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flickering on her face, catching her hair. “When Hillary couldn’t be bothered with an infant, Paul hired a nurse to take care of Tanya…. My sister was off and running with her crowd as soon as she recovered her figure. And I was there, checking on this beautiful little unwanted baby left with a hired nurse who didn’t care. Tanya was born just after the Amoteh’s opening. I was there, too. There is something special about seeing a baby born—”
    She smiled softly and now her eyes were dove gray. “She gurgled, you know. Happy little baby sounds…”
    A slight sad frown slid over her expression. Ellie brush back her hair as though trying to focus on what she must do. “I fought with Hillary over her behavior, if you can call it that. Paul didn’t bother to check what Hillary told him—and he didn’t want to hear realities from me. He was fine with the situation as long as there was no bad publicity. Hillary’s pregnancy was kept secret. She wasn’t marriedand didn’t know exactly who Tanya’s father was. Paul still had plans to marry her off for business reasons. That’s what his daughters are to him, you know—business assets.”
    Ellie smiled slightly. “Tanya was amazing, beautiful and I wanted her more than anything I’d wanted in my life. I wanted to adopt her. I chose to marry Mark, because I had this plan that two parents were better than one. He came from a good family. He wanted me—or rather he wanted a Lathrop heiress bred for the life he wanted—and I wanted Tanya. I was used to business deals, teethed on them, and marriage to Mark seemed sensible. I liked him. We were very compatible. We—we filled each other’s needs. I wanted marriage, a home and the idea of a real family. I’m used to making trade-offs, Mikhail. I’ve made them all my life. I knew that I was exactly what Mark wanted, more of a business partner to make him look good. That was the master plan, to give Tanya a good home and a good father.”
    She looked so weary and pale, and Mikhail’s instincts were to tell her to rest. But he recognized that she had fought hard and now defeated, baring herself and her pride to him, that she needed to take these last steps by herself.
    Ellie was quiet and then another blast of rain against the windows seemed to rouse her from her thoughts. “Tanya was just six months old when I married Mark. We had talked about adoption prior to the wedding. He had agreed…and then he changed his mind. Someone had mentioned genetic defects to him, and he was afraid she’d—I spent the next six months trying to convince him that we needed to adopt Tanya. One of his ridiculous reasons not to adopt was that with Hillary’s frequent changes in lovers, Tanya could have inherited any disease, he said. Basically, he wouldn’t even bring up the subject to Paul. I did…I had to. My father can be…horrible. He believed that someday Hillary would marry and settle down and make a fine mother. So, I divorced Mark and adopted Tanya when she was two years old. Correction—I bought her from Hillarywith everything I owned, and then I adopted Tanya legally. Tanya is my child—legally,” Ellie repeated, clenching her fists until the knuckles glowed white beneath the skin.
    To Mikhail, the thought that a woman could reject her own child was unthinkable—but then so was the fact that his ex-wife had an abortion rather than have their child. His child. The past bitterness went tearing through him again, unexpected and dark and hurting. He remembered his ex-wife’s words. “You chose the Amoteh and this godforsaken piece of sand. On those terms, I chose not to be a mother, not to be stuck in this wasteland. When we moved here, I thought it was only for a short time, that you needed to make your mark in the industry and then we would move to civilization. I simply changed my mind about having a baby, and that’s that,” JoAnna had said.
    Mikhail pulled himself back from that stormy, primitive edge, that