1

THE SUN WAS BRILLIANT AND HOT, SHINING DOWN ON the deck of the motor yacht Blue Moon. She was 240 feet, eighty meters, of sleek, exquisite powerboat, remarkably designed. Pool, helipad, six elegant, luxurious guest cabins, a master suite right out of a movie and an impeccably trained crew of sixteen. The Blue Moon— and her owner—had appeared in every yachting magazine around the world. Charles Sumner Harrington had bought her from a Saudi prince six years before. He had bought his first yacht, a seventy-five-foot sailboat, when he was twenty-two. She had been called the Dream. Twenty-four years later, he enjoyed life on his boat as much as he had then.

At forty-six, Charles Harrington knew that he was a lucky man. In many ways, seemingly, life had been easy for him. At twenty-one, he had inherited an enormous fortune and had handled it responsibly in the twenty-five years since. He had made a career of managing his own investments and running his family's foundation. Charlie was well aware that few people on earth were as blessed as he, and he had done much to improve the lot of those less fortunate, both through the foundation and privately. He was well aware that he had an awesome responsibility, and even as a young man, he had thought of others first. He was particularly passionate about disadvantaged young people and children. The foundation did impressive work in education, provided medical assistance to the indigent, particularly in developing countries, and was dedicated to the prevention of child abuse for inner-city kids. Charles Harrington was a leader of the community, doing his philanthropic work quietly, through the foundation, or anonymously, whenever possible. Charles Harrington was a humanitarian, and an extremely caring, conscientious person. But he also laughed mischievously when he admitted that he was extremely spoiled, and made no apologies for the way he lived. He could afford it, and spent millions every year on the well-being of others, and a handsome amount on his own. He had never married, had no children, enjoyed living well, and when appropriate, took pleasure in sharing his lifestyle with his friends.

Every year, without fail, Charlie and his two closest friends, Adam Weiss and Gray Hawk, spent the month of August on Charlie's yacht, floating around the Mediterranean, stopping wherever they chose. It was a trip they had taken together for the past ten years. It was one they all looked forward to, and would have done just about anything not to miss. Every year, come hell or high water, on August first, Adam and Gray flew to Nice and boarded the Blue Moon for a month— just as they had done on her predecessors every year before that. Charlie was usually on the boat for July as well, and sometimes didn't return to New York until mid- or even late September. All his foundation and financial matters were easily handled from the boat. But August was devoted to pure fun. And this year was no different. He sat quietly eating breakfast on the aft deck, as the boat shifted gently, at anchor, outside the port of St. Tropez. They had had a late night the night before, and had come home at four A.M.

In spite of the late night, Charlie was up early, although his recollections of the evening before were a little vague. They usually were when Gray and Adam were involved. They were a fearsome trio, but their fun was harmless. They answered to no one, none of the three men were married, and at the moment none had girlfriends. They had long since agreed that, whatever their situations, they would come aboard alone, and spend the month as bachelors, living among men, indulging themselves. They owed no one apologies or explanations, and each of them worked hard in his own way during the rest of the year, Charlie as a philanthropist, Adam as an attorney, and Gray as an artist. Charlie liked to say that they earned their month off, and deserved their annual trip.

Two of the three were bachelors by choice. Charlie insisted he wasn't. His single status, he claimed, was by happenstance and, so far, sheer bad luck. He said he wanted to get married, but hadn't found the right woman yet, despite a lifetime of searching. But he was still looking, with meticulous determination. He had been engaged four times in his younger days, although not recently, and each time something had happened to cause the wedding to be called off, much to his chagrin, and deep regret.

