He was glad he hadn’t when a moment later she added, “You know, Doc, funny thing is, I don’t feel that way about you. I happen to like you a lot-just the way you are.”

He’d never felt less likeable in his life. He felt, in fact, like nothing so much as a contrary child, a mass of confusion and contradictions, inadvertently hurting that which he only meant to hold.

He closed his eyes, needing to be away from her just then, needing to go to his quiet place and try to rediscover himself there-or failing that, at least to find his path again. Somewhere, he knew, there were important things he was supposed to do that he’d lost sight of, priorities he’d set for himself that he’d somehow forgotten. Somewhere along the line he’d wandered off the path on a quest of his own, this search for the ellusive and alluring being named Joanna, who for all he knew might exist only in his own mind. He sensed that he was very close to becoming hopelessly lost, and that he desperately needed some sort of compass to bring him back to where he belonged.

It was at just that moment, like an answer to an unspoken prayer, that he heard a childish voice calling, “Hey, Doc! Doc-where you been? Hey, come on, man.”

He opened his eyes and found Phoenix watching him, blue eyes bright and quizzical in the shadows beneath the brim of the cowboy hat. Beyond her, behind the lattice of a chain-link fence, he could see the basketball court’s cracked pavement reflecting heat in sluggish waves. And Michael, standing at the fence, the fingers of one small hand woven through the chain link, impatiently shaking it while holding the basketball precariously balanced on one scrawny hip. A short distance away, Tom Applegate waited under the basket, patiently mopping sweat.

“Better go,” Phoenix said with a small jerk of her head. She glanced upward and added wryly, “You might want to hurry…”

He noticed only then how dark the day had gotten. The air lay on his skin like a hot, wet blanket, and somewhere in the distance thunder rumbled. He felt as surly as the weather, his thoughts humid and unsettled, confusion and frustration tumbling rampant through his insides. He stood and looked at her, part of him craving the peace and quiet only distancing himself from her could bring, part longing to plunge headlong into the emotional tumult, to hold on to her and never let go.

“Go,” she repeated in a grating voice, forcing herself to smile. She waited until he had nodded and turned away before she sagged against the chain-link fence, shaken…shaking inside.

His eyes aren’t a shaman’s eyes now. The thought gave her a sharp and angry sense of triumph, but no satisfaction. Those emotions she’d been so smugly sure of, those passions she’d sensed churning below the surface of his quietness-all that and more she’d seen just now in those dark and turbulent eyes. But those feelings were in no way hers to control. Foolish, foolish Phoenix, she thought, to ever have imagined they might be.

Control his emotions? How, when she couldn’t even manage her own? Avidly, she watched the trio on the basketball court-which, due to the combination of the heat index, a threatening storm and the sports season, they enjoyed unchallenged-tall, imposing black man in running clothes, cute skinny black kid in clothes several sizes too big, and Dr. Ethan Brown, the president’s kid, blond, conservative and wholesome as shredded wheat in light blue jeans and a pale yellow polo shirt. It was obvious the doc wasn’t much of an athelete; in spite of his size and naturally beautiful physique, he had none of Tom Applegate’s feline grace. And yet of the three out on that court it was he who drew her gaze like filings to a magnet. His moves she followed, standing on the sidelines, clinging with both hands to the chain-link fence like a shunned child, with the ache of yearning behind her smile. She heard a little boy’s laughter, but it was the doc’s face she saw, smiling and flushed with heat and exertion as he scooped up the boy with the ball hugged tight in his arms and lifted him high, high toward the basket. She heard the childish shriek of delight as the ball clanged through the iron hoop, but it was the doc’s quiet “Way to go!” as he executed an endearingly awkward high five that made her breath catch and tears gather sizzling behind her eyes.

What do you want from me? She’d asked him that only minutes ago, hadn’t she? Now she knew she should have asked herself the same question. What do you want from this man, Joanna?

She was suddenly terribly afraid that what she wanted was something she’d have no earthly idea what to do with once she got it. Afraid that if she got it, and if she tried to make it work, she might harm this gentle and beautiful man irreparably. Afraid that with her selfish wanting she would try-and hurt him-anyway.

A large raindrop splashed onto the back of her hand. She looked up, startled, as if such a thing were completely inexplicable and miraculous, and when she did, another drop landed on her cheek. She was wiping it away when the three came, laughing, through the gate.

Tom Applegate was talking to his watch. “Carl’s gone to get the car. He’ll meet us on this side of the park,” he reported when he’d finished.

Ethan glanced at Michael, who was looking mulish and disappointed, then said to Tom, “Why don’t you tell him to meet us over at-” he just did stop himself from saying “The Gardens,” and with a quick, guilty glance at Phoenix made it “-Michael’s place. We can walk back. That way we can stop on the way and get a hot dog-how’s that sound, Michael?”

Michael shrugged and said, “That’s cool,” trying hard to be offhanded. But he couldn’t keep the grin from slipping through his pose of determined indifference.

“How ’bout you?” Ethan said, turning to Phoenix. He wanted to lower his voice to a level of privacy, make a joking remark about “regular people,” maybe say something cute about Leroy and Joanna. But those were things between them, and it felt wrong, suddenly, to share them with anyone, even someone as unobtrusive as the Secret Service, or as oblivious as a child. What he offered instead was a rather stiff and formal sounding, “Would you like to join us for lunch? We can take you home, if you want to, after we drop off Michael.”

