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in hell than serve in heaven’?”
    “I know it.” Hugh smiled to himself with grim satisfaction. “Sounds like Cormier. He probably figured his chances of getting into heaven were slight. But he'll do all right if he goes down instead of up. I'd back him in a contest with the devil any day. Paul may have had the manners of an angel, but I've seen him—” Hugh stopped himself abruptly. No sense bringing up Paul's past. It might lead to questions about his own, and Hugh definitely did not want that.
    “Well, he thought he saw Christine again right at the very end, waiting for him, so maybe he went the other way after all.”
    “Maybe. He loved her very much.” Hugh was silent for a moment, thinking. I should have been there with you, Paul. After all these years together, I should have been there at the end. I'm sorry, my friend .
    “Thanks, Mattie.”
    “For what?”
    “For staying with him for those last few minutes. You probably shouldn't have hung around. You probably should have run like hell. But Paul was a good friend of mine. I'm glad he didn't die alone.”
    Mattie was silent. “I'm sorry you lost a friend.”
    “I just wish you hadn't had to go through that,” Hugh continued, his voice roughening.
    “It was something of a shock,” she admitted.
    “Why in hell didn't you do as you were told and follow the original flight schedule?” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Hugh wished he had bitten his tongue.
    Mattie sighed. “Please, Hugh. No lectures. Not tonight. I know it will be very difficult for you to resist, but I would very much appreciate it if you would try.”
    “But, why, Mattie? Was the thought of seeing me again all that terrible? You've been deliberately avoiding me for months. Nearly a whole damned year.”
    She said nothing.
    Hugh eyed her, feeling a deep anger tinged with guilt. He brushed aside the guilt and concentrated on the anger. It was an easier emotion to deal with. “You nearly got yourself killed today because of your stupid determination to avoid me at all costs.” He swore under his breath, thinking about what it had felt like to walk up the steps of Cormier's too-silent mansion and see that ominously open door.
    There was no response from the still figure on the cavern floor.
    “Mattie?” He heard the edge in his own voice and frowned.
    She continued to stare silently out into the night.
    Hugh swore again, knowing he should not have brought the subject up so soon. But he was not, by nature, a patient man. In fact, Hugh thought he'd exercised more patience with Mattie Sharpe during the past year than he had with every other person in his whole life combined.
    The entire, convoluted mess was his own fault, of course, as Cormier had taken pains to point out a few months ago.
    “ Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, Hugh. You're old enough to know that. You have only yourself to blame for the situation in which you find yourself. Now you're going to have to work very, very hard to get her back. I rather think the exercise will be good for you .”
    Hugh, as Cormier had carefully explained, had made the fatal blunder of rejecting Mattie's heart and soul a year ago. But he had compounded his error by taking her body, which she had offered along with the rest.
    The lady apparently held a mean grudge. Cormier had warned him that women were inclined to do that.
    There had been only one night with Mattie because Hugh had been booked on a plane back to St. Gabe the next morning. His stormy engagement to Mattie's brilliant, dazzling sister, Ariel, had at last ended in a hurricane of tears and recriminations. Ariel never did anything without a lot of melodrama, Hugh had discovered to his disgust. He was only grateful he'd found it out before the wedding. In the end he had wanted nothing more than to escape to his island and lick his wounds.
    The last thing he'd intended doing that final night in Seattle was spend it with the quiet, restrained, obviously repressed,