She had it in a death grip. She couldn’t seem to pry her fingers loose.

Marcotte watched it, the color going out of him. “Jesus Christ. Her finger’s on the damned trigger.”

“It’s stuck.”

“Tabak…”

“Mollie.” His voice was soothing, as if he were making love to her. He eased beside her and touched her shoulder, a whisper of warmth. “I’ll put my hand under the gun. You just relax and let go. Okay?”

She nodded.

One hand still on her shoulder, he placed the other one palm up under the butt of the gun. His skin felt so hot. No wonder she couldn’t let go. Her fingers were icicles.

“Mollie, the phone. You need to call 911. Just let go, and I’ll get rid of this thing. Come on, sweet pea. I’m here. We’re here together.”

Her fingers released.

Marcotte sagged. He sank against the wall.

Croc had his arms around his brother, his head in his lap, and if he was in any pain from his own injuries, he didn’t show it. He kept the pillow pressed up hard against the wound. Deegan was unconscious. Diantha Atwood sobbed soundlessly, her slender body shaking violently. “Call an ambulance,” she said hoarsely. “Please. Hurry. I was only trying to protect him. Things just got out of hand.”

With a fresh wave of adrenaline kicking in, Mollie left Marcotte and Diantha Atwood to Jeremiah and raced into the kitchen. She gave the 911 dispatcher everything she had, told her she might want to get Frank Sunderland here, and in the back of her mind-far back, where she was still sane and led a normal life-she knew she’d have to tell her family and Leonardo about this one.

When she hung up, she stood in the dark, quiet kitchen. Jeremiah. There’d been nothing neutral or objective in the way he’d tackled the thug who’d beaten up his friend, who had a gun on her. She smiled, fighting back tears. He was maddening. Utterly maddening. And yet, once again, she couldn’t imagine her life going on without him.

But it might have to.

The story had reached its conclusion, and as confident as she was that what they’d had in the past few days was real to him, she just couldn’t be sure it would last.

Then she thought of Deegan Tiernay, bleeding in the next room, and Croc, and Diantha Atwood, and she picked up the phone to call Michael and Bobbi Tiernay.

But as she reached for the phone, it rang. She picked up the receiver. “Mollie Lavender.”

“Mollie, m’girl, I knew you’d be there.”

It was Leonardo, boisterous and exhausted. She felt the tears forming, spilling into her eyes. “Leonardo, it’s what, three or four o’clock in the morning in Austria?”

“I couldn’t sleep. I had to know. Tell me, m’darling, how was your party?”

17

The Palm Beach cat burglar was front-page material on virtually every newspaper in the country, including the Miami Tribune.

Helen Samuel wrote the story.

It was her first front-page story in her fifty-year career. She arrived on Jeremiah’s doorstep to show him. He told her she got the front page because it was a slow news day. “Otherwise, it’d be buried inside.”

“Ha! You’re just jealous.” She was out front with the boys, passing out cigarettes and copies of the Trib with her byline above the fold, as delighted with herself as Jeremiah had been at twenty-six. “We’ve got not one but two rich boys, we’ve got a doting rich grandma with a gun, we’ve got a hired thug, and we’ve got you, Tabak.” That last she clearly loved. “A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter tackling a two-hundred-twenty-pound security expert in Leonardo Pascarelli’s media room. Damned good thing you were heroic or your reputation would be shit right now. You watch, it’ll be a TV movie.”

“Don’t forget the publicist,” he said.

“I’m not. She’s the innocent, the ordinary person caught up in extraordinary circumstances with her unique set of clients. A jazz-playing Apollo astronaut. A mutt. Then there’s the caterer.”

“Griffen Welles.”

She’d entered the kitchen to finish cleaning up and had found her boyfriend shot and bleeding, a battered Croc holding him, a white-faced best friend, and Jeremiah holding a gun on a near-catatonic elderly socialite and a well-known security expert. The police and ambulance were en route. And so were the Tiernays. Unwilling to leave his brother’s side, Croc had asked for a portable phone and called them himself.

“It’s a great story,” Helen said with a satisfied sigh. Forty-eight hours after it was over, and she still hadn’t let it go. “Of course, I knew it would be. That’s why I kept giving you the dish and letting you do the running around. I’m too old for that shit.”

Sal, Bennie, and Al passed around a book of matches and watched her, transfixed. Sal looked particularly smitten. Jeremiah just shook his head.

Helen grinned at him. “God, this feels good. The kids’re going to be all right, you know. Deegan and Kermit. Their folks got with the program in the end. Momma was a little late on the upswing, but she’s at the hospital round the clock, had Kermit moved into the main house. They’re making the younger boy take responsibility for what he did, but they’re right there with him.”

“He got their attention,” Jeremiah said.

“That he did. Atwood’s only talking to her lawyers, but the way I see it, she was raised by disengaged parents, then raised her own daughter that way. The generational cascade at work. The triumph of form over substance.” She flicked her half-smoked cigarette onto the porch and ground it out with her foot; the guys, Jeremiah knew, would do likewise. “You figure out what to do about your blonde?”

He rolled up on his feet. He’d spent last night at his apartment; he’d needed the space, Mollie had needed the space, and his reptiles needed to know he was still alive. Plus, Bennie, Al, and Sal had wanted details. They’d left a message on his voice mail-it was Sal who figured out how to use it-saying they were renting a car and driving up to Palm Beach if he didn’t get down there. Over bagels and coffee and a little whittling on the porch that morning, Jeremiah gave them details, and they gave him advice. Unsolicited advice. It had to do with marriage, commitment, kids, and having a life. And a dog. Bennie thought he should get rid of the reptiles and get a dog. A beagle would be good.

Then Helen had arrived.

He regarded her with an affection that even a month ago he would have thought impossible. “Yes,” he told her, “I most certainly know what to do about my blonde.”

Mollie didn’t know how they did it. Busy musicians all, her parents, her sister, and Leonardo all managed to arrive at the West Palm Beach Airport within an hour of each other. They brought their instruments, and tons of unnecessary clothes because they hadn’t taken the time to think about what they really needed, and they wanted to hear everything, the whole story, all over again, from start to finish. It was a transparent show of support that Mollie appreciated.

They were out back, now, with Griffen Welles and Chet and a few other of her clients, all making sure she was okay, that she didn’t feel alone and isolated in her new home. She’d wandered out front to get her bearings.

A battered brown truck rattled to a stop in front of Leonardo’s driveway. Her heart skipped a beat when Jeremiah climbed out and sauntered around front, then leaned against the hood. “Going to let me in?”

“We had the security codes changed, just in case.”

“Ah. Is this a hint?”

He knew it wasn’t. His tone, his bearing, even his straight line of a mouth told her he knew exactly how hard she’d fallen for him this time. She opened the gates, and he left his truck where it was, just walked on in and slid his arms around her, kissed her.

Stopped cold.

“What the hell is that?”