“Not possible,” Molly said, quickly, urgently. “Sorry.”
It wasn’t on the schedule to stay, thank goodness, but even before the children started begging him, it seemed every one of them tugging on some part of him to get him up off the floor, his eyes met Molly’s and she knew they weren’t going anywhere.
With handprints and food stains all over the pristine white of that shirt, Houston allowed himself to be dragged to the sinks, where he obediently washed his own hands, and then one by one helped each of the children wash theirs.
After he washed “Princess’s” face, the same child who had sat beside him at snack, she crooked her finger at him. He bent down, obviously thinking, as Molly did, that the tiny tot had some important secret to tell him.
Instead she kissed him noisily on his cheek.
Molly held out the camera, framed the exquisite moment. Click.
He straightened slowly, blushing wildly.
Click. She found herself hoping that she was an accomplished enough photographer to capture that look on his face.
“Did you turn me into a prince, little princess?” Houston asked.
The girl regarded him solemnly. “No.”
But that’s not how Molly felt, at all. A man she had been determined to see as a toad had turned into a prince before her eyes.
Again she realized that this excursion was not telling her as much about Houston Whitford as it was telling her about herself.
She wanted the things she had always wanted, more desperately than ever.
And that sense of desperation only grew as Molly watched as Houston, captive now, like Gulliver in the land of little people, was led over to the story area. He chose to sit on the floor, all the children crowding around him. By the time they were settled each of those children seemed to have claimed some small part of him, to touch, even if it was just the exquisitely crafted soft leather of his shoe. His “little princess” crawled into his lap, plopped her thumb in her mouth and promptly went to sleep.
Molly could not have said what one of those stories was about by the time they left a half hour later, Houston handing over the still sleeping child.
As she watched him, she was in the grip of a tenderness so acute it felt as if her throat was closing.
Molly was stunned. The thing she had been trying to avoid because she knew how badly it would weaken her—was exactly what she had been brought.
She was seeing Houston Whitford in the context of family. Watching him, she felt his strength, his protectiveness, his heart.
She had waited her whole life to feel this exquisite tenderness for another person.
It was all wrong. There was no candlelight. It smelled suspiciously like the little girl might have had an accident in her sleep.
Love was supposed to come first. And then these moments of glory.
What did it mean? That she had experienced such a moment for Houston? Did it mean love would come next? That she could fall in love with this complicated man who was her boss?
No, that was exactly what she was not doing! No more wishing, dreaming! Being held prisoner by fantasies.
No more.
But as she looked at him handing over that sleeping little girl, it felt like she was being blinded by the light in him, drawn to the power and warmth of it.
Moth to flame, Molly chastised herself ineffectively.
“Sorry she’s so clingy,” the daycare staff member who relieved him of her said. “She’s going through a rough time, poor mite. Her mother hasn’t been around for a few days. Her granny is picking her up.”
And just like that, the light she had seen in his face snapped off, replaced by something as cold as the other light had been warm.
Selfishly, Molly wanted to see only the warmth, especially once it was gone. She wanted to draw it back out of him. Would it seem just as real outside as it had in? Maybe she had just imagined it. She had to know.
She had to test herself against this fierce new challenge.
As they waited for a cab on the sidewalk, he seemed coolly remote. The electronic device was back out. She remembered this from yesterday. He came forward, and then he retreated.
“You were a hit with those kids.” She tried to get him back to the man she had seen at lunch.
He snorted with self-derision, didn’t look up. “Starving for male attention.”
“I can see you as a wonderful daddy someday,” she said.
He looked up then, gave her his full attention, a look that was withering.
“The last thing I would ever want to be is a daddy,” he said.
“But why?”
“Because there is quite a bit more to it than carrot sticks and storybooks.”
“Yes?”
“Like being there. Day in and day out. Putting another person first forever. Do I look like the kind of guy who puts other people first?”
“You did in there.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“You seem angry.”
“No kidding.”
“Houston, what’s wrong?”
“There’s a little girl in there whose mom has abandoned her. How does something like that happen? How could anybody not love her? Not want her? How could anybody who had a beautiful child like that not devote their entire life to protecting her and making her safe and happy?”
“An excellent daddy,” she said softly.
“No, I wouldn’t,” he said, coldly angry. “Can you wait for the cab yourself? I just thought of something I need to do.”
And he left, walking down the street, fearless, as though that fancy watch and those shoes didn’t make him a target.
Look at the way he walked. He was no target. No victim.
She debated calling after him that she had other things on the agenda for today. But she didn’t. This was his pattern. She recognized it clearly now.
He felt something. Then he tried to walk away, tried to reerect his barriers, his formidable defenses, against it.
Why? What had happened to him that made a world alone seem so preferable to one shared?
“Wait,” she called. “I’ll walk with you.”
And he turned and watched her come toward him, waited, almost as if he was relieved that he was not going to carry some of the burden he carried alone.
HOUSTON watched Molly walking fast to catch up with him. The truth was all he wanted was an hour or so on his punching bag. Though maybe he waited, instead of continuing to walk, because the punching bag had not done him nearly the good he had hoped it would last night. Now it felt as if it was the only place to defuse his fury.
That beautiful little girl’s mother didn’t want her. He knew he was kidding himself that his anger was at her mother.
From the moment he’d heard Molly laughing from under the pile of children a powerless longing for something he was never going to have had pulled at him.
You thought you left something behind you, but you never quite left that. The longing for the love of a