Mandy insisted on substituting her nightgown for the T-shirt Tate gave her, even though it was long after midnight and closer to breakfast than bedtime.

“Now you’re an honorary Dallas Cowboys cheerleader,” he said as he slipped it over her head.

She admired the gaudy silver lettering on the front of her new shirt, then smiled up at him beguilingly. “Thank you, Daddy.” Yawning hugely, she retrieved Pooh Bear and dropped back onto her pillow.

“She’s learning to be a woman, all right.”

“Exactly what does that comment imply?” Avery asked him as they went into their bedroom on the other side of the parlor.

“She took the goods, but didn’t come across with a hug or a kiss.”

Avery propped her hands on her hips. “Should I warn the female voters that behind your public feminist stand on issues, you’re nothing but a rotten chauvinist at heart?”

“Please don’t. I need all the votes I can get.”

“I thought it went very well tonight.”

“Once I got there, you mean.”

“And before, too.” Her confidential inflection brought his head up. “Thank you for defending my honor, Tate.”

“You don’t have to thank me for that.”

They exchanged a long gaze before Avery turned away and began removing her clothes. She slipped into the bathroom, took a quick shower, put on a negligee, then relinquished the bathroom to Tate.

Lying in bed, Avery listened to the water running as he brushed his teeth. From sharing other hotel suites, she knew that he never replaced the towel on the bar, but always left it wadded in a damp heap beside the sink.

When he emerged from the bathroom, she turned her head, intending to tease him about that bad habit. The words were never voiced.

He was naked. His hand was on the light switch, but he was looking at her. She rose to a sitting position, an unspoken question in her eyes.

“In the past,” he said in a hoarse whisper, “I could block you out of my mind. I can’t anymore. I don’t know why. I don’t know what you’re doing now that you didn’t do before, or what you’re not doing that you once did, but I’m unable to ignore you and pretend that you don’t exist. I’ll never forgive you for that abortion, or for lying to me about it, but things like what happened tonight in the car make it easier to forget.

“Ever since that night in Dallas, I’m like an addict who’s discovered a new drug. I want you a lot, and I want you constantly. Fighting it is making me crazy and nearly impossible to live with. The last few weeks haven’t been fun for me or for anybody around me.

“So, as long as you’re my wife, I’m going to exercise my conjugal rights.” He paused momentarily. “Is there anything you have to say about that?”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“Turn out the light.”

The tension ebbed from his splendid body. A grin tugged at one corner of his lips. He switched out the light, then slid into bed and pulled her into his arms.

Her nightgown seemed to vaporize beneath his caressing hands. Before Avery had time to prepare herself for it, she was lying naked beneath him, and he was stroking her skin with his fingertips. Occasionally his lips left hers to sample a taste of throat, breast, shoulder, belly.

Desire rivered through her, a constant ebbing and flowing of sensation until even her extremities were pulsing. Her body was sensitized to each nuance of his—from the strands of hair that fell over his brow and dusted her skin each time he dipped his head for a kiss, to the power in his lean thighs that entwined with hers before gradually separating them.

When he levered himself above her, poised for entrance, she prolonged the anticipation by bracketing his rib cage between her hands and rubbing her face in his chest hair. Her lips brushed kisses across his nipples. The sound of Tate’s hoarse moan was her reward.

Hungrily, their mouths found each other again. His kisses were hot and sweet and deep… and that’s what he said of her body when he claimed it.

* * *

Mandy, riding on Tate’s shoulders, squealed as he dipped and staggered as though he were about to fall with her. She gripped double handfuls of his hair, which made him yelp.

“Shh, you two!” Avery admonished. “You’ll get us kicked out of this hotel.”

They were making their way down the long corridor from the elevator to their suite after having eaten breakfast in the restaurant downstairs. They’d left Nelson and Zee drinking coffee, but Mandy had been getting restless. The formal dining room was no place for an energetic child.

Tate passed Avery the key to their suite. They went inside. The parlor was full of busy people. “What the hell’s going on in here?” Tate asked as he swung Mandy down.

