In the meantime, she’d been watching him. He liked being in Chicago about as much as he’d liked spending six months in Washington last year-which was not at all. Cities turned him off. He hadn’t let it show, however, during his talks at the conference and the speech tonight. And after dinner, when a dozen prominent men were all but flag-waving to get his attention, he’d offered his time to Bradford, such a lonely old man these days.

Long, firm fingers closed on her waist from behind, and Sonia glanced up with a private smile for her husband, his mere closeness making her eyes light up like Fourth of July sparklers. The half frown on his forehead was there and gone before another soul could have noticed. Sonia, immediately perceptive, ended the argument with Ferona as Craig’s arm circled her shoulders.

“What’s wrong?” she murmured as she found herself inexorably led away from the crowd. Just outside the hotel’s banquet room was a darkly paneled hallway filled with coatracks and all but empty of people.

“It occurred to me…” Craig paused as someone unexpectedly entered the hallway and stopped to exchange a word or two. When they were alone again, he wrapped both his arms around Sonia’s shoulders and enclosed them both immediately in their own private cocoon. In Sonia’s line of vision were Craig’s stiffly starched white shirt, his spring-weight black suit jacket, the shock of brown hair on his forehead and those Paul Newman blues of his. No one else. Nothing else. “It occurred to me,” he repeated gravely, “that we haven’t made love in nearly three days.”

She stared at him blankly before a small, slow smile curved mischievously on her lips. “We aren’t a wee bit bored with this gathering, are we, Mr. Hamilton?” she murmured.

“We have done our duty, Mrs. Hamilton.”

She shook her head. “There’s still a line of people in there wanting to talk to you when they get the chance, and you know it.”

“You talked to all of them. I don’t need to.”

“They’re expecting-”

He shook his head. “If you’ll remember correctly, Mrs. Hamilton, we had some very different plans for these three days in Chicago. A little shopping, a little time alone together. You wanted to see that art fair. Instead, I haven’t even had breakfast alone with you, and you’ve been asleep long before I could escape the crowd at night. I’ve noticed it before, lady. You are a very, very good sport.”

“I am,” she agreed impishly, “very, very good.”

“And I think it’s time to skip out and cut up a little.”

“Oh?”

Craig’s thumb idly traced her cheekbone. A very high, delicate cheekbone. He was tremendously fond of those bones. And those incredible deep-set green-blue eyes, always so full of emotion, so sensitive to his every mood. She had a tiny black beauty mark at the nape of her neck and wore her curly black hair just long enough to conceal it. He loved that mark, too. And the legs that could have been a dancer’s…she was all leg, he told her often. She regularly apologized for being so misshapen.

She was wearing her cat’s smile at the moment, her eyes unspeakably demure beneath a fringe of thick, dark lashes. She knew damn well that in his eyes she was shaped perfectly. And that he was tired of people and wanted her alone, where the phone was off the hook and the door was locked against interruptions.

“First, we’re going to hear some music,” he told her huskily. “And then maybe we’ll just walk for a while.”

“Walking is what you have in mind, is it?”

“For starters.”

Sonia made a big business out of straightening his tie. Scarlet-and-black-striped, very conservative. So was his starched white shirt. Beneath that shirt his heart was beating at a very unconservative rate-and it continued to accelerate the longer her hands lingered at his throat, the longer her breast brushed just lightly against his arm. Her husband responded like quicksilver. Disgraceful, after being married four years. She reached up to brush back that wayward shock of light brown hair that had fallen over his forehead. The gesture was frankly proprietary. One of these days she was going to get him out of those starched white shirts if it killed her. She would not insist on pastels; that would be a hopeless mismatch with his character, but a simple masculine stripe wouldn’t hurt him. “It was an honor to be invited, and I really think you should be busy in there-”

“Your mother always says that busy hands are happy hands,” Craig agreed. “Mine are itching at this moment to get very busy, Mrs. Hamilton.”

“There’s just no talking to you,” she informed him.

With a lazy grin, he claimed her wrist, not wasting any more time. They quickly said the necessary goodbyes to the people Craig honestly cared for and respected, and then made their escape.

