White, liberal, awash in chagrin, Ethan stammered, “Well, uh…I mean, I just thought-”

“I’m six foot seven and black-what do you think?” Tom Applegate looked down at Michael, who was gazing up at him in utter awe, and winked. “North Carolina Tar Heels-NCAA champs my senior year.”

Not one to allow himself to be intimidated for very long, Michael put a hand on his hip and stuck out his jaw, aiming it upward in the general direction of the Secret Service agent’s altitude. “Hey-you know Michael Jordan?”

Ethan shrugged Tom an apology; forget those Tar Heels, man-this was the only test that mattered. He didn’t know who was more surprised-him or Michael-when Tom nodded and said, “Sure I know Michael. Played basketball with him, too. We went to high school together.”

Michael’s mouth was hanging open. He didn’t have to close it to say, “Uh-uh!”

He looked for verification to Ethan, who again shrugged his shoulders. “Hey-if Tom says so, it must be true. Secret Service agents never lie.”

Michael slanted Tom a suspicious look with one eye closed. “What’s a… S-Secret Service agent? Is that like some kind of cop?”

“Sort of.” Tom plucked the basketball from Michael’s arms. “So, you want to go shoot some hoops, or not?”

He gave Ethan a look, and as they began to move along the jogging path together, Michael sandwiched between them, muttered under his breath, “Sir…straight ahead, about…ten o’clock? Just to the left of that tree…”

His heart rate mysteriously accelerating, Ethan followed the agent’s directions. A woman was standing there, casually watching them from the shade of some pin oak trees, one shoulder leaning against a lichen-encrusted trunk. She was tall and willowy, and wore a long white skirt of some kind of gauzy material that started low on her hips, with a white stretchy top that left her shoulders and most of her middle bare. A white cowboy hat worn straight on her head shadowed her face and completely hid her hair.

Ethan looked back at Tom, eyebrows raised in question. Tom lifted a hand and spoke briefly to his wristwatch, then nodded. “Go ahead-Carl’s got you covered.”

Ethan muttered, “Thanks,” gave Michael’s shoulder a squeeze and added, “Catch up with you in a few minutes.” then angled off the path, jogging across the grass toward the trees. The smell of crushed grass drifted up from his feet, filling his senses and adding itself to the list of things he knew he would ever afterward associate with Phoenix.

Still twenty feet or so away from her, for reasons he didn’t entirely understand he paused, bent down and plucked a dandelion from the grass. He straightened and stood looking at her, holding the stem of the fragile white puffball in his fingers.

He didn’t know what to make of her-or of himself, and the way he felt, seeing her. He thought of all he knew about her-and how little. He knew that, however unintentionally, he’d made her want him, that last night’s kiss had been as real for her as for him. But real for whom? Whom had he kissed last night, Joanna, or Phoenix? The way he understood it, Phoenix wasn’t even a real person, she was a persona, an invention, a collection of personalities that could be changed at will to fit the demands of a fickle record-buying public. A man would have to be insane to allow himself to fall for one of them, when she might be gone tomorrow…like a dandelion in a puff of wind.

And as for Joanna…he had no idea in the world who she was, much less how to find her again.

She smiled when he started forward again, but crookedly. “I wondered when you were going to notice me.”

He smiled back, the same way, and nodded, taking in her costume. “Another nice disguise.”

She hitched one shoulder as she pushed away from the tree. “I prefer to think of it as protective coloring.”

“Whatever it is, it didn’t fool Tom for a minute-he’s the one who spotted you.”

“Yeah, well, that’s his job.” She held out her hand when she saw the dandelion. “Is that for me?”

He offered it to her with a curious reluctance, his heartbeat tapping in quick time at the base of his throat. “If you want it,” he said. She took it from him, holding it as he had been, with the delicate stem between two fingers and thumb. He expected that she would immediately lift it to her lips and blow it to pieces.

She did raise it to her face, but instead of blowing the fluff away, cupped her other hand around it as if to protect it from stray breezes while she studied it. Her features were grave and still. Then her lashes lifted and her eyes came back to Ethan, and he was caught off-guard by the sadness in them. “It’s so perfect, isn’t it? By tomorrow it will be gone, you know.”

He nodded, a lump coming into his throat. “That’s true.” What was she telling him? A warning? That whatever this was between them would be gone tomorrow, too? That, he already knew.

