“Do you have a panic button on the alarm?” he whispered to her, and she shook her head.

“I have a thing somewhere, but I don't know where it is,” she whispered back. They could definitely hear someone moving around, and then heard a step on the stairs. Liam glanced around her moonlit bedroom, grabbed a poker from the fireplace, and yanked her bedroom door open, as they heard a step right outside. And as he pulled the door toward him, he flipped on the light, and stood in her bedroom doorway, stark naked, with the poker in his hand. He found himself less than a foot from Tatianna, staring at him with a stunned expression. There was a young man just behind her, on the landing. She screamed the moment she saw Liam, and so did he. It was a scene beyond belief. The young man with her took a step toward him, as Sasha leaped out of bed and came to stand right behind Liam. She was also naked, and astounded to see her daughter. Tatianna had said nothing about using the house that weekend. She thought her mother no longer went there at all. Sasha hadn't mentioned her recent trips there, and had no desire to explain Liam's presence in her life.

“My God, Mother, what are you doing?” She burst into tears, and the man with her discreetly headed down the stairs. He had instantly figured out what had happened, and decided to remove himself from the scene, a wise decision. “Are you insane?” And then she turned to Liam, sobbing, “What the fuck do you think you're doing in my father's bed? What are you both thinking? Don't you have any respect for Daddy?” she screamed at her mother. “How can you bring him here? How could you? Is this what you do when you're in Paris? You just run around screwing your artists?” Without thinking, for the first time in her life, shaking from head to foot, Sasha slapped her daughter, and Tatianna slapped her back, as Liam groaned and set down the poker. He was shaking, too, and ran into the bedroom to put something on. All he was able to find in the chaos of the moment were his jockey shorts, which wasn't a vast improvement, but it was better than standing there with his privates hanging out. He hadn't had time to put on clothes when he thought he was protecting Sasha from a burglar. He would have preferred to face a man with a gun than Tatianna.

“Everyone calm down… please…,” he urged both crying women, to no avail. Tatianna was still screaming at her mother, in a state approaching hysteria. “Just stop! Let's go downstairs and talk,” he said in the calmest voice he could muster. Neither of them listened, and then Tatianna turned on him again.

“Get out of my parents' house, you bastard! You don't belong here!” He was at a total loss for words, in the face of her fury. He had never been in a situation like this. Thank God Beth hadn't walked in on him with Becky, or it might have been worse, although he couldn't imagine anything much worse than this, being attacked by Sasha's irate daughter, and the horrified look in Sasha's eyes. It was awful.

“Don't speak to him that way,” Sasha was shouting at her. “He's my guest.”

“He's not your guest. He's your lover. And you're both disgusting.” She spat the words at her mother, turned on her heel, and ran down the stairs, and within seconds they heard the door slam, and the car she'd come in drive away. If she'd been planning a romantic weekend, she had gotten something very different, and so had Liam and Sasha. Sasha sat down on the stairs, put her face in her hands, and sobbed, as Liam put his arms around her. This was not the way she had wanted Tatianna to find out about them. She was devastated, and cried for hours.

“She'll never respect me again, Liam. She thinks I dishonored her father's memory, and I suppose I have,” she said, looking morbidly depressed and badly shaken. “She called me a whore and a slut. Oh my God…I can't believe this happened.” Neither could he, and there was very little he could do, except comfort her, to make it better. He thought Tatianna had behaved like a monster, no matter how surprised or upset she was. She had said things to her mother that could never be forgotten or taken back, even if Sasha chose to forgive her, which knowing Sasha, he was sure she would.

“This is none of her business,” he told Sasha firmly, once he got her back to bed, which took hours. He wasn't even sure if he should be in the bed with her, but she needed him, so he decided to stay. “You haven't done anything wrong. You're a grown woman, your husband has been gone for almost two years. You have a right to a life without him. You were in the privacy of your own home, with a man who loves you. You have nothing to apologize for,” he said, and kissed her gently. “She owes you an apology, Sasha. What she said to you was inexcusable.” And even if Sasha did, he had no intention of excusing it, or forgiving her, anytime soon. She had called him a piece of shit and a two-bit gigolo, which had cut him to the quick. He would have liked to slap her too, but of course he didn't. For Sasha's sake, if nothing else. There was no point adding fuel to a fire that was already blazing out of control. But they were both smarting from Tatianna's verbal attack on them, and her outrage at finding her mother with Liam, in what had once been her parents' bed.

