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  "But it's in all the tabloids," he protested. "He's going to know already..."

  "Rory, this will be hard for you to understand," she said huskily, "but he was married and his wife... got rid of their child. He's never gotten over it. He doesn't want to get married again, and he doesn't really want a child. But he'll blame me for losing it, just the same. He'll...hate me." She closed her eyes on a wave of pain. "I wanted my baby. I wanted him, so much! Cash will never believe it. He'll hate me forever, Rory, because I didn't refuse to do the scene. He'll think I did it deliberately, don't you see? We can't call him. It would only make things worse. I expect he's hurting, too, now that he knows, even more than me." She sighed. "We can't hurt him anymore."

  Rory didn't think Cash would blame her. The man he'd briefly gotten to know was bigger than that. Of course he was.

  So it came as a shock that Cash refused to speak to him when he called the Jacobsville Police Station while Tippy was in the shower. Rory hung up, feeling alone and scared. He never said a word to Tippy about the phone call.

  CASH WAS BACK AT WORK after a day's absence at home just after he read the tabloid account. He seemed not to be fazed by it all, but he was suddenly quick-tempered and hard to talk to. Not that anybody knew why. They didn't know that he was the father of Tippy Moore's child.

  Judd Dunn suspected, of course. But he didn't want to risk a knock-down-drag-out fight with Cash by asking him.

  Just the same, he was surprised days later when he overheard one of the men telling someone that Cash had left orders not to put through any calls from anyone named Danbury.

  Danbury was Tippy's real last name. She'd told Judd, when she was making the

  movie out at the ranch he shared with his wife Christabel. "Who was that?" Judd asked, concerned. The officer shrugged. "Some kid named Danbury." "Did Cash tell you not to accept calls from kids, too?" The officer glared up at him. "If you want to tell him and risk having him put a fist through your nose, go ahead. He's already had one bite of me today, and I'm covering my rear!" Judd walked into Cash's office without knocking and studied the older man quietly before he spoke. "You look white in the face," Judd told him. Cash didn't look up. "I'm busy."

  Judd closed the door and perched himself on the corner of the desk. "She wouldn't have done it deliberately." Cash's eyes were terrible. "Why not? My ex-wife did!" Judd's surprise widened his eyes.

  "Women don't want babies, they're too damned much trouble. They want careers!" "Sure," Judd said, losing his temper. 'That's why Tippy took her little brother in and raised him." Cash stared at him without speaking. But something touched his face. "It's not the boy's fault, whether or not she's responsible," Judd said coldly. He stood up. "You shouldn't take it out on him." "I haven't said a thing to him," Cash said defensively. Judd scoffed. "Your desk sergeant just hung up on him and said you told him to," he said, nodding at the dismay on Cash's face. "Try calling him back, why don't you, and see if he'll listen to you. If he called you, it can only be because he's worried about his sister." He glared at his friend. "I guess she got pregnant all by herself." He turned and strode angrily out the door. Cash felt sick at

  his stomach. It had been a shock to learn that Tippy was pregnant and hadn't told him. He'd had to read about it in the tabloids. It had been a bigger shock to read about her deliberate stunt work leading to the miscarriage. He'd told her that he'd take responsibility for anything that happened, but she hadn't even called him.

  And why would she, he asked himself miserably, when he'd done everything in the world to make her think he didn't want either her or a child. He couldn't have made his distaste for their intimacy more evident. Tippy had low esteem already, and his attitude hadn't helped. Rory must have been worried to take a chance on calling him at work. Apparently Rory wasn't angry, and certainly he suspected that the baby's father was Cash.

  But his helpful colleague out there, put off by Cash's ongoing bad mood, had told Rory that Cash wasn't accepting any phone calls from him. So now Rory would think Cash had deserted him, too.

  He didn't even bother phoning back. He didn't want to talk to Tippy, or about her, not just yet; not until he could come to terms with his horror at what she'd done. He knew her career was important to her. He hadn't realized that it was the most important thing in the world.

  Now that he knew, he could stop hating himself for what had happened. He'd actually thought about going back to her a time or two, of trying to make a relationship work between them. But it had come to nothing. He couldn't force himself to take a chance. Maybe that was a good thing, considering how it had worked out. She obviously placed her career before any relationship, even before a child. It was graphic proof that she didn't want anything more to do with Cash Grier.

  IT TOOK A COUPLE OF WEEKS for Tippy to get herself back in any sort of shape to go to work.

  She was drinking, for the first time in her adult life, to stop the memories and the pain.

  She was hiding it from the people she worked with—and from Rory. She hadn't seen

  him since the weekend Joel had brought him to see her. He'd finally confessed that he

  tried to call Cash and that Cash had told his men that he wasn't speaking to

  anybody named Danbury. Tippy was even more depressed after that.

