He couldn't allow himself to leave. This was something he thought he'd outgrown long ago – such an overwhelming physical attraction.

Oh sure, when he'd been younger… in college a couple of times… even the first few years of his marriage, the occasional dalliance, stepping out, somebody coming on to him, usually, on a business trip or one of the firm retreats.

But that had stopped after the one crisis, Sheila getting wind of what was going on with one of them. She wasn't going to have it. Infidelity wasn't going to be part of their lives. Dooher had better decide whether he wanted to sleep around or keep the kids.

A hundred times since, he wished he'd have let Sheila go, taking the kids with her.

But in truth, back then, fifteen years ago, he was already unable to risk a divorce, already working with some of the charities, the Archdiocese itself. There was big money there, clean work. And Sheila would have scotched it if things had gotten ugly.

He knew she would have. As she would today.

So he'd simply put his hormones out of his mind, put all of his effort into real life – work, the wife, the kids, the house. He would be satisfied with the ten-fifteen-twenty days of vacation, the new car.

Everyone else seemed to survive in that secure between-the-lines adult existence. It wasn't so bad.

Except Mark Dooher hated it. He never got over hating it. He had never had to play by the same rules as everyone else. He was simply better at everything, smarter, more charismatic.

He deserved more. He deserved better.

That couldn't be all there was. Do your job, live the routine, get old, die. That couldn't be it. Not for him.

He couldn't get the woman off his mind.

Well, he would just have to do it, that was all. He'd call up his fabled discipline and simply will her out of his consciousness. There was nothing to be done with her anyway. Dooher didn't trust the dynamic of lust, that hormonal rush and then the long regret. No, he wasn't about to get involved with all that.