"A big fat whopper," Bobby said.

"Steve made the last out in the College World Series," Cadillac said.

"Aw, jeez," Steve said.

"Uncle Steve's a 'Cane," Bobby said. "Played at U of M."

"Couldn't hit a lick," Cadillac said.

Steve winced. "C'mon, guys. I was good at stealing bases."

"And petty cash, if I know you," Victoria said.

"Uncle Steve once scored from first on a single," Bobby said proudly.

"I seem to have a knack for running in circles," Steve said.

"Instead of slowing down rounding second, he speeds up by balancing the centrifugal and centripetal forces," Bobby said.

"So you got thrown out stealing?" Victoria guessed. "That it?"

"Worse," Cadillac said.

"Much worse," Cece said. "Aw, don't be such a baby. Tell her."

Steve sighed. "We're in Omaha, championship game against Texas. Two outs, bottom of the ninth, n.o.body on base, we're down by a run. We get a triple. I come in as a pinch runner, take a lead . . . and get picked off."

"Oh, dear," Victoria said, not knowing what else to say.

"The thing is, I was safe. It was a bad call."

"Uh-huh."

"Honest. The video proves it. I got in under the tag. My first taste of injustice."

"Some of us seen a lot worse than that," Cadillac said.

Ten minutes later, Victoria sampled her sweet potato pie and listened. Cadillac was telling Steve he'd taught T-Bone Walker to cook catfish, and T-Bone taught him to play bottleneck slide guitar. "And I ended up playing guitar a h.e.l.luva lot better than T-Bone cooked."

Steve paid rapt attention to the old man, and Victoria wondered just how many people did. Cadillac started telling Muddy Waters stories, and Steve began singing, "I'm your hoochie-coochie man."

Cadillac laughed and slapped his thigh as Steve mangled the lyrics and the tune, completely unfazed. Looking at her, Steve belted out the stanza about a man who could make pretty women jump and shout, but then he forgot the words and started making up his own. Just like he made up his own laws.

She'd better add Cadillac Johnson to the Steve Solomon Fan Club. The old man showed deep affection for him. Leaving her wondering again if she'd been missing something.

What a complicated man you are, Steve Solomon.

Chisel away that purposely obnoxious exterior, there might be a heart and soul buried inside. As she looked at him now, the dark hair falling across his forehead, his eyes bright with pleasure, she let herself see him not as a lawyer but as a man. A man who could round second without slowing down and score from first on a single. A man who was already a surrogate father and would make a wonderful father to his own children. A man who-dare she even think it?-was hot.

If I weren't engaged . . .

Whoa. Where had that come from? She was about to do the happily-ever-after with Bruce. She was lucky to have found him. She loved so many things about him. His honesty and loyalty and levelheadedness. And Solomon? On good days, he could be a savvy, funny colleague. But on bad days, they still squabbled and yapped at each other like those dogs in Judge Gridley's barn.

Whoops. Strike that thought, Counselor.

Those dogs ended up humping on a bale of straw. Best to banish all thoughts of Steve Solomon and barking dogs and bales of straw.

But seconds later, her mind, which had, well, a mind of its own, wandered again: If I weren't engaged . . .

Focus, she told herself. Don't think of his arms, his legs, his hands, his . . .

OmiG.o.d. I saw it!

The memory came back to her now. A lost dream recovered from the foggy mist between sleep and consciousness. When Bruce's alarm clanged her awake this morning, she was pressed, spoonlike, against him, feeling his warmth. But the man in her dream was not Bruce. It was Solomon.

They were walking on a deserted beach, Solomon wearing nothing but a towel, just like Sunday night at his house. In the dream, she tore the towel away, revealing his fully aroused . . .

Iron Rod.

Joystick.

Kosher Pickle.

Oh, G.o.d, how could she? It was as if she'd cheated on Bruce. She vowed to control her rebellious psyche. Concentrate, she told herself.

Sequester Solomon. Expunge him from every brain cell.

Victoria had no doubt she could, through sheer force of will, remove Solomon from her conscious thoughts. But how, she wondered, stricken with guilt, would she ever control her dreams?

Seventeen.

STEALING HOME.

Three steps off third base, Steve bounced on his toes, knees flexed, arms relaxed. A wet fog had settled over the field, and he could barely see home plate.

"Steal home," a sweet, seductive voice whispered.

He stayed put. "Who said that?"

The pitcher threw a sizzling fastball that vanished into the mist. "Stee-rike!" an invisible umpire called out.

"Steal home for me," the seductive voice murmured.

Steve turned and squinted through the fog, and there she was. The third base coach. Victoria Lord, and she was not wearing pants! Nothing but skin between her University of Miami jersey and her high-heeled, cork-soled sandals with orange and green straps.

"You're wild and reckless," she said. "That's what I love about you."

"You do?" He was vaguely aware he was dreaming.

Another pitch disappeared into the mist. "Stee-rike two!"

"Please, Steve. Please steal home." A Siren of the base paths.

Steve shivered. It was growing colder, the moisture soaking through his uniform. The pitcher started his windup, and Steve took off. Through the thickening fog, he saw it all unfold in slow motion.

A soft floating pitch.

