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  Back to the reporter. “Being a butler is a highly specialized vocation, and there are very few women who enter the field. Topflight butlers train at a school in England, and they don't come cheap. To Judge Lowell Roberts in Mountain Brook, though, price doesn't matter.”

  “She's a member of the family,” said the old man, and the final shot was of Sarah setting down a silver tray loaded with a coffee service.

  She should be here, he thought violently. She should be serving him.

  He remembered the old man's name: Lowell Roberts. So price didn't matter? Well. They would see. He would have her, one way or another.

  Judge Roberts slapped his knees with satisfaction. “That was a good piece, don't you think?”

  “It was less painful that I feared,” Sarah said dryly as she cleared away his breakfast things. “They certainly took a long time to film about sixty seconds worth of story.”

  “Oh, you know how television is: they shoot miles of film, then edit most of it. At least they didn't get any details wrong. When I was on the bench, whenever I gave a statement or an interview, there was always at least one detail that was reported wrong.”

  “Will this give you bragging rights at your poker game?”

  He looked a little embarrassed, but gleeful all the same. “For at least a couple of weeks,” he confessed.

  She had to smile. “Then it was worth it.”

  He turned off the VCR, because of course he had taped the segment. “I'll get copies of this made for the kids,” he said.

  Sarah glanced up. “I can make copies, if you'd like. My VCR is a twin-head.”

  “Don't start speaking technical jargon to me,” he warned, waving a hand as he ejected the cassette. “Twin-head sounds like something teams of surgeons would have to correct, and one head would die in the attempt. I think I have a blank in the library—”

  “I have plenty of blanks.” She always kept a supply, just in case he needed one.

  He slipped the cassette into the cardboard jacket and carefully wrote, “Sarah's television interview,” on the adhesive strip before handing the tape to her.

  “I'll get them in the mail today. And don't forget your doctor's appointment at two this afternoon.”

  He briefly looked mutinous. “I don't see why I need a blood test again. I've been eating better, and my cholesterol should be down.”

  He had been eating better than he knew; when making his French toast, Sarah substituted Egg-beaters for the eggs in the egg-and-milk mixture, spiced up a little with vanilla flavoring, and she used low-fat, high-fiber bread. She also bought two types of syrup—one was regular, the other fat-free—and mixed just enough of the regular syrup with the fat-free that the taste of the blend didn't make him suspicious. He had agreed to eat a bacon substitute if he could just have his French toast, and she also served him fresh fruit every morning. In collaboration with the cook, she had managed to drastically reduce the amount of fat in his meals without his suspecting a thing.

  Of course, he would credit any drop in his cholesterol level to eating the bacon substitute instead of real bacon, and resist any other changes if he knew about them. Outsmarting him was a constant, ongoing struggle.

  “Two o'clock,” she said again. “And if you cancel the appointment, I'll tell Barbara.”

  He put his hands on his hips. “Do your parents know what a bully they raised?”

  “Of course,” she said smugly. “My dad gave me lessons in bullying. I rated expert.”

  “I knew I shouldn't have hired you,” he muttered as he retreated to the safety of his library. “As soon as I saw on your application that you're from a military family, I knew you'd be trouble.”

  Actually, it was her military family that had tipped his decision in her favor. The Judge was a former Marine; he had fought in the Pacific during World War II. The fact that her father was a retired Marine colonel, forced to leave the service because a car accident had severely damaged his right hip and leg, had weighed heavily with him.

  She sighed. While she was making copies of the tape, she would have to make one for her parents, too. They were living in a posh retirement village in Florida, and they would love being able to show this to all their friends. She had no doubt her sister and two brothers would receive copies from their mother; then she would get a phone call from at least one brother, probably both, telling her about this buddy who wanted to go out with her.

  The good part of that was that she was in Alabama, while one brother was currently in California and the other was TDY—temporary duty—in Texas. Dating anyone they knew was geographically impossible. But she was thirty years old, and they were all beginning to visibly worry because she hadn't yet shown any inclination to get married and help produce the next generation. Sarah shook her head, smiling to herself. She hoped she would get married, someday, but for now she was working on her Plan.

  A butler was well paid; a good butler was very well paid. A butler-bodyguard earned well over a hundred thousand a year. Her own salary was pushing a hundred and thirty thousand. Her living expenses were negligible; she bought her SUV and her clothes, but that was it. Every year she salted away the vast majority of her salary in stocks and bonds, and though the stock market was down right now, she sat tight on her investments. By the time she was ready to put her Plan into effect, the market would be back up.

  She would never leave the Judge, but, realistically, she knew he would live only a few more years. All the signs were there: she could get his cholesterol level down, but he had already had one severe heart attack, and his cardiologist, an old friend, was concerned. He was more visibly frail than he had been even six months ago. Though his mind remained sharp, this winter had seen one illness after another, each one taking a toll on his body. He would have maybe two more good years, she thought as tears stung her eyes, unless he had another heart attack.

  But after the Judge was gone, Sarah wanted to take a year and travel the world. As a military brat, moving every two years or so, she had developed a real yen to see everything that was out there. Not being a masochist, she wanted to do it in comfort. She wanted to fly first class and stay in good hotels. With a healthy bank account and her investments as a cushion, she could go where she wanted whenever the mood took her. If she wanted to spend a month in Tahiti, she could.

  It was a simple ambition, a yearlong treat in the middle of a lifetime of work. She liked her career, she wanted to get married someday and have one child, maybe two, but first she wanted that year just for herself. Since college she had resisted forming any romantic relationships of any depth, because in the back of her mind she was always aware that no man would like his girlfriend, fiancée, or wife heading off to wander the earth for a year—without him.

  Her father didn't understand it. Her brothers certainly didn't understand it, because they were constantly being posted TDY all over the world. Her sister thought she was crazy for not getting married while she was still young and had her looks. Only her mother, she thought, understood her youngest child's wanderlust.

  But the timing of her Plan depended on Judge Roberts, because for as long as he was alive, she intended to take care of him.

  CHAPTER 4

  HER FIFTEEN MINUTES OF FAME OVER, ALL THE STATEMENTS made and papers signed, Sarah gladly returned to her normal routine. She enjoyed the daily challenges of being in charge of a large home. She didn't have a large staff to oversee, but the house itself was an entity, in constant need of replenishing and small repairs, and she had to be on her toes to spot small problems before they developed into something major.

  By the middle of the week, the phone calls from all the Judge's neighbors, friends, and family had dwindled, which was good because Wednesday was her day off. Wednesday was usually the slowest day of the week, the day in which very little happened; on Monday and Tuesday she handled the things that had cropped up over the weekend, and on Thursday and Friday she did whatever was necessary for any weekend plans the Judge had. In addition to Wedn