Page 141 of This Heart Of Mine (Chicago Stars 5)

“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 anythi

ng 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.”

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