"Yes. Yes."

While he played with her, she closed her eyes against the slice of Louisiana moon above her head so that nothing would distract her from the wonderful feelings that were rushing through her body. She turned her cheek and didn't even feel the dirt from the trunk rub against her skin. His hands grew less patient. They spread her legs farther apart and pulled her hips closer to the edge. Her feet were balanced precariously on the bumper, separated by a Texas license plate and some dusty chrome. He fumbled with the front of his jeans and she heard the zipper give. He lifted her hips.

When she felt him push inside her, she gave a small gasp. He bent over her, his feet still on the ground, but drew back slightly. "Am I hurting you?"

"Oh, no. It-it feels so good."

"It's supposed to, honey."

She wanted him to believe she was a wonderful lover-to do everything right-but the whole world seemed to be sliding away from her, making everything dizzy, wavery, and mushy with warmth. How could she concentrate when he was touching her that way, moving like that? She suddenly wanted to feel more of him. Lifting her foot from the bumper, she wrapped one knee around his hips, the other around his leg, pushing against him until she had absorbed as much of him as she could.

"Easy, honey," he said. "Take your time." He began moving inside her slowly, kissing her, and making her feel as good as she'd ever felt in her life. "You with me, darlin'?" he murmured softly in her ear, the sound slightly hoarse.

"Oh, yes… yes. Dallie… my wonderful Dallie… my lovely Dallie…" A cacophony of sound seemed to explode in her head as she came and came and came.

He heaved hard, and something halfway between a moan and groan escaped him. The sound gave her a feeling of power, touched fire to her excitement, and she came again. He quivered over her for a wonderfully interminable length of time and then grew heavy.

She turned her cheek so that it pressed against his hair, felt him dear and beautiful and real against her, inside her. She noticed that their skin was stuck together and that his back felt moist beneath her hands. She felt a small drop of perspiration fall from him onto her bare arm and realized she didn't care. Was this what it meant to be in love? she wondered dreamily. Her eyelids drifted open. She was in love. Of course. Why hadn't she realized it long before this? That was what was wrong with her. That was why she'd been feeling so unhappy. She was in love.

"Francie?" he murmured.

"Yes?"

"You all right?"

"Oh, yes."

He eased himself up on one arm and smiled down at her. "Then how 'bout we head for the motel and try it again on top of those sheets you were so set on?"

On the drive back, she sat in the middle of the front seat and leaned her cheek against his shoulder while she chewed a piece of Double Bubble and daydreamed about their future.

Chapter 13

Naomi Jaffe Tanaka let herself into her apartment, a Mark Cross briefcase in one hand and a bag from Zabar's perched on her opposite hip. Inside the bag was a container of golden figs, a sweet Gorgonzola, and a crusty loaf of French bread, all she needed for a perfect working night dinner. She set down her briefcase and placed the sack on the black granite counter in her kitchen, leaning it against the wall, which had been painted with a hard burgundy enamel. The apartment was expensive and stylish, exactly the sort of place where the vice-president of a major advertising agency should live.

Naomi frowned as she pulled out the Gorgonzola and set it on a pink glazed porcelain plate. Only one small stumbling block lay between her and the vice-presidency she craved-finding the Sassy Girl. Just that morning, Harry Rodenbaugh had sent her a stinging memo threatening to turn the account over to one of the agency's "more aggressive men" if she couldn't produce her Sassy Girl in the next few weeks.

She kicked off her gray suede pumps and nudged them out of the way with a stockinged toe while she removed the rest of her purchases from the sack. How could it be so difficult to find one person? Over the past few days, she and her secretary had made dozens of phone calls, but not one of them had run

the girl to ground. She was out there, Naomi knew, but where? She rubbed her temples, but the pressure did nothing to relieve the headache that had been plaguing her all day.

After depositing the figs in the refrigerator, she picked up her pumps and headed wearily out of the kitchen. She would take a shower, put on her oldest bathrobe, and pour herself a glass of wine before she started on the work she'd brought home. With one hand, she began unfastening the pearl buttons at the front of her dress, while with the elbow of her other arm, she flicked on the living room light switch.

"What's doin', sis?"

Naomi shrieked and spun toward her brother's voice, her heart jumping in her chest. "My God!"

