No; Beth, even lovelier — if possible — in her grief, was not pleased. Not at all! Neither the plaintive braying of the Don’s llamas nor the study, by the fiercely-staring portrait she so loathed impressed her, and it was all because he wasn’t there. Intellectually, she realized that Baron Quentin, the remarkable man she had belonged to so completely, had a full life in which he was dancing away the hot Rio nights with the sultry Terri, and he could not be expected to hold any consideration for the pleasure of one inexplicable girl. Intellectually, she knew this. And yet…
   Truly, it had been a most forbidden day when The Times had brought him to her attention.
   Then, without any warning, an inrush of cool air as the door was flung open shattered her composure into a million incendiary, unconquerable pieces! She dropped the brimming wine glass heedlessly on the rug. Surely it could not be — but it was! At the door, the tender and masculine face she had come to know so well! “Without you I am nothing,” he boomed in his curiously endearing fashion while the truth — the whole truth — slowly came home to her. “I need you, my dewy, doll-faced delight!”
   It was then that as he went down on his knees and implored her to forgive him, she knew that life without him was unthinkable, if not instinctive. Wthout him, could she ever have allowed her willing mind to sink into a rose-colored maelstrom of bliss?