Joe! I thought I heard you back here. Don't you usually start in the living room?"

The Dry-wall finisher looked up from the thin plaster he was mixing and smiled toothlessly. "The tile man called me last night and said you had him scheduled to come in today, so I told him to hold off until noon and I'd be out of his way. He had another job he had to do this morning."

Jacqui pantomimed tearing her hair. "If it weren't for these housing shows, there would never be any excitement in this business, would there?" she asked him.

Dorothea and the plaster-splattered Joe laughed. "What would we do for overtime!" Joe asked.

"In here I'm planning on this dark blue-gray shade of paint on the walls, these drapes, and this print bedspread," she showed Dorothea.

Dorothea's brow furrowed. "I'd go a little darker with the paint, Jacqui," she advised. "The idea is right, but you need to be just a little bolder, a little more dramatic."

"Good! That's what I wanted you to tell me," Jacqui said, pouncing on her words. "That was what I thought in the first place, but I--"

"Always go with your first instinct!" Dorothea dictated, implying that her statement covered more than decorating. "What about the other bedrooms?"

"I'm going to have to scrap my plans for them because they are going to be office space. Look, would you do me another favor?" she asked.

"Besides giving you all this free advice?" Dorothea teased.

"Could you take on Janice like you did me?" she asked. "She's sixteen and she needs a job, part-time, after school."

"Is she as intense and impatient as you were?" Dorothea asked, smiling a bit wistfully. "Send her over after school tomorrow and we'll have a talk. If she is anything like you, I can give her the business and retire in three years."

"I'll see that she comes over," Jacqui promised. "Thanks."

"Look at the time!" Dorothea said, glancing at her watch. She fumbled with her sunglasses. "I have another appointment here. Jacqui, I'm anxious to see this place when it's finished."

"You're not the only one!" Jacqui laughed. "Will you be at the Builders Association meeting Monday night?"

"Yes. I'll see you there," Dorothea said, and waving, hurried away.

Jacqui looked around for Christopher Warden and discovered him standing in the archway which led to the bedroom wing, his arms crossed on his chest and his gray eyes watching her every move with an intense speculation she found distinctly unsettling. "I have a few more notes to make here," she told him, squinting at a ceiling joint, "and we'll be going."

She tensed her shoulders before venturing past him to continue her inspection. If he had blocked her way, she did not know how she would have reacted.

"A very clever bathroom there," he told her, sliding the dividing door closed and open again.

"In our house, there never seemed to be enough sinks, so I split the bathroom and put in two sinks," Jacqui said, proudly. "I build my houses for families, not just retired people."

"I see," Christopher Warden said, dusting has hands with a fine linen handkerchief.

"I'm sorry if this is a bore for you," Jacqui said, feeling a pang of contrition for the way she had treated him as she led him back to her four-wheel drive wagon.

"On the contrary," he said, taking off the hard hat, which he clearly detested. "It was in the way of an education."

"How to go out of your mind in one easy lesson?" Jacqui asked, putting her key into the ignition. "Well, everything came loose this morning, starting with the Simpsons wanting the house so soon, but it is something that can be managed. Shall we use the paved street, or take the overland route again?"

"Please use the pavement," Christopher said. "I am not in so much of a hurry to get back to my office that you must take your shortcut again."

"That's what I thought," Jacqui said. "Of all the times of the year, this is the busiest and, I guess, the part I like most." She rambled on about some of the problems she was having, conscious of talking to fill up the time, to take away any opportunity that Christopher might have to criticize her. It gave her a sense of power to know that she had forced him into a situation where he was totally unfamiliar with the surroundings and at a loss, especially because he had been so critical of Kyle. Of all people, Kyle had to be the best possible person for Alaine Warden to meet.

She chided herself fleetingly for the streak of vengeance that had been unleashed in her to cause Christopher Warden his discomfort and then gloat to herself about it, but there was something in the firm line of his slightly cleft chin that told her he would survive her little game, one she had never played before and vowed she never would again.

"So what are the specs on your Egret Island project?" Jacqui asked, trying, by allowing him at least an opening into the conversation, to make amends.

"I'm sure you'll get a much better idea of the situation from the papers I left in your office. It's merely a matter of quoting figures," Christopher told her.

"Then why not just hire your own subcontractors?" Jacqui asked.

Christopher sighed. "I tried that once, Miss Belpre. Things are never as easy as they first appear. Perhaps when you look over the materials, and we could talk--"

"Mr. Warden, I really don't intend to bid on that project," she told him forcefully. "You can see the bind I'm in. I have three other houses in various stages right now. So long as I have Kyle farmed out learning the trades, I'm the only one to ride herd on my subcontractors and look for new business."

"Explain what you just said about Kyle," he demanded, a puzzled expression on his face.

Jacqui steered the car into her parking place. "Kyle is not old enough by state law to receive his builder's certification yet, so when he graduated from high school, I started farming him out to the best of my subcontractors. First he learned building supplies from a wholesaler. Then I had him learn electrical wiring, plumbing and carpentry. Now he'll work on masonry for another month or so, and go on to dry-wall for the summer. In the fall he'll work for roofers. Then, he'll be old enough to start builders' school and learn contracting, the legal end of it. He's already had bookkeeping in high school."

"So there is a pattern to his not keeping a job over six months?" Christopher Warden asked, his dark eyebrows raised.

Jacqui opened her car door and jumped out. "If you thought he was shiftless because he wasn't keeping a job very long, you are totally wrong," she told him. "There is definitely a method to this madness. And he hasn't worked for a single employer who has not told him that he would have a job with him if he ever needed it. But that isn't our plan. Kyle will take over Osprey Builders in about two years, and I'll just sit around the office and yell at the county inspectors."

"There is a possibility that I misjudged your brother, Miss Belpre," Christopher Warden said, and Jacqui realized that it was as much of an apology as she was likely to get from him.

"There is every possibility in the world, Mr. Warden," she said.

He handed the hard hat to her. "Should you decide not to bid on Egret Island, may I have the set of specifications back?" he asked.

"That's standard procedure around here," she told him, taking off her own hat and fluffing out her long, honey-blond hair. "Besides, I have so many sets of my own, why would I want to clutter up my office with someone else's? I might get confused and build a multimillion-dollar complex instead of a three-two somewhere."

"Three- two?" he asked, his gray eyes quizzing her.

"Three bedrooms, two baths," she told him, flashing fingers. "Nice meeting you, Mr. Warden. I'll speak to Kyle, but I don't give him orders. And I'll send the specs back after I take a look at them. Just because I'm busy, that doesn't mean I'm not curious."

Christopher Warden backed away toward his sleekly gleaming maroon town car, one that would be immediately bogged down in some of the sandy, remote places Jacqui took the Beast. The closest thing to a smile crossed his face, and Jacqui wondered if he was smiling at her or at the relief of leaving her presence.

In the office, Yvonne looked up from her account books and grinned. "How did you manage to tear yourself away from him so soon?" she teased.

