He'd never lied to the boy. He couldn't start now. "A little of both. Maybe a lot of both."

"How come she's bad and you're good?"

"She's not all bad and I'm not all good."

And that was the truth, he thought. Only hours earlier, he'd agreed to pay Janice a bribe. One hundred thousand dollars for her favorable testimony. His only defense was that he didn't have the money to carry out the crime. He would work on that tomorrow. He would try not to consider the ethical and moral ramifications of what he had agreed to do. That, he knew, would come another day, and with it, a pain worse than his current headache.

The boy's eyelids were fluttering. "If Mrs. Barksdale murdered her husband, wouldn't she be way bad?"

"Way bad," Steve agreed.

"Not the bad that's good. The bad that's bad."

"Yep."

"The woman is perfected," the boy whispered. "We'll figure it out." A second later, he was asleep.

"You're a wonderful father," a soft voice said.

Steve turned. Victoria stood just inside the bedroom door.

"Thanks. But sometimes I think I get more from him than he does from me."

Victoria walked to the bed, reached down, and stroked Bobby's cheek. He was breathing so heavily he seemed to be purring. "He idolizes you. You should be very proud."

But just now, he wasn't feeling proud at all. Not as a would-be father. Not as a lawyer. Not as a man. He felt more like a felon on the verge of being caught. Hoping to change the subject, he gestured toward a darkened window. "How's it going out there?"

"Temperature's dropping. Bruce is freaking."

"Sorry I'm not more help."

"That's okay. I just thought it would be nice to have you around." She was silent a moment. Then she said: "Do you want to take a walk?"

A three-quarter moon peeked through the orange-tinted clouds, and black smoke curled above the trees. Cuban love songs played on the speakers as Victoria led Steve along a path of coral rocks on a ridge above the grove. Suddenly, thousands of brightly colored lights blinked on, turning the avocado grove into a stand of Christmas trees.

"Wow. Look at that."

"Bruce's idea to heat the trees," Victoria said. "He cleaned out every Wal-Mart of Christmas lights from Orlando to Key West."

"Smart guy, your Bigby."

"He's got nothing on you."

"Just a few million bucks. And you."

"Which do you suppose is more important to Bruce?" she asked.

The question surprised Steve. Discussing her relationship with Bigby had been off-limits. "Can't answer for him. Only for me."

His words hung in the air, trapped like the smoke from the smudge pots. After a moment, she said: "Keep going, Solomon."

"I'm cold. Let's go back."

"This way." She took him by the hand.

"Where?"

She didn't answer, just led him down the path toward the lagoon.

"If you're thinking about skinny-dipping, forget it," he said.

Two flaming torches were stuck in the ground at the entrance to the chickee hut at the water's edge. "Come on in," she said. "It's a good windbreak."

"Yeah, for a Miccosukee hunting party."

He lingered at the entrance, and she ducked inside.

He wondered: Just what the h.e.l.l's going on? The walk. The hut. Was she coming on to him? Or could he be misreading the signals? No doubt his brain was addled by his dinner of Jack Daniel's, Tylenol with codeine, and peanut b.u.t.ter cups.

"What are you afraid of?" Her voice came from the shadows inside the hut.

"You."

"What do you think's going to happen in here?"

"If we were fifteen, we'd make out. But we're not, so I figure you've got pre-wedding jitters, and because I'm your pal, you want to talk. 'I love this about Bruce,' and 'I don't like this about Bruce.' Frankly, Victoria, I can do without it."

"What if I just wanted to make out?"

"What about el jefe? He's packing heat."

"I know you, Solomon. You're not afraid of him. All your fears are self-directed."

Steve was aware of something cold and wet striking his forehead. What the h.e.l.l? He turned back toward the grove. The orange-lit sky was flecked with white. "It's snowing!"

"Impossible."

She hurried out of the hut. Then, to his astonishment, she spun a pirouette and yelped with joy, sticking out her tongue to catch the flakes swirling toward her. "It's fabulous!" Over the speakers, Benny More was singing something with a bolero beat. "Magical . . ."

"Temporary," he said, watching the snow melt as it hit the ground.

Benny More sang: "Eres t flor carnal de mi jardin ideal."

"So beautiful." She moved to the music, her long leather coat swinging open, the snow whipping in the wind. "I wish I knew the words."

"You're the s.e.xual flower of my perfect garden," Steve said.

"You talking to me, big boy?"

"The lyric. More or less."

They listened. "Eres t la mujer que reina en mi corazn."

