From the Heart

stay like this all day, and you wouldn’t need that watch.”
    “If we were in Fiji,” he countered, “you wouldn’t have had your snow.”
    Kasey sighed again and closed her eyes. “You’re so logical, Jordan. It’s one of the things I love most about you.”
    He said nothing for a moment. She hadn’t mentioned love to him since the first day she had confessed it. He had wanted to hear it again so that he could explore his own reaction. Now he could feel her beginning to drift back to sleep.
    “I don’t like to leave you alone,” he murmured.
    “There’re a million people out there.” She yawned and snuggled down. “I’ll hardly be alone.”
    “I’d rather be with you.”
    “Don’t worry about me, Jordan. I’m going to look for a sweatshirt and some jeans for Alison. Something cheap and symbolic that she can grub around in.”
    “For making mud sculptures?” He felt the smile tugging at his mouth again.
    “ Mmm-hmm. ” She smiled, remembering the expression on his face the first day she and Alison had made them. “And I want to see all the Christmas decorations. I’m going to have a lot more fun than you are.”
    “Can you break off from your busy schedule to meet me for lunch?”
    “ Hmm, maybe. Where?”
    “Where would you like?” He knew he should be up and dressing, but he found it impossible to move.
    “Rajah,” she said drowsily. “West Forty-eighth Street.”
    “Two o’clock, then.”
    “Okay. Did I bring my watch?” she asked him.
    “I’ve never seen you wear one.”
    “I keep it in my purse so it doesn’t intimidate me.”
    He kissed the top of her head. “I have to get up. If I stay much longer, I’ll have to make love with you again.”
    She lifted her face, and her eyes were half-closed. “Promise?”
    He drew her back to him.
     
    “Twenty minutes late.” Agnes gave her watch a hard look. “That’s not like you, Jordan.”
    “Sorry, Agnes.” He settled back in a leather chair. Agnes sat behind a six-foot desk. It was piled with manuscripts and memos. Jordan had always felt that sitting behind that desk, she looked like a general waging battle.
    “Well.” She saw the humor in his eyes and leaned back, a pencil tapping on her lip. “I hope it was worth it.”
    Jordan lifted a brow and said nothing. Agnes had expected nothing else. She had never been able to bait him. A very cool character, she thought, not for the first time. She remembered the animated woman he had brought with him the night before. An interesting combination.
    “About your collaborator,” Agnes began, pushing a few papers aside. “Is she as good as you were led to believe?”
    “Better,” he told her.
    She nodded. “Then it’s money well-spent.”
    “I want her to have a percentage of the royalties.”
    “A percentage of the royalties?” Agnes scowled and shifted in her chair. “You contracted her for a flat fee.”
    “She’s to have that as well.” Jordan sat back and laced his fingers.
    “Jordan, the fee you’re paying her is very generous.” Her voice was patient. “Your personal life is one thing, but business is business.”
    “This is business,” he countered. Jordan’s voice was patient, too, but firm. Agnes recognized the tone and stifled asigh. As well as being cool and cautious, he was stubborn, and she knew it. “I never expected, when we wrote up the original agreement, that I’d be able to draw so much out of her. Agnes, the book’s nearly as much hers as it is mine. She’s entitled to benefit from it.”
    “Ethics.” Agnes sighed. “You have such a sterling character, Jordan.”
    “So do you, Agnes.” He smiled at her. “Or you wouldn’t be my agent.”
    Agnes shrugged. “What percentage did you have in mind?”
     
    Kasey fought her way through Gimbel’s and loved every minute of it. She’d run into a sale and had three sweatshirts and two pairs of jeans tucked into her shopping bag. Shopping was something she did rarely, but when she did, she did it passionately. She could spend three hundred dollars on a dress without a qualm and haggle furiously over a five-dollar sweater. She pushed her way through the crowds and scrambled happily through racks of bargains as she shot from store to store.
    Passing a window, she spied an inch-high pewter unicorn and rushed inside to dicker over the asking price. A pang of hunger reminded her of the time, and she began to search through her purse for her watch.
    “Six-twenty-seven,” she