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He drew her face up close to his, paused, probed her eyes, then took her lips beneath his. There was a difference in his kiss. The difference was subtle, yet tremendous. Avery sensed it immediately. Technically it was the same, as his tongue gently but possessively mated with her mouth. But somehow it was much more personal, more intimate, more giving.

Minutes later they were in bed. Tate was naked, lying above her, his lips following down her nightgown as he lowered it inch by delicious inch.

When it was completely off, he laid his head on her belly, his shoulders between her thighs, and fervently kissed the yielding softness. "I never thought I could love you again. But after what you've done for Mandy, and for me," he added thickly, "I'll be damned if I don't love you more than ever."

He slid his hands beneath her hips and tilted them up. His parted lips whisked the smooth skin of her abdomen. He kissed the delta of dark curls, nuzzled it with his nose, feathered it with his breath.

Catching his hair with her hands, she arched up, offering her open thighs to his caressing mouth. He drew the silky, slippery, softness between his lips, imbibing her taste and scent, using his flicking, stroking, questing tongue to bring her to one crashing climax after another.

Then she inverted her body and returned the favor. Her lips covered the smooth head of his penis. She sucked it tenderly and used the tip of her tongue to cleave the groove and pick up the pearly drops of fluid already collected there.

Tate prayed to nameless gods when she took him into her mouth completely, and when he filled it with the very essence of himself, he gave hoarse, rasping cries that left them feeling perfectly marvelous and replete.

Later that night, while they lay dozing, he drew her back against his chest. He kissed her warm, soft nape. He nibbled her shoulder. He said nothing, but waited, as though asking her permission to continue.

She merely purred like a drowsy cat and responded when he eased her thigh up toward her chest, leaving her open for his smooth entry. Their bodies gently undulated against each other with no discernible motion. It was a facile, fluid fuck.

Reaching around her, he caressed her breasts, reshaping them with his hand, then fanned his fingertips across the pebbly nipples.

She pressed her buttocks into the curve of his body, and rubbed her smooth flesh against the dense hair spreading outward from the root of his sex. He groaned his approval and drew her up higher, closer.

He manipulated her from the front with breathtaking sensitivity, and sometimes replaced his rigid penis with inquisitive fingers that moved deep inside her, until immense pleasure washed over her like a warm and balmy spring rain, without thunder, without wind, without lightning— cleansing and pure and benevolent.

The rhythmic contractions of her orgasm brought on his. His body tensed. His breathing was suspended for several splendid seconds while the hot tide of his semen bathed her womb.

When it was over and their bodies were relaxed, but still emanating heat, she turned her head toward him. Their seeking mouths came together in a long, slow, wet kiss.

Then they slept.

FORTY-FIVE

Since they were scheduled to leave very early that morning, Avery got a head start by waking up before Tate. She disentangled their limbs. Getting her hair unsnarled from his fingers wasn't easy, but she finally managed.

She glanced over her shoulder at him as she left the bed. He was beautiful when he slept, one leg sticking out of the covers, his bearded jaw dark against the pillowcase. Sighing with the sheer pleasure of looking at him, and with the stirring memories of last night's lovemaking fresh in her mind, she crept into the bathroom.

The water taps screeched when she turned them on. Avery winced at the noise. Tate needed as much sleep as he could get. Today's agenda was arduous. He would spend hours in an airplane. In between, he would be delivering speeches, pressing hands, and soliciting votes.

This day before Election Day was possibly the most important one of his campaign. Today the fence- straddlers, vital to the outcome of any election, would make up their minds.

Avery stepped beneath the pounding spray. After shampooing her hair, she lathered her body. It still bore traces of Tate's fervent lovemaking. His mouth had left a faint bruise on her soft inner thigh. The hot water stung her whisker-rasped breasts. She was smiling over that when the shower curtain was suddenly whipped back.

"Tate!"

"Good morning." "What—"

"I thought I'd shower with you," he drawled, smiling lecherously. "Save time. Save the hotel some hot water."

