Alex tossed and turned beneath the covers, punching his pillow to ease his growing anger. He was mad at Sarah, mad at Jennifer and Wendi, and mad at himself. He was even mad at Emma because, if she'd stayed home, she could have been a witness to what really went on. Not that he should have to defend himself. He punched the pillow again.

"Sarah! d.a.m.n it, just call me!"

The phone mocked him with its silence. His fingers itched to dial her number again, but he resisted. He had made a fool out of himself already; he didn't need to compound the error by trying her number again. If she didn't answer, he couldn't leave a message anyway, and if she did pick up the phone...

What could he say? He had said it all with each message he'd left. He'd even written it in the snow, for G.o.d's sake. What more did the woman want?

"What does any woman want?" he asked irately to the empty room. "I told her I loved her, d.a.m.n it! Shouldn't that be enough?"

Obviously, Sarah didn't think so.

Sunday pa.s.sed in blessed silence. Sarah didn't call or go to see Alex, and she was proud of herself for resisting the temptation. Unplugging the phone had helped.

Work on Monday was a hectic scramble, just as Sarah had expected. Both she and Darren were up to their eyebrows in paperwork and meetings that had been rescheduled because of the snow. The busier she was, the better Sarah felt. Throwing herself into her work left little time for anything else. That her phone kept ringing with important calls meant she couldn't use it to call anyone on personal business.

"Cleopatra wasn't the only queen of denial, honey," Darren said to her when she had refused even to break for lunch. "Working yourself to death isn't going to change what happened."

Sarah gave him a steely glare. "Please let me handle this my way."

He had shrugged, clearly hurt by her rough manner. "Fine. I was only trying to help."

Nothing would help. Nothing but time, work, and maybe a few more pots of Earl Grey and a whole library of Stephen King. Sarah left work later than usual, but that was all right. She had already called Rivka and told her she wouldn't be at the gallery meeting that night. Rivka, to Sarah's surprise, hadn't complained.

"I understand." Rivka sounded surprisingly calm, considering the way she'd been carrying on. "We've got it all under control, Sarai. But promise me you'll come over tomorrow night to talk about our costumes. Promise."

Sarah had promised, both relieved and surprised her sister had accepted her absence from the meeting. With the gallery opening in a little over a week, her sister was in a state of slow emotional boil. Nothing Rivka could have said would have convinced Sarah to go to that meeting, however. Not if she had to face Alex.

She might be taking the coward's way out, but she just didn't feel ready to see him. When she did confront him, if she ever did, she wanted to be calm. Now the pain was still raw in her heart, and she needed time for her wounds to at least scab over.

She swung by the mall on her way home, picked up some groceries, and visited the bookstore. Though her credit card practically shrieked at the overload, she treated herself to some premium ice cream and a sack of horror paperbacks. Not King, but they'd have to do.

The porch light was on when she got home so there were no shadows to hide the figure sitting on the swing. Sarah pretended not to see him while she unloaded her bags from the car. When she sat the paper sacks down in order to fit her key in the lock, he stepped up.

"Why didn't you come to the meeting tonight?" Alex's voice was just this side of unfriendly.

Sarah finally got the stubborn key to slide into its fittings and concentrated on opening the door. She picked up her purchases and laid them inside. She kicked the doorframe several times to clear the snow from her shoes and prepared to step inside. She hadn't answered him.

"Sarah." Alex's voice was low and angry now. "Don't ignore me."

She stopped halfway through the front door and turned to look at him. "I need some time."

"The gallery opening is in less than two weeks." He got off the porch swing. "Your sister is counting on you. I can't believe you would let your sister down just to hurt me."

She sucked in her breath at his audacity. "Don't be so vain, Alex. I didn't do it to hurt you. You can't hurt someone who doesn't care about you, remember?"

In an instant, he had grabbed her arm before she could slip inside and slam the door. His fingers hurt, even through her bulky coat. Sarah yanked her arm away.

"Sarah, I love you." He made no second attempt to touch her.

She laughed, the sound harsh and mocking. To her shame, she felt the hot sting of tears against her lashes, but she refused to let them slide down her cheeks. Sarah lifted her chin, willing her lips not to tremble as she spoke. "So you said."

