He was damned if he was going to chase him around the house groveling and wreck his back for good.

After dinner, on their enormous bed, Mitch lay belly-down so that Lindy could straddle his legs and knead his spine. Her hands, though small, were strong, and her legs were firm and solid beside his own. She was only five years younger than he but somehow, effortlessly, kept herself looking like a daughter instead of a wife. Her hair was thick and vibrant, her skin always tanned and young, her hazel, gold-flecked eyes clear as the day they had met. He thought of her as bronze and amber, lit somehow from within. He would have to tell her this, sometime when she was moody.

Justice Holmes, their shepherd, licked his arm soothingly. Mitch toyed with his satin ear. None of it was fair. The dog stayed in shape, sleeping all day and chewing on newsboys. Tony stayed in shape, diddling broads. Lindy stayed in shape, playing tennis and vacuuming the house. While he got fat behind a desk, supporting the whole ménage, and his back grew feeble and his balls dried up.

“You know why your back hurts?” Lindy murmured.

He sensed her diagnosis and didn’t care to hear. “A downfield block in the USC game,” he said quickly. “It hurt twenty years ago.”

“You never complained then.”

“I was dulling it with booze.”

“Nope,” she decided. “It’s the surgeon.”

“I’ll file another suit, for sorcery.”

“You know what I mean.”

She didn’t realize that once he had made the decision he had quit worrying about it. He reached back and patted her tail.

“Lindy Gordon,” he yawned. “Girl psychotherapist. The paperback kid. Hey, lower?” Her stubby fingers found the knot. “Thanks.”

“You’re not like Bernie,” she insisted. “It bothers you.”

“What, for Christ’s sake?”

“Knowing he saved her life.”

“He paralyzed her first ... OK, lower. Hey, you’ve done it!”

“We think he paralyzed her,” she murmured, getting up.

He felt a flash of pain and his back clenched again.

“The case,” he said softly, “is solid.”

He might not be the most open of men, but he seldom lied to her. He disliked himself when he did.

His back began to throb, stolidly, in time with his pulse. By strength of will he stood up without wincing.

He was damned if he’d tell her, after all her work, that her treatment had failed.

Now that she had cured his back, perhaps, and wrecked his Sunday, she felt awful. She should not question his work, and besides, she was blaming the wrong guy. He hadn’t really wanted the case: Bernie had simply conned him.