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over a lot of his responsibilities. Of course, Florian’s mother and aunts couldn’t handle all the duties. I was kind of like the booby prize. And then …”
    Her voice trailed away. Joe glanced at her. Her jaw was set, so he finished the sentence for her, to get it out in the open. “And then your son died.”
    “Drowned,” she said, with a poignant catch in her voice. She stared down at her hands. “Paulofell into the canal when only I was with him. He was pulled under some docked boats by the strong current. He couldn’t surface, and I dived … I couldn’t find him.” She paused for a long moment. “He was four.”
    “I admire you,” he said quietly, knowing her husband had blamed her in every newspaper he could for the accident. He reached over to cover the too-tightly clenched hands in her lap with his own. She started, gazing at him suddenly with wide eyes, and he added, “Despite the tremendous unfairness, you never once gave a show for the public.”
    He had taken her hands only to give her support, yet suddenly and uncontrollably the support changed to something more primitive at the contact of skin to skin. He felt the blood curling thickly through him, and he could feel the same in her. His breath was rasping in his throat. Where her fingers had been cold at first, they now were warm—almost hot. And her thighs brushed restlessly, enticingly, against his hand.
    She turned, unclasping her hands in such a way that his slid naturally off her lap. He took the wheel again, without comment. Her breathing was audible, but her attempt at a nonchalant shrug wasn’t far off the mark as she picked up the conversation again. “Now all I want is a little peace and quiet. And privacy.”
    “For roller skating.”
    She made a face at him, and he smiled. But he had heard a fierce determination in her voice when she had spoken of peace and privacy. It bothered him, as if she were shutting out the world quietlybut surely. She was beautiful, he thought, poised and serene. And very vulnerable; she always would be. And she had a dry sense of humor. He hadn’t expected that. He couldn’t allow someone like her to lock herself away.
    “Now that I’ve told my dismal tale of woe that everybody already knows,” she said, “what about yours?”
    He shrugged. “There’s nothing to tell.”
    “Joe, I don’t even know where you live or whether you’re married.”
    “What!” he exclaimed. “You didn’t get that in your report?”
    “Nope, except that you seem married to Carlini Foods.”
    “Sometimes I think that’s too true.” He glanced at her. She was looking at him expectantly. “Okay. We live in Wynnewood—”
    “You really are married!”
    He grinned. “Scared ya, didn’t I? Actually, I have apartments at the family home. Now that my dad is retired, my parents spend about ten months out of the year traveling. It was convenient to be close to my father when I was learning the business. Then I never seemed to find the time to move, and now I’m there by myself for most of the year.”
    Ellen shrugged. “Where I come from, people don’t buy their estates, they inherit them. So you’re not married.”
    “Not to a woman, anyway,” he said, tacitly acknowledging her comment about his job. “Was once.”
    “Divorce?”
    He shook his head.
    “I’m sorry, Joe,” she said sincerely.
    He cleared his throat. “To tell you the truth, I always feel a little guilty when someone says that. I married young, at twenty, against everybody’s advice. Gina was helpless and clinging … innocent, I guess. At first I was flattered that she needed me so much, and then I felt smothered by it. She died in a car accident nearly a year later. Being older and wiser now, I realize that I got married more out of a need for rebellion than for love. I—I was glad I didn’t have to hurt her. Hell of a thing to say, isn’t it?”
    Ellen frowned. “No … not really. You’ve just recognized that the marriage