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“Let’s leave them here That way a part of us will always exist under this old tree When we’re old, we can corandchildren”

Ah, he could still re love he’d felt for her in that moment

They wrapped the cheap red earrings in one of Madelaine’s expensive, rammed handkerchiefs and buried their treasure at the base of the tree

Afterward, she looked at hiet home now,” she whispered

The next ti on hishim about the baby

He knew he said the wrong things then, but he didn’t knohat to say He was so damned scared For a week afterward, he called her house and hung up when her father answered Finally he rode to her house and saw the iron bars that had been fixed across her bedroom , and he knehat had happened Alex had found out about the baby

He wanted to turn tail and run and run and run He al—a shadow pass across the bright light in her bedrooht of that el

Thehis collar, up against the pouring rain, he walked up the pathway to the double front doors and knocked hard

There was a rustling of feet, a click of metal on metal, then the door opened

And God stood in the doorearing a Brooks Brothers suit and holding aand overpowering, so inti; he had a voice that boomed into the darkness like a bullhorn So you’re the little ho screwed hter

The rest of the ret Instead of the actual sequence of events, he remembered bits and pieces of their conversation; words that drove through the heart and soul like razors

Who do you think you are to co here? You’re nothing Nothing

With each word, delivered like a blow, Angel felt hi s left of him at all

What’ll it take, kid, to get you the hell out of her life? One thousand dollars, five thousand, ten thousand? How about if I fire that drunk mother of yours? You didn’t think I knew she worked in my mill, I see The world’s full of surprises, isn’t it?

It took a el understood: Alex was offering him a way out