The necessity for doing such a thing made him resentful; knowing he was completely in the wrong made him self-righteous. Full awareness of all that, understanding the workings of his own psyche, made him tense and cross. He argued with himself. True, he was a grown man, he had no business being so inconsiderate and selfish. But-he was a grown man, and if he wanted to spend an evening in pleasant intimacy with a beautiful woman in the privacy of his own home, he had a right to do so, didn’t he? Of course he did. But…

Street parking was hard to come by in Ethan’s neighborhood, since most of the row houses lacked either garages or driveways. For security purposes, however, the Service had designated and the city had so marked the area in front of Ethan’s building as a strictly enforced tow-away No Parking zone. He pulled the SUV into the empty space, stopped and turned off the motor.

“This is it,” he said. “I live on the second floor. Tom and Carl occupy the first. Third floor’s empty.”

He got out of the car and went around to help Phoenix with the food. He had the door open and was leaning over to reach for a bag when a big brown hand closed on the window frame. A deep voice snapped in a quiet Southern accent, “Watch your head.”

Phoenix’s eyes met Ethan’s, then slid past him and upward. “Aye aye, sir,” she murmured cheekily, husky with laughter.

As Ethan moved back to make room for her to get out of the car, he glanced at the Secret Service agent. He wasn’t expecting to see amusement in Tom Applegate’s impassive face, and he wasn’t disappointed. “Ah…about the car-” he began.

“Carl called.” Casting a quick look in all directions, the agent slammed the SUV’s door, then, without actually touching them, managed to herd both Ethan and Phoenix across the sidewalk and up the steps. “He’s out looking for you now.”

“Ah. Look, I’m sorry,” Ethan said, and meant it even though his voice probably didn’t sound like it. Once everyone was safe inside the vestibule, he turned to the agent and added in an undertone, “Please tell me you didn’t call my dad.”

Dead serious, Applegate replied, “No, sir, not yet. I was gonna give you another fifteen minutes.” Behind him, Phoenix smothered laughter with her hand.

“The car belongs to her sound man,” Ethan said. “Somebody’ll have to see it gets back to him. And uh…she’ll be needing a ride home…eventually.” He coughed, annoyed with himself for the twinges of embarrassment. “She, uh…doesn’t drive.”

“Sir, let us worry about the logistics.” Applegate was securing the front door.

“Yeah. Okay. Sure.” Gathering up the shreds of his pride, Ethan touched Phoenix’s elbow and they started up the stairs. After a few steps, he paused and looked back at the Secret Service agent, who was now muttering to his wrist. “Listen, shall I-”

“Just knock on my door when you’re ready.”

“Uh-huh. Well…hey, listen, would you care for some Chinese? We’ve got plenty.”

“No thank you, I’ve already eaten. You have a good evening, sir.”

Good evening? As they continued on up the stairs, Phoenix looked over at him and mouthed the word. Her eyes were shimmering with laughter…and maybe something else.

“I believe he thinks we’re settling in for the night,” Ethan said dryly. He was beyond being humiliated by this sort of thing.

“Hmm,” she murmured, “I can see why this would drive you crazy.”

“Well, I look at it this way-it’s only for another year and a half.”

“A year and a half? What happens then?”

They’d reached the second-floor landing. Ethan shifted the sack he was carrying and paused with his hand on his apartment doorknob. “My father will no longer be president,” he said softly. “Nobody kidnaps the children of ex-presidents.” He turned the knob and pushed open the door, reaching for the light switch. He turned on the light, then stood back to let his “date” go ahead of him.

“Well, here we are,” he said-or some such thing. He really didn’t know what he said just then, because as he followed Phoenix, rock-and-roll legend, into his apartment his heart was sinking into a slough of dismay.

Chapter 9

“It’s a bit of a mess,” Ethan said with grand understatement, lunging forward to snatch at the several pairs of sweats draped over the couch, and the socks, running shoes and three days worth of newspapers on the floor beside it. “I, uh…didn’t know when I left here this afternoon that I was…having company.”

He heaved the gathered armload through the nearest doorway and pulled the door firmly shut upon the disasters lurking within. Then, in a heated and breathless state he could not recall having experienced since adolescence, he turned back to Phoenix.

