This Heart Of Mine

Chapter 23

Oh, boy… Molly stalled as long as she could-brushing her teeth, splashing water on her face, straightening her tank top, and retying the drawstring on her pajama bottoms. She half expected him to charge in after her, but apparently he didn't see the need, since the window had been painted shut and the only other way out was through him.

A bath was too much to hope for. Besides, it was way past time to face the music. She'd edged open the door and saw him leaning against the opposite wall ready to pounce. "Uh… what were you saying?"

He carved out the words with his teeth. "Would you care to explain why, when I walked down to the beach after breakfast this morning, I found a dead tuna floating in the lake?"

"A change in fish migration patterns?"

He grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the front room. Another bad sign. At least in the bedroom she'd have had a fighting chance.

"I seriously doubt that migration patterns are going to change enough for a saltwater fish to end up in a freshwater lake!" He pushed her down onto the couch.

She should have gone back to the lake last night and fished out the fish, but she'd assumed they'd stay where they were until they sank. They probably would have if it hadn't been for the storm.

Okay, enough messing around. Time for some righteous indignation. "Really, Kevin, just because I happen to be brighter than you doesn't mean I know everything about fish."

Probably not her best strategy, because his words bristled with splinters. "Are you going to look me in the eye and tell me you don't know anything about how a tuna got in that lake?"

"Well…"

"Or that you don't know why Eddie Dillard came up to me this morning and told me he wasn't going to buy the campground after all?"

"He did?"

"And what do you think he said to me before he drove away?"

"Just a guess: 'You duh man'?"

His eyebrows shot up and his voice grew as soft as an assassin's footsteps. "No, Molly, he didn't say that. What he said was 'Get some help, man!' "

She winced.

"Now what do you suppose he meant?"

"What was it he said again?" she croaked.

"Exactly what did you tell him?"

She fell back on the Calebow kids' technique. "Why do you think I told him something? There are lots of people here who could have said something to him-Troy, Amy, Charlotte Long. It's not fair, Kevin. Every time something happens around here, you blame me."

"And why do you think that might be?"

"I have no idea."

He leaned down, braced both his hands on her knees, and brought his face inches from hers. "Because I've got your number. And I've got all day."

"Yes, well, I don't." She licked her lips and studied his earlobe, perfect just like the rest of him, except for a small red tooth mark she was fairly sure she'd put there. "Who fixed breakfast this morning?"

"I did." He spoke softly, but the pressure on her knees didn't ease. He definitely wasn't letting her up. "Then Amy came in and helped me. Are you done stalling?"

"No… yes-I don't know!" She tried to move her legs, but they weren't going anywhere. "I didn't want you to sell the campground, that's all."

"Tell me something I don't know."

"Eddie Dillard is a fool."

"I know that, too." He stood up, but he didn't back away. "What else have you got?"

She tried to stand herself so she could let him have it, but she was pinned in by his body. It made her so agitated she wanted to scream. "If you know that, how could you have done this in the first place? How could you have stood there and let him talk about painting the cottages brown? About tearing down this cottage-the cottage you're standing in right now!-and then turning the B &B into a bait shop?"

"He could only do those things if I sold the campground to him."

"If you-" She whipped her legs around him and jumped up. "What are you saying? Omigod, Kevin, what do you mean?"

"First I want to hear about the tuna."

She gulped. The moment she'd conceived her plan, she'd known she'd have to tell him the truth. She'd just hoped it wouldn't be quite so soon. "All right." She backed away a few steps. "Yesterday I bought some fish at the market, and last night I put them in the lake, and then I woke up Eddie and took him to see them."

A pause. "And you told him what exactly?"

She made eye contact with his elbow and talked as fast as she could. "That an underground chemical dump was leaking into the lake and killing all the fish."

"An underground chemical dump?"

"Uh-huh."

"An underground chemical dump!"

She took another quick step backward. "Could we talk about something else?"

Oh, jeez, that made his eyes flash fourteen different shades of mad. "Eddie didn't happen to notice that some of those fish shouldn't have been in a freshwater lake?"

"It was dark, and I didn't let him have a really good look." Another quick step backward.

Countered by a quick step forward from him. "And how did you explain away my trying to sell him a fishing camp on a contaminated lake?"

Her nerves snapped. "Stop looking at me like that!"

"Like I might wrap my hands around your neck and squeeze?"

"Except you can't, because I'm your boss's sister."

"Which only means I need to come up with something that doesn't leave marks."

"Sex! There are couples who think that having sex when they get really angry with each other is a turn-on."

"And you know this how? Never mind, I'm going to take your word for it." He reached out and snared the front of her top.

"Uh… Kev…" She licked her lips and gazed up into those glittering green eyes.

He splayed his hand across her bottom. "I seriously suggest you don't call me that. And I seriously suggest you don't try to stop this either, because I really, really need to do something physical to you." He shoved himself against her. "And everything else I'm thinking about will put me in jail."

"O-okay. That's fair." As soon as she was naked, she'd let him know what else she'd said to Eddie.

But then his mouth crushed hers, and she stopped thinking altogether.

