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So natural, so down-to-earth. Oh, why couldn’t you be Malibu Barbie? A bimbo Annie could have disdained and felt superior to.

“Look, can I get you something, some tea maybe?” Phoebe was looking around distractedly, as if hoping a tea tray would magically appear.

Annie looked around at the couches and chairs covered in Haitian cotton and scattered with pillows, no two alike. A Franklin stove with split logs stacked haphazardly beside it, and a big basket overflowing with pinecones. And sprouting up in the midst of it all, like some fantasticlooking piece of driftwood, an enormous burl table piled with old issues of National Geographic and Architectural Digest, seashells sugary with sand, a pair of swimming goggles, some unopened mail, a coffee mug. Yes, just the kind of place Emmett would be comfortable in.

She spotted a rather good seascape on the far wall, surf crashing against rocks. The artist-Phoebe?-had nicely caught the violence of the ocean. And right now, Annie too wanted to lunge forward and hit something, or somebody, and at the same time, wanted to melt into the floor. She had no real business being here.

Eighteen months, no letter, no call, no nothing … what kind of an idiot could I have been to think there might still be a chance? What on God’s green earth could I have been thinking?

“I’d love to, but I’m afraid I didn’t plan on staying.

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Maybe another time?” Annie glanced pointedly at her watch. “Emmett, I forgot to mention, I have a meeting at five-thirty … so we probably should get going.” She actually was having dinner, but quite a bit later, with an old chum of Dolly’s who used to run a designer boutique, and who might soon be managing Annie’s Rodeo Drive Tout de Suite.

Phoebe shrugged-easy come, easy go.

“Ready when you are.” Emmett was now digging into his pocket, jingling his keys. “Anyway, you’ve seen the best part-the view. Isn’t it an eyeful?”

“It’s fantastic.” Annie again took in the view of the ocean, twinkling off in the distance, and the beach scattered with loungers and bathers. “I envy you.” She realized, as she was speaking, that she was looking not at Emmett, but at Phoebe.

Yes, that’s right, I want what you have. I wish more than anything that I had grabbed my chance when I had it… .

“Well, I do hope I’ll see you again.” Phoebe was padding alongside her as Annie walked back to the door. “Honestly, Emmett’s told me so much about you. Annie, Annie, Annie, that’s all I ever used to hear.”

I’ll just bet he has. Annie, who took him for granted and gave back only little bits and pieces. Annie, who used him as a standin for another man. Annie, who cheated on him.

“That would be nice,” she told Phoebe at the door. “Anyway, it was nice meeting you.”

“Take it easy, Bee, don’t OD on turpentine,” Emmett called to her, the voice of a contentedly married man.

Annie climbed back into her rented Ford. She’d know the way to Bel Jardin blindfolded, and had insisted on Emmett’s leaving his BMW here. Starting the engine, she felt as if she were on fire. Face blistering, heat waves licking along her scalp, her hair crackling. She imagined herself racing along the Pacific Coast Highway-it didn’t matter in which direction-windows rolled down, the wind rushing at her, cooling her. How could she pretend to be calm, to drive with Emmett only an arm’s length away?

20 EILEEN GOU DCE

lake small talk when she felt like crying out,
was a fool ot to love you, blind not to see how wonderful you re. …

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lou still haven’t told me a thing.” She was turning off •unset Boulevard onto Bellagio, a narrower tree-lined oad leading up into Bel Air. Almost there now, only linutes away. She could feel her stomach fluttering. “I lean, if they’re asking the moon, I have no business even aoking at it. Even if it’s reasonably priced, by Bel Air tandards, I probably can’t afford it.”

“It won’t cost you a thing,” Emmett said.

Annie, gliding past the gentle green swells of the Bel ^ir golf course, nearly slammed on her brakes. “What?”

“Just what I said.”

“Em, if this is some kind of joke …”

“It’s no joke.”

“What are you saying, then?”