"He's all show and no substance," Jacqui called back over her shoulder. Going back to her office, which would probably be the breakfast area when the Simpsons moved into the house, she carefully hung her father's hat on its hook and replaced hers on the filing cabinet. She tossed her tube of specifications back into its slot and tentatively picked up the tube Warden had left.

Christopher Warden had been an interesting diversion in her day. Handsome. Cultured. Perhaps even spoiled. Definitely class-conscious.

There was something about him, though, that struck her as fundamentally appealing, something that would attract her even if the wealth, the refinement, perhaps even the physical perfection were stripped away, something indefinable. It struck a responding chord in her own being, almost as she had seen harmonic strings in a piano quiver when a related key had been struck. Through the years, she had steeled herself against reacting to the men whom she met, but Christopher Warden had appeared at a time when her guard was down and there was no avoiding the impression he had made on her.

She felt again a little sorry for treating him as wretchedly as she had, but he should have known that she would not have welcomed criticism of her younger brother with gratitude. Besides, he had made her feel plainly inadequate.

She looked down at the blue chambray shirt and blue jeans that she was wearing. They were functional, practical clothing for a woman who never knew what swamp or palm-thicket her work would be taking her to.

She grinned devilishly to herself, then slid the Egret Island papers into an empty slot in the rack. So much for Christopher Warden.

"Yvonne? Can you come here a minute?" she called. "We have to make some plans."

Chapter Two

There was the inevitable quiver when she finally turned off the ignition of the Beast in her own driveway late that afternoon. Jacqui pulled the key from the slot, then dropped the heavy ring of keys into her satchel-sized purse. Almost forgetting the tube that lay across the passenger seat, she reached back to get it, then walked along the concrete paving stones to the patio door of the house her father had built seven years before.

"Is that you, Jacqui?" Janice called to her from the kitchen.

"What's left of me," Jacqui replied without humor, walking slowly to the kitchen. The wide white countertops did not give the usual clues to what Janice was fixing for dinner. "What are we having tonight?" she asked.

"There's coleslaw in the refrigerator," Janice answered, turning from the oven and laying aside a bright yellow oven mitt, "and I just now put a potato casserole into the oven. You just can't smell it yet."

Jacqui reflected that it was becoming increasingly like looking into a mirror to see those bright blue eyes, the long, waving honey-blond hair, only a shade lighter than her own.

"What are you doing?" Jacqui asked, noticing that Janice was fussing over their mother's deep-fryer which had been tucked back into the hard-to-reach corner of the kitchen cupboard for several years.

"Well, it's a surprise," Janice said, loving the opportunity to tease, to draw out the suspense as long as possible. There were times when she was maddeningly effective at it, and this was one of them, Jacqui realized wearily. It was almost as annoying as her overuse of makeup.

"I've had enough surprises for today, Jan," she said with a heavy sigh. "How about a straight answer?"

"Lisa's mother brought me home from school today," she started, glancing up at the clock. "She told me about buying some eating shrimp from one of the trucks that park in the plaza, and how good they were going to be. So one thing led to another, and I asked her if she would mind taking me to get some and showing me how to fix them, because I'm so tired of all the ground beef we've eaten lately."

Jacqui felt her eyes widen and her jaw drop. "Shrimp! Where did you get the money?"

"I hadn't spent any of my allowance," Janice said, with an offhand shrug of her shoulders, "so I thought I'd splurge. Besides, it's not as much from off the back of a truck."

"Well, I can pay you back easily enough," Jacqui told her, dropping her purse to its usual place on the counter and picking up the mail.

"Lisa's mother came in and showed me how to clean the shrimp, and she made the batter to dip them in. I wrote everything down as she went along," Janice rambled on. "So when Kyle gets home, all I have to do is heat this oil and dip them into the batter and fry them. I hope it's all right."

"If it works, it's more than all right," Jacqui told her, dropping the mail back onto the counter and giving her sixteen-year-old sister an affectionate pat on her back as she turned toward the hallway that led to her bedroom. "Got an idea for you, if you're interested in making some money."

Janice left the stove and followed her. "Interested? I'm fascinated!" she exclaimed eagerly.

"I thought you would be," Jacqui said, sitting down on the edge of her barely made double bed. "I was talking to Dorothea Grace about you today. She said for you to drop by tomorrow if you want a part-time job."

"Eh. Decorating?" Janice asked, with a frown crossing her fresh oval face.

"That's where I started," Jacqui reminded her, kicking off her shoes. "It's not something you have to stick with for the rest of your life. It's fun, and Dorothea is great to work for."

"I'll talk to her," Janice said, very apparently not overjoyed with the prospect. "But I'm not going to promise anything."

"Money is money," Jacqui said. "Look, I'm in desperate need of a shower. I have had about the worst day ever. I'm in a basically lousy mood, so just humor me, huh?"

"What do I always do?" Janice asked. Then she glanced at the tube Jacqui had brought into the bedroom and dropped beside her on the bed. "What is that?"

"Just a project that is out on bids," Jacqui told her, getting up and rummaging through her dresser for fresh underthings. "I don't intend to bid on it, but I just thought I'd look it over to see what it was all about."

"It's a good thing you don't intend to bid," Janice spouted. "You're working six or seven days a week as it is. I hardly ever see you. When was the last time we went anywhere together just for fun?"

If Jacqui had taken over the job of breadwinner of the family, Janice had assumed the duties of mother-hen. She was constantly fretting over their sleeping and eating, their aches and pains.

"How would it be if I promise, in blood, that we can do something soon?" Jacqui asked, heading for the bathroom that was adjacent to the bedroom. She still felt very tentative about the room, which had been her parents' and now served as both a bedroom and a home-office for Jacqui.

"When?" she demanded.

"The weekend after the Parade of Homes," Jacqui said, thinking ahead.

"That'll be six weeks from now," Janice wailed, then her mood instantly changed. "What will we do?"

Jacqui closed the door between them, anxious for the solitude of the shower. "Maybe go down to Sarasota and look at the museums."

She heard Janice groan and walk away. Then there was the roar of Kyle's powerful motorcycle as it entered the driveway. Janice would go tell everything to Kyle and she could have a few minutes of sweet, warm, perfumed peace in the shower.

But her thoughts went back to the morning, first to Ted Marks, then skittered off immediately to Christopher Warden, and she felt herself become tense and angry all over again. How dare he look down his elegant nose at Kyle, who had been raised to have every bit as much respect for womanhood as any stiff and proper Bostonian?

So they weren't rich. That did not really matter. Alaine Warden obviously needed to talk to someone who understood an irreparable loss of both parents. There had been a special love in their family that was no longer there, leaving them emotionally stranded. Jacqui had swallowed all her grief, taking charge of making all the arrangements, taking over the home-building company, and seeing that the houses under contract had been finished, while studying for her own builder's certificate. By the time she had reached a breathing space, Kyle and Janice had their emotions back under control, and Jacqui pushed her feelings far into the background. Grief had a difficult time settling on a moving target.

