I AM A WOMAN An Original Gold Medal Novel by ANN BANNON Gold Medal Books FAWCETT PUBLICATIONS, INC. FAWCETT BLDG., FAWCETT PLACE, GREENWICH, CONN. Copyright © 1959 by Fawcett Publications, Inc. Second Printing, April 1959 All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof. All characters in this book are fictional and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Printed in the United States of America Chapter One Tell your father to go to hell. Try it. It’s a rotten hard thing to do, even if he deserves it. Merrill Landon did. He was an out-and-out bastard, but like most of the breed, he didn’t know it. He said he was a good father: sensible, firm, and just. He said everything he did was for Laura’s own good. He took her opposition for a sign that he was right, and the more she opposed him, the righter he swore he was. But he was a bastard. Laura could have told you that. But she couldn’t tell _him_, because he was her father. That was why she ran out on him. Left him high, dry, and sputtering in his plush Chicago apartment with only his job to console him. And never told him where she went. Never told him why. Never told him of the angry agony of her nights, spent torching for a love gone wrong. Never mentioned his straight-laced bitter version of fatherly affection that hurt her more than his fits of temper. He never kissed her. He never touched her. He only told her, “No, Laura,” and “You’re wrong, as usual,” and “Can’t you do it right for once?” She had taken it all her life, but it was the worst the year after she left school. It was a year of confinement in luxury, of tightly controlled resentment, of soul-searching. And one rainy night when he was out at a press dinner, she packed a small bag and went to Union Station. She bought a ticket to New York City. She could never be free from herself, but she could be free from her father, and at the moment that mattered the most. So she rode out of the big city, wet and cold with its January gloss, and left behind Merrill Landon, her father. The man in her life. The only man in her life. The only man she ever seriously tried to love. All she wanted from New York was a job, a place to live, a friend or two. As long as she won them herself, without her father’s help, she would be happy. Much happier than when she had been surrounded with comfortable leather chairs, sheathed in sleek fine clothes, smelling like an expensive rose.