His first fiancée had slept with his best friend three weeks before the wedding, which had caused a veritable explosion in his life. And of course he had no choice but to call off the wedding. He had been thirty at the time. His second bride-to-be had taken a job in London as soon as they got engaged. He had commuted diligently to see her, while she continued to work for British Vogue, and could hardly make time to see him while he waited patiently in the flat he'd rented just so he could spend time with her. Two months before the wedding, she admitted that she wanted a career, and couldn't see herself giving up work when they got married, which was important to him. He thought she should stay home and have kids. He didn't want to be married to a career woman, so they agreed to part company—amicably of course, but it had been an enormous disappointment to him. He had been thirty-two at the time, and ever more determined to find the woman of his dreams. A year later he was sure he'd found her—she was a fantastic girl, and was willing to give up medical school for him. They went to South America together, on trips for the foundation, to visit children in developing countries. They had everything in common, and six months after they met, they got engaged. All went well, until Charlie realized his fiancée was inseparable from her twin sister, and expected to take her everywhere with them. He and the twin sister had taken an instant dislike to each other, which turned into heated debates and endless arguments each time they met. He felt certain that they would continue to dislike each other in alarming ways. He had bowed out that time too, and his would-be bride agreed. Her sister was too important to her to marry a man who genuinely despised her twin. She had married someone else within a year, and her twin moved in with them, which told Charlie he'd done the right thing. Charlie's last engagement had come to a disastrous end five years before. She loved Charlie, but even after couples counseling with him, said she didn't want children. No matter how much she said she loved him, she wouldn't budge an inch. He thought at first he could convince her otherwise, but he never did, so they parted friends. He always did. Without exception. Charlie had managed to stay friends with every woman he had ever gone out with. At Christmastime, he was deluged with cards from women he had once cared about, decided not to marry, and who had since married other men. At a glance, if one looked at the photographs of them and their families, they all looked the same. Beautiful, blond, well-bred women from aristocratic families, who had gone to the right schools, and married the right people. They smiled at him from their Christmas cards, with their prosperous-looking husbands at their side, and their towheaded children gathered around them. He was still in touch with many of them, they all loved Charlie, and remembered him fondly.

His friends Adam and Gray kept telling him to give up on debutantes and socialites and go out with a “real” woman, the definition of which varied according to their respective descriptions. But Charlie knew exactly what he wanted. A well-born, well-heeled, well-educated, intelligent woman who would share the same values, same ideals, and had a similarly aristocratic background to his. That was important to him. His own family could be traced back to the fifteenth century, in England, his fortune was many generations old, and like his father and grandfather, he had gone to Princeton. His mother had gone to Miss Porter's, and finishing school in Europe, as had his sister, and he wanted to marry a woman just like them. It was an archaic point of view, and seemed snobbish in some ways, but Charlie knew what he wanted and needed, and what suited him. He himself was old-fashioned in some ways, and had traditional values. He was politically conservative, eminently respectable, and if he had a fling here and there, it was always done politely, with the utmost discretion. Charlie was a gentleman and a man of elegance and distinction to his very soul. He was attentive, kind, generous, and charming. His manners were impeccable, and women loved him. He had long since become a challenge to the women in New York, and the many places where he traveled and had friends. Everybody loved Charlie, it was hard not to.

Marrying Charles Harrington would have been a major coup for anyone. But like the handsome prince in the fairy tale, he had searched the world, looking for the right woman, the perfect one for him. And instead he met lovely women everywhere, who seemed delightful and appealing at first, and always had a fatal flaw that stopped him in his tracks just before he got to the altar. As much as it was for them, it was disheartening for him. His plans to marry and have children had been thwarted every time. At forty-six, he was still a bachelor, through no fault of his own, he said. Wherever the right woman was hiding these days, he was still determined to find her, and Charlie felt sure he would, one day. He just didn't know when. And for all the impostors masquerading as the right women, he was able to detect their fatal flaws every time. The one thing he consoled himself with was that he hadn't married the wrong one. He was determined not to let that happen. And he was grateful that so far he hadn't. He was ever vigilant and relentless about those fatal flaws. He knew the right woman was out there somewhere, he just hadn't found her yet. But one day he knew he would.

Charlie sat with his eyes closed and his face to the sun, as two stewardesses served him breakfast, and poured him a second cup of coffee. He had drunk a number of martinis, preceded by champagne the night before, but after a swim before he sat down to breakfast he felt better. He was a powerful swimmer, and a skilled windsurfer. He had been the captain of the swimming team at Princeton. Despite his age, he was fiercely athletic. He was an avid skier, played squash at every opportunity in the winter, and tennis in the summer. It not only improved his health, but he had the body of a man half his age. Charlie was a strikingly handsome man—tall, slim, with sandy blond hair that concealed whatever gray he'd acquired over time. He had blue eyes and, after the last month on the boat, a deep tan. He was a stunning-looking man, and his preference in women ran to tall, thin aristocratic blondes. He never thought about it particularly, but his mother and sister had both been tall blondes.

