“Go on,” Dimitri prompted.
She grimaced. “There’s not much else to tell. Mother would have ignored the redundancy notices until the sheriff showed up to evict us from our home. Madeleine still had two years left at Our Lady’s Bower and I couldn’t bear for her to lose that stability after we’d all just lost Papa.”
“So you went to work.”
“Under an assumed name. I was trying to spare my mother’s feelings. It didn’t work.”
“She could not reconcile herself to the thought of her daughter working?”
“No.” She smiled ruefully. “I’ve always felt guilty, that I had failed her, but I simply could not think what else to do. I hadn’t gone to college yet. I was too young for most well paid career choices. Modeling looked like my only option. My friend’s cousin helped me create Xandra Fortune. It was cloak and dagger stuff and he really got into it. He made sure the only people who knew about Alexandra Dupree’s connection to Xandra Fortune were me, my family and him.”
“So this man knew you were Alexandra Dupree, but I, your lover for a year did not.” He sounded mortally offended.
“Got it in one. I didn’t know about Phoebe, the patiently waiting bride-to-be, either. I guess we’re even on that score.” Her throat felt dry from all the talking and she took a long cool sip of water.
He didn’t take the bait, surprising her. “Your mother’s sensibilities are the reason you refused New York assignments.”
“Yes. I never took an assignment in the States period. I was careful to avoid doing commercials for international products and as you know, I tried to stay out of the media limelight in my personal life.”
“Yet, you were well-known in Europe.”
“Yes, but only as a French model, not a supermodel. My biggest claim to fame was being your lover and you were careful to keep that fact under wraps.”
“Not completely,” he said enigmatically. “You did your family a great service and your mother should be proud of you.”
His words warmed her, but Alexandra felt a burble of laughter well up and let it out. “Proud of me? Her scandalous working daughter who got pregnant without the benefit of matrimony? She hadn’t forgiven me yet for not saving the family home. I’ll be the black sheep of the family forever at the rate I’m going.” She tried to hide the hurt that knowledge caused her. She didn’t want Dimitri to see her weakness.
“Your mother lost her home?”
“My income as a model kept my mother in Chanel suits and provided a complete education for my sister. She graduated from Smith a month before she married Hunter last year.” Pride in Madeleine’s accomplishment tinged Alexandra’s voice.
Then she sighed. “The money did not stretch far enough to keep up payments on a heavily mortgaged mansion and the staff necessary to run it. Mother was forced to sell and move into a converted apartment serviced by a daily maid. Although it’s still in a socially acceptable New Orleans neighborhood, it is not the Dupree Mansion.”#p#分页标题#e#
“And she blames you for this? Not your irresponsible father who left his wife and daughters in debt?”
She didn’t take exception to Dimitri’s view of her father. Dimitri was a responsible guy, someone who would never leave his family in the lurch. He couldn’t comprehend a man who had absolutely no sense about money.
“Mama doesn’t exactly blame me for losing the mansion, but she was furious when I wouldn’t stop modeling after it was sold. She would have much preferred I married well rather than work to support her and Madeleine.”
“But you did not wish to marry well?”
“I wanted to marry a man I loved, not a bank account.”
“Then it should please you to marry me. If the words you spoke at Chez Renée were true, I can give you both.”
“They were true then,” so much so that parts of her heart were still cracked and bleeding after the abrupt way they’d broken up, “but I don’t love you anymore.”
“I refuse to believe a woman of such strong character could fall out of love at the first sign of adversity.”
She was beginning to have a horrible suspicion he was right, but she wasn’t about to feed his smug pride admitting it. “I wouldn’t call you ejecting me from your life with the force of a rocket launcher so you could marry another woman the first sign of adversity.”
“Yet I did not marry her.”
“Because your brother beat you to the punch.”
He sighed. “You are sure I would have married her otherwise?”