by Susan Meier
Jack waited for Tim to leave, then went into the kitchen to scrounge for supper. Despite the fact that they’d had a big lunch, Jack decided he’d fix something nice for dinner then take Molly a tray in an attempt to cheer her up. Unfortunately, when he opened the refrigerator door, he didn’t even find enough eggs to make a decent omelet.
“What are you doing?”
Jack jumped at the sound of Molly’s voice and bumped his head as he pulled himself out of his refrigerator. “Ouch! Molly, what are you doing up?”
“I’m hungry.”
He eyed her skeptically. “Are you sure you’re well enough to be out of bed?”
“I’m fine,” she emphatically stated. “I think you and Dr. Tim are a little on the crazy side because you keep insisting there’s something wrong with me, but I’m fine.”
Jack avoided the touchy issue by giving her the bona fide bad news. “We don’t have anything to make for dinner.”
Her brow furrowed. “Are you sure?”
Jack took another peek into his refrigerator. “There’s lots of stuff in here, but none of it falls together to be a dinner I can make.”
Molly said, “Hmm,” and walked to the refrigerator. “How hungry are you?”
“Fairly hungry, but not starved.”
“Can you make due with French toast?”
He thought about that. He hadn’t had French toast in years. And he’d loved French toast. “French toast would be great.”
“Good. You set the table and I’ll make the French toast.”
They worked together in companionable silence for the time it took for Molly to create their dinner and Jack to prepare the table. When they sat down to eat, however, the silence wasn’t relaxed anymore. Jack knew that the longer he let it rein, the greater the possibility that Molly would begin worrying about her upcoming doctor visit. And he didn’t want that to happen.
He cleared his throat. “This is very good.”
“It’s one of my specialties,” she admitted around a laugh.
Surprised by her laughter, he stared at her. “You sound like you think there’s something wrong with being able to make French toast.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m laughing because that’s about as far as my specialties go.”
“No. it isn’t,” Jack contradicted playfully, thinking this was a terrific way to get her mind off her troubles—maybe even the troubles she kept pushing away. “You have lots of great things going for you.”
“Really? Like what?”
He thought about telling her that she was so good at her job that he was on the verge of offering her the position as his assistant, which would eventually lead into overseeing a section of his department that he felt could splinter off. But he realized that was a discussion better left for when she was back to normal. “You’re intelligent and organized and very, very thorough,” he said, hitting the essence of what he wanted to say without coming right out and telling her about the promotion. “You’re probably the most efficient person in my department.”
Molly frowned. “Whatever happened to ‘Molly, you’re pretty, and sexy and very, very soft to hold’? Do yon realize, Jack, you haven’t told me that once in the last few days? And that used to be your pet line for me. I couldn’t get into bed or out of bed without you saying ‘You’re pretty, and sexy and very, very soft to hold,’” Molly said, giving him a chastising look.
Jack felt his face redden. He completely forgot the more complex aspects of their dilemma, overwhelmed by the fact that was something he would say. He remembered saying something similar to Barbara. It was uncanny how Molly’s fantasies seemed to have tapped into things even he’d forgotten. “We haven’t been in bed together recently,” he answered inanely.
“I know,” she said, then seemingly without cause or provocation she brightened and changed the subject. “Anyway, to my parents, the ability to make French toast is good, but being organized, efficient and thorough is even better. If you’d tell them that the next time they’re here, they’d probably be fairly impressed. They might even think I’m making progress.”
This time Jack frowned. He remembered the odd conversation about her parents at Mahoney’s the night of her accident. He remembered realizing something was wrong. Maybe wrong enough for her not to want to get her memory back.
“Molly, I sometimes get the impression you don’t think your parents like you.”
She gasped at the very thought “One of the foundations of a good life,” she said, sounding more like she was repeating something she’d heard on their tapes than something she believed, “is a close, loving family. You don’t raise children not to like them, or to be critical and judgmental. You raise them to be your friends, your companions, your peers someday....”
“And since you’re not on the fast track of success like they are,” Jack speculated, “then you’re not a potential peer. So even though your parents don’t dislike you, they still want you to be someone you’re not.”
Molly blew her breath out on a sigh. “They’ve never come right out and said it.... I mean, they haven’t actually asked me to change—at least not much.” She paused, sighed again. “It’s hard for them to be success teachers, people who live in the public eye, and have a child who doesn’t practice what they preach. In some ways, I think I make them look bad.”
“My first wife’s parents thought children were the result of an overabundance of love. They thought that two people who loved each other made love, and from making love they created a child. Which, theoretically, created more love in the home. Their belief was the more children, the more love. They had nine. Not to create their own circle of friends or to be a foundation for success, simply to love.”
Molly stared at him pensively for a minute. He knew she was pondering what he’d said and hoped it might spur her into getting her memory back. Particularly since she should wonder why she didn’t know he had a first wife.
Expecting her to come up with a question about why she didn’t know anything about his past, Jack was taken aback and answered without thinking when she said, “Why didn’t you ever have children with your first wife?”
“She died before we had a chance.”
