“It’s like a mausoleum,” Annette had told him many years ago. “I hate it. My husband does, too. He’d move in a minute.”

“Then why don’t you?”

She’d laughed. “Because I’m a Winston. If I’d had a brother, he’d be stuck with the place. I loathe primogeniture, but in this case it’d be a blessing.”

It was, of course, a magnificent house, not a mausoleum or anything Annette Winston Reed had ever remotely considered giving up. Jean-Paul went through the unlocked carriageway gate to the back as Annette had instructed him. He had called her office at Winston & Reed and had spoken to her secretary, who’d told him her boss wasn’t in the office today. Jean-Paul had urged her to get hold of Annette at once and left the number of his pay phone.

Annette had called him back right away. The only hint of the mind-numbing shock he’d just given her was a slight hoarseness in her voice.

So she actually thought I was dead.

The thought amused him.

She’d understood they would have to meet in person-if only to convince herself the call wasn’t a nightmare. Reluctantly, but ever the stiff-upper-lip Bostonian, she gave him directions to her house.

Jean-Paul entered the beautiful house in the back, then moved silently through the antiseptic kitchen and down a short hall, where dozens of expensively framed photographs hung on the wall. The people in them were all the same-smiling, rich, perfect. The men were without scars and the women without fear, and Jean-Paul had to make his arms go rigid to keep from knocking the photographs off the wall. The pain was there, the anger, the burning hate. Nearly four years in the Légion étrangère and five years at the mercy of the Vietcong and North Vietnamese in a prisoner-of-war camp had taught him how to control his emotions, but he could feel them exploding to the surface.

Time had resolved nothing.

He called up a self-discipline he’d forgotten he had and pulled his gaze from the private gallery, proceeding down the hall to Annette’s study.

She was seated in a bone-colored leather chair at the antique French table she used as a desk. Sun streamed in through the tall windows that looked out on the elegant urban garden, making the rich woman’s room seem far from the crush and dirtiness of the city.

For a moment Annette seemed unchanged, and Jean-Paul could almost hear her weeping for him as she had thirty years ago, begging him to love her. She was rich, American, older, married. She had fallen for him like a rock in a deep, still pool, drowning in her obsession. Stupidly-so stupidly-he had believed she loved him. Too late he’d learned Annette Winston Reed only loved herself.

Behind her stood a motionless, silent Vietnamese whom Jean-Paul recognized as Nguyen Kim. Kim was just over five feet tall, sleek, wiry and very tough. In Vietnam, Jean-Paul had known him as a consummate survivor. He’d been trained by the American Special Forces, and no doubt Annette showed him off as a former South Vietnamese army officer she’d generously given a job as her bodyguard. But Kim ingratiated himself with anyone who could help him-and was perfectly willing to kill anyone who wouldn’t. Probably, Jean-Paul thought, Annette knew that.

He had considered she might have a gun or a bodyguard, but had risked that she wouldn’t shoot him, if only not to have to explain the bloodstains on her floor.

“Well, Jean-Paul.” She sat up very straight, her tone more regal than it had ever been thirty years ago on the Riviera. She had only been a rich woman then; now she was powerful, as well. “I’m beginning to think you’re invincible.”

He’d had the same thought about her. “I want the Jupiter Stones.”

“Fine.” She swept to her feet and came around to the front of the table, sitting on its edge. Her navy suit was conservatively cut and expensive, and her hair no longer fell out of its pins and made her look more innocent than she was. “Get them. The Jupiter Stones have nothing to do with me.”

“You’re a liar, Annette.”

She laughed. “Oh, I used to love to hear you say my name. To think, I used to lie awake nights wondering if you were thinking about me. My, my, I’ve never been so absorbed with any man the way I was with you. But I’ve changed in the past thirty years. So, yes, Jean-Paul, all right-I’m a liar. But not this time.”

“You’ll do anything to get your way.” Jean-Paul walked to the edge of the Persian carpet but stopped there, as if treading on it would suck him back into her world, back under her spell. “You only care about yourself-your own pleasure and excitement. You were that way even in bed. I should have guessed long ago what you would do to me.”

“And now you hate me.” She looked at him coldly, her eyes as mesmerizingly blue as he remembered, but now distant and unsympathetic. “That’s your problem, Jean-Paul. I can’t help you.”

Looking around the study, he took in all the indications of her extraordinary wealth and thought of his own squalid room in Honolulu. Was she any happier? Any better a person?

“Do you have one of your guns handy? Or will you just wave your fingers and leave your dirty work to your bodyguard?”

He thought he saw her shiver at his reminder of just how much he knew about her-how much he’d suffered at her hands-but she recovered. “I see no reason we can’t resolve this problem in a civilized manner. Jean-Paul, I haven’t seen the Jupiter Stones in thirty years, and that’s the truth.”

“So you say.”

“Don’t believe me, then. It’s your choice.”

Jean-Paul stepped onto the thick carpet, his footfall making no sound, and his gaze riveted on the powerful woman seated before him. He asked mildly, “You love your son, don’t you? As much, of course, as a woman like you can love anyone.”

She bristled. “Who are you to talk to me about love? Get out of my house.”

Jean-Paul ignored her. “And your company,” he went on. “Winston & Reed is your triumph. It would never have amounted to anything if your husband had lived. How fortunate he died, hmm? You’re the Winston. You were always the one with the money and intelligence, but you insisted on being the perfect Boston woman and wife-until Benjamin’s death freed you. A widow can get away with so much more, can’t she? Yes. Look at Annette Reed, bravely carrying on alone.”

“Get out, Jean-Paul.” Her voice was low and deadly, but the Vietnamese guard remained impassive, not moving until she specifically instructed him to.

Jean-Paul persevered. “You always loved to take risks. It used to be you could satisfy your zest for risk by going to bed with the kind of man I once was.” He made himself smile and move toward her, until he was so close he could have taken her into his arms. Better a viper, he thought. But he lowered his voice and exaggerated his French accent, “Aah, ma belle, you were a passionate woman. Have you put all that passion into your company?”

She pushed him away. “Go to hell.”

Jean-Paul laughed. “We’ll go together, ma belle.” Then he moved in close again, daring her to touch him; he saw her wince at the foulness of his breath and the ugliness of his scars. “I can destroy your son, and I can destroy your company. Quentin and Winston & Reed. Imagine them gone. What would you have left?”

For a moment she was expressionless, saying nothing. But Jean-Paul could see beneath the composed facade, could sense how angry she was-and frightened. Could he do it? Would he? Annette might like risks, but she wanted them to be on her own terms. She hated losing control. With Jean-Paul, she had lost control thirty years ago and had tried to drive him out of her life for good.

“Don’t threaten me,” she said, but her voice cracked. She licked her lips. Without lipstick, they seemed pale and thin. Still, she had never been vain about her appearance. “No one will believe anything you say about Quentin or about me. I’ll have you locked up for the raving lunatic you are.”