V.

Rebecca answered the door. She said, "I sort of figured it would be you."

He stood on the landing, shivering. "We've got a raging blizzard out there."

She was wearing a soft blue robe, slippers.

Her hair was honey-yellow. She was gorgeous.

She didn't say anything. She just looked at him.

He said, "Yep, the storm of the century is what it is. Maybe even the start of a new ice age. The end of the world. I asked myself who I'd most like to be with if this actually was the end of the world-"

"And you decided on me."

"Not exactly."

"Oh?"

"I just didn't know where to find Jacqueline Bisset."

"So I was second choice."

"I didn't know Raquel Welch's address, either."

"Third."

"But out of four billion people on earth, third isn't bad."

She almost smiled at him.

He said, "Can I come in? I already took my boots off, see. I won't track up your carpet. And I've got very good manners. I never belch or scratch my a.s.s in public-not intentionally, anyway."

She stepped back.

He went in.

She closed the door and said, "I was about to make something to eat. Are you hungry?"

"What've you got?"

"Drop-in guests can't afford to be choosy."

They went into the kitchen, and he draped his coat over the back of a chair.

She said, "Roast beef sandwiches and soup."

"What flavor soup?"

"Minestrone."

"Homemade?"

"Canned."

"Good."

"Good?"

"I hate homemade stuff."

"Is that so?"

"Too many vitamins in homemade stuff."

"Can there be too many?"

"Sure. Makes me all jumpy with excess energy."

"Ah."

"And there's too much taste in homemade," he said.

"Overwhelms the palate."

"You do do understand! Give me canned any day." understand! Give me canned any day."

"Never too much taste in canned."

"Nice and bland, easy to digest."

"I'll set the table and get the soup started."

"Good idea."

"You slice the roast beef."

"Sure."

"It's in the refrigerator, in Saran Wrap. Second shelf, I think. Be careful."

"Why, is it alive? alive?"

"The refrigerator's packed pretty full. If you're not careful taking something out, you can start an avalanche."

He opened the refrigerator. On each shelf, there were two or three layers of food, one atop the other. The storage s.p.a.ces on the doors were crammed full of bottles, cans, and jars.

"You afraid the government's going to outlaw food?" he asked.

"I like to keep a lot of stuff on hand."

"I noticed."

"Just in case."

"In case the entire New York Philharmonic drops in for a nosh?"

She didn't say anything.

He said, "Most supermarkets don't have this much stock."

She seemed embarra.s.sed, and he dropped the subject.

But it was odd. Chaos reigned in the refrigerator, while every other inch of her apartment was neat, orderly, and even Spartan in its decor.

He found the roast beef behind a dish of pickled eggs, atop an apple pie in a bakery box, beneath a package of Swiss cheese, wedged in between two leftover ca.s.seroles on one side and a jar of pickles and a leftover chicken breast on the other side, in front of three jars of jelly.

For a while they worked in silence.

Once he had finally cornered her, he had thought it would be easy to talk about what had happened between them last night. But now he felt awkward. He couldn't decide how to begin, what to say first. The direct approach was best, of course. He ought to say, Rebecca, where do we go from here? Rebecca, where do we go from here? Or maybe, Or maybe, Rebecca, didn't it mean as much to you as it did to me? Rebecca, didn't it mean as much to you as it did to me? Or maybe even, Or maybe even, Rebecca, I love you Rebecca, I love you. But everything he might have said sounded, in his own mind, either trite or too abrupt or just plain dumb.

The silence stretched.

She put placemats, dishes, and silverware on the table.

He sliced the beef, then a large tomato.

She opened two cans of soup.

From the refrigerator, he got pickles, mustard, mayonnaise, and two kinds of cheese. The bread was in the breadbox.

He turned to Rebecca to ask how she wanted her sandwich.

She was standing at the stove with her back to him, stirring the soup in the pot. Her hair shimmered softly against her dark blue robe.

Jack felt a tremor of desire. He marveled at how very different she was now from the way she had been when he'd last seen her at the office, only an hour ago. No longer the ice maiden. No longer the Viking woman. She looked smaller, not particularly shorter but narrower of shoulder, slimmer of wrist, overall more slender, more fragile, more girlish than she had seemed earlier.

Before he realized what he was doing, he moved toward her, stepped up behind her, and put his hands on her shoulders.

She wasn't startled. She had sensed him coming. Perhaps she had even willed willed him to come to her. him to come to her.

At first her shoulders were stiff beneath his hands, her entire body rigid.

He pulled her hair aside and kissed her neck, made a chain of kisses along the smooth, sweet skin.

She relaxed, softened, leaned back against him.

He slid his hands down her sides, to the swell of her hips.

She sighed but said nothing.

He kissed her ear.

He slid one hand up, cupped her breast.

She switched off the gas burner on which the pot of minestrone was heating.

His arms were around her now, both hands on her flat belly.

He leaned over her shoulder, kissed the side of her throat. Through his lips, pressed to her supple flesh, he felt one of her arteries throb with her strong pulse; a rapid pulse; faster now and faster still.

She seemed to melt back into him.

No woman, except his lost wife, had ever felt this warm to him.

She pressed her bottom against him.

He was so hard he ached.

She murmured wordlessly, a feline sound.

His hands would not remain still but moved over her in gentle, lazy exploration.

She turned to him.

They kissed.

Her hot tongue was quick, but the kiss was long and slow.

When they broke, drawing back only inches, to take a much-needed breath, their eyes met, and hers were such a fiercely bright shade of green that they didn't seem real, yet he saw a very real longing in them.

Another kiss. This one was harder than the first, hungrier.

Then she pulled back from him. Took his hand in hers.

They walked out of the kitchen. Into the living room.

The bedroom.

She switched on a small lamp with an amber gla.s.s shade. It wasn't bright. The shadows retreated slightly but didn't go away.

She took off her robe. She wasn't wearing anything else.

She looked as if she were made of honey and b.u.t.ter and cream.

She undressed him.

Many minutes later, on the bed, when he finally entered her, he said her name with a small gasp of wonder, and she said his. Those were the first words they had spoken since he had put his hands on her shoulders, out in the kitchen.