Molly put a consoling hand across his wrist. “Oh, I’m so sorry. But I’m not surprised you married someone like her. I can see you with a house full of kids, believing that each new child only brought more love.”
Jack couldn’t help himself; he scowled. “Fairly naive.”
“Oh, my, no.” Molly whispered. “Fairly wonderful.”
For the first time since Barbara’s death, Jack didn’t feel awkward talking about having children. Mostly because he realized that if he was going to coerce Molly into facing her past, whatever demons lie there, then he had to be willing to face his.
“Barbara and I weren’t kids, but she made me feel young and strong and as if anything were possible,” he said, voicing feelings he’d kept bottled up because even though they were good they were too painful to remember.
“She must have been terrific.”
“She was,” Jack agreed, prepared to fight off the urge to break something, but the feeling never came. Instead, he had a sense of relief and release. As if he had rejoined the human race, as Dr. Tim had said.
Awkward with this new discovery, he brought the conversation back to where it should be. “Why don’t you tell me more about your parents?” he said, liberally pouring maple syrup on two new slices of French toast.
“They’re two fireballs of energy,” Molly said.
Hearing the emotion in her voice, Jack knew that she loved them. Their profession, it seemed, was what got in the way of a normal relationship.
“My mother is dynamic. My father is laid-back, but powerful.”
“They sound very interesting.”
“Oh, they are. When I was young and they’d host weekend seminars in our home, I’d sneak to the stairway and peek between the banister poles. When I’d get caught and have to go back to my ro
om or outside to play, I’d line up all my dolls and give them fiery motivational speeches.”
Jack laughed heartily. “That would have been a picture. But I’m surprised you didn’t give the speeches to your friends.”
“I couldn’t. We lived in the country because my parents wanted their seminars to have the look and feel of a retreat. The friends I had lived miles away. I had to make special arrangements to spend an afternoon or weekend at their homes. Sometimes it couldn’t be arranged.”
“It sounds like a very lonely childhood.”
“My childhood wasn’t exactly lonely. In fact, lots of it was exciting. Traveling to nearly every city in the United States for book tours or seminars, I certainly wasn’t deprived.”
“No, maybe not deprived, but you would have had to have been lonely.”
Molly shrugged impassively. “It doesn’t matter now. But I’m not so indifferent to my past that I don’t see that being an Only child is the reason I want to have a houseful of kids. Every child should have someone to play with, someone to fight with, someone to learn with. Childhood is all about leanring. And not just from books. You have to learn to get along, but you also need to learn to fight for what you believe is right. You can’t do either of those if you’re alone...or with people who are so much older than you that they’re past learning the lessons. Children need to learn together.”
Barbara’s. ideas about raising kids had been a little vague but, still, it was easy for Jack to see Molly’s ideas were more practical. Of course, she’d had reason and opportunity to think her ideas through clearly. Based on her own excellent childhood, Jack supposed Barbara had believed everything naturally fell into place because you wanted it.
Molly knew better.
“Since my parents had always taught me to set goals, I made the goal,” she said, smiling, “of having several children.” She sighed and her expression became distant as if she were thinking of other places, other times. “It wasn’t the goal they wanted for me, but it was a goal. Unfortunately, even that failed,” she said softly, and for a second Jack stared at her, wondering if she hadn’t gotten her memory back because she was so quiet. But as quickly as he had that thought, she perked up again. “Until I met you,” she said, and squeezed his hand. “Now my goals are back on track.”
“Your goals?” Jack asked. Confusion and embarrassment collided when he finally figured out what she was telling him. Could she have set the goal to marry him?
Feeling a little dizzy himself, Jack quickly ran through the facts in his head. Her parents pushed her to make goals. She made the goal of having several children. Somewhere along the way she’d gotten the notion that she’d failed. Then she got a set of tapes from her parents the same day of the celebration at Mahoney’s....
Could it be?
Could it be that thinking she’d failed and pressure from her parents to succeed had caused her to believe she was married to him—and, therefore, well on her way to reaching her goal of having children—after getting a bump on the head?
That made sense. Much more sense than thinking she’d targeted him specifically and made a goal to marry him and have children.
Jack nearly breathed a sigh of relief. That kind of coincidence he could handle. But for every bit as quickly as relief enveloped him, it evaporated. Knowing why she thought they were married didn’t solve the problem, In fact, in a way, it might have compounded it. Now, when she got her memory back, she wouldn’t merely be embarrassed, but she’d be alone again....
So would he.
Chapter Eight
“I’m not even going to ask you what Dr. Tim said about our sleeping together.”
Jack glanced up from punching his pillow on the sofa. Molly stood in the doorway of the living room, framed by the pale light of the lowest setting of the foyer chandelier. Dressed in the red satin pajamas, with her yellow hair twisted into a loose knot at the top of her head she looked worldly and sophisticated. In a sense, she was. She’d seen and done things ninety percent of the population could only dream about. Tall, slim, with the face of an angel and the power of money at her disposal, she seemed to have everything. If it weren’t for the fact that Jack knew she was weighted down by the realization that she couldn’t meet her parents’ expectations for her, he’d think her the luckiest woman in the world.
