Jack & Jill

to Animals,” he said. “That’s my pet cause.”
    He tried to look pleasantly surprised that she would remain talking with him. He could play parlor games as well as anyone—when he had to, when he wanted to.
    “If I might be just a little bold,” he said, “would you consider the two of us cutting back together?” His very natural and unassuming smile undercut the forward-sounding line. It was a come-on just the same. There was no disguising that. Natalie Sheehan’s answer was tremendously important, to both of them.
    She stared at him, slightly taken aback.
He’d completely blown it,
he thought. Or maybe
she
was acting now.
    Then Natalie Sheehan laughed. It was a hearty laugh, almost raucous. He was sure that no one in America had ever heard it in her prim and proper role as a network television reporter.
    Poor Natalie,
Jack thought.
Number two.

CHAPTER
19

    NATALIE TOOK another margarita for the trip home. “A roadie,” she told him and laughed that deep, wonderful laugh of hers again.
    “I learned how to party a little bit at St. Catherine’s Academy in Cleveland. Then at Ohio State,” she confided as they walked to the garage under the Pension Building. She was trying to show him that she was different from her television persona. Looser, more fun. He got that much, got the message. He even liked her for it. He was noticing that her usually crisp and exact enunciation was just a little off now. She probably thought it was sexy, and she was right.
She was actually very nice, very down-to-earth,
which surprised him a little.
    They took her car, as Jill had accurately predicted. Natalie drove the silver-blue Dodge Stealth a little too fast All the while she talked rapid-fire, too, but kept it interesting: GATT, Boris Yeltsin’s drinking problems, D.C. real estate, campaign-financing reform. She showed herself to be intelligent, informed, high-spirited, and only slightly neurotic about the ongoing struggle between men and women.
    “Where are we going?” he finally thought he should ask. He already knew the answer, of course. The Jefferson Hotel. Natalie’s honey trap in D.C. Her place.
    “Oh, to my laboratory,” she said. “Why, are you nervous?”
    “No. Well, maybe a little nervous,” he said and laughed. It was the truth.
    She brought him upstairs to her private office in the Jefferson Hotel on Sixteenth Street. Two beautiful rooms and a spacious bath overlooked downtown. He knew that she also had a house in Old Town Alexandria. Jill had visited there. Just in case. Just to be thorough.
Measure twice. Measure five times, if necessary.
    “This place is my treat for myself. A special spot where I can work right here in the city,” she told him. “Isn’t the view breathtaking? It makes you feel as if you own the whole city. It does for me, anyway.”
    “I see what you mean. I love Washington myself,” Jack said. For a moment he was lost, peering off into the distance. He did love this city and what it was supposed to represent— at least, he had once upon a time. He still remembered his very first visit here. He had been a marine private, twenty years old.
The Soldier.
    He quietly surveyed her workspace. Laptop computer, Canon Bubblejet, two VCRs, gold Emmy, pocket OAG. Fresh-cut flowers in a pink vase beside a black ceramic bowl filled with foreign pocket change.
    Natalie Sheehàn, this is your life. Kind of impressive; kind of sad; kind of over.
    Natalie stopped and looked at him closely, almost as if she were seeing him for the first time. “You’re very nice, aren’t you? You strike me as being a very genuine person. The genuine article, as they say, or used to say. You’re a nice guy, aren’t you, Scott Cookson?”
    “Not really,” he shrugged. He rolled his sparkling blue eyes and an engaging little half-smile appeared. He
was
good at this: getting the girl—if it was necessary. Actually, though, under normal circumstances, he never ran around. He was at heart a one-woman guy.
    “Nobody’s really nice in Washington, right? Not after you’ve lived here for a while,” he said and continued to smile.
    “I suppose that’s true. I guess that’s basically accurate,” she snorted out a raucous laugh, then laughed again. At herself? He could see that Natalie was disappointed a little in his answer. She wanted, or maybe she needed, something genuine in her life. Well, so did he; and
this
was it. The game was exquisite, and it was definitely the genuine article. It was so