"Hey, he went over toScotlandto film his last video. And he doesn't live inHollywood. He has a home in Ft.Lauderdale, and one here." "Here?"

"Yeah, he's owned it for years. But he seems to be a very private person, so few people know about it, or much about him."

"You seem to know enough," Bryn teased lightly.

"Ummm.I wish I knew a little more."

"You like that hard-rock type, huh?" Bryn kept up with a chuckle.

To her surprise, Barbara hesitated. "He's a strange man, Bryn.Cordial, and quiet. But you have the feeling that he sees everything around him and that...that he absorbs more than most people. He's dynamite to look at, with those gold-tinged eyes and dark hair. Seems like he's long and wiry until you get close to him and see the real breadth of his shoulders..." Barbara sighed. "I admit he does give me goose bumps. I've never come across a man so...so...male...before."

Bryn laughed, but she sounded uneasy even to her own ears. She had known a man like that before. Known him a little too well. Was that what gave her fever-chills of instant hostility? Had just that flash-fast glimpse of elemental fire in those gold eyes warned her that his sensual appetites were as natural to him as breathing, just as they had been with Joe?

There were signs of warning as clear as neon lights about such men...once you learned to read them. Signs that might read: Women, beware! He can take you to the stars, and dash you back upon the gates of hell.

But a woman only got messed up with a man like that once in her life, never a second time.

Bryn shook away her thoughts and the uneasy feeling of fever along her spine. This was business.

"Okay, he's doing a video and hiring dancers. But where does the photography come in?"

"You know those promo shots you took for Vic and Allen when they started playing the Stardust Lounge? He saw them, stared at them for a long time and asked if I knew the photographer. Well, of course, I hopped right in with your name!"

"Thanks," Bryn murmured.

"What's an agent for?" Barbara laughed happily. "But listen, I've got to run. I have another twenty dancers to line up. Boy, oh boy, am I in love with the man! Think of my percentages! And I'm going to put on the old answering machine and dance myself. Oh, Bryn! This has been a heck of a windfall!"

This time when Bryn laughed, it was with honest delight. She and Barbara were a lot alike. Barbara spent her days as an agent and her nights as a showgirl in a popular nightclub that was part of a new casino. Barbara loved to wheel and deal, and she also loved to dance. She could easily have gotten Bryn a job in her own show, but Bryn considered it a little toorisque for a woman who was raising children and also for her own comfort. Barbara was an efficient businesswoman and had concluded deals for a number of big names, but even so, this did sound like a nice windfall.

"You're right, the whole thing sounds great, Barb. I'm happy for you."

"Be happy for yourself, honey. You're going to make enough to come close to a real nice down payment for that new house you've been dreaming about."

Bryn bit her lip. Money was, unfortunately, one of the key factors of life. One you couldn't live without.

Before herbrother Jeff's death, she had always felt that she had all she needed to survive. She could take the jobs she liked, turn down those she didn't.

If only he were still alive! Not because she resented her nephews--she loved them and would fight hell and high water to keep them--but because...because she had loved her brother, too, and life had seemed so normal once, simple, right and easy. She couldn't wallow in self-pity. She had to accept reality. Jeff was dead.

And he had died without a shred of life insurance. But growing boys had to be fed and clothed, taken to doctors and dentists--and brought to a baby-sitter when Bryn worked nights. Keith and Brian went to school, but Adam's day care was costly. She'd had to sell her two-seater Trans-Am and buy a small Ford van. And her pretty little two bedroom town house had become way too small. The boys had been moved into the darkroom, and the darkroom had been moved to the storage shed.

And the stuff that had been in storage...Well, it was stuck into closets, cabinets and any little nook that would hold anything.

Since she wasn't ready to fall back on being a showgirl, she couldn't afford to get fussy about jobs just because a man's eyes--seen on screen!--made her nervous."You still there, Bryn?" "Yeah, Barb." "Be at the oldFultonplace at ten sharp on Tuesday. He's areal stickler for punctuality."

"The oldFultonplace?"The house was on one of the long roads leading to the desert; it had been built around the middle of the nineteenth century, and had been deserted for as long as Bryn could remember. School kids still dared one another to go into it, as it had, of course, acquired a reputation for housing ghosts.

"You won't recognize what's been done with it!" Barbara laughed. "Ten o'clock, with everything you'll need for a full workout."

"I'll be there," Bryn promised. "Oh Barb? How many days' work is it? And when do I take the PR photos?"

