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With a grunt, Emmett set her down in front of the door, using his body to hold her pressed against it. “Can I trust you? Or do I have to tie you up?”

“Em … you’re crazy.” She clapped her hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing.

“Crazy about you.” He pulled her hand away, and kissed her mouth, feeling her resist, then grow still and soft, the tip of her tongue lightly teasing him. She smelled good, and tasted even better, buttery and irresistible. He felt the ache in his belly deepen. She was the damndest woman … but he loved her. How could he walk away from her?

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She drew back. “Doug and Louise …” she started to protest.

“They can’t see us back here, and so what if they could? We’re no big secret, you know.”

“Okay, okay, you win.” She sighed, and let her head rest against his shoulder. “But if I agree, will you promise me one thing?”

“Anything.”

“That you’ll stop talking like Matt Dillon. It’s starting to make me nervous.”

“Why’s that?”

” ‘Cause at the end of every Gunsmoke episode, there was always a showdown.”

Was she worrying about the stiff competition she’d face at tomorrow’s fair, or was she maybe sensing that the time had come for a showdown with him?

Minutes later, they were strolling up Washington Street toward an all-night pizzeria on West Houston. Hell, Emmett thought, maybe I should get this thing off my chest here and now, before it burns a hole right through me.

I’m thirty-six, Annie, and sick of waiting. Tired of being on hold. I make a damn nice living selling apartments and houses, and I still don’t own one of my own. Like a half-ass drifter with more dreams than brains, I’ve been waiting for when we could buy one together… .

He remembered that Turtle Bay brownstone he’d had his eye on and probably could’ve stolen-a real wreck, but he’d imagined them fixing it up, together. And Annie had blasted it right out of the water. She wasn’t ready. She loved him, she said, but if she moved in with him, she didn’t know whether she could stick it out. And wouldn’t moving out on him after they’d been living together for a while be worse than her not moving in in the first place? Dammit, she was right, that would be worse. But, Christ Almighty, couldn’t she let herself believe there might be a chance of them sticking it out?

That time, a year ago now, he had washed his hands of her. If she couldn’t make up her mind about him, he’d thought, then he’d find somebody who could.

He remembered those months without her, hardly

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sleeping, pains in his stomach half the time. He’d been determined to get Annie out of his system-not calling her, not seeing her, even going out of his way to avoid places where he might run into her. And then, like spring appearing suddenly one day after a winter you’d thought would never end, he’d met Elaine. As different from Annie as a wide-open daisy from a tightly furled rosebud. Softly rounded, always wearing a pretty dress and often a ribbon in her curly hair. She taught sixth grade at St. Luke’s in the Village. But she wasn’t driven like Annie-not consumed with her work. A real homebody, and so sweet on him, too. When he asked her to marry him, it’d taken her less than a second to say yes.

So why hadn’t he gone ahead and tied the knot?

Now, looking at Annie trudging beside him, wearing a yellow raincoat tightly belted against the evening’s chill, her cropped hair bristling up where the wind was blowing it, he knew why he hadn’t married Elaine.

Because she wasn’t Annie.

Simple as that. Elaine was good, smart, pretty, fun … but she wasn’t the woman he wanted. So, yeah, he could kind of understand how Annie might feel about Joe Daugherty. For half her life, she’d been in love with the guy, and as far as Emmett knew, Joe and Annie had never even had the chance to give it a tumble. Emmett kind of wished they had. The great obsessed lovers, the Romeos and Juliets, were always the ones who could never quite get it together. And how the hell could he-with his gimpy foot, his snoring, his hogging the covers at night-compete with an obsession?

He’d tried. He’d tried like hell. Hoping that one day all on her own she’d come to her senses, realize that all the dumb little things they did together-reading the Sunday Times in bed at his place or hers, soaping each other down in the shower, then fighting over who got the last dry towel, coming home late from a movie, half-starved, and scrounging up leftovers from the refrigerator, listening to Doctor Ruth on the radio and laughing their heads off-that was loving, the best kind, the only kind that mattered.

