The maître d' at Locke-Ober was a small-boned man with a black suit and a face as stiff as his starched white cuffs. The gold name tag on his jacket read Philip.

"Good evening," I said.

He glanced past me into the empty foyer. Locke-Ober had not even admitted women until 1970, so he was no doubt searching for my husband. Finding no escort, he defaulted to me. "May I help you?"

"Yes, thank you. I'm meeting someone for dinner." Although the way my stomach was flipping around, it was going to be hard to eat.

He hovered over his reservation book. "What is the gentleman's name, please?"

"The party's name is William Scanlon." Jeez.

Philip's demeanor transformed instantly as I grew in social stature right before his very eyes. Twit.

"Indeed, Mr. Scanlon is here. He's in the bar. I'll let him know his guest has arrived."

"I'll find him, if you'll point me in the right direction."

"Certainly. The bar is right this way." He tugged on one cuff and motioned toward the bar. "Tell Mr. Scanlon we'll hold his table as long as he'd like."

That's what I'm here for, Philip, to deliver messages for you.

The prevailing theme in the bar was dark, dense, and heavy. Polished paneling covered the walls, thick and ponderous furniture filled the floor space, and reams of suffocating fabric absorbed all light from the windows. The air was filled with the blended odor of a dozen different cigars.

I peered through the mahogany haze and found him at the bar, holding court. He was wearing the same gray suit from this morning with a different but equally spiffy silk tie and that electric air of self-confidence the rest of us mere mortals found so mesmerizing. Take the people in this bar. Nobody here worked for him; I doubt anyone even knew him. Yet when he laughed, they smiled. When he spoke, they leaned in to hear what he had to say. He effortlessly commanded all the attention in the room through the sheer force of his personality.

"Alex Shanahan." His voice cut through the dampened acoustics, calling everyone's attention to-me. The stares were discreet, but intense enough to raise the humidity level inside my suit a few damp degrees, and he knew it. He smiled serenely as he reached for his wallet and turned toward the bar.

Rather than stand in the doorway on display, I worked my way through the room and ended up standing right behind him. Too close, it turned out, because when he turned to leave, he almost knocked me flat.

"Ah," he said, reaching out to steady me, "and here you are."

I thought he let his hands linger. I thought he did, but couldn't be sure. What I was sure of was the jolt that moved from his hands through my arms and all the way down my spine, almost lifting me off the floor, the stunning reminder of the powerful physical connection that had always been between us-and how little it would take to reignite the flame. He felt it, too. I saw it on his face. I saw it in his eyes, and I knew that if I'd had any true desire to keep my distance from him, I wouldn't have come here tonight.

"Thank you for coming," he said, adjusting his volume down for just the two of us. "Hungry?"

"Yes." Not really. "They're holding your table."

"Then let us go and claim it." He gave my arm one last squeeze.

Philip, with his maître d' sixth sense, was waiting for us with two menus. He personally escorted us upstairs to our table, draped a napkin across my lap, and addressed himself to Bill. "Sir, it's nice to have you back with us."

"It's always nice to be back. Ask Henry if he has any more of that cabernet I had last time. That was quite nice." He looked at me. "And a white burgundy, also. Tell him to bring the best that he's got."

"Yes sir, I'll send him right over. Enjoy your dinner."

Philip melted back into the dining room while Bill leaned back, stretching his long legs out and making the table seem even smaller and more intimate. I kept my hands buried in my lap, my feet tucked under my chair.

He touched the silver on each side of his plate, tracing the thick base of his knife and the flat end of his spoon. "It is white burgundy, isn't it?"

He looked at me in the dim glow of the table candle flickering between us, and a slow smile started-an open, ingenuous smile that was not for the entertainment of the masses but just for me. When he smiled that way, it changed him. When he smiled that way, it changed me.

"You know I like burgundy," I said. "You never forget anything."

He pushed his plate forward and leaned on his elbows as far toward me as the table would allow. "I haven't forgotten anything about you. Until I picked up your message, I thought you'd forgotten about me."

I studied his face: the long plane of his cheeks, the curve of his forehead, the shape of his eyes, the way they sloped down slightly on the sides in a way that kept him looking almost boyish. No, I hadn't forgotten anything. That was the problem. No matter how hard I tried and no matter how much distance I put between us, I couldn't forget him.

"That was quite an entrance you made this morning."

"Dramatic, wasn't it?" He brightened at the memory, like a little kid on Christmas day. He did love being Bill Scanlon. We both leaned back, making way for the wine steward, who had arrived with a silver ice bucket, two bottles, and other assorted sommelier paraphernalia.

"You surprised me," I said.

He shook his head and grinned. "I don't think so. If you hadn't wanted to see me, you never would have called. You opened the door. All I did was walk through it."

"More like blew it up."

He laughed and so did I. It felt good to laugh with him again.

Henry poured our wine and, after more gratuitous bowing and scraping, receded into the background.

Bill offered a toast. "Here's to blowing up the door… and any other barriers left between us."

We touched glasses. This morning when he had stared down Big Pete, his eyes had seemed almost black. But in this light they were clear amber, almost sparkling. It was like looking into a flowing stream and seeing the sun reflected off the sandy bottom. I had missed seeing myself reflected there.

I put my glass down, searching for and finding the precise depression in the tablecloth where it had been. "Where did you get that hangman's drawing?"

"Someone sent it anonymously. I usually throw things like that away, but since it was your station-"

"I know, and I'm sorry about that. I can explain-"

"Are you seeing anyone?"

I blinked at him. He waited, eyebrows raised. I took another drink of the chilled wine, letting it roll over my tongue. "No."

"Why not?"

Because I haven't gotten over you. "Do you know what that drawing means? Has Lenny told you-has anyone told you what's been going on around here?"

"Lenny makes a point of not telling me anything, which is one of the reasons why I'm here."

"Are you saying you don't know anything about the rumors and why they set that bomb off?"

"I didn't say that. I said that Lenny didn't tell me. And I don't want to talk about him. Were you seeing anyone in Denver?"

I inched back. He didn't move, and yet he felt so much closer. In our good times I'd always felt better with him-safer, surer of my footing. He had confidence to burn, and sometimes when I'd touched him, I'd known what that felt like, not to be afraid of anything.

"Why do you want to know if I was seeing someone?"

"Because I heard that you were."

"And why would that matter to you?"

I didn't feel the pointed end of that question until he straightened up as if he'd been poked in the stomach. He reached for the bottle of red and poured another glass. When he drank the wine, I could almost track its warming flow through his system, and it seemed to me that he was trying to relax, trying to get the words just right. That he didn't have the right words and exactly the right way to say them was disarming.