The door flew open, but she was sobbing in fear and she didn't notice.

"Good God!"

The angry male voice penetrated her consciousness. Panicked, she pushed herself deeper into the suffocating depths of the furs, instinctively seeking a known terror instead of an unknown one.

"Good God," the voice repeated. "This is barbaric."

She stared into the malevolent face of the fox and whimpered.

"Come here, sweetheart," the voice said, speaking more softly this time. "Come here."

Slowly she turned, blinking against the light. She turned toward that soft, crooning voice, and her eyes drank in their first sight of Joel Faulconer.

He was big and golden in the light, with powerful shoulders and a large, handsome head. Like a magic prince in one of her books, he smiled at her and held out his hand. "Come here, sweetheart. I'm not going to hurt you. I won't let anyone hurt you."

She couldn't move. She wanted to, but her feet were tangled in the wet bedcovers, and the fox head was butting against her cheek. He reached for her. She winced instinctively and drew back into the coats. He began crooning to her as he pulled her free of the furs. "It's all right. It's all right, sweetheart."

He lifted her into his strong arms and held her against his chest. She waited for him to recoil when he felt her damp nightgown and smelled her acrid scent, but he didn't. Instead, he clasped her tightly against his expensive suit coat and carried her into her bedroom, where he helped her to dress. Then he took her away from the Park Avenue penthouse forever.

"That stupid, stupid bitch," he murmured as he led her from the building.

Not until much later did she realize that he wasn't talking about her grandmother.

Joel Faulconer wasn't a sentimental man, so nothing in his experience had prepared him for the surge of emotion that had overtaken him when he had seen Susannah huddled like a frightened animal in his mother-in-law's moth-eaten furs. Now, six hours later, he glanced over at her strapped into the airplane seat at his side and his heart turned over. Her enormous gray eyes were set in a small, angular face, and her hair was skinned into braids so tight her skin seemed as if it might split over her fragile bones. She stared straight ahead. She had barely spoken since he had taken her from the closet.