“I guess…some things you just have to enjoy while you have them,” she said on a lightening breath.

They began walking by mutual unspoken consent, it seemed, through the trees, paralleling the jogging path, Phoenix still holding the dandelion with a hand cupped protectively around it.

“I wasn’t stalking you, you know,” she said after a moment, flashing him a smile. “I was just…curious.”

“To see if I was really going to the park…or who I was going with?” Ethan said, teasing her.

She dismissed that with a little spurt of laughter. As if… She aimed a smile at her sandaled feet as though she found it entertaining to watch them play peekaboo with the hem of her skirt. “No, actually, I wanted to see what ‘regular’ people do on a Saturday in the park.”

“Well,” Ethan said, looking around as they walked, “as you can see, that covers a pretty wide range.”

Her gaze followed the same path his had taken, touching on groping lovers, picnicking families, joggers, bicyclists, in-line skaters, a toddler chasing squirrels, a young man throwing a Frisbee to a dog wearing a bandanna around his neck, and a group of out-of-shape men with their shirts off courting heart attacks with a game of touch football in the muggy heat.

She nodded toward a family setting out food on a table nearby. “I actually thought about that-bringing a picnic.”

Ethan grinned broadly at the thought of Phoenix toting a picnic basket. Little Red Ridinghood? Look out, Wolf! “You did?”

She nodded. “Yup. Then I remembered I don’t own a picnic basket. Or anything to put in one, for that matter. Kind of put a damper on the whole idea.” Her smile turned wry. She gave a shrug that seemed defensive, somehow, and looked away. “So-I just came. Without even so much as a bottle of water. Which reminds me-I’m thirsty. You don’t suppose…”

“There’s probably a drinking fountain around here somewhere.” A thought struck him. “By the way, how did you come? Did somebody bring you? How did you know which park?”

She gave him a look that managed to be both direct and secretive. “I took a cab,” she said evenly. “And, I told the driver to take me to the park that’s closest to South Church Street-that’s where your clinic is, right? Must be, because here I am. And here you are…” She was silent for a moment, once again watching her feet flash rhythmically in and out of view. Then she threw him another look, an altogether different one. Uncertain…almost shy. “You don’t mind, do you? That I came? Because if it’s not okay, just say so. I’ll go.” Her voice was gruff but her gaze was unflinching, and it came to Ethan that in a way she was opening herself to him, offering her vulnerability like a gift.

Unbelievably touched, he thought of the dandelion she still held cupped in her hands, and for the first time it occurred to him that perhaps it wasn’t what was between them she was symbolically protecting, but only her own fragile self.

“Of course it’s okay. I’m glad you came,” he said softly. And reached over and took her hand.

The dandelion, suddenly robbed of its buffer, caught a capricious breeze and exploded in a tiny blizzard of fluff. Phoenix gave a stricken cry and halted, her free hand making an involuntary movement toward the drifting feathers, as if trying to catch them, to bring them all back somehow, if only she could…

Ethan caught her hand and, holding it tightly together with its mate, turned her toward him. “It’s all right,” he said in a fierce and unfamiliar voice, words that hurt his throat, “I’ll get you another.”

“Hey-nothing lasts forever.” She said it lightly, but in the shadows beneath the brim of her hat, the skin around her eyes had a damp and fragile look.

He didn’t know what to say to that. He wanted to deny it, argue the point, but didn’t see how he could. The fact was, nothing did last forever. So he just looked at her. And then, because her lips looked so soft…so tender and sweet…he leaned over, tilted his head to avoid the hat brim, and gently kissed her.

He heard-no, felt-the small intake of breath…as if, he thought, he’d caught her by surprise; the slightest trembling, as if she were a maiden unaccustomed to being kissed. And he suddenly remembered what her piano man, Rupert Dove, had told him.

“What you got to understand about Phoenix is, her heart’s still a virgin…”

He thought about that, and about the dandelion, while he held her hands enfolded and tucked between his chest and hers, and lightly brushed her warm, soft lips with his. He drew back to find that her eyes were bright and sharp with panic.

“I don’t know what to do about you, Doc,” she said fiercely. She pulled her hands from his and moved away, and he let her go, not following until there was an arm’s length distance between them.

“You got to go slow…and expect some resistance.”