Jake pushed on the door, which swung open. Molly was now on the far side of the room, standing in front of the open window. She was wearing a thin white pajama top that fell to the middle of her thighs, and her legs were bare beneath it. The only sound in the room was the soft crash of waves against the cliffs below the open window.
“Are you all right?” Jake asked. It was a stupid question, because she obviously wasn't, but it was the best he could do on short notice.
She sniffed slightly and pressed her nose against her raised hand. Looking up again, she cleared her throat. “What? Yes, of course. I'm fine, why do you ask? I was just reading. I was about to go to bed. It's getting late. What are you doing here? I thought you left hours ago.”
Jake blinked, taken aback by the sudden torrent of words. “I decided to stay the night,” he said. He wondered if he should back off and leave her alone. It seemed boorish to confront her when she clearly wanted to hide the fact that she had been crying. But he didn't go. The disturbing sound of her sobs still lingered in his ears.
“Who was that on the phone?” he asked.
She recoiled. “What? When?”
“Just now. You sounded very unhappy.”
“You were listening to my conversation?”
“I was walking by your door, and I overheard a few words.” It wasn't strictly true, but it wasn't exactly a lie, either. He had overheard a few words…a few hundred.
“Why were you walking by my door?” Molly asked suspiciously. “There's nothing at this end of the hall but guest rooms. And I'm the only guest here now.”
“Right,” Jake said. “I was…coming to talk to you. I wanted to know if you needed anything from Miami. I'm leaving early tomorrow morning, but I'll be back on Friday, and if there's anything you want me to bring you…”
Molly gave him a strange look. “Thanks,” she said. “A chocolate bar and some clean socks. It's tough to be out here in the wilderness without any of the basic comforts.”
“Chocolate with almonds or without?”
She ignored the question. “It's almost midnight. If you wanted to offer courier services, you could have called me tomorrow. You do have the phone number for this house, don't you?”
“Oh, for God's sake,” Jake said impatiently. It was too late, and he was too tired to play verbal fencing games with her. “Fine, I listened to your conversation. You were talking to your father?” From the content of the call, and from what Jake remembered of the pompous Stanford Shaw from the White House luncheon, he seemed like the most likely candidate. And it was only ten
P.M.
in Wisconsin.
Molly didn't answer. She folded her arms against her chest and turned her head to stare through the window. The moonlight glazed her profile, and Jake saw a damp shine on her cheek.
“You were crying,” he said.
“I was not.”
“Right,” he said dryly. “My mistake. So if I leave you alone, are you going to start not crying again?”
Apparently, she wasn't even going to wait that long. She sniffed and reached up to swipe at her eyes. “Go away,” she said miserably.
For some reason that Jake didn't understand, Molly's shrewish temper didn't bother him at all, but the sight of her with a tear-tracked face and her body slumping in defeat made him want to shake her until her fighting spirit reasserted itself.
“Your father is a self-centered blowhard,” he said.
“What?” She was so surprised that she looked fully at him.
“It's true. You were kinder to him than he deserved. He should be proud of you, and if he's not, then he's as narrow-minded as the other snobs at Belden College.”
“You don't know what you're talking about,” Molly said indignantly. “He's famous. He has two Pulitzer Prizes and the Medal of Freedom.”
“He also has a daughter who has every right to refuse to speak to him again. I hope his prizes keep him company when he gets old.”
“He is old,” Molly said. “He's not that bad, really. He spent last Wednesday morning trying to talk the administration into taking me back.”
To whose advantage?
Jake wondered. It might make Stanford Shaw feel better to have his daughter securely back in her high-octane professorship, but anyone who knew Molly ought to know—and care—that Belden was the wrong place for her. “What did the administration say?”
“They said no.” She pressed her lips together for a moment. “He told me that he felt like a beggar, and that I put him in a humiliating position.”
“That's ridiculous. Did you ask him to go to them?”
“No. But he wanted to help me.”
“Sounds to me like he wanted to help himself. And he's upset because they didn't defer to him, so he's trying to blame you for his wounded ego. Not very nice.”
She didn't say anything, but he saw her staring at him, her eyes luminous in the moonlight.
