Gia saw his eyes then and knew that she had cut him deeply. But his mouth smiled.

“I haven’t molested a child all week.”

“That’s not what I mean—”

“I’m a bad influence, right?”

“We’ve been through this before and I don’t want to get going on it again. Vicky was very attached to you. She’s just getting used to not having you around anymore, and now you come back and I don’t want her to think things are going back to the way they were.”

“I’m not the one who walked out.”

“Doesn’t matter. The result was the same. She was hurt.”

“So was I.”

“Jack,” she sighed, feeling very tired, “this is a pointless conversation.”

“Not to me. Gia, I’m crazy about that kid. There was a time when I had hopes of being her father.”

The sound of her own laugh was harsh and bitter in her ears. “Forget it! Her real father hasn’t been heard from in a year and you wouldn’t be much of an improvement. Vicky needs a real person for a father. Someone who lives in the real world. Someone with a last name—do you even remember your last name? The one you were christened with? Jack, you… you don’t even exist.”

He reached out and touched her arm.

“As real as you.”

“You know what I mean!” Gia said, pulling away. The words poured out of her. “What kind of a father could you be to anybody? And what kind of a husband?”

She was being hard on him, she knew, but he deserved it.

Jack’s face tightened. “Very well, Ms. DiLauro. Shall we get down to business? After all, I didn’t invite myself over.”

“Neither did I. It was Nellie’s idea. I was just the messenger. ’Get that friend of yours, that Jack fellow, to help.’ I tried to tell her you were no longer a friend but she insisted. She remembered that you worked with Mr. Burkes last year.”

“That’s when we met.”

“And the long string of deceptions began. Mr. Burkes called you ’a consultant,’ ’ a troubleshooter.’ “

Jack made a sour face. “But you came up with a better job description, didn’t you: thug.”

It jolted Gia to hear the pain in Jack’s voice as he said the word. Yes, she had called him that the last time she had seen him. She had hurt him then and had been glad of it. But she wasn’t glad now to know he was still bleeding from it. She turned away. “Nellie is waiting.”

11

With a mixture of pain and resentment rolling through him, Jack followed Gia down the hallway. For months he had nurtured a faint hope that someday soon he would make her understand. As of now he knew with leaden certainty that that would never happen. She had been a warm, passionate woman who had loved him, and unwittingly he had turned her to ice.

He studied the walnut paneling, the portraits on the walls, anything to keep from watching her as she walked ahead of him. Then they were through a pair of sliding doors and into the library. The dark paneling continued in from the hall, and there was lots of dark furniture: overstuffed velvet chairs with antimacassars on the arms, Persian rugs on the floor, Impressionist paintings on the walls, a Sony Trinitron in the corner. It looked lived-in.