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first, I think, no, but then I realize I
really do want to know how he has been. “Yes.”
    “Well, you know everything that happened. I
don’t think we need to linger in the Valley of Death.”
    I try not to, but it’s hard to ignore the
pain in his eyes. Suddenly I feel very bad for him. “Michael…?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’m truly sorry about you mother. I wish
she hadn’t suffered like she did,” I say.
    His face goes slightly ashen, and I want to
reach across the table, take his hand, and tell him he can come to
me and talk about it if he needs someone. But I don’t want to give
him false hope that I have any sort of desire to reunite with him.
So I don’t offer.
    “Thank you, Scarlett,” he says.
    I can, however, give him honesty. “I have
something I need to tell you, and although I really don’t want to,
it’s for the best.” I have to let him know what Diane did. It’s the
only right thing to do, and as I have resolved to start living my
life right again, this is one of the major things I absolutely must
do.
    He studies my eyes for a moment. “Okay.”
    “Your mother sent me another letter,” I
admit.
    His eyebrow peaks. “Oh?”
    “I think you should read it.”
    “I don’t need to read it. You and me…that’s
what’s important. Not a letter that will perpetuate the secrets and
lies.”
    “But two very large checks were enclosed in
the letter,” I say.
    “I don’t care about the money, Scarlett. You
can keep it for all I care.”
    I’m taken aback by his statement. “But
you…created this entire crazy deal just so you could get your hands
on that money. You dragged me into it, and we…” I slump back in my
seat and let out a loud huff.
    “You’ve changed me, Scarlett. I wasn’t
kidding when I said I didn’t truly love a woman until I met you,”
he says.
    Tingles shoot up my spine and across my
shoulders. “But you ended it. You divorced me. You…”
    He reaches across the table and takes my
hand. “We needed a fresh start. We needed our relationship to start
anew without all that baggage.”
    I look down at my hand, not quite sure what
to do. “You hated me for lying to you. I’m a stripper, remember?”
Why the hell am I trying to convince him I’m no good for him? Oh,
yeah, looking into those deep, blue eyes, I forget that I don’t
want to be with this man. He hurts me again and again. Deeply. And
it will only be a matter of time before he hurts me again. I’m not
really into that kind of self-torture.
    “I don’t care about that,” he says. “You can
keep stripping for all I care. But it’s the real Scarlett I have
fallen for. The one who takes care of her father. The one who is
coming clean despite the threat of losing billions of dollars. The
one who made love to me and gave herself so freely that it made me
feel loved for the first time during sex.”
    “I…I don’t know what to say.”
    “Just say you’ll date me. I won’t even ask
it to be exclusive. You can date the other guy if you want to. Just
give me another chance.” He lifts his other hand to my face and
gently strokes my cheek.
    “I need to think about it.” He’s being far
too reasonable. He must be hiding something.
    “Take as long as you need. I’m not going
anywhere,” he says.
    I narrow my eyes at him.
    “I’m not. I will prove to you that I have
changed. And soon you’ll see that we are worthwhile. That you can
trust me. I trust you, Scar.”
    If I say yes, that means I’ll at least have
to try to forgive him for all the things he put me through. The
whole fucking deal. The mother-in-law. The lies he made me tell.
The lies he held onto. The rejection when he found out I was a
stripper.
    But if I say no, I might regret it for the
rest of my life and always wonder what could have been had we given
it a fair shot. Because he’s right. There was no way we could have
lived a happily ever after with that deal. I don’t even think I
know who Michael truly is. Everything was a