Harumi waited thirty-six hours to call Seungri cell phone, sure with the passing of each hour, the man she loved, the father of her child, would come back to her.

He had made love to her. She was sure he hadn’t planned to do it, but he had. He’d never slept with Phoebe. He had said he didn’t love the other woman and equally important, he couldn’t possibly need her the way he had needed Harumi for the past year.

But he did not come and she had no choice but to contact him. She was furious with him, more hurt than she’d ever been in her life, but she carried his child and she had to tell him before he made the mistake of marrying another woman.

She refused to consider what she would do if the news of impending fatherhood had no effect on his marital plans. The sound of the phone ringing beeped in her ear three times before he picked up.

“Hello.”

“It’s Alexandra.” She was met with unnerving silence.

“We need to talk.” More silence.

“There is no more to say.”

“You’re wrong. There are things I must tell you.” Did he notice how alike her words now to the ones he’d spoken to her two days ago?

“Can we not dismiss the post-mortems?”

She in air, but controlled the desire to scream like a fishwife at the insensitive tycoon dismissing her like yesterday’s garbage.

“No. We need to talk. You owe this to me, SeungHyun.” This time she didn’t break the silence. Finally she heard a heavy exhalation at the other end of the line.

“Fine. Meet me at The Ritz for lunch.”

“I’d rather meet in the apartment.” She did not want to tell him of his impending fatherhood and her true identity in a public setting.

“No.”

She gritted her teeth, but didn’t argue. “Fine.”

Maybe a public setting would be best after all. He would hesitate to commit murder with witnesses, she thought with black humor. They set a time and hung up.

Seungri cut the cell connection and turned to look out the large window in his office. He had to fly to London again within the next two hours. He hadn’t trusted himself to stay in Paris and not go back to her. And that infuriated him. His grandfather’s life was at stake and Seungri refused to allow an obsession with a woman deter him from his purpose.

His parents had taught him all the lessons he needed to learn in that area. His father’s obsessive need for his mother had resulted in years of volatile togetherness and ultimately both their deaths.

He could not allow a similar compulsive need for Harumi to affect the same result for his grandfather. He’d been her first lover, but with a sensual nature like hers, he knew he would not be her last. There had even been times when he wondered if he were her only lover.

There were areas of her life she kept hidden from him. She took trips abroad that were not modelling assignments, but that she refused to discuss with him. He had told himself he was being foolish. She did not flirt or make meaningful eye contact with other men. She had always been gratifyingly hungry when they came together, but he’d never been able to dismiss the feeling she did not belong exclusively to him.

If not ually, than emotionally. Which had led him to believe she would take their eventual but inevitable breakup with her usual cool sophistication, just as she took their many separations made necessary by her work or his. A memory of her tear-clogged voice the last time he’d called to say his stay in London had been prolonged rose up. What if she had convinced herself she loved him?

He shuddered at the thought. Love was an excuse women used to succumb to their passions. His mother had supposedly loved his father, but she’d also loved her tennis instructor and then the husband of a business acquaintance and finally the Italian ski instructor she’d run off with.

His mother had been a prime example of the treachery women perpetrated in the name of love. Seungri preferred the frank exchange of ual desire to protestations of a fleeting emotion that only caused pain in the end.

But Harumi wanted to meet one more time. His curled fist settled against the windowsill. He’d agreed because she was right…he did owe her. They’d spent a year together and she had given him the gift of her innocence. She’d made little of it at the time, but his traditional upbringing had planted it as a debt firmly in his mind.

A debt he should not have repaid with such a soulless dismissal of their relationship. He hadn’t even given her a gift in parting. She deserved better than that. She had been his woman for a year. He would make sure she was set for the future. He could only hope his control at their upcoming meeting exceeded that of the last one.