"What woman was that?" he asked with practiced innocence.
"The one who slept in this bed last night."
"You see another woman around here?"
"I don't have to see her," said Loren, taking great delight in teasing him. "I can smell her."
"Would you believe it was my masseuse'
She leaned down and gave him a long kiss. When she finally pulled back, she handed him the coffee and said, "Not bad. I'll give you an A for creativity."
"I was conned," he said, hoping to change the flow of the conversation. "This cup is only half full."
"You didn't want me to spill it all over your blankets, did you?" She laughed as if actually enjoying Pitt's indiscretion. "Drag your great hairy bod out of bed and wash off that perfume. Not a bad odor, I admit. Rather expensive. I'll start breakfast."
Loren was standing at the counter slicing the grapefruit as Pitt came out of the shower for the second time in eight hours. He wrapped a towel around his hips, stepped up behind her, and circled his arms around her waist. He nuzzled her neck.
"Long time, no see. How did you ever get along without me for so long?"
"I buried myself in legislation and forgot all about you."
"You didn't find time to play?"
"I was a good girl. Not that I'd have been bad if given half the chance, especially if I knew you weren't wasting any time since coming home."
Loren bore up quite well, Pitt thought. There was only a slight flush of jealous anger. But she knew better than to crowd the issue. Pitt was not the only man in her life. Neither dictated to the other or displayed undue jealousy, situations that made their affair all the more desirable.
As he nibbled her earlobe, she turned and put her arms around his neck. "Jim Sandecker told me about the destruction of your project, and how you barely escaped."
"That's supposed to be secret," he said as they brushed noses.
"Congresswomen do have privileges."
"You can have privileges with me any time."
Her eyes turned dark. "Seriously, I'm sorry the facility was lost."
"We'll build another." He smiled down at her. "The results of all our tests were saved. That's what counts."
"Jim said you came within seconds of dying."
Pitt grinned. "Water under the bridge, as they say." He released her and sat down at the table. It seemed just another Sunday morning domestic scene between a comfortably married man and his wife, yet neither Loren nor Dirk had ever been married.
He picked up a newspaper she'd bought along with the groceries and scanned the stories. His eyes stopped at one article, and after scanning its contents he looked up.
"I see you made the Post again," he said, grinning. "Getting nasty with our friends in the Orient, are we?"
Loren expertly flipped an omelet onto a dish. "Ownership of a third of our businesses has been transferred to Tokyo. And with it went our prosperity and independence as a nation. America no longer belongs to Americans. We've become a financial colony of Japan."
"That bad?"
"The public has no idea how bad," said Loren, setting the omelet and a plate of toast in front of Pitt.
"Our huge deficits have created an open door for our economy to flow out and Japanese money to rush in."
"We have only ourselves to blame," he said, waving a fork. "They underconsume, we overconsume, burying ourselves deeper in debt. We gave away or sold out our lead in whatever technology that wasn't stolen. And we stand in line with open pocketbooks and tongues hanging in greedy anticipation to sell them our corporations and real estate to make a fast buck. Face the facts, Loren, none of this could have happened if the public, the business community, you people in Congress, and the economic cretins in the White House had realized this country was engaged in a no-quarter financial war against an enemy who looks upon us as inferior. As it stands, we've thrown away any chance of winning."
Loren sat down with a cup of coffee and passed Pitt a glass of orange juice. "That's the longest speech I've ever heard you give. You thought of running for the Senate?"