where it would be left on for forty-eight hours. Parts generally failed within a short period of time or not at all.
Susannah's fingers were sore at the end of the first hour, but she didn't complain. She was too conscious of the ticking of the clock and the fact that they had only thirty days to repay Spectra Electronics.
Joel dreamed that a dog was chewing on his shoulder. He was trying to get to Susannah, to save her from something horrible, but a wild dog had sunk its teeth into his shoulder and he couldn't move.
He awoke with a gasp. The dream was so vivid that he could still feel the pain. And then he realized the pain was real. As he clumsily lifted his hand to his chest he felt his pajamas soaked with sweat.
He would never forgive Susannah for doing this to him. He had given her everything, and look how she had repaid him.
The pain in his shoulder began to ease and his breathing steadied. It wasn't the first time he had experienced this tight, cramping ache. Perhaps he should see a doctor, but the idea of revealing his personal problems to anyone, even a medical professional, repelled him. He simply needed to get a grip on himself. He hadn't worked out since all of this had happened. He should get back into his old routine, set up a golf game. There was nothing wrong with him that some old-fashioned self-discipline wouldn't fix. Self-discipline and getting his daughter back.
Unaccountably, his heart began to pound again. Two weeks had passed. She should have returned long ago. The awful thought that she might not come back was never far from his mind. What would he do without her? She meant everything to him.
The darkness in the room grew oppressive. His hand trembled as he reached out for the lamp at the side of his bed. He bumped against a vase of garden flowers that Paige had left on the table and knocked it over. He swore as he flipped on the light. Dirty flower water had soaked his papers as well as the cookies that had been lying on a china plate next to the vase. Every night Paige left a snack by his bedside, like a child putting out a treat for Santa Claus. He never ate the snack-food before bedtime didn't agree with him-but still she put it out.
Joel stared down at the sodden cookies and wondered why he couldn't love the child of his own flesh as much as he loved his adopted daughter. But emotional introspection made him uncomfortable, so he got out of bed and crossed the floor to the window. Facts were all that mattered, and he acknowledged the simple, indisputable fact that Susannah had long ago become the most important person in the world to him. He had to get her back.
As he gazed out into the darkness, he chided himself for not having taken her last telephone call. She must have realized by now what a horrible mistake she had made, and he should have given her the opportunity to beg his forgiveness.
His hand closed over the edge of the windowsill. He had always been a man of action, and it wasn't in his nature to let events slip so far from his control. He had been patient long enough. Tomorrow he was going to see her. He would point out how reprehensibly she had behaved, and after he had laid out a few conditions of his own, he would relent and let her come back to Falcon Hill.
For the first time since the afternoon of her wedding, some of the darkness inside him lifted. He walked from one window to the next, envisioning their meeting. She would cry, of course, but he mustn't give into any emotional manipulation on her part. After everything she had put him through, he wouldn't make it easy for her. He would be tough, but he wouldn't be unreasonable. Eventually, Susannah would thank him for treating her so compassionately. Years from now they might even be able to smile about what had happened.
Feeling much more like himself, Joel returned to his bed. As he sank back into his pillow, a sigh of satisfaction slipped from his lips. He had been too emotional about all of this.
By this time tomorrow night, he would have his daughter back. And then everything would be all right.
The afternoon was unusually hot for Northern California. Susannah had propped the garage door open, but only an occasional breeze managed to make its way inside. Even though she had pulled her shorter hair into a ponytail with a red rubber band from the morning newspaper, her neck was damp. She looked up from the board she was stuffing to study Sam. He had a bandanna wrapped around his forehead so he didn't drip sweat onto the boards. For a moment she let her gaze linger on the muscles bunched beneath his T-shirt.
'I sure as hell hope Pinky doesn't decide to renege on the deal,' he said abruptly. 'I've met guys like him before. They're hardware freaks-seduced by the last piece of equipment they set eyes on. Half the guys in Homebrew must have discovered his place by now, and I'll bet some of them are trying to sell him their boards. If we don't get ours to him fast, he might strike a deal with someone else and then back out on us.'
Susannah rubbed the small of her back where it was aching from having been bent over the assembly table for so long. 'It seems to me that we have enough real problems without inventing unlikely ones.' She stretched, trying to work out the kinks. 'Remember that we have a contract and the others don't.'
The muscles she had been admiring beneath his T-shirt grew unnaturally still. Slowly, she laid down her soldering iron. 'Sam?'
He didn't say anything.
A warning bell went off in the corners of her mind, and she pushed herself up from the table. 'Sam, you do have a written contract with the man, don't you?'
He became unbelievably busy with the board he was putting into the burn-in box.
'Sam?'
He turned on her belligerently. 'I didn't think about it, all right? I was excited. I just didn't think about it.'
She pulled off her reading glasses and rubbed her temples.
Suddenly she felt very tired. Her love for him kept blinding her to the fact that he was only a kid. A wild kid with a silver tongue. And she was an uptight socialite, and Yank was a hopeless nerd, and none of them knew what they were doing. They were goofing around, playing at being grownups. Why was she even surprised that he hadn't thought to draw up a contract? At that moment, she realized how insurmountable their problems really were. They were deeply in debt. It was only a matter of time before this house of cards they were building came crashing down around them.
'Look, don't worry, okay?' he said. 'I told you the guy's a hardware freak, and we've got the best piece of hardware in the whole Valley.'
She wanted to yell at him and tell him that it was time to grow up. Instead, she said wearily, 'No more oral agreements, Sam. From now on everything has to be in writing. We can't ever let this happen again.'
'Since when did you start giving orders?' he retorted. 'You're sounding like a real bitch, you know that?'
Perhaps it was the effect of the heat, or the ache in her muscles, but her customary patience deserted her. A surge of righteous anger swept through her, and she slapped the flat of her hand down on the table. The sound reverberated through the garage, startling her as much as it did Sam. For a few seconds she stared down at her hand as if it belonged to someone else, and then, incredibly, she found herself slapping it down again.
'You're the one who made the mistake, Sam. Don't you dare attack me. You're the one who messed up! Not me.'
He looked at her for a moment and then wiped the back of his forearm over his sweat band. 'Yeah, you're right. Okay.'
She stared at him. Was that all there was to it? Had she actually won an argument with him?
He grinned at the expression of surprise on her face and began to amble toward her, running deliberately lecherous eyes over her body. Susannah experienced a moment of deep pleasure, a sense of the strength of her own womanhood that was new and wonderful. Without thinking about what she was doing, she hooked her index finger over the snap on his jeans and tugged. When he came up against her, she gave him a trashy kiss, open- mouthed and deep.
'Would you be a doll baby and do a shampoo for me? I hate to interrupt, but I'm really backed up.'
Susannah pulled abruptly away as Angela came through the beauty shop door. Sam whirled around. 'She's not your shampoo girl, for chrissake!'
Susannah interceded. 'My back hurts and I need to stretch for a few minutes. I don't mind. Yank will be here before long, and Roberta's coming over this evening to help.'
Sam's lips tightened at the mention of Roberta, but since he was the one who had called her and told her she had to help assemble the boards, he couldn't really protest. Susannah suspected he would have made the elderly women in Angela's beauty shop stuff boards if they had better eyesight.
A blast of cool air from the window air conditioner hit her as she stepped through the door of the beauty parlor. One elderly woman was under a hair dryer, and Angela was giving another a perm. Susannah ushered the third to the shampoo bowl and supported her as she leaned back. She didn't mind helping Angela. Sam's mother was so good-natured it was impossible not to like her. Besides, when Susannah was helping out, she felt less guilty about
