Guilt tugged at his heart when he realized how much she'd wanted to be asked. "I'm serious."

On the dance floor, she was surprisingly adept. "Where did you learn to dance?"

She rolled her eyes. "It's a girl thing. We're born knowing how to do it. Are you going to try to get Sloan into bed?"

"Mind your own business."

"Do me a favor—let her go. You'll only end up dumping her like you always do; then she'll be hurt, and then we won't see her anymore. She's nice. I'd really like to have her for a friend."

Noah gazed at his sister's earnest upturned face, and he felt humbled by Sloan's generosity of spirit, the compassion for other people that had caused her to worry about Courtney's feelings in the middle of a party where she herself was under constant pressure and relentless scrutiny. With quiet certainty, he said, "Sloan is already your friend."

He spent most of the balance of the evening chatting with friends and wishing they would go home. Time seemed to drag, so he hit upon the idea of reintroducing Sloan to some of his friends and managed to keep her near him in that way, but only between the dances she gave to his father and every other single man at the party. He danced twice more with Courtney.

27

Sloan stood at the front door with Paris and her rather saying good night to a couple who were close friends of his and who'd remained to discuss politics long after Noah and everyone else had left. Edith had retired much earlier, and Paul had evidently foreseen that Senator and Mrs. Thurmond Meade were going to linger, because he'd excused himself and gone up to bed a half hour before.

"Good night, Sloan," Mrs. Meade said. "I'm so happy to have met you. I'm going to try that recipe for key lime pie you gave me—it helped my sore arm immensely tonight."

She turned to Paris, leaned forward, and almost touched her cheek to Paris's in a now-familiar gesture that Sloan realized passed for a good-bye kiss among the fashionable Palm Beach set. "You naughty girl," she told Paris. "I can't believe you've kept your talent a secret all this time. If Sloan hadn't told all of us that you designed her dress and yours, none of us would have ever known! I heard Sally Linkley ask you to show her your sketches, but I want to see them first. It's only fair that I get first choice—I've known you longer than Sally has."

Senator Meade stepped forward and said more formal good-byes to Paris and Sloan, but when he shook hands with Carter, his compliments were enthusiastic and genuine. "You're a lucky man, Carter. You have two beautiful daughters. Paris has always been a credit to you, but you can be very proud of Sloan as well. She won everyone over tonight."

Carter smiled and shook hands with him. "I know she did."

When he closed the door and turned to Sloan, Carter was every bit as sincere as Senator Meade. "Sloan, I cannot tell you how proud of you I was tonight."

He truly liked her very much at that moment—not because she was likable, Sloan suspected, but because he was a narcissist and she'd added to his prestige by favorably impressing his friends. To her surprise, she had liked many of his friends tonight. She could not like him, however, and she tried hard to hide it as she smiled and said, "Thank you."

When he started up the stairs, she glanced at the antique grandfather clock in the foyer and her heart plummeted when she realized how late it was. By now, Noah would no longer be waiting on the beach for her. Fate—and Senator Meade—had interceded and saved her from doing a very foolish thing. She should have felt relieved. She felt terribly disappointed.

Paris didn't share her disappointment over the lateness of the hour. Wrapping Sloan in a fierce hug, she said, "You were a smash! Everyone was talking about how lovely you are, how charming, how witty—and the party was a huge success, too. That's why people stayed so late."

Sloan made it all the way to her bedroom door before she began to lose the battle against going down to the beach to see if Noah might still be there.

"Good night," Paris whispered.

"Good night," Sloan said, but she hesitated, her hand on the doorknob.

Paris noticed. "You've been up since early this morning. Aren't you tired?"

Sloan shook her head, and then she confessed the rest of the truth: "Noah asked me to meet him on the beach after the party," Sloan confessed.

"He did?"

"Yes."

"Then why are you up here?" Paris asked with a smile.

That was all the encouragement Sloan needed.

The back lawn was brightly lit and swarming with activity as men and women from the hotel worked to pack up and reload everything they had brought for the party. Some of the staff who worked for Carter were helping as well, Sloan noted as she said hello to two of the maids she recognized.

No one acted as if there was anything peculiar about her apparent desire to go for a moonlight stroll on a deserted beach at one A.M., wearing a fabulous chiffon dress and dainty high-heeled sandals, but Sloan felt incredibly conspicuous, nonetheless.

She was relieved when she finally reached the beach and turned out of their view, but her relief immediately gave way to an overwhelming sense of disappointment when Noah was nowhere in sight.

She looked in the direction of his house, but unless he was blocked by someone's shrubbery, he had obviously gone home. She took off her sandals and wandered slowly down the shore, the sandals dangling from her fingertips, half expecting him to materialize from somewhere in the shadows.

The closer she got to his house the more dejected she became. Her traitorous heart reminded her of how it had felt to dance with him and the way his gaze had fixed boldly on her lips when she said she didn't know how to thank him for the party. "We'll have to think of a way," he'd said. And when she asked why he wanted to meet her on the beach after the party, his answer had made it stirringly plain. "We'll invent a reason when we're there."

She stopped at the edge of his back lawn, her eyes searching the terraces in the moonlight, seeing only vague shapes and dim outlines.

It was just as well, she told herself bracingly. Noah Maitland was too sophisticated, too jaded, and much too sure of himself for her. He thought nothing of trying to seduce her on a dance floor, and only two days after meeting her. He would break her heart if she gave him the chance.

She was very, very lucky to have had a second narrow escape from certain disaster tonight.

She was glad he hadn't waited.

She was thrilled he'd gone to bed.

She swallowed over a lump in her throat and started to turn. On the terrace one of the shapes moved, grew taller, and she heard her name, low and imperative. "Sloan!"