Paige reached for Sami.

"This little one needs to be changed. Jill, you know where things are, why don't you set the table. Sara, the chicken should be done.

You can bring it in."

Paige played with Sami all the way up the stairs and through a diaper change. She was seeing the beginnings of smiles and laughed every time she did. What she loved, though, was the way Sami's arms naturally went around her when she picked her up.

"That's my girl," Paige said, hugging her all the way down the stairs.

She set her in the high chair in the kitchen, gave her mashed chicken from a baby food jar and a sliced banana, and sat down to eat with Sara and Jill. She had taken no more than two bites of chicken when the phone rang. She looked at Sara. "I warned you. I'm on call."

But it wasn't her answering service. It was Noah. "I'm a little frantic here, Paige. I need your help. We've searched the entire campus, but we can't find Sara. She hasn't been seen since practice."

"She's with me," Paige said quickly.

"With you? Really?"

"She left campus with me. We're just having dinner."

"Thank God," he breathed. "I've been imagining horrible things."

"You shouldn't have. She signed out."

"No, she didn't."

Paige caught the guilty look on Sara's face.

UAaach. I guess she didn't." To Sara, chidingly, she said, "He was in a panic.

They've been looking all over for you."

If Sara was touched, she didn't let on. Paige wanted to shake her.

On the other end of the line, Noah sounded dismayed. "The girls kept talking about the Devil Brothers, saying that it was only a matter of time before they abducted one of the female students. Who in the hell are the Devil Brothers?"

"Not Devil. DeVille. They're two sweet, simpleminded lugs of guys who are Tucker's perennial scapegoats. They're harmless."

UAhhhhh. The girls were working themselves into a frenzy, taking me right along with them. I'm afraid our secret's out, Sara's and mine.

So she's there Thank God." In the next breath he said "God help her, the little minx.

If she thinks I can give her dispensation from disciplinary action, she's wrong. Particularly now that people know we're related, I'll have to go out of my way to be impartial. She went A.W.O.L. That's worth a detention times ten." iWhat's he saying?" Sara whispered.

"You don't want to know," Paige whispered back then said into the phone, "Can she finish dinner, at least?" ill'll be there in half an hour."

"Make it an hour."

"Half." He took a shaky breath. "Thank God. I was thinking that I'd taken her away from her mother only to subject her to unspeakable horrors."

He took another breath, a steadier one this time. "So, anyway, what are you eating?"

"Chicken, but there's none left for you. Come in an hour and you can have some brownies."

She hung up the phone before he could argue.

"Brownies?" Jill said. "We don't have any brownies."

Paige looked from one girl to the other.

"Then we'd better get a mix down from the shelf and whip up a batch real quick, don't you think?"

Noah loved the brownies. He didn't love the awkwardness that accompanied Sara and him in the car back to Mount Court. Talking with teenagers was his forte, which was one of the reasons why the difficulty he had talking with Sara upset him. The other was that she needed a father as much as he needed a daughter.

But talking about feelings, perhaps criticizing and being criticized, was risky business for two people who didn't know each other very well.

After several minutes of silence, all he could think to say was, ill was worried."

"I'm sorry," she answered, though she didn't sound it at all.

"Why didn't you sign out?" ill didn't think of it."

It's one of the most basic of the dorm rules, he wanted to say. When you leave campus, you sign out. If everyone came and went as the mood took them, we'd never know where they were. Parents entrust the care of their children to the school. We are responsible for our students.

"You know," he mused, "when I envisioned having my own daughter at the school where I taught, I thought I knew the drawbacks. After all, I was in a similar position as you once. So I was thinking how i icu t it might be for you, but there's another side to it that I hadn't thought of. Me. Normally parents are miles away and don't know about the little problems at school until those problems are resolved They don't go through the hell of the worry I did."

She was quiet for so long that he wondered if she'd heard. When he looked at her, she said, "You can always send me home. Then you won't have to know about the problems."

"I don't want to send you home. I want to have "Maybe I don't want to be here."

Don t you?"

She didn't answer.

usara?

ill don't know," she mumbled.

"Are you missing California that much?"

"Maybe."

"Looking forward to going back for Thanksgiving?" When she didn't answer, he shot her a glance. "You talkuUwhith your mom every week don't you?" ills she doing okay?"

"Sure."

The fact was that Noah had received an irate call from the woman several days before saying that she could never get through on the dormitory phone and asking why Sara hadn't called her. According to Liv, the two hadn't talked in three weeks.

Given Sara's history, Noah tended to believe Liv But he couldn't say that to Sara. He was doing his best to trust her, in the hope that she would earn at trust in time.