Husband from 9 to 5

by Susan Meier

  Unfortunately, she saw the light under Jack’s office door and knew he was working late, but she also knew that he wouldn’t see she was there since his door was closed. But more than that, she recognized he wouldn’t care.

  Well, maybe he would care, but he wouldn’t bother her. She was perfectly safe and probably better off to clear out her things tonight.

  In the photocopy room, she found one of the boxes used to transport ten reams of paper, emptied it, took it to her office and began putting her personal belongings into it. She found pictures of herself and the friends she’d made at Barrington—Olivia, Rachel, Sophia, Cindy and even Patricia. She had a lot of fun here and had done some great work here, but it was time to go.

  Pressing her lips together to keep herself from succumbing to the urge to cry for everything that was and everything that might have been, Molly continued placing pictures and desk knickknacks into the box. But everything reminded her of someone or some event—and how she’d miss everyone—until her chest was tight and her throat was dry.

  “I’m really, really sorry this didn’t work out, Molly.”

  Because Jack was in her doorway, behind her, Molly squeezed her eyes shut. Damn him! He couldn’t even allow her the chance to pack in private so she could get out with at least a morsel of pride. But after taking a few seconds to compose herself, and bury her anger—which would only make things worse—she said, “It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”

  “I feel responsible.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t.”

  “Aren’t you even going to turn around and look at me?”

  “Not much point.”

  “Please,” he said, and Molly could hear the real emotion in his voice. This was as difficult for him as it was for her. She longed to believe what Patricia said, that he did feel too much for her but was afraid, but she didn’t know Jack Cavanaugh to be afraid of anything. Logic told her he was upset because he’d wanted to help her succeed and, since they couldn’t work together, he’d failed. She couldn’t fault him for not loving her, or not being able to love her. And she also knew him to be a generous boss—somebody who genuinely wanted to help her and who would regret that he couldn’t.

  Having put the situation into perspective, Molly completely composed herself and faced him. “It’s not going to be easy for me to go.”

  “Well, it won’t be that difficult, either,” he said, trying to cheer her up. “You’ll have new challenges.”

  “Yeah, and maybe better opportunities.”

  “Maybe,” Jack agreed softly, but they both knew it wasn’t true. There was no better opportunity for her than the opportunity to be Jack’s wife. All she had to do was see him and all her feelings flooded her. Now that she knew him a little better, she also understood that he truly would be the perfect father for her children. She didn’t believe there was anybody to whom she would be so physically attracted. There also wasn’t anybody that she felt closer to as a friend. But he didn’t love her. And you couldn’t force. someone to love you.

  “I hope you understand that I genuinely believed I was going to be able to be what you wanted....”

  She suddenly got the impression he wasn’t talking about the promotion anymore, and an intense misery enveloped her. He was aching as much as she was, because he didn’t want to hurt her. In a sense, he felt sorry for her.

  Pride, thick and fierce, rose to rescue her. She simply couldn’t handle his pity. In fact, it made her mad. “You don’t have to worry, I’m going to be fine.”

  “I’m sure you are, but what if you can’t find a job...”

  “Jack, my parents are wealthy. I don’t have to be an overnight success. I’m not going to struggle for rent money and I certainly won’t starve.”

  “I know, but I wanted...”

  “To be a knight in shining armor?” Molly asked, then she laughed. “Maybe I don’t need one.”

  He stared at her for a few seconds. “Maybe you don’t,” he agreed softly, and walked out of her office door.

  Molly felt the floor fall out from under her feet. She felt her world crumbling. She knew this was coming. She hadn’t necessarily foreseen a confrontation, but she knew Jack wanted her out, and she knew leaving him was going to hurt.

  But she hadn’t expected it to hurt so much. She wondered if she would be able to make it to tomorrow, let alone endure the rest of her life.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Look at this,” Flora Conway singsonged as she slid a vase of roses on Molly’s desk. “You aren’t even here two hours and already you’re getting flowers.”

  Molly glanced up from her word processor and stared at the bright red blooms in complete dismay. “I don’t know anybody who would send me flowers,” she said sullenly as she reached for the card. Then it hit her. “Oh, I know. They’re from my parents.”

  “I don’t think so.” Flora, a forty-eight-year-old unmarried romantic, continued to sing her comments to Molly. “I took the liberty of peeking at the card and I think you’re going to be very surprised.”

  Brow furrowed, Molly worked the small envelope open. And even before she read the name, she knew who’d sent the flowers, because she recognized the handwriting. Without trying. she saw the words Congratulations and good luck, and, furious that Jack could think a bouquet of flowers would make everything better, she grabbed the vase and tossed it in the trash.

  Flora gasped. “What are you doing?” she asked, hysterically racing to the wastebasket to rescue the delicate blooms.

  “I’m putting that where it belongs.” Molly replied, and slid her earphones into her ears. But she stopped and took them out again. “Unless you’d like those flowers. If you want them, they’re yours.”