He didn't have the patience to take off his own clothes, but he stripped her, then slammed and locked the bedroom door in case any little Calebows decided to come visit their Auntie M.

"On that bed. Right now."

Oh, yes. As fast as she could get there.

"Open your legs."

Yes, sir.

"Wider."

She gave him a couple of inches.

"Don't make me have to ask you again."

She slid up her knees. It would never be like this for her again. Never again would she feel so absolutely safe with a dangerous man.

She heard the sound of his zipper. A rough growl. "How do you want it?"

"Oh, shut up." She reached out and opened her arms. "Shut up and come here."

Seconds later she felt his weight settling over her. He was still angry, she knew that, but it didn't stop him from touching her in all the places she loved to be touched.

His voice was low and husky, and his breath stirred a lock of hair near her ear. "You're making me crazy, you know that, don't you?"

She pressed her cheek to his hard jaw. "I know. I'm sorry."

His voice grew softer and tighter. "It can't-we can't keep…"

She bit her lip and held him tight. "I know that, too."

He might not understand that this was going to be the last time, but she did. He drove deep and high inside her, just the way he knew she liked. Her body arched. She found her rhythm and gave him everything. Just once more. Just this one last time.

Usually, when it was over, he drew her onto his chest, and they cuddled and talked. Who'd been more magnificent, her or him? Who'd made the most noise? Why Glamour was superior to Sports Illustrated. But this morning they didn't play. Instead, Kevin turned away, and Molly slipped into the bathroom to clean up and dress.

The air was still damp from the storm, so she pulled a sweatshirt over her shorts and top. He was waiting on the screen porch, Roo at his feet. Steam curled from his coffee mug as he gazed out into the woods. She huddled deeper into the warmth of the sweatshirt. "Are you ready to hear the rest of it?"

"I guess I'd better be."

She made herself look at him. "I told Eddie that even though you were selling this place, you were still emotionally attached to it, and you couldn't stand the thought of something happening to the lake. Because of that, you were in denial about it being contaminated. I said you weren't deliberately deceiving him; you couldn't help it."

"And he believed this?"

"He's stupider than dirt, and I was pretty convincing." She trudged through the rest of it. "Then I said you had a mental problem-I'm really sorry about that-and I promised I'd make sure you got psychiatric help."

"A mental problem?"

"It was all I could come up with."

"Other than butting out of my business?" He slammed down his mug, sending coffee sloshing over the table.

"I couldn't do that."

"Why not? Who gave you permission to run my life?"

"No one. But…"

His temper had a long fuse, but now it fired. "What's with you and this place?"

"It's not me, Kevin, it's you! You've lost both your parents, and you're determined to keep Lilly at arm's length. You don't have any brothers and sisters-any extended family at all. Staying connected with your heritage is important, and this campground is all you have!"

"I don't care about my heritage! And, believe me, I have a lot more than this campground!"

"What I'm trying to say is-"

"I have millions of dollars I haven't been stupid enough to give away-let's start with that! I have cars, a luxury house, a stock portfolio that'll keep me smiling for a long time. And guess what else I have? I have a career that I wouldn't let an army of self-serving do-gooders steal from me."

She clenched her hands together. "What do you mean by that?"

"Explain something to me. Explain how you justify spending so much time minding my business instead of taking care of your own?"

"I do take care of it."

"When? For two weeks you've been plotting and scheming over this campground instead of putting your energy where it belongs. You have a career that's going down the toilet. When are you going to start fighting the good fight for your rabbit instead of lying down and playing dead?"

"I haven't done that! You don't know what you're talking about."

"You know what I think? I think your obsession with my life and this campground is just a way of distracting yourself from what you need to be doing with your own life."

How had he managed to turn the conversation? "You don't understand anything. Daphne Takes a Tumble is the first book on a new contract. They won't accept anything else from me until I revise it."

"You don't have any guts."

"That's not true! I did all I could to convince my editor she'd made a mistake, but Birdcage won't budge."

"Hannah told me about Daphne Takes a Tumble. She said it's your best book. Too bad she'll be the only kid who gets to read it." He gestured toward the notepad she'd left on the couch. "Then there's the new one you're working on. Daphne Goes to Summer Camp."

"How do you know about-"

"You're not the only sneak. I've read your draft. Other than some blatant unfairness to the badger, it looks like you've got another winner. But nobody can publish it unless you follow orders. And are you doing that? No. Are you even forcing the issue? No. Instead, you're letting yourself drift along in some never-never land where none of your troubles are real, only mine."

"You don't understand!"

"You're right about that. I never did understand quitters."

"That's not fair! I can't win. If I make the revisions, I've sold out and I'll hate myself. If I don't make them, the Daphne books are going to disappear. The publisher will never reprint the old ones, and they sure won't publish any new ones. No matter what I do, I'll lose, and losing's not an option."

"Losing isn't as bad as not fighting at all."

"Yes it is. The women in my family don't lose."

He gazed at her for a long time. "Unless I'm missing something, there's only one other woman in your family."

"And look what she did!" Agitation forced her to move. "Phoebe held on to the Stars when everybody in the world had written her off. She faced down all of her enemies-"

"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."