In spite of himself, he snorted a laugh. "I thought so. Just as productive as me attempting to comprehend anything in these reports."

"Eduardo ..."

He turned away from her, from the pained expression in her eyes and looked out at the city. "Do you have any idea how ... frustrating it is, to have such a lack of control. To ... I can't make it work. I can't make my mind what it was. I can't make it what I want." A dagger of pain pierced his temple and he winced.

"Maybe you should take a break."

He turned back to her. "I don't have time for a break."

"Then maybe ask for help instead of being so stubborn!"

The anger drained from him, as sudden and as uncontrollable as it had come on. And now he just felt exhausted. Down to his bones. "Help me, Hannah."

Something in her expression softened. If she tried to touch him ... if she said she was sorry ... he couldn't handle that.

Then, just as suddenly as the softness had appeared, it was replaced by her mask of hard efficiency. A mask he needed her to wear.

"What do you need help with?"

"In general. Help. All the help you can give me. I can't focus on this." He indicated the papers again. "I can't retain it. I can barely read it. The words just keep ... moving. I don't know why. Today it's like everything is moving too fast. I can't ..."

She bent and gathered up the papers, glancing at the page numbers and, with a speed that made him vaguely jealous, put them in order.

"Close your eyes." He frowned. "Do it," she said.

He complied and felt a rush of calm go through him. All of the light and busy surroundings shut out, and he felt like he could think a bit better.

She started reading. Out loud. To him. Like he was a child who needed a bedtime story. About the amount of returns over the Christmas shopping season.

He straightened in his chair, his eyes popping open. "I'm not a child."

"I know. I'm not treating you like one. What I'm curious to know is how it is for you to listen to things rather than read them. Some people are auditory learners rather than visual."

"I never had a problem with visual ..."

"Before. I know. But that was before."

"How do you know so much about this?"

"About learning? I had to teach myself how to learn when I decided I wanted to go to college. So, I researched every studying trick imaginable. Every way I could think of to do well on tests. I had to take an entrance exam, you know? And I only went to two years of high school. I had to study more than anyone else going into those tests, and I wasn't a natural intellectual. But I needed to be. So I learned to be."

"What kinds of things did you do?"

"Well, sometimes I would record my notes, and then play them back in headphones before going to sleep. I would write things out dozens of times. Drink coffee while I was studying, and again while I was taking the test. Taste is a really powerful memory trigger it turns out. Anyway, I don't see why we can't try to apply the principles to you."

A strange feeling moved through him. Respect? Yes, respect for Hannah. Intense and strong. And with that, the feelings of attraction he'd been working so hard to repress over the past few weeks.

Every time he'd pa.s.sed her as she went into her office on his otherwise secluded floor. Every time he pa.s.sed her in the hall in his home. Every time he closed his eyes at night and thought of her, so near, and yet so un.o.btainable.

"You are very clever, Hannah. Smart."

"No less for needing to use those tricks?"

"More so, perhaps. You found ways to make it work for you."

"And that's what you'll do, Eduardo." She lifted the stack of papers again. "Now, close your eyes."

This time he let her read and he found he had an easier time grasping meaning. Holding on to details that had pa.s.sed through his mind before like water through a sieve. And when she quizzed him at the end, he could remember most of what he'd heard. Not all, but much more than he would have remembered had he read through it, and in much less time.

Now, when he spoke to his managers he wouldn't sound completely ignorant. Would sound more like a man who was equipped to hold his position.

"Better," he said, rising from his chair and rounding the desk.

"Yes," she agreed, a smile on her beautiful face. Was she happy for him? Or was it her own success that had her beaming from ear to ear in such an uncharacteristic way? "Now this is an easy one. You just need phone calls. They can fax you the reports so you can have them on file, but you can get a verbal briefing on the phone."

"You are truly a genius, Hannah," he said. And impulsively, he leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. "Thank you."

She put her hand up to her cheek, her eyes round. "You're welcome."

He realized it was the first time he'd touched her since their night together. Unbidden, images of her hands on his body, his mouth on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, came into his mind. He'd been without s.e.x for five years until recently, largely of his own accord, and now three weeks without seemed a h.e.l.lish eternity.

"Hannah ..."

She backed away. "No. Not ... I'm glad that that's helping. I want to keep helping. I'm really close to being able to give you some nice projected stats on how well we could do if we bought out Bach Wireless. But ... no."

He hadn't realized that the hunger inside of him had been projected so clearly. And of course she'd said no. Of course she had. She should. Being with her had been like being thrown into a fire. It had been all-consuming, a flame that would ravage and devour everything in its path. He didn't have the kind of time needed to devote to something like that.

He had to focus on Vega. He had to keep things moving forward. They both needed to be fully engaged in business for that. Not fully engaged in bedroom games.

"Back to work then," he said.

She nodded curtly and walked out of the room. He tried to ignore the ache that started in his groin and seemed to spread to his entire body. Hannah was off-limits. If he said it enough times, he might start to believe it.

She was late. She was late, late, late. And her shady, private detour was making her late for work, and not just for her period. She wanted to crawl under the potted plant in the lobby of Vega Communications and cry. But she didn't have time. She had to go pee on a stick, see one line instead of two, and get to work.

Eduardo was already in his office on the top floor. She walked past, trying to keep her steps quick but quiet, trying to keep from disturbing him as she made her way to the private bathroom at the end of the floor. She closed herself in and locked it, unwrapping the box that contained the test with shaking fingers.

The test itself was wrapped in some sort of heinous, indestructible foil. Keys. She did have the keys from home in her purse. She grabbed one and jabbed at the packaging until she worked the slim, innocuous-looking white test free.

Actually taking the test was easy. It was the wait that was hard.

