“I’d like that. I’ll put in my application,” Nuala had said at the time; then she had kissed his cheek. “You’ve been a good friend, Malcolm.”

“I’ll draw up the papers. You’re making a good decision.”

What Malcolm had not told Nuala was something a friend in Washington had passed along. A proposed change in environmental protection legislation was sure to go through, which meant that some property now protected by the Wetlands Preservation Act would be freed from development restrictions. The entire right end of Nuala’s property would be included in that change. Drain the pond, cut down a few trees, and the view of the ocean would be spectacular, Malcolm reasoned. Moneyed people wanted that view. They would pay plenty for the prop erty, would probably even tear down the old house and build one three times the size, facing the ocean. By his calculations, the property alone would be worth a million dollars. If it all went as planned, he should turn over an eight-hundred-thousand-dollar profit within the next year or two.

Then he would be able to get on with his life. With the profit he would make from the sale of the property, he would have enough cash to settle with his wife, Janice, retire, and move to Florida with Barbara.

How his life had changed since Barbara started working for him as a legal secretary! Seven years younger than he, she was a very pretty widow of fifty-six. Her children were grown and scattered, so she had taken the job in his office just to keep busy. It wasn’t long, however, before the mutual attraction between them was palpable. She had all the warmth Janice had never offered him.

But she wasn’t the kind who would get involved in an office affair-that much she had made clear. If he wanted her, he would have to come to her as a single man. And all it would take to make that happen was money, he told himself. Then…

“Well, are you ready?”

Malcolm looked up. His wife of thirty-five years was standing before him, her arms folded.

“If you are,” he said.

He had been late getting home and had gone directly to his bedroom. This was the first time he had seen Janice since this morning. “What kind of day did you have?” he asked politely.

“What kind of day do I always have?” she snapped, “keeping books in a nursing home? But at least one of us is bringing home a regular paycheck.”

At 7:50 P.M., Neil Stephens, managing director of Carson amp; Parker Investment Corporation, stood up and stretched. He was the only one left in the office at 2 World Trade Center, except for the cleaning crew, whom he could hear vacuuming somewhere down the hall.

As the firm’s senior executive, he had a large corner office that afforded him a sweeping view of Manhattan, a view which, unfortunately, he had little time to savor. That had been the case today, especially.

The market had been extremely volatile the last few days, and some of the stocks on the C amp;P “highly recommended” list had reported disappointing earnings. The stocks were all solid, most of them blue chips, and a dip in price now wasn’t really a problem. What was a problem was that too many smaller investors then became anxious to sell, so it was up to him and his staff to convince them to be patient.

Well, enough for today, Neil thought. It’s time to get out of here. He looked around for his jacket and spotted it on one of the chairs in the “conversation area,” a grouping of comfortable furniture that gave the room what the interior designer had called “a client-friendly atmosphere.”

Grimacing as he saw how wrinkled his jacket had become, he shook it and thrust his arms into the sleeves. Neil was a big man who, at thirty-seven, managed to keep his body muscle from sliding into fat by a program of disciplined exercise, including racquetball sessions two nights a week. The results of his efforts were apparent, and he was a compellingly attractive man with penetrating brown eyes that bespoke intelligence and an easy smile that inspired confidence. And, in fact, that confidence was well placed, for as his associates and friends knew, Neil Stephens missed very little.

He smoothed down the sleeves of his jacket, remembering that his assistant, Trish, had hung it up this morning but pointedly ignored it when he had once again tossed it down after lunch.

“The other assistants get mad at me if I wait on you too much,” she had told him. “Besides, I do enough picking up after my husband. How much can a woman take?”

Neil smiled at the memory, but then the smile faded as he realized that he had forgotten to call Maggie to get her phone number in Newport. Just this morning he had decided to go to Portsmouth next weekend for his mother’s birthday; that would put him just minutes away from Newport. Maggie had told him she would be staying there for a couple of weeks, with her stepmother. He had thought they would get together there.

He and Maggie had been dating casually since early spring, when they met in a bagel shop on Second Avenue, around the corner from their East Fifty-sixth Street apartment buildings. They had begun chatting there whenever their paths crossed; they then bumped into each other one evening at the movies. They sat together and later walked over to Neary’s Pub for dinner.

Initially, Neil liked the fact that Maggie apparently took the dates as casually as he did. There was no indication on her part that she viewed the two of them as anything more than friends with a shared interest in movies. She seemed as wrapped up in her job as he was in his.

However, after six months of these occasional dates, the fact that Maggie continued to act uninterested in him as anything other than a pleasant film and dinner companion was beginning to annoy Neil. Without realizing it was happening, he had found himself becoming more and more intent on seeing her, on learning all he could about her. He knew that she had been widowed five years ago, something that she mentioned matter-of-factly, her tone suggesting that emotionally she had put that behind her. But now he had started wondering whether she had a serious boyfriend. Wondering and being worried about it.

After puzzling for a minute, Neil decided to see if maybe Maggie had left her Newport number on her answering machine. Back at his desk, he listened to her recorded message: “Hi, this is Maggie Holloway. Thanks for calling. I’m out of town until October 13th.” The machine clicked off. Obviously she wasn’t interested in getting messages.

Great, he thought glumly as he replaced the receiver and walked over to the window. Manhattan stretched before him, ablaze with lights. He looked at the East River bridges and remembered that when he had told Maggie his office was on the forty-second floor of the World Trade Center, she had told him about the first time she had gone for a cocktail at Windows on the World atop the center. “It was just becoming dusk. The lights of the bridges went on, and then all the building and streetlights started glowing. It was like watching a highborn Victorian lady put on her jewelry-necklace, bracelets, rings, even a tiara.”

The vivid image had stayed with Neil.

He had another image of Maggie as well, but this one troubled him. Three weeks ago, on Saturday, he had dropped in to Cinema I to see the thirty-year-old French classic A Man and a Woman. The theater wasn’t crowded, and halfway through the film, he had noticed that Maggie was sitting alone a few rows ahead of him, four seats over. He had been about to join her when he realized that she was crying. Silent tears coursed down her cheeks, and she held her hand to her mouth to prevent sobs, as she watched the story of a young widow who could not accept her husband’s death.

He had hurried out while the credits rolled, not wanting her to see him, thinking that she would be embarrassed to be caught so emotionally vulnerable.