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  “So tell me, Amy, what did you do when you ran away from Jason? Hide some more? Did you stay in an apartment somewhere and draw your little pictures and only go out with your son?”

  “Yes,” Amy said softly as tears began to form in her eyes again. Great big drops were spilling over and running down her cheeks, but she made no move to wipe them away.

  “Okay, Amy, I’m going to tell you some hard truths. You’ve hurt Jason Wilding to the point where I don’t know if he’ll ever recover. He’s had a difficult life, and he’s learned not to give his love easily. But he offered his love to you and Max, and you spit in his eye and walked away from him. You really, really hurt him.”

  Amy took a deep breath. “So how do I get him back? I was horrible this morning. I lied and said dreadful things. Should I go to him and tell him the truth?”

  “You mean tell him that you’ve learned your lesson and that you want him so much that you ache inside?”

  “Yes, oh, yes. I didn’t know how much I wanted him until I saw him again.”

  “Honey, if you go to a man and tell him you were wrong, you’ll spend the rest of your life apologizing to him.”

  “What? But you just said that I’d hurt him. Shouldn’t I tell him that I’m sorry I hurt him?”

  “You do and you’ll regret it.”

  Amy stuck her finger in her ear and wiggled it as she tried to open the passage. “Forgive me, but I seem to have gone deaf. Would you go over this again?”

  “Look, if you want a man, you have to make him come to you. You know you’re sorry you ran out, but you can’t let him know it. You see, to a man, conquest is everything. He has to win you.”

  “But he did already. He went to a lot of effort for Max and me before, but I had some weird idea that I wanted—”

  Mildred cut her off. “Who cares about the past?”

  “But you just said that I run away and hide and—”

  “You do. Now, listen, I’ve just come up with a plan. That’s ‘Plan’ with a capital P. By the time we get through with Jason Wilding, he won’t know what hit him.”

  “I think I’m jet-lagged, because I’m not hearing things properly. I thought your sympathy was with him. I thought he was the wronged person.”

  “True, but what has right got to do with it? Look, you can’t win a man with apologies and truth. No, you win them with lies and tricks and subterfuge. And sexy underwear helps.”

  Amy could only blink at this woman with her fantastic hairdo. Mildred Thompkins didn’t look like the type of woman to use subterfuge on a man. No, she looked more as though she were the type to rope and brand a man. “Underwear?” Amy managed to say.

  “Did you ever get that body of yours in shape?”

  “I, ah . . .”

  “Thought so. Well, I’ll get my hairdresser Lars to do something with you. In front of Jason, of course. And maybe we’ll even get Doreen her house. Why not? Jason can afford it, and Doreen will probably marry some gorgeous man who knocks her around, so she’ll need a house. And you’re going to need a lot of help with those murals of yours. And—Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this before.”

  “Honey, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Now, let’s go see my grandson.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  WHEN AMY AWOKE TWO MORNINGS LATER, SHE KNEW exactly where she was. She was in what had once been her own bedroom in the Salma house. Quietly, she threw back the comforter and padded into the next room to check on Max. He was sound asleep, on his stomach, looking as though he hadn’t moved all night.

  Poor little thing, she thought, he’ll probably sleep another couple of hours.

  After tucking the cover about him and smoothing his hair back, she went into the kitchen. But this kitchen bore no resemblance to the old kitchen she’d once tried to cook in. There were no more rusty, broken appliances, no more cracked and peeling linoleum.

  Amy wasn’t surprised to see freshly brewed coffee in an automatic maker and muffins, still hot, on the counter. “With love, Charles,” the card beside the pot read. On a hunch, she opened the refrigerator door and wasn’t surprised to see that it was fully stocked. There was a breakfast meal of crepes and strawberries for Max, a red bow tied around the top of the little basket. That Charles somehow knew that Amy and Max were now staying in the house where Max had spent his first seven months didn’t surprise her. No one kept a secret in Abernathy.

  With coffee, two muffins, and a warm hard-boiled egg in her hand, she went into the living room, and smiled when she saw a fire in the fireplace—a fire that didn’t smoke. It would be heavenly to sit and drink and eat and to be able to think in peace about how she got here in a mere twenty-four hours.

  It had all started because Max wouldn’t stay with Mildred and the new nanny, she thought with a smile. But then, didn’t everything start with Max?

  Yesterday, as Amy had entered the library, she could feel the heat of Max’s body as he lay against her, his head down on her shoulder as he did when he was hurt or, as now, exhausted. Nine-thirty, she’d thought. She’d wanted to have two drawings transferred onto the walls by now, but instead she was just arriving at the library.

  Jason had greeted her with a face full of fury.

  “How do you expect us to get this done in just six weeks?” he said angrily. “Are you unaware of the time pressure we’re under? The opening of the library is six weeks away. The president of the United States is coming. Maybe that doesn’t mean much to you, but it means a lot to the people of Abernathy.”

  “Be quiet, will you?” Amy said, not in the least intimidated by him. “And stop looking at me like that. I’ve had all I can take of bad-tempered men this morning.”

  “Men?” Jason said, his face darkening. “I guess your . . . your . . .”

  She knew that he was trying to say “fiancé,” but the word wouldn’t pass his rigid lips. Maybe it would eventually be fun to play the little game that Mildred had concocted, but not now. Now she was too tired.

  It was as though Jason suddenly read Amy’s mind. “Max,” he said softly. “You mean Max.”

  “Yes, of course I mean Max. He was awake most of the night. I think that being in a new place frightened him, and after a few hours he didn’t like being pawned off on the nanny Mildred hired. Max has never liked staying with strangers. He’s very selective about the people he likes.”

  Jason gave her a raised-eyebrow look that said, That’s how we got into all this in the first place, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, with an ease that was as though he’d been doing it every day for years, Jason took the tall, heavy, sleeping toddler from Amy and settled him on his shoulder, where Max lay bonelessly. “He’s exhausted,” Jason said, frowning.

  “He’s exhausted? What about me?”

  “As long as I’ve known you, you’ve never had any sleep,” Jason said quietly, his lips playing with a smile.

  “True,” she said, smiling back.

  “Come on,” Jason said as he walked toward double doors at the end of the room. When he opened one, Amy drew in her breath.

  “Beautiful, huh?” Jason said over his shoulder, his voice quiet so he didn’t wake Max. “This was the room the Abernathys built so if they wanted to go to the library, they didn’t have to sit with the hoi polloi.”

  The room was indeed nice, but not because there was anything unusual in it, no carved moldings, no imported tile work. What made the room so beautiful was the proportion of it, with windows all along one side of the room, looking out over the little garden at the back of the library. Going to the windows, Amy looked out and realized that the garden was walled off from the larger play area behind the main part of the building.

  “Oh, my,” she said. “Is that a private garden?”

  “Of course. You don’t think the Abernathys were going to play with the town’s kids, do you?”

  “They sound lonely,” she said, then turned back to Jason and held up her arms to t