Family Merger - By Leigh Greenwood Page 0,2

for ten, but I only have four now."

"Who looks after them when you go to work?"

"This is my work."

"You mean you have a trust fund that allows you to do nothing."

"I have an income that allows me to provide a service to the community."

Just what he thought. A rich woman with nothing to do, who excused her meddling by thinking she was providing a social service these girls couldn't find elsewhere.

"How do they know about you? Do you advertise?"

He'd angered her. She sat with her clenched hands in her lap, her back ramrod straight, her knees together.

"They learn of me through their friends or from girls who have been here. When they come to me, I urge them to go to their parents immediately. I tell them all the reasons that would be preferable to staying here. I'm proud to say most of them do go home. Two have come back afterward, but most found their parents were more supportive than they expected. Mostly the girls fear their parents will hate them for what they've done."

"Don't think you're going to convince me Cynthia thinks I'll hate her. We don't always agree, but she - "

"Cynthia believes your work comes before her."

"It keeps me away from home a lot, but nothing is more important to me than Cynthia. Why do you think I hired so many people to take care of her?"

"I imagine what she wanted and needed was you, your time and attention, your assurance that she was more important than your work."

"She knows that."

"She told me she came here because she doesn't want her having a baby to get in your way."

That was such a ridiculous statement he could hardly believe his daughter made it. He wasn't even sure what it meant. "Cynthia couldn't possibly get in my way. I've hired four people to take care of her. If she wants anything, she only has to ask for it."

"She still doesn't believe she's as important to you as your next merger."

"Of course she is. If she wants, she can go to Switzerland with me as soon as school is out." He realized with a terrible sense of guilt he hadn't even considered that until the words came out of his mouth. If she had wanted to go vacationing with one of her friends, he'd have been happy to let her.

"She wants to stay here. She doesn't want to hurt you or the baby's father."

"That's something else I want to know. Where can I find the boy who did this?"

"I have several rules. One is I never ask the name of the father. Another is even if I know it, I never reveal it."

"You're a regular paragon of virtue, aren't you?"

She must have a difficult time with her shelter. He didn't imagine many fathers would have been as calm as he had been so far, but he couldn't work up the will to rant and rave at Kathryn. He intended to take Cynthia home, but he didn't think Kathryn was an evil person. She was just a well-meaning busybody who couldn't keep her nose out of other people's business.

"My only purpose is to help these girls. I want to give them a safe place to stay where they can continue their education, have their babies, then decide what to do with the rest of their lives. I don't provide a permanent solution, just a temporary refuge from all the pressure."

"All that sounds fine and noble, but what are you getting out of this?"

"I beg your pardon!"

"People don't do things like this without a reason. You're rich. I imagine your friends are building careers, going to parties and having children. There's got to be some reason you'd give all that up to baby-sit pregnant teenagers. And there's no point glaring at me. I don't intimidate."

"Neither do I."

"Good, then answer my question. Why are you doing this?"

"Because something like this happened to my sister," she said after a pause. "I saw the damage it could do when it was handled badly."

She meant it happened to her, he thought. People always put traumatic events off on a relative, a friend, even a neighbor. They only reacted like Kathryn Roper when it really happened to them. She didn't seem like the kind of woman to let her emotions get the better of her. But then who better to learn to control her emotions than someone who had failed to do so and paid the price?

He looked at her, sitting so stiffly in the chair