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honey."
    "Dad—"
    It was too late. Douglas Slater had already hung up the phone. Amy tossed her receiver back into the cradle, crossed her arms under her breasts and glared at Jed.
    "Hey, I'm innocent," he said, holding up a protesting hand. "I'm just hanging around for breakfast."
    Amy smiled ruefully and turned back to the stove. "Sorry. That was my father. He's accustomed to having people do as he wants. Right now he wants me to go visit him and Mom before they leave for Europe."
    "And you don't want to go?"
    Amy became very busy with the oatmeal. "I don't really want to go to the island."
    "The island?"
    "My father's retired. For years he's maintained a second home on a little dot of an island a few hundred miles beyond Hawaii. We used to go there for every vacation when I was a kid. Now that he's no longer going into the office every day, he and Mom spend most of the year there. Mom paints and Dad's writing a book on management."
    "Why don't you want to visit them?"
    Amy shrugged. "No good reason, I guess. It's just that I'm right in the middle of Private Demons and I was hoping to finish it soon. I hate to take time off in the middle of a book. Dad says he's worried about me. But that's nothing new. He's always worried about me."
    "Yeah? Why?" Jed eased himself down onto a stool and hooked the cane over the edge of the counter.
    He studied Amy with deep interest as she added a handful of raisins to the cereal.
    "Probably because I'm the youngest. And probably because I'm classified as the black sheep of the family. You have to understand that my older sister is a board certified gynecologist, one of my brothers has taken over the running of my father's firm and is making Slater Aero even more profitable than it has been in the past, and my other brother is a successful attorney who's about to enter politics in a big way here in California. I, on the other hand, am twenty-seven years old and have spent half my adult life waiting tables and taking night classes in everything from surrealist painting to an intensive, in-depth study of the hard evidence for flying saucers."
    "I get the picture," Jed said dryly. "You're not maintaining the family standards. But now you've actually sold a book. A three-part series, in fact, and you're writing another book. Doesn't that count?"
    "Dad thinks I'm going to burn out on my first taste of success. Not that I'm likely to go too crazy on the microscopic advance I got for the Shadow series. And the advance on Private Demons wasn't much better, believe me."
    "He thinks you're working too hard?"
    "I guess." She finished stirring the oatmeal and ladled it into two bowls. "He should talk after the way he battled to push Slater Aero to the top years ago."
    "How long since you've been back to the island?"
    "A little over eight months." She concentrated on taking flie milk out of the refrigerator and setting it down on the counter, aware of the nervous tension that sometimes made her remarkably clumsy these days. With a little self-discipline she could control it, she knew. But when she safely set the milk down on the counter top in front of Jed, he only frowned at it.
    "I usually just have coffee and a doughnut in the morning."
    "Well, I usually have oatmeal and grapefruit," she declared stoutly. "Just another little item to add to our storehouse of knowledge about each other's habits and eccentricities."
    "I haven't had oatmeal since I was a kid." He examined the bowl of gray cereal distrustfully.
    "Throw a little brown sugar on it and it will go down as easily as a doughnut. Trust me. Besides, it's good for you. You need to regain your strength." Amy handed him the sugar bowl, plunked down the twin halves of a grapefruit she had prepared earlier and slid onto a stool beside him.
    "So who's Bob?" Jed asked casually as he dug into the grapefruit.
    Amy blinked. The grapefruit spoon trembled slightly in her hand. "No one important. Just a man I was seeing casually the last time I went to the