"I can do stunts," Jed boasted. "Gin showed me how."

Will continued the litany of carnage. "Aunt Marsha fell off a Jet Ski. She's got gangrene."

"Can Nelson come and live with us?" Della begged.

"Please."

"Well, that all sounds lovely," Dan drawled. "I'm so glad you're having such a great holiday with your mother and Aunt Janie." Her cool blue eyes locked with Solley's. "h.e.l.lo, sweetheart."

Moving onto the veranda, she leaned down and kissed Solley slowly and deliberately on the cheek, ensuring she had enough time to breathe in her scent and feel the heat of her lips.

From the shady depths of her bedroom balcony, Gin a 129 a watched the kiss with a queasy stomach. She wished she'd gone to the fi lm shoot with Marsha, who'd wisely removed herself for the day, saying her problems with Dan's att.i.tude got the better of her. She told Gin she didn't want to say anything that might upset the kids.

Gin had planned to keep a low profi le. It made her nauseous to think of Dan arriving to reclaim her position at the center of her children's universe. But for some unfathomable, m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic reason, she still found herself un.o.btrusively watching the arrival. She decided her actions were honorable.

If Dan got nasty and upset Solley, she would intervene. After all, this fraught, unscheduled visit was the result of her behavior with Solley and the kids. She wouldn't let Solley suffer the consequences alone.

She couldn't help smiling as Nelson leaped up on the new arrival, leaving paw prints and damp sand on Dan's expensive-looking clothes.

"Get this animal off me." Dan's demand was clearly aimed at Solley. "He's putting dog hair all over my slacks."

"Mommy." Della still vied for attention. "His name is Nelson. Can he come home with us, please? He's my best friend."

"No, he can't come home with us. He's a beach dog and he wouldn't be happy in the city. You should know that."

Della immediately accepted this.

How does she do that? Solley wondered for the millionth time. Dan only had to say something and the kids accepted it.

For Solley, they were all tears and snot and tantrums unless they got their way.

"Hey, Janie. How are you doing?" Dan fi nally greeted her sister-in-law. "What, no Marsha in the welcoming party?"

"She knew you were coming and had to go and throw herself off something," Janie deadpanned. "Ain't she the lucky one," was added sotto voce, but Dan chose to ignore her.

a 130 a "We need to talk." Her eyes drilled into Solley's. "I have a few...concerns."

Solley was tall at fi ve-nine, but Dan was a well-built six-footer. She easily overshadowed Solley, making her feel at a disadvantage. Automatically, she brushed a paw mark off Dan's raw linen jacket. "You didn't need to come all the way out here. We could have dealt with this on the phone."

Picking up on Solley's tension, as she always did, Janie drew her car keys from her pocket. "Come on, kids. I'm heading into town for cheesecake. Who wants to come along?

We can bring some back for your mommies."

It was an easy bribe and as the kids piled into her car with Nelson, Janie met Solley's eyes and mouthed "good luck" in solidarity.

"Shall we?" Dan gestured toward the house.

Entering the coolness of the darkened hallway, she hesitated for a second and raised her eyes to the upstairs balcony, where Gin stood ramrod straight, arms crossed over a muscular chest, biceps bulging with tension, jaw fi rm and eyes enigmatic. Solley caught her breath as Dan's icy stare locked with Gin's and a fl icker of cold contempt fl ashed between the two. She could see that Dan sensed the raw power and anger of the smaller woman and probably had no doubt that she could leap from that height and cheerfully throttle her given half the chance. With a blaze of blue hatred she continued after Solley.

Gin sighed aloud and leaned back against the wall. Boy, but Danielle Vitelli was one arrogant motherf.u.c.ker, exactly as Marsha had described her. Gin's heart ached over the joy the children had displayed on seeing their absent parent. You don't deserve them, you freakishly tall b.i.t.c.h. With that white-hot thought, she grabbed her car keys. She had to leave the house before she imploded with jealousy, resentment, and outright rage. How had Solley ended up with that cold monster a 131 a for a partner? Within seconds of greeting Dan, her vibrancy had dimmed as though a cloud had moved over her. Her body language, usually so full and effervescent, became muted and compressed. She looked colorless, almost unrecognizable as the s.e.xy, pa.s.sionate woman Gin had made love with the night before.

Gin strode downstairs with single-minded purpose. She had to escape before she burst into the family room and yanked Solley out of there and away from Dan forever.

"So." Dan sat on the smooth leather couch, one long leg elegantly crossed over the other. "It seems you've been busy."

"Not that it's any of your business."

"The minute my kids. .h.i.t the tabloid headlines it became my business," Dan snapped.

They sat in terse silence for a moment.