"I didn't lie."

"I don't need you to do me any favors." Her efforts at keeping the tears at bay were defeated. The shame of him seeing her cry only made her angrier. "I'm not your charity case, Alex!"

"Don't I even get a chance? Have you written me off, just like that? I don't even get the chance to tell you the truth?"

Sarah gritted her teeth before she spoke. "I don't need to hear your truth. I know what it is. I've known all along. I just let your pretty face persuade me differently, that's all."

His face blanched. Her words had struck home. At the sight of his eyes, flickering with hurt, Sarah wanted to call her words back. But she couldn't. That was the problem with words. You couldn't ever take them back.

"I love you, Sarah." The anger was leached from his voice. "I won't say it again."

"Good," she whispered. "Because I don't think I could stand to hear you say it, Alex."

Without looking at him again, for to see his face would only weaken her, Sarah stepped inside the door.

"Why, Sarah?" She thought she heard tears in his voice and pretended she didn't. She didn't want to think she might have made him weep. "Why?"

"Because men like you don't date women like me. It doesn't happen, Alex. It can't. We have nothing in common. I was stupid to think it might work. Good-bye."

Her heart ached, but she shut the door behind her and leaned against it when all at once she thought she might fall. She waited for him to knock. He did not. Instead, Sarah heard the sound of his feet crunching through the snow, down the porch steps, and away. Then she could hear nothing at all.

CHAPTER 10.

With only a week left before the gallery opening, and her baby sister in a romantic crisis, Rivka Delaney was showing remarkable restraint. So Sarah thought, anyway, watching Rivka preen in front of the floor-length mirror. She and her sister were trying on their costumes in Rivka and Mickey's bedroom.

Rivka, thus far, had not asked about Alex, for which Sarah was extremely grateful. Though she knew Rivka would listen sympathetically, the pain was still too fierce, too fresh to discuss. Sarah wanted to curl up and lick her wounds in private. It was the way she had always been and Rivka knew it. When Sarah discovered she could laugh about Alex, whether or not the humor she found in the situation was genuine, then she would talk about him with her sister. Not before.

Nor had Rivka made any mention about the food for the party, her problems with the printer, or any of the other innumerable last-minute qualms Sarah knew her sister had to be feeling. Instead, Rivka had tried on a dozen different costumes, all on loan from the costume shop and due back by this afternoon. She had finally decided on going to her party as Marie Antoinette because, as she had so dryly put it, if she was going to lose her head over this opening, she wanted to be dressed appropriately. Mick, she had explained, would be going as the little dog the French queen had been rumored to keep beneath her skirts.

"Gorgeous." Sarah meant it.

Her sister looked breathtaking, as always. The dress suited her to perfection, capturing Rivka's artistic nature, innate sensuality, and vivacious nature all in one elaborate package. An extremely expensive package, too, Sarah noted, looking at the price list that had come with the costumes Rivka was trying on.

"Not too cutesy?"

Resplendent in hoop skirt, powdered wig, and beauty mark, Rivka was fretting. She pressed her palms to the gown's bust and pushed her already straining bosom to new heights of plumpness. She pranced in front of the mirror, then curtseyed. To someone who didn't know her, Rivka would look the very epitome of vanity. Sarah, however, knew her sister didn't really care how she looked. She never had. Rivka was nervous about the gallery opening, and the new series of paintings she would be revealing. Her moaning and complaining about her costume was just her way of pretending she wasn't afraid of all the other stuff.

"Not as cutesy as Little Bo Peep." Sarah compared Rivka's elaborate, flattering costume to the one she herself planned on wearing. With its white-frilled pantaloons, blue pinafore, and stuffed sheep, she was going to look about ten years old. It was better than the costume her sister had wanted her to wear, however. No matter how desperate she might be to attract attention, Sarah thought with distaste, she would never, ever go anywhere dressed as Lady G.o.diva.

"Oy, Bo Peep!" Rivka grimaced. "But if it makes you happy..."

"It does," Sarah said firmly. "Besides, I got a great discount because the Miss m.u.f.fet costume I wanted didn't come in on time."

