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her mind. An awful day. And then … her sister.
    Had Melinda behaved strangely, or was it just that everything seemed strange today?
    She shivered, looking out, and stepped back from the windows. She loved her pool and patio area, and it was surrounded by a high privacy fence. She suddenly felt uneasy, though, as if standing in the light, she might be seen by anyone.
    She pulled the heavy drapes and realized that she was feeling … scared.
    Silly! The house is all locked up.
    She remembered the way Melinda had greeted Jeff, running into his arms. Together, they had seemed so much stronger.
    She was envious. She wished that …
    No, don’t think about him. He was an ass …
    But still, color flooded her cheeks, and she couldn’t help but remember how great it had been to be with him. Go ahead — be angry and righteous, you’re entitled! And yet she remembered the way he had taken her home that first time, and how he had come in, and how, suddenly, clothes had been strewn everywhere and she had felt the heat of his flesh.
    She had known almost nothing about him at the time; nothing about his family, if he had a family, what he did in his spare time, how he liked his coffee. The living room drapes had even been wide open. He had looked through her house because she’d been nervous about the Hitchcock killings, and he’d said that the house was secure and she shouldn’t be worried, and the next thing she knew, he touched her, and she had been on fire … and then his hands … and his lips moving over her flesh, and then his question: Hey, are you … all right with this? And her answer, oh, my God, yes … and men feeling him, the extent of his arousal, pressing intimately against her bare flesh. All right? Yes, she was about to die …
    She had never done anything like that before. Never. Her natural inclination was to refrain from sex unless a relationship was entirely right. That was probably why she had married Andy. But Liam wouldn’t know that, or believe that, because the magazines had a tendency to make a handshake with any man in Hollywood or beyond into a tempestuous affair.
    He was the best sex you ever had! an unwanted voice told her.
    Not that much to compare to, no matter what the rags say! she protested. Andy didn’t really count. He was really always making love to himself.
    “More wine!” she murmured aloud and headed back to the kitchen.
    “Lots more wine,” she said.
    Then, after still another glass, she told the refrigerator, “He was an ass!”
    A damned good-looking ass, with his dark eyes and hair, built like a brick wall, tight and tan and rugged. And convinced he was right, and patronizing, and annoying, and …
    He had walked out.
    Because of her schedule. When he was a cop, being called in continually. Being a cop mattered, he said. His emergencies were always crucial. She was just an actress. It was all pretense.
    She lifted her glass to the refrigerator. “To put it crudely, fuck him! And if he were ever to walk back into my life, I’d tell him exactly that!”
    Still, the whole thing today had been more than sad and horrible and a tragic loss of life. It had been … bizarre.
    She was never afraid at home alone. Her neighbors were private people, but great folks. There was little crime here. Now she could hear every rustle of a branch or tree outside. Or at least she thought she could. There was a breeze tonight. A light breeze. Yet to her, the night suddenly seemed to be moaning. And each rustle outside sounded like footsteps …
    “No!” she declared out loud.
    She switched the TV on. Loud. So much for sounds beyond. The doors were locked, the windows all had alarm wires. No one could get in.
    But despite the charming sitcom on the television and the wine she was drinking—and all the logic she forced through her mind—she found herself returning to the front of the house and peeking out the drapes. Nothing. A car rode by.
    It was a black-and-white police cruiser. See? Relax.