“No, he hasn’t.”

“Well, now, I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Your mate has got quite a reputation in the papers of being a bit of a wild one. He’ll be back by morning.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” she said, unconvinced. She considered looking for David but realized it would serve no real purpose except to satisfy her need to—in her mind at least—do something besides sit in their suite. But the reality was that a lone American strolling through the Australian bush in complete darkness hardly constituted a competent rescue party. More likely, David would come home while she was busy getting lost in the wilds.

Laura went back to her room, firm in the decision that she would not panic until morning.

WHEN the room’s digital dock read seven a.m., Laura officially began to panic.

2

“THE call will be put through in a moment, ma’am.”

“Thank you.”

Laura sat back and stared at the telephone. With the time difference, it was nearly nine p.m. yesterday in Boston and she wondered if T.C. was going to be home yet. His shift normally ended at a little past eight and she knew that he often stayed a lot later.

Laura’s hands trembled, her face and eyes harried and swollen from the torment of the seemingly endless night she had just endured. She glanced out the window and saw the sun shining. The bright rays and the clock beside her bed were the only clear signs that last night had turned into today, that the night had indeed given way to morning. But for Laura, the night continued, her heart squeezed in a nightmare that would not move on.

She closed her eyes for a moment and remembered the second time David Baskin had entered her life. It was three weeks after their initial encounter at the Boston Pops, three weeks in which their short conversation constantly jabbed at the back of her mind like a dull ache, never all-consuming but still bothersome enough to make its presence felt whenever she tried to forget about it.

Subconsciously (or so she would claim), Laura began to skim through a few of the many articles about him. Though the press could not shovel enough praise about David’s talent, sportsmanship, and positive influence on the game, Laura was more fascinated (well, not fascinated, she told herself—more like interested) by the few sprinkles of information about his upbringing, his academic prowess at the University of Michigan, his time spent in Europe as a Rhodes scholar, and his selfless work with the handicapped. She found herself feeling oddly guilty about the way she had treated him, as though she had somehow to even the score or stay forever in his debt. It might be nice to see him again, she told herself, and maybe just apologize so he would see that she wasn’t really a cold person.

That was when she began to accept invitations to functions and gala parties that he was likely to attend. She, of course, would never admit that David Baskin had anything to do with her social calendar. It was just coincidence, she would claim. Svengali needed her exposure at these events, and if David Baskin happened to be there, well, life sometimes worked that way.

But to her inward dismay, David made only token appearances, smiling broadly as people gathered around him to shake his hand and slap his back. Laura thought she noted a wince or small look of revulsion on his face as these phonies reached out to touch him, but it might have been just her imagination.

David never approached her, never so much as glanced her way. Finally, Laura decided to do something truly childish. Spotting him by the bar at one such event, she took what has been termed by teenage girls as a “strategic walk”—i.e., a casual stroll where she would “accidentally” bump into him. It worked. He spotted her. He smiled cordially at her (or was there something else in the smile, like mockery?) and then moved on without a word. Her heart sank.

Laura returned to her office, fuming. She felt embarrassed at her behavior, upset she was acting like a high school girl with a crush on the football captain. She could not understand why she felt this need to confront him again. Was it simply because he had bested her, made her reconsider her normal behavior and defense mechanisms? Or was there an attraction—albeit, dormant—causing this static electricity in her brain? True, he was not bad-looking, rather handsome in an unconventional way. His face and body were dark and strong like that of a lumberjack on a lite-beer commercial. His green eyes were warm and friendly, his thick hair groomed short. Actually, he was quite attractive, more natural and real-looking than the supposedly gorgeous male models she used to work with.

But even if Baskin wasn’t a typical, self-centered, immature jock, he was nonetheless a jock, hero-worshipped by adolescents of all ages, a man who played a child’s game as a career. Undoubtedly, he was a playboy-athlete, surrounded by airy bimbos who sought the spotlight and wanted to get on television with the other wives in the stands. And Laura wanted nothing less than to be considered another bimbo, another conquest of the immortal Celtic great. Clearly, David Baskin was the very antithesis of what she would want in a man, if indeed she had been interested in a relationship at all. Right now there was no room for a man. Svengali was her ambition, her lifelong dream and partner.

Laura tilted her chair back and put her feet on her desk. Her right leg shook as it always did when she was somehow uptight or in deep thought. Her father had the same annoying habit. They both drove people crazy because the movement was no mere quiver—it was a full-fledged shake. When her dad or she really got that right leg going, the chair, the desk, the very room would vibrate under the leg’s tenacious assault. For those in the area, it was an unnerving spectacle—one that Laura had tried unsuccessfully to stop herself from doing.

The vibrations her leg caused eventually knocked her pencil holder off the desk, but she did not stop to pick it up. After a few more minutes of leg shaking, Laura managed to dismiss the basketball player from her mind as Marty Tribble, her director of marketing, entered her office with a large smile.

Marty Tribble was not a man who smiled all that often during working hours. Laura watched him confidently stroll into her office, his hand pushing away the few strands of gray hair that had lasted the five decades of his life, his face beaming like a Little Leaguer after his first home run.

“We’ve just made the advertising coup of the year,” Marty exclaimed.

Laura had never seen him act like this before. Marty Tribble had worked with Laura from Svengali’s conception. He was a serious-faced executive, a down-to-earth conservative in a rather liberal, flighty business. His sense of humor was famous around the office only because no one believed he had one. Crack a joke in front of ol’ Marty and you’d see the same reaction if you tickled a file cabinet. He was the office rock, not a man who became excited over trivialities.