A Winning Battle

by Carla Neggers

  “Okay. All I want is your respect.”

  He smiled. “You’ve got it. Have I got yours?”

  She sighed and smiled back. “Yes.”

  “But you and I both know that what we do isn’t going to save the world. I try to give people a chuckle and maybe even something to think about over their morning coffee or on their subway ride to work. You try to help people make the best use of their available time, space and money. Our work gives us satisfaction and it’s not dope dealing, but—”

  “It’s not brain surgery, either.”

  “Right.”

  “So I shouldn’t take myself so seriously?”

  He slipped his arm around her waist. “Let’s just say I think you should cut yourself some slack once in a while.”

  She laughed. “And you, too?”

  “Definitely!”

  “Well,” she said, patting his hand on her waist, “I have to admit it wasn’t just because I thought you were going to poke fun at my work that made me feel self-conscious.”

  He loved the feel of her under his arm and wanted to get closer, much closer. “No?”

  “Uh-uh. It was also because every time I looked over and saw those dark gray eyes of yours, I thought about this weekend and...well, it was very distracting.”

  “Good,” he said, and dropped his arms so she would have complete freedom to pick which way she wanted to turn.

  She turned left.

  * * *

  Page didn’t know why she hadn’t told Chris she didn’t have time to visit and gone straight home. It was late. She was tired. She was still confused and, if not irritated, at least unsettled. Out of control. She wasn’t sure what she’d do next—what he’d do. To cover for her uneasiness, she said she was hungry and pulled open Chris’s refrigerator. It was not well stocked. She felt his gaze on her as she rummaged around for something to eat.

  “Beer, hot dogs, o.j. What’s in the jar? It looks like cornmeal.”

  “It is.”

  She glanced up at him, leaning against the stove as he watched her. “Stone-ground, huh?”

  “Makes the best corn bread and hush puppies. Not Concord food, I know, but who cares? It suits me. As far as I’m concerned, no kitchen is complete without stone-ground cornmeal.”

  “Why’s it in a jar?”

  ‘There’s some kind of weird leak inside the fridge. I didn’t want the package to get wet.”

  “Why don’t you get the leak fixed?”

  “Not worth it. I’ll just wait and buy a whole new fridge one of these days. It’s been doing it for about five years, so I’m used to it.”

  Page sighed. She couldn’t have tolerated a leaky refrigerator for more than a few days. She stuck her head back in the fridge and, pushing aside a jar of plain golden mustard, seized a carton of yogurt. “Great, just what I feel like.”

  But when she’d shut the refrigerator door, Chris was shaking his head. “I wouldn’t if I were you.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  He pointed. “Check the date.”

  “January 9? But it’s almost April!”

  “I don’t eat yogurt. Some friend left it here.”

  “And you just haven’t gotten around to tossing it.”

  He grinned without apology. “Cleaning the refrigerator isn’t high on my list of priorities.”

  “I should say.” She deposited the offending carton in the trash. In her own routines she made it a weekly practice to give her refrigerator a clean sweep, when she brought her groceries in. Before the fresh stuff went in, the old stuff went out. Simple. But she doubted Chris Battle did much of anything to simplify his life; even weekly grocery shopping was beyond his capacity for organization.

  “If you’re hungry,” he told her, “I can run over to Charles Street and fetch something.”

  “No, that’s okay. I’ll just have a beer.”

  “Allow me.”

  He got out two bottles, opening both and handed her one. “Wait, do you use a glass?”

  She smiled. “This is fine.”

  The beer was very cold and very smooth—Chris spared no expense there—and Page felt herself begin to calm down. She hated feeling so jittery, and especially being unable to pinpoint exactly why. Perhaps it was just fatigue... and the frustration of knowing she couldn’t stay.

  “Is something wrong?” Chris asked, his brow furrowing as he studied her. “Would you like to go sit down?”

