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name with perfect clarity: Elise Burke. Strange that she and this Parisian woman should share the same name when they were so completely different. Elise Rousseau was the perfect embodiment of the roaring twenties: filthy rich, gorgeous, sexually uninhibited and completely frivolous. On the other hand, Elise Burke had been middle-class, girl-next-door pretty, shy and naively thoughtful.
    Harry fought the sudden tiredness in his eyes. To be honest, he would probably prefer to bathe in Miss Burke’s quiet kindness rather than soak up Madame Rousseau’s sharp, jaded wit.
    But of course, Harry knew that was impossible.
    For he had broken that poor girl’s heart once—and all because he’d known that he would never be able to make her happy. She deserved a more responsible man, one who would be devoted only to her. But after he’d flat-out rejected her, he’d almost immediately regretted it. A moment too late as well, for the woman had fled the country and disappeared to who knows where!
    Harry shook his head of his thoughts. Regret would do no one any good—and he had a rich widow to seduce and swindle!
    “Never mind the past,” Harry said, smiling and setting down his champagne flute. “The future is so much brighter.”
    “Is it?”
    Elise Rousseau pinned him with such a sharp glare that Harry almost squirmed.
    “I mean,” he continued. “There’s so much going on now that who has time to dwell on the past?”
    The woman looked away suddenly, a shadow clouding her perfect face. Harry leaned over and reached for her hand.
    “Whatever is the matter, my darling?” He asked, his deep voice sincerely concerned.
    Elise looked back at him, her eyes shining with unshed tears.
    “I w-was just thinking,” she said with a barely noticeable stutter. “That it is so very difficult to forget the past.”
    Harry felt sympathy well up in his chest; she was hardly a woman and already a widow. She must have been the target of many a fortune-seeker, people after her for her money...just as he was. He quashed the guilt that began to grow in the bottom of his stomach. Taking some of her money didn’t mean he had to be totally insensitive about it. Perhaps they could both get something out of it; a mutually beneficial agreement, as it were.
    Harry squeezed her fingers encouragingly. He pulled her gently from her seat and tugged her into sitting across his lap. He smoothed his hands up her back and began rubbing soothing circles over her shoulders.
    “Oh, I know,” he said, his voice comforting. “I once hurt someone very dear to me. It was for the best, but I can’t help regretting it—even now.”
    “Who was it?” she asked, genuinely curious as to who had captured his womanizing heart.
    “You won’t be jealous?” he teased.
    “I promise you, I won’t be,” she answered dryly.
    “It was my college classmate,” he said. “The mousy girl.”
    Elise shot up so quickly that she nearly knocked his glass from the table. Her face had gone white, and her fingers trembled.
    “What?” Harry asked in concern, also rising. “What is it?”
    “It’s nothing.” Elise stepped away, waving him off with one hand and rubbing her temples with the other. “Nothing at all.”
    Harry reached for her hand. But when she turned to look at him, the unguarded, innocently beautiful expression on her face was so hauntingly familiar that he paused. It was like a shadow flitting across her face...and then it was gone.
    “I think I’ve had enough of New York for one night,” Elise said, walking away.
    She paused when she reached the door, throwing a saucy smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes over one shoulder.
    “But you’re more than welcome to entertain me tomorrow,” she told him cheekily.
    Then, with a quick flash of teeth and a flick of her bobbed hair, Elise turned and slipped away.

Chapter 5
    Elise paced the length of the bedroom of her lavish suite at the Grand Plaza Hotel, biting nervously at her manicured nails.