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moments, then shot the last of the drink. “Yeah. A big hero. Which is why you married me.”
    She laughed softly. “That’s right, sweetheart. I wanted a hero”—she spread her robe open from the waist down—“and you wanted this.”
    There was a time when he would have dropped to his knees, crawled to her, and planted his face in her lap. He would have sent his tongue burrowing into her sex in search of the tiny gold charm that pierced her flesh, a tantalizing trinket that remained hidden until she was aroused. He used to make her crazy doing that.
    But then he’d found out who had suggested she get the charm. That had ruined the pleasure for him.
    She laughed and covered herself. “Poor George. So upset over Jay’s demise he can’t even make love to his wife.”
    “Not when she still reeks of Drake.”
    “Oh, please. Don’t take a self-righteous posture with me. You’re in the throes of a ridiculous affair with the teenybopper who hustles drinks at the country club.”
    “She’s twenty-six. She only looks eighteen.”
    If anything could hurt Miranda—and he had a powerful need to hurt her just now—it was a reminder that she wasn’t getting any younger. Thirty had come and gone. Forty loomed. It was still a long way off, but she was terrified of it.
    In her youth, she’d been Miss Charleston County, Miss South Carolina, Miss This and Miss That. She had more tiaras and trophies than the housekeeper could keep polished. Other girls were winning those titles now. Girls with firmer thighs and perkier tits. Girls who didn’t get Botox injections as regularly as pedicures.
    Idly, painfully, he wondered if the current Miss Charleston County would have an abortion just to keep her tummy tight.
    Miranda’s rich laughter interrupted that dark thought. “Does your tacky little affair explain why you’re popping Viagra these days?” He gave her a sharp look. “Oh, yes. I found it in the medicine cabinet.”
    “I’m amazed you could locate it among all the pills you keep in there.” He set his empty glass on the portable bar and considered pouring another shot of vodka but talked himself out of it. He’d kept a buzz going for the last thirty-six hours. Miranda was right; it didn’t look good.
    “If you need a pill in order to keep it up for your new, young girlfriend, you’re more pathetic than I thought.”
    She was trying her best to rile him, to start something or, rather, continue it. Usually he’d get right into it with her and keep it going until she won. Miranda always won.
    But today, he didn’t want to play their game. He had other things on his mind, life-and-death issues that were weightier than their ongoing contest to see who could inflict the most painful wound.
    “We’re both pathetic, Miranda.”
    He went to the window and moved aside the drape, which had been pulled closed, no doubt to create a more romantic ambience for her and Drake. From this second-story vantage point, George could see down onto the back lawn of the estate, where a crew of men were mowing, weeding, clipping. Separated from the formal lawn by a stone-wall border, the irrigated acreage spread out like a green apron. A white wood fence enclosed a pasture where their racehorses grazed.
    He could see the roof of the multicar garage that housed his father-in-law’s collection of classic cars as well as his own fleet of automobiles, kept buffed and polished and gassed up, ready to roll at his whim.
    George McGowan had come from the working class. Money, actually the lack of it, had been a constant worry to his folks. In order to provide for his family of seven, his daddy had worked overtime at Conway Concrete and Construction Company. It was hot and dusty work that killed him well before his time. He’d dropped dead one August afternoon while working an extra shift. The doctor said he hadn’t felt a thing.
    Who would ever have guessed that his oldest son, George, would wind up marrying Miranda Conway, only child of