“I’m headed to Barcelona to get together with my med school girlfriends,” I said slowly. “But we were planning a day trip to Morocco with Declan and the kids. I’ll see if I can reach anyone in the public health system there.”

Wally snorted at the mention of Declan; he’d cooled to any mention of him ever since learning Declan had urged me to give up my job to be with him. “Good, let me know if you reach anybody. And have fun. Rorie’s post said she wants to ride a camel in Morocco.”

Really? A camel? What was up with all the adolescent static, then? “Dec’s got the kids for a few days while I’m with my friends,” I said. “I’ll tell him.”

“Don’t do anything dumb,” said Wally, the gruffness in his voice doing little to mask an underlying tenderness. “We need you to come back.”

—

RORIE WATCHED AS I rummaged through my travel bag. Since we’d be taking a day trip to Morocco—a Muslim country—I added a pair of waterproof full-length khakis. Compared to many places, they’re fairly tolerant of shorts-wearing female infidels over in Tangier, but the first thing you learn as an EIS officer is to be as respectful as possible of local customs and beliefs. It helps with cooperation and it sends the message that you’re there to assist, not to assert authority over the people suffering in an epidemic. I wouldn’t be traveling in any official capacity, of course, but it never hurt to be prepared.

Downstairs, the door chimed as it opened. “It’s Declan,” hollered Beau. He charged for the stair landing, his duffel clanging against the backs of his knees hard enough to send him sprawling forward onto the floor. He scrabbled back up. “I’m fine! I got it!”

Trying to repress a smile, I turned to Rorie. “Honey, I hate to pressure you, but you have to adjust your attitude: Go with Beau and Declan and have fun? Or go with Beau and Declan and ruin everything by acting like a sullen twit?”

A fluttering eye roll.

“Okay, I’m going to decide for you. You’ll go with Beau and Declan and be miserable.”

“Fine. I’ll be nice.”

Reverse psychology. Works every time.

“Great, throw some stuff in a bag. Make sure you have your chargers.”

“I know, Mom!”

Beau loped back into the bedroom, his bag still thunking him in the backs of the legs, followed by Declan.

A word about Declan: he’s sexy. In my experience most people have a defining characteristic that tends to overshadow their other features: they’re prissy or they’re manic or they’re remarkably unflappable or whatever. Declan’s thing is that he’s smoking hot. It’s not so much conventional attractiveness as it is pure animal magnetism, the kind some people convey in the mere flick of an eyebrow or the hint of a smile. I realize you might not consider attractiveness a character trait, but in Declan’s case it undoubtedly constitutes part of his personality. It’s also nondiscriminatory: you could put him in a room with an elderly schoolmarm or the pope or that chunky freakshow that runs North Korea—to name a few non-sexy types—and he’d be unable to repress a come-hither look. It seeps out of his pores, because the man is a smoldering sex bomb.