"And you reign in my heart," Steve said.

"The song again?"

"Of course."

"You ever talk that way to a woman?"

"Nah." What could he say to her? That she was beautiful and smart? That he respected her values, her integrity, even her d.a.m.ned rect.i.tude, which he had ridiculed but which deep down, he admired and envied? That he was drawn to her for all the mysterious reasons that drive men mad? "I don't talk like that."

"But you've felt that way?"

"What are we playing here, Vic? Let's watch Steve plunge a knife into his own chest?"

"C'mon. Was there a woman who reigned in your heart? Is there now?"

"Why should I tell you? So we can kiss? And then you can run away again?"

"Who said anything about running?"

"Don't do this." He was a trespa.s.ser. On another man's property. With another man's woman.

She spoke softly: "The night we kissed, weren't you the one who said, 'Go with the flow, see where it takes us'?"

"The flow takes us nowhere. You've got other plans."

"You're such a fool, Steve Solomon." She put a hand behind his neck, pulled him to her, kissed his bruised lower lip.

"Ouch."

"Hurt?"

"More than you know."

"Be brave."

Her kiss was feathery as snowflakes. He did not kiss her back. No way he'd blunder down that path: hope, rejection, pain. She'd gut him as a hunter guts a deer.

Her lips moved, soft as rose petals, across his cheek. He felt her warm breath against his ear, along his neck. She kissed him again, then traced a fingertip across his forehead, around one eye, along the length of his nose. As if she wanted to later draw his likeness.

He felt light-headed, floating in the cold breeze with the snowflakes, his world spinning off its axis. Then, without meaning to, he kissed her back. A soft and longing kiss. If his head throbbed, if his lip stung, he no longer felt the pain.

The flames from the torches warmed them, tossed their shadows against the exterior of the hut. From below, Steve heard Benny More singing to them.

"Mi pasin es rumor de un palmar."

As Victoria led him into the hut, Steve murmured: "My pa.s.sion is the whispering of palm trees."

"The song?"

"Me," he said.

The hut was filled with bales of straw, some of which had spilled across the floor. She had not planned this, Victoria thought, slipping out of the long coat and laying it across the straw. She was, for once, riding with the moment, letting her emotions carry her along. She was drawn to Steve and had stopped questioning why. But look at him, so afraid and confused. She unzipped his parka, knowing she would have to take the lead. She pulled the jacket off him, unb.u.t.toned his shirt, ran her hands up his chest.

"I want you," she breathed, kissing him again.

He whispered something, but his face was alongside her neck, and she couldn't hear. One of his hands was working its way under her sweater, and she felt her bra unsnap, and then his hands were on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Moments later, her sweater and jeans were tangled somewhere in the straw with his clothes, and she peeled off her low-rise panties, because she couldn't wait for him to do it.

Her breaths came deep and fast as his mouth tracked a path down her neck, circled both b.r.e.a.s.t.s, settled on one. She felt him pressed against her, hard and erect, and she stroked him, making him gasp. He touched her gently, insistent, probing. She kissed him again, a feverish, deep, urgent kiss.

"I want you inside me," she breathed into his ear. "Now!"

"Already?"

"We've had weeks of foreplay. Now!"

He entered her, and she wrapped her legs around him. Then she arched back, limber as a cat, her body rising to meet his.

Steve could hear his own heart hammering away, thought he could hear hers. He drank her in with all his senses. The curve of her neck, the path of her spine, the smooth silk of the cul-de-sac below her navel. He kissed her, caressed her, tasted her.

For these moments at least, he was free of the consequences, lost in the eternal ritual. He had always thought that every new encounter echoed with memories of earlier ones. But this one did not. This one was new; this one was different from all the rest.

She came with an explosive force, digging her hands into his scalp, pulling his hair, holding on as if she would fall off the edge of the world. A second later, he exploded, too, just as she felt the aftershocks rock her, mini tremors flowing in hot waves.

And then, still inside her, rocking slowly, sucking each morsel of pleasure for as long as it would last, he said it at long last. "I love you, Victoria. I really, really love you."

Thirty-eight.

THE MORNING-AFTER BLUES.

"Where are the bagels?" Marvin the Maven asked.

"Don't have any." Steve opened a paper bag and pulled out four crusty Italian rolls. "I bought michettes."

"What mishegoss is that?"

"We're talking smoked salmon and caprino panini."

"Feh! They charge another five bucks, give the lox a fancy name."