From the time he was fifteen, Joel Faulconer had fed on the lore of Tom Watson, the founder of IBM. He had watched avidly as Watson had molded his company into one of the most successful corporations in the world. He wanted the same to happen with Falcon Typewriter, the company his father Ben and his uncle Lewis had founded in 1913. Being good wasn't enough for Joel Faulconer. He had to be the best.

Returning from World War II with big dreams, Joel presented his father and his uncle with audacious strategies for expanding the company. Selling typewriters was smalltime, he told them. They needed to attack IBM in its own territory by expanding their product line to include accounting machinery. They should be going after government contracts and upgrading their sales force.

His uncle, Lewis Faulconer, with his flashy suits, Havana cigars, and two-toned shoes, dismissed all of his nephew's suggestions. "Your father and me made ourselves millionaires a couple of times over, buddy boy. What do we need more money for?"

"To be the best," Joel replied, tight-lipped and seething with frustration. "To give Watson and IBM a run for their money."

Lewis's gaze slithered from Joel's well-cut hair to his Stanford class ring. "Shit, boy. You're not even wet behind the ears and you're trying to tell your daddy and me how to run the company we founded."

Ben Faulconer, who had gained more social polish over the years than his brother, was intrigued by Joel's ideas, but still cautious about making the sweeping changes his son insisted the postwar economy mandated. Still, Joel was certain he could manage his father, if only he could get rid of his uncle Lewis.

In a move that was to prove prophetic, Joel snatched up patents from the infant computer industry. At the same time, he began a systematic courtship of the high-ranking officers of the company, and with very little effort maneuvered his uncle into an escalating series of blunders. It took two years, but he finally succeeded in uprooting Lewis Faulconer.

On Lewis's last day with the company he had helped found, he confronted his brother in Ben's comfortable, paneled office. "You let a fox in the hen house, Benny," he warned, his words slurred because he no longer had any reason to wait until noon to take his first drink of the day. "Watch your ass, boy, because he'll be after you next."

Nonsense, Ben had thought to himself, secretly proud of Joel's cunning in ridding the company of a man who had become an embarrassment. The very idea of worrying about the security of his own position seemed ridiculous to Ben. He was chairman of the corporation-an untouchable. Besides, Joel was his son.

One year later, at the age of thirty, Joel Faulconer had forced his father into early retirement and taken over the helm of the newly renamed Falcon Business Technologies-or FBT, as it was being called. The company immediately began to prosper beyond anyone's imagination.

Two weeks after Susannah's arrival in California, FBT was marking the eighth anniversary of Joel's ascendancy to the chairmanship with the dedication of their new corporate headquarters near Palo Alto. Officially named the FBT Center of Corporate Activities, it had already become known simply as the Castle. Joel was secretly pleased with the nickname. After all, what better place for a king to live than a castle?

Not that he actually thought of himself as a king. But in the kingdom of Falcon Business Technologies, he certainly had unlimited power. Even the President of the United States was answerable to the people, but Joel was only answerable to himself and a handpicked Board of Directors. He was proud to have accomplished so much at such a young age. At thirty-eight, he was one of the most influential men in American industry. If only he had as much control over his own household.

As he shot a pair of onyx cuff links into the sleeves of his dress shirt, he glanced impatiently at his wife. She was sitting at her dressing table and applying lipstick to the full mouth that had ministered so effectively to his body such a short time before. At thirty-three, she was just entering the prime of her beauty. Her breasts strained seductively against the bodice of her slip whenever she leaned toward the mirror. She worked with utter concentration, as if the simple act of applying lipstick took every ounce of her intelligence-which wasn't far from the mark, he thought.

"You're going to be late again, Kay," he snapped. "You know how important tonight's affair is. You promised me you'd be on time."

"Did I?" she said vaguely. She screwed the lipstick down into its tube and then began looking about for the jeweled cap. Wisps of light brown hair from her short Italian cut feathered her cheekbones, softening features that were already pleasantly blurred. Her mouth was too full for fashion, but he had always liked it. Too much, perhaps. It was more a trollop's mouth than the sort of mouth that belonged on the wife of a powerful man.

