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could have been a poster boy for any young American male who aspired to hold the office. He was classically handsome, athletic, attractive, and charismatic to men and women alike.
    Vanessa Merritt was the perfect armpiece for her husband. She was gorgeous. Her beauty and southern-bred charm somehow made up for any shortcomings. Such as wit. And wisdom. She wasn't considered a dynamo in the brains department, but nobody seemed to care. The public had wanted a First Lady with whom to fall in love, and Vanessa Armbruster Merritt had easily fulfilled that need.
    David's parents were long deceased. He had no living relatives. Vanessa's father, however, more than compensated for this lack. Cletus Armbruster had been the senior senator from Mississippi for as long as anyone could remember. He'd survived more presidents than most Americans remembered voting for.
    Together they formed a photogenic triumvirate as famous as any royal family. Not since the Kennedy administration had an American president, his wife, and their personal life attracted so much public attention and adoration, nationwide and around the world. Everything they did, everywhere they went, singly or together, created a stir.
    Consequently, America went positively ga-ga when it was announced that the First Lady was pregnant with the couple's first child. The baby would make perfection even more perfect.
    The baby's birth was given more press than Desert Storm or the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. Barrie remembered

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    watching, from a newsroom monitor, the umpteenth story on the Merritt baby's arrival at the White House. Howie had sourly remarked, "Should we be on the lookout for a bright star in the East?"
    The only event to receive as much news coverage was that same baby's death three months later.
    The world was plunged into shock and grief. No one wanted to believe it.
    No one could believe it. America mourned.
    Barrie finished her wine, rewound the videotape for the third time, and watched again as the funeral scenes sadly unfolded.
    Looking pale and tragically beautiful in her mourning suit, Vanessa Merritt was unable to stand without assistance. It was obvious to all that her heart was broken. It had taken years for her to conceive a child, another personal aspect of her life that had been explored and exploited in great detail by the media. To lose the child she'd struggled to bear made her a truly tragic heroine.
    The President looked courageously stoic as tears streaked his lean cheeks and ran into the attractive furrows on either side of his mouth. Pundits commented on his attentiveness to his wife. On that day, David Merritt was seen primarily as a husband and father who happened also to be the chief executive.
    Senator Armbruster wept unashamedly into a white handkerchief. His contribution to his grandson's small coffin was a tiny Mississippi state flag, sticking up among the white roses and baby's breath.
    Had Barrie been in the First Lady's situation, she would have wanted to grieve privately. She would have resented the cameras and commentators.
    Even though she knew her colleagues were only doing their jobs-indeed, Barrie herself had been in the thick of it-the funeral had been a pub-18 Sandra Brown
    lic spectacle, shared via satellite with the entire world. How had Vanessa Merritt held up even as well as she had?
    Barrie's doorbell rang.
    She glanced at the clock. "Damn! Twenty-four minutes, thirty-nine seconds.
    You know, Cronkite," she said as they went down the stairs, "I think they do that on purpose just to build our hopes up."
    Luigi himself delivered. He was a short, rotund Italian with a rosy sweating face, fleshy cherub lips, and a mop of curly black hair-on his chest. His head was completely bald.
    "Miss Travis," he said, tsking as he took in her attire. "I was hoping the extra pizza tonight was for a lover."
    "Nope. The meatball one's for Cronkite. Hope you didn't go too heavy on the garlic. It gives him gas. How much?"
    "I put