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called.
    “Let’s go,” Nat replied.
    His voice splashed over her, drenching her with longing. She wanted him. No matter how she’d tried to stamp out her feelings, the sound of his voice brought back a flood of memories—tender, lusty, explosive memories. And of all the times they’d made love, the most electrifying had been the night they’d conceived Elizabeth. He’d become such a part of her that night that she’d thought for sure he’d agree to break the code of silence.
    Instead, he’d smashed their love to smithereens.
    Her heart beat wildly as the front doors of the cab opened and the dome light flicked on. If either of them decided to look in the back seat during that brief time, they’d see her.
    They didn’t.
    The engine started, and she discovered one other unpleasant fact. She could smell car exhaust down here. Wonderful. Now she could worry about asphyxiating herself.
    As the cab began to move down the driveway, Jessica was sure she could feel every rock and pebble in the road, especially when the tires threw them up under the car. But she didn’t dare move, at least not until they were well on their way back to the city.
    “Did you get your business settled?” the cabdriver asked.
    “Not exactly,” Nat said. “But it was a start.”
    Please let this be a nosy cabdriver, Jessica prayed. She just might find out something that would partially make up for being crammed in here like a doomed mobster.
    Unfortunately for her, the cabbie wasn’t all that interested in Nat’s business at Franklin Hall and started talking about the World Series instead. Jessica clenched her teethas Nat happily traded opinions on the relative merits of each team in the playoffs. Guys and their sports.
    Yet even though the conversation bored her to tears, she loved listening to Nat’s voice, and his low chuckle was enough to trip the switch on her libido. She didn’t focus on his words, but absorbed only his tone.
    Maybe because she was lying in the dark, she began to think of how it had been lying with Nat in the dark. Gradually her mind replaced his talk about baseball with other words, polished gems from her treasure-house of memories. I could spend forever looking at you, Jess. And kissing you. Your skin tastes like milk and honey. Come here, woman. Come let me make love to you. For the rest of the night. Who cares about sleep when we can do this?
    She hadn’t forgotten a minute of the time they’d been together. She wondered if he’d forgotten it all. But if he didn’t want anything more to do with her, why had he traveled to Franklin Hall the minute he set foot on U.S. soil?
    Cautiously she wiggled over so she could see out the window. It wasn’t a great view, and the hump on the floor forced her to arch her back to an uncomfortable degree, but she’d be able to tell when they reached the city. She was more than ready to get there. The exhaust fumes were making her woozy.
    “There’s the Franklin Tower,” the cabbie said. “They say Franklin’s office takes up the entire top floor. A huge office, they say, with a three-hundred-sixty-degree view of Manhattan.”
    She knew that office. Jessica brought her attention back to the conversation in the front seat. Maybe the driver would finally try to get some gossip out of Nat.
    “I’ve heard about his office,” Nat said.
    He’d heard it from her. Nat had been the only person who knew about her background, and when he’d abandoned her, she’d lost more than a lover. She’d lost the one person she could talk to without constantly guarding her speech.
    When she’d left New York, she’d severed all ties with friends because she couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t somehow give her away and leave her open to the kidnappers her father spoke about endlessly, the ones waiting to snatch a rich man’s child. She’d heard his warnings for so long that she believed him. She’d just wanted to find a different way to avoid that fate.
    She’d made new friends