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then rose and walked out of the bar. The agent had followed him without looking back at her. After fifteen minutes, she’d gone upstairs to her room, one floor below his, to catch a couple of hours of sleep.
    In the morning, she’d reached for her BlackBerry before her eyes were completely open. She was sure that someone must have been down there at four A.M. and seen them. She was sure that someone had phoned her news director and told him to fire her for kissing the president’s husband.
    But no one had e-mailed.
    No one had called.
    She couldn’t look at him when they had boarded the plane for the return trip to Washington, but she was thrilled when he’d smiled at her after they landed at Andrews nine hours later.
    She and Peter had immediately struck up a friendship. It started with short text messages. Because he’d maintained his sports agency, he was allowed to keep a private cell phone and an e-mail account that was secure but not part of the official White House system. He would e-mail her from his work account about a college football game he’d seen, and she’d send him funny stories from the sports section or snow conditions from the ski resorts in Tahoe and Colorado. Eventually, their e-mails turned to near-daily phone calls, and sometimes she’d come up to his East Wing office, where they’d chat about everything from the news of the day to the personal lives of the White House staff. Dale had told him about her frustrations at the network, and Peter had sought her advice about how to handle the public relations predicaments some of his young athletes faced.They’d never talked about the night in Budapest, and it didn’t happen again for a long time.
    Dale now snapped out of her reverie and looked at her watch: seven forty-five. She stood up and approached the gate agents. “Any updates on the seven P.M. shuttle?” she asked.
    “We made an announcement about ten minutes ago. The seven was canceled, but the eight o’clock shuttle will leave around eight-thirty,” the agent said.
    Dale knew it wasn’t their fault, but she couldn’t help glaring at them.
    “Ms. Smith, we’ve got you in first class on the eight o’clock. We’ll board in a few more minutes,” the agent said.
    “Thanks,” Dale said, returning to her seat. She didn’t want to start their weekend off with a meltdown, so she e-mailed Peter with her update: “7 pm shuttle is dead. I’m on the 8, which leaves at 8:30. See you when I see you.”
    He wrote back right away: “Stop stressing. I’m not going anywhere.”
    Dale hated how clingy she felt. It was as if she couldn’t get enough of him. They’d spend Friday nights together, and then he’d get up on Saturdays and drive the two hours to the Connecticut countryside, where his kids were at boarding school. She’d work all day Saturday and then get into the car after the newscast and spend Saturday nights with him at the house he rented in Washington, Connecticut, to be near the kids.
    On Sunday mornings, they’d stay in bed as long as possible. Dale would say, “I’m getting in the shower in five minutes,” over and over again, until she was so late she’d leave his house with wet hair and no makeup. Then she would return to the city to prepare for the Sunday evening newscast, and Peter would return to Kent to have lunch with the twins before he headed back to D.C. Sometimes he’d stay Sunday nights, too, and about once a month, Dale flew to California to meet Peter on her days off. Her weekend schedule meant that Monday and Tuesday were her Saturday and Sunday, so she’d get on a late flight out of JFK on Sunday night and meet him in San Francisco or Los Angeles, where he kept offices and homes.
    Dale saw the gate agents reach for the PA system and prayed fornews that her flight was boarding. “Boarding all first-class passengers for the eight P.M. US Airways shuttle to La Guardia,” he said, smiling at Dale as he said it.
    She settled into her seat and