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said blithely, draining his coffee.
    Jessica plastered her Snow Queen smile to her tired facial muscles. "I'm not going with you."
    His damnable grin widened, so that he looked like a huge Cheshire cat smiling down at her. One that just swallowed a canary. "Of course you are, Jessie," he said mildly enough. "You're a calm, sensible woman—you aren't going to be unreasonable about it. Peter was very pleased that I'd be able to drive you out there—apparently he worries about you in city traffic. Are you that bad a driver?"
    "She's very good," Elyssa defended her, if not with perfect truthfulness. "She just doesn't like it."
    "So if she doesn't like it, she can drive with me. Don't worry, Jessie, you'll come back with Peter. All you have to put up with is a couple of hours of my company. Surely you're tough enough to take it."
    She shouldn't let him goad her, shouldn't let him challenge her like that. Her head snapped up; her eyes met his for a long, silent moment. "I'm tough enough," she said lightly.
    He nodded—approvingly, she thought. "Where are your things?"
    "Already at Peter's. I keep a change of clothes there." Was that defiance she heard in her own voice? What had happened to the Snow Queen?
    "That's why you were prancing around in Johnson's hand-me-downs," he said, half to himself. "Then let's go"
    "When do you think you'll be back?" Ham broke in. His voice sounded studiedly casual, but any fool could see the trace of desperation, the caring beneath the facade.
    Any fool who cared to look. Springer didn't. "Late Sunday, probably. Don't change your plans for me." Jessica noticed he deliberately refrained from calling his father by name or title. "I'll be in and out during the next few weeks—I can look after myself."
    Even he couldn't miss Elyssa's face falling in sudden dismay. Leaning down, he kissed her cheek lightly. "See you, Ma. Say hi to David for me."
    His gaze turned to Jessica, and she told herself if he did anything disgustingly macho like take her arm to
    usher her out of the room she would kick him, and this time she wouldn't miss. But he didn't touch her, just waited patiently, and she had no choice but to precede him out of the kitchen,
    "You like David?" she questioned on her way out the front door.
    "What I've seen of him, yes. Don't you?"
    "No," she said. And wondered why, for the first time in weeks, she was hungry.
    He drove fast , and well, most of his attention on the crowded highway around him, only a small portion of his mind tuned to the tense, thin figure of the woman sitting beside him, her hands clenched in her lap beneath the loose-fitting linen suit. He wondered what devil had made him call Peter Kinsey that morning and cadge an invitation. He could tell himself that he was grabbing at any excuse to escape his father's town house, but he knew better. And it wasn't Peter Kin-sey's undemanding charm that drew him, or the thought of a few days on the ocean. He lived on the ocean, in sight of the crashing Pacific, and the tame New York shoreline of the Atlantic held no great charm for him.
    But he knew what had made him call Peter Kinsey; he just wasn't quite sure why. It was the cool, composed Ice Princess sitting beside him who had teased him, tickled him, edged him into an uncharacteristic whim. And he didn't even like her, or anything about her. He had had his share of cold, overly ambitious women, with no heart or soul, just a driven need for power. He didn't need another one. He told himself last winter that he was tired of athletic performances and no emotion. For thirty-five years he had avoided commitment like the plague. Whether he deserved it or not, he wasn't about to turn around and get involved with a woman just as incapable of it.
    Besides, she'd already committed herself to Peter Kinsey. His mouth curved in a mocking smile. She certainly had her priorities straight.
    "What's so funny?" she demanded testily. His smile broadened. She'd been more aware of him than she'd been