Avery looked at Fancy's lip and lied, "Nothing. Just a hen party."

In under a minute Dorothy Rae knocked. She was in her nightgown. "What is it, Carole?"

"Come in."

The minute she saw Fancy's face, she stopped dead in her tracks and raised a hand to her chest. "Oh, my baby! What happened to you?"

Fancy's lower lip quivered. A fresh batch of tears filled her eyes. She stretched out her arms and, in a weak, tremulous voice said, "Mommy?"

"I left them crying in each other's arms," Avery told Tate a few minutes later. "This might have been the best thing that could have happened."

"I don't think I've ever seen Eddy so irrational." While she'd been gone, he'd stripped down to his trousers. Bare-chested, he was pacing the room, still spoiling for a fight.

"He's determined to get you elected. When some-thing happens that could jeopardize that, his temper is explosive."

"But to strike a woman?" Tate asked incredulously, shaking his head.

"How long have you known that he was sleeping with Fancy?"

"A few weeks."

"He told you?"

"No, I picked up signals."

"Did you say anything to him about it?"

"What could I say? He's a grown-up. So is she. God knows he didn't coerce her or sweet talk his way past her virginity."

"I guess not," Avery sighed. "But for all her sexual experience, Fancy's extremely vulnerable, Tate. He's hurt her."

"Don't get me wrong. I'm not defendinga"

"Listen!"

Avery held up her hand and signaled for quiet. Then, moving simultaneously, they rushed toward Mandy's bedroom and burst through the door.

She was flailing her limbs, thrashing them against the bed covers. Her small face was contorted and bathed with sweat. She was weeping copiously, her lips blubbering.

"Mommy! Mommy!" She screamed the name repeatedly.

Instinctively, Avery reached for her. Tate placed a restraining hand on her shoulder. "You can't. This might be it."

"Oh, no, Tate, please."

He shook his head stubbornly. "We have to."

So Avery sat on one side of Mandy and Tate sat on the other. Each lived through the hell the child's subconscious mind was being put through.

"No, no." She gasped for breath, holding her mouth wide. "Mommy? I can't see Mommy. I can't get out."

Avery looked across at Tate. His fingers were steepled over his nose and mouth, his eyes fixed on his tormented daughter.

Suddenly Mandy sat bolt upright, as though a spring action device had catapulted her head off the pillow. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly. Her eyes were open and unblinking, but she was still in the throes of the nightmare.

"Mommy!" she screamed. "Get me loose. I'm scared.Get me loose!"

Then her eyelids began to flutter and, though her respiration was still choppy, it no longer sounded as though she'd been running for miles and each breath might be her last.

"Mommy's got me," she whispered. "Mommy's got me now." She flopped back down, and when she did, she woke up.

Once her eyes had focused, she divided her bewildered gaze between Tate and Avery. It was into Avery's arms that she hurled her solid little body. "Mommy, you got me out. You got me away from the smoke."

Avery enfolded Mandy in her arms and hugged her tight. She squeezed her eyes shut and thanked God for healing this child who had become so dear to her. When she opened her eyes, they melded with Tate's. He extended his hand and stroked her cheek with his knuckle, then laid his hand on his daughter's head.

Mandy sat back on her heels and announced, "I'm hungry. Can I have some ice cream?"

Laughing with relief, Tate scooped her into his arms and swung her high over his head. She squealed. "You certainly can. What flavor?"

He ordered ice cream from room service, along with a change of linens from housekeeping to replace the damp, tangled sheets on Mandy's bed. While they waited for the deliveries, Avery changed Mandy into another nightgown and brushed her hair. Tate sat watching them.

"I had a bad dream," Mandy told them pragmatically as she used another hairbrush on Pooh Bear. "But I'm not scared anymore 'cause Mommy's there to get me away."

She'd gotten sleepy again by the time she'd finished her ice cream. They tucked her in and sat at the foot of her bed until she fell asleep, knowing that if Dr. Webster was right, her sleep would be uninterrupted from now on. As they left the room, their arms looped around each other's waists, Avery began to cry.