Rivka rolled her eyes as she examined the intricate beadwork on her skirt. She flicked her fan open and tossed it on the bed with an agonized groan. She slouched, straightened and turned to see the side view.

"I don't look creative enough. Everyone's going to expect me, the artist, to be in some great costume I made myself, and I just couldn't do it, Sarah!"

Sarah kissed Rivka's white-powdered cheek. "You'll knock them all out of their shoes."

"I need to knock the money out of their wallets." Rivka stopped pacing. "Help me get out of this thing, Sarai, please."

"You know this is going to be the greatest party Harrisburg has ever seen." Sarah began unhooking the myriad of tiny hooks-and-eyes that closed the back of Rivka's gown. "You don't need to worry so much."

"I know." Rivka wriggled out of the gown. "How can it not? I've got Martin setting it up, you and Alex handling the rest of it..."

Rivka's pause told Sarah her sister expected an answer, but she made sure to be noncommittal. "Yes. The Foxfire has great food. I'm sure the catering will be excellent."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it." Rivka turned to Sarah and searched her sister's eyes. "What happened with you two, Sarah?"

Sarah looked away uncomfortably. "Nothing. Things just didn't work out, that's all. No big deal."

"When my sister walks around looking like 'The Scream' it's not no big deal."

Sarah smiled faintly at Rivka's comparison of her to the famous painting. She supposed that, at times, over the past five days she probably had looked like the elongated, screaming face in Munsch's painting. Lord knew she had certainly felt like it.

Sarah forced lightness into her tone. "You know how handsome men are. They might say they want a woman with a brain, but they don't mean it. Not unless the brain comes in a size-34D, blonde-haired package."

Rivka frowned. "h.e.l.lo! Sarah? Are we talking about the same Alex Caine?"

Sarah busied herself with arranging her sister's ornate costume on its hanger. She didn't want to talk about this with Rivka or with anyone. The less she talked about him, the less she had to think about him. It was going to be bad enough seeing him at the opening, but there was no way to avoid it. She couldn't let her sister down by not showing up, and she had no hopes Alex would decide not to come.

"Let it go, Riv."

Rivka took Sarah by the shoulders until they faced each other. "No."

Sarah wanted to throw off her sister's grasp, to shout and run away, but she could not. Rivka's jaw was set firmly, but her blue eyes were sad. At the compa.s.sion so clear in her sister's face, Sarah wanted to cry.

"It was like William all over again." Sarah was not surprised to find the tears welling in her eyes. It seemed that no matter how many she shed, she always had more.

"No." Rivka urged Sarah to the king-size bed and sat beside her with one arm over her sister's shoulder. "No, Sarai, Alex isn't like William."

"What do you know?" Sarah hadn't wanted to talk to Rivka about Alex, but at least she had expected her sister's sympathy.

Rivka's words weren't sympathetic. "Alex is only like William because you wanted him to be. That's what I know."

For a moment, Sarah just stared at her sister in shock. Had she really said those words? Rivka, Sarah's staunchest supporter, was taking Alex's side in this? Sarah's mouth worked, but she could not speak. Scalding tears slid, ignored, down her face.

"Just because William hurt you doesn't mean all men will." Rivka rubbed Sarah's shoulder. "Whatever Alex did, I bet you didn't even give him a chance."

Now Sarah recoiled from her sister's touch. It seemed as though she could not breathe, could not see, could not do anything but listen to Rivka as she spat out more and more hateful words. Sarah's bones were melting beneath her flesh, her heart was shredding itself upon the shards of her dignity, and still Rivka spoke.

"I know you, Sarah. You love him. I saw it in your eyes when you looked at him and in your smile. It was in your voice when you spoke." Rivka's voice was so hard, so cold. Sarah wanted to block it out, but Rivka held her hands so she could not. "And I saw the same thing in his face. Alex loves you. I never saw a man light up so much as he did when you walked in the room. When I told him you weren't coming to that last meeting, I thought he was going to faint, Sarah, that's how bad he looked. Alex Caine almost wept in front of me because I told him you weren't coming to a stupid meeting."

"You don't know." Sarah forced the words through parched lips. "You don't know what happened."

