He chuckled, and ran his fingers along her cheek. "Yeah, I'll do just about anything to get you alone and all to myself."

Unable to resist that sexy smile of his, and what his words implied, she accompanied him up to his office, very aware of just how alone they were in the deserted building.

He turned on the overhead lights and strolled toward his desk. "Give me a few minutes to find what I need."

"Sure."

The room was pleasantly warm, and she took off her heavy coat and hung it on one of the brass hooks by the door. While he sorted through files and paperwork stacked on his desk, she drifted toward a credenza along the wall holding framed photographs.

Passing idle time, she gazed at each one, most of which were group shots. Recognizing Ryan and Natalie in one of the larger gatherings, she picked up the professional portrait to take a closer look at the older couple surrounded by six adults and five young children.

Seeing a striking resemblance between Ryan and the older man in the middle of the photo, she turned the picture toward Ryan and asked, "Is this your family?"

"Yep." Setting aside a few file folders, he shrugged out of his jacket, hung it next to hers, and came up beside her. "There are Mom and Dad in the middle, and you know Natalie, of course," he said, then went on to point out his two older sisters by name, and their respective husbands and children.

The photo, as simple as it was, encompassed a wealth of emotion Jessica couldn't help but envy. An abundance of affection radiated from everyone's smiles, happiness shone in their eyes, and love was evident in the strength of the familial bond they shared.

A pang of longing struck near her heart, so strong it nearly stole her breath. "You're very lucky to have such a close-knit family," she said, her voice a whisper of sound in the quiet room. "Don'tever take that for granted."

Ryan recognized the vulnerability that etched Jessica's features and tinged her voice-he'd seen and heard that emotion with some of the women he'd represented in divorce cases. While he'd always managed to remain immune and objective with his clients because he had a job to do, he felt Jessica's pain like a vise around his heart.

Jessica was a casualty of divorce, having been deeply affected by her father's betrayal. She'd lost the stability and security of a complete family in one fell swoop, and apparently was still struggling to find what her father had carelessly ripped apart.

A family.Something hedid take for granted because all he'd ever known was the love and support of his mom and dad, and his siblings. He'd never lacked for affection, had never gone to bed as a child feeling alone, and had never questioned either of his parents' love.

Ryan drew a deep breath, knowing it was time to discuss her past, that in order for her to trust him as he wanted, they had to cross this hurdle together. And maybe, during the course of their conversation she could purge some of the bitterness and resentment caused by one's man lack of compassion.

"How old were you when your parents divorced?" he asked quietly.

She looked at him, initially startled by his question. "I was nine, and Brooke was thirteen." She gave the photo in her hand one last lingering glance before setting it back on the credenza. "I think the most difficult part of the divorce was that before my father left and my parents separated, everything seemed so perfect I was definitely Daddy's girl, and I adored him. He was always so larger than life for me."

He slid his hands into the front pockets of his trousers to keep from touching her, comforting her. "I'm sure whatever problems your parents had didn't happen overnight." From his experience with clients, the strife within marriages sometimes festered for years before married couples split up-which accounted for many unpleasant divorces. He'd witnessed amicable separations, as well as vengeful ones.

"You're right, of course, and I realize now that my father must have been having an affair for quite a while before my mother found out. But as a little girl, I was so wrapped up in feeling secure, that when my dad just packed up and walked out one day, I was devastated." She shook her head, her velvet blue eyes brimming with shadows of old misery. "I just couldn't understand what went wrong, whatI did wrong to make him leave."

Ryan balled his hands into fists, aching deep inside for the innocence she'd lost at such an early age. He imagined her at nine, carefree and filled with girlish dreams, and blinded by fantasies of happily-ever-afters, only to have them crushed by the one man she'd trusted to always be there for her.

