Charlotte held out her hand to him. "Please, will you let me try to convince you?"

He looked at her fingers, saw her tears, but didn't reach to take her hand. His face was so serious. "Will you marry me after, even when I tell you that I still have to leave?"

She couldn't deceive him and she let her hand drop to the blanket below. "No."

Vince nodded. "Do you ..." He cleared his throat. "Do you honestly love me, Charlie?"

She didn't want to answer that, but her silence was just as revealing.

"Ah," he said.

"I don't want you to die," she told him.

"That's what this is really about, isn't it?" he asked. He laughed softly. "Wow. You really don't want me to die, huh? My G.o.d."

"Is that so awful?" she said. "I care about you, Vince, I doa""

"But you still love James."

She couldn't deny that.

"And yet you're willing to ... to give yourself to me as some kind of prize. Some kind of virgin sacrifice. You're the sacrifice and I'm the virgina"that's a nice twist, huh? But I'm supposed to be so grateful to you and so enthralled that I simply throw away everything I believe in because making love to you is so great?"

"You're twisting it all around."

"Am I?" he asked.

She climbed out of bed, wanting him to understand. "You don't know what it was like, waiting for news after Pearl Harbor was attacked. I can't do that again. I can't spend the next five years or however long this awful war lasts terrified that I'm going to get another of those telegrams. And I am not going to bury another husband."

"You're not going to have another husband," he told her, quiet again, "until you manage to bury your first. G.o.d, you're beautiful, but I want more than your body, Charlotte." He turned away from her. "I think you better go."

She went.

Back to her room where, knowing how thin the walls in this house were, she cried as quietly as she could.

"So you're my consolation prize."

Brooke Bryant was more than just a little bit drunk. Joan could see it in her eyes and in the looseness of her movements as she held out her hand to Muldoon in greeting.

Muldoon glanced at Joan before he answered Brooke. "Yes, ma'am. That seems to be what I am."

"You're a little young," Brooke said.

The staff from the White House had discussed the Brooke-Muldoon age difference for several hours. Considering the alternatives, it was decided that it would be addressed in their press releases. They would call Brooke "young at heart," and Muldoon would be a "mature young officer accustomed to a great deal of responsibility." Whatever they did, though, the fifteen-year difference would be noticed and commented on. On late-night TY Brooke would probably be the b.u.t.t of more than one cradle-robbing joke because of it. But the positive press far outweighed the negative in this case.

"Although someone with all those medals on his chest can't be too young, can he?" Brooke continued. "So sure, why the h.e.l.l not?"

"My thoughts exactly," Muldoon said, again with another look in Joan's direction. When he looked back at Brooke, he bestowed his best smile upon her. It wasn't as good as his genuine one, but it was pretty d.a.m.n close. "You look beautiful tonight, ma'am."

Her gown was a deep shade of red that few women could wear. Brooke managed, as she always did, to look amazing. The gown was low cut and it seemed to be held on by a single tied bow in the back. When Joan first saw what Brooke was wearing, she'd started praying that the bow didn't accidentally come undone while she was greeting Admirals Tucker and Crowley.

There was a picture she didn't want on page one of USA Today.

"Thank you, darling," Brooke said. "So do you. Although, if we're going to fool anyone into thinking we've been f.u.c.king for weeks now, you might want to call me something other than ma 'am. Unless we want the press to speculate on the intimate details of our so-called relationship. Of course, maybe we should drop them a few hints." She turned to look for d.i.c.k. "What do you think, d.i.c.k? How about if Lieutenant Muldoon mentions to the press that I'm particularly good at giving head? Because surely the idea of me going down on a hero would boost my father's popularity rating."

Okay.

Myra and d.i.c.k pulled Brooke aside, as Joan took Muldoon's arm and dragged him offa few feet.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "She's not usually like this. She's drunk."

"She's p.i.s.sed at being manipulated. I can relate."

"Will you do me a favor? When you get downstairs, try to keep her from having another drink."

Muldoon laughed. "She's a grown-up. I can't make her do anything she doesn't want to doa"including not drink."

"You can steer her away from the bar," Joan said. "Please?"

He didn't answer right away. He just stood there looking at her. "I don't think I owe you any favors right now," he finally said.

