by Sarah Morgan
“I’d love to, but Lucas is locked in front of his computer and I have some work I need to do. Another time? Call me if you need anything else.” Eva vanished and Daniel closed the door and turned to Molly. The look he gave her made her head swim.
“Daniel—”
“Are you afraid of me, or yourself?”
“Excuse me?” She was beginning to wish she hadn’t drunk the wine on an empty stomach.
“You invited Eva to join us because you didn’t want to be alone with me, but you didn’t need to do that.” He walked to the kitchen and put the food down on the counter. “When we eventually take this further it will be because you’re ready and because you want it as much as I do. And that isn’t going to be when you’re feeling fragile and vulnerable.”
“I’m not vulnerable.”
“Valentine is sick and you’re staying in the apartment of a man you barely know. That makes you vulnerable.”
“Maybe. A little.” It was the truth. Why deny it?
“You don’t need Eva to protect you from me, Molly.” He spoke softly. “When we get together it’s going to be because of what we’re feeling for each other, and nothing else.”
The fact that he made it sound like a foregone conclusion made her heart bump against her chest.
She should probably argue, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead she chose a safe topic. “I didn’t know you knew Eva.”
His eyes held hers for a moment and then he gave a faint smile and accepted the change. “I don’t know her that well. Eva, Frankie and Paige run Urban Genie. I happen to be friendly with Paige’s brother, so when I found out they were offering event and concierge services, I put them in touch with Fliss and Harriet. Plenty of people in Manhattan need dog walking. I’ve seen more of Eva since she moved in with Lucas, my neighbor.”
She blinked. “Small world.”
“It is. But she’s gone back to her little world, leaving us in ours. So here’s what I suggest. We’re going to pretend we’ve forgotten about that kiss. If I don’t look at your mouth, and you don’t look at mine, I figure we might manage it. We’ll ignore the chemistry and the fact that keeping my hands off you is becoming a challenge, and tonight we’ll focus on getting to know each other a little better.”
“You’re right. We should forget about it totally.” Except that trying not to think about the kiss made it the only thing in her head.
“I never said anything about forgetting it totally.” His eyes gleamed. “I have every intention of revisiting it once you’re not anxious and worried and thinking about Valentine.”
“We won’t be revisiting it.” But she liked the fact that he didn’t say “your dog.” He made it seem as if he cared.
“I like you, Molly.” His honesty was disarming. “I liked you enough to borrow a dog to get to meet you.”
“You hadn’t spoken to me then, so you couldn’t have known you liked me.”
“I admit that it might have been your legs I noticed first. And your hair—the way it swings. I want to pull it down and—never mind.” His voice was raw. “It doesn’t matter what I want to do with it.”
“You borrowed a dog because you liked my hair?”
“And the way you ran. As if you were killing the tarmac. Damn it, can we talk about something else?” He paced back to the kitchen, grabbed plates of food and took them to the table in the living room. “Have you ever been to Antarctica?”
“No.” She was startled by the question. “Have you?”
“No.”
“But you want to? Why mention it?”
“Because I was trying to have cold thoughts. I started off thinking of crushed ice in a margarita but it wasn’t enough. Neither was winter in New York. I was trying Antarctica, but I think I might have to give in and settle for a cold shower. No, don’t sit next to me—” he gestured with his hand “—sit across from me. I feel safer with a table of food in between us.”
Unsettled and more than a little flattered, she sat down.
The sofas were deep and comfortable and had been arranged to make the most of the view. This late, all she could see was darkness and sparkle.
“I always wondered how it would feel to have a view of the park.”
“It feels good. When I have time to look at it.” He added a few more things to a plate and handed it to her. “Eat. And tell me about Valentine. How did you find him?”
She hesitated and then slid off her shoes and curled her legs under her. “I’d been in New York for a couple of months, and I came across him in the park. Someone had dumped him. I took him to the vet, then to the adoption center and then I realized I didn’t want anyone else to have him.”
“You’d never owned a dog before?”
Her heart started to beat a little faster. “I had a dog as a child. His name was Toffee. He was a chocolate Lab. I adored him.”
“It’s always hard to lose a pet.”
All she had to do was nod and move on. She didn’t have to correct his misunderstanding, but for some reason she wanted to.
“Toffee didn’t die—at least, not then. My mother took him.”
“Took him?”
“When she left.” She leaned forward and cut a thin slice of cheese. She added it to her plate, along with some plump tomatoes and one of Eva’s mini quiches. “Turned out that although she could easily live without my father or me, she didn’t want to lose Toffee. That was hard.”
“I can imagine. You suffered two losses at once. That’s tough on anyone. Even tougher when you’re a child.”
He understood. Not because he’d handled it in his work, but because he’d handled it himself. Maybe that was why she felt compelled to tell him things she’d never told anyone else. “It was especially hard because when she tried to explain why she was leaving, she told me she wanted to be free. But then she took Toffee.” She paused. “So what that told me was that she wanted to be free of me.” The food on her plate lay untouched.