She moved away from him and stopped in front of the huge plate-glass window overlooking the city. With the lights on in his office, though, all she could see was the reflection of herself, and the room around her. He didn't approach her, suspecting that she needed to work through this particular event in her life without interference. And so he gave her what she needed-someone to listen to her rid herself of her painful past

"Then my father filed for divorce, and he wasn't satisfied with half of everything," she continued. "From yelling matches that I overheard between my parents, I learned that he felt he deserved everything, because he'd been the sole breadwinner. When my mother disagreed, that's when things got real ugly with my father. Come to find out, his new girlfriend was twenty-two years old and very high maintenance, and he was out to get whatever he could from the marriage at our expense."

Her shoulders lifted as she drew a deep breath, and relaxed when she exhaled, though her spine remained stiff with tension. "He hired a cutthroat divorce attorney who took advantage of my mother's emotional state and took her for everything he could, and since my mother couldn't afford a powerful lawyer, she lost just about everything to my father and his new lover.

"My mom was a mess after that ordeal," she went on, her voice hoarse. "All I can remember is her constantly crying, and staying in her bedroom with the shades drawn. It was awful, and if it wasn't for Brooke taking control and pushing my mother to snap out of her depression, I'm sure we would have ended up on welfare-or worse, Brooke and I would have gone into a foster home."

He watched a shudder wrack her slender form, and she wrapped her arms around her middle as if to hold herself together. "We moved our meager belongings from the house my mother was forced to sell, the one I grew up in, and into a one-bedroom apartment because that's all she could afford. My mother took on two jobs to support us, and because Mom was hardly ever home, Brooke pretty much raised me. We went from dining on solid, nutritious meals to eating macaroni and cheese and hot dogs because it was filling, and cheap."

"What about child support?" he asked. Surely they'd had that extra income to rely on and to help them with expenses.

She turned to look at him, and laughed, but the sound held no humor. "What about it? According to my sister, the checks came sporadically, then stopped altogether, as did my father's infrequent phone calls. I haven't seen or heard from him in over thirteen years."

She was trying so hard to remain composed and strong, when he knew beneath the surface brewed dark, bitter emotions. "It's okay to be angry, Jessie," he said softly.

"Is it okay to hate him for what he did?" Moisture glimmered in her eyes, contradicting the defiant lift of her chin. "For making a family, then walking away from it?"

"No man should ever forsake his children," he said, vehemently believing that.

Divorces happened, it was a sad fact of life. And if there was one thing he disliked about his profession, it was that the children involved were sometimes embroiled in their parents' spiteful attempts to hurt one another. He'd never given the long-term effects of that any thought while handling his cases, but was coming to realize through Jessica that the impact of a nasty divorce on a child left lifetime scars.

Compassion and an inexplicable tenderness welled within him, and it took concentrated effort to remain where he stood, when he wanted to close the distance between them. "I'm sorry that you had to go through that."

She turned back to the window. "Yeah, me, too," she said, her voice a mere whisper.

The office grew quiet and still, and little by little, understanding trickled through him, as well as a deeper insight into Jessica. After everything she'd endured as a child, was it no wonder that she'd never allowed a man to get too close emotionally?

Obviously, his profession had been the initial deterrent for her, but it wasn't the sole reason she'd built a wall of reserve. He suspected that her father's abandonment and the crass way Lane had treated her had left her feeling insecure and unable to put faith in any man's promise.

Dragging a hand through his hair, he tried focusing on the positive. "Your mother is remarried and happy, isn't she?"

She hesitated before answering. "Yeah, she is."

"And Brooke, too," he added.

She glanced over her shoulder at him, her mouth pursed with impatience. "Can you just get to the point you're trying to make with this line of questioning?"

"The point I'm trying to make," he replied very calmly, "is that maybe it's just a matter of finding the right person."

From across the room, he could see her gaze searching his, deep and intense. "And how do you know when it's the right person?"

"You trust your instincts."

She scoffed at his simple response. "That didn't work for my mother or Brooke's first marriages."

"Then maybe you have to trust your heart." Just as he was beginning to put complete faith in his, and what he was beginning to feel for Jessica.