  Her mother had read the tabloids and phoned her at once, just after Rory's visit. "Now

  you're going to see what I can do," she told Tippy, slurring her words—obviously she

  was using again. She never seemed to stop. "I'm going to get my son back, or you're

  going to pay through the nose to keep him!"

  "I'm between jobs," Tippy lied. "I don't have any money. You'll have to wait until I get a

  royalty check from the first movie." "Which will be when?" "I don't know. Next

  year."

  "No good. I need money now. You listen to me, girl, I'm not going to sit down here in Georgia starving while you ride around in limousines and eat at fancy restaurants! I deserve something for all the hell you put me through, you and that little brat!"

  Tippy clenched her hand on the phone. "You deserve to burn in hell, you witch!" she raged. "You did nothing for either of us but help your sick boyfriend abuse us." Her mother laughed. "I was just helping you grow up," she drawled. "You'd have gotten to like it eventually."

  "I'd have killed you both, eventually," Tippy said coldly. "Sam's a loser, just like you." "You've got money and we need some. You give it to us, girl, I'm warning you, I'll do something desperate!" "Why don't you go to the tabloids and tell them how your

  boyfriend raped me when I was twelve years old?" Tippy asked harshly. "Maybe I'll tell them myself!" There was a pause, as if the other woman was trying to think through a fog of drugs. "You were older than that...."

  "I was not," Tippy choked. "I want some money!" came the harsh reply. "I shouldn't have to work, when you're rich! You owe me. I gave you that boy!" "You sold him to me for fifty thousand dollars!" Tippy screamed into the receiver.

  "That was just a down payment. I want more. I need money. You don't know what it's like," she rambled drunkenly. "I got to have it. I got to. You better send me some money, or I'll tell Sam to get it however he can. Sam's got connections in Manhattan. He can make a lot of trouble for you. You'll see."

  "You miserable excuse for a human being," Tippy said under her breath. "How can you live with what you are?"

  "You just send me a check, or else." The line went dead.

  Tippy had been furious for days after that phone call. What must it be like to have a parent love you, want you, protect you, she wondered. Surely in the world there were good women. She only wished there had been one, just one, in her life.

  Now her mother wanted more money and she didn't have any to spare. She was out of work, and no paycheck would be coming in until she went back on the job. But in the meantime, she didn't have enough for Rory's tuition or money to pay rent and utilities.

  She began to laugh hystericall
y. She was going to starve and Rory would end up in a foster home, while her mother went running to the tabloids to tell everyone on earth how her ungrateful daughter was mistreating her.

  She took a whiskey bottle out of the cabinet and filled a tea glass with it. It was the weekend. She wasn't working and she

  could do what she pleased, she told herself. If she was going to lose everything,

  maybe she could numb the hurt just a little...

  SPRING BREAK CAME IN EARLY April. Tippy had pawned some of her jewelry to pay Rory's

  fees through until the summer, and he came home on the train to spend his week off

  with her. But it was a changed Tippy who met him at the station.

  She was thin as a reed and shaky. She smiled and hugged him, but her eyes were blank

  and there were deep, dark shadows underneath them. She looked like the walking

  dead. "Are you back to work?" he asked worriedly. She nodded. "We finish up next

  week," she said dully. "Joel got me a stunt double. Too little too late." She laughed

  huskily. "Well, what the hell. Better late than never!" "Tippy, are you okay?" he

  asked.

  "Of course I am!" she said enthusiastically. "We're going to have a great time together. I

  made a cake with a happy face on it." "I'm just a little bit too old for happy cakes," he

  ventured. "Nonsense. We're going to have fun. We'll be just like a.. .like a family." She

  swayed a little on the way to the cab. "You've been drinking!" he accused softly, and with evident surprise. 'Tippy, you know you shouldn't drink. Look at our mother!" That comment made her uneasy, but she laughed it off. "There's a tendency toward alcoholism," he pointed out. She laughed again, this time a little wildly. "Rory, I just had a couple of drinks to unwind, for God's sake. Don't start lecturing me." She hugged him. "There's my sweet boy... I'm glad you're home." "Me, too," he said. But he didn't smile. There was a phone call on Rory's first night home. He answered it and the caller hung up at once. Tippy had Caller ID,

  but the number had been blocked. It might have been Cash, he thought optimistically. He hadn't tried to call the man back, but perhaps Cash had been thinking about them and decided to check on them.

  "Have you heard from Cash?" he asked her abruptly.

  Her face closed up. "I have not!" she said angrily. "And I do not want to hear from him! If he'd given a damn about me, he'd have called here weeks ago!"

  "You haven't phoned him?"

  She glared at him. "Why would I want to? He hates me."

  "You don't know that."

  "Yes, I do," she said with utter certainty. She poured a little whiskey into a glass and tossed it back. "And I don't care."

  But she did. It was killing her. Rory winced at the look on her face, at the thinness of her body. He wished he were older, that he knew what to do. But he had no idea.

  She had another drink and just as she did, there was a knock on the door.