Daniel’s lay untouched, too. He was still, his gaze fixed on her face. “Hell, Molly—”
“It’s fine. You don’t have to work out what to say. There really isn’t anything to say. I expect you hear stories like that all the time in your working day. You’re probably immune.”
“I’m not immune.” He hesitated. “This is why you don’t date?”
“No, of course not! That happened when I was eight years old and I moved on long ago. Am I wary? Of course, but so are a lot of people, yourself included. Dealing with people at the end of their marriage must tarnish your view on life.”
He looked as if he was about to say something else and then changed his mind. “Sometimes. But I try and extract the positive from every situation and help people find the best way to resolve their issues. Sometimes that’s counseling and conciliation.”
The thought made her smile. “You’re a guy who talks about his problems?”
“Talking is what I do best. I talk to clients, if necessary I talk in court, in front of a judge.”
“I’m sure you’re good at that.” She decided to confess. “I looked you up.”
“On the internet?” He seemed more amused than annoyed. “Now I understand why you were reluctant to stay on your own with me. Which piece did you read? The one where they paint me as being a cross between the Dark Knight and Gladiator, or the one where they call me the Heartbreaker?”
She thought back to what she’d read. About how he was a master at strategy, finding the weak spot in his opponent. Then she remembered her racing heart rate and her jelly legs and decided that where he was concerned, all of her was weak.
“I know better than to believe everything I read.” She thought about what he’d discover if he did an internet search on her. Maybe he already had. If he had, he wouldn’t have found anything. There was nothing out there about Molly Parker. And if he’d found out by some means, they’d be having a different conversation. “You have quite a reputation.”
“The media like to exaggerate thing
s.”
And didn’t she know it. “That’s why I read everything with a critical eye for the facts.”
“And what did your critical eye tell you?”
“That you almost always win your cases, so either you’re very, very good or you only take cases to court if you think you can win. Which probably makes you wise as well as good at what you do.”
“A contested divorce is never my first choice for anyone. Having said that, I would never recommend that anyone engage the services of a divorce attorney who is afraid to litigate in court. If you do, you have little to no bargaining power. You need someone who is prepared to fight for your best interests, but who also knows when to settle. The ideal outcome is an early resolution.”
“You settle? I would have thought you would go after victory every time.”
“‘For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.’”
“Excuse me?”
“Sun Tzu. The Art of War.”
“War? That doesn’t seem like a healthy way to view a divorce.”
“It’s about strategy and knowing your enemy. Sun Tzu was a Chinese military general. The Art of War is a masterpiece on strategy. You should be interested in it because it’s more about taking advantage of the psychological state of your enemy than in applying force.”
“So you’re telling me you’re a disciple of an ancient Chinese military general?”
“I think his ideas have relevance, yes.” He finished the food on his plate. “So if you looked me up then you probably already know everything there is to know about me. And I still know next to nothing about you.”
Her heart beat a little faster. “What do you want to know?”
“Why did you run from me in the park the other day?”
“You said we weren’t going to talk about that.”
“No, what I said was that we’ll forget about the kiss for now.” He added another slice of cheese to his plate. “I’m not asking you about the kiss. I’m asking you why you ran. You’re careful. Reserved. Cautious. You don’t allow people to get too close. I would have said that has to do with being abandoned at an impressionable age, but if that’s not the case then your reaction has to have its roots in something more recent.”
“Or maybe I didn’t feel the chemistry.”
His gaze met hers. “I think it’s because you felt the chemistry that you ran. It wasn’t because you didn’t feel, but because you felt too much.”
“Hey, I’m the psychologist.”
He put his plate down slowly. “Who hurt you, Molly?”
Her mouth dried. “What makes you think someone hurt me?”
“You live alone, your best friend is your dog and you avoid relationships. Those are the actions of someone who has been hurt. Badly hurt. And now you protect yourself. You do whatever it takes to make sure your heart doesn’t get broken again. Am I right?”
She could let him think that. She could end the conversation now.
Or she could be honest, and end the relationship.
She stared at her plate for a moment, weighing the options even though she’d known from the start that she couldn’t be less than honest.
Acknowledging that, she lifted her head. “You have the first part right. I live alone, Valentine is my best friend and I avoid romantic entanglements. But my heart wasn’t broken. You’ve got it the wrong way round,” she said slowly so that there was no misunderstanding. “I wasn’t the one who was hurt. I was the one doing the hurting. I’m not the one with the broken heart. I’m the one who does the breaking. Every time.”
Daniel stared at her. “What do you mean, ‘every time’?”
“My first proper relationship was when I was eighteen. College boyfriend. He fell in love, I didn’t. I ended it because I knew I was never going to feel the way he wanted me to and I thought it would only make it worse if we prolonged it. He was so devastated he dropped out. His parents wrote me a letter telling me that I’d ruined his future.” She could have elaborated, but she stuck to the basic facts. “After that I picked someone older. I met him in a nightclub when I was with friends. He told me he was only interested in having a good time. I believed him. Maybe he even meant it at the time.”