His mother had been spectacularly beautiful, and his sister had been a tennis star in college when she dropped out to take care of him. His parents had both been killed in a head-on collision while on vacation in Italy when he was sixteen. His sister had been twenty-one, and had left Vassar in her junior year, to come home and take on the responsibilities of running the family, in the absence of their parents. It still brought tears to Charlie's eyes when he thought about his sister. Ellen had said she would go back to finish college when he went to college two years later. It was a sacrifice she was more than willing to make for him. She had been an extraordinary woman, and Charlie adored her. But by the time he left for college, although he didn't know it, and she said nothing to him, Ellen was ill. She had managed to keep the seriousness of her illness from him for nearly three years. She said she was too busy working at the foundation to go back to college, and he had believed her. In fact, she had a brain tumor, and fought a valiant battle. They had determined early on that the tumor was inoperable because of its location. Ellen died at twenty-six, just months before Charlie graduated from Princeton. Charlie had no one to see him graduate. With his sister and parents gone, he was virtually alone in the world, with a vast fortune, and a great sense of responsibility for all they left him. He bought his first sailboat shortly after he graduated and for two years he sailed around the world. There was barely a day that went by that he didn't think about his sister and all she had done for him. She had even given up college for him, and had been there for him in every way until she died, just as his parents had been before. Their family life had always been harmonious and loving. The only thing that had gone wrong in his early life was that everyone who had loved him, and whom he loved, had died, and left him alone. His worst fear was of loving someone else, and having them die too.

When he'd come back from traveling the world on his yacht, he was twenty-four years old. He had gone to Columbia Business School and gotten an MBA, and learned about his investments, and how to run the foundation. He had grown up overnight and become responsible for everything in his world. Charlie had never let anyone down in his life. He knew that neither his parents nor Ellen had abandoned him intentionally, but he was alone in the world, without family, at a very young age. He had remarkable material benefits, and a few well-chosen friends. But he knew that until he found the right woman, he would be alone in important ways. He wasn't going to settle for anything less than what he felt he deserved, a woman like his mother and Ellen, a woman who would stand by him till the end. The fact that they had ultimately left him alone and terrified wasn't something he admitted to himself, not often anyway. It hadn't been their fault. It was simply a rotten turn of fate. Which made it all the more important for him to find the right woman, one he knew he could count on, who would be a good mother to his children, a woman who was nearly perfect in every way. That was vital to him. To Charlie, that woman was worth the wait.

“Oh God,” he heard a groan behind him on the deck of the boat. He laughed as soon as he heard the voice. He opened his eyes and turned to see Adam in white shorts and a pale blue T-shirt slip into a seat across the table from him. The stewardess poured him a cup of strong coffee, and Adam took several sips before he said another word. “What the hell did I drink last night? I think someone poisoned me.” His hair was dark, his eyes nearly ebony, and he hadn't bothered to shave. He was of medium build with powerful shoulders and rugged looks. He wasn't a handsome man in the way Charlie was, but he was intelligent, funny, attractive, had charm, and women loved him. What he lacked in movie-star looks, he made up for with brains, power, and money. He had made a lot of it in recent years.

“I think you drank mostly rum and tequila but that was after the bottle of wine at dinner.” They'd had Château Haut-Brion on board, before going into St. Tropez to check out the bars and discos. Charlie wasn't likely to find his perfect woman there, but there were plenty of others to keep them all busy in the meantime. “And I think the last time I saw you at the discothèque before I left, you were drinking brandy.”

“I figured. I think it's the rum that does me in. I turn into an alcoholic on the boat every year. If I drank like that at home, I'd be out of business.” Adam Weiss winced in the sunlight, put on his dark glasses, and grinned. “You're a shit influence on me, Charlie, but a great host. What time did I come in?”

“Around five, I think.” Charlie sounded neither admiring nor reproachful. He made no judgments on his friends. He just wanted them to have fun, and they always did, all three of them. Adam and Gray were the best friends he'd ever had, and they shared a bond that exceeded mere friendship. The three men felt like brothers, they'd seen each other through a lot in the last ten years.

Adam had met Charlie just after Rachel divorced him. He and Rachel had met at Harvard as sophomores, and gone to Harvard Law School together. She had graduated from law school summa cum laude, and passed the bar on the first try, although she never practiced law. Adam had had to take it a second time, but was nonetheless a terrific lawyer, and had done well. He had joined a firm that specialized in representing rock stars and major athletes—and he loved his work. He and Rachel had gotten married the day after they graduated from law school, and the marriage had been welcomed and celebrated by both families, who knew each other on Long Island. Somehow he and Rachel never met till college, although their parents had been friends. He had never wanted to meet the daughters of his parents' friends, so he had found her on his own, although he knew who she was as soon as they met. She had seemed like the perfect girl for him.