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But Annie, well, she was good at seeing things about other people, and businesswise, she was smart as a whip … but when it came to knowing what the right thing for herself was, she was as shortsighted as a cross-eyed mule.

Emmett touched her elbow. “You still nervous about tomorrow?”

“Better now.” She smiled at him. “Just don’t get any ideas about trying anything like that stunt again.” In the glow of a street lamp, he caught the stern look she was trying to give him.

“Cross my heart.”

“How come I never know if you’re teasing me?”

“If I were serious right now, I’d say you belong in bed … preferably mine.” Crossing over to Houston, he grabbed her hand and held it tightly, hoping she couldn’t feel the pulse that was making his whole arm throb.

“I’m sorry, Em … I know I haven’t been around much lately. There’s just been so much going on … getting ready for this fair, and keeping up with all my orders, and …” She let out a breath that left a faint wisp of smoke in the chilly air. Then, with what appeared to be an immense effort, she squared her shoulders. “Anyway, look who’s talking. You haven’t exactly been lounging around these past few weeks. Did you close on that building on Mercer?”

“Not yet, but it’s going to go. Just tonight, as a matter of fact, I had dinner with Haberman, the guy who’s organizing the limited partnership. He’s got six investors, and they’re going ahead, even if they can’t buy out those last few tenants.”

Annie, caught in the midst of yawning, shot Emmett an apologetic look. “Sorry. I didn’t get much sleep last night either.”

“Working?”

“No, as a matter of fact, I was on the phone with my aunt. She’s really worried about my sister.”

“Laurel? She sick?”

Annie shook her head, and she looked away from him, watching a taxi that had stopped on the corner and was letting out three crewcut guys in identical black leather

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jackets. “Not exactly. But Dolly says she’s really broken up. Joe … well, he’s moved out … back to his old apartment. Laurey asked him to.”

Emmett slowed his steps, feeling a need to move cautiously all of a sudden, as if he were picking his way down a stony incline.

“Didn’t know they were having problems. They always seemed to get along.” Emmett liked Laurel … and Joe, too, for that matter. And they had seemed pretty happy … so why wasn’t he all that surprised to hear they might be breaking up? “I suppose it must have been building up for a while.”

Emmett sensed there was more to it than what she was telling him, but he didn’t press her. When it came to Joe Daugherty, he steered clear of asking too many questions.

“You think they’ll work it out?”

“I don’t know.”

Did she mean she hadn’t a clue … or was she hoping they wouldn’t get back together? Emmett, thinking of Joe and Annie having a clear shot at what he, Emmett, had wanted for so long, felt his stomach wrench, sending a taste of his dinner backfiring up his throat.

“Something else is bothering you,” he probed, the sound of his boots clopping against the pavement suddenly making him think of a hitchhiker heading off down some lonely highway. “Want to tell me about it?”

“The other day when I was out at Laurey’s house, she was pretty upset. She seemed to think Joe was having some kind of an affair. I tried to talk her out of it, and she blew up at me. She said … well, she … she blames me for …” Annie’s voice caught. “For a lot of things … and, God, I don’t know, maybe she’s partly right.”

“Annie, whatever went wrong between them … that’s between them. “

“It’s not …” She shoved her hands deep in her pockets, and hunched forward a little. “Not as simple as you think.”

“Nothing ever is.”

He was thinking of Annie, how even though she

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sometimes held him at arm’s length, her affection, her love, if you could call it that, was more solid, more sustaining to him than Elaine’s utter devotion had been. And that’s what had kept him going, wasn’t it? What had stopped him from calling it quits, time and again. But now … now he was worn down.

“Annie, there’s something …”

But before he could get the words out, before he could tell her about California, about the development in Fountain Valley, about the incredible job he’d been offered, Emmett saw that they were nearing Arturo’s. A garishly-lit sign over the steamy window advertising calzones, pizza, falafel.

“What?” She half turned toward him with an expectant smile.

No, he thought, better wait. Right now, she needed to relax, and eat something-and Arturo’s, in his opinion, served the best calzones in New York.

“It’ll keep,” he told her. “I’ll tell you later.”

