Cat in a hot pink Pursuit

that I couldn’t refuse. She would have made a great Godfather.”
    “And Mira. Now I see it. You look like Mira.”
    Matt kept silent.
    “Not the Mira I knew.”
    “Once,” Matt bit out. One night. One-night stand. “From what I understand,” he added, watching carefully, “I was the product of a virgin birth, so to speak.”
    The man shook his head. “What’s your name?”
    “Matt, short for Matthias, the apostle who replaced Judas the betrayer.” He let that sink in. “My last name is Devine.”
    “She married?”
    “Yes, but to a loser. Who else would have her after that? She named me something different. After her favorite Christmas hymn. Can you guess?”
    “Divine? Oh.” He grew even paler, if that was possible. “‘O Holy Night’?” ‘“O Holy Night, O Night Divine.’ Bingo. I’m named for a mortal sin.”
    The man pushed off the wall. “It’s not your fault. Listen.” He glanced down the hall again, then shook his head. “We need to talk. Privately.”
    “Agreed.”
    “I have a club...”
    “You would.”
    “Then you suggest—?”
    “I have a hotel. The Drake.”
    The man’s pale eyebrows—almost dead white, though his hair was still steel blond—rose.
    “The Amanda Show puts up its regular guests in style,” Matt explained.
    “We’ll go there then.”
    “Yes, a hotel’s so impersonal. Like a church.” Matt was pleased to see him wince.
    “You must be famous.” The man came as close as he’d avoided doing before.
    They stood shoulder to shoulder, awaiting the elevator Matt’s finger had summoned. Father and son. God’s finger to Adam.
    Damn! They were almost the same height. No denying. The man seemed to notice this. “How is... Mira?”
    “She’s pretty good. No longer a single parent with a kid at home. Has a job. Is widowed.”
    “My name is Winslow. Jonathan Winslow. And .. — he reported this dutifully—“I’m married. I have a family. Three almost-adult kids.”
    Matt noticed that he hadn’t said “happily.”
    “I wish I’d had a son who’d do for me what you did for your mother.”
    “You have kids. No son?”
    “Yeah. I have a son.”
    No more comment. Matt read bitter estrangement.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “That’s the family mantra here, I guess. Keep in touch. Let me know when you’re in Chicago. We should... learn to know each other.”
    Matt, surprised, hesitated. Then nodded. Maybe. Maybe not.
    “Meanwhile, let’s hit your hotel. I could use a drink or three.”

    How many bars in how many hotels the world over hosted lost relatives who sat and stared at each other over drinks they were reluctant to touch?
    Matt supposed there must be at least eight.
    He ran his fingers through his hair that the unaccustomed baseball cap had tamped down, like the wire ring of a kindergarten-play halo.
    “You’re blonder than I remember your mother being.” It was Matt’s turn to feel put on the spot. “You remember right. The... my radio station had some stylist do my hair for the latest publicity photos. I’m told it’ll wash out. Can’t be too soon for me.”
    “Media.” Winslow laughed a little, for the first time. “Image. Reality is never enough, is it?”
    “No. Not in this day and age.”
    “So, you’ve been a priest.”
    “Until eighteen months ago.”
    “Why’d you leave?”
    “Better question would be ‘Why’d you enter?’ I was looking to become the perfect father I’d never had.”
    “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I did not know. I looked for your mother after I got back from my tour of duty and couldn’t find her. We only knew first names. I didn’t dare probe further. My family would have had my head if they’d known about... what happened. I had no idea they already knew and had resorted to lawyers. I suppose they thought they were protecting me.”
    “They were. From unwanted consequences. Me.”
    “I’m sorry. I could say it a thousand times and it’d never change the past. You look... like you turned out fine.”
    “It could have been worse,” Matt conceded, “although I could have done without the abusive stepfather.”
    Winslow’s contrite expression was startled into shock. “My God! How did that happen?”
    “She had no options. She was a pariah, an unwed mother in a deeply Catholic community. Oh, they ‘supported’ her but not without instilling this bone-deep sense of shame. She helped hurt herself, her upbringing helped. So strict. She took such a chance on you.”
    “It didn’t