Oh, G.o.d. Joan closed her eyes briefly. She felt terrible. "I've apologized, Michael. I've tried to explain that I didn't mean for any of this to happena""

"Except for the part where I escort Brooke to this party," he interrupted. "That was your idea, thanks so much."

"One you didn't seem to mind," she countered sharply. "Especially when you called me up and asked for advice on how to make sure Brooke went home with you tonight, because you thought she was so hot..." Because of her email. Which Joan had written. Which Muldoon had known that Joan had written, which really meant... that he'd thought Joan was hot?

She looked up at Muldoon and saw him watching her, waiting for her to figure it out.

"You lied to me, too," she said. It was not what she should have said, but unfortunately it was the first thing to fly out of her big mouth.

"No," he said. "Not really. I was just being stupid. I got it into my head that maybe you'd get jealous or, shoot, I don't know. Notice me at least. I was going to come back here and lay it on the linea"tell you I'm crazy about you. Make it clear that I don't think of you as any kind of a sister." He laughed. "Yeah, I had it all figured out. I was going to tell you that I think you're a G.o.ddess and that I'd love to be your personal slave. That was how you put it, wasn't it? Except now that I've been handed off to Brooke as a consolation prize without a single word of protest from you, I'm not sure that I think so highly of you anymore."

Joan didn't know what to say. She didn't know what to think. She could barely even breathe. She'd received plenty of criticism and her fair share of reprimands throughout her life, but nothing had ever stabbed as deeply as Muldoon's quiet words.

And to have it come on top of the news that he was crazy about her... ?

"I'm good at carrying out orders," he continued. "Apparently tonight's involve making the world believe Brooke and I have a relationship. Okay. You got it. Can do. And who knows? Maybe by tomorrow morning, it'll be true. It can be a night of consolation prizes all around. Except for you. You get to win big, right?"

Brooke was done being lectured by Myra and d.i.c.k, and there was no time for Joan to defend herself or reb.u.t.t or even say anything to Muldoon at all.

"I've been ordered to muzzle it," Brooke said as she took his arm. "Under pain of death, I suppose. Shall we face the gauntlet with our heads held high?"

"Brooke," Joan said. "Lieutenant Muldoon is not your consolation prize. He's not any kind of a prize. He's a... a friend of mine, and I'd appreciate it if you treated him with respect."

"Don't worry, darling," Brooke called over her shoulder. Muldoon didn't even glance back. "I'll take very good care of him."

"Brooke, I'm serious!"

"I am, too," she said.

Joan followed them to the elevators, but with all the Secret Service agents piling in behind them, she had to wait for the next one. As the doors closed, Muldoon didn't even look at her. He was busy smiling at something Brooke said.

He was wrong.

Joan wasn't the one who was winning big here. She wasn't even close.

Chapter 17.

"And where exactly do you live?" Mary Lou asked.

Ihbraham pointed with the hand that wasn't holding Haley to one of a row of nondescript apartment buildings across the street from the church. "I have a studio apartment on the fifth floor. It's pretty small but it's economical. Right now I have more important things upon which to spend my money."

"I know what that's about," she told him.

They'd come down here to an AA meeting in Ihbraham's neighborhood, because when they arrived at the Catholic church up by her house, the meeting room was being painted. There was a sign directing them to another location across town, but Ihbraham shook his head. It was a part of the city he wasn't comfortable even driving through.

That was when they decided to come down here. This meeting started a full hour later than most in the city, and it was a larger, open meeting, with chairs set up in anonymous rows instead of a more intimate circle.

They'd sat in the back, near the door, in case Haley decided to go ballistic.

The meeting was crowded, and the message, although not at all new, was a good one. Don't drink tonight. Worry about tomorrow when tomorrow dawned.

Instead of fighting to the front of the room for some store-bought refreshments, and since Haley was still wide awake and at her charming best after having spent the meeting sitting on Ihbraham's lap and playing with his set of keys, they decided to go down the block to a little place that served ice cream.

As usual, many people in the meeting had lit up cigarettes immediately upon exiting the church.

"She could lose it any second," Mary Lou warned Ihbraham, pushing the stroller alongside of him as they navigated their way through the crowd. Even though it was night, the sidewalks in this part of the city were bright as day. "I can take her now, if you want."

"Haley and I have reached an understanding," Ihbraham said, giving Mary Lou one of what she had begun to think of as his nuclear-powered smiles. "If she won't pull my beard, I'll carry hera"which we all know is more fun than riding in that stroller. Isn't that right, little one?"