The world-renowned legend of rock and roll was wandering through the clutter in his living room, gazing with undisguised curiosity-even fascination-at the overflowing bookshelves, the tower of CDs that had recently fallen over, strewing plastic cases like toppled dominoes across the floor beside the stereo…his old acoustic guitar propped against the wall. The untidy piles of medical journals that covered every flat surface-except for the top of the television and stereo system, which were unavailable due to the jumble of framed photographs already there-snapshots, mostly, except for Lauren’s professional wedding portrait. They were all there, his whole family: his dad and Dixie-a snapshot of the two of them laughing together, taken while his dad was still governor of Iowa. A photo of Lauren and John and their two boys on horses, with the Arizona scenery spread out behind them. A series of several beautifully composed pictures of Aunt Lucy and Uncle Mike Lanagan and their daughter, Ethan’s cousin Rose Ellen, taken on their Iowa farm by their son, Eric, who was on his way to becoming a photojournalist. One stunningly beautiful portrait done in black-and-white-also by Eric-of Great-great-aunt Gwen, who’d died peacefully the year before at the age of one hundred and five. There were others-Uncle Wood and Aunt Chris, their daughter, Kaitlin. Even a snapshot of Ethan’s mother, Elaine, with her husband, taken during a vacation somewhere in the South Seas.

Watching Phoenix as she studied the photographs one by one, Ethan was struck suddenly by a memory of her loft…its elegance, its emptiness…its loneliness. He felt his sense of dismay and embarrassment leave him, like sand running out of a sack.

Relaxed, now, quiet inside, he walked to the couch and placed the bags of Chinese food on the cushions while he cleared the coffee table of medical journals, books, newspapers and the remnants of this morning’s breakfast.

“I thought we’d eat out here, if that’s okay,” he said, setting out white cartons, paper napkins and paper-wrapped chopsticks. “The kitchen’s pretty small.” He did not add, “And very messy,” which he figured by this time she’d know was a given.

Phoenix nodded, but went on looking at the arrangement of photographs. Then, in an impulsive, uncharacteristically awkward motion, she picked one up and tilted it to show him. “This your mother?” Her voice was gruff, almost harsh.

Ethan straightened, looked and said, “Yup.” He walked toward her, breathing suspended, moving carefully and slowly, the way he might have approached an unexpectedly tame fawn in the woods.

She watched him come, her eyes never leaving his face. When he was within touching distance she turned back to the snapshot in her hands. “You look like her.”

“Well, I have her coloring, anyway. Both my sister and I got the blond hair.”

She said nothing for a while, though he sensed she wanted to; he could almost see the unasked questions hovering on the tip of her tongue. Then, abruptly, she put the snapshot back on the stereo. “Big family,” she remarked, lightly touching several of the photos as if setting them to rights.

“I guess.” Though it had never seemed so to him. Still with that feeling that he was about to attempt to pet a wild creature, he murmured, “What about you?”

“No family.” She said it lightly, blowing it away like dandelion fluff in a summer wind. She pivoted and moved away from him, a moment later pouncing on his guitar with a pleased cry, as if she’d only just discovered it.

“You did tell me you play.” She settled herself on the arm of the couch with her ankle propped on her knee, cradling his guitar across her lap. Her fingers moved on the strings, playing seemingly random chords as she looked up at him. “You said Dixie taught you, right?”

“Right.” It occurred to him as he looked at her that he ought to be feeling wonderment of some sort-this was Phoenix, sitting in his living room, playing his guitar. Instead, he felt an indefinable tenderness that was intertwined somehow with sorrow, and a frustrating sense that he was close…so close to understanding something of profound importance about this woman named Joanna Dunn.

She smiled to herself as she played; her eyes, shielded from him by the heavy fall of her lashes, were only an elusive twinkle, like stars glimpsed through a canopy of trees. No longer just random wanderings, the melody she was playing was familiar to him-a lullaby, if he wasn’t mistaken, something about a mockingbird. An odd and unexpected song for Phoenix to choose, he thought. Out of all the songs in the world, an old folk lullaby.

He hummed along, then sang a few bars very softly, and felt the quiver of a powerful but nameless emotion deep inside his chest when after a moment she joined him.

“Did your mother sing that to you when you were small?” he asked when the words he could remember ran out. Reaching…reaching with a gentle and reassuring hand toward the fawn in the forest.

Still softly playing, she said without looking up, “I don’t remember my mother.”