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  “And what do you plan to do with us now?”

  Jason looked bewildered. “I want to marry you.”

  “Of course. What was I thinking? You didn’t by any chance buy me a great big diamond ring, did you?”

  Based on her tone of voice, Jason started to lie but decided against it. “Yes,” he said simply. “A huge diamond.”

  “That makes sense. That fits. I guess you’ve planned our futures too, haven’t you?”

  Jason didn’t answer, just looked at her across a table covered with reprints of everything that had ever been published about him. His mind was racing as he tried to figure out who had sent these to her, but he had a suspicion. At the ball he’d seen the sister of a woman he used to date. After going out for a few weeks they had parted ways amicably. Then she had approached him several months later and wanted to begin things again. When he’d turned her down, as gently as he could, she’d flown into a rage and sworn she’d get even with him. So now, Jason wondered if the sister he’d seen last night across the room, her eyes staring at him coldly, had had these pages faxed here and had made sure Amy received them.

  When Jason didn’t reply to Amy’s question, she continued. “Let me guess. You plan to buy Max and me a huge house within commuting distance of New York City and you plan to visit us on weekends. Maybe you’d helicopter in, right? And you’d open accounts for us everywhere so I could buy Dior any time I wanted. And Max could have all the finest toys and clothes. Nothing but the best for your family, right?”

  For the life of him Jason could see nothing wrong with the picture she was painting.

  Slowly Amy began to smile. “Sounds good to me,” she said at last. “How about some tea to celebrate?”

  “Yes. Please. I’d like that.”

  Slowly, Amy got up from the table, with her back to him, filled the kettle, and opened a few tins as she looked for the tea bags.

  But Jason was so relieved he didn’t pay any attention to what she was doing. “How about a summer home in Vermont?” he was saying. “We’ll get some place with stone walls and acres of . . . of fruit trees.”

  “Sounds great,” Amy said, her voice flat. But she knew he wasn’t listening to her. He was in his own little daydream of a happy, idyllic life in which he had a loving wife and child to come home to. Whenever he could find the time, that is.

  “Here you are,” she said, smiling.

  Jason tried to take her hand and kiss it, but she pulled away to sit down at the opposite side of the table.

  “Did you see the movie Pretty Woman?”

  “Can’t say as I did.” He was smiling at her sweetly.

  “It’s about a businessman, a billionaire, who falls in love with a prostitute.”

  “Amy, if you’re implying that I think of you as a—”

  “No, let me finish. The movie was a great success, and everyone I know loved it, but—”

  “You didn’t.”

  “No, I did, but I was worried about what happened later. What would happen five years down the road when they had an argument and he threw it in her face that she’d turned a trick or two? And what about his education versus hers? His money against her lack of it?”

  “Go on,” Jason said cautiously. “What’s your point?”

  “Drink your tea before it gets cold. You and I are like the couple in that movie. You’ve done everything, proven everything to yourself.”

  “I hardly think—”

  “No, it’s true. You have.”

  “Amy, you’re a lovely woman, and—”

  “And women don’t need to prove anything, is that right?”

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  “Look,” she said, leaning toward him. “If I left here with you, you’d swallow me up like the Richard Gere character would have swallowed the young woman played by Julia Roberts.”

  “What?” Jason asked, rubbing his hand over his eyes. Now that the crisis had passed, he found that he was quite sleepy. Why did women always want to discuss things in the middle of the night? “Could we talk about this in the morning?”

  Amy didn’t seem to hear him. “Why do you think I’ve refused to take charity?” she asked. “Everyone knows me as the drunk’s widow, but I needed to prove that I was worth more than that. I don’t want Max known as the drunk’s kid.” She leaned toward him. “And I most certainly don’t want him known as the billionaire’s kid.”

  “I’m not a billionaire.” Jason could barely keep his eyes open. The clock over the stove said five A.M. “Amy, sweetheart,” he said. “Let’s discuss this in the morning.” Rising, he took her hand and led her back to the bedroom, where he removed her robe then held the covers back from the bed. When she was under the covers, he slipped in beside her and snuggled her in his arms. “Tomorrow we’ll go over all of this, I promise. I’ll explain everything, and we can talk about all the movies you want. But right now I—” He broke off to give a jaw cracking yawn. “Now I . . . love you . . .” He was asleep.

  Beside him, Amy took a deep breath. “I love you too,” she whispered. “At least I think I do, but right now I have an obligation that is more important than my love for a man. I’m Max’s mother, and I have to think of him first before my own needs.”

  But there was no reply from Jason.

  When Amy saw that he was asleep, she angrily threw back the covers and stood, glaring down at him. “It takes more than a private helicopter to be a father,” she said quietly, then turned on her heel and went to the hall closet, where she pulled out an old duffel bag; then, without realizing what she was doing, she began to throw clothes into it. “To be a father, Jason Wilding, you need to be a teacher as well as a money provider,” she said under her breath. “And what would you teach him? To buy whatever he wants? To lie his way into a woman’s heart? Would you teach him that he can do any devious, underhanded, sly thing he wants to a woman, then all he has to do is say ‘I love you,’ and those three words erase all the lies?” She leaned very close to his sleeping face. “Jason Wilding, I don’t like you. I don’t like the way you use your money to trick people, to connive behind their backs. You have treated me, Max, and, actually, this whole town with contempt.”

  The only reply she received was that he rolled to his other side and kept on sleeping.

  Drawing back, she looked down at him, and suddenly, she was calm and she knew what she had to do. “Max and I aren’t for sale. Unless the currency used is good deeds,” she said as she almost smiled. “I’m going to leave now, but please don’t look for me, because even if you find me, you still won’t be able to buy me.”

  With that she turned away and went into her son’s room.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ONE YEAR LATER

  “MR. EVANS TO SEE YOU, SIR,” MRS. HUCKNALL SAID TO Jason’s back.

  Jason didn’t bother to turn around, but gave a nod as he continued staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows. Manhattan lay thirty stories below, the people and cars looking like toys. He didn’t know why he still bothered hiring the private detectives. Twelve months ago his whole life revolved around the reports of the first one he’d hired. The reports were called in daily, and Jason took the calls wherever he was. But when the detective could find no trace of Mrs. Amy Thompkins and her baby son, Jason had fired the man and hired someone else.

  In the last year he’d hired and fired more detectives than he could count. He’d tried everyone from sleazy guys whose ads promised to catch any cheating husband to men retired from Scotland Yard. But no one could find the single woman and her little boy.

  “You have nothing to go on,” he’d been told again and again—and it was true. First of all, there were no photos of Amy past the age of twelve. Mildred, her mother-in-law, had taken pictures of her grandson, but Amy wasn’t in them. The people in Amy’s hometown said that the house Amy had grown up in burned down the week after Amy’s mother’s death, so maybe all the pictures of her had been destroyed then. Maddeningly, Amy seemed to have been absent ever