Now as she lathered herself with rose-scented soap, one of the few extravagances she allowed herself, she was dismayed that the force of the shower slackened. She knew that Kyle was in the other bathroom, and no matter how badly she needed her shower, Kyle undoubtedly needed his more. She quickly rinsed herself off and stepped out onto the thick bathmat.

Jacqui took her time, though, drying herself, tying up her hair, and getting into one of the light robes that were her trademark at home. She intended to sit down and look over the specifications for Egret Island, but the aroma of Janice's potato casserole and the deep-frying shrimp reached out to her, drawing her to the kitchen, and then to the breakfast area, where Janice was setting the table.

"How's dinner coming?" Jacqui asked, straightening a teaspoon on the table, then feeling guilty that she had possibly insulted Janice.

"Just fine, I hope," Janice said, and returned to the stove to peer down into the deep fryer and wait.

Kyle appeared in the doorway, bare-chested, wearing fresh but well-worn jeans. Droplets of water still clung to the tight ringlets of his sun-bleached hair. He was a handsome man, well over six feet tall, muscular from the hard manual work that he was used to. His face had long ago lost all its babyishness and taken on the angularity of adulthood, softened by his ready smile and warm blue eyes. Jacqui considered herself the ugly duckling of the three of them, but only because she had neither the time nor the inclination to fuss over her grooming.

Without a word, Kyle went to the stove and studied the contents of the fryer. He took the slotted spoon from Janice and stirred patiently. "Got a platter ready?" he asked. "Did you make a sauce?"

"Sauce?" Janice demanded. "You're lucky I made all this."

He gently poked her in the ribs with his elbow. "The cook has to taste first," he reminded her, lifting a dripping golden blob from the fryer and shaking it off onto the paper towel on the platter Janice held. "They all look done, don't you think?"

Janice nodded and watched as he turned off the electric element and finished taking all the shrimp out of the boiling oil. "It's really not awfully hard to fix shrimp," Janice said, carrying the platter to the table, "once you get past cleaning the little dickens."

"Well, it's a very fitting treat for the occasion," Jacqui told them, as they all sat down at the round table. As was their custom, they bowed their heads for a few seconds and then raised them again. "Ted Marks sold the old model today. The only problem is that we have to be out of it in two weeks."

Janice filled her plate from the various dishes before attempting the first bite of shrimp. Suddenly Kyle speared one of the shrimp with a fork. "If you're not brave enough, kid," he said, "I sure am. I hardly got any lunch today."

Janice took a tentative nibble at her shrimp, then a larger bite. "Needs something, don't you think?" she asked Kyle. "Something--"

"It needs the sauce you didn't make," he told her, his blue eyes teasing as he managed to talk while he chewed.

"Well, next time, you can do it," Janice said, almost pouting.

Kyle, sitting at what was considered the head of the table, reached out with his big hand, placing it behind Janice's slender neck. "It's really delicious," he said and grinned. Then he turned to Jacqui. "Can you get into the new model house so soon?"

"I'll have to," Jacqui said, dutifully cutting one of her shrimp in half with her fork and preparing to bravely bite into it. "I called around to some of my subcontractors and they were willing to juggle a job here and there," she told Kyle. "But next Sunday, we're all going to end up painting the place, because the carpet has to go in Monday. That's the only day they can install it."

"We're painting?" Kyle asked, frowning, a forkful of coleslaw halfway to his mouth. "We?"

"I know that will cut into your swimming schedule," Jacqui teased.

Kyle shrugged and Jacqui wished that he would have shown some surprise that she knew what he had been doing the last two Sundays.

She debated with herself for a long moment whether to go deeper into the matter of Alaine Warden, or whether to let everyone enjoy Janice's unexpected culinary triumph and bring up the subject later, when she and Kyle would be along. When Janice launched into a discussion of how she could keep Jacqui to the promised weekend excursion, and where they should go, the matter was settled. There would be plenty of time to corner Kyle when Janice had gone off to struggle with her geometry.

* * *

When dinner had been cleared, Jacqui spread out the specifications for the Egret Island project, weighing down the corners of the survey on the land with a couple of glass paperweights from her mother's collection, still on display on the buffet.

"What's this?" Kyle asked, shrugging his shoulders into a blue chambray shirt indistinguishable from six others he owned and only larger than four hanging in Jacqui's closet.

"The specs for Mr. Warden's project on Egret Island," she told him and detected a flicker behind his blue eyes. "He delivered them in person first thing this morning--well, first thing after Ted Marks sold the house out from under me."

Kyle rubbed the cleft between his lower lip and his chin with one blunt forefinger. "Something tells me I'm about to find out why he delivered them in person," he said slowly.

"Sit down," Jacqui said.

"I guess I'd better," Kyle sighed. "What did he have to say?"

"He doesn't want his sister associating with a cement-block layer," she told him simply.

"She could do a lot worse," Kyle said, running his fingers along the edges of the land survey.

"That's the essence of what I told him, among other things," Jacqui said, turning her attention to the summary of the contract. "I had to ask what her name is. To him, she is just his sister, not Alaine."

"From what she has told me, that's symptomatic of the way she has been treated since she was a child," Kyle said. "The unexpected baby, the inconvenience to what was already supposed to be a perfect arrangement."

"And now that the arrangement has fallen apart, she feels--"

"Like she caused the divorce," Kyle said. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms on his chest. "She's hurting, Jacqui, and if I don't care about her, who will?"

He recounted the story that Christopher Warden had only sketched for her earlier. Jacqui shook her head that neither Kyle nor Christopher Warden had seemed to notice that Alaine was very much in control of the situation, and whatever anyone else did, Alaine had made her point clear. She was lonely, and she wanted a friend.

"I took her to the beach and to Purple Popsicle because I thought I could get her to meet other people," Kyle concluded, "but she doesn't want to be interested in anyone but me."

"And how do you feel about her?" Jacqui asked.

"Like I would about a sister, I guess," he told her, looking at her levelly with his sincere blue eyes. "She has been in private schools, very sheltered, very proper, all her life. I guess they have money. Of course, they have money! She is so small and helpless and--pretty--"

Jacqui raised her eyebrows at the word helpless. "Kyle--another one of your strays?" she asked, trying to keep from being too serious.

Kyle smiled sheepishly. He had been the one in the family to cart home the stray, and there had been times when the family had been afraid their home would turn into a pound. Luckily now they had only an independent female cat that appropriated a corner of the garage and drifted in and out of their lives at will, asking nothing more than an occasional handout of dry cat food and all their table scraps.

Jacqui shook her head again. "Have you met Christopher Warden?" she asked him.

"Oh, yes!" Kyle pounded the table with the palm of his hand. "He's a cool one. There I was, covered with cement dust and mortar, and he was in a gray three-pieced suit and a striped tie. The second he felt the calluses on my hand, he recoiled like a snake. I am not acceptable to be even a friend of his precious sister. But she does have a defiant streak in her. Alaine told me that she doesn't care what her brother thinks, she wants to go out with me anyway."

