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lives, an unknown daughter out of Vito’s past, a whim of Billy’s turning her into a legal ward and an unofficial stepdaughter. Gigi, without whom none of them would be together today; Gigi, whose talent they had come to count on; Gigi, who had outgrown them. Damn it to hell, he thought, he was the one who was going to do the major part of the missing, more than it would be fair to tell her, more than she knew or should know. She had to be free to make whatever she could of herself. There was no telling how far she could go, this woman who had never realized, on that single night when she’d stopped him from trying to make love to her, that it was almost the only time he’d been rejected in a lifetime of conquest.
    “When do you want to leave?” he finally asked reluctantly.
    “I think I should … leave right away,” Gigi answered firmly, “without two weeks’ notice. You have more than seven weeks before the next catalog will be due at the printers; that’s plenty of time to find and train another copywriter, but Archie needs to put together the Indigo Seas pitch as quickly as possible.”
    Her voice wasn’t apologetic and her words were irrefutable, Spider rioted ruefully. Already someone else’s needs were coming first with her. Archie! Archie indeed! What kind of name was that? Did he have a butler named Jeeves?
    “I thought about it all during breakfast,” Gigi continued rapidly, “and since I’m leaving, I should let them know today, leave here … tomorrow … so I can be there by next Monday.”
    “Jesus, you’re a heartless bitch. What about the big going-away party, the gold watch for two and a half yearsof faithful service, or would you rather have a silver tea service?”
    “I was hoping to avoid exactly that. Please, Spider, no fuss. Josie will slime me with a guilt trip that’ll break my heart.”
    “I could too, if I wanted to. A guilt trip you’d never recover from.”
    “But I knew you wouldn’t. That’s why I told you first of anybody. Do I have your blessing?” Gigi’s impudent mouth, with its upper lip that curved naturally in a hint of a smile, was frankly laughing at him now, and so were her large, beautifully shaped green eyes that reminded him so much of Valentine’s.
    “You have my blessing, my wholehearted blessing, combined with my wholehearted wish that you’d stay. But you’re not wrong to want to try something else, you’ve picked your time wisely, and although you can never really be replaced, we’ll just have to be good soldiers and carry on without you—I know there’s no real room for major career growth in a catalog, Gigi, but an advertising agency’s something else.”
    “Oh, Spider, thank you!”
    “Do you want me to tell Billy for you?”
    “No, I’ll go and see her now, at the house. I’m afraid she won’t be as open-minded as you are, but I wouldn’t feel right about not telling her in person.”
    “Brave little Gigi. Still, you never know. Billy took a few risks in her day too, she’s grabbed her life in both hands and changed it more than once. Maybe she’ll understand, in spite of the fact that she counts on you.”
    “Maybe,” Gigi said doubtfully. Billy, even with the softening influence of marriage to Spider, was still the most demanding woman she’d ever had anything to do with, and Billy had many perfectly valid reasons to feel that she’d singlehandedly invented Gigi. Abandoning Scruples Two would be much less of a trauma if it didn’t mean letting Billy down as well.
    Spider leaned down, grasping her shoulders, and shookher hard and briskly for a minute, like a friendly lion expressing a number of unutterable and complicated thoughts to a pussycat. Then he took her face tenderly in both of his hands. “Remember what you said when you first met me, way back when?”
    “Of course. ‘Congratulations.’ ”
    “Congratulations to you,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “And good luck, Gigi darling.”
    “Mrs.