When they married, they had everything in common, and a lifetime of happiness ahead of them. Rachel got pregnant on their honeymoon, and had two babies in two years, Amanda and Jacob, who were now fourteen and thirteen. The marriage had lasted five years. Adam was always busy working, building his career, and coming home at three in the morning, after going to concerts or sporting events with his clients and their friends. But in spite of the temptations all around him—and there had been many—he had been faithful to her. Rachel, however, got tired of being alone at night and fell in love with their pediatrician, whom she had known since high school, and had an affair with him while Adam was making money hand over fist for them. He became a partner in the firm three months before she left him, and she told him he'd be fine without her. She took the kids, the furniture, half of their savings, and married the doctor as soon as the ink was dry on their divorce. Ten years later he still hated her, and could barely bring himself to be civil to her. The last thing he wanted was to marry again and have the same thing happen. It had nearly killed him when she left with the kids.

In the decade since it had happened, he had avoided any risk of attachment by dating women nearly half his age, with one tenth the brain. And in the milieu where he worked, they were easy to find. At forty-one, he dated women between twenty-one and twenty-five, models, starlets, groupies, the kind of women who hung around athletes and rock stars. Half the time he could barely remember their names. He was up-front with all of them, and generous with them. He told them when they met him that he would never remarry, and whatever they were doing was just for fun. They never lasted more than a month—if they lasted that long. He was only interested in a few dinners, going to bed with them, and moving on. Rachel had taken his heart with her, and tossed it in a dumpster somewhere. He talked to her now only when he had to, which was less and less often as the kids grew older. Most of the time, he sent her terse e-mails about their arrangements, or had his secretary call her. He wanted nothing to do with her. Nor did he want a serious involvement with anyone else. Adam loved his freedom, and nothing on earth would have made him jeopardize that again.

His mother had finally stopped complaining about his being single, or almost, and she had finally stopped trying to introduce him to a “nice girl.” Adam had exactly what he wanted, a rotating smorgasbord of playmates to entertain him. If he wanted someone to talk to, he called his friends. As far as he was concerned, women were for sex, fun, and to keep at a distance. He had no intention of getting close enough to get hurt again. Unlike Charlie, he wasn't looking for the perfect woman. All he wanted was the perfect bedmate for as long as it lasted, hopefully no longer than two weeks, and he kept it that way. Adam wanted no serious involvements. The only things he was serious about were his children, his work, and his friends. And as far as he was concerned, the women in his life were not his friends. Rachel was his sworn enemy, his mother was his cross to bear, his sister was a nuisance, and the women he went out with were barely more than strangers. Most of the time he was a lot happier, felt safer, and was more comfortable with men. Particularly Charlie and Gray.

“I think I had fun last night,” Adam said with a sheepish grin. “The last thing I remember was dancing with a bunch of Brazilian women who didn't speak English, but man, could they move. I sambaed myself into a frenzy, and must have had about six hundred drinks. They were amazing.”

“So were you.” Charlie laughed out loud, as both men turned their faces to the sunshine. It felt good, even with Adam's headache. Adam played as hard as he worked. He was the top lawyer in his field these days, eternally stressed and anxious, he carried three cell phones and a pager, and spent his life either in meetings or flying somewhere to see clients in his plane. He represented a roster of major celebrities, all of whom seemed to get themselves into trouble with alarming regularity, but Adam loved what he did, and had more patience with his clients than he did with anyone else, except his kids, who meant everything to him. Amanda and Jacob were the sweet spot in his life.

“I think I made a date with two of them for tonight,” Adam said, smiling at the memory of the Brazilian beauties. “They couldn't understand a word I said. We'll have to go back tonight and see if they're there.” Adam was beginning to revive after a second cup of coffee, just as Gray appeared, wearing dark glasses, with his mane of uncombed white hair sticking up straight. He often wore it that way, but it seemed particularly appropriate as he groaned and sat down at the table, wearing a bathing suit and a T-shirt that was clean but splattered with paint.