Gerry Jaffe lounged on the couch, his shabby jeans and faded blue work shirt out of place against the silky rose upholstery. He still wore his black hair in an Afro. He had a small scar on his left cheekbone and tired brackets around those full lips that had once driven all of her female friends wild with lust. His nose was the same-as big and bold as an eagle's. And his eyes were deep black nuggets that still burned with the fire of the zealot.

"How did you get in here?" she demanded, her heart pounding. She felt both angry and vulnerable. The last thing she needed in her life right now was another problem, and Gerry's reappearance could only mean trouble. She also hated the feeling of inadequacy she always experienced when Gerry was around-a little sister who once again didn't measure up to her brother's standards.

"No kiss for your big brother?"

"I don't want you here."

She received a brief impression of an enormous weariness hanging over him, but it vanished almost immediately. Gerry had always been a good actor. "Why didn't you call first?" she snapped. And then she remembered that Gerry had been photographed by the newspapers a few weeks before outside the naval base in Bangor, Maine, leading a demonstration against stationing the Trident nuclear submarine there. "You've been arrested again, haven't you?" she accused him.

"Hey, what's another arrest in the Land of the Free, the Home of the Brave?" Uncoiling himself from

the sofa, he held out his arms to her and gave her his most charming Pied Piper grin. "Come on, sweetie. How 'bout a little kiss?"

He looked so much like the big brother who used to buy her candy bars when she had asthma attacks

that she nearly smiled. But her temporary softening was a mistake. With a monstrous growl, he vaulted over her glass and marble coffee table and came for her.

"Gerry!" She backed away from him, but he kept coming. Baring his teeth, he turned his hands into

claws and came lurching toward her in his best Frankensteinian manner. "The Four-Eyed Fang-Toothed Phantom walks again," he growled.

"I said stop it!" Her voice rose in pitch until it was shrill. She couldn't deal with the Fang-Toothed Phantom now- not with the Sassy Girl and the vice-presidency and her headache all plaguing her. Despite the passing years, her brother never changed. He was the same old Gerry-larger than life,

just as outrageous as ever. But she wasn't nearly as charmed.

He lurched toward her, his face comically distorted, eyes rolling, playing the game he'd teased her with

for as long as she could remember. "The Fang-Toothed Phantom lives off the flesh of young virgins." He leered.

"Gerry!"

"Succulent young virgins!"

"Stop it!"

"Juicy young virgins!"

Despite her irritation, she giggled. "Gerry, don't!" She backed away toward the hallway, not taking her eyes off him as he advanced inexorably toward her. With an inhuman shriek he made his lunge. She screamed as he caught her up into his arms and began spinning her in a circle. Ma! she wanted to shout. Ma, Gerry's teasing me! In a sudden rush of nostalgia, she wanted to call out for protection to the woman who now turned her face away whenever her older child's name was mentioned.

Gerry sank his teeth into her shoulder and bit her just hard enough so that she would squeal again, but

not hard enough to hurt her. Then he stiffened. "What's this?" he cried in outrage. "This is awful stuff. This isn't a virgin's flesh." He took her over to the sofa and dumped her unceremoniously. "Shit. Now

I'm going to have to settle for pizza."

She loved him and she hated him, and she wanted to hug him so much that she jumped up off the sofa and gave him a sucker punch right in the arm.

"Ow! Hey, nonviolence, sis."

"Nonviolence, my ass! What the hell is wrong with you, barging in here like this? You're so damned irresponsible. When are you going to grow up?"

He didn't say anything; he just stood there looking at her. The fragile good humor between them faded. His Rasputin eyes took in her expensive dress and the stylish pumps that had fallen to the floor. Pulling out a cigarette, he lit it, still watching her. He had always had the ability to make her feel inadequate, personally responsible for the sins of the world, but she refused to squirm at the disapproval that gradually came over his expression as he surveyed the material artifacts of her world. "I mean it, Gerry," she went on. "I want you out of here."

"The old man must finally be proud of you," he said tonelessly. "His little Naomi has turned into a fine capitalist pig, just like all the rest."

"Don't start on me."

"You never told me how he reacted when you married that jap." He gave a bark of cynical laughter. "Only my sister Naomi could marry a Jap named Tony. God, what a country."