Eddy glanced up from his perusal of the morning paper and removed the Danish pastry that he’d been holding between his teeth. “We needed to meet and you have the only room with a parlor.”

“Make yourselves at home,” Tate said sarcastically.

They already had. Trays of juice, coffee, and Danish had been sent up. Fancy was polishing off a bagel as she sat crossed-legged on the bed, flipping through a fashion magazine. Dorothy Rae was sipping what looked like a Bloody Mary and staring vacantly out the window. Jack was on the phone, a finger plugging one ear. Ralph was watching the “Today Show.” Dirk was riffling through Tate’s closet with the appraising eye of a career shopper at a clearance sale.

“You got a good review last night,” Eddy commented around the sweet roll.

“Good.”

“I’ll take Mandy into the other room.” Avery placed her hands on the child’s shoulders and steered her toward the connecting door.

“No, you stay,” Dirk said, turning away from the closet. “No hard feelings about last night, okay? We’ve all been under a lot of pressure. Now the air’s been cleared.”

The man was insufferable. Avery wanted to slap the phony, ingratiating smile off his dour face. She looked at Tate. Ignoring the campaign expert, he told her, “I guess you’d better stick around.”

Jack hung up the phone. “All set. Tate’s got a live interview on channel five at five o’clock. We need to have him there no later than four-thirty.”

“Great,” Ralph said, rubbing his hands together. “Any word from the Dallas stations?”

“I’ve got calls in.”

Someone knocked on the door. It was Nelson and Zee. A man, a stranger to Avery, was with them. Fancy bounded off the bed and embraced her grandparents in turn. Since her arrival in Fort Worth, her mood had been effervescent.

“Good morning, Fancy.” Zee cast a disapproving glance at Fancy’s denim miniskirt and red cowboy boots, but said nothing.

“Who’s he?” Tate asked, nodding at the man lingering on the threshold.

“The barber we sent for.” Dirk stepped forward and pulled the dazed man into the room. “Sit down, Tate, and let him get started. He can clip while we talk. Something conservative,” he told the barber, who whisked a blue-and-white-striped drape around Tate’s neck and took a comb to his hair.

“Here,” Ralph said, shoving a sheaf of papers beneath Tate’s nose. “Glance over these.”

“What are they?”

“Your speeches for today.”

“I’ve already written my speeches.” No one listened to or acknowledged him.

The phone rang. Jack answered. “Channel four,” he excitedly informed them, covering the mouthpiece.

“Zee, Nelson, find seats, please, and let’s get down to business. The morning’s getting away.” In his element, Dirk took the floor. “As Eddy has said, we had a terrific turnout at Billy Bob’s last night and raised a lot of campaign dollars. God knows we need them. Once momentum subsides, supporters stop contributing.”

“Even though we’re currently behind by a substantial margin, we don’t want it to look like we’re giving up,” Ralph said as he bounced the coins in his pocket.

“The people at channel four said they’d be at General Dynamics to get a sound bite of Tate’s speech, but that’s all they’ll promise,” Jack reported as he hung up the phone.

Dirk nodded. “Not great, but better than nothing.”

“See, Tate,” Ralph said, continuing as though the second conversation weren’t going on, “even if you lose, you don’t want it to look like you gave up.”

“I’m not going to lose.” He glanced at Avery and winked.

“Well, no, of course not,” Ralph stammered, laughing uncomfortably. “I only meant—”

“You’re not taking enough off,” Dirk sourly told the barber. “I said conservative.”

Tate batted the barber’s fussing hands away. “What’s this?” He pointed to a paragraph in one of the speeches that had been written for him. Again he was ignored.

“Hey, listen to this.” Eddy read a passage from the newspaper. “Dekker comes right out and calls you a rabble-rouser, Tate.”

“I think he’s running scared,” Nelson said, drawing Dirk’s attention to him.

“Nelson, I want you to be a prominent figure on the podium when Tate speaks at General Dynamics this afternoon. Those military contracts keep them in business. Since you’re an ex-flier, you’ll be a bonus.”

