Gin rummy.

It was pretty surreal.

Vince, clad in her dead husband's pajamas, sat on the bed with Charlie, holding a handful of cards while the room blazed with light both electric and candle-powered.

She'd pulled up the bedspread to make it lie flat so they could use the bed as a tablea"the way they'd played cards all those days when he was recovering from being ill.

Neither of them mentioned the fact that just last night, she'd climbed beneath those very covers with him and begged him to...

Ah, G.o.d, he still wanted her. He loved her.

But the sad truth was, she didn't love him.

Maybe it would be enougha"his loving her.

Thunder boomed, closer now, and she surely couldn't help but notice the droplet of sweat that slid down past his right ear. At least his hands didn't shake. Too much. He fumbled only a card or two.

"Who's Ray?" she asked as she discarded the seven of hearts.

When he didn't answer right away, she glanced up at him.

"You called me Ray when I was trying to wake you up. You've mentioned him before."

"He was a friend of mine," Vince told her, drawing the nine of spades and discarding it immediately. "A good friend. He died at Tarawa."

"How did he die?" she asked.

"You don't want to know." Thunder. s.h.i.t, this time he dropped his entire hand.

She covered her eyes because some of the cards had fallen face up. "Maybe you should let me decide that for myself," she countered tartly. "You think you're doing me favors by keeping things from me, Vince, but you're not. How can I begin to understand why you want to go back, if you tell me these polite, censored versions of what it was like?"

The thunder was moving closer, and outside of the house the wind picked up, rattling the windows nearly as much as he was rattled by her presence.

"Okay," he said, giving up on his attempt to rearrange his cards. He threw them down onto the bed. "Okay, you want to know how Ray died? His head was blown off, okay? It was ripped from his neck. One second I was shouting instructions to hima"he was helping a bunch of men from our unit get to sh.o.r.ea"and the next thing I knew I was covered with his blood and his brains and pieces of his skull. And you know what the really stupid thing was?"

Her face was pale and her eyes were enormous, and he knew he shouldn't be telling her any of this, but now that he'd started, he couldn't stop.

"I started screaming for the medicsa"like they were going to be able to patch him back up. Like they were going to help. But even if they could have, all of our unit's medics were already dead. None of them even made it to sh.o.r.e. Two of them stepped out of the Higgins boats and drowned. There's something that I left out of the polite version. The water out by that reef was too G.o.dd.a.m.n deep," he told her. "Hundreds of men waded through both chest-deep water and j.a.panese machine-gun fire, and the water proved to be the deadliest. They G.o.dd.a.m.n walked right into an underwater trough, is that what you want to hear? With eighty pounds of gear, those men sank. Even the strongest swimmers didn't stand a chance in water that was well over their heads, with all that gear on their backs, with all those other men struggling around them, pulling them down. And most of those farm boys couldn't swim a single stroke to save their lives."

Charlie looked as if she were going to burst into tears. "My G.o.d, they drowned?"

"Do you know why we didn't drown?" Vince's voice shook. "Me and Ray?" He didn't wait for her to answer. "Because those dead Marines finally filled in that trough enough to keep the rest of us from going under. We were far enough back in the line, and we walked over them. We walked over their bodies, Charles."

He was the one who started to cry.

"Oh, G.o.d, Vince." She crawled across the bed to him.

"Please," he said, d.a.m.n near shaking her as she came close enough to grab hold of. "You've got to help me talk to Senator Howard, or, Jesus, someone, so this doesn't ever happen again. You said you could get him to pull strings..."

She was crying, too, as she clung to him, as he clung to her. "I don't want you to go. Don't go back! Please don't go back to that!"

"I don't want to," he confessed. "But, Jesus G.o.d, I have to. Don't you see?"

"I know," she wept. "I know. I just... I don't want to lose you, too."

"You'll never lose me," he told her, pushing her hair back from her face, away from his face, too. "I love you too much, Charlottea"I'll come back to you, I swear I will come back."

"When you say it like that," she said as she looked up at him, "I can almost believe you. But I know that's not something you can promise." Her eyes welled with a fresh rush of tears.

