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her. “So, you two an item or what? I pretty much knew give-me-lots-of-money Amanda was on her way out. It’s been six months, you know. Nobody lasts longer than six months with Holden. You’d think these bloodsuckers would buy a clue, you know, and figure that out.”
    Taylor stopped dead on the bottom step, turned, placed both hands on the pipe railings on either side of the staircase and effectively blocked Woody from advancing any farther.
    “Let’s do this all at once, okay?” she began, smiling over gritted teeth. “One, I don’t know who Amanda is, don’t care who or what you think Amanda is and, if she’s smart, she’ll dump him before he dumps her. Two, I am here as an employee, period, and do not have designs on your brother, don’t want to have designs on your brother, and ifyour brother has designs on me he’s in for a bitter disappointment. This is not Hollywood, or Malibu, or a scene out of Thelma’s soap. This is Ocean City, New Jersey, for crying out loud, and not some romantic getaway island for swinging singles. Now, you got that, Woody?”
    “Well,” said a voice from the kitchen level, sending Taylor’s heart to her toes even as she looked past Woody LeGrand and straight into the laughing green eyes of Holden Masters, “I don’t know if Woody’s got that, but I sure heard the message loud and clear. Did you get that message loud and clear, Tiffany?”
    “I sure did, Holden.” A high-pitched, little-girl voice came from a lower level of the condo, and Taylor quickly peeked over the railing to see a beautiful young female face grinning up at her. “Didn’t Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn do that in a movie? Talk like that, you know—all quick and mean and full of put-downs? Maw-maw was always making me watch those old flicks with her. Gee, this is just like a movie, huh? So, who’s the blonde?”
    “I…want…to…die,” Taylor muttered quietly in measured pauses, speaking only to herself, but unfortunately, loudly enough for Holden to hear.
    “Why don’t you help Tiffany get settled first, Taylor? Talk to her, ask her about her life, her problems with Maw-maw and Daddykins,” Holden suggested, laughter in his voice. “If you survive that—andnot many have—then well, there’s always that proverbial long walk on a short pier.”
    “Don’t do it, Taylor,” Woody warned, moving her hand from the rail so he could get past her. “You may not have had all your shots. Why don’t you go for a run on the beach with Holden instead. That’s what he said he was going to do. I’ll go help Tiff. After all, I’ve got those eight-by-ten pictures of her in her Snow White costume when she was six. Blackmail may not be pretty, but it’s kept me safe for a lot of years.”
    “You’re so full of it, Woodstock!” Tiffany groused, then smiled, showing that the whiter-than-white teeth must be a LeGrand inheritance. “But you could help the chauffeur with the luggage. Oh, and could you tip him, too? I don’t have anything smaller than a hundred, I’m afraid.”
    “Nothing smaller than a hundred?” Taylor repeated, dumbstruck. “How old is that kid?” she asked Holden as he came down the steps.
    “Eighteen, going on thirty,” he answered, taking her hand. “Come on, let’s get out of here while the getting’s good. They may be happy now, but they’ll be screaming at each other in an hour. Unless they decide to gang up against me, at which point it will be every man and woman for themselves. I’m no hero.”
    “Really?” Taylor shrugged. “Much as I hate to say it, I’m beginning to think you’re a lot nicer than you want me to believe. Either that or you’re soft in thehead. Do you realize what you’re doing, letting those two stay here all summer?”
    His grin weakened her knees. “Shooting the hell out of any possible personal love life?” he offered, then ducked as Taylor took a halfhearted swing at him.
    As they went down the remainder of the stairs, then