As he surveyed the scene, a smile replaced the frown on Marc’s face. He ran his fingers through his curly dark hair and sighed in satisfaction. The sky was a mottled gunmetal gray and the wind was rising fast. Foul weather on the mountain was a great excuse to stay home most of the day.

Marc took time to pull on a pair of fur-lined slippers before punching out his office number on the bedroom phone. Waiting for his secretary to answer, he grabbed the aspirin bottle on the table by the bed and swallowed three.

“It’s me, Tam. Cancel my noon meeting, will you? Tell Nicholson I’m sorry, but it can’t be helped. There’s a winter storm warning and I’m stuck up here on the mountain.”

Marc grinned as Tammy asked the predictable question. “Hell, no. I’ll be in later this afternoon. One other thing, call the electrician and ask if he finished those junction boxes at the Sandhill development. I need them in today.”

Marc was halfway across the room before he remembered. He picked up the phone again and pressed the redial button. “Tam? If I don’t get in before you leave, meet me at the Golden Steer at seven. I want you to soften up a prospective buyer for Johnny Day’s unit. Name’s Roy Perkins.”

Just as soon as he’d hung up, Marc turned on his answer phone, started the coffee, and headed for the shower. He still felt a little groggy from lack of sleep, and last night had been a disaster. He’d entertained Sam Webber, the man who owned the land he needed for his next housing development, flying him in from Dallas first-class and picking him up at the airport in a limo. The little man in the ridiculous ten-gallon hat had seemed to enjoy himself during the dinner, but when Marc offered the services of a genuine showgirl for the rest of the evening, Sam had been less than interested. He told Marc he’d ordered a book on blackjack from a television ad, and he really wanted to try out its “sure-fire” system.

Marc had paid off the showgirl and sent her home in a cab. Whatever the pint-size Texan wanted was fine with him. So they’d started at one end of the strip and worked their way to the other, Marc watching while Sam swilled cheap booze, played impossible hunches, and hopped from table to table in casino after casino. The little Texan had been up five hundred dollars when they’d left for the airport at seven in the morning, despite the fact that he’d done everything wrong. As Sam had gone up the ramp to board, he’d thanked Marc effusively for the night on the town. He’d said that it was the best fun he’d had in years and he was real sorry, but he’d changed his mind about selling his land. He’d decided to hang on to it for a while, to see if it would go up in value.

Marc stepped into the giant shower stall and sighed as the hot water chased away the stiffness in his shoulders. Watching someone gamble was hard work. You sat or stood in one place for hours and the tension was just as bad as it would be in any high-powered business deal. And even though he’d managed to slip Sam enough chips to make him think he’d won, Marc had ended up with nothing but a giant headache.

He studied his image in the steamy mirror as he toweled dry. Pretty good for a guy approaching his fortieth birthday, lean and tall with what Tammy called devil eyes. They were a shade between dark green and blue, and his black eyebrows almost met in the center.

Marc tossed the towel in the hamper and dressed in a dark green velvet monogrammed sweatsuit. All his clothes were designer originals, carefully crafted to complement his dark complexion and accentuate his height. Several women had compared him to the tall, dark stranger who lived in their fantasies and he encouraged that image by living the life of a freewheeling bachelor. He enjoyed women, lots of them, as frequently as he could manage, but none had managed to lure him into one of Vegas’s sixteen deluxe wedding chapels.

He went into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee, black and strong. On his way out the door, he grabbed a couple of raspberry Danish from the bag on the counter and headed for his game room.

Marc flicked the wall switch and grinned as his pinball machines came to life. Moira had carpeted the room in midnight blue; the walls and ceiling as well. With recessed lighting, it resembled a dark cavern. Each pinball machine was set back in its own alcove. There were twelve in all, enough variety so he’d never be bored.

He hesitated in front of “Haunted House.” It was a three-level wonder of mechanical precision, but it played a theme song. Paul Lindstrom had told him the piece was Toccata and Fugue in D minor by one of those composers that started with a B, Bach or Beethoven or Brahms, he could never remember which. It didn’t really matter who’d written it. It wasn’t the sort of music he wanted to hear first thing in the morning.

The second alcove contained a great little machine he’d played as a boy, and it was every bit as much fun now. “All-Star Baseball” took the player through a whole nine-inning game, with extra balls if you got over a five hundred average. It played “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” a melody that reminded him of hot dogs slathered with yellow mustard, and warm beer in waxed cups. Laureen swore that hot dogs prepared in a microwave tasted just like ballpark franks, but she was dead wrong. Nothing could compare with the real thing.

He hesitated for a moment and then moved on. All-Star Baseball brought back painful memories of his brief moment in the limelight. He could still hear the roar of the crowd when he’d nailed someone stealing second, feel the slaps on the back in the locker room when he’d pitched a no-hitter, relive his elation when he’d faced a power hitter with a full count and caught him looking. Even after almost twenty years, Marc still felt incomplete without a ball in one hand and a glove in the other. Most days he could handle it, but not after losing out on his land deal to a man like Sam Webber.

Marc pulled out a padded stool and sat down in front of “Front Line Invasion,” a war game. There were three sets of flippers and two balls, one from either side, that were put in play simultaneously. It took six hits to knock out the big cannons at the rear and four hits to take out a sniper. Every time a ball missed its target and hit the surrounding bumper, the player lost points. The first time Tammy had played, she’d ended up with a minus score; her whole army was dead, and she’d lost the war. When the machine had played “Taps” and the rows of caskets had lit up, Tammy had gotten so bent out of shape that he’d ended up spending the rest of the evening coddling her. Of course he’d known that her father had been killed in ’Nam, but he’d never expected her to get so emotional about a game.

There was a pile of slugs in a bowl on top of the machine and Marc dropped one in the coin slot. Then he pulled back the twin plungers to release two balls in tandem. There was no way he’d ever understand how today’s kids could be so fascinated by video games. With their synthesized voices and computerized graphics, they were about as boring as watching Saturday morning cartoons. Pinball machines were real. The player controlled the action completely and anything could happen. You could even cheat the odds a little by tilting the machine if you knew just how far to go. It was no wonder that kids today sat back and waited instead of getting out there and making their own luck.

Ten Minutes before 10:57 AM

Jayne Peters was doing her best to be cheerful, even though she’d been depressed ever since the divorce papers had been filed. Life just wasn’t the same without Paul and how could she even begin to start a new life when she was surrounded by so many traces of the old?

Paul had designed every piece of furniture in their apartment. There was the built-in kitchen booth in the sunniest corner overlooking the ravine. And the bed with separate, cleverly shaded lamps built into the bookshelf headboard so they wouldn’t keep each other awake with late-night reading. And the wall-mounted speakers in every room so she could listen to her favorite country-western music. And the rough pine paneling in her studio with cattle brands burned into the wood to give her the feel of a western ranch. And the huge wagon-wheel table he’d designed to hold her music. Perhaps she should have been the one to move out, but she hadn’t wanted to give up the fabulous sound studio.