Dallie was playing in the final foursome along with Johnny Miller, the leading money winner on the tour that season. When it was Dallie's turn to tee up, Skeet handed him a three-wood and gave his final words of advice. "Remember that you're the best young golfer on the tour today, Dallie. You know it and I know it. How about we let the rest of the world figure it out?" Dallie nodded, took his stance, and hit the kind of golf shot that makes history.

At the end of fourteen holes, Dallie was still in the lead at sixteen under par. With only four holes to go, Johnny Miller was coming up fast, but he was still four strokes behind. Dallie put Miller out of his mind and concentrated on his own game. As he sank a five-foot putt, he told himself that he was born to play golf. Some champions are made, but others are created at the moment of conception. He was finally going to live up to the reputation the magazines had created for him. With his name sitting at the top of the leader board of the Orange Blossom Open, Dallie felt as if he'd come out of the womb with a brand-new Titleist ball clenched in his hand.

His strides grew longer as he walked down the fifteenth fairway. The network cameras followed his

every move, and confidence surged through him. Those final-round defeats of the past two years were

all behind him now. They were flukes, nothing but flukes. This Texas boy was about to set the golf

world on fire.

The sun hit his blond hair and warmed his shirt. In the gallery, a shapely female fan blew him a kiss.

He laughed and made a play out of catching the kiss in midair and slipping it into his pocket.

Skeet held out an eight-iron for an easy approach shot to the fifteenth green. Dallie gripped the club, assessed the lie, and took his stance. He felt strong and in control. His lead was solid, his game was on, nothing could snatch away this victory.

Nothing except the Bear.

You don't really think you can win this thing, do you, Beaudine?

The Bear's voice popped into Dallie's head sounding just as clear as if Jack Nicklaus were standing

beside him.

Champions like me win golf tournaments, not failures like you.

Go away, Dallie's brain screamed. Don't show up now! Sweat began to break out on his forehead. He adjusted his grip, tried to loosen himself up again, tried not to listen to that voice.

What have you got to show for yourself? What have you done with your life except screw things up?

Leave me alone! Dallie stepped away from the ball, rechecked the line, and settled in again. He drew

back the club and hit. The crowd let out a collective groan as the ball drifted to the left and landed in

high rough. In Dallie's mind, the Bear shook his big blond head.

That's exactly what I'm talking about, Beaudine. You just don't have the stuff it takes to make a champion.

Skeet, his expression clearly worried, came up next to Dallie. "Where in hell did that shot come from? Now you're going to have to scramble to make par."

"I just lost my balance," Dallie snapped, stalking off toward the green.

You just lost your guts, the Bear whispered back.

The "Bear had begun to appear in Dallie's head not long after Dallie had started playing on the pro tour. Before that, it had only been Jaycee's voice he had heard in his head. Logically, Dallie understood that he'd created the Bear himself, and he knew there was a big difference between the soft-spoken, well-mannered Jack Nicklaus of real life and this creature from hell who spoke like Nicklaus, and looked like Nicklaus, and knew all Dallie's deepest secrets.

But logic didn't have much to do with private devils, and it wasn't accidental that Dallie's private devil

had taken the form of Jack Nicklaus, a man he admired just about more than anyone else-a man with

a beautiful family, the respect of his peers, and the greatest game of golf the world had ever seen. A

man who wouldn't know how to fail if he tried.

You're a kid from the wrong side of the tracks, the Bear whispered as Dallie lined up a short putt on

the sixteenth green. It lipped the edge of the cup and scooted off to the side.

Johnny Miller gave Dallie a sympathetic look, then sank his own putt for a par. Two holes later when Dallie hit his drive on eighteen, his four-shot lead had been reduced to a tie with Miller.

Your old man told you you'd never amount to much, the Bear said as Dallie's drive sliced viciously to

the right. Why didn 't you listen?

The worse Daliie played, the more he joked with the crowd. "Now, where did that miserable golf shot come from?" he called over to them, scratching his head in mock bewilderment. And then he pointed

to a plump, matronly woman standing near the ropes. "Ma'am, maybe you'd better put down your

purse and come on over here so you can hit the next one for me."

