Flash

good reason for marriage?
    Love.
    Do you love him?
    Yes. Oh, lord, yes, yes, yes.
    Then, what's the problem here?
    The problem is that I don't know if he loves me. Maybe he's got his passion for order mixed up with his passion for me. Maybe that's what be calls love.
    Ask him.
    Olivia turned on her side and propped herself on her elbow. She gripped Jasper's shoulder and shook him gently.
    "Jasper?"
    "Now what?" he growled, in the voice of a bear that has been awakened in the middle of hibernation.
    "Are you awake?"
    "No."
    "I have to ask you a question."
    "Can't it wait until morning?"
    "No. Do you want to marry me just because you've got your obsessive need to practice good filing habits mixed up with a physical attraction?"
    There was a long silence.
    "Jasper?"
    He opened one eye. "Are there going to be a lot more questions in this vein?"
    "Just this one."
    "No." He closed his eye.
    "No, what?" she asked. "No, you haven't got your filing impulse mixed up with your sexual impulse? Or, no, you don't want to answer the question?"
    "No, I haven't got my desire to organize things mixed up with my desire to make love to you. Believe it or not, I can tell the difference between both basic instincts."
    "Oh, good." She waited. He said nothing else. "Is that all?"
    There was no response. She realized he had fallen back into the depths of sleep.

30
    « ^ »
    O livia was nervous. Nothing strange about that, Jasper thought the following morning as he parked the Jeep in a space on Second Avenue. After all, she'd already made one mistake with marriage. She was keenly aware of the risks involved. So was he, for that matter. Just one more thing they had in common.
    She wouldn't panic on him just because she'd had a few qualms about accepting his proposal, he assured himself as he got out of the Jeep. At least, he didn't think she would panic.
    But deep down he was afraid that he had rushed things. He wished he had the same instinct for timing in his personal affairs that he had in business. It would make life so much more orderly and predictable.
    At least she had not spent breakfast grilling him with more of the strange questions she had asked in the middle of the night. He hoped that meant that his answers had satisfied her.
    But deep down he was afraid he had not told her whatever it was she wanted to hear.
    Of course, she had not told him what he had hoped to hear, either, he thought. He had not realized until this morning that there had been something missing last night.
    He tried to convince himself that he had achieved his goal. Olivia had agreed to marry him. Theirs, clearly, would not be a marriage of convenience. What more could he want?
    The answer had eluded him, so he had done what he always did when his personal life got fuzzy. He focused on other things.
    There was still one loose end remaining to be tied off in the Dixon Haggard affair.
    He walked along the sidewalk toward the storefront office that had served as Lancaster campaign headquarters. No one had bothered to take down the cheerful red, white, and blue pennants that fluttered from the awning. When he reached the front door, he glanced through the window.
    From the outside there was nothing to indicate that Eleanor Lancaster's run for governor had collapsed last night. People sat at their desks.
Lancaster for Governor
signs were still plastered across the windows.
    He opened the door and went inside.
    It was like walking into the viewing room of a funeral parlor.
    The subdued atmosphere and hushed conversations told the real tale of disappointment and despair.
    A young woman with long blond hair sat at the front desk sniffling into a tissue. When she looked up, Jasper could see that her eyes were wet with tears. He resisted the urge to say something callous like,
hey, it's only politics
. He had a feeling that she would not appreciate his lack of empathy.
    "If you're from the media," the receptionist whispered, "I'm afraid Ms. Lancaster is still not available for interviews."
    "I'm looking for Todd Chantry."
    "Oh." She glanced over her shoulder. "He's in the office at the back But he's rather busy…"
    "Thanks."
    Jasper walked down an aisle formed by desks, toward the glass-walled office at the rear of the room. The people who sat at the desks did not look up from their somber conversations. Nobody appeared to be doing any work. They were all engaged in rehashing the bad news.
    When he reached the closed door of the small office, Jasper saw that he had been