LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER THREE

      LOOKING BACK, Jamie wasn’t sure just when she’d made the wrong turn, which decision had been the one that catapulted her from a damaged childhood into a hellish life. Though she desperately didn’t want it to be so, she couldn’t help wondering if maybe she’d always been tainted; maybe there’d never been any question as to what course her life would take.

      Lord knows, she’d tried to be moral, to do what was right. She’d tried to make the proper decisions, to search out the best choices available to her. There just hadn’t seemed to be much to choose from.

      Leaning her head against the kitchen cupboard, she closed her eyes, wishing that sleep would come. The night was already half over. And there she sat, a full nine years after she’d last seen John Archer, still alone, still frightened.

      Had it been wrong to run? Slowly shaking her head, Jamie couldn’t believe that running wasn’t her only choice. She’d run to Las Vegas. Because it was close. And because she knew enough about the city to realize that if there was any place in the United States that she had a chance of not being found, it was in the city that never slept. Where “no questions asked” was an accepted standard.

      She’d left her purse on the front table when she’d come in from the funeral that day and had grabbed it again on her way out. She had enough money for a couple of nights’ cheap lodging, but other than that, she was broke. She’d tried to get a job immediately. Had spent two days answering every want ad she could find. She was a high-school dropout, though, and the most anyone offered her was a fast-food position that didn’t pay enough to cover rent and expenses—let alone any extra to cover the education she’d need to better herself.

      Jamie studied the uneven grain in the cupboard across from her. Maybe she should have known when she’d visited the community college, passed the entrance exams without her diploma and applied for scholarship money that she was reaching too high. The guidance counselor she’d seen had tried to tell her, suggesting Jamie go home to John, apologize, ask him to take her back until she finished high school. She was told to save her money and move out when she’d established herself, became “independent”

      Maybe that was where she’d gone wrong, Jamie thought now. She hadn’t listened.

      But she couldn’t possibly have returned home as the counselor had encouraged her to. Nor could she have begged her stepfather to take her back. What he’d asked of her had been wrong. Very, very wrong. And illegal.

      The possibilities floundered in her weary mind, a cacophony of might-have-beens and should-have-dones. Still, she’d known even then that she couldn’t have gone to the authorities for help. After thirteen years of silence, of John’s generous example to the community, of his breaking down her own credibility, who’d have believed her? And what if they had? Could she really have faced her stepfather across a courtroom? Could she have told a roomful of strangers, of reporters, what he’d done to her?

      But more, could she have hidden herself from John? After thirteen years of living with the man, of witnessing his diabolical abilities, she knew that even the witness protection program wouldn’t have been able to keep him from finding her if she’d turned traitor on him. And that was exactly how he’d see it; what was self-protection to her would seem betrayal to him.

      So maybe her biggest mistake had been believing in fairy tales. Not running as fast and as far as she could when Prince Charming bowled her over in the lobby of his office building. Prince Charming, alias successful business entrepreneur Tom Webber. She’d been standing there looking at a watercolor she didn’t understand, waiting to be interviewed for a job she knew she’d never get, and he’d knocked her right on her butt as he’d come barreling through the revolving door on his way up to the penthouse office.

      He’d not only picked her up but insisted on buying her lunch. A meal she’d have turned down flat if she hadn’t been so hungry. As it was, she’d needed the meal even more when she met him at the restaurant an hour later, as he’d instructed. She’d had her interview—and lost the job—in the interim. And over the first real meal she’d had in days, she’d told him the whole sorry tale. She hadn’t been able to resist. He’d been kind, sympathetic, showing her more compassion during that long lunch than she’d known her entire life.

      Maybe she should have said no when he’d offered to help her, no strings attached. But he’d said almost plaintively that he had more money than he knew what to do with. He’d offered to set her up in a small unit in one of his many apartment buildings, support her while she finished high school, send her to college. He’d begged her not to say no—and she hadn’t. Should she have denied him the opportunity to be the Good Samaritan he wanted to be? Denied herself the miraculous help that had finally fallen her way?

      After growing up under John’s damaging influence, she’d soaked up Tom’s kindness. And he had been kind, if not as altruistic as he’d seemed. He’d been true to his word, too. For a while. Long enough for her to grow fond of him, feel indebted to him. He’d helped her—no strings attached, just as he’d said—right up until she turned eighteen.

      He’d been there at her high-school graduation. And had come immediately the day he’d received the news that John was dead. He’d apparently hired a detective agency to keep track of John and had told her as soon as he’d heard. John Archer had been killed by an unidentified hit-and-run driver.

      John was dead. If there was anything in her life, besides Ashley, for which Jamie was thankful, it was the death of her stepfather. Which was probably just another immoral decision she’d made. To be happy that a man had lost his life.

      Jamie stood and took her exhausted body to bed, her mind finally quieting with fatigue. She had no more answers now than she’d ever had, and she was beginning to suspect that she’d never have them—that, in fact, her questions were unanswerable. Maybe it didn’t matter how she’d become the woman she used to be, the woman she’d renounced.

      Maybe there’d been choices and maybe there hadn’t.

      But she’d been wrong to think she could escape that woman.

      “ASHLEY ASKED ME yesterday if her daddy died fighting for our country.”

      Jamie’s stomach, already queasy, protested as she glanced across at Karen. The two were sharing a cup of coffee during Jamie’s morning break before Karen left to get the girls from school.

      She said the first thing that jumped into her mind. “Why didn’t she come to me?”

      Karen shrugged, paying unnecessary attention to the sugar she was stirring into her coffee. “I asked her the same thing.”

      “And?”

      “She said you might get sadder at her.”

      “Sadder at her?”

      Karen shrugged again. And continued to stir.

      “She thinks she makes me sad?”

      Karen glanced up, her blue eyes warm with compassion. “Kids are pretty perceptive.”

      “But Ashley hasn’t made me sad a single day of her life!”

      “Apparently, she doesn’t think so.”

      “She hardly even makes me mad.”

      “You do have amazing patience with her.”

      Jamie pushed her coffee away, sick at the thought that Ashley might be growing up the

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