“Am I to go? And Mandy?” Zee asked.

“I’ll be glad to stay with Mandy,” Dorothy Rae offered.

“Everybody goes.” Dirk frowned at the empty glass in Dorothy Rae’s hand. “And everybody looks his best. Squeaky-clean America. That means you too, missy,” he said to Fancy. “No miniskirt.”

“Go screw yourself.”

“Francine Rutledge!” Nelson thundered. “You’ll be sent home promptly if you use that kind of language again.”

“Sorry,” she mumbled. “But who’s this asshole to tell me how to dress?”

Dirk, unfazed, turned to Avery. “You usually do fine as far as wardrobe goes. Don’t wear anything too flashy today. These are working people, wage earners. Tate, I picked the gray suit for you today.”

“Don’t forget to remind him about his shirt,” Ralph said.

“Oh, yes, wear a blue shirt, not white. White doesn’t photograph as well on TV.”

“All my blue shirts are dirty.”

“I told you to send them out to be laundered every day.”

“Well, I forgot, okay?” Suddenly he swiveled around and snatched the scissors from the barber’s hands. “I don’t want my hair cut any more. I like it like this.”

In a tone of voice he might have used on Mandy, Dirk said, “It’s too long, Tate.”

He was out of his chair in an instant. “Who says? The voters? Those workers out at GD? Channel five’s viewing audience? Or just you?”

Avery wanted to applaud. Unlike everyone else, she hadn’t been caught up in the pandemonium going on around her. She’d been watching Tate. The more he read of the papers Ralph had given him to study, the deeper his scowl had become. She had sensed that his temper was about to erupt and she’d been right.

He whipped the drape from around his neck, sending hair clippings flying. He fished into his pocket and came up with a fifty-dollar bill, foisted it on the barber, and walked him to the door. “Thanks a lot.” Tate shut the door on him.

When Tate turned back into the room, his expression was as ominous as the low clouds that still scuttled across the sky. “Next time, Dirk, I’ll let you know when I need a haircut, if I deem it any of your business, which, frankly, I don’t. And I would also appreciate it if you’d stay out of my closet and consult me before moving in on my family’s private quarters.”

“There was no place else to meet,” Eddy said.

“The hell there wasn’t, Eddy,” he shouted, rounding on his friend, who had dared to intervene. “This hotel has several hundred rooms. But since you’re already here,” he said, picking up the sheets of paper he’d tossed down on the dresser, “I’d like to know what the hell this is supposed to signify?”

Ralph leaned over and read a few lines. “That’s your position on the new education bill.”

“Like hell it is. This is bullshit. That’s what this is.” He slapped the sheet of paper with the back of his hand. “Whitewashed, watered down, wishy-washy bullshit.”

Zee left her chair. “I’ll take Mandy into the other room to watch TV.” She led the child away by the hand.

“I have to go potty, Grandma.”

“Okay, darling. Fancy, you might want to come with us.”

“Hell, no. I wouldn’t budge for ten million bucks,” she said from her position in the middle of the bed. She opened a fresh stick of Juicy Fruit and added it to the one already in her mouth.

When the door had been closed behind Zee and Mandy, Ralph ventured forth with a conciliatory explanation. “We simply felt, Tate, that your position on some of the campaign issues should be softened.”

“Without consulting me?” Tate demanded, bearing down on the much shorter man. “It’s my position,” he said, thumping his chest. “My position.”

“You’re trailing in the polls,” the man pointed out reasonably.

“I was doing that before you were retained to advise me. I’ve sunk lower since then.”

“Because you haven’t been taking our advice.”

“Uh-uh,” Tate said, stubbornly shaking his head. “I think it’s because I’ve been taking too much of it.”

Eddy stood up. “What are you implying, Tate?”

“Not a damn thing. I’m outright stating that I don’t need anybody to pick out my shirts and suits or hire my barbers. I’m saying that I don’t want anybody to put words in my mouth. I’m saying that I don’t want anybody softening my position until it’s so soft that even I don’t recognize it. The people who have pledged their votes to me on the basis of those positions would think I’d gone crazy. Or worse, that I had betrayed them.”

