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doesn't mean anything and you know it."
    "It's just.. .annoying."
    "I agree, but this fund-raiser has to work."
    No kidding. Skye wouldn't have running water and electricity if it didn't. "Fine. I'll find someone to drag along on Saturday," she grumbled.
    "Anything else for me?"
    "Not today." Sheridan set the rest of the mail aside. "And make sure it's someone who cleans up well," she added. "It's formal, and we want to make a good impression. This is our chance to network with people who have serious money and to make contacts in the political world."
    Skye started toward her own office but turned back at the door.
    "Getting a guy who makes a good impression isn't as easy as it sounds.
    Remember Charlie Fox at the Christmas party?"
    "I told you not to ask him." Sheridan stood and slid the chair back under the desk. "He's still crying in his beer over the divorce."
    "You didn't say that, Sher. You said your neighbor was lonely. That it might be nice for him to get out and circulate."
    Sheridan wouldn't look her in the eye. "I'm pretty sure I warned you,"
    she said as she made her way to the office directly across from the reception area.
    "No, you didn't. You said he was sweet, harmless."
    "Which is true."
    "True? That sweet, harmless man drank so much he reduced himself to a blithering idiot before the evening was half over. By the time I drove him home, he was snoring in the passenger seat and I could hardly get him 34

    to wake up."
    Sheridan pushed her door open. Skye suspected she was hiding a smile. "I'm sorry it didn't work out. Maybe this time you should ask someone you might actually be interested in."
    "Oh, no, you don't," Skye called after her. "There is no one."
    Her friend pivoted to face her. "Yes, there is."
    Skye waved an irritated hand. "He's married."
    "He's divorced."
    "Doesn't matter. He'll get back with her. He always does. He stays with her as long as he can take the tension, then he leaves. But he sees divorce as an admission of failure, and he's too stubborn to let himself fail."
    "There is that," Sheridan agreed.
    "And she's got the one thing he really cares about," Skye said.
    Sheridan's expression grew serious. "He cares about you, Skye."
    Skye stepped into her office. "Not as much as he cares about his son."
    "It's Oliver!" Noah Burke snapped, his blue eyes revealing his dismay.
    Knowing her husband was on the phone made Jane's limbs go heavy and cold. She'd just spent an hour making love to his older brother and was lying naked in bed. Whenever her mother-in-law took Kate for the weekend, Noah dropped by. He always came under the guise of fixing a leaky faucet or mowing her lawn--so his wife wouldn't suspect--but it still wasn't good that Oliver had caught him at the house.
    "Yes, I'll accept the charges," she heard him say, then he raked his fingers through his thick sandy hair.
    "He never calls on Saturday mornings," she whispered apologetically.
    The cloud of euphoria that had engulfed her moments before disappeared as she sat up. Noah hadn't intended to answer the phone. He'd been hoping to find a pizza place that was open now that it was nearly noon-- only to be surprised by an operator, who had Oliver on the line and promptly announced what Jane had heard hundreds of times herself: This recorded call is from an inmate at a California state correctional facility.
    What lousy timing. According to Oliver, there was one telephone per tier at San Quentin, which meant fifty-four guys were constantly vying for a turn. But he always managed to contact her when she least wanted to speak with him....
    Of course, lately she hardly ever wanted to speak with him. He acted as if she should be excited about his parole, but what made him think he deserved a happy homecoming after everything he'd put her through? Maybe he wasn't guilty of attempted rape, but he'd broken their marriage vows long before she had. And that had led to the biggest heartache Jane could 35

    imagine. She'd lost everything and her