Her Secret, His Child

It was too late to be anything other than what she was, so when the powerful businessmen called her, Jamie accepted the money they offered. But the one constant that allowed her to do so was the affection each man, without fail, lavished on her. God help her, she was starved for affection, for approval, and being with men who were kind to her, who appreciated her, who wanted her, went a long way toward mending the emotional damage her stepfather had caused.

Her clients were all referrals from Tom. And if she received a phone call from one she didn't immediately like, she was too busy to see him. She played games with herself. She told herself that as long as she didn't enjoy the physical ministrations of the men she was with, as long as she never shared a climax with them, she wasn't selling anything that mattered. She had her rules. She always, always, insisted that the man she was with be sober and that he use protection. She abided nothing rough, nothing kinky, and never, ever consorted with more than one

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man at a time. She'd take a repeat client only if she wasn't currently seeing another.

And before she knew it, she was in her junior year at the university, an honor student, a favorite with all her teachers, popular with other students. And no one there knew that for a few hours a couple of evenings a week, she was a very expensive, high-class prostitute.

Wrapping her arms around herself on the cold living-room floor, Jamie stared at the dead embers in her fireplace and cried. She'd had one goal back then: to finish school, get a decent job and never have to be dependent on anyone for the rest of her life. The only thing she'd lived for was the day she could own her life, her body, for the first time since she was four years old.

And then she'd met Kyle Radcliff.

Shuddering, trapped, Jamie didn't know where to go from there. Kyle was a time bomb slowly ticking. If she didn't get rid of him, her life was going to explode right before her eyes.

But as she contemplated lying to the man, or better yet, running again, something frightening held her back. Her conscience. She'd worked so hard to become the respectable, honorable woman she'd always known she could be. The woman she really was. And now her respectable, honorable conscience wouldn't let her just take Ashley and vanish.

Because with Kyle Radcliff in town, with her discovery that he might, after all, be an honest decent man, she had one powerful reason to stay. Ashley.

CHAPTER EIGHT

"Miss Karen's mad at me." Ashley moved the queen's boat across the ocean, 'cept the queen wasn't in the boat; the king was.

"No, she isn't, honey," Mommy said. "Why would you think she's mad at you?"

"When I sleeped there, she didn't talk to me."

"But she talked to you this afternoon when she came over to pick up Kayla."

Ashley pondered that for a minute. She dumped the king from the queen's ship and put the queen in. And then ran the ship through a big cloud that was really a big pile of bubbles. But that was okay because the ocean was really just in the bathtub with Ashley.

"Miss Karen's got a lot on her mind right now," Mommy said. She was the lighthouse, even though she was just a person sitting on the closed lid of the toilet and didn't have a light at all.

And Mommy always said that about people having things on their minds when she wanted Ashley to stop asking questions.

Somehow, Ashley knew she'd made Miss Karen sad with her and she didn't know how, but she didn't want Mommy sad with her, too, so she'd quit

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asking questions just like Mommy wanted. Just like she wasn't asking questions about her daddy, either.

They'd made Mommy really sad with her, those questions. Ashley thought she knew why, and she didn't want Mommy to tell her, so she didn't ask about her daddy anymore for that reason, too. Mommy was sad about Ashley's daddy because of Ashley. Because he'd made Mommy have Ashley. Maybe Mommy didn't want that. Which was something Ashley couldn't stand to think about.

She just wished her daddy didn't keep jumping into her stories and her school time, and even when she was playing with Kayla.

"You ready to get out, punkin?" Mommy stood up and held up a big, big towel for her. One that would make Ashley feel all warm and happy inside. "Tomorrow's Monday and you have school."

"Okay." Letting the queen sail away, Ashley stood up, really careful 'bout not slipping, like Mommy always told her.

"I love you, baby," Mommy said, snuggling Ashley up against her as she rubbed her hands along the outside of the huge towel.

And Ashley felt all warm inside, exactly like she was's'posed to. "I love you more than you love me," she said, and giggled.

"No, you don't, buster." Mommy picked Ashley up and carried her to her bedroom. "I'm bigger so I get to love more."

Ashley was counting on that.

A party. Kyle had to plan a party. Yeah, right. In the first place, the only thing he knew about food