Jacqui shuffled papers around in front of her. Should she ask Kyle if he felt that Alaine was using him to rebel against her family, or should she let the whole thing work itself out at its own speed, she wondered. "I don't want to get mixed up in this," she told him, "but Christopher Warden asked me to talk to you about it. I've already told him that we have an agreement that I don't interfere in your affairs of the heart and you don't interfere in mine."

"And when was the last time you had an affair for me to mess in?" Kyle teased, leaning his elbows on the table.

"That has nothing to do with it," Jacqui said, at first insulted then feeling herself smile.

"Only half as long, I'd bet," Kyle spouted, "as it's been since Warden had one, if he has a heart to have one with."

"Kyle, calm down," Jacqui said, thinking momentarily of what Christopher Warden would be like if he were in love. His gray eyes would smolder with passion, and the deep round tones of his voice would very matter-of-factly proclaim his undying adoration. A woman wouldn't have a chance when he put his arms around her and held her to his broad chest, when he began to kiss her with his classically sensual mouth. She swallowed quickly and brought herself back to the matter at hand. "Are you sure you are not in love with Alaine, just a little?"

"I've kissed her a few times, experimentally, you know," Kyle confessed. "But it didn't mean anything, not to me, at least."

"Want some advice?" Jacqui asked with a sigh.

"I don't know," Kyle said.

Jacqui turned her attention to the papers spread out before her. She had no business ever offering advice to Kyle, in view of her limited experience, she told herself.

"Oh, all right," Kyle said. "What do you think I should do?"

"It depends," Jacqui told him. "If Alaine is bothering you, and you want to get rid of her, as Christopher Warden wants you to, the best thing would be to reverse your psychology. There is one very good way to discourage a romance. Force-feed Alaine on your presence, with proper chaperoning, of course. She needs family, so we include her in ours. Jan can distract her, since they are closer in age than you are to her. I need painters Sunday, so maybe--"

Kyle's face brightened. "You are so clever! Only someone who is a step back from a problem can see it clearly, though."

"I'm just your common, garden variety super-sister, dear Kyle, and don't you forget it," she said, then laughed with him. "Seriously, you work out the details. You can use 'the Beast' anytime you need it, because I think Christopher objects to the cycle. Count on me to chaperone, or take Janice with you. Just be very obvious to Christopher with what you are doing and where you are going, and Alaine will soon tire of us and you."

"Guaranteed?"

"If it doesn't work, I'm going to forget I ever mentioned it," she said. "Look at this! They want to put six cottages on that island. They have no idea of the elevation they need to keep the units from being swamped by heavy seas."

She scooted her chair aside a little to give Kyle a chance to see the plans as they had been drawn up. He moved papers around with his mortar-roughened hands. "Well, how would you do it?" he asked.

"I'm not even going to bid on this," she sighed. "Why waste my time on it?"

"Just in case you ever want to do something like this," Kyle reasoned. "Look, Jacqui, the way these cottages are facing each other, no one would feel they had any real privacy."

"If they were clustered," Jacqui mused, "using common walls, and the natural contour of the terrain--Kyle, could you bring me my drafting board? I may just sketch out a few ideas."

She and Kyle were both good at drafting. It had come naturally to them, it seemed. But Kyle was more adept at visualizing structures from bare blueprints and specialized schematics, which Jacqui was wary of.

"All right!" Kyle exclaimed, when he comprehended what Jacqui was sketching. "But Leisure Discovery wants six units, and that is only four."

"What if we excavate this lower area behind these four, put in a service and storage area, and perch two units on top. Now, with landscaping and decking, all six units have views of the Gulf, and all the privacy they could want. With the common garden, really well-planned, exotic plantings, it could be like six little private paradises. We could have a footbridge here to connect with the cart-path, and a service road here, out of sight. Even space for six cars, under a carport--"

"Do a front elevation for it," Kyle suggested. "What style do you see it in?"

"I see stone, angled wood panels. No, that would be too much upkeep. Stucco and stone, some redwood decks and walkways," Jacqui said, then turned to a fresh page in her sketch pad and drew quickly.

They worked together, trying one idea after another, spurring each other on to better and better ideas, until Janice, in night clothes, came shuffling over to the table. "What are you doing?" she asked.

"Messing around," Kyle said, barely looking up from the table.

"Well, it's almost eleven, and you both have long days tomorrow," she scolded, then yawned.

"Mother hen!" Kyle countered. "Is there any iced tea left?"

"It'll keep you awake," Janice said. "What's that? A house?"

"Six resort units," Jacqui said. "This is what the specs are, but I didn't like that concept, so we got to fooling around with the idea, and this is what we came up with."

Janice held the final sketch at arm's length and made faces as she studied the rendering. "I guess if you have to mess up Egret Island, that's the best way to do it," she commented at last.

Jacqui sighed and slumped in her chair. "Well, that was a perfectly good evening wasted," she said.

"Just because I don't like it doesn't mean that Leisure Discovery won't buy it," Janice said, flipping back to a previous sketch.

"I don't think it was a waste," Kyle was saying, rummaging through the refrigerator. "I learned a few things, didn't you, Jac?"

"Yes, I think I did." She flexed her back, then began straightening up the table and her drafting board.

"How long do you have before you submit this?" Janice asked.

"I'm not submitting this," Jacqui told her.

"You mean you are going to let someone else hack up Egret Island this other way?" Janice demanded. "Really, Jacqui--"

"She's right," Kyle said. "Looking at the alternative, this is a great plan. The cluster makes very good sense in a lot of ways. You really ought to finish this and take it to Christopher Warden to show him that we Belpres have something other than cement in our heads."

"I don't care if I ever see Christopher Warden again," Jacqui told him.

"Come, come," Kyle chided. "You've always told us this business is not the place to let personal feelings color your judgment."

"I didn't know you were listening," Jacqui said.

"Jacqui, if you presented this," Kyle said, spreading one hand across the work she had completed that evening, "and got the contract, think what it would do for Osprey Builders. It would make our year."

"That's easy for you to say," she told him. "I don't want to have anything to do with--"

"To say nothing of the reputation you would get from it," Kyle was going on, ignoring her protests.

"It seems like a waste of a night's work," Janice said, always the pragmatist, as she compared the two designs.

"Oh, yes, as though I had something else to do," Jacqui said. "It would take me three or four nights of hard work to prepare a proper presentation."

Janice looked at her intently. "What can I do to help?" she asked.

Kyle's eyes were their most serious blue. "I say let's go for it," he said, with a cautious urgency in his voice.

Jacqui rubbed the back of her neck. "Really--"

"From here, it's just drafting and estimating, Jac," he said. "You make a watercolor wash for each elevation, and those proposed interiors, and it's as good as done. I'll do the drafting and the estimating. Jan can make the iced tea and pick out the style of swimming pool we are going to have installed here when it's done."