“I'm too old for this,” he said, gratefully accepting a cup of coffee, and opening a small bottle of Unterberg. The bitter taste settled his stomach after the excesses of the night before. Unlike Adam and Charlie, he was not in fabulously athletic shape. He was long and lean and looked somewhat undernourished. As a boy, he had looked like a poster child for starving children somewhere. Now he just looked very thin. He was an artist and lived in the West Village, where he worked for months on intricate, beautifully done paintings. He managed to survive, though barely, if he sold two a year. And like Charlie, he had never married, nor had kids. He was respected in the art world, but had never been a commercial success. He didn't care. Money meant nothing to him. As he told them frequently, all he cared about was the integrity of his work. He offered some of the Unterberg to Adam and Charlie, and both made a face and shook their heads.

“I don't know how you drink that stuff,” Adam said, grimacing at the smell of it. “It works, but I'd rather have the hangover than drink that.”

“It's great. It works. Maybe you should just hook me up to an IV of it, if we're going to keep drinking like this. I always forget how bad it gets. Do we qualify for AA yet?” Gray said as he downed the Unterberg, then the coffee, and then dove into a plate of eggs.

“That's usually the second week, not the first,” Charlie said happily. He loved being with his two friends. Despite their initial indulgences, they usually settled down to a dull roar after the first few days. It wasn't as bad as they both made it sound, although they had all drunk a lot the night before, and had a lot of fun, dancing with strangers, watching people, and generally enjoying each other's company. Charlie was looking forward to spending the month with them. It was the high point of his year, and theirs. They lived on the anticipation of it for months every year, and reveled in the warmth of it for months after. They had a decade of memories of trips like this, and laughed at the tales of their antics whenever they met.

“I think we're early this year with a night like last night. My liver's already shot. I can feel it,” Gray commented, looking worried, as he finished the eggs, and ate a piece of toast to settle his stomach. His head was still pounding, but the Unterberg had helped. Adam couldn't have faced the breakfast Gray had just eaten. The bitters he took religiously every day while on board obviously worked and fortunately, none of them got seasick. “I'm older than you two. If we don't slow down, it's going to kill me. Or maybe just the dancing will. Shit, I'm out of shape.” Gray had just turned fifty but looked noticeably older than either of his friends. Charlie had a youthful boyish look, even in his mid-forties, that knocked five or ten years off his appearance, and Adam was only forty-one, and was in amazing shape. Wherever he was in the world, and no matter how busy, he went to the gym every day. He said it was the only way he could cope with the stress. Gray had never taken care of himself, slept little, ate less, and lived for his work, as Adam did. He spent long hours standing in front of his easel, and did nothing but think, dream, and breathe art. He wasn't much older than the other two, but he looked his age, mainly because of his shock of unruly white hair. The women he met thought him beautiful and gentle, for a while at least, until they moved on.

Unlike Charlie and Adam, Gray never thought about pursuing women, and he made little effort, if any, in that direction. He moved obliviously in the art world, and like homing pigeons the women he wound up with found him, and always had. He was a magnet to what Adam referred to as psycho women, and Gray never disagreed. The women he went out with had always recently stopped taking their medication, or did so immediately after becoming involved with him. They had always been abused by their previous boyfriend or husband, who was still calling them, after throwing the woman in question out into the street. Gray never failed to rescue them, and even if they were unattractive or problematic for him, long before he slept with them, he offered them a place to live, “just for a few weeks till they got on their feet.” And eventually, the feet they got on were his. He wound up cooking for them, housing them, taking care of them, finding doctors and therapists for them, putting them in rehab, or drying them out himself. He gave them money, leaving himself even more destitute than he had been before they met. He offered them a safe haven, kindness, and comfort. He did just about anything he had to, and that they needed, as long as they didn't have kids. Kids were the one thing that Gray couldn't deal with. They terrified him, and always had. They reminded him of his own peculiar childhood, which had never been a pleasant memory for him. Being around children and families always reinforced the painful realization of how dysfunctional his own family had been.

The women Gray got involved with didn't appear to be mean at first, and they claimed they didn't want to hurt him. They were disorganized, dysfunctional, more often than not hysterical, and their lives were a total mess. The affairs he had with them lasted anywhere from a month to a year. He got jobs for them, cleaned them up, introduced them to people who were helpful to them, and without fail, if they didn't wind up hospitalized or institutionalized somewhere, they left him for someone else. He had never had a desire to marry any of them, but he got used to them, and it disappointed him for a while when they moved on. He expected it. He was the ultimate caretaker, and like all devoted parents, he expected his chicks to fly the nest. Much to his amazement each time, their departures were almost always awkward and traumatic. They rarely left Gray's life with grace. They stole things from him, got into screaming fights that caused the neighbors to call the police, would have slashed his tires if he'd had a car, tossed his belongings out the window, or caused some kind of ruckus that turned out to be embarrassing or painful to him. They rarely if ever thanked him for the time, effort, money, and affection he had lavished on them. And in the end, it made it a blissful relief when they left. Unlike Adam and Charlie, Gray was never attracted to young girls. The women who appealed to him were usually somewhere in their forties, and always seriously deranged. He said he liked their vulnerability, and felt sorry for them. Adam had suggested he work for the Red Cross, or a crisis center, which would let him caretake to his heart's content, instead of turning his love life into a suicide hotline for the mentally ill and middle-aged.