He turned his smile on Haley, who laughed and clapped her hands, then reached out to hug Ihbraham tightly around the neck.

For a moment he actually looked rattled. But only for a moment. Then he laughed, too.

"She really likes you," Mary Lou said. "Don't you, jelly bean?"

"I like you, too, Haley," Ihbraham told her daughter. He spoke to her as if she were full grown and able to understand his every word. He didn't talk down to her the way Bob did. Of course what Bob did was better than Sam, who just plain didn't talk to her at all.

Sure, he tickled her and flew her through the air and made raspberry noises on her neck.

Of course, Mary Lou didn't know what Sam did when she wasn't around. It was possible he discussed physics with Haley thena"but she wouldn't bet on it.

"Isn't that the best feeling in the world?" she asked Ihbraham. "To get a hug like that from someone so, I don't know, so... pure and perfect?"

"It is probably one of them," he agreed. "Yes."

"It's kind of like hugging G.o.d." Mary Lou laughed self-consciously. "Lordy, listen to me. I sound like I have a future writing sappy greeting cards. 'Course, I happen to love sappy greeting cards."

Not that she ever got more than one or two a year.

Still, she loved looking at them in the grocery store. Thinking of you... d.a.m.n, someday she wanted to get a card from someone that said Thinking of you ... on the front. Problem was, no one ever was thinking of her.

"Do you ever think of me," she asked Ihbraham, "you know, when I'm not around?"

The look he shot her was indecipherable and he didn't answer hera"at least not right away.

"I think of you at certain times, yes," he said.

"I'm sorry, that was actually a pretty dumb question," she apologized. "I shouldn't have asked, because what are you going to say? No, you never think of me at all? I mean, even if it's true..."

"It's not. At the very least, I remember you in my prayers," he told her.

Mary Lou stopped walking. "Well now, I think that that might be the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me."

"Mary Lou! Hey, it is you. I thought I saw you and Haley sitting in the back of the church."

She turned, blinking like mad to cover up the fact that her eyes had welled with tears, only to see Bob Schwegel, Insurance Sales, pushing his way out of the crowd in front of the church doors.

What was he doing here? And wasn't this awkward, considering she'd left a message on his machine telling him that she couldn't have dinner with him tonighta"that something important had come up.

He was dressed down in blue jeans and the kind of shirt Sam swore he wouldn't be caught dead wearinga"one of those nice short-sleeved polo shirts with a collar.

He'd already extended his hand to Ihbraham. "Bob Schwegel, Insurance Sales. You must be ..." Bob looked from Haley's blond curls and blue eyes to Ihbraham's jet-black hair and mahogany-colored skin and frowned slightly. "Mr. Starrett... ?"

Mary Lou shrieked with laughter. "Oh, G.o.d, no! You thought he was my ... ? No, no, this is Ihbraham Rahman. He's..."

And just then she realized just how it must look, with Ihbraham holding Haley like that, with the two of them strolling down the sidewalk, as if they werea"Lord save hera"a couple.

If she called him her friend, Bob might well a.s.sume they were intimate friendsa"and wouldn't that be mortifying. Yet if she introduced him as the guy who did the neighbors' yard work, well, that wouldn't sound too good eithera"like she was getting it on with the pool boy.

"He's my AA sponsor," she flat-out lied, because everyone in the program knew that it was seriously frowned upon for a person to have a s.e.xual relationship with her sponsor.

Ihbraham looked at her, and she felt her face heat in a blush. He didn't contradict her, though, thank goodness.

"Ah," Bob said. "Yeah, I was wondering what you were doing down here in my neck of the woods. My office is right around the corner. I attend this meeting pretty often because it starts at eight o'clocka"I can work late if I have to."

"I didn't know you were in the program," she said.

"For just over a year now." He smiled at her. "It took the breakup of my marriage to get me in the door. Too little, too late, my ex says. I don't think I agree."

"It's never too late." Mary Lou reached over to keep Haley from grabbing Ihbraham's earring. "Sorry," she told him before turning back to Bob. "I got really tanked a few times when I was first pregnant with Haley. But then my downstairs neighbor gave me this article on FASa"fetal alcohol syndrome. She was like, 'Look what you've gone and done.' "