He smiled as he stepped onto the huge black-and-white marble square entrance hall. He said, “What would you like me to call you?”

“Natalie. The truth is, Davis, everyone will think you’re my boy toy.”

Hooley guffawed and smirked, leaving wuss hanging clear but unspoken in the air.

Davis said, “Shall I drape myself all over you?”

She laughed as he slipped a black wool cape over her shoulders, so beautifully made it almost put his tux to shame. “Give me the occasional smoldering eye, that’ll do it.”

He eyed the diamonds. “If there’s trouble, all those rocks could be a casualty.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t let a lady lose her sparklers, Davis.” She gave Hooley a grin and walked out the front door to the waiting black bulletproof custom limousine. The driver was a young, smooth-faced Puerto Rican with ancient dark eyes and wearing no expression at all.

“Keep the lights on, Hooley,” Natalie called back to her henchman. “Guard the manse.”

Hooley nodded, standing in the open front door in his favorite pose, arms folded over his massive chest.

Natalie settled herself in the backseat and met the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Luis, this is Special Agent Sullivan. Davis, this is Luis Alvarez. He’s a bodyguard and a professional driver. Luis, you know where we’re going.”

Luis looked street-smart and tough, probably had since he was a boy; maybe he’d been an alley rat in San Juan, or in L.A. Davis met Luis’s eyes in the mirror. He saw Luis was assessing him back. Luis nodded and pressed the button to raise the clear privacy shield.

“Hooley brought in Alvarez?”

“Yes, right after the incident in the park. You also haven’t met Connie Mendez. She’s with me when it’s not comfortable for the guys to be, such as in my bedroom. Hooley told me she can shoot the ace of spades off a card while painting her toenails. You’ll like her.”

Three people guarding her, on her own dime. Good enough. He said, “So you said your daughter is coming with the secretary of state’s son? You said they might be serious?”

“Well, as I told you, I’d always thought of them more as brother and sister. If Perry needs a last-minute date, he’s the one she calls and vice versa. Maybe there’s more now, but like I said, she won’t talk to me about it. We’ll see.”

Davis said slowly, “She’s unusual. I’ve never met anyone like her before. She looks like you.”

She cocked her head at him. “For the most part, but in temperament, Perry was her father’s daughter from the get-go. I’ll never forget when she grabbed his finger when she was three months old and wouldn’t let go.

“From the age of six, he took her to the home Redskins games. Later, she got to visit the sideline of every professional football stadium in the nation. She was in the locker room when he examined injured players, held their hands if they let her, which they usually welcomed, while her father worked on them. She told a receiver once he should have taken his option route outside, where the safety wasn’t, but her dad would get him well anyway.”

Davis checked out the cars driving near them on Cransford Avenue. “I wonder if her father would have managed to get her on the sideline in today’s games?”

“Since Brundage was larger than life, a real presence in NFL lore, I imagine he could have managed it. He thought Perry’s real love affair with football started when Joe Montana tossed her a ball on his way to the locker room at halftime, and smiled at her, and beckoned. She threw him back a perfect spiral, so her father told me. Joe carefully stood only six feet away. She grew up with the coaches and players, sat in on their meetings whenever she could get away from school, and no one stopped her from sneaking in the back of the room. I guess you could say football was in her blood.

“When she was a teenager, I suppose I expected to see girly concerns take over, you know, obsessions with makeup and boys, but not a bit of it changed.”

Davis said, “Her future husband is going to be in football heaven with somebody like her as his wife. I’ll bet she makes great guacamole, too, right?”

Natalie laughed. “Very true. Even if sportswriting weren’t her job, I’d bet Perry would still try to keep in touch with the players and the coaches. She even makes a point of getting to know all the up-and-coming college players before they’re drafted. Believe me, she has her own take on who should draft them. She’s always discreet. She’s never burned a coach or a player or a player’s wife for telling her something off the record. And she’s well liked, almost family.”