This Heart of Mine (33 page)

"Married one of them."

"—and beat them at their own game. Those men thought she was a bimbo and wrote her off. She was never supposed to have ended up with the Stars, but she did."

"Everybody in the football world admires her for it. So what does this have to do with you?"

She turned away. He already knew, and he wasn't going to make her say it.

"Come on, Molly! I want to hear those whiny words come out of your mouth so I can have a big cry."

"Go to hell!"

"Okay, I'll say it for you. You won't fight for your books because you might fail, and you're so competitive with your sister that you can't risk that."

"I'm not competitive with Phoebe. I love her!"

"I don't doubt that. But your sister is one of the most powerful women in professional sports, and you're a screwup."

"I am not!"

"Then stop acting like one."

"You don't understand."

"I'm starting to understand a lot." He circled his hand over the back of one of the farmhouse chairs. "As a matter of fact, I think I've finally got it."

"Got what? Never mind, I don't want to know." She headed for the kitchen, but he moved in front of her before she could get there.

"That thing with the fire alarm. Dan talks about what a quiet, serious kid you were. The good grades you got, all the awards you earned. You've spent your whole life trying to be perfect, haven't you? Getting to the top of the honor roll, collecting good-conduct medals like other kids collect baseball cards. But then something happens. Out of nowhere the pressure gets to you, and you flip out. You pull a fire alarm, you give away your money, you jump in bed with a total stranger!" He shook his head. "I can't believe I didn't see it right away. I can't believe nobody else sees it."

"Sees what?"

"Who you really are."

"Like you'd know."

"All that perfection. It's not in your nature."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the person you'd have been if you'd grown up in a normal family."

She didn't know what he was going to say, but she knew he believed it, and she suddenly wanted to run away.

He loomed in the door between her and escape. "Don't you see? Your nature was to be the class clown, the girl who ditched school so she could smoke pot with her boyfriend and make out in the backseat of his car."

"What?"

"The girl most likely to skip college and—and run off to Vegas to parade around in a G-string."

"A G-string! That's the most—"

"You're not Bert Somerville's daughter." He let out a bark of rueful laughter. "Damn! You're your mother's daughter. And everybody's been too blind to see it."

She sagged down on the glider. This was silly. The mental meanderings of someone who'd spent too much time inside an MRI machine. He was trying to take everything she understood about who she was and turn it topsy-turvy. "You have no idea what you're—"

Just like that, she ran out of air.

"What you're—" She tried to say the rest, but she couldn't because deep inside her something finally clicked into place.

The class clown… The girl most likely to ditch school…

"It's not only that you're afraid to take a risk because you're competing with Phoebe. You're afraid to take a risk because you're still living with the illusion that you have
to
be perfect. And, Molly, trust me on this, being perfect isn't in your nature."

She needed to think, but she couldn't do it under those watchful green eyes. "I'm not—I don't even recognize this person you're talking about."

"Give it a few seconds, and I bet you will."

It was too much.
He
was the bonehead, not her. "You're just trying to distract me from pointing out everything that's screwed up about you."

"There's nothing screwed up about me. Or at least there wasn't until I met you."

"Is that right?" She told herself to shut up, this wasn't the time, but everything she'd been thinking and trying not to say spilled out. "What about the fact that you're afraid to make any kind of emotional connection?"

"If this is about Lilly…"

"Oh, no. That's way too easy. Even someone as obtuse as you should be able to figure that out. Why don't we look at something more complicated?"

"Why don't we not?"

"Isn't it a little weird that you're thirty-three years old, you're rich, moderately intelligent, you look like a Greek god, and you're definitely heterosexual. But what's wrong with this picture? Oh, yeah, I remember… You've never had a single long-term relationship with a woman."

"Aw, for the… " He sprawled down at the table.

"What's with that anyway?"

"How do you even know it's true?"

"Team gossip, the newspapers, that article about us in
People
. If you ever did have a long-term relationship, it must have been in junior high. Lots of women move through your life, but none of them gets to stay around for long."

"There's one of them who's been around way too long!"

"And look at what kind of women you choose." She splayed her hands on the table. "Do you choose smart women who might have a chance of holding your interest? Or respectable women who share at least a few of your—and don't even
think
about arguing with me about this—a few of your rock-bottom-conservative values? Well, surprise, surprise. None of the above."

"Here we go with the foreign women again. I swear, you're obsessed."

"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.

Stop!

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."

It's true. Guys don't think the same way girls do, and this can lead to trouble.

"When Guys Won't Listen"

for Chik

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.
Home
.

Two miserable weeks later Molly stepped from the elevator onto the ninth floor of the Michigan Avenue office building that held the offices of Birdcage Press. She retied the cardigan around the waist of her red-and-white checked gingham sheath and made her way down the corridor to Helen Kennedy Schott's office. Molly had long ago passed the point where she could turn back, and she only hoped the concealer she'd dabbed under her eyes hid the shadows.

