"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."

Chapter 24

It's a bunny-eat-bunny world. Anonymous children's book editor

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."