After the fair, he thought. Tomorrow, or the next day, when she wasn’t feeling so pressured. He’d explain how New York was making him feel hemmed in, and in a weird way, shut out, too-as if, in the highest-stakes realestate game on earth, he could never be more than a bit player. And that unless she gave him the reason to do so, he couldn’t see himself sticking around. Because this time, after he asked her to marry him, and she said no again, he knew he’d need to be miles and miles away from her. Or how else would he keep from turning right back around and making a damn fool of himself all over again?

Rudy pushed his way in through the plate-glass door of the Venice health club where Val worked. Glancing around the dingy reception area with

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its trampled puke-green pile and mildewed walls, he wondered if Val was still here, or if he’d already split for the day. Christ, what a dump. And this was what his handsome brother had sunk to, the best job he could get, teaching karate to fags in some crummy Washington Boulevard club?

It’d been six years since he’d seen or talked to Val. Some things never change, Rudy thought. What if Val still held a grudge against him? What if-even when he told Val why he’d come-Val just told him to fuck off?

Rudy began to feel queasy, beads of sweat pricking his forehead. It was a little steamy in here, but he knew that wasn’t why he was sweating … or why his stomach was pitching. Steeling himself against a wave of dizziness that threatened to swamp him, he forced himself to concentrate on the kid behind the reception desk.

“Yeah, what can I do for you?”

Rudy stared at the pimply, overdeveloped young man sitting at a wood-grain metal desk, holding open in front of him a well-thumbed copy of Ring magazine.

“I’m looking for somebody,” Rudy said.

“You a member?”

“Naw.”

“Didn’t think so.”

Smart-aleck kid, needling him for his shortness, for his bulging gut that the expensive jacket he was wearing couldn’t quite hide. “What the fuck makes you so sure?”

“It’s just … I haven’t seen you around before.” The meatball blinked and tilted back in his chair, clearly taken aback by Rudy’s acid response.

Take it easy, don’t blow this before you’ve even gotten your foot in the door. Rudy took a deep breath, and forced a grin that felt like he was trying to wrap his lips around the grille of a Greyhound bus.

“Like I said, I’m looking for someone.” He kept his voice even, smooth. “Val Carrera, I heard he works here.”

“Val? Yeah, sure, he’s around. I don’t think he’s teaching a class right now. He might be in the weight room.”

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Rudy started toward the doorway leading to the exercise area.

“Hey, you can’t go in there ‘less you’re a member!” The kid was getting up. He was big … sucker had to be at least six-five. “I’ll have to see if I can find him for you.” He sounded resentful, as if Rudy was pulling him away from his real job of loafing around.

Rudy’s head began to hurt. He’d wanted to just pop in on Val, get him cornered before Val knew what was coming down. Rudy suspected that if he’d gone to Val’s apartment, Val would’ve slammed the door in his face. So he’d come here. And now this pizza-face joker could be messing up his plan.

Rudy pulled out his wallet-a lizard-skin Mark Cross with gold corners; cost almost as much as the bills inside it. Fishing out a twenty, he slipped it to the hulky kid.

“Here’s a nice bookmark for you. It’ll keep the pages of your magazine from getting stuck together.”

Hercules had to arch backwards to cram the bill into the front pocket of his skin-tight jeans. Now, amid the raw hamburger of his face, his small dark eyes were lighting up with interest. “Val in some kinda trouble?”

Kid watched too many cop shows, so maybe slipping him that bill hadn’t been such a good idea. “Naw, nothing like that. I’m just a … friend. I heard he might be here. Thought I’d stop by and say hi.”

“Well, I’m not s’posed to let you if you don’t have a card …” His eyes shifted nervously toward a door labelled “OFFICE.” “But I guess it’d be okay this one time. Exercise room’s down the hall, you can’t miss it.”

Rudy strolled down a dreary, mildew-smelling hallway, its green walls and ceiling a mass of cracks from the clammy moisture he could feel swamping the air about him. Poking his head into the first door on his right-a goodsized space filled with exercise bikes, rowing machines, slant-boards, Nautilus equipment-he saw half a dozen men, most of them young and muscle-bound. But no Val. Could he have slipped out without the hulk out front noticing?

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