“Not unless they know my ex,” Terry said with absolute certainty. “I never discuss it. For obvious reasons, it’s not exactly written up in my bio. I only told Neil so he would be prepared in case something exactly like this ever happened.”
“Any ideas at all about where your ex-wife might be living now?” Callie asked.
“No. Like I said, we didn’t exactly keep in touch. Her family was from just outside Chicago, but I don’t think she went back there after the divorce. For some reason she blamed herself for not being woman enough for me. Nothing I said could make her see that my choice wasn’t about her at all. It was about who I was.”
“Where was she when she sent the note?” Callie asked.
“I don’t remember,” Terry said.
“You didn’t save the note?” she asked.
“For what? To torment myself?”
“Maybe so you could track down your child,” Callie retorted more sharply than she intended. “Didn’t you care about that baby at all?”
Terry looked hurt that she’d even asked such a question. “I cared enough to stay away,” he said softly. “That was all I had to offer.”
“But you’re a wonderful man,” Callie protested. “Any child would be lucky to have you for a father.”
“Very few people would have thought that thirteen or fourteen years ago,” Neil reminded her.
“Look, it’s too late to change the past, but think, man,” Jason ordered. “Surely you at least glanced at the envelope. You must have wondered where they were. Try to picture that envelope.”
Terry looked doubtful, but he dutifully closed his eyes as if trying to dredge up the image or maybe just some long-forgotten memory. Suddenly his expression brightened. “Wait, I do remember. It was Wisconsin. I remember thinking that at least they were close enough to visit her family, so they wouldn’t be so terribly alone.”
Jason still wasn’t satisfied. “Milwaukee? Madison? Green Bay? Racine?”
“Madison,” Terry said readily. “It had to be.”
“Why?” Callie asked.
“Because my ex planned to teach college history. The University of Wisconsin is in Madison. She was too ambitious to pick anyplace smaller than another Big Ten School.”
Callie stood up and hugged him. “There, you see. We have a lead. First thing tomorrow we’ll start trying to track her down.”
“No,” Terry said sharply, his tone startling them all. “I won’t let you do it.”
“But, Terry, that could be the answer to everything,” Callie said. “We have to check it out.”
“I won’t disrupt their lives.”
“But they could be disrupting yours,” Jason reminded him. “And maybe Callie’s, as well. It’s gone beyond a few innocuous little notes now. That mess upstairs is serious.”
“I’ll hire someone to watch out for Callie,” Terry said stubbornly. “I’m not worried about myself.”
“Well, I am,” Neil shot back. He looked at Jason. “Do whatever you think is best to get to the bottom of this,” he said, overruling Terry’s objections.
Jason nodded. He turned a grim look on Callie that instantly started warning flags waving.
“As of this moment,” he said, “you are out of the off-screen investigating business, is that clear?”
She glowered right back at him. “I beg your pardon? Who put you in charge of my life?”
His lips curved into a wry smile she knew all too well. It was his power-trip smile. Something told her she wasn’t going to like his answer one bit.
“You did,” he reminded her. “Read your contract.”
She tried very hard not to let him see how shaken she was by the reply. “I’ll call my lawyer. Contracts were made to be broken,” she said with far more confidence than she was feeling.
“Not this one, sweetheart,” he said just as confidently. “I am very good at what I do, and I made very sure that you and I would be joined at the hip for one solid year with options.”
She deliberately surveyed him from head to toe, lingering pointedly on the area below his waist. “So that explains it,” she said sarcastically as she headed for the door. “And here I thought our relationship was based on mutual desire.”
She fled quickly, but Jason caught her halfway up the stairs. He spun her around to face him. She had never seen him quite so angry. That made them pretty much even. She was livid.
“You know that wasn’t what I meant,” he bit out furiously, his hands locked on her shoulders.
She smacked his hands away. “And how do I know that? For all I know there’s some clause indicating that you’re just one of the perks in my deal. Just a little sex to keep the starlet contented and in line. Tell me, Mr. Kane, do you provide the same service for all your actresses?”
“Dammit, you know better,” he repeated.
“No, I don’t,” she said softly but emphatically. After giving him one last regretful look, she turned away and started up the steps.
Only when she was inside her trashed apartment, huddled against the remains of her upturned sofa did she allow herself to cry. Her emotions by then were in such a tangle, she couldn’t even have sworn with absolute accuracy what her tears were for.
That was how her mother found her a few minutes later, sobbing as though her heart were broken, which perhaps it was.
“Oh, baby, don’t cry,” Regina whispered, taking Callie into her arms. “We’ll have this place back in order in no time.”
“And my life?” Callie inquired with a sniff.
“You listen to what that nice young man has to say. He’ll take care of you.”
Another conquest for Jason, Callie thought bitterly. “I don’t want anybody to take care of me,” she snapped instinctively. “I can take care of myself.”
“Never hurts to have a strong man like that on your side, though, does it? He’s only worried that something might happen to you. You can’t blame him for that. He cares about you.”
“But he’s just taken over, as if I didn’t have a brain in my head.”
“Maybe it’s not your brain he’s worried about. It’s your soft heart. Trying to protect Terry could land