"Probably three or four weeks on the video.It's going to run about fifteen minutes, I think. But there will be a day or two off during that time for the photos. I'll let you know when."

"Thanks again, Barb."

"Arggggghhhhhh!"

Another ear-splitting scream sounded from outside.

"Got to go, Barb.The natives are getting restless."

"Give them all a kiss and a hug for me!"

"I will."

Bryn slammed down the receiver and raced outside again, anxiously scanning little faces.

Adam was crying his eyes out. And soon as he saw her, he ran toward her as fast as his chubby little

legs would carry him and buried his head in her lap.

"What happened?" Bryn demanded of the older two.

"I think a bug stung him!" Brian answered worriedly, coming over and stroking his little brother's blond

curls. "Adam--" Adam began to wail again. Bryn picked him up.' 'Come on, Adam, you have to tell me what happened." He raised a red and swollenpinky to her, the tears still streaming from his huge green eyes just a shade darker than her own.

"Bug!" he pronounced with a shudder. "It was a bad bug! Hurts, Aunt Bryn..."

She whirled and hurried into the house, where she plopped Adam onto the counter between the kitchen

and the dining room, and filled a small bowl with water and ice cubes. "Put your finger in the water,

Adam, and it will feel better, I promise."

Adam, his tears drying as he tremulously took a deep breath, did as he was told. Bryn glanced over the counter to see that Keith and Brian, their eyes frightened as they stared at their brother, had followed her.

She grimaced,then gave them an encouraging smile. "It's not that bad,guys , really. I think it must havebeen a little honeybee." Brian compressed his lips for a minute,then lowered his eyes. Bryn frowned as she watched him "What's the matter, Brian?" "He...he..."

"He what, Brian?"

Brian mouthed the words behind Adam's back, his eyes stricken. "He's not going to die, is he, Aunt Bryn?"

"No!" Bryn exclaimed."Of course not!" She lowered her own lashes and pretended to turn around to

survey the contents of the refrigerator.

It was strange that Brian had come up with the question. It seemed as if all three of the boys had adjusted so well in the past year and a half. They accepted her as their figure of authority, and they were touchingly ready to give her their trust and their love.

But maybe it wasn't so strange. Sue had died of a case of pneumonia that had defied medical science when Adam was just a year old; Jeff had followed her in the reckless accident less than two years later. No matter how well-adjusted the boys seemed, it was natural that they should worry.

And natural that they should cling to her, fearing sometimes that she would leave them, too...

She pulled out a pack of hot dogs and turned back to smile at the three; Adam with his pain-puckered and rosy cheeks; Brian and Keith, both pale with uncertainty.

"Hey! Why the long faces?Adam, you just keep your finger in that water--" "Too cold!"

"Okay, take it out for a minute, but then put it back in. Keith, Brian,go and take your baths. Then we'll have hot dogs and ice cream and I'll play your Muppet tape, and then everybody can go to bed. Tomorrow's a school day." And, she added silently, I'm going to have to finish up those last proofs and run out and buy some new tights. I don't have a pair left without a dozen holes.

Three hours later the boys were all bathed--including Adam--the hot dogs had been long-consumed and The Great Muppet Caper was drawing to a close.

Brian was on her left side, Keith on her right. And Adam was perched on her lap.

A painful shaft of memory suddenly ripped through Bryn, and she bit her lip so the boys wouldn't notice the tears that had stung her eyes.

She loved them so very much.

And she felt so fiercely loyal to them. Partially because they were beautiful kids and partially because they had been Jeff'sAnd no matter what happened, no matter how she had to struggle, no matter what she had to give up, she would never, never, let them down.

Jeff had never let her down.

She had been only sixteen when her mother and father had died in a freak mountain slide on the ski slopes. Sixteen, lost, bewildered, and stricken with grief. The only certainty in her life had been Jeff, and Jeff had battled for her. He fought distant aunts and uncles, and he had fought the courts.

He had taught her to accept their parents' deaths, and he had somehow gone to school, kept a job and created a home for the two of them, until she had been ready to leave for college. He had never failed her; he had been only three years older, but no girl, no job, no social event, had ever come before her.

Even when he and Sue had married, she had never been made to feel like an outsider. She had waited at the hospital when each one of the boys had been born. And she had been the one to stay with Sue each time she had come home with a new baby.

No, she would never let anyone stop her from loving the kids, or giving them the same loyalty and devotion that their natural parents would have given them.

Not even a man like Joe.