“It's her house too,” Sasha said miserably. “She has a right to be here. I just didn't want her to know about us so soon, and not like this.” She felt like a prostitute who'd been caught entertaining a john. Her daughter had made her feel like the lowest of the low. They finally fell asleep when the sun came up, after talking about it for hours, ad nauseam. She cried herself to sleep in his arms, and they both woke up to the sound of the phone at nine-thirty. It was Xavier, calling from London. His sister had called him the night before, and told all. Her version was pretty ugly. She had said that Liam was strutting around the house naked when she walked in, and had obviously been screwing their mother. Xavier had been startled at first, particularly by the picture she painted. But when he calmed down, and thought about it for several hours after that, he wasn't entirely opposed to the match. In fact, not at all. He liked Liam. He was just sorry for everyone that it had come to light in the way it had. It was two-thirty in the afternoon for him when he called them. And his mother cried the moment she heard him on the phone. She was deeply remorseful.

“Darling, I'm so sorry…I couldn't…I thought… it wasn't the way it looked to Tati …oh God… what am I going to do?” She was sure her relationship with her daughter was destroyed forever, and she had never felt so ashamed in her life. No affair was worth destroying her family over. She loved Liam, or she thought she did, but her children still came first. And she was terrified Xavier would be angry too.

“First, you have to calm down,” Xavier said sensibly. He had said the same thing to Tatianna, when she called him at six in the morning his time, screaming and crying hysterically, and calling their mother a whore. He had told her to shut up immediately, and she had. They had talked for hours. He had assured her that Liam was a nice guy, a good friend of his, and he had introduced them, although he hadn't expected this to happen. In fact, it had never occurred to him. But he thought their mother had a right to happiness, with whomever she chose. It was not up to them. She had obviously been discreet about it, as he pointed out to Tatianna, since no one seemed to know. Even he hadn't figured it out when he saw them together. And she certainly was no “whore.” She was a lonely woman with a lover who happened to be a few years younger than she was, which was none of their business.

“How can she do that in Daddy's bed? That's disgusting!” Tatianna had wailed. She had worshiped him and still couldn't believe he was gone. And now to add to her misery, someone had taken his place and was sleeping in his bed.

“Tati, it's her bed too. Where do you expect her to go? We're lucky she lets us use the house. She doesn't have to. Dad left it to her.”

“She could go to a hotel.”

“That would be sordid. She has the right, Tat, and I promise you he's a decent guy. I know him well.”

“Like hell he is. He's a starving artist, and he's after her money. Our money,” she reminded her brother, hoping to pit him against his friend. It didn't work. Xavier knew Liam better.

“I don't think so,” Xavier said thoughtfully. “I really don't. I think he likes her.” At least he hoped so, which was what he wanted to know when he called his mother. “Is this serious, Mom?” he asked her honestly, and she hesitated. She didn't know what to say, or what to call it. They loved each other, but they hadn't figured the rest out yet. That's what they were doing now.

“I don't know.” Sasha answered her son honestly. She was always honest with her children. She hadn't lied about Liam. She just hadn't told them. It was a sin of omission, but not commission, which she knew was splitting hairs.

“How long has it been going on?” he asked then, hoping it wasn't a one-night stand, or an irresistible impulse, which would make a liar of him to Tatianna, when he had said his mother didn't do things lightly and this was probably important to her. Which only made Tatianna cry more. She didn't want her mother marrying some ridiculous young artist. That would have been just too embarrassing. And too much for her to swallow. She wanted her mother to mourn her father forever, childish though that was.

“It's been going on for six months. On and off since January,” Sasha said miserably. Liam was listening, lying next to her in bed, and decided to leave her alone to talk to her son. He got up and went downstairs to make coffee.

“Are you going to marry him?” Xavier asked her.