He bogeyed the final hole and Johnny Miller birdied it. After the players had signed their scorecards, the tournament chairman presented Miller with the first-place trophy and a check for thirty thousand dollars. Dallie shook his hand, gave Miller a few congratulatory pats on the shoulder,and then went over to joke with the crowd some more.

"This is what I get for letting Skeet hold my jaws open last night and pour all that beer down my throat. My old grandmother could have played better out there today with a garden rake and roller skates."

Dallie Beaudine had spent a childhood dodging his father's fists, and he knew better than to let anybody see when he was hurting.

Chapter 4

Francesca stood in the center of a pool of discarded evening gowns and studied her reflection in the wall of mirrors built into one end of her bedroom, now decorated with pastel-striped silk walls, matching

Louis XV chairs, and an early Matisse. Like an architect engrossed in a blueprint, she searched her twenty-year-old face for gremlin-induced imperfections that might have mischievously appeared since she last looked in the mirror. Her small straight nose was dusted with a translucent powder priced at twelve pounds a box, her eyelids frosted with smoky shadow, and her lashes, individually separated with a tiny tortoiseshell comb, had been coated with exactly four applications of imported German mascara. She lowered her critical gaze down over her tiny frame to the graceful curve of her breasts, then inspected the neat indentation of her waist before moving on to her legs, beautifully clad in a pair of lacquer green suede slacks complemented perfectly by an ivory silk blouse from Piero De Monzi. She had just been named one of the ten most beautiful women in Great Britain for 1975. Although she would never have been so crass as to say it aloud, she secretly wondered why the magazine had bothered with nine others. Francesca's delicate features were more classically beautiful than either her mother's or grandmother's, and much more changeable. Her slanted green eyes could grow as chill and distant as a cat's when she was displeased, or as saucy as a Soho barmaid's if her mood shifted. When she realized how much attention it brought her, she began to emphasize her resemblance to Vivien Leigh and let her chestnut hair grow into a curly, shoulder-length cloud, occasionally even pulling it back from her small face with hair slides to make the likeness more pronounced.

As she contemplated her reflection, it didn't occur to her that she was shallow and vain, that many of the people she considered her friends could barely tolerate her. Men loved her, and that was all that mattered. She was so outrageously beautiful, so utterly charming when she put her energy to it, that only the most self-protective of males could resist her. Men found being with Francesca rather like taking an addictive drug, and even after the relationship had ended, many discovered themselves coming back for a damaging second hit.

Like her mother, she spoke in hyperbole and put her words into invisible italics, making even the most mundane occurrence sound like a grand adventure. She was rumored to be a sorceress in bed, although the specifics of who had actually penetrated the lovely Francesca's enchanting vagina had grown a bit muddy over time. She kissed wonderfully, that was for certain, leaning into a man's chest, curling up in his arms like a sensuous kitten, sometimes licking at his mouth with the very tip of her small pink tongue.

Francesca never stopped to consider that men adored her because she was generally at her best with them. They didn't have to suffer her attacks of thoughtlessness, her perpetual tardiness, or her piques when she didn't get her way. Men made her bloom. At least for a while… until she grew bored. Then she became impossible.

As she applied a slick of coral gloss to her lips, she couldn't help but smile at the memory of her most spectacular conquest, although she was absolutely distraught that he hadn't taken their parting better. Still, what could she have done? Several months of playing second fiddle to all his official responsibilities had brought the chill light of reality to those deliciously warm visions of royal immortality she'd been entertaining-glass-enclosed carriages, cathedral doors flinging open, trumpets playing-visions not entirely unthinkable for a girl who'd been raised in the bedroom of a princess.

When she'd finally come to her senses about their relationship and realized she didn't want to live her life at the beck and call of the British Empire, she'd tried to make her break with him as clean as possible. But he'd still taken it rather badly. She could see him now as he'd looked that night-immaculately tailored, exquisitely barbered, expensively shod. How on earth could she have known that a man who bore no wrinkles on the outside might bear a few insecurities on the inside? She remembered the evening two months earlier when she had ended her relationship with the most eligible bachelor in Great Britain.