"He is just a dream, isn't he?"

"Almost too good to be true," Tara giggled. The giddiness of these two lovebirds was rubbing off on her like wet paint on a bench. She hoped she'd get rid of it soon. She had to work the next day.

"Don't tell me he's got a brother in his pocket," Tara whispered to Donna.

"If he did, I'd make him show me first," Donna giggled. They pulled apart. He was back, all legs and slim hips moving toward the table. He stopped at Tara's elbow and leaned down close.

"Happy Birthday. Didn't want to come emptyhanded. My daddy said never, ever go to anyone's spread without something' to offer."

Bill Hamilton held out a heart-shaped, black and gold box. Where on earth he'd found Valentine's candy when people were still nursing New Year's hangovers Tara couldn't imagine.

"Thanks. That's so sweet." And she meant it.

Sweeter than all the lovely gifts she'd been given over the years from admirers with more than Bill Hamilton would ever have. Putting down the dishes, Tara took the candy.

"I was wondering what we were going to do about dessert." She laughed and pulled open the top only to stop short. Her head c.o.c.ked. She looked at the man with fog-swirl eyes and held out the nearly empty box.

"Two pieces?"

"But they're the best two pieces. Marzipan," he said with a wink and a chuckle.

"Donna told me they were your favorite. I tossed the rest. Wouldn't want you to have anything that wasn't right up to snuff. Not a lady like you." Those eyes were still trained on her as she put the top back on.

"Well, thanks," Tara said, fl.u.s.tered and flattered and just slightly put off.

"That is definitely the most unusual gift I've ever received. I love it."

"I guarantee you aren't going to be forgetting this night any too soon," Bill said quietly, moving toward Donna, running his hands across the back of her neck until his fingers were coupled around her throat.

"Nothin' good should last too long.

You lose appreciation for it Ain't that so. Donna?"

Tipping her head back until her neck stretched long and taut. Bill leaned down and kissed her lips, slowly.

"Everything but us," she purred back and that delighted Bill Hamilton.

"We're better than good. We're perfect."

Donna raised her lips to be kissed again, then shot Tara a how-*bout-them-apples look.

"Can you believe this?"

Tara shook her head and chuckled.

"It's tough, I must admit." With that, she took the dishes and headed for the kitchen. A moment alone was definitely in order. For her or them, Tara wasn't quite sure.

Tara glanced at the clock. Fifteen minutes. The dishes were almost done. Every once in a while she could hear Donna laugh. Her little girl voice was getting tinnier with age. Tara closed her eyes, hoping against hope that Donna wasn't pulling her moppet act. What was charming in a sixteen-year old might drive a man like Bill Hamilton home to the range if Donna didn't watch it.

Rinsing the last of the silver, Tara leaned over and peeked through the open door. Bill and Donna still sat at the table; Bill looking like the handsome young whip he was. Donna looking more than her age. Donna the natural teller of tiny tales, and the tall-tale cowboy. Two yarn spinners happily weaving their own May-December legend.

As she retrieved the champagne flutes, Tara thought it seemed a perfect match.

"Well, what do you think?"

Tara looked over her shoulder. Donna was standing in the doorway in her short, light flowered dress. A poor choice for an Albuquerque winter.

In a nod to the nip in the air, she'd layered it over a turtleneck. Her thin legs were encased in black opaque stockings, her shoes were thick-soled boots that added two inches to her height and nothing to her panache.

"He's fabulous." She pulled down the gla.s.ses and turned around.

Donna grinned.

"You're not mad I brought him with me?"

"No, of course not." Tara laughed.

Ready for a chat. Donna settled at the kitchen table and toyed with the salt shaker.

"I'm not fooling myself, you know. He is special and I am so happy. He's funny. He's surprising. He's darn good in bed." Her enthusiasm melted into a sigh and she rested her chin on her upturned palm.

"You know, I'm glad you like Bill. It's always been important that you like my men, but it's really important you like him."

"Donna, as long as you're happy, I'm happy. If Bill's doing it for you, then that's great." Tara's eyes flicked over Donna's head toward the doorway as she joined her at the table.

"What have you done with him anyway?"

r "Nothing." A Cheshire cat grin followed.

"He thought we needed some time alone to girl talk so he's making a fire. I love a man who thinks about stuff like that."

"Better all the time," Tara agreed quietly, letting her observation dwindle to nothing.

"It's not awful for you, is it? I mean the way it was for me when I turned forty?" Donna gave Tara a little poke in the arm, misreading her silence.

She got a wry grin for her efforts.

"Nothing could be that awful." Tara rearranged the three flutes. They now sat in a line instead of a triangle and she seemed satisfied with the symmetry.

"I'm actually just glad we're not sixteen anymore.

Remember? Washington was awful, wasn't it? We were such babies."

"Yeah," Donna caught the mood and drifted with the memories.

Washington, D.C. Two girls whose fathers had been big fish in that exclusive small pond. Tara, adored by her widowed father, had hated Washington because it wasn't New Mexico. Donna's barely- there mother was consumed by Washington.

Committees and charities, luncheons and dinners, dressing for b.a.l.l.s, recovering from b.a.l.l.s, having a ball with everyone but her husband, all took precedence over her daughter.