And then she kissed him.

The thunderstorm didn't move any closer that night. It never came near enough to distract him completely.

Which was his ultimate downfall.

Yeah, blame it on the weather rather than the fact that Charlie looked and moved like a movie star, that her smile was the definition of glorious, anda"most important of alla" that beneath her brisk, no-nonsense att.i.tude resided a truly kind woman with infinite patience and a bone-deep sweetness of spirit.

Vince had replayed their first night together tens of thousands of tunes over the yearsa"particularly the war yearsa" that followed. And no matter how often he ran that memory, he couldn't for the life of him figure out how Charlotte had gotten out of that robe and nightgown so quickly. All he knew was that she was kissing him and he was kissing her, and then, holy G.o.d, there was all that incredible smooth skin beneath his hands, pressed against his own miraculously naked body.

It happened so quickly. In a heartbeat, she was touching him, guiding him, and then...

Every clich ever written was true. Every overused description, every tired line of poetry that waxed rhapsodic about making love, was right on the money.

There was nothing on earth that compareda"even remotelya"to doing this act with this one incredible woman who totally owned his heart.

And who loved him, too, despite everything she'd said the night before. This proved that she loved hima"the fact that she would do this with him. She wouldn't do this if she didn't intend to marry him, would she?

His heart felt as swollen and as ready to burst as the part of him that was buried so deeply inside of her, so much so that he felt compelled to speak.

It was a miracle his voice worked, although he definitely sounded hoa.r.s.e and very unlike himself. "Charlotte, are you sure?"

A little late for that question, actually. Because what was he going to do if she said no?

But, "Yes," she told him. "Oh, please, oh yes!"

And then, just as he was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that there could be no better pleasure than this, he discovered, all in a rapid sequence, the true wonder of her release, his own release, and then the intense, drifting sweetness of an aftermath filled with the bone-melting satisfaction of knowing that he'd sent his seed deep inside of her.

He'd heard men talking about the fear of getting their girlfriends pregnant, about breaking into a cold sweat after the heat of the moment had pa.s.sed.

But Vince wasn't afraid. In fact, he wanteda"he prayeda" that he'd made her pregnant. Imagine that! Charlie carrying his child. He couldn't think of anything he wanted more.

It was wonderful, lying there with her, imagining their lives together.

At least it was until he opened his big mouth. "We'll take the train to Maryland tomorrow, right after you get off from work."

She seemed to wake up, to realize that they were lying naked, bodies intertwined amid the remains of their card game on top of his beda"her beda"in a room that was blazing with light.

"I'm not going to marry you, Vince," she told him, pushing him off of her.

"But..." He propped himself up onto one elbow as she scrambled to find her nightgown on the bedroom floor. She had to turn it inside out and while she did, she stood with her back to him as if to try to hide her nakedness.

"Nothing's changed," she said. "You're not going to stay. I know that. It was wrong of me to ask it of you. I know that, too." She slipped her robe back on, and when she finally turned to face him, he saw that she was working very hard not to cry.

He sat up. "Charlottea""

She backed toward the door. "Forgive me, please, for my lack of restraint tonight. It was lovely. You 're lovely. I hope you know just how lovely it was to... But I can't... Ia"

Vince stood up, and she b.u.mped into the door with her back and reached for the k.n.o.b. "Whoa," he said. "Slow down, okay? Let's sit down anda""

"There's nothing to say," she interrupted. "I knew you had expectations, but I wanted ... I wanted... I was selfish and I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry, Vince."

Charlie slipped out the door and was gone.

"Wait!" He searched for his pajamas so that he could follow her, but of course they were tangled. He cursed as he tried to jam his legs into them and nearly fell onto his face on the floor.

On the movie screen, all those years later, the actor and actressa"obviously hired because of how good they looked naked rather than for their ability to recite dialogue convincinglya"put their clothes back on effortlessly.

They were completely clean, too, after making sweaty, steamy love in that grimy, rat-infested bas.e.m.e.nt. Their hair remained perfectly styled.

