“And that’s it. We were having such a hoot today because … well, because we know each other so well. Listen, she wouldn’t mind me telling you this—everybody in Boston but Abigail knows anyway—she’s in love with her doubles partner.”

“I see.”

“I’m not sure you do. I’m not talking about mixed doubles.” Suddenly, they were both laughing.

“By the way,” Brad said, “maybe we should get Abigail and Karim together.

They seem to have the same opinion of our seeing each other.”

Jenna laughed even harder. It was true. Her son, now a Harvard scholar and at the flood stage of his Egyptophilia, showed Brad only a dry-ice politeness. But now Karim’s disapproval no longer upset Jenna. It wasn’t that she didn’t care what her son thought, she did. No, it was that Jenna felt a rightness about this relationship that she hadn’t felt before.

Brad kissed her, without permission this time, their lips lingering, tast- ing, exploring. “Does this mean we can go steady?” he asked, his blue eyes serious now.

“Go steady?”

“No more Winkys. Or anyone else.”

“Yes,” she answered, pushing aside fear and conscience, ignoring the nagging voice that reminded her that, according to the laws of the United States and al-Remal, her rights to a relationship were limited in the first instance and nonexistent in the second.

O

Going steady meant someone to talk to, to share with. Someone who was on her side, who would rub her back when she was tense, who would fix an omelet when she was almost too tired to eat. Someone who cared.

How did I get along without him? Jenna wondered almost every time she looked into those blue-blue eyes.

“I have a cottage in Marblehead,” he said one Wednesday night as he tinkered with Jenna’s computer, trying to recover a file that had apparently disappeared. “I think you’ll like it. Why don’t you come up there with me for the weekend?”

“All right,” she said, though she knew there was more ahead than a simple summer weekend at the beach.

O

“Cottage?” Jenna exclaimed, marveling at the sprawling oceanfront Victorian with gingerbread woodwork, ornate plaster ceilings, and handmade brass fixtures. “You New Englanders certainly believe in understatement.” “The Puritan influence. We feel guilty about having so much, so we pretend we don’t.”

As he gave Jenna the grand tour of all eighteen rooms, Brad pointed out portraits of his ancestors, the saints and sinners and those who fell some- where in between. “We even have a pirate somewhere in the bunch. But my grandfather Benjamin—he’s the one who built the house—he refused to dis- play the rascal’s portrait. He said Kincaid Pierce was hanged once and that should be enough for any man.”

Jenna laughed. “I love this place,” she said. “It has a lot of character. Like you.”