Convicted by Jan Burke Page A

and he took it. She led him upstairs.
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    LATER, WAKING IN THE BIG bed, he found her watching him. “Did you read it?”
    â€œNo,” she said, tracing a finger along his collarbone. “I don’t want there to be any mistake about why you’re here. It’s not because of what’s in that manuscript box.”
    He savored the implications of that for a moment before insecurities besieged him. “Maybe you’d hate it anyway.”
    â€œI couldn’t.”
    It was the last time they talked about the manuscript for three days. At the end of those three days, he mailed it to an agent, called his father to say he’d found other work, packed up his belongings and moved in with Ellie.
    The agent called back, took him on as a client, and sold the book within a week. Bill was already at work on his second novel. The first one was a critically acclaimed but modest success. The second spent twenty-five weeks on the bestseller list. When Bill got his first royalty check, he asked Ellie to marry him.
    She gently but firmly refused. She also refused after books three, four and five—all bestsellers.
    Today, as he finished the chapter he was working on, he wondered if she would ever tell him why. Ellie could be very obstinate, he knew. If she didn’t want to give him a straight answer, she would make up something so bizarre and absurd that he would know to stop asking.
    â€œThere was a clause in my parents’ will,” she said once. “If I marry before my fiftieth birthday, the house must be turned into an ostrich farm.”
    â€œAnd the courts accepted this?” he played along.
    â€œAbsolutely. The trust funds would go to ostriches and Mir would be very unhappy with you for putting an end to her healthy allowance.”
    â€œYour parents would have left Miriam a pauper?”
    â€œShe thinks she’s a pauper on what I give her now.”
    â€œA pauper? On ten thousand dollars a month?”
    â€œPin money for Mir. We grew up rich, remember?”
    â€œHard to forget. Why not give it all to Miriam and live on my money instead?”
    She frowned. “I’d be dependent on you.”
    â€œSo what? I was dependent on you when I first lived here.”
    â€œFor about four months. And you had your own money, you just didn’t need any of it. Do you want to be married for more than four months?”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œSo now you see why we can’t be married at all.”
    He didn’t, but he resigned himself to the situation. She probably would never tell him why she wouldn’t marry him, or why she allowed Miriam, who often upset her, to come to the house on a regular basis to plead for more money.
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    â€œWHERE’S HARRY?” MIRIAM DEMANDED WHEN Bill answered the doorbell.
    â€œOn the phone,” Bill explained as he took her coat. “He’s placing ads for a cook and housekeeper.”
    â€œNot again,” Miriam said.
    â€œThe last ones managed to stay on for about six weeks,” Bill said easily.
    Miriam turned her most charming smile upon him. She was gorgeous, Bill thought, not for the first time. A redhead with china blue eyes and a figure that didn’t need all that custom tailoring to show it off. What was she, he wondered? A walking ice sculpture, perhaps? But he discarded that image. After all, sooner or later, ice melted.
    â€œI don’t know why you stay with her, Bill,” Miriam purred, misreading his attention.
    Bill heard a door open in a hallway above them.
    â€œIf you’re here for a favor,” he said in a low voice, “you’re not being very kind to your benefactor.”
    Miriam stood frowning, waiting until she heard the door close again. Still, she whispered when she said, “Even you must admit that she drives the entire household to distraction.”
    â€œYes,” he said, thinking back to the night he met Ellie. “But distraction isn’t