The lobby of the hotel was swarming with people; through a revolving glass door they were suddenly set free in Chicago at night. A late spring breeze whispered off nearby Lake Michigan. At eleven o’clock, Chicago’s nightlife was just getting started. Sequins and silks flashed by in passing car windows, and Sonia paused for a moment, seeing the promise of excitement in the gleam of neon lights. She no more valued big-city pollution than Craig did; they both loved their ranch at Cold Creek with its backdrop of mountains. Tonight, though, Chicago had its own special appeal. The air actually smelled fresh, with a lingering hint of spring. Or perhaps she was just susceptible to becoming intoxicated at the idea of escaping responsibilities and people.

“We’ll go back to our hotel and change clothes,” Craig directed as they crossed the six-lane street to where their rented car was parked. “Put on something comfortable. We’ll go out and just fool around for an hour or two.”

“And then come back to get a good eight hours of sleep,” Sonia said demurely.

“Or its equivalent.”

“I was never very good at math. What is the equivalent of eight hours of sleep?” Sonia wondered aloud.

“I may,” Craig remarked, “develop a fetish for spanking. Soon.” She slipped into the car. Automatically, his thumb punched down the lock button before he closed her door. Just as automatically, when he got in on his side his arm immediately strapped her in at shoulder and waist; then, when he had her pinned like a moth, he proceeded to kiss her thoroughly. As he released her and started the engine, Sonia thought idly that Craig’s protectiveness was instinctive, something he probably wasn’t even aware of. She was.

The moment they pulled out onto the street, a small dark blue car appeared right behind them. Sonia knew Craig saw it, because he checked the rearview mirror. “Shadow” had come with the conference, and their unasked-for bodyguard thoroughly irritated her.

Emotions ran high on anything remotely connected to energy and the Middle East; she knew that, just as she knew Craig had joined the ranks of wealthy and influential men in the past few years. The conference organizers routinely provided protection for important participants, but Sonia knew Craig wouldn’t have put up with Shadow if she hadn’t been along.

When they’d been in Washington, she’d had more than a moment or two of worry when she realized how volatile certain groups could be. Mention oil and the ecologists cocked their panic guns at the same time that people with vested interests in fossil fuels got touchy. So a little prudence was called for, but Sonia certainly had no intention of living her life in a perpetual state of paranoia. She resented Shadow as she resented toothaches, and glancing back at their tail, she felt a damper clamp down on her ebullient mood.

“The conference is over. We don’t have to have him with us if we’re just going out for a few hours, do we?” she pleaded.

For a moment, she thought Craig hadn’t heard her. His foot pressed down on the accelerator as the light turned green. He adjusted the car’s ventilation to let in some fresh air, loosened his tie and weaved promptly around a driver who was straddling two lanes.

“Of course we don’t,” he said finally.

And immediately regretted that decision. He knew Sonia hated their tail, and he knew she’d guessed that Shadow was there primarily to protect her. Craig would never have put up with Shadow for himself alone, regardless of the knife someone had tried to poke at him in Sheridan, Wyoming, two years before. Sonia didn’t know about that, and never would. At the time, he’d hadn’t known whether his attacker was after his wallet or angry over his work with shale oil. It didn’t matter. Sonia did.

He couldn’t stand the thought of something happening to her.

For the past three days, though, whenever he spotted Shadow’s car in his rearview mirror, he felt like a pretentious fool. He might have a little money, and for a short while maybe he was in a modest limelight. He was still just a man, and a man who’d known how to defend himself from the time he was nine.

In protecting Sonia, however, it was unlike him to let his better judgment be swayed by impulse. He didn’t like big cities and knew the conference had received national publicity, so he had no regrets about taking on Shadow-but dammit, at the moment he just wanted to be with his wife. He wanted the freedom to make her laugh, to talk nonsense and simply play without an audience. To make love later, yes, but first to cherish a few stolen hours of privacy with her. It wasn’t as though Shadow had spent the past three days staring at them, but the few minutes they’d had alone together just hadn’t been enough.

After he parked the car in the hotel garage, Craig stalked back to have a word with the other man. Sonia waited by the car until he returned. “What’d you say to him?” she asked.

“That we were retiring for the night.”

Her chuckle was delighted; her bright eyes were sparkling. “So we get to escape from the big bad wolf?”