"Your mother had one pushy kid," Jacqui said, pointing to Kyle, then she pointed to herself, "and one fool for work." She got up slowly. "Let's leave everything right where it is, and eat at the counter for breakfast. Agreed?"

Kyle nodded, then placed his hands on Janice's shoulders. "Bed!"

Janice nodded. "You too."

He immediately had a faraway look in his eyes, then he turned back toward the project on the breakfast table, but Jacqui knew better than to ask him what he was thinking. "Check the doors, Kyle," she told him. "I'll get the lights."

Chapter Three

The wind woke Jacqui from a heavy sleep a second before the alarm was to ring. The walls of the house shook and she heard the rustling of leaves, straining to cling to the oak trees outside.

Then came the first spattering of raindrops against the roof.

Yawning, she turned off the alarm and sat up on the edge of the bed. "Janice! Get up!" she called out, but Janice's radio had already clicked on to a rock station, the only noise which assured that Janice would be fully awake and on the school bus by seven o'clock.

In the kitchen, the telephone rang, and a few minutes later, Kyle came to the door of the bedroom as Jacqui was putting on her velour robe. "That was Cletus Garwood," Kyle told her, scratching his mop of blond curls. "He says that this wind is from the south, which means that we're going to have rain until nine or so, and there is no point to going out to the job until then. I thought, since I have a little time, I might work on the bid for Egret Island."

"Be my guest," Jacqui said, around a yawn. "Look, how does Garwood always know exactly how long it is going to rain, and when to report to work? He's hardly ever wrong."

"He says that when the wind is from the south for more than four hours, we'll get rain," Kyle said, then shrugged. "If I work with him long enough, he'll tell me all the lore he knows, besides how to get the stress cracks to go where we want them."

Jacqui shoved her feet into her thong sandals and got to her feet. "All I know is that he is one of the best cement masons around, and you can learn a lot from him. Now, if you want to work on that contract, this might be a good time, between eight and nine, to get the quotes on the materials. Most of the offices are open by eight."

"You're not planning to get this thing together to give to Mr. Warden on Sunday when I pick up Alaine to come paint, are you?" he asked, following her to the kitchen.

"I don't see how I can have it done by then, do you?" Jacqui asked him, drawing water into the kettle. She glanced across the room at the breakfast table, still cluttered with two nights' worth of work.

"No," Kyle agreed, getting the bread from the refrigerator. "So it will be Monday night before we finish it, and the deadline is the next Friday. He sure didn't give much warning to the bidders."

"Well, it seems to me that Leisure Discovery doesn't know how to conduct business very well yet," Jacqui said.

"Come on, Jac," Kyle said. "You know why he brought you that set of specifications. Just to bug you about me. To see what kind of person you are. He had no intention of asking you to bid. Those specs were probably a set that someone returned to him, and he just used them as an excuse."

"And we are submitting a bid as an excuse to--"Jacqui caught a glimpse of a dangerous look in Kyle's blue eyes.

"What I was wondering was," Kyle said, turning away to start his toast, "who is going to take this bid in? You or me.?"

"Personally, I don't care if I never see Christopher Warden again in my life," Jacqui said, and promptly felt a twinge in her shoulder, a twinge which she claimed was an old volleyball injury, but in fact was a reminder of conscience. "I just remembered, Kyle, I won't be able to work on it Monday night, because I have a Builders Association meeting."

Kyle nodded. "I was thinking, maybe I should make a scale model, to show how the positions of the units will be varied by the use of the terrain. With the extra night to work on it--"

"Kyle, why are we knocking ourselves dead on this?" Jacqui asked. "I don't want to win this bid. I don't want to have anything to do with Leisure Discovery or Christopher Warden. We're learning a lot on this, but if I won this bid, I would be scared to death. I would hate to accidentally get the dumb thing and then default on the contract."

"If, by some dumb quirk of fate," Kyle said, searching for the strawberry jam in the refrigerator, "Osprey gets the contract, I'll foreman the job, so you won't have to go near the place."

Jacqui rolled her eyes heavenward. "Now that would really give Mr. Warden something to think about, you hanging around Leisure Discovery for the months it is going to take to make this project come together."

Kyle laughed. "You make it sound as though I'll be hanging around the pool or the golf course. Believe me, I'd rather do that than--"

"You'll learn dry-wall this summer, and that will be that," Jacqui said.

Janice shuffled into the kitchen, yawning. "That wind is awful! What if it's raining this hard when I have to get the bus?"

"Is this a hint that you want a ride to school?" Jacqui asked her.

"How'd you guess?" Janice asked. "Hey, when are we getting the breakfast table back?"

"Next Wednesday morning," Kyle told her, taking his toast from the toaster and trying not to burn his fingers.

* * *

Yvonne Halpern was late for work, trudging into the office with her raincoat and umbrella dripping, apologizing that her electricity had been out and her alarm had not gone off. Jacqui did not particularly care whether Yvonne was late or not. A widow in her early fifties, Yvonne was a hard worker whose loyalty was unquestioned. She had worked for Jack and Sandy Belpre, and had almost become a member of the family.

"What are you doing with all that trash?" Yvonne asked, looking at the pile Jacqui was accumulating in the middle of the floor.

"I thought while you weren't here, and the phone wasn't ringing," Jacqui said, "I'd start throwing things away. Would you happen to have any moving boxes?"

"No, but I'll bet some of my neighbors do," Yvonne replied. "I'll ask around. Do you want me to help paint Sunday?"

"No," Jacqui said after a moment's thought. "I think I'd rather you help with the moving the next week. I don't want to impose on you."

"It's not an imposition," Yvonne assured her. "I think of it as part of my job."

"Moving, maybe," Jacqui said, making a decision to throw away an old Christmas decoration. "Painting, no."

"You're the boss," Yvonne said, adding an old scratch pad to Jacqui's growing pile of junk.

"Yvonne, make a note that I have to talk to the bonding company this morning," Jacqui said, digging out some bent file cards from the back of a drawer. "I need a bid bond for the Egret Island project."

Raising an eyebrow, Yvonne made a note on her calendar. "So-o-o?" she drawled. "You're actually certifying that bid?"

* * *

Alaine Warden was as charming as her brother was formidable. She entered the model home gingerly, her eyes wide and inquisitive. Her small frame, refined, almost classic face, and black hair was a sharp contrast to Kyle's height and blondness, Jacqui thought, seeing them together.

"So this is it?" Alaine asked, her accent definitely Bostonian, her manner somewhat as Jacqui always imagined Alice in Wonderland had when she fell down the rabbit-hole. Her gray eyes were probing and curious, showing that she was open to a new experience. She wore old jeans and a T-shirt that showed off her slender figure and even tan.

"Alaine," Kyle said, a note of pride in his voice, "my sisters, Jacqui and Janice."

Without a flicker off restraint, Alaine reached for Jacqui's hand, which was already paint spattered. "My brother told me quite a lot about you, Miss Belpre."