“You’re blowing this out of proportion.”

Tate confronted his brother. “It’s not your hair they’re trying to cut, Jack,” he said heatedly.

“But it might just as well be,” he fired back. “I’m in this as much as you are.”

“Then you should know how important it is to me that I’m my own man.”

“You are,” Eddy said.

“The hell I am! What’s wrong with the way I dress?” He gestured down to the clothes he’d worn to breakfast. “Do you really think it matters to those workers out at GD what color shirt I have on? Hell, no! They want to know if I’m for a strong defense program or for cutting the defense budget because my Senate vote may determine whether or not they’ll have jobs for the next several years.”

He paused to draw a breath and plowed his hand through his hair, which, Avery was glad to see, the barber hadn’t gotten too much of. “Look, guys, this is me.” He held his arms out perpendicular to his body. “This is the ticket. This is how I originally went to the Texas voters. Change me and they won’t recognize me.”

“We don’t want to change you, Tate,” Dirk said expansively. “Only make you better.”

He clapped Tate on the shoulder. Tate shrugged off his hand. “Gentlemen, I’d like to speak to my family in private, please.”

“If there’s something to discuss—”

Tate held up his hand to ward off their objections. “Please.” They moved toward the door reluctantly. Dirk shot Eddy a telling glance before they went out.

“Carole, would you pour me a cup of that coffee, please?”

“Certainly.” As she rose to do so, Tate dropped into an easy chair. She brought the requested cup of coffee and sat down on the upholstered arm of his chair. Tate took the coffee with one hand and casually draped his other over her knee.

Eddy said, “Well, that was quite a speech.”

“I tried it your way, Eddy. Against my better judgment, I let you hire them.” His gaze was direct and so was his statement. “I don’t like them.”

“I’ll talk to them, tell them to back off a little.”

“Wait,” Tate said, as Eddy headed for the door. “That’s not good enough. They don’t listen.”

“Okay, I’ll tell them that by the end of this tour we want to see drastic improvements in the polls or else.”

“Still not good enough.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

Tate looked at everyone in the room before saying, “Give them their walking papers.”

“Fire them?” Jack exclaimed. “We can’t do that.”

“Why not? We hired them, didn’t we?”

“You just don’t shrug off a company like Wakely and Foster. You’ll never be able to use them again.”

“I don’t consider that any great loss.”

“You can’t do it,” Jack said stubbornly.

Eddy pleaded, “Tate, I beg you to think about this carefully.”

“I have. I don’t like them. I don’t like what they’re trying to do.”

“Which is?” Jack’s tone was snide, his stance belligerent.

“Which is to mold me into what they think I should be, not what I am. Okay, maybe I need some grooming. I could use some coaching, some finesse. But I don’t like things to be mandated. I sure as hell don’t like words put in my mouth when I don’t even agree with them.”

“You’re only being stubborn,” Jack said. “Just like when you were a kid. If I told you you couldn’t do something, that’s exactly what you became damned and determined to do just to show me up.”

Tate expelled a long breath. “Jack, I’ve listened to your advice, and it’s always been sound. I don’t want to second-guess you on this decision—”

“But that’s what you’re doing, isn’t it?”

“It was my decision, too,” Tate said, raising his voice. “Now I’m changing my mind.”

“Just like that?” Eddy said, snapping his fingers. “With the election only a few weeks away, you want to switch horses in the middle of the stream?”

“No, dammit, that’s what they were trying to do!” He shot out of his chair and pointed toward the door through which the two under discussion had passed.

“They wanted to bend and shape me until I wouldn’t be recognizable to the voters who have backed me from the beginning. I’d be selling out. I’d be no better than Dekker. Slicker than owl shit. Two-faced. Double-dealing.” He was met with a wall of silent opposition from Eddy and his brother.

He turned to Nelson. “Dad? Help me out here.”

“Why ask for my help now? You’ve already let your temper get the best of you. Don’t ever get mad, Tate. Get even.”

