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Graham? Had Brendan McKenna been right? Was she asking too much?

    After a half-day with him, she had no doubt that the man knew his business. And yet, she just couldn’t believe that the perfect house wasn’t out there somewhere. Some day, and surely not too far in the future, she would walk into a house and say, This is it. This is where Graham and I will live, talk, laugh, and play, raise our children, grow old together .

    She was buying not just a house, she reflected, but a home for a lifetime, and that required a completely different sort of search.

    “ I won’t settle for less,” she told herself. “In a city this size, there has to be a house that is just right for us.”

    The telephone on the kitchen counter rang, and she dumped Omar unceremoniously off her lap to answer it. It was Graham.

    “ Where have you been, Kaye? They told me at the travel agency that you’d gone to look at houses.”

    “ I did, Graham.” She was eager to share the results with him; her words were almost tumbling over each other. “I haven’t found anything wonderful yet, but today was just exploratory, to find out what sorts of things I like best, and—” She realized suddenly that she was babbling, and that there was no sound from the other end of the line.

    “ Which firm did you go to, Kaye?”

    “ First City.”

    “ But surely you know that Andy Winchester always does my buying and selling, Kaye. He’s done it for years.”

    Kaye had never met Andy Winchester, but she knew who he was. If there was a million-dollar building project in the wind, the Winchester firm was always involved. “Yes,” she said. “I knew that. But I thought he only dealt with commercial properties, banks and industries and shopping complexes.”

    “ Generally, he does. But as a favor to me, he’s agreed to help you find our house.”

    “ But this agent has already spent a whole afternoon, just getting to understand what I want,” she pleaded. “Surely...”

    “ Real estate agents have to expect that sort of thing,” Graham said reasonably. “They might show houses every day for a month and not sell anything at all.”

    “ But surely it wouldn’t hurt to let him have a chance.”

    “ Kaye, are you involved in a charity project, or are you looking for a house?”

    “ The house, of course. But—”

    “ Well, you’d be doing him a favor not to take up any more of his time,” Graham said reasonably. “He’s not likely to have anything we’d be interested in on his listings, anyway. Stop wasting his time, and let him work with people who are apt to buy from him.”

    “ I suppose you’re right,” Kaye said unhappily.

    “ Of course I’m right. Andy wants to show you a house tomorrow. It sounds perfect, Kaye. It’s one of the really wonderful houses in this city, done by a premier architect, and it isn’t even listed for sale, because the owners don’t want to have half the population of Henderson trooping through just to look at the wallpaper.”

    “ If it isn’t for sale, Graham...”

    “ Oh, they want to sell it all right. Andy’s a friend of theirs. That’s how he knows about it. Your precious First City person could never get you in there, because he’s got no idea they’re ready to move to Phoenix.”

    She sighed. He was right, she supposed. If Brendan didn’t even know that a house was for sale, how could he show it to her? A house she would have loved to own might change hands privately, and she’d never even know about it. Having good connections did make a lot of difference, and Andy Winchester certainly had them.

    “ I wish you hadn’t told Andy about us,” she said.

    “ What was I supposed to do? Tell him I wanted a big house so I could start a school for the disadvantaged? Come on, Kaye.”

    “ Of course not. But the people at that club of yours are always talking about someone, and we did agree that we wanted to keep our engagement quiet for a little while.”

    “ Let me