LITMIR.BIZ

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ultrasound. She’d put the videotape in her bag, but hadn’t been able to tuck the photo away. She was enthralled with this proof of the baby growing in her womb. The baby she could not yet feel or even see in her only slightly thickened waistline.

      It was a boy. A part of Dimitri Petronides she was free to love, someone who would return her love. Even weakened by constant morning sickness and exhausted from her pregnancy, she wanted to shout for joy.

      Desperately wanting to share her news with someone, she flipped open her cell phone and dialed her sister’s number. She got the answering machine and opted not to leave a message. She could tell Madeleine the news when she went home later. She considered and discarded the idea of calling her mother. Alexandra was not up to another dose of “You’ve brought shame to the family name.”

      Compulsion she could not deny had her dialing the number to the Paris apartment. There had been no news of Dimitri’s wedding in the New York society pages. Fool that she was, she couldn’t stop herself from looking and even more foolishly hoping. Had he come to his senses? Called off the wedding?

      Perhaps the latter was too much to hope for, but surely after two months he would have had enough time to calm down and realize Alexandra would never have been unfaithful to him.

      The phone rang several times and Alexandra remembered belatedly it would be the dinner hour over there. Perhaps he was out, or not in Paris at all. She let the phone continue to ring, knowing she didn’t have the courage to call his cell. For some reason this was news she needed to tell him when he was in the apartment they had shared.

      The other line picked up. “Hello?”

      Alexandra almost dropped her phone. It was a woman’s voice at the other end of the line. She forced her vocal chords to work, praying the unfamiliar voice was that of a new housekeeper and not Dimitri’s newest woman. “Hello. Is Mr. Petronides available, please?”

      “I’m sorry, he’s out. This is Mrs. Petronides. Can I help you or would you like to leave a message?”

      Mrs. Petronides. Alexandra stopped breathing. The bastard had gone through with it. He’d married another woman while Alexandra was pregnant with his child. Funny, until that very moment, she hadn’t truly believed he would do it. And it was only in the absence of all hope that she realized how much she’d been living on the unspoken faith in a man who cared nothing for her and clearly never had.

      “Are you there?”

      “Yes.”

      “Did you want to leave a message for my husband?”

      “No. I…” The words simply trailed into nothingness as the joy that had buoyed her up since discovering she carried Dimitri’s son drained away.

      “Who’s calling please?” The young woman, Phoebe Leonides, no…Phoebe Petronides now, sounded impatient.

      Because Alexandra was so emotionally devastated, she answered the other woman’s question without thought. She couldn’t think. Her brain had ceased to function. She gave the name an occupant of the Paris apartment would expect to hear. “Xandra Fortune.”

      “Miss Fortune, where are you? Dimitrius has been looking for you. He’s desperate about the baby.”

      Dimitri had told his wife about her, about their baby? Alexandra pulled the phone from her ear and stared at it in her hand as if she didn’t know how it had gotten there. She could hear the woman’s voice, but not the words she was saying. She sounded frantic.

      Alexandra cut the connection without putting the phone back to her ear.

      CHAPTER THREE

      DIMITRI took a sip of his neat whiskey and walked out onto the terrace of the New York high-rise apartment. It was empty, no doubt due to the chill in the air brought on by November’s cooling temperatures.

      He’d come late to the holiday party, at the insistence of a business acquaintance who’d told him the host was an investment banker he thought Dimitri should meet. For the past four months, Dimitri had had very little interest in making money. He’d had little interest in anything, but finding the mother of his child.

      He was in New York because that was her last known whereabouts. She’d had her things shipped to a Manhattan receiving office and picked them up on the day of their arrival. One day before he had instigated a search for her. After that, there had been nothing. His investigators had been unable to find a single lead.

      She’d canceled her contract with her modeling agency. She’d even closed her credit cards and checking account. No one had seen or heard from Xandra Fortune in three months.

      Well, that was not strictly true. She’d called the Paris apartment four weeks ago and spoken to Phoebe. Xandra had hung up without saying why she’d called or answering Phoebe’s questions about where she was. The call had been placed on an untraceable cell phone.

      Dimitri still cursed whenever he thought of that ill-fated phone call. Would she have told him where she was if he had been there to answer the phone?

      The sound of voices drifted out onto the almost deserted terrace and he asked himself why he’d bothered to come. He spun on his heel, intending to go when a woman caught his eye. She had her back to him. Long curling blond hair reached to the center of her back, a back that looked much too familiar. Then she moved, gripping the balcony railing and letting her head fall back as she took a deep breath of air.

      “Xandra!”

      She spun around to face him and his heart tightened in a painful knot, for although the woman had enough surface resemblance to Xandra to be her sister, she wasn’t the model.

      She smiled, even white teeth gleaming in the cool glow of the outdoor lighting. “Hello. I didn’t realize anyone was out here.”

      “I came for the solitude,” he admitted.

      Her smile flashed again. “I know what you mean. I adore socializing, but once in a while the crush gets to me and I just need to breathe some air that’s all my own.”

      He felt himself smiling for the first time in months. “Then I’ll leave you to it.”

      She waved her hand. “There’s no need. I don’t mind sharing my little oasis of quiet. You said you knew Xandra?”

      “Yes. I know her.”

      “She was an amazing model, wasn’t she? She had just the right combination of innocence and passion to shoot her to supermodel status. It’s too bad she refused to take any New York commissions.”

      “She prefers working in Europe.”

      Something odd passed across the woman’s face. “Yes, I suppose she did.”

      “You keep talking about her in the past tense.” Had Xandra given up modeling for motherhood?

      “That’s because Xandra Fortune is gone.”

      Everything inside him went still. “What do you mean gone?”

      The blonde sighed. “According to my sister, Xandra Fortune is dead, if not buried six feet under.”

      The words had the effect of multiple body blows and he felt his knees begin to buckle. He reached out blindly for the balcony railing and it was only by sheer force of will that he remained standing. “She’s dead?”

      He tried to breathe, but his lungs refused to cooperate. He felt the whiskey glass in his hand break and the sharp pain of one jagged edge pressing into his hand.

      “Oh, my word. Are you all right?” The woman’s voice was filled with concern. “Wait right there. I’ll get something for the cut and to clean up the glass.”

      He looked down at the blood beading against the dark skin of his hand and could not connect it to anything he felt because all he felt was numbness. Xandra was dead and his baby with her. That thought pounded through his consciousness with the power of an express train pushing

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