Helen rose to greet her from behind a desk cluttered with manuscripts, galleys, and book covers. Even though the weather was muggy, she was dressed in her customary editorial black. Her short gray hair lay neatly against her head, and although she wore no makeup, her nails shone with slick crimson polish. "Molly, it's wonderful to see you again. I'm so glad you finally called. I'd nearly given up trying to get hold of you."

"It's good to see you," Molly replied politely, because no matter what Kevin said about her, she was,
by nature
, a polite person.

A strip of the Chicago River was visible through the office window, but the colorful display of children's books on the shelves drew Molly's attention. As Helen chatted about the new marketing manager, Molly spotted the bright slender spines of the first five Daphne books. Knowing that
Daphne Takes a Tumble
would never join them should have felt like a stab in the heart, but that part of her was too numb right now to feel anything more.

"I'm so glad we're finally having this meeting," Helen said. "We have lots to talk about."

"Not so much." Molly couldn't prolong this. She opened her purse, drew out a white business envelope, and set it on the desk. "This is a check reimbursing Birdcage for the first half of the advance you paid for
Daphne Takes a Tumble
."

Helen looked stunned. "We don't want the advance back. We want to publish the book."

"I'm afraid you won't be able to. I'm not making the revisions."

"Molly, I know you haven't been happy with us, and it's time to sort this out. From the beginning we've only wanted what was best for your career."

"I only want what's best for my readers."

"We do, too. Please try to understand. Authors tend to look at a project only from their perspective, but a publisher has to look at the larger picture, including our relationship with the press and the community. We felt we had no choice."

"Everybody has a choice, and an hour ago I exercised mine."

"What do you mean?"

"I published
Daphne Takes a Tumble
myself. The original version."

"You published it?" Helen's eyebrows shot up. "What are you talking about?"

"I published it on the Internet."

Helen erupted from her chair. "You can't do that! We have a contract!"

"If you check the fine print, you'll see that I retain the electronic rights to all my books."

Helen looked stunned. The larger publishing houses had plugged this hole in their contracts, but some of the smaller presses like Birdcage hadn't gotten around to it. "I can't believe you did this."

"Now any child who wants to read
Daphne Takes a Tumble
and see the original illustrations will be able to do it." Molly had planned a big speech, complete with references to book burning and the First Amendment, but she no longer had the energy. Pushing the check forward, she rose from her chair and walked out.

"Molly, wait!"

She'd done what she needed to, and she didn't stop. As she headed for her car, she tried to feel triumphant, but she mainly felt drained. A college friend had helped her set up the Web site. In addition to the text and drawings for
Daphne Takes a Tumble
, Molly had included a page that listed some of the books various organizations had tried to keep out of children's hands over the years because of their content or illustrations. The list included
Little Red Riding Hood
, all the Harry Potter books, Madeleine L'Engle's
A Wrinkle in Time, Harriet the Spy, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn
, as well as the books of Judy Blume, Maurice Sendak, the Brothers Grimm, and Anne Frank's
Diary of a Young Girl
. At the end of the list, Molly had added
Daphne Takes a Tumble
. She wasn't Anne Frank, but she felt better being in such wonderful company. She only wished she could call Kevin and tell him that she'd finally fought for her bunny.

She made a few stops to pick up supplies, then swung onto Lake Shore Drive and headed north to Evanston. The traffic was light, and it didn't take her nearly long enough to get to the moldy old brownstone where she now lived. She hated her second-floor apartment with its view of the Dumpster behind a Thai restaurant, but it was the only place she could afford that would take a dog.

She tried not to think about her little condo, where strangers had already moved in. Evanston didn't have many loft conversions available, and the building had a waiting list of people anxious to buy, so she'd known it would sell quickly. Even so, she hadn't been prepared for it to go in less than twenty-four hours. The new owners had paid her a premium to sublease while they waited for the final paperwork, so she'd had to scramble to find a rental, and here she was in this dismal building. But she had the money to repay her advance and settle her bills.

She parked on the street two blocks away because her Slytherin landlord charged seventy dollars a month for a parking spot in the lot attached to the building. As she climbed the worn steps to her apartment, the El tracks shrieked just outside the windows. Roo greeted her at the door, then scampered across the worn linoleum and began to bark at the sink.

"Not again."

The apartment was so small that she had no place for her books, and she crawled over the packing boxes on her way to the kitchen sink. She gingerly opened the door, peered inside, and shuddered. Another mouse quivered in her Hav-A-Heart trap. The third one she'd caught, and she'd lived here for only a few days.

Maybe she could get another
Chik
article out of this—"Why Guys Who Hate Small Animals Aren't Always Bad News." Her cooking piece had just gone into the mail. At first she'd called it "Breakfasts That Won't Make Him Puke: Scramble His Brains with Your Eggs." Just before she'd slipped it into the envelope, she'd come to her senses and substituted "Early-Morning Turn-ons."