"Jacqui, please," Jacqui admonished, imagining exactly what Christopher Warden had told his sister about her.

"Jacqui. And Janice, Kyle has told me a lot about you, all nice things. Where do I start?" Alaine asked, pushing her black hair back over her shoulders.

"Well," Jacqui said, "there's a bandana over there for you to tie back your hair. Then why don't you take a look around the house?"

"Oh, good," Alaine agreed enthusiastically. "By the way, Chris is bringing us our dinner when he comes to collect me later. He thought that it would be imposing on Kyle for him to take me back home."

Jacqui shot Kyle a look, but he had not reacted to the implied message.

Janice put down her paint roller and said, "Come on, Alaine, I'll show you around," and she led the girl away.

"So," Jacqui said, lowering her voice, "big brother doesn't trust you to get little sister home safely after dark?"

"He is trying to cramp my style," Kyle said with a grin.

"Did you explain your strategy to him?"

"Didn't get a chance," Kyle said, pulling off his T-shirt and hanging it on a doorknob. "Besides, I don't think I'm going to. That way there is one less person who can sink the whole plan. If he knew, he might not react the way we want him to at times."

"Absolutely right," Jacqui said, after some thought. "Do you want Alaine to work with you or with Janice and me?"

Kyle picked up Janice's roller and loaded it with paint. "There's safety in numbers," he said. "Let's do everything together, the whole day."

"I'm glad we already hung wallpaper in the bathroom then," Jacqui laughed.

Janice and Alaine returned to the living room, giggling about something. Quickly Alaine put the spare bandana around her head. "Jacqui, this is a lovely house," she said. "So much room. We've always lived in townhouses.

"Janice told me that she started working for an interior decorator," she continued. "You all have such great plans for your lives, and such interesting work."

Janice pretended she was choking. "Actually, you can have my job any time you want it, Alaine. Somehow Jacqui thinks that there is nothing in the world besides building houses and decorating them."

"Oh?" Jacqui said. "I thought you like working with Dorothea?"

"It's all right," Janice said, with a noticeable lack of spirit.

No, it's not, Jacqui thought to herself. She had assumed that Janice would like the job because she had found it so engrossing herself. It could be that Janice had heard so much about building all her life that she did not feel the excitement of watching a house take shape on an empty lot. Jacqui had not foreseen this trouble in her paradise.

She brooded about it, especially when they moved on to the bedrooms and Janice took the opportunity to criticize the colors Jacqui had chosen for them. The first was a pale pink and another pale peach. When they got to the master bedroom, and Janice saw the dark blue-gray paint, her tongue clacked in her mouth.

"This is really going to be horrid," she assayed, shaking her head as she studied the first streak of her roller.

"It will dry lighter," Jacqui assured her.

"I still think it's a big mistake," Janice said.

"Well, Dorothea thought it would be very striking," Jacqui defended.

"Precious Dorothea," Janice exploded.

"You can go outside," Jacqui told her, pulling rank. "Or you can paint the dining room all by yourself."

"What do you think, Alaine?" Janice asked.

"I like blue, myself," Alaine said, and from the look on her face, Jacqui could see that she was trying to be diplomatic.

"I think," Kyle said, pausing before he poured paint into a roller tray, "that it is time we take a little break. What do you say, ladies? Let's go for a walk around the neighborhood and check out the other houses."

"You all go," Jacqui told them. "I'll finish up with the paint that has already been poured, then I'll take a break."

The longer she looked at the blue paint, the less she liked it herself, although she was as enthusiastic about her decorating scheme as ever. "It's got to look better when it's dry," she told herself when she was alone.

* * *

Christopher approached the house on Signal Drive with an attitude of cautious anticipation. He had not been altogether convinced that Alaine should spend a whole day with the Belpres, although it was better than having her mope around all day, telling him how bored she was. But he could not have manufactured a better excuse to see Jacqueline again.

He entered the house, knocking at the front door first and looking around the living room, putting himself in the place of a prospective buyer. Impressed by the change a coat of paint made, he smiled to himself.

No wonder no one had responded to his knock at the door! Everyone was in the dining room laughing over a mock argument as they picked up their painting paraphernalia. Jacqui Belpre, dressed in an old chambray shirt with sleeves rolled above her elbows and the front shirttails tied high on her midriff, was banging the lid of a can tight with the handle of a screwdriver.

"Oh, Chris!" Alaine greeted him, by now spattered with all five of the shades of paint they had used. "What perfect timing! We're all finished except for cleaning up."

"Good," Christopher said hoisting the picnic hamper he was carrying. "And you're all hungry, I suppose."

"Famished!" Alaine said. "Oh, this is Janice, Chris."

"How do you do?" Christopher said, then turned to Jacqui. "Miss Belpre, do you want to eat here, or should we take our dinner over to your home?"

"Er--" Jacqui said, quickly looking over at Kyle as though asking for help. "We--ah--have a project on our breakfast table at home--I ah--"

Kyle put a roller into its empty pan. "Jacqui, the girls and I will go over to the house and set up dinner, and Mr. Warden can bring you over when you've cleaned out the rollers and brushes."

"Great idea," Jacqui said, wiping her hands on the seat of her cut-off blue jeans. "Take everything out to the utility sink in the garage and I'll be right there."

Christopher caught Jacqui's azure blue gaze with his own, wondering fleetingly if anyone else had ever appreciated her eyes as he did. "How are your schemes for your master bedroom coming along?" he asked.

"Janice doesn't like the shade of paint," Jacqui reacted, sighing, then turned to lead the way through the family room.

"Perhaps she will like if better when everything is in place," Christopher encouraged, "or perhaps her concepts are a bit immature."

Jacqui laughed as she entered the room in question. "Janice's concepts are rarely immature these days." The last rays of the afternoon sun slanted through the master bedroom. "In this light, I still can't get a good idea of how it looks," she sighed pensively.

"I think it looks quite--restful, yet--romantically exciting," Christopher said, "and after all, that is the purpose, isn't it?"

Jacqui looked up at him with surprise at his boldness. "Yes, I suppose."

"Blue is a favorite color of mine," Christopher told her. "The most fascinating women I have ever met have all had blue eyes," he said, lowering his voice and aiming his words directly at the azure eyes that watched him. He could not be certain, in the reddish light of the sunset, that she blushed slightly, but only that she was the most fascinating of all the creatures he was lumping together.

"Oh," Jacqui said, trying to appear preoccupied with inspecting the wall closely, trying to see if any spots had been missed and should be touched up before the brushes were put away.

"We got off to a bad start, didn't we?" he asked, standing in the middle of the room. Jacqui could feel him watching her, could hear in his tone and inflection that he wanted her attention.

Jacqui looked up at him quickly, then sighed. "Yes, we certainly did."

"I am very grateful for your inviting Alaine to help you today," he continued. "I can see what you are trying to do."