“I can't help it,” Gray said sheepishly. “I always figure that if I don't help them, no one else will.”

“Yeah, right. You're lucky one of those wackos hasn't tried to kill you in your sleep.” Over the years, one or two had tried, but fortunately, had failed. Gray had an overwhelming and irresistible need to save the world, and to rescue women in dire need. Eventually those needs always included someone other than Gray. Almost every one of the women he had dated had left him for another man. And after they left, another woman in a state of total disaster would turn up, and turn his life upside down again. It was a roller-coaster ride he had gotten used to over the years. He had never lived any other way.

Unlike Charlie and Adam, whose families were traditional, respectable, and conservative—Adam's on Long Island, and Charlie's on Fifth Avenue in New York—Gray had grown up all over the world. The parents who had adopted him at birth had been part of one of the most successful rock groups in history. He had grown up, if you could call it that, among some of the biggest rock stars of the time, who handed him joints and shared beers with him by the time he was eight. His parents had adopted a little girl as well. They had named him Gray, and her Sparrow, and when Gray was ten, they had been “born again,” and retired. They moved first to India, and then Nepal, settled in the Caribbean, and spent four years in the Amazon, living on a boat. All Gray remembered now was the poverty they had seen, the natives they'd met, more than he remembered the early years of drugs, but he recalled some of that as well. His sister had become a Buddhist nun, and had gone back to India, to work with the starving masses in Calcutta. Gray had gotten off the boat, literally and otherwise, and went to New York at eighteen to paint. His family still had money then, but he had chosen to try and make it on his own, and had spent his early twenties studying in Paris, before he went back to New York.

His parents had moved to Santa Fe by then, and when Gray was twenty-five, they had adopted a Navajo baby and called him Boy. It had been a complicated process, but the tribe agreed to let him go. He seemed like a nice child to Gray, but the age difference between them was so great that he scarcely saw him while Boy was growing up. His adoptive parents had died when Boy was eighteen, and he had gone back to live with his tribe. It had happened seven years earlier, and although Gray knew where he was, they had never contacted each other. He had a letter from Sparrow from India once every few years. They had never liked each other much, their early life had been spent surviving the vagaries and eccentricities of their adoptive parents. He knew Sparrow had spent years trying to find her birth parents, maybe to bring some kind of normalcy into her life. She had found them in Kentucky somewhere, had nothing in common with them, and had never seen them again. Gray had never had any desire to find his, some curiosity perhaps, but he had enough on his plate with the parents he'd had, he felt no need to add more dysfunctional people to the mix. The lunatics he was already related to were more than enough for him. The women he went out with were just more of the same. The disruptions he shared with them, and tried to solve for them, were more of what he'd seen growing up, and were familiar and comfortable for him. And the one thing he knew without wavering was that he never wanted to have children and do the same to them. Having children was something he left to other people, like Adam, who could bring them up properly. Gray knew that he couldn't, he had no parental role models to follow, no real home life to emulate, nothing to give to them, or so he felt. All he wanted to do was paint, and he did it well.

Whatever genetic mix he had come from originally, whoever his birth parents were, Gray had an enormous talent, and although never financially viable, his career as a painter had always been a respected one. Even the critics conceded that he was very, very good. He just couldn't keep his life together long enough to make money at what he did. What his parents had made in their early years, they had spent on drugs and traveling around the world. Gray was used to being penniless and didn't mind it. What he had, he gave to others whom he considered more in need. And whether on Charlie's yacht, in the lap of luxury, or freezing in his studio in the Meatpacking District in New York, it was all the same to him. Whether or not there was a woman in his life didn't matter to him much. What mattered to him were his work, and his friends.

