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easy breath. "She needs me. She needs someone who understands and appreciates who she is, and who she's decided to be. And I need her, because who she is, and who she's decided to be are-big surprise to me-what I've been waiting for all my life."

"That's an excellent answer." Gavin rose."I'm going to leave those here," he said, gesturing to the papers. "You handle that with Cilla however you think best. I'm going to go paint. I'll see myself out." At the edge of the kitchen, he turned back briefly. "Ford, I couldn't be more pleased."

Pretty damn pleased himself, Ford sat down at the bar and read through all the papers, all the stories. And knew just how he'd handle it.

It took considerable time, but the end result more than satisfied. He and Spock crossed the road, and finding the front door locked, Ford used the spare key she'd given him. He gave a shout and, when she didn't answer, started upstairs. The sound of the shower solved the mystery of where Cilla was. He thought briefly and intensely about joining her, but that would spoil the order of events.

Besides, surprising a woman in the shower in a locked house invited screams-and the woman could produce a serious scream. So he contented himself with sitting on the side of the guest room bed-as it remained the only bed in the house-to wait.

She didn't scream when she saw him, though from the amount of air she sucked in when she stumbled back, she'd have shattered every piece of glass for five miles if she'd cut loose.

"God, Ford. You scared the hell out of me!"

"Sorry. I figured I'd scare you more if I came in the bathroom while you were in the shower." He fisted his hand as if over the hilt of a knife, pumped it and did a fair imitation of the Psycho shower scene.

"It might've been worse. No Spock?"

"He wanted to go see if there were any invisible cats out back."

"I need to get dressed. Why don't you go sit out on the patio. I'll be out in a few minutes."

Unhappy, he thought. Irritated. And with a faint haze of discouragement. His idea would either help or make it worse. He might as well find out.

"I brought you something."

"What? Why don't you take it down, and I'll..." She trailed off when he took the thin package wrapped in tabloid paper from behind his back.

She hitched the towel a little more securely between her breasts. "So, you've seen them."

"Yeah. Oh, and two of your subs, my supposedly lifelong friends Matt and Brian, snuck off the job to come over and rag me about it. Punish them as you will. But meanwhile, open your present."

"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I completely underestimated the interest, the angles. And I walked straight into it by using my mother's publicist in the first place. Stupid, stupid, stupid."

"Okay, you can claim the stupid award. Open your present." He patted the bed beside him.

She sat, stared down at the package he put in her lap.

"I didn't use pages with any of the stories on them. We might want to make a scrapbook."

"It's not funny, Ford."

"Then you're really not going to like your present. I'll just take it back, bury it in the backyard. Where I may come across some worms we can both eat."

"Really not funny. You have absolutely no idea..." Temper had her ripping the paper. Then she could only stare down.

It was a slim volume, comic-book style, she supposed. The cover held a full-color drawing of her and Ford, locked in a passionate embrace. Over their heads, in what she could only call a lurid font, the title read:

THE AMOROUS ADVENTURES AND

MANY LIVES OF CILLA AND FORD

"You wrote a comic book?"

"It's really more a very short, illustrated story. Inspired by recent events. Come on, read it."

She couldn't think of anything to say, not initially. The five pages he'd done in black and white, complete with dialogue balloons, narrative captions and illustrations, ranged from the ludicrous, to pornographic to brutally funny.

She kept her face expressionless-she still had some acting chops-as she read it through.

"This." She tapped her finger on a panel depicting Ford, full monty, sweeping a naked Cilla into his arms while Spock covered his face with his paws. "I don't think this is to scale. A certain attribute is exaggerated. "

"It's my attribute, and I'm the artist."

"And do you really think I'd ever say, 'Oh, Ford, Ford, hammer me home'?"

"Everyone's a critic."

"But I