"You're not responsible for what happened to Maria. Or to me."

"No?" His lip curled. "Look at the thread. I'm the thread. Maybe I've been pulled out of that whole world," he said. "But it only happened because of the family. What do you think they'd say if they knew I've been sleeping with you?"

"Don't be ridiculous. They love you."

"Yeah, they do. And I owe them, plenty. Do you think I'm going to pay them back by shacking up with you over a bar? Do you think I'm crazy enough to think about marriage and kids. Kids, for God's sake, where I come from? I don't even know who my father was. But I know who I am, and I'm not passing it on. I care about you, sure I do—enough to get you the hell out."

"You care," she said slowly, "so you're breaking it off."

"That's exactly right. I was out of my mind to let it get this far, and I nearly—" Now he broke off, remembering how close he'd come, only a few days before, to declaring himself. "What matters is, you worked on me, and I let things get temporarily out of hand. It ends here. For the sake of the family, we'll try to forget any of it happened."

"Forget?"

"All of it. I'm not going to risk hurting you any more, and I sure as hell don't want to hurt the rest of the family. They're all I've got—the only people who ever wanted me or cared about me."

"Poor, poor Nick," she said, with ice. "Poor lost, unwanted Nick. You really think you're the only one who's faced that kind of rejection, or wondered just what lack might have been passed onto him. Well, it's time you learned to live with it. I have."

"You don't know anything about it."

"My mother never wanted me."

"That's bull. Natasha's—"

"Not Mama," she said coldly. "My biological mother."

That stopped him. It was so easy to forget Spence had been married before. "She died when you were a kid, a baby. You don't know how she felt."

"I know exactly." There was no bitterness in her voice. That was what tugged at him. There was no emotion at all. "Dad would have kept it from me. I doubt he has a clue I ever overheard him talking to his sister. Or with Mama. I was nothing more than a mistake she'd made, then decided to forget. She left me when I was an infant, without a second thought. And her blood's in me. That coldness, that callousness. But I've learned to live with it, and to overcome it."

He couldn't imagine her harboring that kind of pain, that kind of doubt. "I'm sorry. I didn't know.

No one's ever talked about her." He wished he could have held her then, offered comfort, until her body lost that uncharacteristic rigidness. He didn't dare offer her anything. "But that doesn't change what's here."

"No, it doesn't. You won't let anything change." Freddie was crying now, but the tears were hot, more of anger than of grief. "You knew I was in love with you. And you knew, in the end, I would have made any compromise, any adjustment, to make you happy. But you don't make compromises, Nick LeBeck."

"You're too upset to handle this now. I'm going to get you a cab."

"You're not going to get me a cab." She shoved at him. "You're not going to send me anywhere. I'll go when I'm ready to go, and I can take care of myself. I proved that today, didn't I? I don't need you."

She let the words hang, closed her eyes on them a moment. When she opened them again, they were fierce. "I don't need you. What a concept in my life. I can live without you, Nicholas, so you needn't worry that I'll come around mooning over you. I thought you could love me."

Her breath came out steady, strengthening her. "My mistake. You aren't capable of loving that way. I wanted so pitifully little from you. So pitifully little, I'm ashamed."

He couldn't stop himself from reaching out. "Fred."

"No, damn you, I'll finish this. Not once did you ever tell me you loved me. Not the way a man tells a woman. And not once did you try to show me, except in bed. And that's not enough. Not one soft word. Not one. You couldn't even drum up the effort to pretend and tell me, even once, that you thought I was beautiful. No flowers, no music unless we made it for someone else. No candlelight dinners, except when I arranged them myself. I did all the courting, and that makes me pathetic. I was willing to settle for crumbs from you, and that's exactly what I got."

"It wasn't like that." It appalled him that she should think so. "Of course I think you're beautiful."

"Now who's pathetic?" she snapped back.

"If I didn't think about romance, it was because things got confused so fast." That was a lie, and he knew it. Yet he wondered why he was defending himself, why he felt such panic at the steely, disinterested look she sent him, when he'd been so hellbent on pushing her away. "I can't give you what you need."

"That's very clear. I'm better off without you. That's very clear, too. So, we'll do just as you suggested. We'll forget it."

He put a hand on her arm as she started to walk out. "Fred, wait a minute."

"Don't touch me," she said, in such a low, furious voice that his fingers dropped. "We'll finish our commitment to the musical. And we'll make polite conversation around the family. Other than that, I don't want to see you."

"You live three damn blocks away," he called after her.

"That can be changed."

"Running home after all?"

She shot one frigid look over her shoulder. "Not on your life."

He thought about getting drunk. It was an easy escape, and would hurt no one but him. But he just couldn't work up any enthusiasm for it.

He got through the night, though he didn't sleep. The music he tried to write in the dawn hours was flat and empty.

He'd done what he needed to do, he told himself. So why was he so miserable?

She'd had no right to attack him. Not after she told him that everything that had happened since she'd come to New York was part of some plot. He was the victim here, and still he'd done his best to protect her in the end.

Imagine him, married, trying to raise kids. He snorted, then dropped into a chair, because the whole picture was suddenly so appealing.