She was writing every day. As devastated as she was about everything, she hadn't given up and gone to bed the way she'd done after her miscarriage. Instead, she was facing her pain and doing her best to live through it. But her heart had never felt emptier.

She missed Kevin so much. Each night she lay in bed staring at the ceiling and remembering how his arms had felt around her. But it had been so much more than sex. He'd understood her better than she'd understood herself, and he'd been her soul mate in every way but the one that counted. He didn't love her.

With a sigh that came from the bottom of her being, she set aside her purse, slipped on the gardening gloves she'd bought along with the trap, and warily reached under the sink for the handle on the small cage. At least her bunny was hopping free and happy in cyberspace. Which was more than she could say about the rodent.

She let out a squeak as the frightened mouse started scampering around the cage. "Please don't do that. Just be quiet, and I promise I'll have you in the park before you know it." Where was a man when you needed one?

Her heart contracted in another achy spasm. The couple Kevin had hired to take over at the campground would be in place by now, so he was probably back in town partying with the international set.
Please, God, don't let him be sleeping with any of them. Not yet
.

Lilly had left several messages on her answering machine wanting to know if Molly was all right, but she still hadn't returned them. What could she say? That she'd had to sell her condo? That she'd lost her publisher? That her heart had suffered a permanent break? At least she could afford an attorney now, so she had a shot at being able to get out of her contract and sell her next Daphne book to another publisher.

She held the cage as far away as she could and retrieved her keys. She was on her way to the door when the buzzer sounded. The mouse had given her the heebie-jeebies, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

"Just a minute."

Still holding the cage at arm's length, she stepped around another book box and opened the door.

Helen charged inside. "Molly, you ran out before we could talk. Oh, God!"

"Helen, meet Mickey."

Helen pressed her hand to her heart, the color bleaching from her face. "A pet?"

"Not exactly." Molly set the cage on a packing box, but Roo didn't like that. "Quiet, pest! I'm afraid this isn't the best time for a visit, Helen. I have to go to the park."

"You're taking it on an outing?"

"Releasing it."

"I'll—I'll come with you."

Molly should have enjoyed seeing her sophisticated former editor so discomposed, but the mouse had discomposed her, too. With the cage held far from her body, she led the way outside and began winding through the back alleys of downtown Evanston toward the park by the lake. Helen, in her black suit and heels, wasn't dressed for either the heat or stumbling around potholes, but Molly hadn't invited her to come along, so she refused to take pity.

"I didn't know you'd moved," Helen called from behind. "Luckily, I ran into one of your neighbors, and he gave me your new address. C-couldn't you release it somewhere closer?"

"I don't want him to find his way back."

"Or use a more permanent trap?"

"Absolutely not."

Although it was a weekday, the park was filled with bicyclists, college students on Rollerblades, and children. Molly found a grassy area and set the cage down, then hesitantly reached for the latch. As soon as she sprang it, Mickey made his leap for freedom.

Straight toward Helen.

Her editor gave a strangled cry and leaped up on a picnic bench. Mickey disappeared into the shrubbery.

"Beastly things." Helen sagged down on the tabletop.

Molly was feeling a little wobbly-kneed, too, so she sat on the bench. Beyond the edge of the park, Lake Michigan stretched to the horizon. She gazed out and thought of a smaller lake with a cliff for diving.

Helen pulled a tissue from her purse and dabbed at her forehead. "There's just something about a mouse."

There were no mice in Nightingale Woods. Molly'd have to add one if she ever found a new publisher.

She gazed at her old editor. "If you've come here to threaten me with a lawsuit, you're not going to get much."

"Why would we want to sue our favorite author?" Helen pulled out the envelope that held Molly's check and set it on the bench. "I'm giving this back. And when you look inside, you'll see a second check for the remainder of your advance. Really, Molly, you should have told me how strongly you felt about the revisions. I'd never have asked you to make them."

Molly didn't even try to respond to that piece of Slytherin crapola. Nor did she pick up the envelope.

Helen's tone grew more effusive. "We're going to publish
Daphne Takes a Tumble
in its original version. I'm putting it on the winter schedule so we have time to line up promotion. We're planning an extensive marketing campaign, with full-page ads in all the big parenting magazines, and we're sending you on a book tour."

Molly wondered if the sun had gotten to her. "
Daphne Takes a Tumble
is already available on the Internet."

"We'd like you to remove it, but we'll leave the final decision up to you. Even if you decide to keep the Web site, we believe most parents will still want to buy the actual book to add to their children's collections."

Molly couldn't imagine how she'd been so magically transformed from a minor author to a major one. "I'm afraid you'll need to do better than this, Helen."

"We're prepared to renegotiate your contract. I'm sure you'll be pleased with the terms."

Molly had been asking for an explanation, not for more money, but she somehow got in touch with her inner tycoon. "You'll have to deal with my new agent about that."