Zach had hardly changed at all since our last, carefully unemotional meeting. He was still tall and lanky, still giving a vague impression of untidiness. His cavalier attitude toward clothes had been one of the continuing points of contention between us…one of many.

Arms crossed, he sagged against the doorframe and studied me with the same dispassionate interest he would have shown one of his experiments. His eyes, unwinking but not unfriendly behind their screening spectacles, were still the bright and startling blue of a sunny sea.

“You don’t look well at all.”

That was Zach all over, and I felt a ghost of ancient anger. After almost two years—one of separation and one of divorce—his first words were to comment disparagingly about me. The fact that they were indisputably true only made me feel worse, and my well-developed self-pity turned prickly. I gestured toward the heavy plaster cast which encased my elevated leg from toes to knee.

      “And how am I supposed to look with one of these things hanging on to me? Like Miss America?” I snapped belligerently. With my leg in a cast, my hair cropped short to accommodate the stitches they had put in my scalp, and the ghosts of a black eye and other bruises, I had never felt more unattractive in my life.

      His shaggy head shook sadly, his salt-and-pepper hair looking like it had been cut with a hedge trimmer. “I see time hasn’t sweetened your tongue any, Alixandra,” he said regretfully, and I shivered with the memory of the other tones—happy, sensual, furious—in which he had used that name.

      Oh, it was my name all right, one of a very impressive string—Alixandra Nicole Catherine Hortense Whittaker and at one time, Hathcock. In a burst of enthusiasm at having at last produced a long-desired baby and unable to decide between any of the favored names, Mother had stuck me with all of them. In a character less strong, my father had said, such a move could have induced schizophrenia. Early on I had become used to Alix. It was short, cute, and could be more or less pronounced by the servants in whatever country we happened to be at the moment. Zach had been the only one to insist on using Alixandra.

      He would.

      “What the devil were you doing sky diving?”

      So I was not to be spared the ignominy of his knowing the cause of my various afflictions. Somehow an auto accident or a plane crash seemed so much more respectable than a parachuting mishap. I didn’t question why, after all this time, appearing respectable to Zach Hathcock should be the least bit important to me. Perhaps some ghosts never die.

      “What else?” I answered with an ugly flippancy. “Shooting pictures. For a color spread on state parks in Pete Kellagher’s new glossy magazine, if you want the details.”

      “Which glossy magazine?” He replied easily but with equal bite. “As I recall, Pete Kellagher starts one about every six months.”

      “Now just because you never liked Pete is no reason to be…” Suddenly racked by coughing, I fell back against the pillows and gasped for air. Extended time in a hospital bed does not put you in top trim for even verbal combat. It was unbelievable, but after two years and only a few more sentences, Zach Hathcock and I were fighting again.

      His reaction was instant. He might look like Mr. Lazybones, but he could move like lightning when he wanted to. He propped up my shoulders and held a glass of water to my lips with all the warm human sympathy he would have shown one of his laboratory experiments.

      “Take it easy. You aren’t back up to your fighting weight yet.” He added in a surprisingly gentle tone of voice, “Drink some of this.”

      I sipped obediently. I had no idea of what he was doing here, and I really didn’t care. After a long stretch in a flower-filled hospital room, I was glad even of his company.

      “Shall we start over?” I asked weakly. At one time it had been very important to me to have the last word in any confrontation with Zach; now I couldn’t remember why. “How are you doing?”

      “Olive branches? You have changed. That was always your mother’s forte.” His eyes flashed, then as scalding memory rose, he looked away in embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I forgot. That was uncalled for, and I apologize. All right, let’s start over. How are you feeling?”

      “Rotten. I can’t decide what is worse—the aching in my leg or the weird things I see.”

      I had expected some sort of reaction to my bald and deliberate announcement, at the very least a scathing reference to my theoretical mental instability, the probability of which had caused a great deal of lively conversation in the old days. His face did not change; obviously he had been well briefed by someone.