“Annie, I didn’t want to say anything before … but ๎el Jardin’s been sold.”

Now she was slamming on the brakes, hard enough o fishtail off the road onto the shoulder, the side of the ;ar scraping some low shrubbery. What kind of cruel joke was this? First Emmett, now Bel Jardin … both of them iangled in front of her, then snatched away. She felt like screaming.

Annie’s chest felt tight from holding herself in. She turned to Emmett, sitting there calmly beside her, as if this was just some minor inconvenience. And to him, of course, that’s all it probably was.

“Do you mean to tell me I came all the way out here for you to tell me it’s been soldi”

“I’m sorry, Annie.” She felt his hand on her arm, and jerked away. “It just came up. This morning, as a matter of fact.”

“I thought you said you had an exclusive listing?”

“I did … I do. But a friend of the couple who owns it made a good offer. I didn’t even know about it until after the fact. Sometimes it happens that way. Listen, if

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it makes you feel any better, you were probably right about not being able to afford it. It went for over three million.” “Emmett”-she twisted around so she was almost facing him-“would you mind telling me what the hell we’re doing here? I mean, if Bel Jardin’s been sold, what’s the point of me looking at it?”

“You’re here, aren’t you? What’s the harm? Like I said, the locking’s for free, and when I explained to the owners that you used to live there, they were all for letting you have a stroll around the old place. Now, are you planning on driving the rest of the way … or should we get out and walk?”

Emmett grinned, and she felt herself growing angry. How could you go from one minute wanting to kiss a man … to the next minute wanting to sock him?

“I ought to let you walk … all the way back to Santa Monica.”

“I nearly forgot… that temper of yours.” Emmett grinned. “Hell, Cobb, once you got a notion into your head, you always did like to hang on to it.”

“As if I’d have gotten anywhere in this world if I hadn’t!”

Annie, oddly, was starting to feel better, her chest opening up, letting air into her lungs. Stronger, too, as jf she were actually climbing up to Bel Jardin on foot, blood pumping, heart racing.

“Who says,” he asked gently, “there’s anything wrong with the way you are?”

“/ do! Maybe I just should’ve been happy with what I had. Maybe I was a damned idiot not to see what was right in front of me the whole time.” A pressure was building behind her eyes, in her nose. “Look where it’s gotten me!”

“Are we still talking about Bel Jardin here?” He spoke quietly, yet his voice seemed to echo inside her head. “No,” she said sharply, “we’re not.” With a wrench of the steering wheel, she turned the car back onto the road, knowing that if she didn’t get going, get moving, she’d probably do something dumb like telling a married man she was in love with him.

2 EILEEN GOUDGE

Then she was winding her way up Chantilly Drive, id there, gliding out from behind a tall oleander hedge, as Bel Jardin. Its curved iron gates wide open, the house’s nk fa็ade, at the end of the long crushed-shell drive lined ith steeple-high palms, glowing in the setting sun. Pink? ad they really painted Bel Jardin pink? Oh dear, maybe raving here wasn’t such a good idea.

But, oh, how good to see it! She could feel her anayance at Emmett fading, and she was gripped by an scitement that had nothing to do with whether or not she auld buy Bel Jardin. It was, she realized, hers already, i her heart, Bel Jardin would always be hers.

Pulling to a stop in the turnabout at the end of the rive, Annie got out and pulled in a deep breath. Lemon lossoms, oh yes, she could smell them. And jasmine. And )ok how the bougainvillea had climbed up around the orch, right up to the roof almost. In front, along the agstone path leading to the porch, no roses … peonies, /ith blossoms the size of small cabbages, pink, crimson, /hite. And low clumps of alyssum and violets. She stared .t the heavy, carved Spanish-looking door beckoning to

1er from under the porch eaves, and felt her heart turn >ver in her chest.

Home. She was home.

All she had to do was walk up and pull the iron latch . . and then she would be inside.

