Gracie’s Saint Jude pin.
Gage bent down to pick it up. When he stood, their gazes locked.
“Here’s the deal, sweetheart,” he said, dropping the pin into her outstretched palm. “Until you acknowledge your fears about love and deal with them, you’ll stay a lost cause.”
15
The drive back to Houston was horrible. Neither of them spoke the entire time. They both stared listlessly at the gray clouds hunkering on the horizon.
They arrived home around eight o’clock that night to discover Peter’s getaway vacation had been a success, at least in terms of paparazzi. The media had disappeared from their front stoop, off to vex someone more happening. According to the radio, a high-profile Hollywood couple had just announced their plans to divorce. Breakups, apparently, were more newsworthy than engagements.
Gage helped her upstairs with her luggage. She thanked him at the door. Without a word, he turned and headed for the elevator.
Janet looked down at the Saint Jude pin she’d clutched in her hand all the way from Lake Travis, and her gut wrenched.
Lost cause.
Her heart dragged on the carpet as she shut the door and locked herself inside the empty condo.
Alone.
She fingered the pin.
Lost cause.
No hope for her.
None at all.
Too late for love.
Her bottom lip trembled, and she sank to the floor and pulled her knees to her chest. “But I don’t want to be a lost cause,” she whispered.
The cold, hard facts hit her like a physical blow. She was helplessly, hopelessly in love with Dr. Gage Gregory. No if, ands, or buts about it.
She wanted to run after him like a forlorn puppy chasing his owner’s car. She wanted to go upstairs, knock on his door, then fling herself into his arms when he answered. She wanted him to smile that crooked, come-hither grin and lightly tickle her ribs to make her laugh. She wanted to taste him and touch him and take him to bed and make babies with him.
Babies?
Was she nuts? Was she insane? Had Nadine’s predictions gripped her common sense and rendered her loopy the way it had Gracie?
Babies weren’t in her immediate future. Nor was marriage. She’d been trying to tell everyone that, but no one had been listening.
Most of all impish voice, who reminded her just how cute a miniature Gage, calling her “Mama”, would look.
The Baby Predicate had taken control.
No. No. No.
“I’m a sensible woman. I don’t act this way. I don’t go gaga over men. I don’t fall in love after only having known someone a month. I don’t. I don’t. I don’t,” she muttered to herself.
This had to be Gracie’s doing. Somewhere she and Nadine were performing voodoo magic, making her fall in love with Gage.
Then again, perhaps she should hold her father accountable. If he wasn’t so hard to please, she wouldn’t have ended up on a houseboat with her colleague. Wouldn’t have made love to Gage until her head spun and her heart ached with an inexplicable longing.
She had to do something about this. Right now.
It was close to ten o’clock when she pulled up outside her father’s lavish estate in the Woodlands. Janet sat in the darkness, swallowing her fear. Resolutely, she got out of the car, marched up the sidewalk, and hammered on the front door.
A few seconds later, her father pulled open the door. He looked rather ridiculous in silk pajamas and a satin bed cap. A man with too much money putting on airs. Funny how she’d never seen him for what he really was. A sad, lonely man who placed wealth and prestige above family and friends.
“Janet,” he said. “What are you doing here?” Not hi, daughter, how are you. Good to see you. Come on in and we ’ll have Ho Hos and hot chocolate.
He waited, blocking the doorway.
“May I come in?” Why hadn’t she ever noticed what a weak chin he had? Why hadn’t she ever realized he could stare at you without ever really looking you in the eyes?
“Uh, I was on my way to bed.”
“We need to talk. It’s important. I’d rather tell you to your face than have you read about it in the newspapers.”
He hesitated.
Maybe it was the I’ve-got-this-massive-chip-on-my-shoulder-and-I’m-daring-you-to-knock-it-off expression on her face that quelled him. Or perhaps it was the Rambo way she muscled him aside and entered the house. Either way, Janet didn’t care. She was no longer afraid of her father.
Thanks to Gage.
All this time she had thought she was so independent. Autonomous, self-ruling, I-don’t-need-anyone-but-me Janet. She’d won scholarships and earned grants to pay her way through medical school. She’d gone to work at age sixteen, waiting tables to help Gracie make ends meet. She’d never followed the crowd, seeing herself as the ultimate maverick because she embraced lofty ideals over having a good time, valued her high standards above relationships, honored inflexible rules over compassion, viewed loving couples as “clingy.”
For all her misplaced pride in her sovereignty, it came down to one thing. Anything she’d ever accomplished, she’d done to gain the love of this single man.
That wasn’t independence. That was neediness of the highest order.
The realization spun her world on its axis.
Filled with anger and remorse, sadness and an odd kind of freedom, Janet trod through the foyer and into the living room. She plunked down in a chair.
“Not that one, Janet!” Her father winced. “That’s an authentic Louis the Fourteenth.”
“Who cares.” She waved a hand. “Why do you buy furniture people can’t sit in?”
Her father’s mouth dropped. “Wh... what’s come over you? Why are you acting like this?” He narrowed his eyes. “Have you been drinking? Where’s Gage? I’m going to call him to come get you.”
“No, Father, I’m stone cold sober and I’ve gotta tell you something and you won’t like it, so you better sit down.”
Eyeing her as if she were a pet poodle that had suddenly morphed into a Doberman pinscher, Niles eased himself down onto the stiff-backed sofa.
“Here’s
