Hilda was on a ladder, dusting the tops of doorframes, when the telephone rang at eleven-fifteen Saturday morning, and so it was Joe O'Hara who answered the kitchen phone and took the call from Dr. Sheila Winters. He recognized her name immediately, partly because she'd phoned in a prescription for Leigh Manning a few days before, but also because Brenna had several times referred to her as a very close friend of the Mannings.

"I'd like to speak to Mrs. Manning," Dr. Winters told him.

O'Hara hesitated and then reluctantly recited the excuse Hilda, Brenna, and he had been told to make to anyone who called with a similar request. "I'm sorry, Dr. Winters, but Mrs. Manning isn't taking phone calls today. She's resting."

Callers—except for reporters—always accepted that and politely left messages, but not this caller. As if she'd picked up on O'Hara's reluctance to brush off her call, she began chatting with him. "Who is this?"

"Joe O'Hara. I'm Mrs. Manning's chauffeur."

"I thought it might be you! You're also a bodyguard, aren't you?"

"If necessary, yes."

"Leigh and Logan told me how happy they were to have you working for them for the next few months. As things stand right now, I'm especially glad you're there." She was so warm, and genuinely concerned, that Joe instinctively liked and trusted her. "Is she really resting?" Dr. Winters asked abruptly.

Joe leaned back and peered past the dining room into the living room, where the subject of the discussion was staring at a framed photograph of her husband on a sailboat, her face so tense and forlorn that it was heartbreaking.

"She isn't resting, is she?" Dr. Winters guessed from his hesitation.

"No."

"I'd like to come over and see her this morning. Do you think that would be a good idea? "

"Maybe so," he said; then he remembered Brenna's saying she wished Dr. Winters had been allowed to come over yesterday, and he strengthened his reply. "Yes," he said. "I do."

"How could we work it out?"

Joe tucked his chin close to the phone and lowered his voice. "Well, if you were to tell me that you're coming over this morning—and that you won't take no for an answer when you get here—then I'd have to tell Mrs. Manning that, and I don't think she's in any condition to put up much of an argument about anything right now."

"I see," Dr. Winters said with a smile in her voice, and then she became very stern and coolly professional. "This is Dr. Winters," she informed him as if they hadn't already been talking, "and I'm coming over in a few minutes to see Mrs. Manning. Please tell her that I will not take no for an answer when I get there!"

"Yes, ma'am. I'll give her the message," O'Hara said. He was hanging up the phone when Hilda's gruff voice made him twist around in surprise. "Who were you talking to?"

"Dr. Winters. She insisted on coming over. She said she won't take no for an answer."

Hilda glared at him in disdain. "Sure, and this dustcloth I'm holding is really a hand puppet! "

O'Hara glowered back at her. "You callin' me a liar?"

"I'm calling you a meddler!" she retorted, but she marched around him and down the back hall to the laundry room without threatening to expose him or spoil his plan.

O'HARA strolled into the living room and cleared his throat. "I'm sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Manning," he lied.

The woman on the sofa hastily swiped the tears from her wet cheeks before she looked around at him. "Yes, Joe?" she said, making an ineffective effort to smile a little and look composed.

"Dr. Winters just called. She said she's coming over in a few minutes—"

"Did you tell her I wasn't seeing anyone and that I was resting?"

"Yep. I told her that. But she said she will not take no for an answer when she gets here."

Leigh was surprised for a moment, then annoyed, and then resigned. "That sounds just like Sheila," she sighed, and when he looked uneasy, she added, "Don't worry about it. I should have talked to her days ago. She's a very dear friend."

"It'll do you a lot of good to talk to a close friend," he predicted.

Leigh didn't think anything could do her much good, but Sheila was the one person she could be completely honest with. Among other things, Sheila Winters had recognized the pitfalls Logan and Leigh were facing in their relationship, and she'd steered them around them.

In the early years of their marriage, it had been Leigh who made most of the money, with Logan contributing his Social Register background and a driving desire to see her succeed that surpassed Leigh's own. After using all of his family's social connections to ensure that Leigh came into personal contact with anyone who was influential in Broadway theater, Logan single-mindedly devoted himself to restoring the Manning family's fortune, which had been squandered by his grandfather during a lifetime of gambling debts and harebrained business schemes.

A love of gambling was a Manning family trait, but, with the exception of Logan's grandfather, the Manning men also possessed sound business judgment. Logan's great-great-grandfather, Cyrus Manning, had carved a comfortable little empire in the canning industry, only to invest everything in a huge gamble on textiles, followed by another, even bigger gamble on oil. Like him, Logan was always willing to gamble on the next big venture. And like old Cyrus's, Logan Manning's gambles nearly always paid off.