“That’s cool,” she said with a shrug, in deliberate imitation of the child. Except that she didn’t smile, and her eyes, before she turned to walk beside him, had a curious silvery brightness, as if a hard rain was falling somewhere just behind them.

Around them raindrops fell only sporadically, making quarter-sized dark spots on the sidewalk. Thunder growled and wind blew in fitful gusts, stirring the pea-soup air like an indifferent chef-though one inclined to carelessly throw in dashes of ozone and hot asphalt now and then for spice.

Thinking the storm only meant to shake its fist and then pass them by, they ignored it, taking their time, walking slowly, Michael bouncing the basketball, the adults taking turns retrieving it when it got away from him. No one talked much-Tom, because it was both his nature and his job to keep his mouth shut and his eyes open, Ethan and Phoenix making the child the center of their attention the way adults do when they need an excuse not to talk to each other. And yet their awareness of each other held more electricity and tension than the storm. It arced between them, bridging the gap between glances that tried hard to avoid meeting; it hummed a background to short, breathless comments and rose to cresendo in the silences. Walking languidly along, Ethan felt a constant need to wipe away sweat, and more winded than when he’d been running in the heat on the basketball court.

They stopped to buy hot dogs from a street vendor who was getting ready to close up shop, and surly about being forced to delay. Then a little later on from another pushcart, ices-a concoction Ethan was sure only a child could find palatable, consisting of sugar water, slush and a dye guaranteed to turn lips and tongues a goulish shade of blue.

While Ethan was paying the vendor for the ices a gust of wind blew Phoenix’s cowboy hat off, and only Tom Applegate’s quick reflexes prevented it from flying into the street.

As he returned the hat to its owner, with a meaningful glance at the darkening sky the agent said quietly to Ethan, “Sir, I think we need to be getting on.”

“Right.” Ethan offered a cone of blue slush to Phoenix. She gave it-and him-a quizzical look but gamely took it.

Knowing it was unwise, he allowed his gaze to linger on her hand as it tentatively enfolded the gaudy paper cone. It came to him as an oddly painful little revelation that it didn’t look like a rock star’s hand-at least not one that went with backless tiger-striped tops and navel rings. The nails were unmanicured but kept short and very clean. It seemed small and somehow defenseless to him, like the hand of a meticulous child.

“Hey, where’s mine?” Michael demanded, handing the basketball off to Tom with a trusting no-look pass and grabbing at the cones Ethan still had in his hands.

“I know your mama taught you better,” Ethan said sternly, holding the cones out of reach. Michael’s face fell. He looked so deflated Ethan had to fight to hold on to his frown. “What do you say?”

“Can I please have my ice?” Michael mumbled, addressing his shoes.

“Much better.” Ethan handed over the cone and gave Michael’s baseball cap a forgiving tug. He offered the last ice to Tom, who declined-with obvious relief. With no other choice left to him, Ethan took a tentative taste. The syrupy sweetness made him shudder.

“Sir,” Tom said again, quietly urgent, “if I’m not mistaken, the sky’s about to open up on us. Unless you want to get wet, we’d best hurry.”

“What are you, his mother?” Phoenix said, making Michael giggle.

But they started moving again, walking quickly now, with Michael having to hop and skip to keep up. The wind scuttled trash along the gutter and pushed impatiently at their backs, molding Phoenix’s skirt to her legs and slapping the edges against Ethan’s pantlegs. Lightning flickered, and raindrops fell with a spattering sound. Moments later thunder boomed a tympany solo.

“Hey!” Michael cried in tones of outrage.

Tom had time to say only, “Uh-oh, here it comes.” And then the sky did open up.

They ran, Ethan holding Michael by the hand, Phoenix with her hat clasped against her chest, Tom vigilantly bringing up the rear, though he could easily have outpaced them all.

Phoenix ran laughing and gasping, filled with a strange sense of euphoria. They would be thoroughly soaked, there was no way to avoid it; her hat would be ruined, there was nothing she could do about it. And something about that inevitability, and her helplessness in the face of it, was unbelievably liberating. She could have no control over this. And thus she was utterly and completely free.

She was aware that her skirt was plastered to her legs, that her hair had come loose and was clinging in ribbons to her face, neck and back. Blindly she ran, through a veil of rain, following Ethan’s lead, trusting him to know where he was going, leaping flooded gutters, her feet splashing gloriously on the inundated streets. Dance in the rain… She’d told him, hadn’t she, that it was one of her favorite things? At the time, she’d thought she was making it up, but maybe…maybe somewhere inside her, someone- Joanna?-must have known that it was true.

She was conscious of a feeling almost of disappointment when Ethan turned hard to the right and led them up some cracked concrete steps. Still euphoric and half-blinded by the rain and her own streaming hair, she barely noticed the peeling paint on the door frame, the broken pane of glass in the front door, the crumbling mortar. It was only when they were inside the vestibule, laughing, gasping and stamping away water, and the door was closing behind them with a sticky sound, that the first alarms began to ring in her mind. She was like an animal sensing the trap-too late.

Somewhere beyond the accelerated thumping of her own heart she could hear Michael’s voice and Ethan’s, laughing and exclaiming over the drowned remains of their ices. She knew that Tom was starting up the stairs, and that Ethan and Michael were following. She knew that, unless she wanted to stay and wait for them where she was, she would have to climb those stairs, too.

Claustrophobia coiled its tentacles around her, suffocating her with the smells of poverty and decay. It was hot in the vestibule, and even hotter in the stairwell, a dense and muggy heat that increased with every tread she climbed. But in spite of that, she felt chilled. Cold clear through to her bones.