  Rory answered it. His friend Don was there, looking puzzled. "Rory, we just came back from the store, and there's a guy waiting downstairs who says he knows you. He wants you to come down and talk to him."

  "Cash!" Rory exclaimed. "Is it Cash?"

  The boy shrugged. "I couldn't tell. I only saw your sister's friend once. This guy

  had a hat pulled down over his eyes and he's wearing a long coat..." "It must be Cash!" Rory said excitedly. "I'll go down and meet him. Don't tell my sister, okay?" he added quickly. "Whatever you say. Want to come over and go to the ice rink with me and mom tomorrow?" "We'll see. Thanks, Don!"

  "No problem."

  Rory paused at the door. "I'm going next door for a minute," he called to Tippy.

  "Be right back!"

  "Okay. Don't go off anywhere without telling me!" she called after him, belatedly remembering her mother's threat of trouble. "I won't." He closed the door and went down the stairs.

  AN HOUR LATER, Tippy noticed that his few minutes had stretched too long. She put down the

  liquor glass and tried to get her mind to work. He'd said he was going over to Don's apartment. She phoned the apartment next door and spoke to Don's mother. "But he was never here," came the shocked reply from the other woman. "Did he say he was coming over?"

  Tippy felt her heart sink. "Yes!"

  "Wait a minute." She called her son and there was a mumble of conversation. "I just asked Don," the other woman said worriedly. "Tippy, he says that a man came to the door downstairs and asked for Rory to come down. Rory thought it was that friend of yours, Cash isn't it? But Don didn't recognize him. He said the man had on a coat and hat and he looked mysterious."

  Tippy thanked her and hung up. Terror lodged in her throat. She knew at once, without being told, that her mother's vicious boyfriend had Rory. She knew it! But her mind was foggy and she couldn't think. What must she do?

  The phone rang again and she picked it up.

  "We've got Rory," came a familiar, terrible voice from the past. "We want a hundred grand by morning. Or you get a dead body back. Don't call the feds. We'll phone you in the morning

  with instructions. Sleep tight, sweetie," he added sarcastically, and hung up.

  Tippy was scared to death. She knew it was Sam, and she knew he meant what he said. There had never been a time when she wasn't afraid of him, long after she'd run away from home. The man was Rory's father. Rory didn't know that. But she couldn't let him hurt the boy. And he would. He had no paternal feelings for anyone.

  Her hands trembled. She grabbed her purse and thumbed through the numbers

  in her appointment book for Cash Grier's. He probably wouldn't speak to her, but she

  had to try.

  She punched in the number of his cell phone, that he'd given her long ago when

  she left Jacobsville for New York after the film shoot. She wasn't certain that it was

  still current.

  It rang once. Twice. Three times. Four times. Her lips moved in a silent prayer.

  Be there. Please be there!

  It rang five times. Six. Her heart sank. He wasn't going to

  even answer...!

  "Grier," came a cold, deep voice over the line.

  "Cash!" she exclaimed. "I have to talk to you. I need help!"

  "Help? You need help? Damn you, Tippy!" he burst out.

  "Just listen," she said firmly, trying to get a grip on herself. "Please. This is

  serious!"

  His voice was icy. "I have nothing to say to a woman like you, Tippy. Don't you ever call me again as long as you live."

  "Cash, for God's sake...!" she choked desperately.

  The line went dead. She punched Redial but nothing happened. He wasn't going

  to answer. And she knew it would do no good, no good at all, to try other numbers,

  like the police department's there. Cash didn't know about Rory, and he wouldn't

  let her tell him. She knew he would have tried to help, if he'd known. But he

  wouldn't listen.

  She cursed roundly, grasping at options. She had to save Rory! On a sudden

  whim, she tried Judd Dunn's number, but nobody answered, not even

  Christabel.

  Those options gone, she poured a cup of cold coffee into a cup and drank it down

  quickly, hoping to clear her mind. Her only other hope was to raise the ransom

  money. Joel. Joel Harper! If she could get in touch with him...!

  She tried his home number, but the answering machine turned on. She tried the

  studio. None of his staff was there, she was told. They'd gone with Joel on location to

  set things up for his next film, now that Tippy's was almost in the can. The location

  was in the wilds of Peru, and even his cell phone wasn't accessible right now.

  Apparently the group was in some location where there were no relays.

  Tippy tried an officer of the studio, but was told that he was out for the w
eek. It was fate, she told herself miserably. She couldn't get help. She was on her own. She thought about calling the police, but how did she get in touch with someone who wouldn't jeopardize Rory's life by rushing in with guns blazing? She had no idea what to do next.

  She put the phone down with a dead sigh. She couldn't possibly get the amount of money Sam wanted by morning. She had no more than a thousand dollars in her savings account, and her credit cards were maxed out. She'd pawned her jewels to pay Rory's fees. There was nothing left. She had nothing left to borrow money on.