Chapter 1

The moment the auction hammer fell, I thought that three-hundred-million-dollar necklace would end up around my neck.

"Mr. Channing really does spoil Evelyn to the bone."

The whispers around us hadn't even faded when Ethan Channing stepped right past me and walked straight toward the woman sitting at the far edge of the second row.

He opened the velvet box himself, lifted out the Dream Tide necklace, and clasped it around her neck.

"Ethan, you still remember I love stars." The woman slipped off her sunglasses. Her eyes were faintly red.

"Of course."

Dead silence fell over the room. Every gaze that had been full of envy when it landed on me shifted all at once into something unmistakably like pity.

I sat in the VIP section, my fingertips digging into the ultrasound printout buried inside my purse. Six weeks. A tiny gestational sac.

That piece of paper suddenly felt like a brand pressed against my skin.

So it turned out he could toss me fifty million dollars for some painting without a second thought, and in the same breath, lift another woman onto a pedestal in front of everyone.