Kate suspected he didn’t know chamber music from white bread. She thought he looked like the type to nod off and fall out of his seat five minutes after the lights were dimmed, and she found that prospect devilishly appealing. Sometimes these things could get a little dull.

“I’m going to make the beds, take a shower, then I’ll be ready to go. About half an hour. It’s at the National Academy of Sciences, and the dress is casual.”

An hour later Kate walked onstage in the intimate NAS auditorium. She looked past the footlights and found Dave on the aisle in the sixth row. She was accustomed to people watching her, but not with such unwavering curiosity, not with such indolent sexuality. He looked very handsome in a tweed sport coat, khaki shirt, and matching tie.

He was sitting behind and slightly to the side of Sydney Mellon, the music critic assigned to the concert. Mellon was a lump of a man. A pear-shaped blob of middle-aged flesh in a gravy-stained camel’s-hair blazer. He knew music in and out and would have been a decent critic if it weren’t for his habit of falling asleep in the middle of every concert.

Kate acknowledged the audience and sat on the plush padded folding chair. She positioned her cello between her legs and cleared her mind of everything but the job at hand. In some ways she liked these small concerts best. Each nuance of tone, each phrase, was critical. She liked being directly responsible for the mood of her audience. She was a woman who rose to a challenge, who enjoyed the pleasures of a task well-done.

If Kate was a born performer, David Dodd was a born observer. He noticed details and added them up like a mathematician. He wasn’t necessarily judgmental, but he formed opinions, changing them when necessary and storing them away for possible future use.

He found Kate to be an especially intriguing personality. Not only had she stolen his heart, but she filled his mind as well. And he was enthralled as he watched the artist quietly but firmly take over the woman. Her face became a professional mask of total concentration. Her curly red hair had been swept back. Her eyes were enhanced with a smudge of shadow. Her outfit included a floor-length black taffeta skirt that rustled when she walked. Her white blouse had a high neck and puffy sleeves. A column of small pearl buttons marched down the back of the blouse. Dave couldn’t imagine how she’d gotten herself into it, and couldn’t imagine how he’d ever get her out of it. It was a chastity belt of sorts, he decided. A would-be lover’s nightmare.

As the opening duet ended, and the audience applauded, Dave shifted in his seat. He’d been so absorbed in watching Kate that he hadn’t heard a single note.