Donna still searched for a place and people to call her own. Unfortunately, she put her faith in an odd a.s.sortment of people who used her, sometimes abused her, and left her without a thought when the happy-go-lucky, trilling-voiced little girl became a woman afraid of growing old and being alone. So Tara had given Donna a place to be herself, where no one judged her. In return, Donna had an uncanny knack for knowing when Tara's privacy bordered on reclusiveness. They saved each other from their own little quirks. Tara pushed the champagne bottle across the table, not wanting to talk old business.

"Long time ago," she sighed, "Let's enjoy the moment."

"d.a.m.n straight." Donna took the bottle, hitched up her skirt, and planted the magnum between her bird legs, as tiny a body as Tara was statuesque. She couldn't saddle a horse, but she had a fast thumb with a champagne cork.

"How long have you been seeing him?" Tara asked.

"A month and three days," Donna said. Her bottom lip disappeared between her teeth. She worked on the cork so she didn't have to look at Tara.

"Four weeks," Tara mused.

"Bet you haven't written a thing. Bet you haven't talked to your agent."

"You know me too well." The cork squeaked, but it was her voice that was right.

"Where does he live?" Silence. Donna almost had the cork out. Tara drew circles on the table.

"Is he staying at your place?"

"I'm waiting," Donna said.

"For what?" Tara lifted her hand, innocent in her ignorance.

"I'm waiting for the lecture on looking before I leap. Let's get it over with. Tell me I'm moving too fast. Point out how much I have to lose now in a palimony suit. Talk to me like a child. Tell me I don't know where his hands have been," Donna sniffed.

Startled, Tara spoke carefully. Her curiosity wasn't judgmental. All wasn't well in paradise if Donna was so defensive.

"I thought you wanted to talk about him."

"Don't be ridiculous," Donna said angrily. She worked the cork furiously, revving herself up again, charging the battery that allowed her to whirlybird over reality. With a huge pop, the cork exploded out of the bottle. Tara ducked as it ricocheted around the kitchen, narrowly missing her prized kachina that sat in a little niche high above the huge oven where her ancestors once baked their flat loaves of bread.

"Nice shot," Tara laughed, swooping in with a gla.s.s to catch the overflow before it drenched Donna's lap.

"Friends?"

"Okay." Donna feigned petulance and filled Tara's gla.s.s.

"Good?"

Tara took a sip and nodded. Donna's taste was impeccable as always. Tara put the gla.s.s down and laced her fingers around the stem, studying the simple design. Belgian crystal. Beautiful and serviceable like everydiing in the Limey family home, from the ladle that Margaret Limey had used to fill the gla.s.ses at the saloon she and her husband Jesse ran in the eighteen hundreds, to the Navajo rugs that hung on the thick adobe walls. This was history. This was permanence. This was a sense of belonging that couldn't be bought. Yet now she looked around and it seemed that much of what she loved had lost depth of meaning. She could recite the history, but not feel it. She could admire the workmanship, but not be moved by it. Tara sighed, half listening as Donna's good humor returned.

"So, tell me what's been happening with you?

Slain any dragons lately? Stood up for the poor?

Won a case for the rich?" Donna filled the other two gla.s.ses, pushing one away, ready to fulfill her role as confidante to a woman who liked to think she didn't need one.

Tara made a motion as if trying to erase the question.

"None of the above. Work and more work. I don't know where the time goes. Haven't got anything to match the prize in the other room," Tara said.

"Come on, there has to be something*someone?

Talk to me," Donna prodded.

Tara chuckled and exaggerated her melancholy.

"You're beginning to sound like me. I don't know." She crossed her arms on the table, leaned over and whispered.

"It's the weirdest thing, Donna. I go to court, argue a case, present a motion, do my paperwork, go to dinner, see people for drinks, then go home and have this been-the redone-that feeling that's driving me crazy."

Donna sat back and crossed her legs, her boot shod foot pumping up and down, stoking the burners of her mind, Tara's problem the kindling.

"Honey, every woman goes through this. But it's harder for someone like you. Someone who's all alone."

"Oh please." Tara guffawed, thoroughly entertained.

"I'm not kidding. This whole autonomous thing*men and women living on their own, no real commitment*it's against all the laws of nature. I've got a book I want you to read. It's called Living Alone: The Danger Zone."

"Donna, really." Tara rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair.

"Of all the nonsense. You're telling me I need to be married? Why? I've got a dozen male friends and a few that have been much more than just friends." Tara tsked.

"And all these friends?" Donna demanded, not to be put off.

"Where are they tonight, on your fortieth birthday? I don't see any big surprise party.

I didn't burst in on you getting ready for that date to-die-for. That table out there wasn't set up for a cozy dinner for two, was it?"

Tara raised a shoulder as if to say her solitude, like Donna's need for companionship, was by choice. Donna didn't buy it and made a sound that left no doubt.

"I don't need parties. I have flowers and good friends offering best wishes."

"It's not the same, and it's about time you faced up to it." Donna poked her finger. Tara batted her hand away and laughed. Donna was being ridiculous and Tara loved her for it. She only wished she knew when to quit.

"Tara, a committed relationship can change the way you look at everything. You need someone to wake up to every morning. You've never had a man to hold your hand, and worry with you about one thing or another day in and day out."

"I have nothing to worry about ..."

"You haven't washed someone's underwear and not minded."

"What a thrill."

"You haven't .. ."

Tara clucked.

"I haven't cooked breakfast naked, run after small children, or enjoyed the delights of picking up his shirts at the laundry."