Lacey swallowed the angry retort that rose automatically to her lips. Maybe now he would know how she felt more often than not, shut out and filled with loneliness and longing.
“Well,” he demanded, “what do you have to say for yourself?”
“Nothing,” she said softly. “You’re obviously too upset to listen to reason.”
“Don’t you dare patronize me.”
“We’ll discuss it over dinner,” she said with deliberate calm as she left him standing in the front hall.
“Oh, no,” he said, catching up with her in the doorway to the kitchen and moving quickly into her path. “We’ll discuss it now.”
Lacey drew in a deep breath and lifted her gaze to clash with his. “Kevin, for the past decade you have not once beat me home in the evenings. I have always left a note just in case. Today I did the same thing. I told you I had gone out, and I told you when I’d be home. I figured you wouldn’t be any more interested in the details than you usually are.”
Despite her best efforts, she hadn’t been able to keep the bitterness out at the end. He looked stunned.
“Not interested?” he repeated softly. “I’m always interested in everything you do.”
“No,” she said evenly. “That was true once, but not recently. As long as I was there to greet you every evening, as long as I never disrupted your plans, you never once asked a question about how I spent my days.”
“I assumed you went to those meetings,” he muttered defensively.
“Those meetings, as you refer to them, were a sorry substitute for having any real purpose in my life. I know that I am as much to blame for allowing that to happen as you are, but the fact of the matter is that for too long now I have been frustrated, lonely and bored to tears. While you’ve been climbing the corporate ladder of success, I’ve been searching for some niche I could fill. Thanks to Paula, I’ve found it.”
For an instant he looked puzzled. Puzzlement slowly turned to incredulity. “Paula Gethers? The one who used to organize peace marches? I didn’t know the two of you even saw each other anymore.”
“Actually we see each other quite a lot. I’m helping her to renovate houses.”
Kevin’s mouth dropped open. “You’re what?” he asked, not even trying to hide his astonishment and disbelief.
“Renovating houses,” she repeated a bit more emphatically.
“You mean hiring contractors, decorators, that sort of thing?”
“No. I mean picking up hammers and paintbrushes and screwdrivers.” She held out her hands for his inspection.
He took her hands and examined them, slowly taking in the specks of paint that had escaped her cleaning, the blister on one finger, the black and blue under the nail of her thumb.
“My God,” he breathed softly, as he gently smoothed his fingers over the rough spots. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
Lacey withdrew her hand before his touch made her forget how irritated she was. “Never more so,” she said with a hint of defiance.
“But why? You could hire anyone you wanted to do that sort of work.”
“Not for this. There’s no money involved. The work is done by volunteers. The materials are donated. Then the houses are turned over to needy families. Paula’s more familiar with the financial arrangements made with the families, but I do know they have to help with the construction.”
The last traces of anger vanished from Kevin’s eyes. Lacey could tell the exact instant when his imagination caught fire. Her breath caught in her throat. A radiant burst of hope spilled through her.
“Sit down and tell me,” he said, urging her to the table. He poured them each a cup of coffee and sat down opposite her. “How does it work? Who’s involved?”
Kevin’s sudden burst of enthusiasm was catching, reminding her of long-ago nights when they had sat just like this for hours on end. Her words tumbled over each other as she shared her excitement about the program with him. All the things she had longed to describe to him for so long came pouring out.
“I was there the day they turned over the first house I’d worked on,” she said. “A single mother was moving in with her three kids. There were tears in her eyes as she walked from room to room just touching things. She said she’d never before seen anyplace so clean.”
Tears welled up in Lacey’s eyes as she remembered that day. “Oh, Kevin, if only you could have been there. Knowing that that house was hers filled her with so much pride and so much determination. You could see it in her face. This is the kind of social program that really works, that doesn’t spend a fortune on overhead. It gets down to one of the very first basics of life, shelter.”
“I want to see for myself,” Kevin said when she was finally done. He got up and began to pace, just as he always had when he was trying to work out a complex problem. “Maybe there’s some way Halloran can get involved,” he said finally. “We could donate fabric for draperies, underwrite some of the costs to buy up land or old houses. What do you think? Would that help?”
Lacey felt a wellspring of emotion rise up inside her. This was the Kevin she’d fallen in love with. This was the man who was touched by the plight of others and wanted desperately to help.
“Thank you,” she said, feeling as if a boulder had lodged in her throat.
He seemed puzzled by her emotion. “Lacey, it’s only some fabric and a few dollars. Halloran makes donations like that all the time.”
She shook her head. “You’re wrong. It’s much more.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Kevin, it’s more proof that the man I fell in love with still exists. Don’t you see? If we could work together on this, it would be a start, a new beginning for us.”
As understanding dawned, he clasped her hands in his and lifted them to his mouth. He kissed