  Flora seemed pleased with her sudden good fortune, scooped the roses out of the garbage and nearly raced back to her desk. Molly sighed. If she weren’t leaving, she’d be worried about how the gossip mill would treat that one. Particularly since the flowers might have gone through several departments until they reached the right one because steno pool employees frequently moved from one department to another, but since she was leaving, it wouldn’t matter. She popped her earphones in her ears and went back to work, strengthened by the knowledge that all this would be over soon.

  But when she saw Jack in the hall on her way to the cafeteria for lunch on her last day of work at Barrington, Molly realized that her anger was unfair. Walking toward her, he didn’t actually see her because he was engrossed in listening to Sandy Johnson. Like always, he’d taken the position of adviser and mentor. She knew he’d wanted to be both of those for her. She knew he wanted to help her be successful. She knew he didn’t like the chemistry that kept getting in the way. And she also knew that if they hadn’t spent those fateful three days together, with her thinking they were married and hugging him and kissing him and in general, tormenting him sexually, he might not have felt any chemistry at all.

  Damn it! Part of her wanted to hang on to her anger. In many ways she felt she deserved it. But she also knew his intentions were good. She knew he was a good man... Hell, she loved him. It certainly wasn’t his fault he didn’t love her.

  Two seconds before they would have reached each other, Molly knew what she had to do. She caught his gaze and smiled at him. “Thank you for the flowers,” she said politely.

  “Oh, did you like them?” he asked eagerly.

  Love him or not, nice guy or not, his enthusiasm was a little too much to handle. It transmitted itself to her as eagerness to be away from her and maybe even joy that she was gone.

  She took a pace back and told herself not to make a mountain out of a molehill. “I loved them,” she said, holding her tongue from saying things that kept popping into her brain because she wanted him to feel as badly as she felt.

  “Good, I wanted to give you a little boost to help you on your way.”

  Flowers? she thought, How the hell could anybody think flowers would make up for the fact that he found her unlovable? Angry, unnerved, s
he looked him right in the eye. “I loved them, but Flora liked them even better, so I gave them to her. I’m sure she’ll be sending you a thank-you card.”

  “You gave my flowers to...”

  “Sorry, Jack,” Molly said and began to walk away. “I’ve gotta run. When you’re bumped to steno pool, you only get a half-hour lunch.”

  “Steno pool?” Jack called after her, confused.

  Molly ignored him and Jack resisted the urge to run after her. Since he was on his way to see Sam Wainwright about a new assistant, he’d merely ask how the hell one of the smartest people in the company got demoted to the steno pool. But even as he walked to Sam’s office, Jack began to understand how Molly ended up in the steno pool. He’d made it perfectly clear that he wanted her out of his department and away from him. If there weren’t any open positions except in the steno pool, then she might have been humiliated enough by his demand that she leave to take what she could get.

  Furious with himself, he slapped the wall of the elevator and earned the curious, annoyed glances of his companions. “Thinking about something stupid that I did,” he explained. employing his charming grin, but realizing it wasn’t working. Everybody continued to stare at him as if he were crazy.

  Maybe he was.

  Without glancing left or right or even up. Jack plowed through the corridor to Sam’s office. He kept his eyes on his shoes, recognizing that he sincerely was beginning to act like a man who was ready for therapy.

  Once he pushed into the personnel office, he pasted a happy smile on his face and greeted Patricia. “Good afternoon,” he said cheerfully. “How are you today?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, then feigned great interest in a stack of papers on her desk. “I’m fine,” she replied in a tight, clipped voice. “I assume you’re here to see Sam, but he’s got someone else in his office right now. If you wouldn’t mind taking a seat,” she said, motioning with her hand, but not sparing him as much as a curt glance, “When he’s free, I’ll let him know you’re here.”

  Jack knew enough about the closeness of Molly’s friends to recognize when he was getting the cold shoulder, but he also decided that from their vantage point, they probably believed he deserved it. Without another word of comment, he sat in one of the chairs along the wall. He grabbed a magazine and began leafing through it.

  Unfortunately, every time he thought about the fact that Molly was in the steno pool—and that it was his fault—he grew tense with self-directed anger. Eventually he couldn’t sit anymore and he rose and began to pace.

  “Jack. have a seat.” Patricia implored, her voice kinder, nicer, than it had been when he first arrived.

  “I can’t,” he replied simply.

  “You have to,” Patricia said with a light laugh. “You’re making me nuts.”

  “Good. You might as well join the rest of us.”

  Patricia stopped typing. “Anything you’d like to talk about?” she ventured uncertainly.

  “Oh, I’m sure you know the better part of the details. There’s no need for me to muddy the waters with my version.”

  “Truthfully, Jack,” Patricia said, leaning back on her chair and crossing her arms on her chest, “you wouldn’t be muddying the waters if you gave me your version, because I don’t think Molly’s version is correct.”

  He stopped pacing. “What did she tell you?”

  “That you wanted her out of your department immediately because the two of you shared some sort of physical attraction that you didn’t like.”

  Jack considered what she said, then shrugged. “That’s a very condensed, unemotional version but, truthfully, Patricia, that’s about the size of it.”

  “Yeah, well,” Patricia said, again treading where she probably didn’t belong. “If you want to add a little bit of emotion, how about if I tell you that Molly believes you want her to leave because you find her physically attractive, but you don’t love her, and believe you can’t love her, so you don’t want to be bothered with her?”

