Her Secret, His Child

His eyes narrowed. "He burned you that badly?"

She couldn't have this conversation. Not with him. "I have different priorities now."

"You're no longer a woman?"

"I don't have to date to be a woman."

"Ah," he said, running his hand lightly through her hair. "But you're forgetting that I know how passionate you really are."

"That was a long time ago."

"Not so long, Jamie." The pad of his thumb brushed her lip. "See?" he asked, meeting her eyes with his own. "You still tremble for me."

"No, I don't." She pulled away from him. He couldn't be right. She couldn't let him be right. She had to remember the money. "I'm just cold."

"One dinner, Jamie," he said softly, all teasing gone. "One meal together, and if we don't find the conversation as stimulating as it was five years ago,

HER SECRET, HIS CHILD

if we find that we are indeed two different people now, then I won't bother you again."

"Not ever?" she whispered. Dear God, could she do it? Could she control her odd connection with this man for one evening?

"Never," he said. "You have my word."

Thinking of the little girl tucked securely in bed next door, of her daughter's quest to know her father, Jamie

had no choice but to do whatever she had to do to protect Ashley's future. Including going to dinner with the one man who'd made her forget all the rules. Who'd made her forget, for a few short hours, that she was a woman men paid to take to bed, not a woman they gave their hearts to.

"How about Friday?" she whispered.

CHAPTER SIX

Over the years Jamie had perfected the art of coping. Of shutting down enough of her mind to get her through one day after another. Surviving. And so it was the rest of that week. She got through each day by concentrating on small moments, not big pictures.

The repairman came to fix her furnace, to the tune of only a couple of hundred dollars instead of the many hundreds she'd envisioned. That was a good thing. A small moment that got her through Wednesday.

On Wednesday night, after Ashley's bath and her bedtime story, Jamie gathered her daughter on her lap and plopped down on the floor beside Ashley's bed.

"We need to talk, punkin," she said softly. How to correct her child while at the same time making sure she understood that she wasn't to blame? To be honest with her without telling her the truth?

"What, Mommy?" Ashley's thumb went straight to her mouth.

"I guess most of the other kids at school have daddies, huh?"

Leaning sideways to look at Jamie with big ear-

HER SECRET, HIS CHILD

nest eyes, Ashley pulled her thumb from her mouth and shook her head. "No. Brent doesn't. And neither do Debbie and Dana. They're twins."

Jamie knew all about the identical twins in Ashley's class. They had fascinated Ashley and Kayla since the twins had first joined their class the previous October.

' 'And do you know where their daddies are?''

Slumping back against Jamie, Ashley spoke around the thumb once again in her mouth. "Brent's daddy lives in Cali…Cali…"

"California?"