page6 (1/2)
Because Alexandra was so emotionally devastated, she answered the other woht She couldn’t think Her brain had ceased to function She gave the name an occupant of the Paris apartment would expect to hear “Xandra Fortune”
“Miss Fortune, where are you? Di for you He’s desperate about the baby”
Dimitri had told his wife about her, about their baby? Alexandra pulled the phone from her ear and stared at it in her hand as if she didn’t kno it had gotten there She could hear the wo She sounded frantic
Alexandra cut the connection without putting the phone back to her ear
CHAPTER THREE
DIMITRI took a sip of his neat whiskey and walked out onto the terrace of the New York high-rise apartht on by Nove temperatures
He’d come late to the holiday party, at the insistence of a business acquaintance who’d told hiht Dimitri should meet For the past fourthe mother of his child
He was in New York because that was her last knohereabouts She’d had her things shipped to a Manhattan receiving office and picked theated a search for her After that, there had been nothing His investigators had been unable to find a single lead
She’d canceled her contract with her ency She’d even closed her credit cards and checking account No one had seen or heard from Xandra Fortune in three months
Well, that was not strictly true She’d called the Paris apart up without saying why she’d called or answering Phoebe’s questions about where she was The call had been placed on an untraceable cell phone
Diht of that ill-fated phone call Would she have told him where she was if he had been there to answer the phone?
The sound of voices drifted out onto the almost deserted terrace and he asked himself why he’d bothered to coht his eye She had her back to hi blond hair reached to the center of her back, a back that lookedthe balcony railing and letting her head fall back as she took a deep breath of air
“Xandra!”
She spun around to face hih the woh surface resemblance to Xandra to be her sister, she wasn’t the model
She slow of the outdoor lighting “Hello I didn’t realize anyone was out here”
“I came for the solitude,” he admitted
Her s, but once in a while the crush gets to me and I just need to breathe some air that’s all my own”
He felt hi for the first time in months “Then I’ll leave you to it”
She waved her hand “There’s no need I don’tmy little oasis of quiet You said you knew Xandra?”
“Yes I know her”
“She was an aht combination of innocence and passion to shoot her to supermodel status It’s too bad she refused to take any New York commissions”
“She prefers working in Europe”
So odd passed across the woman’s face “Yes, I suppose she did”
“You keep talking about her in the past tense” Had Xandra given upfor motherhood?
“That’s because Xandra Fortune is gone”
Everything inside hione?”
The blonde sighed “According to my sister, Xandra Fortune is dead, if not buried six feet under”
The words had the effect of in to buckle He reached out blindly for the balcony railing and it was only by sheer force of will that he re “She’s dead?”
He tried to breathe, but his lungs refused to cooperate He felt the whiskey glass in his hand break and the sharp pain of one jagged edge pressing into his hand