The Damson who charmed a room full of powerful men was warm, quick, generous with his attention, the sort of man people wanted near them.

It was the same man who had courted her at the clinic in Oak Cliff, the one she had fallen for.

And it was, she had slowly come to understand, entirely a performance — a face he put on for people whose opinion could help him, and took off the moment there was nothing to gain.

The private Damson, the one only she saw, was cold and calculating and quietly contemptuous.

For a long time she had believed the warm one was the real man and the cold one a passing mood, and had waited for the warmth to come home to her.

She understood now that she had it backward.