His eyes skimmed over her, lingering for a moment on her mouth, then moving to her eyes. “Now it’s your turn to answer a few questions.”

She felt slightly breathless. “Me? I’m an open book.” God was currently off duty because lightning didn’t strike her.

“Then why are you using a phony Southern accent?”

“How do you know it’s phony?”

“Because half the time you forget.”

“Oh. That’s because I lived in California.”

“Give it up, Nell. You’re obviously well educated, and I didn’t see anybody else at that god-awful restaurant eating their drumstick with a knife and fork.”

“I don’t like greasy fingers.”

“Save it for somebody stupid.”

Nealy thought fast. “All kinds of women get caught up in bad relationships.”

“How bad?”

“Bad enough that I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Do you think he might be following you?”

“Not now,” she said carefully. “But he might have been.”

“Don’t you have any friends who can help you out? Any family?”

“Not right now.”

“No job?”

“I had to quit.”

“Have you gone to the police?”

She was getting herself in deeper by the minute. “Restraining orders aren’t always effective.”

“What’s his name? The baby’s father?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“If somebody’s on our ass, I don’t want to be taken by surprise.”

Only one name sprang to her mind, maybe because she’d recently pulled out her old video of Titanic. “Leo.” She swallowed. “Leo . . . Jack.”

“Weird name.”

“Probably an alias. That’s the kind of guy Leo is.”

“If he’s so bad, why did you hook up with him?”

“I have codependency problems.”

He stared at her.

She’d thought it was a good response, but he obviously wasn’t satisfied, so she embellished. “He’s quite good-looking. Light brown hair, great eyes, nice body. Bad swimmer. A little young for me, but . . .” For God’s sake, what was she doing? “I didn’t realize until too late that he was psychotic,” she said hastily.

“How does he feel about the baby?”

She tried to imagine Leonardo Di Caprio’s reaction if she told him she was carrying his baby. She imagined he’d be quite astonished.

“He doesn’t know.”

“So you haven’t seen him for a while?”

This time she didn’t forget she had a wad of padding sticking out in front of her. “Not for a while. He wasn’t around when I borrowed his car. I’d really rather not talk about this. It’s quite painful.”

He gave her a long, searching look that made her wonder exactly how much of this he was buying. He seemed to have an extremely agile mind.

“It’s hard for me to imagine you getting mixed up with a psychotic.”

“That’s because you don’t know me.”