"Well, those eggs are shot," Josh said grinning. They were downstairs in the kitchen, trying to see what they could salvage from the breakfast he'd cooked a couple of hours earlier. "Good thing I went to the store yesterday; there are more."

"Enough more? I'm starving."

"Eight more—I had part of a box left that I was using up before. That should satisfy you, shouldn't it?"

"Maybe. It depends on what we do with them."

"We? You mean me, what I do with them! This is my kitchen; I do the cooking in it. Your job is to sit back and look decorative."

"And starve, then."

"You won't starve. Wait and see."

"I can't wait very long."

"You won't have to."

Donna sat back in one of Josh's kitchen chairs, and watched him moving around, breaking eggs, grating cheese, rustling in his fridge for some vegetables to chop up for an omelette. He'd put on another pot of coffee, and carved a couple of thick slices off a crusty loaf of bakery bread, popping them into the toaster. A box of greens came out of the fridge along with the vegetables; apparently there was going to be salad. She pried the lid off the box and peered into it in amazement.

"This is fresh," she announced.

"You sound surprised."

"I am surprised."

He dimpled at her. "I've got an easier schedule these days, Donna. I don't eat just take-out anymore."

"But—salad. Vegetables. Fresh."

"Salad. Vegetables. They're really not as bad as I used to think, but they're definitely tastier fresh."

She shook her head. "This is a whole new take on Josh Lyman."

He was smirking now. "Like it?"

"I could get used to it."

"You'd better."

"Had I indeed?"

"Yeah, 'cause when we've eaten something, I'm planning a whole new take on you, and it would really be more fun if you were wanting to take me too."

"I'll think about that."

"I'm thinking about it right now."

"I can tell."

"You don't really need breakfast, do you?"

"I do indeed. In fact, I need breakfast and lunch. I'm starving."

"Eat this, then. Fast. We can call it brunch, can't we?"

"Mmmm. This is delicious, Josh."

"Don't waste time complimenting the cook. Just eat, damn it, eat. Fast."

oooooo

"I love this house," Donna said, looking around the room a couple of hours later. She was pulling on her jeans again. Josh was watching her appreciatively.

"You haven't seen much of it yet," he said, smiling. "Just the bedroom and the kitchen. Mostly the bedroom."

"And the living room, last night."

"Do you want to see the rest of the place?"

"Sure."

"Come on."

There were two other rooms off the hall upstairs, both unfurnished, both smaller versions of the big master bedroom, with the same sloping ceiling angles and dormer windows. One room had a ladder standing in it, some tarps and a couple of cans of paint; Josh really must be doing the painting himself. Each room had a little door in the outside wall, under the eaves; Donna opened the one in the back bedroom, and peered in. It seemed to be a closet running back behind the wall towards the front of the house and the other room.

"They connect," Josh said, with a smile. "Great for kids, like a secret passageway."

"Yes, it would be," Donna said, trying to keep her voice from showing her amazement at the idea of Josh thinking about what was great for kids.

"And you can climb out of the window into that tree, then down to the garden. That's the great thing about apple trees; they're wonderful for climbing."

She was staring at him now, her mouth open. He looked over at her, and smiled, a little hesitantly.

"This was my room," he said softly. "Joanie had the other one."

"This was your house?" Donna was stunned. She'd seen the house he'd spent his teenage years in, a couple of times, before his mother had sold it and moved to Florida. "Before—before—"

"Before Joanie died," Josh said, simply. "Yeah. I came back to take a look after I left the clinic, and there was a For Sale sign in the yard, and—I bought the place. It was only the kitchen that was damaged in the fire; it had all been redone. It probably sounds kind of crazy, my wanting to live here again, but I talked about it with my therapist before I made the offer, and she thought it could be a good idea for a while. She'd really made me look at stuff I'd been avoiding forever, even with the other people—the other therapists—I've seen. I'm not trying to live in the past or anything, just—I don't know, get it back? There was so much I'd forgotten, so many good things—like that tree, I'd forgotten about that tree. I used to climb in there and pretend all sorts of things. And those closets. Before Joanie got too big we used to take the stuff out and crawl back and forth after we were supposed to be in bed, and play in there, pirates and robbers and stuff like that. You'd think she would always have been the leader, but a lot of the time she let me be. There's a lot of stuff like that that I hadn't remembered—hadn't let myself remember, I guess. It's good to remember it now. Does that make sense?" He looked at her, a touch of anxiety in his face.

