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she said with her eyes wide open.
    She stared over his shoulder and kissed the back of his neck, leaving it at that—for now.
     
    At midnight Lincoln Howe was in his pajamas, staring out the window from the twentieth floor of the Houston Hyatt. Two days ago Texas was Leahy territory. Not anymore.
    He pulled back the swag drapes for a panoramic view. A half moon hung low in the night sky. A sea of lights from a deserted downtown and sprawling suburbia blanketed the landscape. He took a deep breath, as if he had the power to draw fresh air from some faraway Texas plain.
    “Lincoln, come to bed,” his sleepy wife grumbled.
    Natalie Howe was the general’s wife of forty-one years, the youngest and prettiest daughter of a Southern Baptist preacher. As a homemaker she’d virtually raised their three children alone while their father served his country in Korea and Vietnam. At sixty-three, she retained much of the beauty that had attracted the young enlisted man she’d married in her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. Dark, almond eyes and smooth, healthy skin were the trademarks of her Ethiopian ancestry. Her shiny black hair was usually worn up or straight back to frame the beauty of her face. She never left the house without her makeup, and sheweighed only five pounds more than on the day they were married.
    Lincoln rubbed his hands together. “I’m too excited to sleep.” He glanced over his shoulder at his wife. She was lying on her back beneath the covers in the twin bed farthest from him. He stepped from the window and sat at the edge of her bed.
    “This is the turning point, Natalie. Leahy has finally made the fatal blunder. It’s like we’ve retaken Paris. Now it’s on to Berlin.”
    “A lot can happen in eleven days.”
    “True,” he said confidently. “But something tells me it will only get better.”
    Natalie propped herself up on an elbow. Her eyes narrowed with disapproval. “Must you gloat so much?”
    “I have every right to gloat.”
    “It bothers me the way you’re acting. It’s as if you’re more excited about her losing than your winning.”
    “You can’t feel sorry for the enemy, Natalie. The minute you do, they’ll stick a bayonet in your belly.”
    “Maybe. But I honestly don’t think what she did is all that horrible.”
    He winced with disbelief. “What she did was downright cowardly. There is nothing the American people hate more than a politician who won’t answer a question.”
    Her eyes became lasers. She had yet to say anything about the debate, but his bravado and self-righteousness were suddenly more than she could stand. “I can certainly think of one thing worse than a woman who won’t answer any questions about marital fidelity.”
    “What’s that, honey?”
    She rolled away, speaking into the pillow. “A man who lies about it.”
    He froze, not sure what to say. It wasn’t like the debate, where he could simply look into the camera and deny it. They’d passed that point long ago, before the apologies.
    He laid a hand on her shoulder, but she didn’t respond. He rose from her bed and switched off the lamp, saying nothing.

5
    Allison managed a couple of hours sleep after making love to Peter, but at 3:00 A.M . she was wide awake. By six o’clock, the first glow of morning light was seeping in around the edge of the balloon draperies, casting a yellow-white frame around the dark bedroom windows. Allison was staring wide-eyed at the ceiling as Peter lay sleeping at her side.
    The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll actually had her trailing Lincoln Howe, but that was only in the back of her mind. She was still struggling over her conversation with Peter. She was happy about the way he’d come through for her, agreeing to campaign at her side. Her joy, however, was overshadowed by a nagging concern over her inability to tell him the whole story behind her decision not to answer the adultery question. Maybe what made it so difficult to talk about it now was that