She'd never imagined she'd be back in this position again. Except, instead of huddling in a cramped, filthy bathroom in her childhood home, shaking and on the verge of vomiting, she was huddled in a gorgeous, spotlessly clean bathroom on the highest floor of one of the world's largest and most prestigious companies. Shaking and on the verge of vomiting.

She paced while she waited. And counted. And closed her eyes. And considered throwing up.

"Just one," she whispered. "Just one line." She opened her eyes slowly and looked down at the white test lying on the white counter. All that stark white made it impossible to miss the two glaring pink lines that had bled into the test.

And then she did throw up.

"Hannah?" The door behind her shook as Eduardo knocked on it heavily. "Are you okay? Are you sick?"

"Yes," she called back. She shifted so that she was sitting inelegantly by the toilet, a cold sweat had broken out across her forehead, down her back.

"You're okay or you're sick?"

"I'm sick," she called back.

"Do you need help?"

"No." She pulled into a sitting position and took the test off the counter, wrapping it four times over in toilet paper before throwing it into the garbage.

Why was this happening to her? Why was she being punished for s.e.x? Was she just extremely fertile? Or extremely unlucky.

Everything started hitting her. The test she'd taken at sixteen. All the options she'd weighed then. Going to the clinic. Leaving the clinic, on a dead run, unable to go through with ending the pregnancy. Going to the adoption agency. The first time she'd felt the baby move. How strange, miraculous and heartbreaking it had been.

Labor and delivery. That brief flash of pink, wrinkled skin. Her baby squalling as he was taken from the room and to his parents.

He wasn't her baby. He belonged to Steve and Carol Johnson. He was their son. But he still felt like part of her. Part of her she couldn't get back. Part of her she'd had to give up. And with him, she gave up so much more.

And then she'd made a promise. That she would do everything to be the best she could be. That she wouldn't waste her life. Through extreme pain, physically and emotionally, she'd been given a wake-up call and she had vowed she would make the absolute most of it.

And she had. She'd done it. She'd made a success of herself. She'd let go of the girl she'd been. At least she thought she had. She didn't feel like it now. She just felt scared.

She couldn't do it again. She couldn't. It would break her.

Loss, a deep, unending sense of loss filled her and she put her hands on her stomach to try and stop the pain from spreading.

"Hannah? Do I have to break the door in?"

She shook off the pain, tried to find her strength. Tried to find Hannah Weston, so she wouldn't drown in Hannah Hackett. "You'll do yourself another head injury, Ed, so maybe don't."

"Hannah," he growled.

She turned on the sink and ran cold water over her hands, dragging them over her face, not caring if she smeared her makeup. Then she jerked the door open and came face-to-face with Eduardo. She had no idea what to say to him.

"Hi."

"You look terrible," he said.

"Thanks"

"You're pale," he said. "And you look like ... well, you look sick."

"I am," she snapped.

"Do you need anything?"

A time machine. So she could go back to four weeks earlier when she'd decided having s.e.x with him would be a way to regain control. It hadn't worked. Not in the least. And it certainly wasn't worth the consequence.

"I don't think there's anything you could do for me at the moment. Let's go in your office."

One thing she wasn't, was a coward. She wasn't going to hide it from him. It was implausible at best. So she would tell him. But she didn't know what she would tell him. She was the world's worst candidate to be a mother. But she honestly didn't know if she could go through giving up another child.

But she wasn't sure if she could be a mother, either. She knew nothing about it. She'd never had one. She didn't know if she had a nurturing bone in her body. She was insensitive. She swore. She was a workaholic. She had a criminal history.

The list went on.

"Sit down," she said.

"Hannah, what is it?"

"You remember how we had s.e.x?"

One of his dark eyebrows shot up. "Yes, I seem to remember something about that."

"Right, well ... also, remember the condom broke."

"I do remember," he said, his tone turning heavy, wooden.

"Well, I ... we ... that is ... you ..."

"You're pregnant."

"Well, when you say it like that you make it sound like it's all my fault. But you know I didn't get that way on my own."

"Hannah, I am well aware of how it happened and I am not fobbing the blame off onto you, so stop panicking for a second," he growled.

"Stop? Stop panicking? Eduardo, I have barely started panicking. There is an entire repertoire of panic for me to work through before I can even begin to wind down the panicking."

"There's no need to panic."

"Why is there no need to panic?"

"Because we're more than capable of handling this situation."

"Are we?" she asked, her throat almost completely constricted. "Do you have any idea ... I mean. Do you? And what will we do with a baby, Eduardo, what? Will you strap him to your chest and bring him to work? You can't concentrate as it is. And me ... what? I'm going to put on an ap.r.o.n and turn into Susie Homemaker?"

"We'll get nannies," he said.

"What kind of life is that for a child?"

"A life. There doesn't seem to be an alternative."

"Adoption," she said. The word sounded flat and cold in the room.

"I'm not giving away my child."

His words hurt. They cut her deep, tapped into a wound still raw and bleeding, covered, but never healed. "That's not what adoption is. It's giving your child the best chance possible. That's what it is. Wouldn't ... wouldn't I have been better off? If my mother had given me up instead of neglecting me for three years of my life and then dropping me off with a father who didn't want me?" She couldn't voice the rest. Couldn't say anything about how this had happened before. It all just stuck in her throat. Painful. Horrendous. "Do you understand what it's like? To live with someone who just doesn't give a d.a.m.n about what you do? Who doesn't even worry about you if you stay out all night? I was doing everything you should be afraid your child is out doing. Drinking, and having s.e.x and he never ... He didn't care. So tell me, Eduardo, what kind of life was that? Why should a child, anyone, ever live where they aren't wanted?"