Avery stood quaking, as guilty in her nakedness as Eve must have been in Eden when God spotlighted her iniquity. The jets of hot water seemed to turn icy and sharp; they pricked her skin like frigid needles. Color drained from her face. Her lips turned blue. Her eyes seemed to recede into her skull, making the sockets appear huge and cavernous. She shivered.

Puzzled, Tate cocked his sleep-tousled head to one side. "You look like you've seen a ghost. Did I scare you?"

She swallowed. Her mouth opened and closed, but she couldn't form a sound.

"Carole? What's the matter?"

He looked for something amiss. His eyes scaled down her pale, trembling body, then back up. Avery's heart sank heavily in her chest as she watched his baffled gaze move down her once again. It was arrested at her breasts, belly, pubis, thighs—places only seen by a lover's eyes, a husband's eyes.

He saw the appendectomy scar, ancient and faint and almost undetectable unless bared to clinical fluorescent lighting. Avery had wondered, but now she knew. Carole had never had her appendix out.

"Carole?" His voice echoed the mystification in his eyes.

Though the protective gesture was a dead giveaway, Avery covered her lower body with one hand and extended the other toward him in appeal. "Tate, I. . ."

As sharp and deadly as swords, his eyes slashed upwards to clash with hers. "You're not Carole." He stated it softly, while his brain still sifted through conflicting facts. Then, when the impact of it hit him full force, he repeated with emphasis, "You're not Carole!"

His arm shot through the shower's spray to grab hold of her wrist and yank her from the tub. Her shins banged into the porcelain; her wet feet slipped on the tiles. She emitted a tortured cry, more of the spirit than the body.

"Tate, stop. I'll—"

He slammed her wet, naked body against the wall and pinned it there with his own. His hand closed tightly around her neck, just beneath her chin.

"Who the fuck are you? Where is my wife?Who are you?"

"Don't shout," she whimpered. "Mandy will hear."

"Talk, goddamn you." He lowered his voice, but his eyes were still murderous and his hand exerted more pressure against her adam's apple. "Who are you?"

Her teeth were chattering so badly she could barely speak.

"Avery Daniels."

"Who?"

"Avery Daniels."

"Avery Daniels? The TV . . .?"

She bobbed her head once.

"Where's Carole? What—"

''Carole died in the plane crash, Tate," she said. "I survived. We got mixed up because we had switched seats on the plane. I was carrying Mandy when I escaped. They assumed—''

He trapped her dripping head between his hands. "Carole'sdead!"

"Yes," she gulped. "Yes. I'm sorry."

"Since the crash? She died in the crash? You mean you've been living. . . all this time . . .?"

Again, she gave a swift, confirming nod.

Her heart broke apart like an eggshell as she watched him try to comprehend the incomprehensible. Gradually, he released his stranglehold on her cranium and backed away from her.

She snatched her robe off the hook on the back of the bathroom door and pulled it on, hurriedly knotting the tie belt. She reached into the tub and cut off the faucets, which she instantly regretted doing. The resulting silence was deafening, yet it shimmered with the brassy reverberation of disbelief and suspicion.

Into that silence lie threw her one simple question. "Why?"

The day of reckoning had arrived. She'd known it would come eventually. She just hadn't counted on it being today. She wasn't prepared.

"It's complicated."

"I don't give a damn how complicated it is," he said in a voice that vibrated with wrath. "Start talking to me now before I call the police."

"I don't know how or when the initial mix-up was made," she said frantically. "I woke up in the hospital bandaged from head to foot, unable to move or to speak. Everybody was calling me Carole. At first I didn't understand. I was in such pain. I was afraid, confused, disoriented. It took several days for me to piece together what must have happened."

"And when you realized it, you didn't say anything? Why?"

"I couldn't! Remember, I couldn't communicate." She caught his arm in appeal. He slung it off. "Tate, I tried to get the message to you before my face was restored to look like Carole's, but it was impossible. Every time I began to cry, you thought it was from fear over the upcoming surgery. It was that. But it was also because I was being robbed of my own identity and having another imposed on me. I was powerless to get that message across."

