“Not a good idea. The wine, yeah, and Spock, but you’ve got a lot of glass in your gym.” She offered an apologetic look, the best she could give him. “Glass, telephoto lenses. No point in handing it to them. They’ve got your name. You’re going to find yourself alongside the alien babies, too.”

“Finally, a lifelong dream fulfilled.” He reached for glasses, glanced down at his answering machine. “Aren’t I the popular guy today? Forty-eight messages.” Even as he spoke, the phone rang.

“You should screen, Ford. I really thought by issuing a short, clear statement I’d head this off. Kim, the publicist, agreed with me. But for whatever reason, some of the media wants to run with it, and turn down cockeyed angles.”

“Let’s do this.” He lifted the phone, switched off the ringer. “I’ll do the same with the others. My family, my friends have my cell number if they need to reach me. I’ll call Brian, see if he’ll take Spock home with him tonight. We’ll take some wine, cook up a frozen pizza and camp upstairs in the bedroom behind the curtains. At last, the opportunity to expose you to a marathon running of Battlestar Galactica.”

She leaned back on the counter as the tension in her shoulders dissolved. Not angry, she realized. Not upset. Not even especially irked. How had she ever managed to connect with someone so blessedly stable?

“You really know how to keep it simple.”

“Unless the Cylons are bent on destroying your entire species, it usually is simple. You get the pizza, I’ll get the wine.”

CILLA WOKE at five A.M. to the beep of the internal clock she’d set in the middle of the night after the alarms had sounded at the Little Farm. Something else she should have expected, she thought as she went to shower. There were some members of some media who routinely ignored the law in pursuit of a story. So she’d spent an hour with the police and Ford across the road.

And she had a lock set on her back door bearing the scratches of a botched jimmy attempt.

She dressed, left a note for Ford. The radio car remained in her drive, where it had been posted after the attempted break-in. Birds chirped, and she caught sight of a trio of deer at her pond. But no reporters camped outside her walls.

Maybe she’d gotten lucky, she thought, and that was that. Using Ford’s car, she drove into town. She was back by six-thirty, and carried a box of doughnuts and two large coffees down her drive.

The cop behind the wheel rolled down his window.

“I know it’s a cliché,” she said, "but.”

“Hey. That was nice of you, Miss McGowan. It’s been quiet.”

“And a long night for both of you. It looks like the invaders have retired the field. I’m going to start work. Some of the crew will be coming along by seven.”

“It’s a nice spot you’ve got here.” The second cop pulled a glazed with sprinkles out of the box. “Heck of a bathroom up there on the second floor. My wife’s been wanting to update ours.”

“If you decide to, give me a call. Free consult.”

“Might do that. We’ll be going off shift pretty soon. Do you want us to call in and request another car?”

“I think we’ll be fine now. Thanks for looking out for me.”

Inside, she set up to finish her run of baseboard. By eight, the hive of activity buzzed. Grouting, drywall mudding, consults on driveway pavers and pond work. Turning her attention to the third bedroom, Cilla checked her closet measurements. As she removed the door, Matt stepped in.

“Cilla, I think you’d better take a look outside.”

“What? Is there a problem?”

“I guess you need to look, decide that for yourself.”

She propped the door against the wall, hustled after him. One look out the front window of the master bedroom had her gasping.

Six reporters had been a nuisance, and not unexpected. Sixty was a disaster.

“They just started showing up, kind of all at once,” Matt told her. “Kinda like there was a signal. Brian called me out, said some of them are yelling questions at his crew. Jesus, there’s TV cameras and everything.”

“Okay, okay, I need to think.” She had at least a dozen crew working between the house and the grounds. A dozen people she couldn’t possibly censor or control.

“There shouldn’t be this kind of interest in me being in a wreck, even with the circumstances. A few blips on the entertainment news maybe, reports locally. I need to make a call. Matt, if you could try to keep the men from talking to them, at least for now. I need a few minutes to…” She trailed off as the gleaming black limo streamed through her entrance.

“Man, look at that.”

“Yes, look at that,” Cilla echoed. She didn’t have to see Mario climb out of the back to know who’d arrived. Or why.

By the time Cilla reached the veranda, Bedelia Hardy stood under the supportive protection of her husband’s arm. She tilted her face out at the perfect angle, Cilla thought with burning resentment, so those long lenses could capture her poignant expression. She wore her hair loose so it shone in the sun over the linen jacket the same color as her eyes.

As Cilla let the screen door slam behind her, Dilly threw open her arms, keeping her body angled for the profile shots. “Baby!”

She came forward in rather spectacular Jimmy Choo sandals with three-inch heels. Trapped, Cilla walked down the steps in her work boots and into the maternal arms and clouds of Soir de Paris. Janet’s signature scent that had become her daughter’s.

“My baby, my baby.”

“You did this,” Cilla whispered in Dilly’s ear. “You leaked to the press you were coming.”

“Of course I did. All press is good press.” She leaned back, and through the amber lenses of Dilly’s sunglasses, Cilla saw the calculatedly misted eyes widen in genuine concern. “Oh, Cilla, your face. You said you weren’t hurt. Oh, Cilla.”

It was that, that moment of sincere shock and worry, Cilla supposed, that dulled the sharpest edge of resentment. “I got some bumps, that’s all.”

“What did the doctor say? Oh, that horrible man, that Hennessy. I remember him. Pinched-faced bastard. My God, Cilla, you’re hurt.”

“I’m fine.”

“Well, why don’t you at least put on some makeup? No time for that now, and it’s probably better this way. Let’s go. I’ve worked it all out. You’ll just follow my lead.”

“You sicced them on me, Mom. You know this is exactly what I didn’t want.”

“It’s not all about you, and what you want.” Dilly looked past Cilla to the house, then turned away. And again, Cilla saw genuine feeling. Pain. “It never has been. I need the column inches, the airtime. I need the exposure, and I’m going to take it. What happened, happened. Now you can let them keep pushing on that, on you, or you can help spin some of it, maybe most of it, around to me.

“Jesus! What is that?”

Cilla glanced down and saw Spock sitting patiently, paw out, big, bulbous eyes latched onto Dilly.

“That’s my neighbor’s dog. He wants you to shake.”

“He wants… Does it bite?”

“No. Just shake his paw, Mom. He’s decided you’re friendly because you hugged me.”

“All right.” She leaned over carefully and, to her credit, in Cilla’s mind, gave Spock’s paw a firm shake. Then smiled a little. “He’s so ugly, but in a weirdly sweet way. Shoo now.”

Dilly turned, her arm firm around Cilla’s waist, and flung out a hand to her husband. “Mario!”

He trotted up, took her hand, kissed it.

“We’re ready,” she told him.

“You look beautiful. Only a few minutes this time, darling. You shouldn’t be out in the sun too long.”

“Stay close.”

“Always.”

Clutching Cilla, Dilly began to move toward the entrance, toward the cameras.

“Great shoes,” Cilla complimented. “Poor choice for grass and gravel.”

“I know what- Who’s this? We can’t have reporters breaking ranks.”

“He’s not a reporter.” Cilla watched Ford shove through the lines. “Keep going,” she told him when he reached them. “You don’t want any part of this.”