By the time he and Leigh celebrated their eleventh wedding anniversary, Logan had succeeded far beyond anyone's expectations, and Leigh's theatrical career had made her into an international star. She wanted to start taking more time off between plays and reduce her appearances during a show's run, but Logan couldn't understand her logic. No matter how well one of his own ventures did, he was driven to expand, to reinvest in another, often riskier venture. He wouldn't stop and he couldn't slow down. His drive to succeed came with an enormous personal cost, and the price to Logan was sixteen-hour workdays, months without even a short vacation, and weeks without making love.

When one of his smaller gambles failed to pay off shortly after their eleventh wedding anniversary, Logan was so stressed over it that Leigh finally insisted they go for some counseling. The therapist she selected was Dr. Sheila Winters, a stunning thirty-seven-year-old blonde who had built a thriving Park Avenue practice by specializing in the treatment of highly successful, overstressed people, including several acquaintances of Logan's and Leigh's.

To Leigh's delight, Sheila Winters lived up to her reputation for intelligent insight, humor, and quick creative solutions tailored to the special idiosyncrasies of her illustrious clients.

After only a few sessions, she prescribed a weekend vacation home as a partial and practical cure for Logan's inability to relax. "Logan, you're one of those people who requires a total change of scene in order to get your mind off your work," the psychiatrist said. "But if you aren't within easy commuting distance of your office in the city, Leigh will have trouble dragging you away. A beach house on Long Island would provide a nice change of scene, but it's too close to the city, and too easy for Logan to spend his days at the beach club or on the golf course talking business with the same people he sees in Manhattan during the week." After a moment's thought, she told both of them, "If I were you, I'd consider a place somewhere upstate—maybe in the mountains."

It had been obvious from the first that Sheila truly liked and admired Logan, and that she somehow empathized with his unwavering desire to succeed, and so it was no real surprise to Leigh when the psychiatrist recommended that Leigh assume most of the responsibility for initiating romance. "Light some candles, turn on soft music, and push him into the shower when he gets home," she told Leigh with a smile. "He's smart, he'll get the idea. He has no sexual problems, other than overwork."

She turned and looked sternly at Logan. "For the first few weeks, Leigh will be in charge of reminding you that there's more to enjoy in life than work, but it's up to you to make the most of the opportunities for intimacy that she offers you. I understand that achieving great financial success requires enormous dedication and a willingness to take the sort of risks that can occupy all your thoughts. I even admire most of the sacrifices you've been willing to make in order to succeed, but it's a serious mistake to take risks with your marriage to further your financial goals." The sense of humor that made her particularly popular with her clients suddenly asserted itself. "You know, Logan, men who neglect their wives because they're too busy making money usually end up with no wife—and with only half their money."

Unlike some therapists who refused to see members of a couple separately, Sheila preferred to give her clients a few minutes with her individually before or after each session. At the next session, when Leigh was alone with her, Sheila surprised her by revealing a little bit about herself: "I may seem a little too tolerant of Logan's driving ambition to succeed, and perhaps I am," she said. "If so, it's because I'm from a similar background. According to what you told me, Leigh, you grew up in a family where there was never enough money, but the kids you went to school with weren't much better off than you. As a result, you didn't grow up with a profound sense of shame and inferiority because you could never fit in with your peers. Logan and I grew up like that. We're both from old, respected New York families, and we both went to all the 'right' private schools, but after school, we went home to a life that was shabby-genteel at best, and everyone knew it. We couldn't vacation with our schoolmates, we couldn't dress like them, or be like them in any way. Psychologically, we'd both have been far better off if we'd gone to public schools and been allowed to hang around with ordinary kids from ordinary families like yours."

The session was over and they both stood up. Leigh smiled fondly at her and gave her a quick, impulsive hug. "You could never have been 'ordinary,' Sheila."

"Thank you. That's a lovely compliment coming from an extraordinary woman like you." She turned and looked at the appointment book lying open on her desk. "There's really no need for you to see me again, but if you could persuade Logan to come a few more times, I'd like to try to relieve him of some of that shame he's been carrying around since childhood."

"I'll urge him to do that," Leigh promised.

It had taken Logan two years to design the weekend retreat of their dreams and then to find the perfect spot for it, but Leigh hadn't minded that in the least. The endless hours they'd spent talking and planning and revising the drawings had brought them closer together. The weekends they'd spent scouting for just the right location had provided a lovely change of pace for both of them, which was really what Sheila had wanted.

During that time, something else happened—Logan became even more successful. Several years before, he had branched out from residential architecture to land development and commercial construction, but most of his money had always come from clever investments in other people's businesses. Suddenly, clients seemed to line up at his doors. He'd added six architects to the four he already employed so that they could do the routine work he didn't enjoy. He doubled and tripled his prices—and still his clients came back for more, with gigantic checks in hand. Logan said it was because he'd finally learned to stop pushing all the time and to let things come to him. That made sense to Leigh.

Although she didn't see Sheila professionally again, Leigh saw her often at social gatherings and charity committee meetings. After one particularly frustrating meeting, the two of them decided to have dinner together, and they ended up laughing and talking for hours. From that encounter a strong friendship had developed, one that included many shared confidences from Sheila as well as Leigh.