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anger and sense of defeat—because his marriage was a failure and divorce the conclusion. To be truthful, perhaps he was as cold and boring as JoAnna had claimed. Perhaps he hadn’t given her what a woman needed. Perhaps that was why his lovemaking had left her cold, why he felt empty and frustrated later.
    He sorted through the years since he’d sent that crystal vase to Ellie as a wedding gift. With no word of Ellie’s escapades, he’d thought that marriage had settled her. Paul had stopped speaking of his daughters. Meanwhile, she’d been divorced and had adopted her niece. “And the problem? Why do you think you need me?”
    When she looked at Mikhail, Ellie’s eyes were filled with tears. Her hand trembled as she lifted it to dash them away. “To Hillary, Tanya is just a…a thing to use. At first, Hillary hated her because childbirth had left stretch marks, and she’d lost her shape. I found Tanya, in her crib, alone at five months—though the nurse carefully locked the door before she went out with her friends. I vowed that would not happen again. Hillary was off somewhere, playing with another man, and she wasn’t concerned at all. After that, Iwas around even more. I basically took Tanya to live with me, and Hillary didn’t miss her at all.”
    Mikhail remembered Hillary—wealthy, spoiled and willful, like Ellie. But there was a basic difference. Hillary acted and looked cheap. Paul actually paid her to stay away from business and social functions, but he wanted Ellie at his side to smooth any waves he created with his aggressive manners.
    Except for the disaster of the botched real estate deal, Ellie was his little fix-it person—when she wanted. But if Paul and Ellie crossed swords, she was his personal disaster.
    Mikhail did not want to share Paul’s fate; he had already been cursed by one sharp-tongued, willful woman.
    The woman curled in the huge chair was soft and vulnerable, and a mother fighting to protect her child. She turned to Mikhail, her eyes huge and sad. “A year ago, Hillary said she wanted Tanya back to impress her new boyfriend. He thinks Hillary just had that one affair and excuses her for being too young to handle a Romeo type. He’s wealthy and family-minded and Paul is delighted. He wants this marriage. He’s obsessed by the idea of getting a Wall Street power broker into the family. This man’s first wife wasn’t fertile and he wants children—the complete family-man picture, you know…proving his manhood and healthy sperm count, and the family image for business, yada, yada, yada. He’s ready to claim that Tanya is really his love child. Hillary and Paul will support him.”
    Ellie shuddered and spoke quietly. “I’ve used and sold everything I can to fight them legally—jewelry, stocks, wedding gifts, clothes—and six months ago, I started running. My father is a powerful man. He can make things…difficult. He sent men with Hillary to collect Tanya at the day care center—that’s why she has nightmares of ‘the big scary men’ trying to take her away. Hillary came with them. She looks enough like me, and like Tanya, to pass as her ‘aunt,’ and that was when I knew we weren’tsafe at all. I was working at an insurance office, and I left as soon as the day care center called me to double-check releasing Tanya without written permissions—and we moved that night. Tanya still remembers that awful scene—when Hillary is angry, she can be violent…abusive.”
    Ellie stood slowly as though she had come too far and could go no farther. She stood in front of him with the air of making a formal, desperate plea. “Mikhail, you are the only man who can help us. Will you?”
     
    Because he knew the players, Mikhail understood the dynamics perfectly. Ellie was a fighter for causes she felt deserved help, and he knew Hillary’s selfishness and Paul’s determination to get his way, no matter who suffered. Now a child was endangered—if Mikhail could trust Ellie to