The couple in front stepped over the threshold and Shane could hear a booming voice he guessed was Farrell Champion's, followed by Nora Bishop's tinkling laugh.

"Boris." Farrell's baritone. "Great opening weekend grosses on Horizon of the Damned. You're up five percent prorated from holiday weekend totals last year."

"But the P and A sure set us back a bundle," the tuxedoed man replied. "It's a step release. We're going wide next week… twenty-six hundred screens."

"Thelma, you look devastating, as always…" Farrell again.

"Sorry about being so overdressed, Farrell. We're leaving here for Calvin's opening at the Taper."

Shane heard Alexa let out a sigh.

After a few air kisses, Thelma and Boris moved on. Alexa was holding Shane's hand and she gave it a little hopeful squeeze. It was their turn. Show time.

They stepped into the magnificent, antiques-laden entry hall and Shane hugged Nora. She was a beautiful, dark-haired, forty-five-year-old woman with a sweet, tender quality that always made him want to protect her. She was also one of L. A.'s premiere interior decorators. In the last few years, Bishop Interiors had done a lot of the big homes in Beverly Hills, Malibu, and the Palisades. And despite her exposure to some of L. A.'s most demanding A-type personalities, Nora never provoked any discontent. She had a way of getting you to behave by making you feel good about yourself. She was ten years older than Alexa, and had been Alexa's baby-sitter back in Michigan when she was twelve. That was the year after Alexa's mother had died. Shane had always wondered if Nora's move to L. A. foreshadowed his wife's decision to come West as well, as if she needed to be close to Nora, who was like a big sister or maybe even a surrogate mother.

Alexa usually projected strength and determination, but around Nora she became strangely girlish. With Nora, she giggled. Sometimes, as Shane watched them together, he would get a glimpse of what his wife must have been like as a child.