Very few developers could make that claim, and none as successful as Stamos & Nikos Enterprises.

“Neo and I learned early to see the good in wherever we were.” He laced their fingers together, giving her a look that implied he wasn’t just talking about property development.

“Even the orphanage?” she asked softly.

“I admit I saw more good there than Neo did.”

“I’m not surprised.”

He shrugged.

“That’s a pretty nice talent to have. I wish I’d had it as a child like you did.” She might have found moving around as much as her family had done easier than she had. “Heck, I wouldn’t mind having it now.”

“Don’t play down your strengths. That was one of the first characteristics I admired in you.”

“Seriously?”

“Definitely. When you look at a property, you do not see what is, but what could be.”

not the same

it comes from the

a long time. The little girl that found changing homes and schools every couple of years so traumatizing was

father’s military career led you to that made you so unhappy. It was the fact you found so much to love and enjoy in each new place and that got ripped

right. Every time she had found the place she wanted to occupy in her new world, she had been ripped away

still. “Lots of kids grow up the way

make it any easier on each one that does it. There were more than two dozen other children in the orphanage my mother abandoned me to. That reality did not make my own situation any easier to accept when

you to

hold of Piper’s hand, so she came with him. Feeling like the only connection he had with the present was their entwined fingers, he could not believe he had shared that

at least some. He just didn’t

were you?” she asked, after several moments of somber quiet

almost five.” He looked down at her to gauge

blue eyes glazed over in shock. “I thought you were a baby,

prostitute.” Again, a sense of utter unreality that he should be telling Piper these things assailed him. “One of her clients fell in love with her and wanted to marry her, but he didn’t want a living reminder of the life she’d led before

adult man, he could almost understand that. Not forgive, but understand. As a child who had adored his mother, the only bright constant in his short life, the one he had relied on entirely for acceptance and love, he hadn’t

few times they met before he decided to buy Leda’s freedom from

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