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His voice was strained.
    “I said, no more questions, Mr. Forrester,” she said in a distractingly gentle tone.
    “I feel like hell, you know, letting you go this way.”
    “Well, that makes two of us.”
    The vague light from the dashboard cast their eyes in shadow, but somehow the intensity conveyed itself. She looked sharply away from his face, for she would not be haunted by the conscience-stricken look she saw there. She opened her door and the overhead light came on and he reached out to stop her. Silence fell while the heat of his hold burned through the arm of her coat. She pulled, slowly, steadily, inexorably away from him, turning, straining toward the door. But her neck arched sideways, revealing under the mellow light three purple bruises strung there in a row, each a finger's width apart. Before she could prevent it, the backs of Clay's fingers glided over the spot and she cringed, lowering her jaw into her collarbone.
    “Don't!” Her eyes were wide, fierce, defiant.
    In a strident voice, Clay asked, “He did that, didn't he?”
    Denial would have been useless, admission folly. All she could do was avoid answering.
    “Don't you dare say anything sympathetic or sentimental,” she warned him. “I couldn't take it right now.”
    “Catherine . . .” But he didn't know what to say, and he couldn't sit here restraining her any longer. He didn't want to be involved in her life, yet he was. They both knew it. How could she get out of this car and carry his child away into some hazy future without both of them realizing how fully he was already involved in her life?
    “Could I give you some money anyway?” he asked, almost in a whisper.
    “No . . . please . . . I want nothing of you, whether you believe it or not.”
    By now he believed it.
    “Will you get in touch with me if you change your mind?”
    “I won't.” She raised her elbow, pulling it by inches out of his fingers until he no longer commanded her.
    “Good luck,” he said, his eyes on hers.
    “Yeah, you too.”
    Then he leaned over to push her door open, the back of his arm faintly brushing against her stomach, sending goosebumps shimmying through her, radiating outward from the spot.
    Quickly she stepped out onto the sidewalk.
    “Hey, wait a minute . . .” He leaned across the seat, peered up at her with a curiously sad expression about his eyes and mouth. “I—what's your last name again, Catherine?”
    His question swept her with the insane urge to cry, an urge she'd felt earlier in the foyer when he'd failed to recognize her.
    “Anderson. It's Anderson. So common it's easy to forget.”
    Then she turned and ran into the house.
    But when she was gone, Clay Forrester folded the arms of his expensively tailored sport coat over the wheel of his expensive sports car, laid his well-groomed head upon them, knowing he would never forget her name as long as he lived.

Chapter 3
    The only light burning on the lower level was the lamp on the console table. Reaching for it, Clay caught his reflection in the mirror. A troubled frown stared back at him. Catherine Anderson, he thought, Catherine Anderson. Not liking what he saw, he quickly snapped the light off.
    Upstairs the door to his parents' bedroom suite was ajar, casting a pyramid of brightness into the hall. He stopped, arms akimbo, staring at the floor in the way he was wont to do when troubled, wondering what to say.
    “Clay? We heard you get home. Come in.” His father moved into the open door. From the shadows Clay studied him, his heavy velour jacket shaped like a short kimono over his trousers. The older man's hair lay in soft silver waves around his healthy face. Momentarily Clay had the desire to grasp his father's neck and bury his face in the silver waves, feel that tanned cheek against his own as when he was a child and came running in for a morning hug.
    “I didn't mean to keep you and Mother up.”
    “We'd be up in any case. Come in.”
    The ivory carpeting