Sarah wanted to take Duane somewhere without telling him where.

"To get me drunk, that's why," he guessed. "So you are driving."

She smiled.

They went to a dock and took a boat over to Windermere.

"What have you got to do with that spook house?" Duane asked. He had the typical attitude of most Port Charles citizens who did not know the Cassidines.

"I was friends with Nikolas in high school, and we used to ride horses together," she said.

They went to the stables once they got to the island.

"This is my horse," she said. "My parents shipped her here. The Cassidines are going to keep exercising her for me. Until I can ride her again." She petted the horse a bit. "I didn't know I'd get her back so soon," Sarah said.

"She was in Colorado?"

"Yes. I only hope I'll be able to ride again, someday."

"If you want to, you will." He petted the horse, too. Then he took Sarah in his arms.

This touched her, somehow, the way he did it.

"What is her name?" he asked.

"Mo'ehno'ha – Cheyenne for horse."

"Say that again?"

"Mo – eh – no – ha," she petted the horse again, her other arm around Duane.

"You call her that every time?"

"No, just Noha."

"Noha. I can do that."

"OK," she giggled and held him close. "Maybe I'll get to teach you how to ride, someday."

"I'm not too old to learn?"

"Never."

They went back across the lake, and then to Jake's. They played pool for awhile. She was really good at it. Again he noticed how steady her hands were. He asked her if she wanted to dance.

"You're a good dancer," she said, slowing down for a slower song. She leaned towards him, resting her head on his shoulder.

"That's why I asked you. To get away from losing at pool."

She laughed, and said, "I'd rather hold you like this than beat you at pool."

"This is an out of the way place," he said. "I'll work up to the Port Charles Grill, I promise."

"It's in Port Charles," she said. "Not Canada, or Rochester or Buffalo. Progress is progress. I'm happy."

"Is it hard, being in your first year?" he asked. "I remember mine was. I came home from the courthouse every day with a huge headache."

"It's not hard, really. It's easier than school. Because you're doing something? It's fascinating. There's this big advantage. Everyone and everything supports you. What you're doing, someone is opposing you all day."

"That's it. I never thought of it. But that's it. You can't accomplish anything without a fight. I think I learned to look at it as accomplishing something by being in the fight."

"That's your purpose."

"Right, to be in it. So if I fought all day, I accomplished something."

"When you get home the last thing you need is opposition."

"Yes, that must have made me terrible to live with."

"Oh, no. No."

"I don't mind being argued with," he said. "I just don't like it to be right away. Right when I comes in the door. Somebody who greats you at the door with an immediate problem and it just kills you. It is the same at the office. Secretaries learned not to do it. They'd wait awhile. That's how I could tell they were getting good at the job."

"How did they learn this?" she grinned. "Did you beat them?"

"I must have snapped at them, or yelled at them. I overheard one of them complaining once. She said to another, 'he got so mad, he almost bit me.'"

"She could have been talking about her husband or a client."

"I knew it was me because the other responded saying that working here was stressful, you never knew when the lion was going to come back from court and bite you."

Sarah threw back her head and laughed. "And we know who the lion was."

"It seems to work better if it is a stressful atmosphere. So the secretaries who last are the ones that can see humor in it. Sometimes I feel like I am deliberately creating a scene. They get this look when they 'get it' so that they don't get upset any longer and just join in, so to speak."

"Or if they can see the humor in the IRS coming to seize the desks."

He looked at her.

"This is a very small town, and I was talking with Quinn the other day. You know, Valerie's friend? She's a nurse now."

"Oh," he smiled.

"She told another nurse and I how your wife married a guy that other nurse had dated in the past, so you see, there's no escape from thesize of this town. So now I know, which I would have known without asking or even ever having met you, about how you got your family millions of dollars in debt. Quinn was a kid and she was there with Valerie when your wife yelled at you about it, and Yvonne started singing about it and she is still singing about it."

"Oh, so years later that fight is discussed at the hospital."

"Yes, people are still talking about you and the IRS. Was it a big battle? I'm sure it was. It is legendary, after all."

"It was the office that was in debt, not the family. And the IRS eventually paid me back when the tax court held in favor of my deductions."

"OK," Sarah said, laughing.

"Allison is always over-dramatic. A check from the IRS is not as dramatic as the IRS agents coming to the house."

"Surely not!" Sarah grinned. He was looking at her as if to see her reaction. "No, the drama is definitely all in the government agents knocking on the door."

"The office being in debt she sees as herself being in debt when that's not so."

"She filed her own taxes, right? According to Quinn, anyway."

"She filed married filing separately, because that was going to keep the IRS from seizing her wages, that's what she thought, but I'm not sure that's true."

"Oh you're not are you? And when she married you, she was too young and naïve to think of a pre-nup."

"Yes, anyone who married me really should have thought of that."

"But the case must have paid off?"

"Yes. And Allison missed that point, too. Kept going on about how she had small children and I put them at risk. That one annoys me. To this day she will be talking to me about one of the girls and use terms like 'my daughters' or 'my children.' When she does that I feel like she is not referring to mine. Some other kids she has stashed away somewhere."

"I wonder if Allison was smart enough for you. I don't mean to say she is not intelligent, I don't know her. Could be, though?"

"I think it is that way. Whenever I tried to explain, it didn't work."

"Or maybe you didn't understandthe emotional fall out. It stressed her out."

"That could be, too. That probably is true."

"She couldn't know how certain you felt about the case."

"Yes, and I was immature too. I probably took that as a lack of faith in me, something like that. Oh," he said, leaning his head against hers. "I shouldn't complain about Allison to you."

"It's OK, baby," she said. "It's a big part of your life. I want to know about your life."

"Thank you. There's yours, too."

She kissed him lightly. "I found this quote for you," she said. "Younger women are better, because their stories are shorter."

"Shorter does not mean less interesting."

"Thank you," she said. "That was nice."

"See, I can be nice."

"We'll see if your secretaries will agree to that."

He laughed. "The longer they are there, the more they like me. Sort of the opposite of Allison."

"Awww," she said, and pulled him closer. "The poor lion."