He said it coolly, the remoteness back in his eyes.
She recognized this was his pattern. Show something of himself, appeal to his emotion, like at the garden, and then he would back away from it. There he had tried to hide behind the threat of a parking lot.
This time by bringing up the sore point of Prom Dreams.
He knew, just as she did, that it was safer for them to argue than to chase each other with worms, to dance down dusty aisles.
But despite the fact she knew she should balance caution with this newly awakened sense of adventure, she felt unusually brave, as if she never had to play it safe again. Of course, the formidable obstacle of his will was probably going to keep her very safe whether she wanted to be or not!
She tilted her chin at him. “Why didn’t you?”
“I guess I wanted to see if you could do it.”
“I can. I will if I have to. But not yet. I’m hoping for a miracle,” she admitted. Because that was who she was. A girl who could look at herself in a wedding dress, even after her own dreams had been shattered, even in the face of much evidence to the contrary, a girl who could still hope for the best, hope for the miracle of love to fix everything.
And for a moment, when his guard had gone down, dancing with him, she had believed maybe she would get her miracle after all…
“A miracle,” he said with a sad shake of his head. He went and opened the car door for her, and drove back to Second Chances in silence as if somehow she had disappointed him and not the other way around.
A miracle, he thought. If people could really call down such a thing, surely they would not waste that power on a prom dress. Cure world hunger. Or cancer. He was annoyed at Molly.
For not doing as he had asked her—a thinly veiled order really—and canceling Prom Dreams, at least she should have told that girl to get ready for the cancellation of it.
But more, for wheedling past his defenses. He had better things to be doing than dancing with her in a shabby store in Greenwich Village.
It was the type of experience that might make a man who knew better hope for a miracle.
But hadn’t he hoped for that once?
The memory leaped over a wall that seemed to have chinks out of it that it had not had yesterday.
It was his birthday. He was about to turn fifteen. He’d been at Beebee’s for months. He was living a life he could never have even dreamed for himself.
He had his own room. He had his own TV. He had his own bathroom. He had nice clothes.
And the miracle he was praying for was for his mother to call. Under that grand four-poster bed was a plain plastic bag, with everything he had owned when he came here packed in it.
Ready to go. In case his mother called. And wanted him back.
That was the miracle he had prayed for that had never come.
“I don’t believe in miracles,” he said to Molly, probably way more curtly than was necessary.
“That’s too bad,” she said sympathetically, forgiving his curtness, missing his point entirely that there was no room in the business world for dreamers. “That’s really too bad.
“Why don’t we call it a day?” she said brightly. “Tomorrow I’ll take you to Sunshine and Lollipops, our preschool program. It’s designed to assist working poor mothers, most of them single parents.”
Houston Whitford contemplated that. Despite the professionalism of her delivery, he knew darn well what she was up to. She was taking down the bricks around his carefully compartmentalized world. She was getting to him. And she knew it. She knew it after he had chased her in the garden with that worm, danced with her.
She was having quite an impact on his legendary discipline and now she was going to try to hit him in his emotional epicenter to get her programs approved. Who could resist preschoolers, after all?
Me, he thought. She was going to try to win him over to her point of view by going for the heart instead of the head. It was very much the romantic versus the realist.
But the truth was Houston was not the least sentimental about children. Or anything else. And yet even as he told himself that, he was aware of a feeling that he was a warrior going into battle on a completely unknown field, against a completely unknown enemy. Well, not completely. He knew what a powerful weapon her hair was on his beleaguered male senses. The touch of her skin. Now he could add dancing with her to the list of weapons in the arsenal she was so cheerfully using against him.
He rethought his plan to walk right into his fear. He might need a little time to regroup.
“Something has come up for tomorrow,” he said. It was called sanity.
“You promised me two days,” she reminded him. “I assume you are a man of honor.”
More use of her arsenal. Challenging his honor.
“I didn’t say consecutively.”
She lifted an eyebrow, knowing the effect she was having on him, knowing she was chiseling away at his defenses.
“Friday?” he asked her.
“Friday it is.”
“See you then,” he said, as if he wasn’t the least bit wary of what she had in store for him.
Tonight, and every other night this week, until Friday, he would hit the punching bag until the funny yearning that the glimpse of her world was causing in him was gone. He could force all the things he was feeling—lonely, for one—back into their proper compartments.
By the end of the week he would be himself again. He’d experienced a temporary letting down of his guard, but he recognized it now as a weakness. He’d had a whole lifetime of fighting the weaknesses in himself. There was no way one day with her could change that permanently.
Sparring with Molly Michaels was just like boxing, without the bruises, of course. But as with boxing, even with day after day of practice, when it came to sparring, you could take a hair too long to resume the defensive position, and someone slipped a punch in. Rattled you. Knocked you off balance. It didn’t mean you were going to lose that fight! It meant you were going to come back more aware of your defenses. More determined. Especially if the bell had rung between rounds and you had the luxury of a bit of a breather.
She wasn’t going to wear him down, and he didn’t care how many children she tried to use to do it.
HOUSTON WHITFORD congratulated himself on using his time between rounds wisely. By avoiding Molly Michaels.
And yet there really was no avoiding her. With each day at Second Chances, even as he busied himself researching, checking the new computer systems, okaying details of the renovations, there was no avoiding her influence in this place.
Molly Michaels was the sun that the moons circled around. Just as at the garden, she seemed to be the one people gravitated to with their confidences and concerns. She was warm, open and emotional.
The antithesis of what he was. But what was that they said? Opposites attract. And he could feel the pull of her even as he tried not to.
They had one very striking similarity. They both wanted their own way, and were stubborn in the pursuit of it.
Tuesday morning three letters had been waiting for him on his desk when he arrived. The recurring theme of the three letters: Why I Want a Prom Dress. One was on pink paper. One smelled of perfume. And he was pretty sure one was stained with tears.