He had long since proven to himself that although women were appealing sometimes, and he liked having a warm body in his bed to comfort him on cold nights, they were all insane—or the ones he found in his bed always were. There was no question in any-one's mind, if a woman was with Gray, more likely than not, she was nuts. It was a curse he accepted, an irresistible pull for him, after the childhood he'd had. He felt that the only way to break the spell, or the curse that had been put on him by his dysfunctional adopted family, was to refuse to pass that angst-making lifestyle on to a child of his own. His gift to the world, he often said, was promising himself never to have kids. It was a promise he had never broken, and knew he never would. He said he was allergic to children, and they were equally so to him. Unlike Charlie, Gray wasn't looking for the perfect woman, he would have just liked to find one, one day, who was sane. In the meantime, the ones he did find provided excitement and comic relief, for him and his friends.

“So, what are we doing today?” Charlie asked, as the three men stretched out on deck chairs after breakfast.

The sun was high, it was nearly noon, and the weather had never been better. It was an absolutely gorgeous day. Adam said he wanted to go shopping for his kids in St. Tropez. Amanda always loved the things he brought home for her, and Jacob was easy. They were both crazy about their dad, although they loved their mother and stepfather too. Rachel and the pediatrician had had two more children, whom Adam pretended didn't exist, although he knew that Amanda and Jacob were fond of them, and loved them like a full brother and sister. Adam didn't want to know about them. He had never forgiven Rachel for her betrayal, and never would. He had concluded years before that, given the opportunity, all women were bitches. His mother had nagged his father constantly, and was disrespectful to him. His father had dealt with the constant barrage of verbal abuse with silence. His sister was subtler than their mother, and got everything she wanted by whining. On the rare occasions when she didn't, she got out her claws and fangs and got vicious. The only way to handle a woman, as far as Adam was concerned, was to find a dumb one, keep her at arm's length, and move on quickly. Everything was fine, as long as he kept moving. The only time he stopped to smell the roses, or let his guard down, was on the boat with Charlie and Gray, or with his children.

“The shops close for lunch at one,” Charlie reminded him. “We can go in this afternoon when they open.” Adam remembered that they didn't reopen until three-thirty or four. And it was too early to have lunch.

They had just had breakfast, even though all Adam had had, after the excesses of the night before, was a roll and coffee. He had a nervous stomach, had had an ulcer years before, and rarely ate much. It was the price he paid willingly for being in a stressful business. After all these years, negotiating contracts for athletes and major stars, he thrived on the excitement and loved it. He bailed them out of jail, got them on the teams they wanted, signed them on for concert tours, negotiated their divorces, paid palimony to their mistresses, and drew up support agreements for their children born out of wedlock. They kept him busy, stressed, and happy. And now he was finally on vacation. He took two a year, one on Charlie's boat for the month of August, which was a sacred commitment to him, and a week on the boat with him again in winter, in the Caribbean. Gray never joined them then, he had bad memories of the Caribbean from when he had lived there with his parents, and said nothing could induce him to go back there. And at the end of August each year, Adam spent a week traveling in Europe with his children. As always, he was meeting them at the end of this trip. His plane was picking them up in New York, stopping in Nice for him, and then the three of them would go to London for a week.

“What do you say we pull out and sit at anchor for a while? We can anchor off the beach, and go in to lunch at Club 55 with the tender,” Charlie suggested, and they nodded in unison. It was what they usually did in St. Tropez.

Charlie had all the appropriate toys on board for guests—water skis, Jet Skis, a small sailboat, windsurfing boards, and scuba equipment. But most of the time, the three men enjoyed being lazy. The time they shared was mostly spent on lunches, dinner, women, drinking, and a little swimming. And a lot of sleeping. Especially Adam, who always arrived exhausted, and said the only place he ever slept decently was on Charlie's boat in August. It was the one time of the year when he had no worries. He still got faxes from his office every day, and e-mails, which he checked regularly. But his secretaries, assistants, and partners knew not to bother him more than they absolutely had to in August. And if they did, God help them. It was the only time when Adam took his hands off the controls, and actually tried not to think about his clients. Anyone who knew him well, and how hard he worked, was well aware that he needed the breather. It made him a lot nicer to deal with in September. He coasted for weeks, and even months sometimes, on the good times he had with Gray and Charlie.

The three men had met originally as a result of their philanthropic bent. Charlie's foundation had been organizing a benefit to fund a house on the Upper West Side for abused women and children. The chairman of the event had been trying to find a major rock star to donate a performance, and had contacted Adam, who represented the artist in question. Adam and Charlie had eventually had lunch in order to discuss it, and found that they genuinely admired each other. By the time the event had taken place, the two men had become fast friends.