Donna put her hand in his. "Show me," she said, softly. "Show me everything."

He squeezed her hand, his eyes full of relief and gratitude. "Come on downstairs," he said. "And then outside. We used to play out there a lot; it was a really cool yard . . . ."

Donna followed, smiling and nodding, feeling indescribably grateful that Josh had made peace with his past at last.

oooooo

"Want to go out for dinner?" Josh asked, a while later. "There are some good places around here."

"Sure," Donna said. "I'd love to. What did you have in mind?"

"What do you feel like? Italian? French? Chinese? Japanese? Indian? Thai? Nouvelle for meat-eaters? Nouvelle vegetarian? Good old American steak or seafood?"

"My, you are well-equipped up here, aren't you?"

"Don't tell me you're surprised. Martha Stewart has a house here, you know."

"I'd forgotten." Donna's expression changed a little. Josh didn't notice.

"So, what would you like? This is a special occasion—we can go five stars if you want. Assuming we can get in at one of those places, of course. I don't have quite the pull I used to, though we could always use your name instead." He was grinning. Donna wasn't.

"Do any of them do take-out?" she asked.

"Of course."

"Let's do that, then. We could just be comfortable here. If—you don't mind?"

"Does being comfortable mean getting to touch you whenever I want to? Wherever I want to?"

Donna laughed then. "That depends."

"On what?"

"On how hungry I am and how much I've had time to eat before you start wanting to touch me."

"I want to touch you right now."

"Let's pick a restaurant and call the order in first, shall we?"

"Don-na." The tone was a whine, but he couldn't resist dimpling at her, which spoiled the effect.

"And we'll have to pick it up."

"Don-NA." The whine was bigger, but so were the dimples.

"Unless some place delivers."

"Just the pizza parlors. Say, wouldn't you like some pizza? There's a really great place I order from sometimes."

"Jo-osh." She pulled off a pout to match his whine.

"Yeah?"

"Going to pick up something better would kill you?"

"If it means having to wait to touch you, yes. Definitely. No question about it."

"You're impossible."

"Yes. I admit it. No contest. It's really good pizza, though; you'll like it. And I've got some good beer."

Donna pretended to consider this, but actually she thought beer and pizza in the privacy of Josh's house sounded like a pretty good thing.

"Vegetarian?"

"Pepperoni."

"We need vegetables."

"There were veggies in the omlette I made at lunch, and I served salad with it."

"Pepperoni's bad for you. Vegetarian, with goat cheese and pesto, or you go out to pick up Thai. It'll be an hour before the Thai would be ready, at least. No touching till it comes."

"You're a cruel woman."

"I am."

"And a hard negotiator."

"I learned from the best."

"Vegetarian it is. I'll call right now. Do I get to touch till it comes?"

"Only with clothes on."

"We'll see how long you go on saying that."

oooooo

The day had been sunny but cool, and by the time the pizza came there was enough of a chill in the air to justify lighting a fire in the fireplace, which Josh managed without any undue difficulty. "It helps when the flue isn't sealed shut," he pointed out when Donna feigned surprise at an ability she said she'd never suspected. It really did surprise her that he suggested it when he saw her shivering; she'd always thought he was just putting on a show of nonchalance for Sam the time they'd almost set fire to the White House. She wondered if he was putting on the same show for her now, or if it really wasn't a problem for him. The question must have been obvious in her face, because he seemed to know what she was thinking. "It's okay," he said, glancing at her before putting his arm around her shoulders as he settled back into the couch beside her. "We always had fires on cold nights at home, here and in the other house. I'm probably kind of neurotic about putting them out afterwards, but otherwise they don't bother me. I like having them; I made quite a few for myself last winter. It's a New England thing."

"And a Wisconsin one," Donna said, cozying herself into his arm. The pizza was delicious, the beer good, and Josh's company everything she could have asked for. When they'd finished eating he took the mess out to the kitchen and then made long, slow love to her in front of the fire. It would have been an entirely perfect evening, if only she'd been able to silence the little voice that had started talking to her earlier, when he'd reminded her that Westport was very far from being the out-of-the-way country place she'd been half-thinking of it as, or when he'd joked that her name could get them a seat in the best restaurants, even on a busy Saturday night. Anonymity would be no more possible here than it would in D.C. And that, that inconvenient voice kept whispering to her, was going to be a problem.

oooooo