The wine seemed to make conversation easy, a teasing banter about tastes and diversions and penchants—though he wasn’t quite sure how to hold the teacup. That tiny handle just got in the way. They had almost nothing in common, but that somehow gave them everything to talk about. The table lamp next to Eve lit her cheek softly and seemed to imbue her features with a lovely pensiveness as the darkness outside deepened. The cut of her armless blouse made her bare arms look soft but toned. Keegan could imagine the warmth and smoothness of her pale skin under his hand.

“I do like travel,” she said at one point. She was looking down into her teacup, her knees drawn up to her side in the big armchair.

Keegan thought of his mother’s humdrum spoon collection on the wall behind him. San Antonio. Yellowstone. “Where’s your favorite place?” he asked Eve. “If you could be anywhere right now?”

She kept gazing down into her teacup, but she tilted her head a little, like she was giving it more thought than his offhand question deserved. “Everyone always says Paris,” she said. “And they’re right. It’s beautiful.” She looked up at Keegan and then looked away. “But right now, I think I’d like to be in Cologne.”

“Why Cologne?”

She gazed down into her cup again. “The Germans always keep to themselves,” she said. “And I don’t know a soul there. I wouldn’t have to talk to anybody. I could just be by myself awhile.” She shrugged and looked up at him. “And I like the way the cathedral looks at night from across the river.”

She fell silent and looked at the floor, and Keegan sensed that his question had shooed her down some melancholy trail of thought. He tried to lift the mood. “What else do you like to do?” he asked brightly. “What makes you happy?”

She pulled her knees up closer to her chin. “I like horses,” she said. “I know it must sound awful, but it’s very nice to be—well—rich.” She slid sideways on the armchair, and set her cup, very gently, on the table beside her. “But there are disadvantages to it, too,” she said.

“Poor thing,” he told her, and hoped it didn’t sound cruel or insulting.

She smiled back at him. “Don’t mock me,” she said. “I’m being serious.”

He took a sip from his cup. “And what might those disadvantages be?”