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And now she loved hiive the emotion freely without expectation of its return If she couldn’t, would their h to love unrequited and not grow bitter? And if she wasn’t, howreal was her love?

The answer to many of her questions lay in her response to her dad She looked inside herself and felt a ot frustrated with her dad and so loved like she needed hurt more than she wanted to admit, she’d never, ever hated him She didn’t hate him now She never would

And for all their similarities, Sandor was not a carbon copy of her dad He paid her more attention than her dad ever had He also showed tolerance for fa Because Ellie wasn’t going to raise her children alone, aShe got the feeling that Sandor would think it was doubly important for him to be there as a dad for his children Because his own father had not been there for him

She couldn’t help wondering hoas going to react to learning she’d guaranteed herself more than a weekend to ed to fool her security detail into thinking she was still in her apartment and flown to Barcelona She hadn’t had any real destination in mind when she arrived at the airport; she’d siht available

That had landed her in Barcelona, where again she’d made her travel plans based on availability and hopped the first outbound bus with an eht her to this small coastal town She’d never ridden a bus before and it had been kind of neat

She’d checked into an older hotel, the kind that still used high ceiling fans instead of air-conditioning to control the heat Her room was small, but clean and the decor was old world with a char in the upscale hotels she stayed at when traveling under her father’s aegis She liked it, too

Just as she enjoyed sitting on the beach for this short hter of a super wealthy businesso back to her life eventually

When she left Boston, she’d been running, she freely ads Froone conclusion Especially since allowing Sandor into her body He’d been right She’d been arguing seiven herself to him, there had been no hope

Not for a future without him if he wanted to share hers

Re back to just before they first made love, she’d had that moment of lucidity…the point at which she’d realized the outcoeously? Or siiven in anyway

She knew that sex didn’t mean the same to women that it did to men She didn’t need her own painful past to learn that, the e in every e had not saved her Si so different to her, she’d had no chance If it was only her body she was holding back, she could have done it, but once her heart was involved, she was lost

She was going to marry Sandor The alternative…life without hiifted with in Hera, was an untenable choice

Her heart beat a rhythm of hope as she accepted the decision Sandor wasn’t her father He loved his mother, which meant he was capable of the emotion And he cared about Ellie He was afraid of love as surely as she feared the emptiness of a life without it She would teach hiest blessing in a person’s life She’d seen it in the lives of others and she had known in that place all certain knowledge is born, not learned, that it would be the same for her if she had it

He had reasons for his fear, just as she had reasons for hers, but that didn’ta chance

She refused to believe he had any less courage than she

Ellie stayed in Spain for the rest of the week,in the freedom The security team didn’t catch up with her until Thursday After a very different return trip to Barcelona, this one in a chauffeured car, she flew home, this time first-class, Friday afternoon

Sandor flipped open his cell while he clicked the send button on an e-mail to a subordinate in Taiwan “Christofides here”

“Sandor, it’s Hawk”

“Have you found her?”