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take any angry edge off the tone of his voice. “Sandy, isn’t it time for you to continue your captain’s tour of the decks of your luxury cruiser?”
    Shaking his head, exaggerating the motion, Sandy Spencer left Byron’s office. And Byron knew that he was racing, no longer just drifting, toward the end of his long career at SpencerBlake.

9

    C HRISTINA ROSARIO’S CHEEK RESTED on Byron’s chest. A sheet was draped over her hips. Uncovered and naked, Byron was on top of the sheets, slowly cooling down, relaxing deeply, and utterly content. Christina looked up at the handsome ridges of his face—the taut cheeks, the sloping forehead that reminded her of Cary Grant’s, the hazel eyes, the high cheekbones—as he in turn stared down at the beauty of her unblemished face and shoulders, the alluring contours of her breasts, and the tautness of her young stomach. And then, too, the swell of her womanly hips under the white sheet, still damp from their love-making. As she stroked the slightly graying hair on his chest, he felt himself get aroused again.
    It was the middle of the afternoon. The windows of Christina’s apartment were ten stories above Riverside Park. A breeze stirred the gauzy beige curtains. Although the weather was hot—almost, Byron had said before they began to undress each other, like “miserable Miami”—the wind was refreshing. The breeze came from New Jersey, from the high cliffs of the Palisades, over the sultry expanse of the Hudson River and Riverside Park. The old-world apartment had no air conditioning. Standing fans, rotating, stirred the air.
    For the third time she whispered, “That was so, so good.”
    He turned slightly to kiss her forehead. “You are a sweetheart, Brighteyes.” Over the last several weeks, and especiallysince the first glorious evening when they made love, he sometimes called her Brighteyes. She called him Carlos.
    There was almost complete stillness in the bedroom. The traffic noises from Riverside Drive were muffled. Byron couldn’t remember a time in his life when he’d experienced such satisfying lassitude, such contentment, as he slowly and lightly moved his fingers along the unblemished skin of her upper arm. Why have I waited so long for this? he wondered. This was happiness, he thought, a feeling always possible, never realized.
    Christina sensed that Byron’s stillness had passed into the realm of sleep. Gradually his breathing deepened. She stopped moving her hand gently across his chest. She, too, felt drowsy—more than two hours had passed since she kissed him, said, “Hey, lover boy,” and, naked, led him to her bedroom. During the two weeks in which, like an uncertain schoolboy from an earlier generation, he hadn’t done more than touch her hand, she had wondered what kind of lover Byron would be. Arrogant, indifferent, devoted, caring, self-absorbed, athletic, timid, quick, potent, impotent? She had been certain, from the moment she sought him out at the evening party in the Central Park Zoo, that he would become her lover. She saw the beginning of his enthrallment in the artificial bantering they exchanged in that first conversation. So she was certain he would pursue her—the week’s delay after she left SpencerBlake in August and his sending her that first email didn’t shake her confidence—but she could never predict how he or any other man would be as a lover.
    As she lay on his chest, with the afternoon light all around them, she realized she was surprised: Byron, that handsome,polite, and at times awkward guy, was a devoted and passionate lover. In the courtroom, he was cogent and self-possessed but restrained, even when he was being battered and baited by a judge, as in Miami. But there was little restraint in the way he undressed her and helped her undress him. There was no uncertainty or prep school mannerism in the way he kissed her, stroked her, licked her, and entered her. And stayed in her, in position after position. She was