  She leaned against the refrigerator and sipped her beer. “I don’t know. I’m just feeling a little jumpy.”

  He grinned, a wolfish, sexy grin that conjured up all that had passed between them over the weekend. She could almost feel his hand trailing up her inner thigh and felt a shiver as a thousand different sensations spread up her spine.

  “Why’s that?” he asked.

  “Who knows?” She sighed, suddenly feeling silly. “My God, Chris, don’t you feel like a couple of adolescents at a sock hop?”

  “Hope if we were adolescents, we wouldn’t be drinking beer and thinking about what we’re thinking about.”

  “True...”

  But his smile vanished, and he said seriously, “Page, I’m making you uncomfortable. I want to know why.”

  If only I knew why! she thought, but suggested they go sit down. She waited until he’d sat on the couch before taking the chair catty-corner to him. Her instincts, such as they were, warned her that this wasn’t the right time to snuggle up on the couch with him.

  “Well?’’ he prodded.

  She drank some beer. “I don’t know why.”

  “You’re good at sorting things out. Start sorting out what’s making you sit on that chair over there instead of beside me on the couch.”

  Flopping back against the chair, she groaned. “Am I being that obvious? All right. If I sat beside you, I know we’d end up doing everything but talking—and we need to talk. I didn’t know how much we needed to talk until I actually got up here, but now I guess I do. But I’m not sure I have my thoughts organized.”

  “Good,” he said softly.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I want the unedited, unorganized, unadulterated truth. You can plug into all your communications skills and image-making skills and all that other stuff another time—with someone else. With me you can forget about control. You don’t have to control me, and you don’t have to control yourself. Just be yourself, Page. Spit out what you have to say, and we’ll sort through it together.”

  “When you write a column, you have all your thoughts so neatly organized.”

  “That’s right, I’m supposed to. It’s my job. But you should see the garbage I have to write before I get everything written up so nice and tidily. The first draft of a thousand-word column can run ten or fifteen pages and be filled with contradictions, unsubstantiated accusations, incomplete thoughts, arguments that go nowhere, emotions that have no place in what I’m doing, inappropriate language—you name it. But I don’t worry about it. Nobody’s going to see it but me or someone I trust.”

  She licked her lips and sat up, resting her beer bottle on her knee and picking at the label. “What you’re asking me to do, then, is to trust you.”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

  “And you think you’ve earned that trust?”

  “Maybe not. But how do you know when someone has earned the right to be trusted? You won’t know until you’ve gone ahead and trusted them and then been burned...or not burned. To trust is an act of faith.”

  She nodded, meeting his gaze. “A risk.”

  “What’s the worst that could happen to you if you trust me?”

  “You could betray that trust.”

  “How?”

  “By not accepting what I feel and think as being valid, by not accepting me for who and what I am. The more honest and frank I am with you about my deepest fears and emotions, the more I’ll have to lose if and when you leave.”

  “Aha. The more you invest in w
hat we have here, the more you’ll lose if it doesn’t work out. Invest less, lose less. That’s the risk, isn’t it? With money you can make a calculated gamble. With romance—not so easy, is it? You can’t have a falling-in-love plan the way you can have an investment plan. You’ve got to just roll with it. Maybe you can put your money in an account and know you’re going to get eight-percent interest compounded whenever and however, but you can’t know in advance a relationship is going to work out.”

  She looked at him with an expression that she was positive betrayed no indication she was going to back down. “Maybe not, but you can minimize your risk.”

  “In a word, humbug.”

  Obviously, she thought, she didn’t intimidate him any more than he intimidated her: he felt awfully damn free to argue with her! “You can,” she insisted. “Take me, for example. If I put my mind to it, I could only go out with men who fit, at least loosely, my idea of what the right kind of man for me is.”

  Chris scoffed. “How can you know the right kind of man if you haven’t met him yet?”

  “By looking at who I am. Don’t you have a conception of who the right woman for you is?”

  “No.”