  “What?”

  “That’s what she told me. After I pushed her to be honest with me about why she wanted to transfer out of a department in which she was doing so well. Molly confessed that the two of you shared some sort of chemistry, and you knew she was crazy about you, but you didn’t even care for her, so you didn’t want her to embarrass herself anymore....”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Jack thundered. “Where in tamation did she get that idea?” He narrowed his eyes at Patricia. “Is this something your little group thought up?”

  “Nope,” Patricia said superiorly. “This is something Molly came up with by herself. In fact, she hasn’t told anybody but me, and I haven’t told anyone because I got the information because of my position here and I consider it confidential. I don’t think she intends to tell any of her friends what happened between the two of you. Since she’ll soon be out of here completely, I think she feels there’s not much point. I think,” Patricia said, emphasizing the word, Jack surmised, because she wanted to be sure he knew she was only giving her opinion, “that since she’s moving on, maybe even to another state, she feels there’s no point in keeping any of her ties here.”

  Jack was all ready to set Patricia straight about speculating about people’s motives, when it finally sunk in that she was telling him that Molly was leaving.

  Leaving.

  Going to another state.

  Not just another department.

  He wouldn’t even pass her in the halls anymore.

  He licked his dry lips. “Why is she leaving?” he asked quietly. “I don’t want her to leave. I also didn’t want her in the steno pool. I just didn’t want...”

  “To be around her anymore,” Patricia finished for him. “I know. Molly told me all about it. She told me about how you’d lost your first wife, who must have been the love of your life and how you didn’t want to settle for second best....”

  “That’s...” Jack was about to say ridiculous, but as everything fell together in his brain, he realized that probably was the conclusion she had drawn.

  He fell to the seat in front of Patricia’s desk.

  “Are you okay?”

  Wave after wave of feeling washed over Jack. The most important one, the one that actually nauseated him. was that he’d hurt Molly because he couldn’t face the truth.

  “Jack, if there’s something you want to tell Molly,” Patricia said, intruding into his thoughts. “You’re going to have to make it soon. Today’s her last day. After that, none of us knows where she’s going.”

  When he arrived at Molly’s apartment, she was packing. The front door was open, as if she were expecting someone, and boxes and containers were strewn throughout her living room.

  “Molly?” he called uncertainly as he stepped into the chaos.

  “Is somebody there?” she replied, apparently not having heard his voice clearly enough to recognize it. She jogged out of her bedroom, jewelry box in hand, and when she saw him she stopped cold. “Oh, it’s you.”

  “That wasn’t exactly the greeting I was expecting.”

  Giving him an expression of complete exasperation, Molly sighed. “Too bad,” she said, then pivoted and went into her bedroom again.

  Jack followed her. He wasn’t precisely sure what he was doing, but he knew he couldn’t let things end this way. “If you’re determined to leave, I know I can’t stop you, but I think it’s only fair that I tell you the truth about my marriage.”

  Molly was furiously tossing knickknacks into a shipping container. She appeared to be paying absolutely no attention to him until he said the word marriage. Once he did, she stopped and glanced up at him.

  “I thought you lived in a perfect world of bliss.”

  “No,” he said with heartbreaking honestly, then he swallowed. “Far, far from it.”

  Molly opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. She settled for sitting on the bed as a cue to let him know she was listening. Jack knew she probably presumed he would j
oin her but he couldn’t sit. He had to pace. This was the first time he’d said any of these things aloud and he wasn’t even sure he could do it.

  Slowly, painfully, he began, “The night before she died, Barbara told me she was ready to have a child.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Molly whispered, commiserating.

  Jack snorted a derisive laugh and tossed his hands in the air. “Don’t be. She wanted a child because she thought it was the right time in her career. We had finally bought a house and if everything went the way it was supposed to, we’d have two kids almost back to back, then she’d be ready to go on the campaign trail.”

  “The campaign trail?”

  “Where we lived, she had to become local district attorney before she could even be considered for attorney general—and she wanted to be attorney general more than she wanted her next breath of air. But, you see, she couldn’t admit it because her relatives were so family oriented that I think she felt guilty for having ambition.”

  “That’s a shame,” Molly said and patted the bed, a gesture Jack was sure Molly meant to convey that she was still his friend, still ready to listen, to console, in spite of the way he’d hurt her.

  But Jack shook his head. He couldn’t sit beside her. He still needed to pace.

  “So she never came right out and admitted her intentions, but she also didn’t know that things she did and other things she said gave her away. She actually confessed to me once that the success of my family would be a benefit to her career. Once she admitted that, it wasn’t a big step for her to acknowledge that she’d realized that even before we started dating.

  “From that day, I began to see that she didn’t love me, she had picked me. I knew that there were worse ways to create a marriage and worse reasons, and we were sexually compatible and I loved her, so I thought we’d be okay. But we weren’t. We were two different people, living different lives and intersecting only when we had to, or when it was convenient. I got lonely, and asked for more from her, but she told me she didn’t have anything left to give. She was busy. And if I loved her I would let her do what she had to do.”