“How?”

“Win.”

“By keeping my mouth shut and taking their advice?”

“Unless you feel that you’re being compromised.”

“Well, that’s exactly where I am. I’d rather lose the election being myself than win and know I’ve had to compromise on everything I stand for. I’m sorry if none of you agrees.”

“I’m on Eddy’s side,” Fancy said, “if anybody’s interested in my opinion.”

“Nobody is,” Jack said to her.

“Carole?”

She had refrained from entering the verbal melee. Until Tate asked for her opinion, she intended to withhold it. Now that he had, she raised her head and looked up at him with newly formed intimacy and the wordless communication of lovers.

“Whatever you decide is all right with me, Tate. I’m with you all the way.”

“Oh, yeah? Since when?” Jack rounded on Tate. “You talk about compromises. Sleeping with her again is the biggest compromise you ever made, little brother.”

“That’s enough, Jack!” Nelson bellowed.

“Dad, you know as well as I do that—”

“Enough! When you can control your own wife, you can start criticizing Tate.”

Jack glared at his father, then at his brother, then hunched his shoulders and stormed out. Dorothy Rae rose from her chair unsteadily and followed him.

“I guess you’ll walk next,” Tate said to Eddy in the tense aftermath of their departure.

Eddy smiled lopsidedly. “You know better than that. Unlike Jack, I don’t take these things personally. I think you’re wrong, but…” He gave an eloquent shrug. “We’ll know on election day.” He clapped his friend on the back. “Guess I’d better go break the bad news to our former consultants.” He left; Fancy was hot on his heels.

Zee brought Mandy in. The atmosphere still crackled with animosity. Uneasily, she remarked, “I heard a lot of shouting.”

“We got some things sorted out,” Nelson said.

“I hope my decision is okay by you, Dad.”

“As you said, it was your decision. I hope you’re prepared to live with it.”

“For my peace of mind, that’s the way it had to be.”

“Then stop apologizing for something that’s already done.”

“I told Mandy we would walk down to Sundance Square for a while,” Zee said, interrupting the uncomfortable conversation. “I don’t think it’s going to rain anymore.”

“I’ll come along,” Nelson said, scooping the child into his arms, his good humor seemingly restored. “I could use the exercise. And we won’t mind if it does rain, will we, Mandy?”

“Thanks for backing me up,” Tate said to Avery when they were finally alone. “You haven’t always.”

“As Jack rudely reminded me.”

“He was upset.”

“More than that, Tate. Jack despises me.”

He seemed disinclined to address that. Perhaps he knew, as Avery did, that Jack didn’t like Carole, but he desired her. Maybe Tate ignored that calamitous fact in the desperate hope that it would go away.

“Why’d you do it?” he asked. “Why’d you take my side? Did you feel like it was your wifely duty?”

“No,” she said, taking umbrage. “I sided with you because I believe you’re right. I didn’t like them or their meddling or their advice any better than you did.”

It had occurred to her that the men from Wakely and Foster might somehow be connected to the plot to assassinate Tate. That was another reason she was so glad to see the last of them.

After the recent heated discussion, the suite suddenly seemed very quiet. Paradoxically, without all the other people, the parlor seemed smaller, not larger. Their silent solitude pressed in on them.

Avery clasped her hands at her waist. “Well, I—”

“Good of Mom and Dad to take Mandy for a walk.”

“Yes, it was.”

“She’ll enjoy the outing.”

“And it’ll give you a chance to study your speeches without interruption.”

“Hmm.”

“Although I don’t think you really need to study them.”

“No, I feel comfortable about today’s schedule.”

“That’s good.”

He contemplated the toes of his boots for a moment. When he looked up, he asked, “Do you think it’ll rain?”

“I, uh…” She gave the window a cursory glance. “I don’t think so, no. It—”

He reached for her, pulled her against him, kissed her neck.

“Tate?”

“Hmm?” He walked her backward toward the sofa.

“I thought, after last night, you wouldn’t want…”

“You thought wrong.”