'Okay, let's leave them out of it and look at the American women the PK dates. Party girls who wear too much makeup and not enough clothes. Girls who leave drool marks on your shirts and haven't seen the inside of a classroom since they flunked dummy math!'
'You're exaggerating.'
'Don't you see, Kevin? You deliberately choose women you're predestined not to be able to have a real relationship with.'
'So what? I want to focus on my career, not jump through hoops trying to make some woman happy. Besides, I'm only thirty-three. I'm not ready to settle down.'
'What you're not ready to do is grow up.'
'Me?'
'And then there's Lilly.'
'Here we go…'
'She's terrific. Even though you've done everything you can to keep her at arm's length, she's sticking around, waiting for you to come to your senses. You've got everything to gain and nothing to lose with her, but you won't give her even a little corner of your life. Instead, you act like a petulant teenager. Don't you see? In your own way you're as freaked by your upbringing as I am about mine.'
'No I'm not.'
'My scars are easier to understand. I had no mother and an abusive father, while you had two loving parents. But they were so different from you that you never felt connected to them, and you still feel guilty about it. Most people could push it aside and move on, but most people aren't as sensitive as you.'
He sprang from the chair. 'That's bullshit! I'm as tough as they come, lady, and don't you forget it.'
'Yeah, you're tough on the outside, but on the inside you're so soft you squish, and you're every bit as scared of screwing up your life as I am.'
'You don't know anything!'
'I know that there's not another man in a thousand who would have felt honor-bound to marry the crazy woman who attacked him in his sleep, even if she was related to the boss. Dan and Phoebe might have held a shotgun to your head, but all you had to do was place the blame where it belonged. Not only wouldn't you do that, but you made me swear not to either.' She pulled her cold hands into the cuffs of the sweatshirt. 'Then there's the way you behaved when I was miscarrying.'
'Anybody would have-'
'No, anybody wouldn't have, but you want to believe that because you're afraid of any kind of emotion that doesn't fit between a pair of goalposts.'
'That's so stupid!'
'Off the field you know something's missing, but you're afraid to go looking for it because, in your typically neurotic and immature fashion, you believe something's wrong inside you that'll keep you from finding it. You couldn't connect with your own parents, so how can you ever make a lasting connection with anyone else? It's easier to focus on winning football games.'
'Lasting connection? Wait a minute! What are we really talking about here?'
'We're talking about the fact that it's time for you to grow up and take some real risks.'
'I don't think so. I think there's a hidden agenda behind all this mumbo jumbo.'
Until that moment she hadn't thought so, but he sometimes saw things before she did. Now she realized he was right, but it was too late. She felt sick.
'I think you're talking about a lasting connection between us,' he said.
'Ha!'
'Is that what you want, Molly? Are you angling to make this a real marriage?'
'With an emotional twelve-year-old? A man who can barely be civil to his only blood relative? I'm not that self- destructive.'
'Aren't you?'
'What do you want me to say? That I've fallen in love with you?' She'd meant to be scathing, but she saw by his thunderstruck expression that he'd recognized the truth.
Her legs felt rubbery. She sat on the edge of the glider and tried to think of a way out, but she was too emotionally battered. And what was the point when he'd see through it anyway? She lifted her head. 'So what? I know a one-way street when I run into it, and I'm not stupid enough to drive down it in the wrong direction.'
She hated his shock.
'You are in love with me.'
Her mouth was dry. Roo rubbed against her ankles and whimpered. She wanted to say this was just another variation on her crush, but she couldn't. 'Big deal,' she managed. 'If you think I'm going to cry all over your chest because you don't feel the same way, you're wrong. I don't beg for anybody's love.'
'Molly…'
She hated the pity she heard in his voice. Once again, she hadn't measured up. She hadn't been smart enough or pretty enough or special enough for a man to love.
A terrible anger filled her, and this time it wasn't directed at him. She was sick of her own insecurities. She'd accused him of needing to grow up, but he wasn't the only one. There wasn't anything wrong with her, and she couldn't keep living her life as if there were. If he didn't love her in return, that was his loss.
She shot up from the glider. 'I'm leaving today with Phoebe and Dan. Me and my broken heart are skulking back to Chicago, and you know what? We'll both survive just fine.'
'Molly, you can't-'
'Stop right now, before your conscience gets cranked up. You're not responsible for my feelings, okay? This isn't your fault, and you don't have to fix it. It's just one of those things that happened.'
'But… I'm sorry. I-'
'Shut up.' She said it quietly because she didn't want to leave in anger. She found herself moving toward him, watched her hand go to his cheek. She loved the feel of his skin, loved who he was despite his all-too-human frailties. 'You're a good man, Charlie Brown, and I wish you all the best.'
'Molly, I don't-'
'Hey, no begging me to stay, okay?' She managed a smile and stepped away. 'All good things come to an end, and that's where we are.' She made her way to the door. 'Come on, Roo. Let's find Phoebe.'
Chapter 24
It's a bunny-eat-bunny world.
Only the presence of the kids made the trip back to Chicago bearable. It had always been difficult for Molly to hide her feelings from her sister, but this time she had to. She couldn't taint Phoebe and Dan's relationship with Kevin any further.
Her condo was musty from having been closed up for nearly three weeks and even dustier than when she'd left. Her hands itched to start scrubbing and polishing, but cleaning chores would have to wait until tomorrow. With Roo scampering ahead, she carried her suitcases to the sleeping loft, then forced herself back down the steps to her desk and the black plastic crate that held her files.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she pulled out her last contract with Birdcage and flipped through the pages.
Just as she'd thought.
She gazed up at the windows that stretched all the way to the ceiling, studied the mellowed brick walls and cozy kitchen, watched the play of light on the hardwood floors.
Two miserable weeks later Molly stepped from the elevator onto the ninth floor of the Michigan Avenue office
