The Millionaire's Intriguing Offer

The Big Date Begins

Bailey doubted she'd ever make any serious money. Despite the college diploma from Brown and the graduate degree from Boston University, she had no interest in parlaying her education into a high paying job at a corporation. Bailey wanted to help people who had been written off, people who never had a chance. She wanted to be someone who made a difference. She was doing that now, working for the small nonprofit in Boston.

But there was an opportunity here in Miami to play an even larger role. To be someone who could help kids already caught up in the criminal justice system actually turn their lives around. She could be part of giving them a future, when teachers and social workers and prosecutors had already completely written them off.

Naturally a job like this - for a start-up nonprofit organization - involved long hours and low pay. Bailey didn't care.

She'd never be in the same gift-giving league as Mitsy, even before the over-the-top bachelor auction bidding.

But at least she had a hobby that had given her the ability to give Mitsy gifts from her heart, she thought, as she glanced over at the stained glass panel that graced the window in the guest room. It was only one of the many pieces she'd made that were displayed in Mitsy's home.

Adelaide Reid – first her foster mother and later her mother for real - hadn't thought much of therapists and psychologists and social workers. She hadn't been much for talking, either, and when the broken and hostile teen had come into her care, she hadn't had the words to break through the walls that the girl had built to protect herself.

Instead Adelaide had expressed her emotions by creating stained glass, mosaics, and fused glass creations. At first Bailey had hated the beautiful creations simply for existing, because everything that was ever beautiful in Bailey's life had been taken from her. One day in her rage she had smashed the stunning stained glass art panel that hung in the window of her room. It had been a gorgeous piece of work, with vibrant colors that came alive in the morning sun, filed with winding vines, flowers and butterflies, bathing her room in a mosaic of light. She'd destroyed it because she couldn't bear to look at something so joyful and lovely when everything inside her felt so hateful and ugly.

Adelaide had stood in the doorway and surveyed the broken glass scattered across the wooden floor. Then she tilted her head toward the hallway, and said 'let's go,' and Bailey had known it was over. She'd be sent away, just like every other time. Pack up her clothes and her few possessions in a trash bag and move on to the next foster home. She didn't care. What difference did it make, anyway? She was only biding her time until she turned 18 and would finally be free of the foster care system. Would finally be able to choose for herself.

And if she had any regret that she was leaving the quiet house where no one had bothered her, where there were fields and country lanes where she could run as fast as her legs would go when the anger filled her, well, she buried that regret down deep. It's not like she'd ever expected the oasis of solitude she'd found here would last.

"Let's go," Adelaide repeated when Bailey just stood there staring at the floor. "It's a lot of work so you might as well get started."

Bailey had looked up then. "What do you mean?"

"It took me three weeks to make that piece. I imagine it will take you a lot longer."

"What are you talking about? I don't know how to do that." Adelaide must be crazy.

"Then you'll just have to learn," Adelaide said.

And to Bailey's shock, she did. They hadn't started with the complicated window panel. First there had been smaller pieces. A single flower. A small sun catcher. Mosaic coasters. A fused glass candy dish she'd designed as a gift for Adelaide and Harlan that first Christmas.