“Are you sorry you didn’t finish your degree?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think when I settle down I’ll get back to it. In case you haven’t realized, I’ve moved around a lot. And here I always thought you’d be the wanderer. That was another thing that worried me, you know. Not only are you half Winston and the Winstons and Blackburns haven’t exactly gotten along the past quarter-century, but you’re half-Sloan-and an architect on top of it. You father hasn’t set any records for lasting relationships, and you know what they say about architects-don’t get attached too soon. You were just twenty-five, Jared. Never mind the rest of it. We just weren’t ready for each other.”

She winced at her choice of words, as if after fourteen years things might have changed. But that was the hard part of the past few days, of seeing his picture and having him turn up in Boston. She was discovering how much she still cared about Jared Sloan.

“You’ve settled down though, I see,” she said lamely.

Jared smiled. “It’s not easy to pick up and go with a kid.”

“I suppose not. Do you like San Francisco?”

“Sure.”

“Ever miss Boston?”

“Occasionally. It’s where I grew up-I have memories here.” His gaze rested on her. “Some are tougher to forget than others.”

Rebecca shifted, suddenly feeling awkward and exposed, and she asked quickly, “Do you think you’ll ever bring Mai here?”

“She’d give her eyeteeth to come, but it’s not going to happen.”

He got up and went to Rebecca, sitting on the bed next to her, knowing he had to tell her. Maybe that was why he’d come up to her room. Not because he couldn’t sleep or because he wanted her to explain why she hadn’t given him a chance after Saigon, but simply, because he needed to talk.

At last.

He brushed her hair behind her ear and grazed her bruised cheek with one finger. “Rebecca,” he said, passing over her nickname, “I want you to promise you’ll hear me out.”

Her brows furrowed, and the Blackburn incisiveness was there in her gorgeous eyes. But she said, “All right.”

“I never slept with Tam.”

“So Quentin Reed is Mai’s-what? Her biological father?”

The shutters banged in a gust of wind. On the end of Rebecca’s bed, Jared shut his eyes and nodded. It was the first time he had ever heard those words spoken aloud: Quentin is Mai’s father.

“And Mai doesn’t know?”

He listened for it, but there was no hint of accusation in her voice. Did Rebecca sympathize with the hard choice he’d made? He had told her everything: Quentin’s secret affair with Tam, his stupid involvement with the drug-smuggling scheme, his return home. Jared could still remember the disgust he’d felt toward his cousin, who’d suddenly treated Tam as if she had never existed. Jared couldn’t understand why she continued to believe in him, but she did. And he’d kept his promise to her not to tell anyone-not even Rebecca-about the affair she’d had with his cousin. Hothead that Rebecca was, she never would have kept her mouth shut, killing Jared’s hope for Tam to begin a new life after her baby was born.

“No, Mai doesn’t know,” he said, and he looked at Rebecca. “Do you think I want her knocking on Quentin’s door so she can see what her real dad looks like? At the very least he abandoned Tam and made it clear he didn’t want to have anything to do with their baby. At worst, he had Tam killed and tried to have Mai killed.”

As she listened in rigid silence, Jared explained how, the night Tam had died, he’d come to realize she’d contacted Quentin and had cajoled, begged, bribed or threatened him to get her out of Saigon and back into his life. Maybe she’d presented him with an untenable ultimatum, or maybe he was just a coward who couldn’t face up to what he’d done. Either way, two assassins had shown up at Jared’s Tu Do Street apartment to murder Tam and try to murder Mai…and had almost killed Jared and Rebecca, just because they were there and in the way.

“Now I don’t know,” he went on heavily. “I don’t know if Tam’s translation of what the Vietnamese told her through the door was accurate-or if she was hearing what she wanted to hear. She was exhausted and scared. She just couldn’t believe Quentin would abandon her and their baby. But that doesn’t explain the gems in Mai’s diaper, Jean-Paul Gerard, Le Chat, Baroness Majlath-” He broke off with a tired huff. “I don’t know anymore. There must be a link here we’re missing.”

Rebecca hugged her knees against her chest and nodded at him, white-faced. But she didn’t speak. She was thinking about Quentin leaving a young woman pregnant and alone, and only because she knew Annette Reed could she understand, if never condone, what he’d done.

Mostly she was thinking about the colored “marbles” she had found in Annette’s bedroom thirty years ago, and how much they’d cheered up Tam.

Was that their link?

She shook off the thought. It was something to save for later, when she didn’t have Jared’s warm blue-green eyes searching her face for secrets and answers and maybe a little understanding.

“You told my grandfather everything about Quentin?”

Jared nodded. “R.J., I was scared to death. I didn’t know if Quentin had gone completely off the deep end and would try again to kill Mai-or even me. He knew I’d found out about the smuggling. He knew I knew about him and Tam. Maybe he’d decide he couldn’t live with the prospect of me blabbing and would have me killed. The point is, I didn’t know what he’d do.”

“And Grandfather advised you to take Mai and go?”

“No. That was my decision. He supported it. I’d just signed my name as Mai’s father so it’d be easier to get her and Tam out of Saigon. That kind of stuff went on all the time those last few weeks. But I had the papers-they were legal.” He couldn’t go on; his throat was tight, his stomach aching with tension, and he could see Mai at two years old climbing into his lap, saying Daddy. “She’s my daughter in every way.”

Rebecca stretched out her legs, her toes grazing his thigh, and he sensed her confused, raw emotions. “You did what you had to do under the circumstances.”

“I ran,” he said.

“You saved a child from a father who didn’t want her and may have tried to have her killed. I don’t think that’s running.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling myself for years. For months after we got to San Francisco, I’d hear a noise and wonder if it was another of Quentin’s assassination teams come to claim us.” He sighed, trying to release some of the pent-up tension. “But what if I was wrong? R.J., what if Gerard and that Vietnamese were after a fortune in gems that had nothing to do with Quentin? When I saw him this morning, he acted as if I’d stolen Tam from him and he believed I did father Mai.”

“A rationalization?” Rebecca suggested.

“Maybe. He’s always been good at believing what he wants to believe.” Jared laughed suddenly, sadly, at the complexity and sheer incredibleness of it all. “Murderers, orphans, thieves, secrets, a fortune in gems-all we need now is a monkey to collect nickels to see the show. But we’ll sort this mess out, R.J.”

“Together,” she said. It wasn’t a question; it was a demand.

Jared gave her a long look, and he wasn’t surprised to discover that despite fourteen years apart, he still knew R. J. Blackburn. “Okay. What’s eating you?”

She pulled her knees back up under her chin. “Nothing.”

“Like hell. You’ve been trying to be nice and understanding, but that’s not your way, R.J. Tell me the truth. You think I should have come to you after I got out of the hospital instead of to your grandfather.”

“Not necessarily,” she said.

“You’d already left Boston,” he pointed out.

She flashed him a look that told him his guess was right on. “So? I was in Florida. You could have flown there from Hawaii just as easily as to Boston. You didn’t trust me to have enough sense to help you work things out.”