"Oh?" Jacqui asked, wondering if her stratagem was so transparent that he had indeed seen through it.

"Yes, and it is good for her to get away from the hotel. Although we like to think of it as a resort for all ages of people, I have to admit that our clientele is fortyish at best, and generally older than that. I had discouraged her from associating with the young help, too, until I realized just this week that I was being unrealistic. There is only so much she can do there--"

Jacqui smiled up at him, but in her mind she was thinking how luxurious it would be to have nothing to do but amuse herself in a resort hotel.

Christopher continued, seeming just a little uneasy about what to do with his hands, as there was really no place to lean or brace himself. "I--I must apologize for getting the wrong impression of your brother," he said. "Since I have been checking more deeply, I've found that your family does enjoy a spotless reputation in your trade."

"I'm sorry that you felt you had to check up on us," Jacqui said, not completely mollified. "Oh, there's a spot--"

"Jacqueline, please look at me," Christopher demanded.

"Yes?" she said, turning suddenly and looking up at him.

"Hold very still," he said, putting his hand to the side of her face. "You have a bit of plaster or something very close to your eye." With his thumb, he gently rubbed the particle away. It was no ruse; she actually had felt a bit of grit under the pressure.

His hand lingered, warmly for a moment longer than Jacqui thought would be necessary. Gone was the arrogance she had seen in his eyes before, and in its place there seemed a genuine attempt at camaraderie. But her hurt feelings of their previous meeting made her wary of him.

"Thank you, Mr. Warden," she said, flustered.

"Chris," he corrected.

He was trying to be ingratiating, she decided, for some reason that she could not yet fathom. Perhaps he had his own purposes in mind. At this close range, he was incredibly handsome, and in the last of the sunset's direct rays, she saw his features soften.

A gentle pressure of his fingers on her cheek drew her closer to him. "A truce," he said softly, just before he bowed his head and his lips closed innocently on hers.

Surprised, Jacqui almost put her hands on him to steady herself, but was painfully aware that her hands were sticky with paint. Suddenly all the innocence evaporated and Christopher's arms were crushing her to the fine white material of his shirt, until she felt the crisp hair of his chest tickling her skin. For a moment she thought the room tilted and then righted itself. Her fingers were pressing into the rippling biceps of his upper arms, contributing not a steadying influence but only confusing her senses more.

At the same moment, she heard the Beast rumble and growl to life in the driveway, and the metallic squeal when Kyle oversteered as he backed out into the deserted street.

She took a step backward and swallowed. "We're--ah--ah! I have to wash out the brushes and rollers," she said, almost stumbling from the bedroom.

Christopher's laughter, deep and spontaneous, echoed through the bare and empty house, no less mocking in its effect on her because there was no one else to hear. "Business, always business!" he said, following her to the garage.

Jacqui was sickeningly aware of being alone in the house with him. Rubbing her chin on the upper portion of the sleeve of her cotton shirt, she wiped his kiss away then began clattering all the painting paraphernalia under the running water in the utility sink.

Oh, Kyle, she thought, do something about that mess on the breakfast table. Should I take my time, she wondered, to give Kyle a chance to move the table-sized model of Egret Island a la Osprey Builders, or hurry through this chore as fast as possible to spend only a minimum of time with Christopher?

Christopher excused himself to look at the rest of the house while there was still some daylight. "Is there anything I can do for you?" he asked, returning to find her still at work.

"Could you hand me that batch of brushes in that can of water there?" she asked, putting a cleaned roller aside to drip dry, then scratching the tip of her nose with the back of her wrist.

Cheerfully, Christopher complied, pouring the water out of the can into the sink when she had taken the brushes out, then rinsing the can and putting it down on the floor. "Here, give me a couple of these," he suggested.

"Don't get your shirt messed up," Jacqui warned, and he made a face at her.

"I have done things like this before," he assured her.

Jacqui squirted liquid detergent on the bristles of all the brushes, but Christopher complained that he did not think there was enough on one of his, and reached around her to retrieve the detergent bottle from her side of the sink, not bothering to make any complicated maneuver but simply surrounding her from behind while squirting more detergent on his brushes.

"Christopher!" Jacqui reacted, nearly scandalized, looking sideways at him.

Without haste, he returned the bottle to where Jacqui had originally put it. "After working all day, you still smell like--roses," he observed, sniffing near her ear.

"That's my soap," Jacqui informed him.

He nuzzled her neck, and she stiffened with surprise.

"Hey! Watch what you're doing!" she begged.

"Oh, but I am," he said, working up a lather on the brushes, then rinsing them and making certain that Jacqui's hands were clean by washing them himself. "I've always been very thorough," he said, at last turning off the water and reaching for the paper towels. "Do you need any more help?"

Jacqui took a deep breath and looked away from him. "You've done more than enough," she said shakily.

Even when she was at last in Christopher's town car, she could still smell paint. "I hope I don't get your car all messy," she said, sitting uneasily in the plush seat, feeling drained, sweaty and tired. "This is certainly a far cry from 'the Beast'."

"Oh, yes, 'the Beast,'" Christopher laughed. "Not quite the vehicle I'd pick for a lady."

"Simply another tool of the trade," Jacqui told him. "You'd be surprised at some of the places I have to get to when a new subdivision is being opened. There was a time when that short-cut I took you on was our only access to Shelter Cove."

"I hope there aren't any short-cuts to your home that you want to show me," he said, switching on his headlights.

"I'm afraid there aren't any," she told him, "even if I wanted to."

"I had the kitchen make us a picnic," he told her, a touch of pride in his voice. "I thought you might enjoy deviled crab and a sampling of our salads. I would have brought wine, but I didn't know if you'd approve."

"Dinner is more than enough," she told him, reflecting that at the moment, if she had to face fixing something for herself, she'd be hard pressed to put together a peanut butter sandwich.

She was infinitely relieved to find nothing but the aluminum trays of fancifully arranged food on the breakfast table when they arrived at her home. The girls had already helped themselves to the deviled crab, potato salad, bean salad and other dishes Jacqui did not readily identify. They were sitting on the floor in the living room.

When Jacqui looked at Janice disapprovingly, Christopher merely laughed. "I told you it was a picnic," he said, and when he had filled his own plate, he joined them on the floor, leaning back against the couch.

Jacqui wondered if it was an attempt to show a certain acceptance of her family that prompted Christopher to follow their lead, and if it, too, required a great amount of self-discipline to relax his posture to this point.

She found Kyle in the kitchen, pouring glasses of iced tea. "Where is the scale model?" she asked him with quiet urgency.

"Under my bed," he whispered.

"Did Alaine see it?"

"No," he assured her. "Janice took her directly to your room to freshen up while I hid the incriminating evidence." His eyes teased her for being so serious.

Jacqui sighed in relief. "Did you know Janice was so set against the business?"

"No," he confessed. "But it is better to know now than to find out when you are trying to get her a builder's certificate."

She looked at Kyle for a long moment. "Are you trying to tell me something?"