She had always considered herself to be confident and self-assured, but Joe had swept her off her feet. He had come to Tahoe for a vacation when the football season had ended, and from the first moment he had seen her, he had pursued her with a vengeance.

Bryn had been amused at first, accepting the situation with the proverbial grain of salt. She didn't consider herself particularly beautiful, but she was aware that there was something about her trim, wiry form and slightly tilted "cat eyes" that made her appealing to the opposite sex. She wasn't sure if she liked the attraction that she held. It was often uncomfortable to know that the male of the species looked upon her and wondered not what she was like as a person, but what she would be like in bed. For a long time she laughed with good humor when Joe tried every compliment and trick in the book to get her to go out with him.

But somewhere along the line, something had become real. She had convinced herself that even football heroes needed to be loved and to give love in return. And it had seemed that he had loved her.

Things had started going badly with Sue's death. Joe had resented the time she spent with her brother, although he tolerated it. Football season rolled around again, and Joe went back to work. In December he called to tell her that he had one night in which he could fly in.

But she was due at Jeff's that night. He was a pilot, and Bryn had assured him that she would stay with the children.

Joe was livid. She asked him to come to Jeff's house, but he didn't want to play baby-sitter, he wanted to be alone. Bryn entreated him, trying to make him understand...

He hung up on her.

But the next week he was on the phone again, pretending that nothing had happened.

She traveled with him for a while. But then the telegram had come from Tahoe. Jeff had been killed while fooling around with a hang glider.

Joe had been comforting, but also aloof. He hadn't come back with her to bury her brother, nor had he seen the faces of the three little boys who had lost both parents and were now lost and alone and frightened....

Bryn couldn't pay the mortgage on Jeff's big house, so she moved the kids into the town house.

When Joe returned the first time, things went fairly smoothly. She hired a baby-sitter, stayed at Joe's hotel room until2:00 a.m.,then rushed home to be there if the kids woke up with nightmares.

There had been a fight when she wasn't ready to go back out on the road. But again he called her in a few days, behaving as if nothing had happened.

Except that something had happened. Bryn had watched his team on TVAnd in the shots of the victorious players in the aftermath of their glory, she had seen Joe--and he hadn't been alone. He had been in the company of a very young, very beautiful and very sleek redhead.

Joe had sensed Bryn's withdrawal during their phone conversation, and he had arrived in Tahoe the next Wednesday. Even with the children up andawaiting dinner, he had pursued her for answers. When she had accused him of infidelity, he had thundered in rage, "I'm a normal, vital, healthy male! You know how it is with football players. There are always women hanging around."

Bryn had looked anxiously about the kitchen, but the kids were all in the living room watching TV She dropped her voice to a low whisper. "Oh, so you didn't sleep with her?"

"If I did, what difference would it make? She meant nothing to me. She was just there--and willing. Which you weren't at the time. You were too busy playing little homemaker. And I warn you, Bryn, no man is going to play a waiting game while you want to be Mother Goose. Not when he has a Sleeping Beauty on his arm."

Somehow she had refrained from throwing a pan of boiling peas in his face. She had emptied them into a serving dish and headed past the counter for the dining-room table. "Dinner's ready, Joe." She could still remember her icy pronunciation of the words. "And call me Mother Goose if you like, but I don't intend to discuss any of this in front of the kids. Understand?"

He had nodded and taken his place at the table while she called the boys. But Brian must have heard part of the argument. He had been silently hostile when Joe had tried to talk to him. And then, when Joe had sworn silently beneath his breath, Brian had dipped his spoon into his peas and sent them flying across the table and into Joe's face.

It had been the last straw, Joe told her later. Sure, she had to be responsible for the kids. But she'd damn well better hire a housekeeper to stay with them. Then she could travel with him, and he wouldn't have to fall for the groupies who awaited the players.

He had proved himself unfaithful, and scarcely charitable. Knowing he had been with another woman had been painful, and then numbing. And it had hurt all over again when she answered him.

"Forget it, Joe. Just forget the whole thing."

"What?"

"I mean it. I don't want to marry you. It would be a disaster from start to finish."

"You're crazy! Do you know what you're giving up?" "Yes, a man who feels it's his right to cheat if 'his woman' isn't available to fall into bed on his terms, at his times." There had been more.A lot more. But in the end it had all been more of the same, and the engagement had definitely been over.

"Aunt Bryn? There's nothing but squiggly stuff on the TV" Bryn started back to the present. "So there is, Brian. And there won't be anything but squiggly stuff in your mind tomorrow if you don't get some sleep! Bedtime, guys!"