The magic of Hollywood definitely wasn't with Vince that first night he'd made love to Charlotte, that was for sure.

Before he could get dressed and go after her, he'd had to peel the jack of hearts and three of clubs off his naked b.u.t.t.

"I was thinking more along the lines of getting drunk and then s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g your brains out," Joan had heard Brooke say to Muldoon. "And that sure as h.e.l.l can't hurt, darling."

"Well," he'd said in response. "That's, um ... quite an idea."

"Let's get out of here and go back upstairs as soon as possible," Brooke suggested.

How did this happen? And how could she fix it?

As Muldoon escorted Brooke across the room to introduce her to Admiral Crowley and the other military VIPs, Joan seriously considered the possibility of running after him, of tackling him around the knees if necessary.

But then what, after she got him onto the floor? What would she say?

Don't go upstairs with Brooke, because she 'd just be using you. But G.o.d, look at Brooke in that dress. If Joan were Muldoon, she probably wouldn't be too upset about being used.

She could say, I was wrong.

Hey, story of her life. Sometimes it seemed as if she spent more time wrong than right. And in this case, she wasn't even completely sure what she'd been wrong about.

She was still convinced that any kind of relationshipa" anything public, that isa"with Muldoon would be looked at askance in terms of her career. But maybe something temporary, something short term with a very definite end date, something that went on privately, behind closed and locked doors...

Yes, that was definitely what she wanted. And it sure seemed to be what he'd wanted, tooa"up to three hours ago.

The night wore on, interminably long, each minute seeming like a millennium, with absolutely no chance for her to pull Muldoon aside and beg his forgiveness.

While Muldoon and Brooke were out on the dance floor, Myra sent Joan to go talk to the reporter from Fox. An entire camera crew was there, hoping to get an interview with the "happy couple."

Every time the reporter called them that, Joan's teeth hurt.

It was impossible to talk without screaming while the music was playing, so they stepped out onto the patio, where Joan gave her four thousandth apology of the day. Brooke had no time right now. This was a pleasant social event for hera"a chance to reunite with her friend, Lieutenant Muldoon.

She gave the reporter a top-ten list of reasons why she couldn't talk to Brooke right now, careful to leave off reason number onea"that her married lover had just chosen the vice presidential candidacy over his relationship with her, and in an attempt to deal with the pain of his rejection, Brooke was totally s.h.i.t-faced drunk.

Halfway through, Joan's cell phone rang. She checked the numbera"Myra.

"Excuse me," she told the news crew. "I've got to take this."

Myra sounded stressed. "Please tell me Brooke's with you."

Uh-oh. "She's not."

Myra's response was blisteringly succinct.

"Darlings! Up here!"

The reporter spotted Brooke the same moment Joan did.

"I found her," Joan told Myra. "She's up on the balcony outside of her room."

Brooke was actually waving to get their attention. Muldoon was with her, and as Joan watched, he tried to talk to her, tried to tug her back into the hotel suite.

The video camera started rolling.

"Excuse me," Joan said loudly. "No one's given you permission toa""

"Who's your affiliate?" Brooke called down to the reporter.

"We're with Fox News, Ms. Bryant," the reporter called back. "May we ask you some questions?"

"I think you better get over here," Joan told Myra as she tried to step in front of the camera. "I'm sorry," she said to the cameraman, "you'll have to turn that off and go back inside."

"Is your camera on?" Brooke asked.

"Yes, it is," the reporter replied.

Joan tried talking directly to Brooke. "If you want to give an interview, Ms. Bryant, please let me seta""

"Good." Brooke ignored her. "Because I have a message I'd like to broadcast to my good friend John."

Oh, no. Oh, no, no. Joan tried to get in front of the lens, but the cameraman was too quick for her.

And then the reporter and some bruiser of an equipment-lugging guy was there, blocking her way.

"John, darling, I appreciate your note wishing me the very best." Brooke projected nicely with her stage voice.

"Don't make me go through you," Joan said to the three-hundred-pound man. "Because I will."