Adam had actually gotten the rock star he represented to donate a million-dollar performance, which was unheard-of—but he had done it. One of Gray's paintings was auctioned off at the same event, which he had donated himself, a major sacrifice for him, since it represented six months of his income. After the event, he had volunteered to paint a mural at the safe house Charlie's foundation had funded. He had met Charlie then, and Adam when Charlie invited both him and Gray to his apartment to dinner to thank them. The three men couldn't have been more different but, in spite of that, had discovered a common bond, in the causes they cared about, and the fact that none of them were married, or seriously involved with anyone at the time. Adam had just gone through his divorce. Charlie was between engagements and invited both of them on the boat he had then, to keep him company during the month of August, when he had planned to be on it for his honeymoon. He thought a trip with the two men might be a pleasant distraction, and it had turned out better than he'd hoped. They'd had a fantastic time. The girl Gray had been going out with had attempted suicide in June, and left with one of his art students in July. By August, he had been greatly relieved to leave town, and grateful for the opportunity Charlie offered to do so. Gray had been even more broke than usual at the time. And Adam had had a tough spring, with two major athletes sustaining injuries, and a world-class band canceling a concert tour, which had spawned a dozen lawsuits. The trip to Europe on Charlie's yacht had been perfect. And it had been their annual junket since then. This year promised to be no different. St. Tropez, Monte Carlo for a little gambling, Portofino, Sardinia, Capri, and wherever they felt like stopping in between. They had been on the boat for only two days, and all three men were thrilled to be there. Charlie thoroughly enjoyed their company, just as they did his. And the Blue Moon was the ideal venue for their shared mischief and fun.

“So what'll it be, boys? Club 55 for lunch, and a little swimming first?” Charlie pressed, so he could let the captain know their plans.

“Yeah, what the hell, I guess so,” Adam said, rolling his eyes, as his French cell phone rang and he ignored it. He could listen to the message later. He carried only one while in Europe, a vast improvement over the battery of phones and papers he carried in New York. “It's tough work, but someone has to do it.” He grinned.

“Bloody Mary, anyone?” Charlie inquired with feigned innocence, as he signaled to the steward that they'd be leaving. The purser, who'd been standing by, a handsome young man from New Zealand, nodded, then disappeared to tell the captain, and make the lunch reservation. He didn't need to ask anything more. He knew Charlie would want to go ashore for lunch at two-thirty. Most of the time he preferred eating on board, but the scene in St. Tropez was too tempting. And everyone who was anyone went to Club 55 for lunch, just as they went to Spoon these days for dinner.

“Make mine a virgin Bloody Mary,” Gray said as he smiled at the steward. “I thought I'd postpone my trip to rehab for a few days.”

“Make mine hot and spicy, and come to think of it, make mine with tequila,” Adam said with a broad grin as Charlie laughed.

“I'll have a Bellini,” Charlie said—they were peach juice and champagne, and an easy way to start a day of decadence. Charlie had a fondness for Cuban cigars and good champagne. They had a lot of both on board.

All three men sat drinking and relaxing on deck as they motored carefully away from the port, avoiding the many smaller boats and the daily tour boats filled with gawkers who snapped their picture as they drove by. The usual flock of paparazzi were huddled together at the end of the quai, waiting for big yachts to come into port, so they could see who was on board. They followed celebrities on motorbikes, hounding them every step of the way, and they took a last picture of Blue Moon as she sailed away, assuming correctly that the superyacht would be back that night. Most of the time they took photographs of Charlie as he strolled through town, but he rarely if ever gave them fodder for the tabloids. Aside from the immense opulence and size of his yacht, Charlie led a relatively quiet life, and avoided scandal at all costs. He was just a very rich man, traveling with two friends, whom no one reading the tabloids had ever heard about. Even with the stars Adam knew and represented, he always stayed in the background. And Gray Hawk was just a starving artist. They were three bachelors, and devoted friends, out to have some fun for the month of August.

They swam for half an hour before lunch. Afterward, Adam took out one of the Jet Skis to take a tour around the other boats, and work off some of his energy, while Gray slept on the deck, and Charlie smoked one of his Cuban cigars. It was the perfect life. At two-thirty they took the tender to lunch at Club 55. Alain