"It's over," Tate murmured and kissed her temple. "She's going to be okay."

"Thank God."

"Then what are you crying for?"

"I'm exhausted," she confessed with a soft laugh. "I'm going to take a long, hot bath. This day seems like it's lasted twenty years."

He had lived through Fancy's crisis and Mandy's nightmare with her. But Tate didn't know that Avery had experienced an anxiety attack at the Spanish church when she had spotted her nemesis outside the nave, surrounded by clambering media.

Once they had safely reached the limo, she had snuggled close to Tate, linking her arm through his and hugging his firm biceps to her breast. What he'd mistaken for an outpouring of affection had actually been a reaction to stark fear.

When Avery came out of the bathroom a half hour later, her skin was dewy and fragrant from soaking in bath oil. With the light behind her, she provided him with a tantalizing silhouette of her body through her nightgown.

"Still exhausted?" he asked.

The room was dim. The bed had been turned down. Avery's subconscious registered this, because she only had eyes for Tate. His hair was attractively mussed. The single light burning in the bathroom gilded his body hair. It fuzzily smattered his chest, whorled around his navel, then tapered to a satiny stripe that disappeared into the unfastened waistband of his trousers.

"Not that exhausted," she replied huskily. "Not if you have something other than sleep in mind."

"What I have in mind," he said, moving toward her, "is making love to my wife."

When he reached her, he curled one hand around the back of her neck and, without any hesitation, slid the other one inside her nightgown to cover her breast. Holding her eyes with his, he finessed the nipple.

"I don't mean just couple with the woman I happened to be married to," he whispered while his thumb continued giving her nipple glancing blows. "I mean makeloveto mywife."

He drew her face up close to his, paused, probed her eyes, then took her lips beneath his. There was a difference in his kiss. The difference was subtle, yet tremendous. Avery sensed it immediately. Technically it was the same, as his tongue gently but possessively mated with her mouth. But somehow it was much more personal, more intimate, more giving.

Minutes later they were in bed. Tate was naked, lying above her, his lips following down her nightgown as he lowered it inch by delicious inch.

When it was completely off, he laid his head on her belly, his shoulders between her thighs, and fervently kissed the yielding softness. "I never thought I could love you again. But after what you've done for Mandy, and for me," he added thickly, "I'll be damned if I don't love you more than ever."

He slid his hands beneath her hips and tilted them up. His parted lips whisked the smooth skin of her abdomen. He kissed the delta of dark curls, nuzzled it with his nose, feathered it with his breath.

Catching his hair with her hands, she arched up, offering her open thighs to his caressing mouth. He drew the silky, slippery, softness between his lips, imbibing her taste and scent, using his flicking, stroking, questing tongue to bring her to one crashing climax after another.

Then she inverted her body and returned the favor. Her lips covered the smooth head of his penis. She sucked it tenderly and used the tip of her tongue to cleave the groove and pick up the pearly drops of fluid already collected there.

Tate prayed to nameless gods when she took him into her mouth completely, and when he filled it with the very essence of himself, he gave hoarse, rasping cries that left them feeling perfectly marvelous and replete.

Later that night, while they lay dozing, he drew her back against his chest. He kissed her warm, soft nape. He nibbled her shoulder. He said nothing, but waited, as though asking her permission to continue.

She merely purred like a drowsy cat and responded when he eased her thigh up toward her chest, leaving her open for his smooth entry. Their bodies gently undulated against each other with no discernible motion. It was a facile, fluid fuck.

Reaching around her, he caressed her breasts, reshaping them with his hand, then fanned his fingertips across the pebbly nipples.

She pressed her buttocks into the curve of his body, and rubbed her smooth flesh against the dense hair spreading outward from the root of his sex. He groaned his approval and drew her up higher, closer.

He manipulated her from the front with breathtaking sensitivity, and sometimes replaced his rigid penis with inquisitive fingers that moved deep inside her, until immense pleasure washed over her like a warm and balmy spring rain, without thunder, without wind, without lightninga cleansing and pure and benevolent.

The rhythmic contractions of her orgasm brought on his. His body tensed. His breathing was suspended for several splendid seconds while the hot tide of his semen bathed her womb.

