LITMIR.BIZ

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without a pillow.”

      “Thanks for the advice.”

      After he left, Dex said, “You mentioned that Kip is lonely. I think Rocky is, too.”

      “He’d like to have a family of his own,” Jim said. “He got the idea, when he lost his leg, that women wouldn’t be interested in him. I can’t talk him into going to a singles mixer or a dating service. He’s sure he’d be a complete failure.”

      “That’s ridiculous,” Dex said.

      “I think so, too.” Jim scooped up his daughter from the playpen and lifted her to his shoulder. The movement was surprisingly natural, considering that he’d had little experience with babies until this afternoon.

      He was a born father, Dex thought with a twinge of guilt as she followed the pair out of the dining room and up a central curving staircase. But Annie needed a mother, too. A real mother who would love her, not merely tolerate her.

      Dex needed to know more about Jim’s almost-fiancée. She supposed she could ask him some discreet questions, but it hurt too much to think about the woman.

      At the top of the stairs, they emerged into a central court around which opened a number of doors. Dex felt as if she were in a hotel.

      Jim headed for the door next to Dex’s. Rocky had pointed it out earlier as Annie’s room, but she hadn’t gone in.

      Now she followed the millionaire into an airy chamber with pale yellow flowered wallpaper, canary-and-tan stripes around the upper moldings and a lacy canopy bed. A crib, which must have been delivered that afternoon, stood against the near wall, across from a rocking chair.

      At the far end of the room, Dex could see the twilit sky through glass doors. Beyond them lay a rounded balcony edged by a wrought-iron railing.

      “This looks as if it had been deliberately decorated for a little girl,” she said.

      “It was.” Jim laid Annie on a changing table. “I’ve always wanted children. Now, how do you work this diaper thing?”

      Dex showed him. Every time their hands touched, she had to fight down rebellious fantasies.

      She imagined that the carpet in his room was tan, as in here. The pile felt thick beneath her feet. If only the two of them could sink into it, could feel it against their skin.

      Nearby, Jim’s breathing sped up. Was he thinking the same thing?

      That night at the faculty party, they’d found themselves operating on the same wavelength. Noticing the brightness of the stars at the same time. Leaning toward each other as if they’d planned it. Dancing as if they were a team.

      It was amazing, considering how different they were. And how incompatible.

      I don’t even know what I’m doing here, Dex thought, and inched away. She didn’t belong with a sleekly sophisticated man who made millions in the wink of an eye, or in a mansion that might have been designed for a glittery home tour.

      Her parents were bookish people, their house efficiently small and filled with well-organized paper clutter. They couldn’t understand why anyone would waste time on appearances. They weren’t impressed by designer labels or by the nouveau-riche club crowd in their Florida town, either.

      Their ideal woman was Dex’s sister, Brianna. The editor of a literary magazine, she was married to an investigative journalist and lived in a small apartment in New York’s SoHo district. They lacked much money and didn’t want kids, but they were the darlings of the intellectual set.

      “How’s this?” Jim hoisted their daughter aloft. A pink nightgown covered her neatly diapered body to her evident pleasure.

      “Beautiful.” Dex inhaled the scent of baby powder and innocence.

      Jim placed Annie into the crib on her back, as Rocky had instructed. The only jarring note was the quilt, which had a geometric design worked in black, purple and white. “Dr. Saldivar’s taste in baby decor was a bit different from mine,” he said, noticing her reaction. “I’ll have Grace pick up something more appropriate tomorrow.”

      “There’s no sense investing a lot of money,” Dex told him. “Annie isn’t staying.”

      They faced each other from opposite ends of the crib. She could feel Jim seeking the right words, the right tone to change her mind.

      “Why are you so determined to put her up for adoption?” Apparently he’d decided on the direct approach.

      Because if I can’t be her mother, I never want to see her again. It would break my heart.

      She didn’t say so, because she didn’t expect Jim to kowtow to her feelings. He was the most powerful person in this town, and she was, if anything, the most powerless.

      Dex struggled to find a more rational reason for her position. In what she hoped was a logical tone, she said, “You’ve got to see how hard it will be for her when people find out about her background. The gossip. The teasing.”

      “No one has to know her background,” Jim said.

      “The town gossips will want to know who the mother is. And plenty of people have seen Annie with Dr. Saldivar over the last nine months,” Dex said. “Whether they learn the truth or imagine some affair between you and the good doctor, it’ll still be a mess.”

      “People may talk,” he conceded. “But…” Instead of completing his thought, he said, “Come here. I want to show you something.” Jim walked to the glass doors, unlatched the slide lock from overhead and opened them. Cautiously, Dex followed him onto the small balcony and into a cooling breeze.

      Below them spread the town of Clair De Lune. From this height, she could see the triangular Bonderoff Visionary Technologies plant on the left and beyond a sprawl of high ground to her right, the campus of De Lune University.

      Directly ahead, sloping downward toward the distant freeway, lay the town itself. She scanned tree-shrouded neighborhoods, shops, city hall, even the twelve-storey structure where she and Jim had met Annie this afternoon.

      “It’s quite a view,” she admitted.

      “The view is as much symbolic as it is literal,” Jim said. “I don’t mean to brag, but in a lot of ways I control this town. The mayor consults me about ordinances that would affect businesses. The Chamber of Commerce uses my name to encourage new industries to come to town.”

      None of this was news to Dex. “So?”

      “Exactly how hard do you think people are going to ride my daughter?” Jim asked.

      He had a point, but she wasn’t about to admit it. “Kids can be cruel,” Dex said. “And I don’t want her spoiled, either.”

      “You’re making excuses. There’s some other reason you want her to be adopted.”

      He was too perceptive, she thought with a flare of alarm. She dreaded having Jim see how vulnerable she was, how much she yearned for things she wasn’t emotionally capable of handling.

      “I don’t think I’m cut out to be a mother,” she said as casually as she could. “Lots of women aren’t.”

      “But I’m cut out to be a father,” he said.

      “It isn’t enough!”

      “You want to keep me at arm’s length because we spent a night together, don’t you?” he pressed. “If I were a total stranger with no memories attached, you wouldn’t be so opposed to my keeping her, would you?”

      Although she supposed that did make a difference, it wasn’t the real problem. “I don’t hold anything against you,” Dex said.

      “There’s no reason you should,” Jim reminded her. “You’re the one who said you were going away.”

      “We aren’t suited to each other,” she

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