If only he could relax, not worry about how things were going at Op-Center. Mike Rodgers was capable as hell, but with his luck the agency would score its first big crisis while he was on Pitcairn Island, and it would take him weeks to get back. It would kill him if Rodgers ever handed him a win like that, neatly wrapped.

There you go again.

Paul shook his head. Here he was, lying next to one of the sexiest, most loving ladies in D.C., and his mind had wandered to work. It wasn't time for a trip, he told himself. It was time for a lobotomy.

He was filled with a mixture of love and need as he watched Sharon's slow breathing, her breasts rising-- beckoning, he fancied. Extending his hand past her arm, he allowed his fingers to hover over the sheer fabric of her teddy. Let the children wake. What would they hear? That he loved their mother, and she loved him?

His fingers had just brushed her silken teddy when he heard the cry from the other room.

CHAPTER FOUR

Tuesday, 5:55 P.M., Seoul

"You really ought to spend more time with him, Gregory. You're glowing, do you know that?"

Donald tapped out his pipe against the seat of the grandstand. He watched the ashes fall from the top row to the street below, then put the pipe back in its case.

"Why don't you visit for a week or two at a time? I can run the Society alone."

Donald looked into her eyes. "Because I need you now."

"You can have both. What was that Tom Jones song my mother was always playing? 'My heart has love enough for two ' "

Donald laughed. "Soonji, Kim did more for me than he'll ever know. Taking him home from the orphanage each day helped keep me sane. There was a kind of karmic balance to his innocence and the mayhem we were planning at KCIA and when I worked at the Embassy."

Soonji's brow knit. "What does that have to do with seeing more of him?"

"When we're together-- I guess it's part cultural, and part Kim, but I was never able to instill in him that trait American kids embrace so easily: forget your folks and have a good time."

"How can you expect him to forget you?"

"I don't, but he feels as though he can't do enough for me, and he takes that very, very personally. The KCIA doesn't have a tab at that bar. He does. He knew he wouldn't win our fight, but he was willing to accept a public drubbing for me. When we're together, he carries his sense of obligation with him like a millstone. I don't want that eating at him."

Soonji hooked an arm through his and pushed back her hair with her free hand. "You're wrong. You should let him love you as he needs--" She froze for a moment and then shot erect.

"Soon? What is it?"