Standing beside her at the railing on the main deck, Noah sensed her withdrawal and assumed the weapons cache was the cause of it, but he attributed her reaction to the same vague panic that Courtney had felt. "Learning to use a gun is the best way to overcome a fear of them."

Sloan swallowed and nodded.

"I could teach you to shoot some of them."

"That would be nice," she said absently, trying to get a grip on her reactions. She was letting her imagination run wild, she told herself sternly, a silly mistake that was probably some sort of emotional backlash. She'd been falling in love with him almost from the moment she'd seen him in Carter's living room; she'd just joined her body with his and moaned with passion in his arms. In view of all that, it made more sense to ask for an explanation than to invent one. "It would be even nicer if I understood why you have them. I mean, we're not at war, are we?"

"No, but I do business in countries where the governments aren't always stable. Businessmen in those countries are frequently armed."

She turned fully toward him, her eyes searching his face. "You do business with people who want to shoot you?"

"No, I do business with people whose competitors want to shoot them. Or me, if I were to get in the way. For that reason, I realized several years ago that it is not only wiser, it is healthier, to do business on my own turf. This ship is my own turf. Next month, I have a meeting off the coast of a major city in Central America. It will take place aboard Apparition, and my colleagues will be flown aboard by helicopter."

"Maybe you ought to get into a safer business," Sloan mused aloud.

He laughed. "It isn't purely for safety; it's also for effect." She looked baffled, and Noah explained, "In a foreign port, dealing with people who are impressed by success, Apparition still gives me a home court advantage."

Sloan relaxed. What he said made a great deal of sense. "What sort of business do you do with those people?"

"Import/export. Basically, I'm in the business of making deals."

"In Venezuela?"

"That's one of the places."

"Does Mr. Graziella carry a gun?"

He didn't like the question, Sloan noticed. "No," he said impassively, "he doesn't. If he did, someone would take it away from him and shoot him with it."

He knew she was suspicious, and instead of saying anything to allay those suspicions, he waited for her to make her own decision. Sloan sensed that she was being tested somehow—for her potential for loyalty? Or as his lover? She liked the thought of the latter, but even if he hadn't meant that, her instincts told her he was telling the truth. In her work, these instincts were almost unfailingly reliable, and she relied on them now. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have pried," she said, turning to the railing and looking out to sea.

"Do you have any more questions?"

She nodded slowly and somberly. "Yes, one."

"And that is?"

"Why did we skip the tour of the saloon?"

Noah was completely enthralled by her wit, her intelligence, and at the moment, by the way she looked in the moonlight in a strapless gown with her hair blowing in the breeze. He wrapped his arms around her from behind, drawing her close against his body, and his voice was already husky with awakening desire. "There's a door to my stateroom off the stairs inside the saloon, and if you go into one room, you have to go into the other, too—there are no deviations allowed on this tour," he teased.

He waited for her to react and felt a fresh surge of lust when she nodded slightly.

"There's one more problem," he whispered. "I made a mistake earlier. The package price didn't include this part of the tour. There's an extra charge—I have to collect it in advance."

His mouth touched the corner of her lips, waiting to collect, and with a shudder of surrender, Sloan turned her head to fully receive his kiss.

33

For Sloan, the next week passed in a sweet procession of sunny days and sensual nights. She spent at least part of every day with Paris and at least part of every night with Noah. His sailboat, the Star Gazer, became a private bower, close-by and yet private and mobile. His house on the beach became nearly as comfortable to her as her own home in Bell Harbor, and Douglas and Courtney seemed to regard her as part of their family. None of it was permanent, she knew that. She knew that only one thing from her Palm Beach trip was permanent and lasting: She was in love with Noah.

Paul and Paris appeared to have paired off, and frequently the four of them spent the day together, though they usually went separate ways for the evening. Sloan couldn't tell what sort of relationship the FBI agent was having with her sister. Paul was not the sort of man who invited questions about his personal feelings, and although Paris was perfectly willing to share hers, the truth was that she didn't know how Paul felt about her either.

That was a frequent topic of conversation between Sloan and Noah when they were alone, but on the eighth day after her fateful night aboard the Apparition, Sloan didn't have him to talk to; in fact, for the first time, she had a solitary evening ahead of her, and although that would have pleased her a few weeks ago, she felt restless and alone now.

Noah had some sort of business meeting in Miami and wasn't due back until the following day. Sloan had intended to spend the time with Paris and Edith, but Paris developed a migraine headache that afternoon and had taken some medication that put her to sleep. Paul had also gone away for the day on some sort of "personal business" and hadn't known whether he'd return that night or the next morning. After an early dinner, Edith wanted to spend the evening watching game shows on satellite TV and by nine-thirty Sloan couldn't sit through another minute of them. Carter had a poker game with friends and wasn't due home until after eleven.

Sloan had an awful premonition that when she left here, when Noah was no longer near, restlessness and loneliness were going to be her constant companions. She did not deceive herself about his intentions; she'd heard enough remarks from Douglas and Courtney, and from Noah himself, to know that he was antimarriage and antichildren. What's more, she'd gotten to know some of his friends when he took her to the country club, and from things she'd heard, it was apparent that Noah discarded women as carelessly as he changed shirts—and almost as frequently.

And yet, even knowing all that and knowing how much this was going to hurt when it was over, Sloan wouldn't have missed a moment of it if she'd been offered the choice.

Until the past week, she'd felt like an oddity around Sara and most of their old friends. Except for Sloan, they'd all been "boy crazy" as teenagers; in college, they'd slept around and fallen in and out of love constantly. Unlike all of them, Sloan had had only two sexual relationships in her entire life, and one of those relationships would never have happened if she hadn't been feeling like a complete outsider at the time.