"We're leaving. Maddy O'Hurley called five minutes after you left. She wants us to come to her house for a few days up at the Hamptons. In the Hamptons. Whatever."

Since the towel refused to stay in place, Freddie pulled it off. "Now?"

"That's the idea. Her weekend home's there, and she's got the family with her." Idly he reached out and tugged one of her wet curls. "She thought it would be an opportunity for us to work together, and have a little R and R while we're at it."

"Sounds like a plan."

"So hurry up, will you?" Impatience was shimmering around him now. "I've got to get back and do my own packing, rent a car and arrange for someone to take over my shift at the bar."

"Okay, go get busy. I'll be ready when you are."

"You wouldn't want to put any money on it, would you? Holy hell!" He'd backed into the bedroom as he spoke, and now stood gaping. "What is that?"

"A bed," she told him, stepping forward to run a loving hand over the curved footboard. "My bed. Fabulous, isn't it?"

He grinned. "Arabian Nights or Sleeping Beauty. I can't decide which."

"Something in between." She arched a brow. "It's bigger than yours."

"It would make three of mine." He fingered the lace of the spread. He would have banked on her choosing lace. Slowly, he turned his head, looked back at her with a gleam in his eyes, and lust in his heart. "So, Fred, just how fast can you pack?"

"Fast enough," she promised, and leaped onto the bed with him.

Chapter Nine

Freddie didn't see why she couldn't drive. The snappy convertible Nick had rented for the trip was a pleasure, and she enjoyed having the wind rush through her hair, the blast of the radio. But she'd have preferred being behind the wheel.

"How come you get to drive?" she demanded. "Because I've driven with you, Fred. You poke."

"I do not poke. I simply obey the law."

"Poke." Enjoying himself, he increased the pressure on the gas pedal. There was nothing like driving full-out with Ray Charles pumping out of the stereo. "If you were driving, we wouldn't get there until next week."

"You've already managed to get one ticket," she reminded him primly. Ten miles out of the city, Nick thought in disgust, and he'd been busted. "Traffic cops have no sense of adventure." But Nick did, and proved it by taking a turn fast. "This baby handles," he murmured. "Okay, navigator, check when our next turn's coming. I think we're almost on it."

Freddie glanced down at the directions, snickered. "You passed it, hotshot, about a half a mile back."

"No problem." He zipped the car into a tight U-turn that had Freddie caught between a scream and laughter.

"The general population can sleep easy, knowing you live in Manhattan and don't own a car. Make a left," she instructed. "And slow down. I'd like to get there in one piece."

He eased back—a little—and scanned the big, rambling houses they passed. Lots of lawn, he mused, lots of glass. Lots of money.

Big rooms, he imagined, filled with Oriental rugs and pricey antiques. Or glossy floors and stunning modern furnishings. Swimming pools with sparkling water and cushy lounge chairs set around them.

Though, of course, those would be sheltered by trimmed shrubbery and grand old trees.

Just the sort of neighborhood he would have been barred from a decade or so before. Now, he was here by invitation.

"It's that one." Freddie leaned forward. "The cedar with the weeping cherries in the front. Oh, aren't they beautiful?"

The blossoms were just past their peak, already littering the ground with fragile pink petals, but they did make a show. Nick couldn't claim to know a lot about horticulture, but he thought the scent tickling his senses was lilac.

When he turned into the sloping driveway, he was rewarded by the sight of a majestic bush loaded with lavender-hued spikes.

"Not bad for a weekend getaway," he murmured, studying the multileveled structure of glass and wood. "It must have twenty rooms."

"Probably. I wonder if—" Freddie broke off as a horde of children raced around from the far side of the house. Though of varying sizes and shapes, they appeared as a mass.

Until a slim, dark-haired boy took another child out with a flying tackle that was likely to jar internal organs.

Taking the cue, the rest of them piled on, shouting and wrestling.

"I see Maddy meant it literally when she told you the family would be here. The whole family, from the looks of it," Freddie observed. "That's Maddy's oldest boy trying to murder one of Trace's kids. I think."

She smiled as a pixie-size girl with wild red curls and an unidentifiable smear on her cheek spotted them, and waved.

"Mom!" the girl shouted. "Hey, Mom, company." As an afterthought, she gave the cousin she held in a headlock one last jab in the ribs, then scrambled up and raced to the car. "Hi, I'm Julia. Remember me?"

"Of course I do." After she'd climbed out of the car, Freddie gave Maddy's youngest daughter a welcoming kiss. "Nick, this is Julia Valentine. I won't try to sort the others out for you quite yet."

"Hi, Julia." She had the look of her mother, he thought. If Maddy O'Hurley really looked like the woman he'd seen on stage and on billboards. "You've got quite a war going on."

"Hi." Julia beamed a smile at him. "We like to fight. We're Irish."

Nick had to grin. "That accounts for it."

"There's a lot of us, 'cause most everybody had twins. Trace had two sets of twins. But Aunt Chantel had triplets." She wrinkled her nose. "All boys. Come in. I'll take you inside."

Being female, if only seven, Julia focused on Nick. "I'm going to be a dancer on Broadway. Like Mom. You can write my music."

"Thanks."

As Julia opened the door, they were greeted by a small, towheaded boy with a maniacal gleam in his eye and a croaking frog in his hands.

"Put Chauncy back, Aaron," Julia ordered, with the perfect disdain of older sibling for younger. "He doesn't scare anybody."

"He will when he gets teeth," Aaron said darkly, and scrambled out.