  “It’s amazing you haven’t had a dozen wives,” she said, teasing him.

  “Maybe, but people are people. You can’t design a person for yourself the way you can a living room. Are you actually saying you have a Mr. Right all picked out for yourself?”

  “Sort of. It’s not that rigid.”

  Chris frowned. “Describe him.”

  “His physical attributes aren’t that critical to me. In fact, somebody like you’d do nicely.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “You’re welcome.” She shot him a look and smiled. “It was a compliment. Physically... well, I’d say we’re pretty compatible there so far. But I know women—and men—who won’t go out with blondes, redheads, brunettes, guys under six feet, women over thirty. You know, silly external stuff.”

  “So it’s the silly internal stuff that makes your Mr. Right right for you?”

  “Uh-huh. He would have a strong sense of self.”

  “Which I do.”

  “Definitely. He would also not have the kind of so-called male ego that would object to a woman who didn’t need to be supported financially.”

  “Comes under strong sense of self, I would think.”

  “So would I. He would also have a certain degree of sophistication.”

  Chris leaned back and polished off the last of his beer. “Does a view of the Public Garden from his messy desk count?”

  “Maybe. My definition of sophistication has changed over the years. I used to think it meant dining regularly at the Ritz, but now I’m more inclined to think it means being at ease dining at the Ritz—or anywhere else, for that matter. It’s a small but critical distinction.”

  “We’re back to a strong sense of self again. Someone who doesn’t have anything to prove can feel comfortable at the Ritz or at a greasy spoon.”

  “I agree.”

  “So what’s Mr. Right do for a living?”

  “He’s neither a parasite nor a shark.”

  “That doesn’t leave much, you know. What about what I do?”

  She almost choked. “You’re not serious.”

  “Shark?”

  “Of the great white school.”

  He grinned. “Good. I’d hate to do what I do and be a damn jellyfish, and I sure as hell don’t want to be accused of being a tapeworm of society. I like shark. Does this Mr. Right have to make more money than you do?”

  “Absolutely not. He doesn’t have to make much money at all, as long as he’s happy in his work.”

  “And doesn’t object when you pay for the bill at the Ritz. Okay.” He digested that and looked at her thoughtfully, but she wasn’t sure just how seriously he was taking her. “Tell me more about this Mr. Right. He’s okay looking, he’s not a jackass, he doesn’t call caviar fish eggs, he doesn’t mind eating home fries and he makes money by enlightening mankind. What else?”

  She regarded him coolly. “You’re making fun of me.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m making fun of Mr. Right. I’m jealous of him. He’s sitting there inside your brain, and I’m sitting over here on this couch all by myself. What else does this guy have going for him that I don’t? A clean office?”

  “Not necessarily, but he has his priorities straight, and he’s self-disciplined and self-motivated.”

  “He would have a clean refrigerator.”

  “Let’s put it this way. If we shared an apartment, he would accept that a clean refrigerator is one of my priorities and wouldn’t object to helping keep it clean.”

  “So long as you tolerated his messy office.”

  “I suppose some arrangement could be made.”

  “I guess the hell it could since this guy’s a saint, anyway. He’d probably offer to clean the fridge every night after supper just to have the chance to live with you. But you’ve never really given much thought about things like clean refrigerators and overcrowded coat trees and finding his hairs in the sink, have you?”

  “No, but...”

  “And you want to know why?” Chris leaned forward, his slate eyes riveted on her. He thumped the arm of the couch with one finger. “Because this guy doesn’t exist!”

  Page refused to respond emotionally. “I’m not saying he does.” Her tone was objective and logical. “I’m just saying these are the qualities I’d always expected to find in the man I fell in love with.”

  “Does this Mr. Right worship you?”

  “I don’t want worship. But he’d make me feel like no other man alive does.”

