After Midnight by Diana Palmer

changes in Clayton’s personality. Nikki hadn’t been well, and Clayton had spent more time in Washington than ever during the past six months. It was well-known that Bett and Senator Torrance were occasional companions. Perhaps he was using Bett to entice Clayton. Or perhaps there was some other connection. No one knew why Nikki and Mosby had broken up. Knowing Nikki as she did, Derrie blamed Torrance. Anyone who couldn’t live with Nikki had to be a basket case.
    She climbed into bed and pulled up the covers, heartsick and demoralized. She’d never argued so much with Clayton before. Now it seemed she was fated never to do anything else. She really must have a long talk with Nikki about him…
    Â 
    Bett Watts was going over accounts on her computer when the telephone rang stridently. She reached out a hand distractedly to pick it up.
    â€œBett?”
    She turned away from the computer. “Yes. Hello, Mosby. What can I do for you?”
    â€œYou can tell me that you’ve convinced Clayton to let me handle this thing about Lombard.”
    â€œDon’t worry,” she said gently. “I can promise you that. I’ve got him right in my little fingers.”
    â€œMy God, I hope so. Don’t let him do anything on his own, do you understand? Nothing!”
    She hesitated. “Well, certainly, I’ll take care of it. But, why?”
    â€œNever mind. I’ll tell you what you need to know. Good night.”
    She hung up, curious, but not worried. Mosby was careful and discreet. But she did wonder what he had in mind.

Chapter Six
    I t had been so simple at first, Kane told himself as he piloted his sailboat out into the Atlantic. All he had to do was ignore Nikki and her influence would disappear like fog in the hot sun. But she hadn’t. It had been three days and he was more consciously aware of his own loneliness than he could remember being since the death of his wife and son a year ago.
    He lifted his dark face into the breeze and enjoyed the touch of it on his leonine features. One of his forebears has been Italian, another Spanish, and even another one Greek. He had the blood of the Mediterranean in his veins, so perhaps that explained why he loved sailing so much.
    He glanced over his shoulder at his crew. They were working furiously to put up the spinnaker,and as it set, his heart skipped a beat. The wind slid in behind it, caressed it, then suddenly filled it like a passionate lover and the sailboat jerked and plowed ahead through the water.
    The wind in his hair tore through it like mad fingers. Kane laughed at the sheer joy of being alive. It was always like this when he sailed. He loved the danger, the speed, the uncertainty of the winds and the channels. In colonial days, he was sure that he would have been a pirate. At the very least, he’d have been a sailing man. There was nothing else that gave him such a glorious high. Not even sex.
    He spun the wheel and brought the sailboat about to avoid collision with a lunatic in a high-powered motorboat. He mumbled obscenities under his breath as he fought the wake of the other boat.
    â€œDamned fools,” he muttered.
    Jake, his rigger, only laughed. “It’s a big ocean. Plenty of room for all sorts of lunatics.”
    The older man was wiry and tough. He had red hair, going gray, and a weather-beaten sort of leathery skin. Jake had crewed for the yacht Stars and Stripes with Dennis Connor in the America’s Cup trials the year she won the race. Like the other tough seamen who survived that grueling sport, Jake had a freeness of spirit that gave him a kinship with Kane. From the time Kane was a boy,he had looked to Jake for advice and support in hard times. The older man was in many ways more his father than the tabloid owner in New York who shared his name.
    â€œYou’re troubled,” Jake observed as they traveled seaward amid the creaking of the lines and the flap of the spinnaker as Kane