Had she not known him as she now did, she might have imagined him striding across fields through Celtic mist. She could have seen him being capable in an outdoors sort of way, performing vaguely rural masculine acts such as ministering to a sick animal or chopping wood. She could see him being brave; she could imagine him being fearless on a mountainside; she could envisage him as a soldier or a poet or vet: what she could not see was a man who would function effectively in a modern newspaper office—yet clearly he did so, so this was her mistake.

Now she looked at him narrowly. The apparent kindness, the occasional gentleness of manner: they were deceptive, she thought, deliberately designed to disarm and charm: they merely ensured that McGuire, in the competitive world of newspapers, disabled his opponents and got to the finish line first.

“You’re going down to the country today, I hear?” McGuire now said. “You’re staying the weekend with Max?”

Lindsay jumped. Lost in contemplation of McGuire’s ruthlessness, possible and already proved, she was forgetting the grande dame gambit. She straightened, and gave him a polar look.

“Yes, I am.”

“Give my love to Mrs. Max. And all the mini-Maxes.” He smiled. “Four children. I used to think it was excessive. Now I think—it’s nice. I gather there’s a fifth on the way.”

“Yes. It’s due in two months.”

“Maybe it’ll be a girl this time. Max would like that.”

“No doubt,” Lindsay replied, ignoring the almost imperceptible Irish lilt that had crept into his voice. Both it and the smile were attractive—and McGuire knew it.

“Look, can we make a start?” She leaned forward. “I have a lot of work to do before I leave. I’m finalizing the arrangements for Paris. Did you see the outline I sent you?”

McGuire shifted papers on his desk. “You’re going down to Max’s with a friend, I think Max said…”

“Yes. Gini. Genevieve Hunter. You know her?”

“No. Before my time here…” He continued to sift papers in a distracted way. “I’m familiar with her work though. And her reports from Bosnia last year, of course. They were excellent. As good, in their way, as Pascal Lamartine’s photographs…They’d worked together before, I believe?”

“Yes.”

“They made a good team. I said so to Max. Where did I put that damn outline? It was here a second ago… Why didn’t she stay out there and continue working with him?”

“I really wouldn’t know.”

“Someone mentioned…She’s been ill, I gather?”

“Not really. No. She’s fine now anyway.”

“Oh, I must have misunderstood. Max said…” He did not complete the sentence. Lindsay ignored the prompt. McGuire was well informed; if he knew about Gini’s illness—and few people did—then Max had been gossiping. Clearly he and Max were far closer friends than she had realized.

It was then, when she was trying to figure out what in hell else Max might have told him, that McGuire sprang his surprise. He finally found the outline and tossed it back across his desk.