"Only that Janice might not want to get into the trade."

"How about you?" she asked, picking up a glass of tea.

"Come on, Jac. Would I be doing what I'm doing if I didn't want to be in the business?"

"Frankly, out of the goodness of your heart I think you might."

"Well, I'm not," he told her. "And, if you want my opinion, I don't think you should do anything about Janice for now. If she doesn't like working for Dorothea, maybe she needs to learn more about it. I think she should stick with it for a few months and then decide. And that's what I told her."

Jacqui wiped her hand on a towel and then threw it down onto the counter. "Did you ever have a day when you thought everything had gone real well, only to find that the whole thing suddenly ended up a loss?"

"There have been times," Kyle agreed. "Look, we have guests who were kind enough to bring food. I think we ought to try to do justice to it." He grinned and carried a tray of glasses into the living room.

"Can I help next week when you move in?" Alaine asked Kyle before he had a chance to sit down.

"Of course, so long as your brother brings some leftovers from the Magellan Room," Kyle teased.

"Kyle!" Jacqui scolded.

Christopher Warden smiled. "It's really nothing, Jacqui, compared to the favor you do us by getting us away from the hotel for a few hours."

Jacqui tried to smile graciously, even though she could not think of a proper rejoinder, and since the girls started talking at their usual level of gaiety, she supposed nothing was necessary anyway.

Time and again, Jacqui looked across the room toward Christopher and found him looking back at her with veiled intensity that reminded her of the stolen moments in the model, and although she was able to keep herself from blushing under his gaze, she was not about to completely erase the moments from her mind.

Even in her fatigue after the long day's work, Jacqui tensed. It was entirely possible that Christopher Warden was looking around the living room, thinking how out-of-date and drab it was. He certainly made it look shabby merely by his presence. Jacqui and Janice did their best to keep it clean, occasionally assisted by Kyle when it was necessary to sweep cobwebs out of the corners--a job not uncommon in Florida. But still, being frank with herself, she saw the room as though with a stranger's eye and was not pleased.

The thought killed her appetite. Wearily, she got to her feet and carried her plate to the kitchen and rinsed it in the sink. She had begun putting dirty dishes into the dishwasher when Christopher came slowly into the kitchen and handed her his plate.

"Your house is very nice," he said. "It looks very comfortable."

Jacqui smiled up at him, thinking to herself that he was only being polite. "Father built this from--oh, about his third set of plans," she told him. "Later plans eliminated some of the problems."

"Problems?" Christopher said, looking around at the kitchen and the adjoining breakfast area. "What problems?"

"Dead spots in the cupboards and closets, for one thing--two things," Jacqui said, flustered. "Places that are hard to reach, hard to clean."

His eyes told her that he was paying only minimal attention to what she was telling him, so she told herself to stop being such a fool and shut her mouth before he decided she was a total idiot. Then she wondered why she cared.

Janice led Alaine into the kitchen, asking, "Are you sure you don't want some ice cream?"

"Oh, I couldn't eat another bite!" Alaine protested.

"Don't you think we should be getting home, Alaine?" Christopher asked. "Do you have homework to finish?"

"No homework," Alaine told him, "but I have a book to read for a report in English. Jacqui, thank you for inviting me along today. It was really great."

Janice laughed sardonically. "You'll feel how great it was tomorrow when you are all stiffened up. You'd be surprised how many muscles you used that you didn't know you had."

"Yes, you really put in a day's work," Jacqui told Alaine. "I know a painter who might give you a summer job." Somehow it did not come out as playful as Jacqui had intended it, and Christopher gave her a cautioning look.

In the confusion of their leave-taking, Christopher's eyes held Jacqui's for a moment, conveying a message Jacqui didn't understand, an expression that recalled the stolen moment while she was inspecting the paint in the master bedroom of the model house. She turned away from them, not bothering to walk out to the car as Janice and Kyle did.

Scarcely knowing what she was doing, she went to her bedroom and prepared to take a shower, taking fresh underthings from her drawer and a light robe from her closet.

"Isn't he something else?" Janice asked, bounding into the room. "Oh, Jacqui, he would be a perfect match for you."

"Hush your mouth!" Jacqui scolded. "Don't be ridiculous."

"He is so handsome--"

"He's also an arrogant snob." Jacqui told her. "Looking down his nose at us the whole time, probably thinking that we are not good enough to associate with his precious sister Alaine."

"Oh, Jacqui! I don't think he's that way at all," Janice said, following her toward the bathroom.

"Do you have any shampoo" she asked Janice.

"Sure. Just a minute," Janice said, then carried on the conversation as she went to the other bathroom. "I think Alaine is great. I wish she could meet Lisa. I think Lisa would like her too. We all have a lot in common, but Alaine--she's had some unusual experiences. Don't you love to listen to them talk?"

She was back, handing Jacqui the bottle of shampoo. Jacqui studied Janice's lively blue eyes for an instant, then took the bottle and placed it on the side of the tub.

"Look, I'm going to pull rank and take a nice long shower," she said. "Now, for heaven's sake, don't turn on the dishwasher."

"Would I do that?" Janice asked, teasingly. "That's work and you say I don't do any."

Jacqui looked at her with tired exasperation, then gently pushed her out of the bathroom, closed the door and locked it.

As she soaped herself in the shower, she heard again in her mind the question Janice had asked. Don't you just love to listen to them talk?

Ha! That would be something, to hear Christopher make love in that sophisticated speech pattern, softly, with intense passion, plumbing the depths of feeling which would no doubt be almost alien to a man as cool and artificial as he seemed.

Annoyed with herself for letting her mind wander down a forbidden path, Jacqui concentrated on scrubbing the middle of her back. Tomorrow she had a lot of work to do, seeing that the carpet was put down in the model--

His touch had been very soft on her cheek, as though he did not remember what it was like to touch a woman.

--and she would have to check with Yvonne to see that the telephones were transferred. It would be a disaster if they lost any calls when they moved into the model.

What did he mean, kissing her like that? She should have been angry, at least. But it was such a surprise. It had taken every ounce of control she had not to throw all her caution and distrust to the winds.

Well, she would hardly ever see Christopher Warden again. Alaine would tire of Kyle, they would never win the bid for Egret Island, and the kiss in the master bedroom of the model would be forgotten in the million chores she had to do tomorrow.

Someday, someone would be living in that house, probably leaving the master bedroom intact as she had decorated it. She hoped it would be someone, if not still young, with at least some joie de vivre left to make proper use of the romantic setting.

Two people barely covered with the elegantly quilted spread, enjoying the touch of warm flesh, encircling each other gently, fondly. Whispering intimate, outrageous things to each other.

"Jacqueline--"

"Christopher--"

"What!" she demanded of herself, her eyes opening wide.

Suddenly the force of the hot water diminished to a thin trickle of cold, striking her between her shoulder blades. She gulped in a breath of air, quivering as she fumbled to turn off the shower and reach for her towel. Christopher? Don't be silly!

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