Annie turned to Emmett, who stood alongside her, isking, “Are they home? The … what did you say their lame was … Baxters?” ^No. But I have the keys. Want to go in?”

“You make it sound so easy … just walking in … iust like that. Oh, Em, I don’t know, it feels sort of … well, like cheating.”

“You mean because they aren’t here?”

“No, it’s me. Maybe I’d be cheating myself. Seeing it the way it is instead of the way I remember it.”

“Why don’t you describe it to me, while we take a look around? Who knows, maybe the new owner would like a few decorating suggestions.”

“Why should he?”

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“I don’t know … why don’t you ask him?” Emmett draped his arm about her shoulders. “He’s standing right here.”

Annie stepped away, her knees buckling a little, staring at him as if she were seeing something that was, well, maybe not quite real. A dream. Or maybe a nightmare. She wasn’t sure which. Was Emmett doing this to taunt her … to get back at her for how she’d treated him before? Or was he saying that… that… oh, no, but that couldn’t be …

“You?” she gasped. “You bought Bel Jardin. But why? Why bring me all the way out here?”

Emmett’s blue eyes, in the fading light, seemed to blaze with an almost unnatural brightness, as ageless somehow as stars in the heavens. A mild breeze was blowing his hair up in front into that funny cowlick, which she had a strong urge to smooth down.

“Because I’m not doing as well as you think I am. Oh yeah, businesswise things are going okay. It’s you I’m talking about, Annie Cobb, your own sweet, stubborn self. For almost two years I’ve been trying to get you out from under my skin, and I haven’t had a helluva lot of luck. When this listing more or less fell into my lap, I sort of figured it was some kind of fate , , , iike maybe if I bought it, owning Bel Jardin would be like having a part of you. And then, after I talked with Laurey-“

“You called Laurey? Why?”

“Gun-shy, I guess.” He shrugged. “I just didn’t want to be hurt again, not a direct hit anyway. It was your own loving sister who gave me the scoop on you.”

“What did she say?”

“That you weren’t married. And that you’d once told her, not too long ago, that not marrying me was the biggest mistake you ever made. So I figured, well, maybe, you’d be interested in sharing Bel Jardin with a reformed drifter like me.”

“What about your wife?” she asked.

His forehead crinkled in confusion, then a slow, amused smile spread across his face. “Phoebe? Well, I don’t blame you for thinking that. In fact, there was a time

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EILEEN GOUDGE

…” He shrugged. “But that was a while back. Now we’re just friends. I let her use the extra bedroom as a studio.” He stepped forward and cupped Annie’s chin in his big, warm hand. “It’s the light. She says the light’s better for her painting. All those windows.” He was bending to kiss her, but she drew back slightly.

“You’re not still …”

“Sleeping with her?” He laughed. “Naw, we’re too good of friends now to mess around with that. ‘Sides, she’s got a boyfriend now. Nice fella. We hang out together sometimes, shoot a little pool down at Charlie’s, play cards.”

“That’s about the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” Tears filled her eyes, and her vision blurred. Her relief and joy were so vast she could not have put them into words. “Now, will you shut up and kiss me.”

He did. A kiss that made her remember everything good she had ever longed for in her entire life.

A sweet, golden warmth filled her. Rapture. Just a word until now … a thing she’d heard about, but never experienced. A state of ecstasy enjoyed by religious zealots, drunken poets, and heroines in romance novels. But … there could be no other way to describe this feeling … this dazed lightness, this heart-struck bliss. Yes, rapture.

In her mind, she heard Dearie say, Grab it, kiddo … a second chance like this one may never come your way again… .

“Let’s go inside,” Annie said, pulling back and taking Emmett’s hand. “And I’ll show you where we’ll put my mother’s Oscar.”

EILEEN GOUDGE is the author of the international bestseller

GARDEN OF LIES.

She lives with her husband

in New York City.