“He fell in love with you, too?”
“He proposed to me after six weeks with the biggest diamond you’ve seen in your life. He took out a loan to buy it.”
Daniel raised an eyebrow. “You seem to have quite an effect on men.”
“Adam was great. Really great—” She swallowed. “In theory we had everything going for us. After my experience in college, I only dated men who should have been a perfect match because I didn’t want to risk hurting anyone else. Maybe that sounds a little sterile and contrived, but it wasn’t. I was simply doing for myself what I’d always done for other people. But still the relationship didn’t work out. And believe me, I tried. I tried so hard to fall in love with him. I really worked at it. You have no idea.”
“You make it sound as if you were trying to pass the bar exam, not fall in love.” His tone was mild and she gave a little shrug.
“I accepted that falling in love probably wasn’t something that would come naturally to me. Because of my DNA.”
“Your DNA?”
“My mother wasn’t good at commitment.”
“I’m not a scientist, but I’m pretty sure that’s not genetic.”
“I’m not so sure. Anyway, after Adam, I didn’t date for a while.”
“I’m not surprised. But somehow I sense this story isn’t over.” He looked at her expectantly and she sighed.
“You might want more wine.”
“How much more?”
“Buy a vineyard.”
“Sounds like a great investment strategy.” He topped up her glass and his. “Go for it. Who was the next guy?”
“The details don’t matter. Let’s just say that despite the fact that we were perfect on paper and he was a very special person, I didn’t feel a thing. Nothing. I’ve given up now. I cannot make it happen. Basically I end every relationship I ever begin. And the last one was—ugly.”
He glanced at her. “How ugly? Ugly enough to make you leave the country?”
“Yes. And the most upsetting thing about that particular disaster was that I was really careful. I kept looking for signs that he was emotionally involved, but I didn’t see any. We had fun, but he never used the L word until the night he proposed. I almost died of shock. And I’m the one who’s supposed to understand human behavior.” She slumped on the sofa. “They call you the ‘Heartbreaker’ but I can tell you that people have much less flattering names for me.”
“You’ve surprised me. I assumed you’d fallen in love and had your heart broken.”
“I’ve never been in love. I can’t fall in love.” And it scared her. It scared her so badly. What was wrong with her? She had no idea. All she knew was that something major was missing. “Other people fall in love multiple times in their lives, and I can’t manage it even once no matter how hard I try. You don’t want to get involved with me, Daniel. I’m bad news.”
“You don’t look like bad news.” He studied her, and his slow, steady gaze warmed her from the inside out.
“Looks can be deceptive. I don’t ever want anyone to fall in love with me again, because I cannot return the feeling.” There. She’d delivered a warning, loud and clear.
He didn’t move, or shift his gaze from hers. “I’m not going to fall in love with you.”
“That’s what Adam said before he blew his savings on a ring.”
“I’m not the falling-in-love type. Seems you’re not either.”
“Apparently my heart, and my defenses, are impenetrable. I’m like the Great Wall of China, only without the tourists. You might want to remember that.” She stood up, wishing she hadn’t had that second glass of wine. “I’ll see you in the morning. And thank you again for what you did for Va
lentine.”
Eleven
The vet called first thing and Daniel answered it as he finished buttoning his shirt.
Molly had obviously heard the phone because she appeared in the doorway, her face pale and her gaze anxious. “What is it? Has something happened?”
His brief scan of the shadows under her eyes told him she hadn’t had any more sleep than he had.
She looked awful.
“He’s better. Making good progress.” Knowing that she wouldn’t be happy until she’d spoken to the vet herself, Daniel handed the phone over.
He was due in court, but he wasn’t leaving until he was sure she was all right.
He reached for a tie, listening as she asked a dozen questions. They were good questions. Thorough. Somehow she managed to keep emotion out of the conversation, although she sank down onto the edge of the bed, as if her legs would no longer hold her.
“Thank you. Thank you.” She repeated the words to the vet before finally ending the call. Then she sucked in a few deep breaths before finally lifting her head. “He’s better. Making progress. He’s going to be okay.” She looked exhausted, as if she’d used up all her strength and energy getting through that crisis.
He watched, concerned, as her eyes closed and tears appeared along the seam of her lashes.
“Hey—”
“I’m okay. Ignore me.” She pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose, trying to stem the flow. “I thought— It’s a relief, that’s all. I was afraid—”
Daniel reached down and tugged her upright, folding her against his chest. He treated it the same way he would if one of his sisters had been upset. “That isn’t going to happen. The vet says he will make a good recovery.” He felt her go limp against him. Felt her hand lock in his shirt. It took a few seconds for the feelings inside him to shift and change, and to realize that holding Molly was nothing like holding his sisters.
He’d only intended to comfort her, but apparently his body wasn’t capable of removing the sexual attraction part.
He stood still, thinking that this was a really, really bad moment to get an erection.
He eased away as she stepped back.