“Molly, you know he doesn’t want to risk your getting hurt.”
She nodded. “I know, but tonight I didn’t want to sleep together as much as I thought it would be nice to have somebody to hold me—somebody to cuddle.”
Seeing the hopeful expression on her face, he considered that he could lie with her on his bed until she fell asleep, but rejected that idea immediately. This whole charade was going to be over and done with on Monday when she saw the specialist Dr. Tim was recommending. As long as they stayed within the boundaries of decency, Molly wouldn’t have to deal with regrets. “Molly...”
“I know,” she said, holding up her hand. “You don’t want to go against Dr. Tim’s instructions.”
Something about her tone of voice transported Jack into her frame of mind. He suddenly saw and felt what it would be like to genuinely believe you were married to someone, yet have them continually reject you. Drawing in a breath as he deliberated, Jack weighed his options until he found one that worked. “Actually, Mol,” he said, “even though we can’t sleep together. Dr. Tim didn’t say cuddling was out of the question. But,” Jack said emphatically, “let’s stay down here.”
When she remained where she stood, Jack realized his continued rejection of her had her spooked enough that she wouldn’t make the first move. He held out his arms to her.
Her face blossomed with a smile.
It took a minute for them to get arranged on the slim sofa. After Molly appeared to be comfortable. Jack shoved himself even farther against the back cushions, but Molly only snuggled closer. With her head angled beneath his chin, her warm back pressed against his chest and her derriere nestled against him, Jack swallowed hard. He’d forgotten how good it felt to hold a woman, but as quickly as that thought came he realized that it wasn’t “good” to hold just any woman; only special women brought out protective instincts and sexual urges. And if you didn’t get the protective instincts and the sexual urges, then it really wasn’t good.
With Molly, it was good.
She sighed and cuddled against him, and Jack closed his eyes, half wanting to let himself go, to indulge in all these long-forgotten feelings, and half struggling to remember why he wasn’t allowed to let himself indulge in all these feelings. He kept repeating in his head that this was Molly and he was supposed to be protecting her, but somehow or another that logic wasn’t working anymore. Physical reality was beating out cold, hard logic.
So he kept his eyes closed and looped his arms loosely around her biceps. He held his body perfectly still for fear that any slight movement might trip an already bubbling volcano.
“Go to sleep, Jack,” Molly said drowsily, and nestled into him again.
Jack ground his teeth together to steel himself against the surge of desire that rocketed through him, but within thirty seconds he heard the soft sounds of Molly’s breathing and knew she was asleep. He sighed with relief, grateful she’d fallen into a comforting slumber, and feeling protected in an odd way because he knew he was gentleman enough not to take advantage of a sleeping woman.
The soothing influence of understanding she was getting much-needed rest and believing that he was on safe ground relaxed him. Lulled by the familiarity of his own sleeping place, he burrowed into his pillow, deciding to give Molly time enough to be in a deep sleep before he carried her upstairs. But he never did carry her upstairs. An hour later when the chill of night nudged him into slight coherence, he pulled the quilt from the back of the sofa and covered them both, then fell into a deep, restful sleep.
The kind of sleep he hadn’t had in five years.
The sound of pounding awakened him. He jerked up on the sofa and almost k
nocked Molly to the floor.
“Jack, for Pete’s sake,” she said, clutching his shirtfront to keep from sailing off the conch. “What the heck...”
As if the pounding had only now penetrated her sleeping state, her eyes widened and her head jerked in the direction of the entryway.
“I guess I’d better get that,” Jack said, but Molly stared at him.
Something was wrong. She could feel that something was wrong, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Not sure what else to do, she allowed herself to slide to the floor, so Jack could get up and open the door.
She watched as he picked and bounced his way to the foyer, realizing that, though his feet were bare, he was still dressed in his jeans and shirt from the day before. Knowing that was odd, she considered that that might be the slightly amiss thing that was tapping at her consciousness, but instinct told her that wasn’t it. She watched while he opened the front door and her parents entered.
“Molly!” her mother cried, pushing past Jack and into the living room. “How could you!”
How could she what? She thought it, but for some reason she couldn’t seem to say it. Everything was clouded, confused. Oh, her mother was still a beautiful blonde. Trim, dynamic, chic. Her black Armani pantsuit was as crisp and important as her demeanor. Her father was still his handsome, powerful self, with the gray wisps at his temples, his magnetic blue eyes and well-tended physique. And both of them were running at their usual fevered pitch....
So what was wrong?
“I can explain everything,” Jack said, and Molly looked at him. He seemed frazzled, out of sorts, not at all the cool, calm and collected boss for whom she worked.
“Molly had an accident.”
Her mother clutched the top button of her jacket. “Oh my God.”
But her father wasn’t fazed. “An accident doesn’t cause you to get married without telling your parents!”
Married?
“Well, Molly’s not actually married.”
“Oh, really?” her mother said, but this time her eyes narrowed as she glared first, at Jack, who was obviously rumpled from sleep and still wearing clothes from the day before, to Molly, who was wearing her red satin pajamas, who had bare feet and who clearly looked like she’d just awakened.