"So, where's Trixie?" Solley asked with phony innocence.

"I'd have thought she'd be sucking this up, trying to milk it for all it's worth. A tenuous connection with a celebrity could promote her p.o.r.n-stroke-modeling career."

Dan fl icked a cool, scornful look her way. "Jealousy looks so cliched on redheads."

Solley bristled at the casual put-down. "Excuse me, I'm auburn haired, and I'm not jealous of that skinny b.i.t.c.h."

"You're h.e.l.l on heels, is what you are," Dan bit back at her.

Relaxing again, she repositioned the conversation. "Anyway, I haven't seen Trixie in a while. She's moved to Miami."

Solley mulled this new information over. "Are you going to follow her?"

"It seems unlikely." With a look of utmost distaste, Dan a 132 a brushed a dog hair from her pant leg. "Something has opened up here, a deal I can probably land. It's a good opportunity and it's local. It would set me up for several more years on the West Coast."

Dan owned a digital special effects company and relied on contracts from the LA studios. Originally, she'd planned the move east to follow up several options after a lucrative TV commercial deal. Solley wasn't sure how she felt, listening to Dan open the door once more for them as a family. If she'd really shelved the crazy notion of taking the children away for part of the year, she'd just lifted an incredible burden off Solley's shoulders. Now no matter what happened in court, if Dan stayed in California, Solley would be nearby. And if Trixie was truly out of the picture, maybe Dan would turn her full attention back on her kids and really think about what was best for them.

"So you're staying?" Solley asked "I decided it would be better for the kids. Less upheaval."

Dan contemplated the toe of one immaculate loafer. "So I'm investigating this new opportunity. I need to set up fi nance and take a look at the legal issues. But for now, I'm staying."

Her eyes narrowed. "Needless to say, it's not helpful to have pictures of my wife whoring around with some bungee-jumping wannabe-butch splashed all over the papers. Cuckolding doesn't sit well with my Armani business suits."

"You have some nerve talking about cuckolding, with your track record. And you know d.a.m.n well that was a paparazzi setup."

"Oh, yeah. You just happened to fall forward, mouth fi rst, onto her naked chest. Happens all the time."

"It happened to you whenever Trixie showed up. Though G.o.d knows, you didn't have to fall very far onto those silicone hillocks, did you?"

a 133 a Another terse silence.

"This is getting us nowhere." Dan took a breath and seemed to consciously curb her sarcasm. "I'm not here for us to scratch each other's eyes out over our...meaningless fl irtations."

"Meaningless? Last time we talked, you wanted your bimbo to be stepmother of our kids for six months of each year."

"I've just told you it's in the past. I'm here to help with what's left of the kids after the shark attacks and who knows what else. I trust you've been keeping all the pieces in a bag for reattachment later."

"They were dolphins, and don't play the perfect parent with me. If it had been you and Trixie on the beach that day, Della would have sailed to Hawaii by now."

"Let it go," Dan warned. "I'm willing to overlook your public s.e.x acts with that stuntwoman, but I want to know how the kids were injured. That's why I drove out here. I was worried."

Solley sighed. This was going to be the hard part, explaining the run of events over the past few days. "Well, what you saw in the papers was misleading. They're actually having an incredible vacation. Gin being here has just blown them away." Oops, bad choice of words. She continued quickly.

"We've had a few minor incidents, that's all."

Dan wasn't willing to settle for the abridged version.

"What happed to Jed?"

"He saw Gin leap off Janie's balcony one day and tried to copy her."

"For G.o.d's sake, he could have broken his neck."

"Gosh, I never thought of that."

"What about Will?"

"He was playing in her trailer and stuck a makeup pencil in his eye. Thought he was Johnny Depp or something."

a 134 a "He was in her trailer, unsupervised?"

"Not for long, and he only wears that patch because he likes it."

"Hmm." Dan didn't sound impressed. "It sounds like they've been spending far too much time around your friend Gin Ito."

Trying not to sound defensive, Solley said, "We have Gin to thank for rescuing Della when she fl oated out too far on her bodyboard."

"Wonderful, she's a hero. But what were the twins doing with bodyboards? They're far too young." As usual, Dan seemed to be looking for any excuse to escalate her criticism.

"Why the h.e.l.l did you buy them? I suppose they whined and you caved in, as usual."

"Actually, they were a gift from Gin."

"Oh, I see." Dan sneered. "She's had a hand in everything, hasn't she?" She looked pointedly at Solley's shorts.

Flushing with anger, Solley avoided the angry blue eyes.

"This is not about Gin. As I said, the kids are doing fi ne, and they really needed to have some fun after all they've been put through recently."

