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alertness of his body, had heard the Vness in his voice, had seen the heat in his eyes. what was heat but warmth once-removed? h, yes, there was warmth. It was stashed away, ed beneath crates of anger and bitterness and tration and distrust. It had to jockey with pride and ty for a brief showing, and for the most part it but it was there. He'd lied when he said that it is gone. He'd lied.
    Chapter 2.
    Page 15
    Barbara Delinsky - Commitments
    Sabrina
    always had a thing about lying. She supposed the aversion dated to her childhood, to the times when her mother told her that if she didn't clean her room the Ardulonian enforcer would turn her ear inside out, or the times when her father forecast a showdown at high noon between her suitors if she got much prettier, or the times when her brother informed her that the nighttime shadow on her bedroom wall was the reincarnation of an ogre who had been buried beneath the oak in the courtyard nearly a century before. It took her a while to figure out that the Ardulonian enforcer was nothing more than a figment of her mother's imagination and that, rather than being an incredibly advanced country somewhere in the vicinity of Antarctica, Ardulon was make-believe. She'd been weaned on Ardulonian lore. She hadn't realized that the nighttime stories her mother told her were shortened versions of tales that were well sold, well published and well read. Not until she was seven and studying geography in school did she learn - with considerable embarrassment the truth, and even in spite of that, she continued to keep her room clean on the vague chance that the school map, the teacher and the other students were wrong. By the time she accepted the truth, she was onto her father's imaginative efforts as well. Even if she'd been as pretty as her father said - which she knew she wasn't and even if the boys were fascinated with her - which they weren't - showdowns at high noon, in 48 or any 6ther corral, simply didn't happen in half of the twentieth century ... otherthan Westerns like those her father churned out ons of followers. Nor were ogres reincarinto shadows on the wall in anything but the genre in which her brother, eight years her eventually went on to make his name. was a gullible child, her family said. They told that she believed. Fiction, they called it, and : conceded that such stories, when bound properly labeled, were okay. But the stories she "told, the warnings and predictions and dread were offered as gospel. ' been lied to, she decided, and for a time she furious. Then resignation came, and with it, ptance. Her family was her family. They were an tric bunch, and there was nothing Sabrina could to change them. Amanda Monroe wouldn't be A. Monroe if her mind wasn't in outer space half time. Nor would Gebhart Monroe be the same "thout a yoked shirt, a stetson and spurs. And J. B., was unfairly good-looking, had always been and d always be a horror. @@.Sabrina rebelled. She devoted herself to being downearth. She watched the evening news, majored in tory in college, dressed stylishly, if conservatively. e wrote nonfiction. She liked to believe that she had firm on reality, and she made it a habit not -to grip But habits, like rules, were meant to be broken when tter judgment demanded, which was why she didn't fault with what Derek had done. She wanted to of him as a friend. She didn't know why, but she wanted that badly. Anything beyond friendship was 49 impossible, though, and for that reason she was grateful that he denied the heat she'd seen. It could lead nowhere. So said better judgment. It was the same judgment that caused her to fudge the truth a bit when she arrived back in Manhattan and received a call from her husband. ' have you been, Sabrina?' Nicholas demanded. ' is the third time I've called.' ''m sorry/ she answered breathlessly. She'd barely come in, checked on her son, changed her clothes and sent Pam on her way when the phone rang. The housekeeper, Mrs. Hoskins, had