"It will be okay," said Natalie. He looked over at her. She gave him a gentle smile. "Love me for a week and then leave me. No, no..." she said, as a pained expression crossed his face. "that's what I want."

"Six days of heaven," he murmured.

She nodded, "and then goodbye."

Howie stretched and looked at the clock by the bed. It was nearly noon. "Hungry?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied. "Breakfast or lunch?"

"Breakfast," he said, after a moment. "I feel like eggs."

"Okay," said Natalie, "I'm going to jump in the shower and then I'll cook while you shower."

"Or we could shower together and then cook together," said Howie, raising one eyebrow in a lascivious leer.

"We can only cook together one more time, remember," said Natalie, nodding at the sole remaining condom.

Howie burst out laughing. "Right! How embarrassing is that likely to be?" Everyone knew everyone else's business in a small town. He sure hoped the pharmacist was discreet.

"Go for bold," suggested Natalie. "Buy dozens of them. If they're going to talk about us, we might as well give them something to say."

Howie laughed and ran his finger down her nose. "Good plan. Now, feed me."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They showered and had breakfast. They talked about the dance and the people they had met. Natalie told him again what a sweet man he was and he told her again how much he had enjoyed her book.

She grimaced. "Yeah, well, it was that book that brought me Brent."

"Is he...?"

Natalie nodded. "Yes."

"I thought he was a banker."

"He was...is. He arranged for my mortgage for me. On my loft."

"In SoHo," said Howie. Then, "what's a loft?"

Natalie laughed. "It's an apartment, but for some reason, we never say that...we say 'loft'."

"So like a condo?"

"It's actually a five-storey building. The main floor is a jewelry store and then there's two apartments above it...two storeys each. I bought the building."

"Wow!" said Howie, "You must sell a lot of books."

"The Treasure Trail was chosen as an alternate selection in the Book-of-the-Month Club, so I got a bonus from my publisher. I decided it was time to grow up and start investing my money."

"Alternate selection?" mused Howie.

"It doesn't sound like much," said Natalie, "but it's a pretty big deal in Book World."

"Kinda like going to number two on the charts," said Howie.

Natalie laughed. "More like making it into the top twenty."

"So do you rent out the other apartment...I mean, loft?"

"Yes, they're not very big. 'Two-storey apartment' sounds grand, but it's pretty small...couple of bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs and then living area below."

They tidied up the dishes and headed into town. Howie brought the subject up again.

"So you got a mortgage and a..." He sorted through a bunch of words before settling on "...lover?"

"Yes, his bank handled all the finances for my publisher and she recommended him to me. He was very charming and very knowledgeable about both the book business and the bank business. He arranged to have the place inspected before I saw the final papers and found an undisclosed flaw that made them reduce the price by several thousand dollars."

She sighed. "And when I told him how wonderful he was and asked how could I ever thank him, he said 'have lunch with me'."

She looked over at Howie. "Not dinner. Lunch. See how smart he was. Dinner would have been highly inappropriate and I would have run like the wind. But lunch was safe...respectable... businesslike. And it was very professional. We talked about books and banking. He didn't suggest coming up to my place or anything. He didn't even suggest getting together again. We talked for three hours and by the end I was completely in love with him." Her eyes went far away for a moment. "We had lunch a couple more times before I moved into the loft. Always business. A paper that needed signing or a clarification. Then he sent me flowers 'from the bank' when I moved in, and when I phoned to thank him, he suggested that he might like to see this place that he had heard so much about...and the rest is history."

Howie parked the car and turned it off. He looked at Natalie. "Dozens, huh?"

She reached across and touched his face. "Scads. Oodles. Scores..."

"And what will you be doing while I am doing this?" he asked.

"I'm going back to the hardware store," said Natalie, "to get oil for the door."

"Care to trade errands?" smiled Howie.

"Not on your life!" retorted Natalie. She ran a hand along his thigh. "Now, get in there! I feel like cooking again."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"So what were the thousand clues that you missed?" he asked, on the way home. She had said 'heal me' and Howie figured this might be part of the process.

Natalie sighed. "Well," she began, "there's the obvious that I never knew his address or home phone number. He always came to my place. And he would call me during the day sometimes for...I don't know...clever conversation. I had a cell phone number, but he turned that off when he went home. Not that I ever called it...I never needed to...he never left me without having arranged our next outing."

She laughed bitterly. "And that was clue number two. We never went 'out'. Our first few dates were intimate dinners in dark restaurants. After that, he would come to my place. We'd go out to daytime things, like art galleries and markets in my neighborhood. But nothing at night. Nothing public." She looked at Howie. "New York is a very big city, but Manhattan is a very small island."

"Did he live there...in Manhattan, I mean?"

"He had a house in Westchester, where the wife looked after the kids..."

"There were kids?" Somehow that made it worse.

"Two of them," sighed Natalie. "A boy and a girl," she added, for no reason.

"So what did you think...when he wouldn't take you anywhere?"

"Well, I'm not much of a party girl and you know how I like to dance!! He managed to make me think that it was mostly my idea that we not go out. And when he was faced up with it, he always had a good excuse, like he was tired from work, or he didn't want to spend time with people because he did that all day...or, my own personal favorite...he just wanted to be with me."

Howie was having trouble getting his head around it. He tried looking at it from the guy's point of view. Just the logistics of it made his mind boggle. "So...I'm looking to cheat on my wife..." he said with a question in his voice.

"...and you want to know how," said Natalie. Howie nodded. "Well, first you do it a few times, so you get really good at it," she said bitterly. "Oh yeah, I was not the first..."

"Then you hammer home the mantra of how hard you work, how unavailable you will be at certain times. Throw in a few fictitious out-of-town clients and some aging parents to explain weekends. Sell the clients to your wife as well."

Natalie started ticking off points on her fingers. "Never call her by her name. Always call her Honey. The wife too. Then you're never going to be caught out at a bad moment. Never let anyone take a picture of the two of you." She smiled over at Howie. "That one might be hard for you."

He smiled, but there was no laughter in his eyes. The hurt was pouring out of her...and into him. The calmer her voice was, the more he had trouble seeing the road.

"When you start bringing stuff to her place, buy it all brand-new. And always change back into your original clothes before you leave."

"That didn't make you suspicious?" Howie thought even he would see through that.

"He just put a 'business appointment' on either end of our time together and showed up in a suit. I know it sounds like I should have known, but, like I said, I was in love."

"So what happened?"

"Carol Sweeney happened. She was my roommate from college. She had been living in France for a couple of years, and as it happened, having an affair with a married man. Oh, she knew he was married. She preferred it that way. Anyway, we met for lunch and I was waxing poetic on the subject of Brent and she got suspicious. She asked me a few pointed questions." Natalie paused. "I was very resentful, rude even. I didn't want to believe it."

"Of course, you didn't," said Howie, half to himself. Who would? he wondered.

"So Carol got the proof. It really wasn't hard once you went looking for it. She asked me if I wanted to know. She said it didn't make any difference to her if I had an affair with a married man, but maybe it made a difference to me. I said I wanted to know, so she told me."

Howie looked over at Natalie. She was staring straight ahead. He could see tears brimming.

"It hurt a lot," she said, and then was quiet for the rest of the drive.