License to Love

by Barbara Boswell

  “I really do,” Steve said. The familiar steely glint of determination glittered in his dark eyes. “And she will. The next time I’m in Merlton, Michelle will be with me—as my wife.”

  It was hot and muggy when Michelle pulled her car into the parking lot adjacent to her apartment building. The drive from Washington had taken longer than usual due to the heavy holiday weekend traffic and Burton and Squeaky, secure in their cat carriers, were not at all pleased with their temporary captivity. Michelle had to play the radio extra loud to drown out their incessant meowing complaints, and her ears were ringing as she climbed out of the car.

  She was relieved to be home. Her holiday visit to Courtney and Connor had been a mistake. All weekend long, as she’d watched the newlyweds so deeply in love with each other, the weight of her own loneliness had grown to crushing proportions. The man she loved hadn’t loved her at all.

  He’d used her, to obtain information about hazardous waste elimination sites. It was galling, it was heartbreaking—it was downright toxic! Fury momentarily supplanted her despair.

  But only momentarily. Michelle’s thoughts rarely strayed from the new little life growing within her and soon shifted back to her pregnancy. This past weekend she’d been acutely aware of three-month-old Sarah and the constant care and attention that an infant required. Lucky little Sarah had two devoted parents to care for her, a stay-at-home mother and a hands-on daddy who willingly pitched in to help whenever he was home.

  The family interaction had been wonderful as well as painful for Michelle to watch, underscoring the practicalities of her own predicament. Who was going to be there for her baby twenty-four hours a day? She would have to work full-time as there would be no husband to support them. And there would be no daddy to take over for a tired mother or to share the pleasures and the anxieties and all the little details of parenthood.

  Michelle reached into the back seat to remove the cats from the car. She felt like crying. She’d been doing a lot of that lately, although only at night, alone in bed in the dark. She wasn’t ready to share her secret just yet, she wasn’t ready to admit that she’d been Hooked! just like those hapless, heartbroken women in Ashlinn’s proposed book.

  “Let me get those for you.”

  Michelle jumped at the sound. She recognized Steve’s voice, of course, without turning around. “Don’t bother,” she said coldly, hanging onto the handles of the cat carriers, one in each hand.

  “I insist.” He reached for them, touching her in the process.

  Michelle instantly set the carriers on the ground. His touch, impersonal and serviceable as it was, was too much for her to cope with. Grimacing, she reached for her suitcase.

  “Leave it,” Steve ordered, picking up the cats. “I’ll come back for it.”

  “No thank you. I can manage.” The bag wasn’t heavy and she easily lifted it. Her heart was pounding, her stomach as jumpy as a restless, caged cat, but she hid her anxiety behind a coolly impenetrable facade. Silently she headed into her apartment; Steve following close behind.

  As tempting as it was, she couldn’t slam the door in his face, leaving him outside. He had her cats, guaranteeing him entry. Which was exactly what he’d planned, of course. Michelle scowled. Steve Saraceni always had a plan, one he would successfully implement to suit bis own ends. No one knew that better than she.

  Once inside, Steve freed the cats, then stood watching her, his dark eyes sharp and intent. “I have a whole carload of gifts in my car for you,” he said at last. “I went to a mall while I was in Jersey and for the first time ever, I ended up buying more than my shop-aholic cousin Saran. I bought you perfume, candy, books, silk flowers, lingerie. Oh, and a life-size toy cat that looks so real Burt and Squeak will either try to fight it or adopt it. If I go down to my car to get the stuff, will you let me back inside?”

  “No,” Michelle said succinctly, her blue eyes as icy as her tone.

  “I figured you wouldn’t. That’s why I didn’t try.” He sat down on the sofa, stretching one arm along the back of it, lifting his right ankle to rest upon his left knee, casual and relaxed, as if he were settling down to watch some TV. Only his eyes, intense and piercing, belied his carefree mode.

  For a while Michelle pretended he wasn’t there. She put food down for the cats, unpacked her bags and straightened up the already orderly living room. Finally the strain of his watchful presence was too much for her.

  “You can leave anytime,” she said caustically. “The sooner the better.”

  “I’m not leaving, Michelle.”

  “Well, you certainly aren’t staying.”

  “Yes,” Steve said calmly. “I am.”

  “You can’t!” Michelle stared at him. It occurred to her that if he refused to leave, she had no means of forcibly evicting him from the premises. He was bigger and stronger than her in every way. She couldn’t physically pick him up and toss him out the door. Frustration roiled within her. “If you’re trying to infuriate me, you’re succeeding masterfully.” She clenched her teeth tightly. “I suppose there’s a reason you’re inflicting yourself on me. Say what it is and then get out!”

  “I want to marry you,” Steve said bluntly.

  Whatever she’d been expecting him to say, it hadn’t been that! She was unprepared, tired and vulnerable. Unexpected, unwelcome emotional tears filled her eyes. She tried to blink them away. “Just drop the euphemisms and say what you really mean for once. You don’t want to marry me, you feel obligated to make the offer. Well, don’t do me any favors, Steve. I don’t want to marry you, either.”