"Don't be angry, darling," she said. "Ever since you got back from New York, you've been so angry with me."

"Do you blame me? I knew you were stupid, but I never imagined that even you could have been this stupid."

Kay reached for a cigarette and smoothed the thin arch of her eyebrow with her little finger. "Don't start shouting at me again, Joel. I've explained that it wasn't my fault. Whenever I went to see Susannah, she was well-dressed. How was I to know anything was wrong?"

Joel bit back a retort, knowing that he would only end up making his feather-headed wife later than she already was. What a terrible marriage he had saddled himself with. Still, he refused to dwell too critically on the sensual side of his nature that drew him to women like Kay-seductive high-born kittens who were marvels in bed but inept at the business of daily living. After all, powerful men were allowed a few weaknesses of the flesh. He had toyed with the idea of divorcing her, but that sort of scandal was dangerous for someone in his position. Instead, he blamed her for not becoming the efficient sort of wife a man of his stature needed.

"Have you seen my earrings, darling? The sapphires?" She poked ineffectively at the clutter on her dressing table in hopes her expensive jewels might be lurking among the Max Factor bottles and cubes of Ayds diet candy.

"God, Kay, if you've misplaced those sapphires again, I'm going to take them away from you. Do you have any idea how much they cost?"

She absentmindedly picked up her lipstick tube again. "A fortune, I'm sure. I remember now. I took them off in the living room and tucked them in a drawer of the secretary so I wouldn't lose them. Be a darling and get them for me."

He stalked from their bedroom and went downstairs. As he walked into the living room, he didn't see Susannah sitting like a quiet little mouse in the corner chair, her legs drawn up under the skirt of her new calico nightgown, her eyes bright with adoration as she caught sight of him.

"Damn!" The drawers of the walnut secretary held the usual clutter of Kay's possessions, but no earrings. He banged them shut one by one. "Dammit to hell. Where could she have put them?"

"Can I help you, Father?" Susannah slipped from the chair and walked toward him, her voice quietly deferential. Joel had forbidden anyone to braid her hair, so it hung loose and bone-straight. As she stood before him, she looked so anxious that his heart turned over in his chest. Because he was so powerful himself, he felt her absolute helplessness and total dependence on him even more acutely. She was so solemn, so quiet, so overly polite with her old woman's vocabulary and desperate obsequiousness. He could not ever remember feeling so protective of another human being-not even his own daughter. Baby Paige had an army of caretakers to watch out for her well-being. This ancient little girl had no one but himself.

"Your mother left some earrings here."

"Earrings? Might they be blue?"

"Yes. They're sapphires. Why? Have you seen them?"

"Yesterday I saw Mother put some earrings in that bowl on the mantel."

Joel went over to the bowl and pulled out the sapphires. He smiled at her. Her lips curled in response. It was a trembling, uncertain attempt at a smile, but it was a smile nonetheless.

"What a good girl you are," he said softly. "What a very good girl." And then he hugged her.

Without either of them realizing it, six-year-old Susannah had taken the first step toward becoming the efficient wife that Joel Faulconer so badly needed.

Chapter 2

The next year was magical. Joel legally adopted her so that she was now his real daughter-no longer Susannah Lydiard, but Susannah Faulconer. She went to school for the first time, and the teacher praised her because she was the smartest student in the class. She stopped wetting the bed and began to smile more. Everyone except her mother seemed to like her.

Although Susannah tried hard to please her mother, nothing seemed to work. She kept herself as neat as a shiny new penny and did everything that was asked of her, but Kay still complained.

"Don't sneak up behind me like that!" Kay shrieked at least once a day. "I've told you a hundred times! It gives me the creeps!"

Susannah perfected a quiet little cough when her mother was around so Kay would always know she was there.

Kay liked Paige much more than she liked Susannah-not that Susannah could really blame her. Paige was so adorable that Susannah immediately made herself a willing slave to her baby half sister. She fetched toys for her, entertained her when she was bored, and placated her when she had a temper tantrum. The sight of her sister's chubby pink face crumpled in tears was more than she could bear.