The catcher turning to shield the plate. That tub of guts, Zinkavich!

The umpire tearing off his mask. Mr. Judgmental himself. His father! Steve slid headfirst, one hand darting beneath Zinkavich's pudgy legs, just as the mitt came down hard, crashing against his temple with a sound of a bowling ball hitting the pins. Pain flared in his skull.

"Out!" Herbert Solomon yelled. "You'll never be the ballplayer ah was, you pantywaist."

"Uncle Steve!" Bobby cried out from somewhere.

"The boy's mine!" Zinkavich thundered. "The boy's mine now!"

"Uncle Steve!" Bobby cried again.

The throbbing in his head grew worse, and now Steve felt a great weight pressing down on his chest.

"Uncle Steve!"

He was coming out of the fog.

Back in his bedroom, but something was wrong. Bobby was on top of him, pushing him into the mattress, clutching at him. Crying, trembling, shouting. "Uncle Steve! Somebody's here!"

"Who? Where?" Steve was wide-awake. Heart racing.

"Outside my window. Looking in!"

"A dream, Bobby. Just a dream."

"No! Someone's here!"

Steve looked at the digital clock on the nightstand: 4:17.

"Don't let them take me," Bobby said.

"No one's taking you. Ever."

Steve reached under the bed, grabbed a metal baseball bat, told Bobby to stay there. Wearing only his Jockeys, he padded to the boy's bedroom. Windows closed, bedsheets tangled. He looked out the window. Nothing but the blackness of the yard. He went into the kitchen, took a flashlight from a drawer, and unlocked the door. Walking barefoot into the yard, the flashlight in one hand, the bat in the other, he looked around. Still nothing.

From a neighbor's yard, he heard the clack-clack of a woodp.e.c.k.e.r hammering a bottlebrush tree. He inhaled the smells of moist earth and jasmine. And something else . . .

Cigarette smoke. Or was it? The smell came and left.

He looked under Bobby's window. No footprints, no cigarette b.u.t.ts.

The poor kid. Bobby couldn't separate reality from his nightmares. But then, Steve wondered, could he?

Two hours later, the sun was just coming up; Bobby was sleeping soundly; and Steve was in the kitchen, slicing a juicy papaya, scooping out the seeds. He left it on the counter with two slices of lime, went into the yard, and checked everything again. No sign of intruders, not even the neighborhood racc.o.o.n that turned over garbage cans. Just another nightmare, he thought. If only he could expel the demons from the boy's mind.

Wearing shorts, running shoes, and a Bar a.s.sociation T-shirt, "Lawyers Do It in Their Briefs," Steve left by the front door and locked up the house. Slipping his Walkman onto his head, he would jog to Tahiti Beach and be back in time to share breakfast with Bobby.

It was a glorious morning of dazzling blue skies and low humidity, the wind gusting from the northwest, signaling an advancing cold front. Steve had already crossed the bridge at the Gables Waterway and hadn't even broken a sweat. On the Walkman, Bob Marley was telling his little darlin' to stir it up. Different music was playing in Steve's mind, Victoria's words from his dream: "That's what I love about you."

Now that he thought about it, hadn't she been nicer to him lately? Yesterday, when Cadillac brought lunch, hadn't there been a softer look in her eyes?

So what? She's engaged, fool.

Sure, he could pursue her, but what lay at the end of that road? Heartbreak City. Just what he needed with the Barksdale trial and Bobby's case coming up. He had no time for emotional messiness. h.e.l.l, he didn't even have time for a one-night stand.

A solid line of whitecaps broke on the reef offsh.o.r.e. The wind grew stronger; a change in the weather was brewing. Picking up his pace, Steve jogged alongside a county bus that was stopped along Cocoplum Circle, disgorging its cargo of uniformed maids, on their way to the ritzy waterfront homes where they toiled. A Mercedes convertible sat at the berm, a young man and woman in the bucket seats, Natalie Cole crooning "Opposites Attract" on the radio, which made him think of Victoria once again. She'd been staring at him when he was talking to Cadillac. Was there some interest there? Didn't lots of women back out of their engagements?

Dammit. She's here for one case. Then she's gone. Live with it.

The sweat was flowing now, his breaths coming hard and fast, his shoes smacking the asphalt with a rhythmic slapitty-slap. Then he hit the zone, and he was floating. Running effortlessly, feeling strong, able to leap piles of palm fronds in a single bound. His mind drifted back to the early morning and to Bobby. Had someone been at the bedroom window? No way to tell. But he would take precautions. The burglar alarm had been on the fritz for years. He would get it fixed. He would . . .

What the h.e.l.l!

Pulling out of Mire Flores Avenue, he saw the muddy green pickup truck. Burning rubber, screeching around the corner, headed toward LeJeune Road.

Steve strained to see which way the truck would turn when it reached the intersection. He was running faster than he ever had, faster than he ever thought possible. Thoughts of Bobby, alone in his bed, streaked across his mind. When the truck turned right, Steve was close enough to watch it approach the Circle.

Please, G.o.d, let it go halfway around, straight out Sunset, or farther, straight down Old Cutler.

But it turned right.

And headed across the bridge.

Toward his home.

Eighteen.

DORIS FROM INTERCOURSE.