  “Yes, you do,” Steve said calmly. “So let’s get married, Michelle. As soon as possible. If we apply for the license tomorrow, we can be married by the end of the week.”

  He made it sound so easy, so logical. Michelle was incensed. “Don’t insult my intelligence! You’re the man who wouldn’t even attend my sister’s wedding with me and now I’m supposed to believe that you want to be in one with me? I know all about your aversion to marriage and commitment, remember? You told me countless times how much your freedom means to you.”

  “That was when I was confusing narcissism with freedom,” Steve said. “I’m not, not anymore.”

  “Where did you come up with that?”

  He shrugged sheepishly. “My sister Jamie. But she was right on target, I can see that now.”

  “Well, I can’t. If I hadn’t been stupid enough to go to your office and tell you about—” Michelle swallowed “—that I’m pregnant, you never would’ve bothered to see me again. After all, I’d served my purpose to you. You found out where the committee voted to place the hazardous waste sites and relayed the news to your client. You got a big cash bonus for your efforts and you—”

  “I intend to use that bonus as a down payment on a house for us. I’ve arranged for a realtor to take us around to look at places later in the week. ’ ’

  Michelle was outraged. “When it comes to—to sheer audacity and tenacity, you have no equal! I don’t know why you’re even going through this charade. You don’t care about me!”

  “Yes, I do.” Steve stood up. “And I’ll prove it to you. I can refute your arguments point by point. First—”

  “Stop trying to lobby me!”

  “I’m not lobbying you, I’m trying to tell you that I love you! ” His voice rose. His first proposal and he was botching it. His lobbying skills suggested backing off and trying a new angle, but he wasn’t a lobbyist now, he was a man in love.

  Passionately, Steve forged ahead. “Michelle, you were not stupid to tell me you’re pregnant. But even if you hadn’t come to my office last week, I would’ve found out anyway because I certainly intended to see you again. I would’ve called you, sweetheart. I missed you and—”

  “If this wasn’t so nauseating, it would be hilarious,” Michelle cut in crossly. “Steven Saraceni’s revisionist relationship history—conveniently ignore the facts and make up new ones. The truth is that you hadn’t called me for t
wo and a half weeks after our fight. It was definitely all over between us.”

  “It wasn’t over, although that was the worst fight we’d ever had. Actually, it was our only serious quarrel, which certainly proves how strong our compatibility quotient really is. But think back to that fight, Michelle. You accused me of using you to gain information. You said I deliberately sought you out because of your position on the committee, that I was a back-stabbing double-crosser because I took advantage of your feelings for me to use for my own political gains. You didn’t believe me when I denied it, you’d already tried, judged and found me guilty. I was furious, Michelle. I was also hurt that you had so little faith or trust in me. I—” Steve cleared his throat and looked at the floor. “I kept expecting you to call me to apologize.”

  “Me apologize to you?” she echoed incredulously.

  He nodded. “I respected everything you ever told me as a confidence between us, Michelle. I never used you. But you wouldn’t believe me.”

  She folded her arms in front of her chest and glared at him. “I still don’t believe you. I remember how quick you were to use the information I gave you about Ed’s basketball career way back in January. You spotted me as a... a source and cultivated our relationship and I was naive enough to trust you and confide in you. But it’s my fault, too. I should have known it would end badly. I received a chain letter the day I met you, promising doom and destruction if I broke the chain. Well, I did break it, and look what happened to me. You!”

  “Michelle, the day we met was the luckiest day of my life, and these past months have been the happiest. You fell in love with me and I.. .fell in love with you, too.” He walked toward her. “I want you and I want our baby, sweetheart.” The closer he came, the faster Michelle’s bravado faded. He held out his hand to her and she refused it, backing away from him. “Don’t touch me! And stop lying to me! You don’t love me and you never have. You saw my love as a weakness and since you’re a man who exploits other people’s weaknesses, you used me and my love for you. You used me politically and sexually and when you were finished with me, you were perfectly content to end it between us.”

  Her temples were beginning to throb from the tension and she rubbed them with her fingertips. “But you must’ve had second thoughts about my pregnancy,” she continued grimly. “Enough people have seen us together these past months to connect you with this baby I’m having and you’ve decided that the politically correct thing to do is to marry me and avoid gossip.

  “Well, that’s not enough for me, Steve.” Her voice rose, straining with emotion. “I’ve been in this situation before, you know, twenty-five years ago when / was the baby who caused two people to live unhappily in a miserable marriage. I won’t put my child in that position. And I won’t make someone else a prisoner in a marriage he doesn’t want.” To her horror, she nearly burst into tears.

  Steve tried to take her into his arms, but she pushed him away. If there had been a magazine handy, she probably would’ve rolled it up and started smacking him with it, he acknowledged gloomily. Jamie was right—this wasn’t going to be easy. But he was not giving up!

  “There isn’t going to be a divorce, Michelle. When I marry, it’s for life, and I fully intend for our marriage to be as happy and successful as my parents’ marriage has been all these years.” He stared at her, his face lighting in a sudden illuminating smile.