He shrugged. “I could be wrong, of course. After all, what do I know? I'm just a shallow, publicity-seeking playboy.”
“Oh,” Molly said. “I'm sorry about that.”
“No problem. I've been called worse.”
“I can't tell him that the engagement is a sham…he wouldn't understand. But he isn't very happy about the prospect of me marrying you, either.”
Jake feigned shock. “What, I'm not the son he always wanted?”
Molly's mouth curved reluctantly. “No. But it's looking like I'm not the daughter he wants, either.”
So we're perfect for each other.
She didn't add that, but he could still hear her voice in his mind.
“You've been playing a lot of roles,” he said. “For your father, for your friend Carter, and now for me. It seems like a lot of trouble. It might even make it hard for you to remember who you really are.”
“It does,” Molly said. “You should know, Mr. Playboy-Billionaire-turned-Family-Man. You spend more time and money on your image that I thought was possible. Who are
you,
really?”
Jake shrugged. “Depends on who you ask. Skye Elliot would tell you that I'm a drug-addicted narcissist with a commitment phobia.”
“And what would your mother say?”
“That I'm a nice boy with workaholic tendencies.”
“You're not a drug-addicted narcissist,” Molly said. “That much I know. But I wouldn't say that you're a nice boy, either.”
He laughed softly. “No. And what would you say, Molly? If I asked you? Don't tell me I'm a Family Man—save that for the press.”
She gazed at him for a moment, considering an answer, and Jake saw that she had taken the question seriously. He hadn't intended it that way…or had he? The dim light and the intimacy of the setting gave an edgy intensity to the scene, and ever since he had come into her room, he had been very aware of the shadowed curves of her body under the thin shirt.
“I would say…” she answered finally, slowly, “that you are the only man…”
Jake watched her, curiously.
She paused to think. “Yes,” she said, “definitely the only man who I ever…ever…”
He waited as she searched for words, and found himself staring at her, caught by the intensity of her eyes.
“You are the only man,” Molly said finally, “who I ever kissed while wearing a blond wig and a double-D bra.” She grinned at him, looking very pleased with herself.
“I'm glad to hear that,” Jake said calmly. “And how many men have you kissed while wearing only a pajama top and no underwear?”
Her grin vanished. “Hey,” she said sharply, and cast a sudden, anxious glance down at her lower half, and then back at the bright moonlight coming through the window behind her. “Wait a minute…you can't—”
“I couldn't actually tell,” Jake said. “It was just a guess.”
“Oh, very funny,” she said.
“So, how many?” he asked.
“What?”
“How…many…men?” Jake repeated, stepping forward.
Molly looked at him, startled. And then her expression changed, and her lips parted slightly, and he knew that she understood.
“Lots,” she said, her eyes never leaving his. “So if you want to distinguish yourself…”
“I'd better make it good,” he said, and pulled her into his arms.
Jake knew from the moment that Molly came to him—her hands sliding up his chest to lock around the back of his neck, her mouth meeting his with the fierce hunger that he remembered—that the night was unlikely to end with a kiss.
And it didn't. Her pajama top and his own shirt were soon discarded, and when he felt the softness of her naked chest pressed against his, he knew that he was lost.
Molly clung to him so tightly that his belt buckle left a mark like a brand on her stomach, and she kissed him as if she, too, had been holding on to the memory of that afternoon at Falcon's Point. The rest of Jake's clothes followed his shirt onto the floor, and he and Molly tumbled onto the bed, tangled together, awkward and laughing with the urgent excitement of the moment.
Jake took certain challenges very seriously, and from Molly's ardent response over the ensuing hour, he thought that he had indeed managed to distinguish himself.
Later, they lay entwined with the white cotton sheet, enjoying the warm night breeze and the novelty of lying quietly in each other's arms.
“I wanted to ask you something,” Molly said. Her voice had a warmth that Jake had never heard before, but liked very much. “What did you mean yesterday, when you talked about the scars of others teaching us caution? You were quoting someone.”
Jake nodded. “Saint Jerome. I stumbled across the line a few years ago, and it always seemed like good advice.”
“Is it? Whose scars made you cautious?”
