“I think so,” Jennifer said. “I usually go and make a fool of myself.”

“I guess I’ll see you then,” he said.

“I guess you will.”

They stared at each other. He was so close Jennifer could see the dense frame of thick dark lashes shading his eyes, a tiny mole at the edge of his upper lip, the soft, heavy sweep of the glossy black hair as it lay across his forehead. He studied her with the same intensity.

He started to speak, and for just a second Jennifer was sure he was going to ask her out socially. But he seemed to think better of it and said instead, “Goodbye, then, Jenny.”

She loved the way he said her name. “goodbye, Lee.”

He trotted down the flagstone walk and paused to turn at the door of the cab. He lifted his hand in a final salute and got in.

Jennifer watched the cab until it was out of sight; then slowly, as if in a dream, she climbed the steps to the second floor and let herself into her empty apartment.

Chapter 3

Jennifer had a date with John Ashford that night, but she knew that she was very inattentive company. John was an attorney with Chaus and Reynolds, and he’d remained there after she left. He had been trying to escalate their relationship into something more serious for some time now, but Jennifer was satisfied with an occasional dinner or movie. She just didn’t feel the requisite degree of enthusiasm about him, and had told him so, gently, several times. As a result, he gave up in frustration about twice a year, and then wound up calling her again a few weeks later. They were currently in the middle of an “on” period, and Jennifer gave it about a month before he would pressure her and she would balk. Then he would retire in silence to pout, and the ritual would begin again. It was such a familiar scenario that by now she could almost predict when John’s patience would wear thin. Jennifer felt sorry for him, but sorrier for herself. Why couldn’t she fall for somebody safe, steady, and reliable like John? It would be the answer to a prayer, but she knew it would never happen. The men who attracted her were of a different strain altogether.

Jennifer looked across the restaurant table at John and compared him with the man who had shared her previous meal that day. Why didn’t John’s eyes sparkle with incipient mischief and hidden fires? Why weren’t they deep and dark and full of feeling, instead of china blue and ordinary? Why wasn’t his hair a rich, shiny blue-black, begging to be touched, instead of mouse brown and about as inspiring as a piece of toast? Jennifer sighed and took another bite of her steak. It wasn’t John’s fault. She occupied herself for the rest of the evening by reviewing the afternoon with Lee in her mind and made inane replies to John’s comments to indicate that she was listening. This wasn’t as successful as she’d hoped, however; she must have shown her distraction because she caught John looking at her oddly several times, and when he took her home, he didn’t try to worm his way inside as he usually did. He gave up without a struggle and left her to her thoughts.

Jennifer changed to a robe and made a cup of tea, taking it into the living room and curling up on the couch. The steam from the cup drifted past her eyes as she sat motionless, seeing again Lee’s smiling face. The reason for her wariness of him was no mystery. He reminded her too much of Bob.

Jennifer had met Bob Delaney when he was a rookie shortstop for the Phillies and she was a freshman in law school. She had attended a workshop on the legal representation of professional athletes, and Bob had been one of the speakers. Immediately taken by his good looks and easy charm, Jennifer found herself married to him three months later.

It wasn’t long before the bloom was off the rose. Stories of Bob’s infidelities on road trips and tours drifted back to her when they had been together less than a year. And that wasn’t all. He had a drinking problem; often he was too hung over to play and began accumulating fines and suspensions like parking tickets. Jennifer blamed herself as well as Bob for the failure of their marriage. If she had taken the time to see what he was really like before rushing headlong into a commitment, she would have realized that they could never make a go of it Well, she wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.

The similarities between Lee and her ex-husband were too numerous to list That same dazzling sex appeal, which in Bob’s case concealed a character as shallow as a tide pool, the same slender, graceful athlete’s body, the personal magnetism, and the effortless, winning way. The flaws didn’t show for a while in the wash of the sun, but sooner or later, the clouds gathered, and then the cracks in the facade began to appear. Jennifer knew it all too well.

She sipped her tea and stared morosely at the pattern in the rug. So I’m a sucker for charismatic jocks, she thought. And I’m in the wrong business, because sooner or later I was bound to run across another one.

And sooner or later, she had.

I mustn’t panic, she mused. Lee doesn’t know how I feel. He’s got a lot going for him, but as far as I know he can’t read minds. If I just watch myself, take extra care when I’m around him, he’ll never guess and I’ll be safe.

Comforted by that thought, she switched on the television and lost herself in the Saturday night movie.

* * * *

On Sunday afternoon, Jennifer drove to her friend Marilyn’s apartment for dinner. Marilyn lived in a garden apartment complex in Ewing, N.J., which was a suburb of Trenton and just across the Delaware river from Jennifer’s home in Yardley, Pa.

Jennifer and Marilyn had been friends for years, since meeting in college when they were paired off as lab partners in a chemistry course. The relationship got off to a volatile start when Jennifer had ignited the fumes from Marilyn’s beaker of ether. Marilyn had been the maid of honor at Jennifer’s wedding, and Jennifer was the godmother of Marilyn’s son, Jeff.

Marilyn had gone back to teaching when her husband, an insurance agent, had been killed in an automobile accident two years before. He had fallen asleep at the wheel on the way home from a convention and crashed into a utility pole. Jeff was three at the time.

Jennifer and Marilyn had helped each other a great deal during their respective crises, and Jennifer trusted Marilyn’s judgment and opinion more than anyone else’s. So she was glad that she would see her that day—she could use a heavy dose of Marilyn’s common sense and natural optimism.

Jeff hurled himself at her when she came through the door, and she spent the first few minutes of her visit listening with rapt attention to the kindergarten news. When they had exhausted the topics of show and tell and acrobatic arithmetic (which was apparently some game his teacher had invented), he took himself off to watch television and Marilyn called Jennifer into the kitchen.

Jennifer followed the aroma of fresh coffee and paused at the table, where Marilyn was basting the hem of a skirt, her mouth full of pins.

“Help yourself,” Marilyn muttered, and Jennifer poured out two cups, getting the cream from the refrigerator and the sugar from the cupboard shelf. She sat across from her friend, and Marilyn studied her absorbed expression for a while in silence.

“All right, out with it,” Marilyn finally said, after removing the pins from her mouth and sticking them in a cushion. “What trouble is furrowing that noble brow?”

“No trouble.”

“Hmmph. That was said with all the sincerity of Eddie Haskell complimenting Mrs. Cleaver on her wardrobe.”

Jennifer laughed. She and Marilyn shared a passion for old TV shows and identified more with Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz than any of the characters currently populating the tube. While everybody else in the college dorm had slept in on Saturday morning, she and Marilyn had been up to catch the reruns of “I Love Lucy.”