LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER THREE

      THERE WAS ONLY one thing that mattered in life, Scarlett’s father had always told her as a child. Freedom.

      Freedom. It was Harry Ravenwood’s rallying cry every time their family had to flee in the night, tossing their belongings into black trash bags and heading blindly to a new city. At seven years old, when Scarlett accidentally left her teddy bear—her only friend—behind, she’d cried until her father comforted her with stories of Mr. Teddy backpacking around the world, climbing the Pyramids and the Pyrenees. His funny stories of her bear’s adventures finally made her smile through her tears. On cold winter nights in Upstate New York, as their family shivered in unheated rooms and icy wind rattled the windows, Harry sang jaunty songs about freedom.

      Freedom. Even on the bleak night when Scarlett was twelve, when her mother died in the emergency room of a hospital in a faded factory town in Pennsylvania, her father kissed Scarlett as tears streamed down his weathered face. “At least now your beautiful mother is free of pain.”

      Scarlett had her freedom now. From Blaise Falkner. From Vin Borgia. She and her unborn baby were free.

      But it had come at a cost.

      To start with, her flight two weeks ago, from Boston to London, had had a little trouble over the Atlantic.

      A small fire in the cargo hold caused the plane to divert to a small airport on the west coast of Ireland. As the plane descended, she saw dark clusters of birds through her porthole window, flying rapidly past the plane. “Bird strike!” a passenger cried out, and as one flight attendant rushed toward the cockpit, another tried to murmur reassuring, unconvincing words to the passengers. Wide-eyed, Scarlett gripped her armrests as she felt the plane ominously vibrate and groan in midair.

      All she’d been able to think was, she shouldn’t be on this plane. Pregnant women weren’t supposed to fly after their seventh month. She was nearly at eight. She’d fled from New York, with a quick stop in Boston, because she thought it was her only way to escape Vin. But now that danger seemed small when she and her child were both going to die. Just like her own father had died in that wintry plane crash a year and a half ago. She never should have gotten on a plane.

      “Prepare for crash landing,” came the pilot’s terse voice over the intercom. “Brace for impact.” The flight attendants repeated the words as the nose of the plane started to plummet and they rushed to buckle themselves in. “Heads down! Brace for impact! Stay down!”

      Scarlett had braced herself, hugging her belly, thinking, please don’t let my baby die.

      Like a miracle, the plane had finally steadied on one engine and limped hard, landing with a heavy bang on the edge of the runway. No one was hurt, and passengers and crew alike cheered and cried and hugged each other.

      Sliding off the plane on the inflatable yellow slide, Scarlett had fallen to her knees on the tarmac and burst into noisy, ugly sobs.

      She never should have gotten on a plane. Any plane. After her father’s death, she should have known better.

      But just like when she’d accepted that limo ride from Blaise Falkner, she’d ignored her intuition and convinced herself that her fears were silly. And both she and her baby had nearly died as a result.

      She’d never ignore her intuition again. From now on, she’d listen seriously to her fears, even when they didn’t make rational sense.

      And above all: she would never, ever get on any plane again.

      But why would Scarlett need to? She had no family in New York. No reason to ever go back. Vin Borgia had done her a huge favor, warning her in advance that he intended to rule her life and their child’s with an iron fist and separate her from her baby if she ever objected or tried to leave him. She didn’t feel guilty about leaving him, not at all.

      She did feel guilty about stealing his wallet. Stealing was never all right, and her mother must be turning over in her grave. Scarlett told herself she’d had no choice. She’d had to cover her tracks. Vin was not only a ruthless billionaire, he owned an airline and had ridiculous connections. If she’d stepped one toe on a flight under her own name, he would have known about it.

      So she’d contacted one of her father’s old acquaintances in Boston to buy a fake passport. That cost money.

      So she’d taken—borrowed—the money from Vin. She hadn’t touched anything else in his wallet. Not his driver’s license, or his credit cards, most of them in special strange colors that no doubt had eye-popping credit limits. And after she’d arrived safely in Switzerland via ferry and train from Ireland, and gotten her first paycheck at her new job, she’d mailed back Vin’s wallet, returning everything as he’d left it. She’d even tossed in some extra euros as interest on the money she’d borrowed.

      She’d gotten the euros from northern Italy, where she’d gone to mail back the package. She could hardly have sent Vin money in Swiss francs, letting him know where she was!

      But that was all behind her now. She’d paid everything back. She and her baby were free.

      Scarlett took a deep breath of the clear Alpine air. She’d been in Gstaad for over two weeks now, and finally, finally she was starting to relax. She just had to hope when Vin couldn’t easily find her, he would forget about her and the baby, and she’d never have to worry about him again.

      Scarlett passed out of the gates of the chalet, if the place could be called a chalet when it was the size of a palace, and turned her face up toward the sun.

      It was mid-October, and the morning air was already frosty in the mountains around the elegant Swiss ski resort of Gstaad. The first snowfall was expected daily.

      She had her own event to expect soon, too. Her hand moved over her belly, grown so large she could no longer button up her oversize jacket. Only two and a half weeks from her due date. Her body felt heavier, slower. But luckily her new job allowed plenty of opportunity for gentle morning walks.

      She’d been lucky to get this job. When she’d fled the shoe store in New York, racing down the alley to hail a cab on Madison Avenue, she’d already decided exactly where to go. Her mother’s best friend, Wilhelmina Stone, worked as housekeeper to a wealthy European tycoon in Switzerland. Though Scarlett hadn’t seen her since her mother’s funeral, she’d never forgotten the woman’s hug and fierce words, “Your mother was my best friend. If you ever need anything, you come straight to me, you hear?”

      Since then, she’d gotten only an occasional Christmas card. But when Scarlett had shown up uninvited and shivering at the gate of the enormous villa outside Gstaad, the plump, kindly woman had proved good as her word.

      “My boss just asked me to hire a good cook for ski season. The best Southern cook in the US, he said. Can you make grits and fried chicken? Jambalaya? Dirty rice?”

      Eyes wide, Scarlett shook her head. Wilhelmina sighed.

      “All right, he usually starts coming here in early December, after the season starts. So you’ve got six weeks, maybe more, to learn how to make amazing fried chicken and all the rest. I’ll put you on staff payroll now. Just make sure you learn to cook for groups of ten or more, because Mr. Black always brings friends!”

      For the last two weeks, Scarlett had been trying to teach herself to cook, using cookbooks and internet videos. She was still pretty bad. The security guard routinely teased her that even his dog wouldn’t eat what she cooked. It was sadly true.

      But

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