After nineteen years, his father was getting out of prison.
And it felt as if all those years of Houston outdistancing his past had been a total waste of energy. Because there it was, waiting for him, right around the next bend in time.
The scar across his nose flared with sudden pain, and Houston pressed a finger into the line of the old break, aware he was entering a danger zone that the mean streets of Clinton had nothing on.
“Have a seat,” Houston invited Molly several hours later, after he had personally waved goodbye to Beebee and Miss Viv at the airport.
“Thank you.” She took a seat, folded her hands primly in her lap and looked at him expectantly.
It was his second encounter with her, and he was determined it was going to go differently than the first. It was helpful that Miss Viv was not there smiling at him as if he was her favorite of all charity cases.
And it was helpful that Molly Michaels was all business now, no remnant of the blushing bride she had been anywhere in sight. No, she was dressed in a conservative slack suit, her amazing hair pinned sternly up on her head.
Still, it was way too easy to remember how it had felt underneath his hands. He was not going to allow himself to contemplate the fact that even after untangling her from that dress several hours ago he was no closer to knowing her truth: was she sexy? Or innocent?
Not thoughts that were strictly professional. In fact, those were exactly the kind of thoughts that made a man crazy.
“I’m sorry about the dress. You must think I’m crazy.”
Damn her for using that word!
The nails holding a compartment of Houston’s past shut gave an outrageous squeak. Houston remembered the senior Whitford had been made crazy by a beautiful woman, Houston’s mother.
Who hadn’t she made crazy? Beautiful, but untouchable. Both of them had loved her desperately, a fact that had only seemed to amuse her, allowed her to toy with her power over them. The truth? Houston would have robbed a bank for her, too, if he’d thought it would allow him to finally win something from her.
The memory, unwanted, of his craving for something his mother had been unable to give made him feel annoyed with himself.
“Crazy?” he said. You can’t begin to know the meaning of the word. “Let’s settle for eccentric.”
She blushed, and his reaction was undisciplined, unprofessional, a ridiculous desire, like a juvenile boy, to find out what made her blush and then to make it happen often.
“So, you’ve been here how long?” Houston asked, even though he knew, just to get himself solidly back on the professional track.
“As an employee for several years. But I actually started here as a volunteer during high school.”
Again, unprofessional thoughts tickled at him: what had she been like during high school? The popular girl? The sweet geek? Would she have liked him?
Houston remembered an incident from his own high school years. She probably would not have liked him, at all. He shook off the memory like a pesky fly. High school? That was fifteen years ago! That was the problem with things coming out of their compartments. They could become unruly, pop up unannounced, uninvited, in moments when his concentration was challenged, when his attention drifted.
Which was rarely, thank God.
Since the memories had come, though, he exercised cool discipline over them. He reminded himself that good things could come from bad. His mother’s abandonment had ultimately opened the door to a different world for him; the high school “incident” had led to Beebee putting him in boxing classes “to channel his aggression.”
Houston was more careful than most men with the word love, but he thought he could honestly say he loved the combat sport of boxing, the absolute physical challenge of it, from the grueling cardiovascular warm-up to punching the heavy bags and the speed bags, practicing the stances, the combinations, the jabs and the hooks. He occasionally sparred, but awareness of the unexpected power of fury prevented him from taking matches.
Now he wondered if a defect in character like fury could lie dormant, spring back to life when it was least expected.
No, he snapped at himself.
Yes, another voice answered when a piece of Molly’s hair sprang free of the restraints she had pinned it down with, curled down the soft line of her temple.
She’d been engaged to a cad.
Tonight, he told himself sternly, he would punch straight left and right combinations into the heavy bag until his hands, despite punch mitts, ached from it. Until his whole body hurt and begged for release. For now he would focus, not on her hair or her past heartbreaks, but on the job he was here to do.
Houston realized Molly’s expression had turned quizzical, wondered how much of the turmoil of that memory he had just had he had let slip over his usually well-schooled features.
Did she look faintly sympathetic? Had she seen something he didn’t want her to see? Good grief, had Miss Viv managed to let something slip about him?
Whatever, he knew just how to get rid of that look on her face, the look of a woman who lived to make the world softer and better.
A cad could probably spot that gentle, compassion-filled face from a mile away! It would be good for her to toughen up.
“Let me be very blunt,” he said, looking at the papers in front of him instead of her hair, the delicate creamy skin at her throat. “Second Chances is in a lot of trouble. I need to turn things around and I need to do it fast.”
“Second Chances is in trouble?” Molly was genuinely astounded. “But how? The secondhand stores that provide the majority of our funding seem to do well.”
“They do perform exceedingly well. The problem seems to be in an overextension of available funds. Your department?”
Here it was: could she make the kind of hard decisions that would be required of her if she took over the top spot in the newly revamped Second Chances?
The softness left her face, replaced with wariness. Better than softness in terms of her managerial abilities. If that was good, why did he feel so bad?
“You can’t run an organization that brings in close to a million dollars a year like a mom and pop store. You can’t give everyone who comes in here with their hand out and a hard luck story everything they ask for.”
“I don’t!” she said. “I’m very careful what I fund.”
He saw her flinch from his bluntness, but at this crucial first stage there was no other way to prepare people for the changes that had to happen. Another little curl broke free of her attempt to tame her hair, and he watched it, sentenced himself to another fifteen minutes on the bag and forged on.
“Two thousand dollars to the Flatbush Boys Choir travel fund? There is no Flatbush Boys Choir.”
“I know that now,” she said, defensively. “I had just started here. Six of them came in. The most adorable little boys in matching sweaters. They even sang a song for me.”
“Here’s a check written annually to the Bristol Hall Ladies’ Lunch Group. No paperwork. No report. Is there a Bristol Hall Ladies’ Lunch Group? What do they do? When do they meet? Why do they get money for lunch?”
“That was grandfathered in from before I started. Miss Viv looks after it.”
“So, you’re project manager, except when Miss Viv takes over?”
“She is the boss,” Molly said uneasily, her defensive tone a little more strident.