“You always get me into trouble,” she said, backing up.

“Hey!” he protested. “Where are you going?”

“I’m taking you home.”

“I don’t live at home anymore.”

“Since when?” She tried not to show her surprised pleasure.

“Day before yesterday. I got an apartment at Charlotte Woods, on Woodlawn.”

“Then I’ll take you there,” she told him.

“My car’s here,” he reminded her.

“And you’ve been drinking all night,” she said, buckling her shoulder harness. “We’ll come back and get your car when you’re sober.”

“I am sober,” he said.

“Compared to what?” She drove. “You won’t remember any of this tomorrow.”

He would remember every second of it for the rest of his tormented life. He yawned and rubbed his temples. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” he agreed, deciding it had meant nothing to her. It also meant nothing to him.

“Of course I’m right.” She smiled easily.

She could tell he was indifferent. He was one more typical asshole-user guy. What was she anyway but a middle-aged, out-of-shape woman who’d never been to a city bigger or more exciting than the one she had worked in since she had graduated from college? He was just trying her on for size, taking his first test drive in an old, out-of-style car that he could afford to make mistakes in. She felt like slamming on the brakes and making him walk. When she pulled into the tidy apartment complex parking lot and waited for him to get out, she offered not a word of friendship or meaning.

Brazil stood outside her car, holding the door open, staring in at her. “So, what time tomorrow?”

“Ten,” she said, shortly.

He slammed the door, walking away fast, hurt and upset. Women were all the same. They were warm and wonderful one minute and turned-on and all over him the next, which was followed by moody and distant and didn’t mean what happened. Brazil didn’t understand how he and West could have had such a special moment at the truck stop and now it was as if they weren’t even on a first-name basis. She had used him, that’s what. It was empty and cheap to her, and he was certain this was her modus operandi. She was older, powerful, and experienced, not to mention good-looking with a body that caused him serious pain. West could toy with anyone she wanted.

So could Blair Mauney III, his wife feared. Polly Mauney could not help but worry about what her husband might engage in when he traveled to Charlotte tomorrow, on USAir flight number 392, nonstop from Asheville, where the Mauneys lived in a lovely Tudor-style home in Biltmore Forest. Blair Mauney III was from old money and had just come in from the club after a hard tennis match, a shower, a massage, and drinks with his pals. Mauney had come from many generations of banking, beginning with his grandfather, Blair Mauney, who had been a founding father of the American Trust Company.

Blair Mauney III’s father, Blair Mauney, Jr., had been a vice president when American Commercial merged with First National of Raleigh. A statewide banking system was off and running, soon followed by more mergers and the eventual formation of North Carolina National Bank. This went on and, with the S&L crisis of the late 1980s, banks that had not been bought up were offered at fire sale prices. NCNB became the fourth-largest bank in the country and was renamed USBank. Blair Mauney III knew the minutia about his well-respected bank’s remarkable history. He knew what the chairman, the president, the vice chairman and chief financial officer, and CEO got paid.