  “That’s the key, isn’t it?” Chris was so close to her he could have touched her knee, but he didn’t. “Someone who makes you feel like no one else can—”

  “No!” She shook her head firmly. “Compatibility is the key. When all the fire and fury wear off, you have to be able to get along with that person.”

  “Who says the ‘fire and fury’ will ever wear off? I’m not saying compatibility’s not important. It is. But you don’t fall in love with an extension of yourself. You don’t fall in love with some guy you’ve made up. You fall in love with a person with good points and bad points. Dammit, you don’t wait around for some Mr. Right who doesn’t exist. You fall in love with someone who’s right for you—and someone for whom you’re right. Loving’s important, too, not just being loved.”

  She stared at him, struck by the passion with which he spoke as much as the words themselves. “And I was convinced you’d just laugh at me.”

  “Laugh? Hell, lady, I’ve never had to compete with thin air before. No laughing matter as far as I’m concerned.”

  She bit back a smile. “You know what I’m saying, don’t you?”

  It wasn’t really a question: she already knew he did. But he grinned and straightened. “Yeah, I guess. I don’t fit your preconceptions of the guy who’s going to get you.”

  “Right. And you do fit into my family— which is another problem.”

  “Problem? Why can’t that be one point in my favor!”

  “Well, it is and it isn’t.”

  “Aha. Mr. Right wouldn’t fit. Hell, no. He’d never fix fences and haul sap and chop wood with Grandpa, and he’d sure as the devil never eat chili and corn bread with that crowd you call a family. Page, you know what?”

  She shook her head.

  “You make me crazy.”

  “I guess I must.”

  “That’s okay. It keeps me on edge.”

  “And it’s different, isn’t it?”

  He frowned. “What?”

  “I’m not what you’re used to. I’m different.”

  “That you are, Page B. No question about it. You’re different. But if you’re thinking this weekend was just a whim on my part because you’re not the kind of woman I usually go for, you’re wrong.” He got up and picked up her hands from her lap and lifted her to her fe
et, then slipped his hands around her waist. “I’m not going to try to be Mr. Right. I’m going to be me. And if that’s not good enough, if that’s not what you want or what you need, you’re going to have to figure that out for yourself and tell me so. But what I am is what you get. It’s all I can give.”

  “I guess that’s all anyone can ask.” She pulled his hands from her waist and winced when she glanced at her watch. “I hate to say this, and I know my timing’s bad, but I’ve got to head home.”

  He smiled and kissed her lightly on the lips. “You couldn’t be persuaded to stay?”

  “Oh, I probably could—”

  “But you’d hate me in the morning when you had to sneak across the Public Garden at dawn with your teeth not brushed. Always so practical.”

  She laughed. “That about sums it up.”

  “You’re sure it’s not the prospect of spending the night in a disorganized household?”

  “Don’t be silly. Of course not.”

  “I’d go back to your place with you, but I’m afraid I’ve got to burn the midnight oil to meet a deadline tomorrow.”

  “Such responsibility.”

  “Such idiocy,” he said, and kissed her hard.

  * * *

  Chris got got her out of his apartment fast before he could say to hell with responsibility and practicality and whisk Page B. off to his bedroom. He could get up early and finish his column, and there had to be a fresh toothbrush kicking around his apartment somewhere. But he didn’t work well first thing in the morning. And Page could have managed if she’d wanted to. The problem was she was afraid to make the effort. Afraid to need him too much. Afraid to make him an integral part of her life. Afraid to make him fit. From what he’d seen of her family, he could guess she’d fought hard to make herself stable and organized—and she was scared to death he was going to erase all her gains and throw her back into chaos.

  And he supposed he didn’t blame her, because, dammit, he just might. He measured his control over his life by its degree of spontaneity. She measured her control over her life by its degree of predictability.

  “There’s no way to reconcile the two,” he muttered.

  But what the hell. They’d have to figure something out. They belonged together. Now that he had a taste of Page B. Harrington in his life, there was no way he could go on without her.