“My teeth are chattering.” The low-slung car bounced on a rut.

“I’ve got the heater on. It’s warm.”

“I’m not cold. I guess it’s a delayed reaction. I was a little nervous this evening.”

“You damn well should have been. Phoebe, in all my born days I never saw anything like what you did tonight. I’m a little disappointed in Ron, though, for not letting me in on your plans, especially since he invited me along.”

“Ron didn’t know exactly what I had in mind.”

“Are you telling me he was winging it in there?”

“Not entirely. I told him the attitude I wanted him to assume, but not the details of what I planned to do. He has this problem with heart arrhythmia. It kicks up when he gets too nervous, and I was afraid he’d give me away. But he’s gotten very good at improvising, so I wasn’t too worried.”

“My respect for my good friend Ron grows by the day.”

They stopped in front of the stone farmhouse, where faint puddles of golden light spilled through the living room windows onto the porch. The Dutchman’s-pipe vine hung dry and withered on its trellis at the end of the porch, but it still somehow managed to be beautiful in the cold December night. She waited until he came around to open her door, and when he did, she was forced to swing her legs out first because her dress was so tight.

He extended his hand to help her. When his fingers closed around her own, she tried to repress a shiver of excitement. A leaf crunched under the toe of her beaded black heels as she and Dan climbed the front steps together.

He unlocked the door and held it open for her. “I thought it was all over when Keane placed that phone call to your close personal friend, Donald Trump.”

“Donald has quite a sense of humor. It didn’t take any persuasion on my part to convince him to back up my story.”

The hallway was lit by a single brass library lamp with a black shade that sat on a small antique chest. She followed him into the living room, where he flicked on more lights until the interior was filled with a cozy glow. Once again, she was struck by how snug his house was. A discarded navy sweatshirt lay across the arm of the green and red plaid couch, while copies of the Chicago papers, along with the Wall Street Journal, were scattered on the floor near one of the overstuffed chairs. She smelled clove and cinnamon.

“This place is so homey,” she said wistfully.

He followed the direction of her gaze toward a rush basket piled high with pinecones on the hearth. “I like outdoors things around me.”

He shed his tuxedo jacket and, while he made his way across the rug to the fireplace, pulled at his bow tie. The ends dangled as he leaned forward to ignite the fire that had been laid. After it caught, he closed the screen and straightened.