“My father's,” Jake said. It was not his ideal conversation to have after an hour of amazingly good sex, but he had barged in on Molly's own family problems, so he probably owed her a little disclosure in return. “He was a commercial developer in Miami, and one of his partners got caught in a crooked land deal with a state senator. The investigation lasted months, and it was a media circus. The papers printed everything they could find that made Dad look sleazy, including details of an old affair that my mother wasn't very happy to learn about. Dad was basically a good guy, but the stress and the shame just broke him. He had a stroke at the office, and died in the hospital a couple of days later. They cleared him posthumously of all charges.”
“I'm very sorry,” Molly said seriously. “Your poor mother.”
Jake nodded. “It was a bad time. Most developers—even big ones—are living on their next loan. The whole house of cards collapsed when Dad died, and we lost everything. I had to quit school, and my girlfriend, who I wanted to marry, decided that the ‘for richer or for poorer’ clause didn't really work for her.”
Molly chuckled, suddenly. “Oops,” she said.
He grinned. “Yeah, oops is right.”
“Did you love her very much?”
“I thought so. But I was twenty, so what the hell did I know? It was just as well. I started Berenger Corporation a couple of years after that, and then for a long time I was too busy for a wife. She probably would've gotten fed up and left me anyway.”
“So you held a grudge against the media?”
“Not a rational one. They're just people trying to sell newspapers, after all. But after I saw firsthand how they could suddenly go for your throat, I never felt like making personal contact.”
“Until now.”
“I still don't feel like it,” Jake said. “But I do what I have to do. The company is my first priority.”
Molly snuggled against him and yawned.
“It's late,” he said. “I should go back to my own room.”
“Should you?”
“Or I could stay here.” He was warm and comfortable, and didn't feel inclined to move.
She nodded agreement. “That's a better idea.”
“I have to leave at dawn, though.”
“That's fine,” Molly said. “Tiptoe on your way out, have a good trip, and I like my chocolate without almonds.”
O
n Monday morning, shortly before Jake's plane landed in Miami, Atlas Group publicly announced their hostile bid to acquire Berenger Corporation for the price of eighteen dollars and fifty cents per share, roughly two dollars more than the stock's value at the time that the news broke. Ed Thatcher had grown tired of stall tactics.
Berenger stock jumped a point as the market reacted to the news, but then leveled off, reflecting a general opinion that Atlas's takeover attempt would be successful.
“Berenger's business is in trouble,” Ed Thatcher announced to the press, who replayed the clip throughout the day. “Time is not on their side.”
Jake had been expecting it sooner or later, but he had hoped for later. Operation Family Man was starting to show results, and the stock had been creeping slowly upward over the past two weeks. The campaign was working, but not quickly enough.
He canceled his morning meeting and spent the day doing live and taped interviews for the cable news channels, reacting to Ed's comments and repeating the same message over and over for each network. “Berenger has weathered the economic downturn better than our competitors, and we're poised for a strong comeback as the economy recovers. Atlas Group's offer undervalues the company assets, and we advise shareholders to reject it.”
He was still at headquarters at ten
P.M.
, finishing up a discussion with the inside directors, and by the time that the group dispersed, his voice was almost gone. His head ached, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten anything. He was due back at the office at six
A.M.
for a live broadcast on CNBC's
Wake Up Call,
which was likely to kick off another fifteen-hour workday.
Somehow, he managed to drive himself home. He did not have live-in staff, preferring to fend for himself after hours. One of the housekeepers had left lasagna in the refrigerator for him, and he cut and ate a square of it cold, too hungry to bother with the microwave. He fast-forwarded through his voice mail, noting that he had messages from Tom, Molly, Susan, and his mother. None of them sounded like emergencies. Tomorrow, if he was lucky, he would have time to deal with personal business, but at that moment, the only thing he cared about was sleep.
By Wednesday, Molly was disturbed to have heard nothing at all from Jake. It wasn't that she suddenly expected him to start writing ballads for her just because they'd slept together, but she would have appreciated a quick phone call to say hello. She found herself growing more and more anxious that she had misinterpreted the level of passion between them that night—it was a painful possibility that the intensity she'd felt had been one-sided. If that was so, she knew that she would not be the first—or the last—woman to have made a fool of herself over Jake Berenger.