"Jesus, this is science fiction." He plowed his fingers through his hair. Realizing he was still naked, he grabbed a towel from the rack and wrapped it around his middle, "That was months ago."

"I had to remain Carole for a while."

"Why?"

She threw back her head and gazed up at the ceiling. The first explanation had been a breeze, compared to what was coming. "It's going to sound—"

"I don't give a shit how it sounds," he said menacingly. "I want to know why you've been impersonating my wife."

"Because someone wants to kill you!"

Her urgent reply took him by surprise. He was still poised to do battle, but his head snapped back like he'd taken an uppercut on the chin."What?"

"When I was in the hospital," she began, clasping her hands together at waist level, "someone came to my room."

"Who?"

"I don't know who. Hear me out before asking me a lot of questions." She drew in a deep breath, but the words continued to tumble rapidly over her lips. "I was bandaged. I couldn't see well. Someone, addressing me as Carole, warned me not to make any deathbed confessions. He said that the plans were still in place and that you'd never live to take office."

He remained unmoved for a moment, then a smile tugged at the corner of his lips. Eventually, he barked a hateful laugh. "You expect me to believe that?"

"It's the truth!"

"The only truth is that you're going to jail. Now." He turned and headed for the telephone.

"Tate, no!" She caught his arm and brought him around. "I don't blame you for what you're thinking about me."

"Your worst guess couldn't even come close."

The invective smarted, but for the time being, she had to ignore it. "I'm not lying about this. I swear it. Someone plans to assassinate you before you take office."

"I'm not even elected."

"As good as, so it seems."

"You can't identify this mystery person?"

"Not-yet. I'm trying."

He studied her earnest face for a moment, then sneered, "I can't believe I'm standing here listening to this shit. You've been living a lie all these months. Now you expect me to believe that a total stranger sneaked into your hospital room and put a bug in your ear that he was going to assassinate me?" He shook his head as though marveling over her audacity and his culpability.

"Not a stranger, Tate. Someone close. Someone in the family."

His jaw relaxed. He stared at her with patent incredulity. "Are you—"

"Think! Only family members are allowed into the ICU."

"You're saying a member of my family is plotting my assassination?"

"It sounds absurd, I know, but it's the truth. I didn't make it up. I didn't imagine it, either. There have been notes."

"Notes?"

"Notes left for Carole in places only she would have access to, letting her know that the plan was still in place." She rushed to the luggage rack in the closet and opened a zippered compartment of one of her suitcases. She carried the notes, including the desecrated campaign poster, back to him.

"They were typed on the typewriter at the ranch," she told him.

He studied each one at length. "You could have made these yourself just in case I caught on and you needed a scapegoat."

"I didn't," she cried. "This was Carole's partner's way of—"

"Wait a minute, wait a minute." He tossed the notes aside and held up both hands. "This is getting better all the time. Carole and this would-be assassin were in it together, right?"

"Absolutely. From the time she met you. Maybe before."

"Why would Carole want me dead? She had no political leanings whatsoever."

"This isn't political, Tate. It's personal. Carole set her sights on becoming your wife. She became exactly what you wanted, and once they teamed up she was coached on how to behave so you'd have to fall in love with her. Who introduced you?"

"Jack," he said with a small shrug. "When she came to apply for a job at the firm."

"It might not have been an accident that she sought employment in your law office."

"She had impeccable credentials."

"I'm sure she did. She would have seen to it."

"She could type," he added drolly, "which shoots your theory all to hell."

"I know I'm right."

"I guess you can prove it," he said, implying the opposite. He even folded his arms complacently across his chest.

"I don't have to. Zee can."

He reacted with visible shock. His arms dropped to his sides. "My mother?"

"She has a whole portfolio on Carole Navarro. I've seen it. Believing me to be Carole, she threatened me with exposure if I made you unhappy."

"Why would she do that?"

"She seemed to think you were falling in love with your wife again." Avery looked at him meaningfully. 'After last night, I have good reason to think that, too."

"Forget last night. As you well know, it was all a hoax." Angrily, he turned away.