Lost and Found - Danielle Steel Page 0,3

and her parents weren’t able to help.

Within months, she was noticed by a well-known French fashion photographer, Stephane Barbier, who lived and worked in New York. He hotly pursued her personally and professionally. She fell in love with him, and he convinced her he was madly in love with her too.

Six months into their passionate relationship, she discovered she was pregnant with Deanna. After long nights when Stephane drank too much and smoked furiously, they decided to get married at city hall. Her parents would have objected to the hasty decision, but Maddie’s father was dying of cancer by then, and her mother was too devastated to pay attention to what her only child was doing. Maddie settled into life with Stephane in utter bliss. It wasn’t how she had intended to start her life, with a shotgun marriage, but it all seemed to be working out. Once her pregnancy showed and she couldn’t model, Stephane put Maddie to work as one of his studio assistants. She became an avid student of everything he did. She loved watching him during the shoots, and continued working for him after the baby was born, eventually becoming his first assistant on every shoot he did. When Deanna was four months old, believing that nursing would keep her from getting pregnant, Maddie got pregnant with Ben. Stephane was ecstatic when their son was born and acted as though Maddie had really done it right. Deanna had been a fussy, difficult baby. Ben was a ray of sunshine, always laughing and smiling, almost from the moment he was born.

The marriage held up for three years, until Milagra was born after a difficult pregnancy. Maddie was eight months pregnant when she discovered Stephane’s torrid affair with a nineteen-year-old Polish model, the star of the hour, and all the infidelities that had come before her. Their life unraveled rapidly, and by the time Milagra was born, Maddie’s world was crashing down. Stephane was drinking too much, and his career was slipping by then. When Milagra was a month old, Stephane told Maddie he was leaving her and going back to Paris with his new love. Maddie’s mother had died the year before, of cancer like her father, and she had no one to turn to. At twenty-five, Maddie was abandoned with three young children, and no way to support herself. Her parents had had nothing to leave her. She had to live by her wits and hard work, and would have to pay for childcare while she did. Stephane told her bluntly that he couldn’t afford to pay child support, and left. She didn’t want to go back to modeling, although she could have and would have if she had had no other choice. Instead she took a job as another photographer’s assistant, for a salary she could just barely manage to exist on to feed her children, pay for day care for the kids, and pay her rent. He was a young, earnest photographer, just starting out in the business. True to his word, Stephane sent her not a penny from Paris, and she heard that he was having a baby with the Polish girl. She filed for divorce, and rapidly discovered that she knew much more about photography than her new employer did. In a bold move, she decided to work as a fashion photographer herself. The money she made increased quickly beyond subsistence level, and within two years she became more successful than Stephane had ever been. She was willing to work hard, long hours, and collaborated well with the major fashion magazines. They loved her work.

She and the children never heard from Stephane after he left and less than two years after he moved back to Paris, he died in a motorcycle accident. His death didn’t change anything for her or the children, except the idea that the children had a father who might want to see them again someday. By the time he died, he was no longer with the Polish girl. She had left him for someone else and taken the baby with her, and his career had tanked after he went back to France. When the money and his prospects ran out, the Polish girl did too. He had left behind in the world four children he had done nothing for.

Maddie was alone in the world with three children. She worked harder than ever, and became one of the most sought-after fashion photographers in New York. The lean