She waited for Dan to react to the dig, but her face was impa.s.sive.

In a soft, conciliatory tone, she asked, "So, where do we go from here?" She touched Solley's arm.

Rather than endure an awkward dinner, Gin decided to dine alone in town. It was much, much later when she fi nally drove the studio car back to Janie and Marsha's house. As she pulled into the drive, her eyes froze on Dan's Beemer and her heart grew cold. Why was that woman still here?

Carefully, she entered the house. A soft sound came from a 135 a the kitchen, the clicking of the refrigerator door. Standing back in the shadows, Gin observed a b.u.t.t-naked Dan with a gla.s.s of water in her hand. She padded upstairs toward Solley's room.

After a second, Gin followed, her heart thumping painfully in her chest with an erratic, panicked rhythm.

A shaft of light across the hall drew her eyes like a magnet to Solley's partially open bedroom door. Dan and Solley stood naked beside the bed in a soft, intimate embrace. Their kissing was tender. Dan stroked her fi ngers idly along the planes of Solley's back until, hands on her shoulders, she slowly pushed her down to sit on the edge of the bed. As she descended under the pressure of Dan's palms, Solley gently left a trail of kisses all the way down Dan's fl at stomach to the shaved pubic mound. While she was distracted and unaware of their voyeur, Dan turned her head and stared squarely, with absolutely no emotion, into Gin's eyes.

Gin stood frozen in the hallway, stricken by the tenderness and devotion Solley was lavishing on this cold, cold woman.

Never breaking eye contact, Dan lifted her arm and lazily swung the door closed in Gin's face.

Shame and humiliation swept over Gin in a heated and hateful rush. Dan had known she was there, in the kitchen. She knew Gin had followed her. And she wanted her to see this, to see how much Solley still loved her.

As they moved closer on the bed, Dan nuzzled Solley's neck. Usually she loved this move, but now it was tickly and annoying.

"Don't leave a mark," she blurted.

Dan raised her head and looked at her, slightly affronted.

"Sorry," Solley muttered contritely.

a 136 a Shifting her weight, Dan turned her attention to Solley's b.r.e.a.s.t.s, ma.s.saging them, mashing them together, remembering Solley liked to play rough.

"Ouch. No. They're too tender."

Dan stiffened and stopped, momentarily uncertain. Solley wrapped her arms around her neck and slid her thigh between Dan's legs, nudging against her s.e.x. Accepting their tired old standby position, Dan moved against her. It never failed. She climaxed quickly and relaxed into Solley's embrace, burying her face in Solley's hair.

Solley stroked along her shoulders and down her back, tightening her arms when she felt Dan try to move.

"Shh," she whispered, wanting to avoid the next phase, the one where she would have to let Dan touch her and appear aroused when she wasn't. "Just let me hold you."

They lay there in the dark, in a silence that seemed sad and empty. Tracing small, meandering circles on Dan's body, Solley stared at the ceiling. They couldn't get it back. They never would.

As though sensing the emotional void between them and fi nding it an unwelcome bed companion, Dan stood and stretched her long, well-toned body. Solley took in her familiar, still pleasing frame. It was so different from Gin's.

The thought appeared from nowhere. It was funny how she'd never made a comparison before. Gin's body was small and tight and very s.e.xy, with loads of muscles.

I've had Dan as a partner for years. But as a lover? Well, not for a long time. And now, in one week, here she was with two lovers to compare, an old one and a new one. And the way she felt about them was so different. Dan was...comfortable.

Like an old shoe, one that could still cause a blister. Their pa.s.sion had well and truly gone. They were just going through the motions. It was quite sad, really. After all this time, they a 137 a couldn't fi nd the spark that had once ignited so easily between them.

She was glad they'd tried again. For themselves as a couple, for their family, and if only to prove something to herself. Now she knew. They both knew. It was over.

But with Gin. My G.o.d, the energy she gave and demanded in return. Solley felt like some sort of animal when they made love. She smiled weakly. She craved the touch of Gin's skin and missed her when they were apart. Despite her intense s.e.xual awareness of Gin, she also felt comfortable and safe with her. Gin seemed to accept her exactly as she was. She genuinely seemed to like her. Solley couldn't remember the last time she'd felt that from a lover. She wasn't sure if she'd ever felt liked or respected by Dan.

When this was all over, she hoped Gin would still want to see her. A glum thought intruded. Who knew where they would all be after this vacation? Gin could be anywhere in the world, with anybody. She would be surrounded by bloodsuckers like Kelly Rose, all clamoring for a piece of her.

With a sigh, Solley hopped out of bed and followed Dan to the bathroom. She was a fool to think of including Gin in her future, even in her wildest daydreams.

a 138 a