When it was over and their bodies were relaxed, but still emanating heat, she turned her head toward him. Their seeking mouths came together in a long, slow, wet kiss.

Then they slept.

FORTY-FIVE.

Since they were scheduled to leave very early that morning, Avery got a head start by waking up before Tate. She disentangled their limbs. Getting her hair unsnarled from his fingers wasn't easy, but she finally managed.

She glanced over her shoulder at him as she left the bed. He was beautiful when he slept, one leg sticking out of the covers, his bearded jaw dark against the pillowcase. Sighing with the sheer pleasure of looking at him, and with the stirring memories of last night's lovemaking fresh in her mind, she crept into the bathroom.

The water taps screeched when she turned them on. Avery winced at the noise. Tate needed as much sleep as he could get. Today's agenda was arduous. He would spend hours in an airplane. In between, he would be delivering speeches, pressing hands, and soliciting votes.

This day before Election Day was possibly the most important one of his campaign. Today the fence- straddlers, vital to the outcome of any election, would make up their minds.

Avery stepped beneath the pounding spray. After shampooing her hair, she lathered her body. It still bore traces of Tate's fervent lovemaking. His mouth had left a faint bruise on her soft inner thigh. The hot water stung her whisker-rasped breasts. She was smiling over that when the shower curtain was suddenly whipped back.

"Tate!"

"Good morning." "Whata"

"I thought I'd shower with you," he drawled, smiling lecherously. "Save time. Save the hotel some hot water."

Avery stood quaking, as guilty in her nakedness as Eve must have been in Eden when God spotlighted her iniquity. The jets of hot water seemed to turn icy and sharp; they pricked her skin like frigid needles. Color drained from her face. Her lips turned blue. Her eyes seemed to recede into her skull, making the sockets appear huge and cavernous. She shivered.

Puzzled, Tate cocked his sleep-tousled head to one side. "You look like you've seen a ghost. Did I scare you?"

She swallowed. Her mouth opened and closed, but she couldn't form a sound.

"Carole? What's the matter?"

He looked for something amiss. His eyes scaled down her pale, trembling body, then back up. Avery's heart sank heavily in her chest as she watched his baffled gaze move down her once again. It was arrested at her breasts, belly, pubis, thighsaplaces only seen by a lover's eyes, a husband's eyes.

He saw the appendectomy scar, ancient and faint and almost undetectable unless bared to clinical fluorescent lighting. Avery had wondered, but now she knew. Carole had never had her appendix out.

"Carole?" His voice echoed the mystification in his eyes.

Though the protective gesture was a dead giveaway, Avery covered her lower body with one hand and extended the other toward him in appeal. "Tate, I. . ."

As sharp and deadly as swords, his eyes slashed upwards to clash with hers. "You're not Carole." He stated it softly, while his brain still sifted through conflicting facts. Then, when the impact of it hit him full force, he repeated with emphasis, "You're not Carole!"

His arm shot through the shower's spray to grab hold of her wrist and yank her from the tub. Her shins banged into the porcelain; her wet feet slipped on the tiles. She emitted a tortured cry, more of the spirit than the body.

"Tate, stop. I'lla"

He slammed her wet, naked body against the wall and pinned it there with his own. His hand closed tightly around her neck, just beneath her chin.

"Who the fuck are you? Where is my wife?Who are you?"

"Don't shout," she whimpered. "Mandy will hear."

"Talk, goddamn you." He lowered his voice, but his eyes were still murderous and his hand exerted more pressure against her adam's apple. "Who are you?"

Her teeth were chattering so badly she could barely speak.

"Avery Daniels."

"Who?"

"Avery Daniels."

"Avery Daniels? The TV . . .?"

She bobbed her head once.

"Where's Carole? Whata"

''Carole died in the plane crash, Tate," she said. "I survived. We got mixed up because we had switched seats on the plane. I was carrying Mandy when I escaped. They assumeda''

He trapped her dripping head between his hands. "Carole'sdead!"

"Yes," she gulped. "Yes. I'm sorry."