Anne glanced at the mirror and was taken aback at the sight of her luminous jade-green eyes so unconsciously full of laughter. The devil!

Hurriedly, she slipped back to join the party, this time deliberately seeking her host. She found Link Cord near the pool filling his plate, his wife at his side. Link was sixty, gray-haired and husky, these days sporting iron-gray whiskers that were supposed to look distinguished…and in any case hid a smoothly rounded chin. To Anne, he still very much resembled the neighbor she remembered from childhood-the man who had filled her pockets with silver dollars the day she’d dropped an ice cream cone on the grass, a long time ago. And when he saw her, his dark blue eyes sparkled, the corners crinkling like tiny fans. He opened his arms, and she willingly snuggled into them.

“I was beginning to wonder if you were here, sweetheart. I didn’t see you.”

“I’ve been here and having a marvelous time,” Anne assured him, and then hugged Loretta Cord as well, with a little less enthusiasm. “You’ve done it all exactly right, as always,” she whispered to Link.

He was sensitive about that. Link had come from some rustic cow town in Nebraska, and the exact amount of caviar on each cracker was a critical matter to him, thanks to years of lectures from Loretta. He beamed down at Anne. “Come on, come on. We’ll get you something to eat. And don’t give me any nonsense about your figure. You’ve got everyone in the place outclassed and you know it…”

Obediently, Anne filled up her plate with oysters and crab and frogs’ legs she had no intention of eating, and edged away just a little so that Link and Loretta could greet another guest.