"I don't have to know. I know you're afraid. William was a dirty, lying jerk, and I wish you wouldn't even grant him the dignity of having hurt you, but I understand." Rivka squeezed Sarah's shoulder gently.

"You and Mick--" Sarah began, desperate to turn the conversation away from herself.

"Just because I've been lucky enough to find my Mickey doesn't mean I can't remember how it was to be hurt!" Rivka knelt beside Sarah, who had somehow slid from the bed to crouch on the floor. "Sarah, my sister, I hurt a thousand times watching you let the things William said wear away your self-confidence. I hurt when you hurt, Sarah."

Sarah shook her head blindly. "The woman in the restaurant called me his charity case. It was just like William all over again. I was stupid to think a man like Alex would ever look at me twice, much less fall in love with me. And even if he did think he loved me, it's better this way. Better it ends now, when I can handle it, than years from now when he decides he wants a woman like Jennifer on his arm and not someone like me."

"Now when you can handle it?" Rivka didn't sound convinced. "You've lost weight, Sarah, and you've got circles under your eyes. You aren't handling it at all."

Sarah wiped her face. "I could be handling it, if you'd just leave me alone about it. I'll get over him."

Rivka moved away, disdain on her perfect features. "I've always called you Sarai, the bold. You're not Sarai anymore. You let a man who wasn't worth the ground you spit on take away what I've always admired about you. William made you Sarah forever. You're not bold at all."

Rivka left the room. Sarah stared after her until the tears dried on her cheeks.

The words her sister had said stung worse than a swarm of bees, but Sarah no longer felt boneless and weak. She felt angry and not at Rivka. At William, who had made her sister ashamed of her. And at herself, for letting him.

Emma was singing in the shower. Her enthusiastic, off-tune words floated down the hall into Alex's bedroom, where he was trying--without success--to sleep. He gritted his teeth against her happiness and buried his face in the pillow.

He could not begrudge his niece her joy. If only she wasn't so vocal about it! Alex had never heard more love songs in his life than in the past week. Emma, it seemed, was an incurable romantic. She quoted Romeo and Juliet over breakfast. She made up terrible but heartfelt poetry and read it aloud to him in an awful Elizabethan accent, and expected him to give his true opinion about it. She had even invited Michel to dinner at the house and baked him a heart-shaped meatloaf. The girl was crazy. He listened to Emma's song crescendo into an almost unbearable, deliriously love-struck trilling.

Months ago, Emma's behavior would have made him laugh. A week ago, he'd probably have been singing right along with her. Since Sarah had shut him out of her life, Alex had never felt less like listening to the wonder and beauty of love as seen by his freckle-faced niece.

He had fired both Jennifer and Wendi, despite their threats of claiming s.e.xual hara.s.sment. He'd risk it, he'd told them. They'd get their last paychecks in the mail, don't bother coming in to The Foxfire, good-bye and I hope not to see you later.

None of that could bring Sarah back. After the confrontation on her porch, he had itched to dial her number a thousand times, but never had. He had driven past her house, but did not stop. He wanted to see her so badly he ached, but what could he do? She didn't want to see him. She didn't trust him. She didn't love him.

But ah, G.o.d! He still loved her! Every note of music on the radio, every star shining in his window while he tossed, sleepless in his bed ... they all reminded him of her. Her eyes, her smile, the sound of his name coming from her lips. Everything, everything was Sarah, and he could do nothing to stop himself from thinking of her.

He had written a dozen letters and thrown them all away. He didn't have any talent with words, not even Emma's poor one for poetry. Alex was a man who used action to show how he felt. If he spoke, it was from the heart. And wasn't that what had gotten him into so much trouble? Speaking from the heart?

Alex heard the shower shut off. Emma, still singing, came down the hall and paused outside his door. He willed her to go away, but the sound of her hesitant tapping on his door told him his wish had been ignored.

"Boss?"

"I'm awake."

A thin sliver of light pierced the blackness of his room. Emma stood outlined in the doorway, her figure bulky in a terrycloth robe and thick towel swathed around her head. She stepped through the doorway.

"Boss, it's only seven o'clock on a Sat.u.r.day night. Don't you feel well?"