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pleasure) that she was attractive to the opposite sex. That, however, had been years ago. Was she still? She honestly didn’t know. Walter didn’t count. She had not for many years thought of him in terms of sex, opposite or otherwise. And, it seemed, the same with him.
    She had a good complexion, what they used to call “peaches and cream,” and eyes the color of old cognac, with gold flecks that glinted when she was angry or excited. She was thirty-two. Well preserved, she thought with all due modesty. Until this last year, she had been careful of diet and exercise, and though no doubt some softening had set in during that time, she could not yet detect any evidence of it.
    Or not much evidence. When she got on the scales, she saw that she had gained a full five pounds. Too much time abed, not enough exercise.
    Even so, she didn’t exactly look chubby. Would a man still find her attractive? Would— the time for pretense in your life is past, my girl, she told herself— would Jack McKenzie still find her attractive?
    Memories crowded in upon her, sweet, stinging. She had been seventeen when they had met. Eighteen when they first made love—the night of her eighteenth birthday, to be exact. His scruples, not hers. Certainly not hers. Despite her most ardent efforts to convince him otherwise, he had stubbornly insisted that he wanted her to be an adult when it happened. “I’m not robbing any cradles, my love,” he insisted. He was eight years older than she. Eight years wiser, she could see now, though at the time she had seen it only as sheer pigheadedness.
    Pigheadedness that somehow allowed her to convince herself that he didn’t love her when he said they would have to wait to get married.
    â€œWhy do you have to go away, to the Middle East?” she demanded. “You could make a writing career here, couldn’t you?”
    â€œBecause I plan to be a war correspondent.” He had been so calm, so reasonable, that it only enraged her all the more. “Iraq is where the war is going to be, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia. That’s where I have to be.”
    â€œThen I’ll go with you.”
    The tolerant smile he gave her infuriated her. “There’s no way I would take you there. The danger, the hardship—no, my darling, you will wait here until I come back. Assuming I do come back. There’s always that chance.”
    â€œAnd if I won’t wait?”
    â€œKat, don’t be silly. If it will make you feel better, we’ll get married the first day I step on U.S. soil again, I promise.”
    â€œWhy don’t we get married now, and you go do your Mid-East thing, and I’ll wait here for you. We have a week for a honeymoon, surely, before you have to leave.”
    There was that damned smile again. “Suppose I didn’t come back. Suppose I left you pregnant. What family do you have? Your mother, who is caring for a bed-ridden husband at the present? And I have a cousin in Oregon, who probably barely remembers me. Do you imagine I want the woman I love left with that sort of burden to bear alone? You’d be middle-aged by the time you worked through it all. No, you’re young, you’re single, I want you to enjoy your life, have fun. You’re still a kid. Go out with other guys if you feel like it. There’ll be plenty of time to work on marriage when I get back.”
    He went, and she sent his ring to him without even a note, and before six months had passed, she married Walter.
    She thought again of her husband and that futile effort at making love. Yes, now that she remembered, she could see that part of their marriage had begun to fade long ago. How many years could it have taken him to realize how much spite there had been in the hasty “yes” she gave him when, the field rid of his rival, he had once again pressed his suit?
    What a fool she had been. Now Jack McKenzie was back in the city.