He looked at her. The slight breeze lifted her hair a few strands at a time, casting them into the sunlight, reminding him of childhood fairy tales. He held one of his crutches by the crosspiece and squashed a dandelion leaf. “What do you think happened?”

“I don’t know. Someone beat you up?”

He grinned into the sun. “No: someone beat the shit out of me.”

“But who? Why—”

“Big blond jackass. He stopped by Saturday afternoon wanting the tiara and the choker—the infamous Balaton jewels—only he didn’t say that. I told him no, and we came to blows. Or, to be more accurate, I came to his blows.”

“Oh, my God.” It came out ohmygod.

“You know something about it? Damn.”

She pulled her fingers apart so she could rub her forehead furiously, as if she had a massive headache. “I...I think I know the name of the man who attacked you. It’s Giles Smith. He’s on my father’s private security force...a professional at this sort of thing.”

For the moment, David didn’t quibble over who was responsible for what injury; he let Sarah think the worst. If Barky hadn’t come along, Giles Smith might very well have broken David’s leg. “Your father sent one of his meats after me?”

“I seriously doubt that,” she said quickly. “More likely Giles was acting on his own—or on behalf of J. Land Crockett.”

David was confused. “What?”

She waved a hand impatiently, trying to sort out this new information herself. “Crockett has spies everywhere in the organization. It’s his way of convincing himself he still exerts some control. Father says he doesn’t mind—he’s always so lenient when it comes to that old man.”

“So he and your father get along?”

“Father gets along with Crockett; Crockett doesn’t get along with anybody. My father has always had tremendous respect for Crockett, but I’ve never been convinced the respect is mutual. Andrew Balaton is certainly good enough to run Crockett Industries, but I get the feeling Crockett has always thought my father wasn’t good enough for Judith Land. In a way, I think he blames my father for Judith’s death. But during the last months of her life, my father didn’t even see her. And she hurt him terribly. He’s never recovered, not emotionally.”

“He remarried, didn’t he?”

“Oh, yes, certainly. A year after Judith’s death he met my mother and they were married almost immediately, but it was too soon. Their marriage lasted just long enough for her to become pregnant. By the time I was born, they were already divorced. My father has had many women since then and two more marriages, but there’ll never be another Judith Land. For better or worse, she was his one true love.”

“So there’s tension between Crockett and your father over her.”

“An underlying tension. Nothing that ever comes to the surface.”

David batted a stone out of the grass with the rubber end of his crutch. It skidded onto the driveway. “Why would either of them have sent this Smith guy after the jewels?”