  “This must be one of those cataclysmic moments of truth that always seem to happen to other people. But now it’s happening to me. I want to be happily married to the woman I love. That’s why I waited all these years, playing the field, taking my time. I was waiting for you, Michelle, the one woman I could truly love for the rest of my life. The

  reason I avoided marriage in the past is because I’m so serious about it. I avoided commitment because I’m deeply committed to it. But now I have you and I want to commit myself to you, Michelle. I want to marry you, my darling.” !

  It was the most impassioned and sincere speech of his life and he felt paradoxically drained and exhilarated. He waited for her to run into his arms. Then he could pick her up and carry her to bed and demonstrate his intentions and his love physically, just as he’d done verbally. That was what was supposed to happen after a guy bared his soul to the woman he loved. Wasn’t it?

  Apparently not. Michelle’s face didn’t soften with love, she didn’t run into his arms. She laughed. And not happily, ; not joyfully. Her laughter was unmistakably derisive—and j filled with disbelief.

  “You’re amazing, Steve. No one can twist things around j to serve your own ends like you can. You can take facts and j turn them into fiction like a magician changes a handker-. j chief into a canary. You don’t make 180 degree turns; yours j are more like 540 degrees, but you manage to seem credible anyway.”

  Steve’s lips thinned into a straight line and his eyes narrowed to slits. She’d just thrown his declaration of love and his proposal back in his face! Anger surged through him, mixed by a terrible hurt at the injustice of it all.

  “If you’re trying to infuriate me, you’re succeeding masterfully,” he said in a taut, controlled voice, deliberately using her own words. “If you’re trying to hurt me, you’ve accomplished that, too. I’ll take whatever you dish out because I deserve it for getting you pregnant. You have every right to be furious with me and I don’t blame you for thinking that you hate my guts. But I can only take it in small doses and I’ve had enough tonight, Michelle. I’ll leave you now, since you so obviously want me to.”

  He strode to the door, carefully sidestepping Squeaky who was chasing after a tiny spongy ball. He didn’t look back and he didn’t say goodbye.

  After he’d gone, Michelle stood staring at the closed door. She should be pleased with herself, she’d driven him away. That had been her aim, hadn’t it? Steve Saraceni was very clever at taking pipe dreams and making them seem real and she wasn’t about to succumb to his skills again. No matter how desperately she might want to.

  Ten

  Michelle was keenly aware that the atmosphere in Ed Dineen’s office on Monday morning was curiously, uncharacteristically somber. There were none of the usual half-joking moans and groans about the iniquities of facing a Monday morning, no swapping tales about the holiday weekend. If anyone spoke at all it was in hushed, funereal tones. Was she in an office or a morgue? Michelle mused. She remarked on the radical change to Brendan O’Neal when he came into her office with her mail.

  “You mean you haven’t heard?” Brendan was astonished. “Where have you been, locked up in a monastery in Katmandu? I thought everybody in Harrisburg would’ve heard by now. The reason we’re all in such a funk is because Ed and Valerie Dineen have split up.”

  Michelle felt as if she’d been socked in the solar plexus. “No!” It was more a pained denial than an exclamation. She gripped the edge of her desk. “When? Why?”

  “Ed made the announcement on Friday,” Brendan said grimly. “He left Valerie and the children for— Want me to quote him? Hold on to your stomach, this is going to make you gag—‘the most exciting woman in the world, the one who makes him feel like a man in ways he never dreamed possible.’ ”

  “Stop.” Michelle weakly held up her hand. “You’re right, I am going to gag. Brendan, please tell me you’re making a very bad joke. Ed couldn’t have said that, he couldn’t have done that!”

  “Oh, it gets worse. Do you know who this career-ending, home-wrecker is, Michelle? None other than our very own Leigh Wilson. Apparently she and Ed have been carrying on all over town for the past couple months. They weren’t very discreet, either, according to Everybody I’ve talked to, although all of us here in Ed’s office and poor Valerie must’ve been wearing blinders. We were literally the last ones to find out.”

  “Ed and Leigh?” Michelle lost her grip on the desk and slid numbly into her chair. “Oh, Brendan, it can’t be true!”

  “It is,” Brendan said bluntly. He eyed her curiously. “I’m surprised you didn�
�t know, Michelle. I mean, Saraceni knew—every lobbyist in town did. Rumor has it that Saraceni, Lassiter, Exner, and three NEA lobbyists actually caught Ed and Leigh in, er, flagrante delicto at an NEA fund-raiser one night.”

  Michelle gaped at him, speechless.

  “Joe McClusky’s staff has been telling everybody that Ed’s been handing out confidential information like campaign buttons, hoping to buy himself some goodwill and secrecy,” Brendan continued glumly. His expression, his posture and tone conveyed total demoralization. “It didn’t work, of course. The inside tips Ed gave out have fueled even more gossip. He’s shown such horrible judgment, Michelle. I can’t help but wonder if Ed Dineen ever was who we all thought he was or just a grandstanding actor playing a role while it suited him, then getting bored with it and shucking the whole show.”

  Michelle stared at the smooth surface of her desk. “It was Ed who told Steve the location of the sites for the hazardous waste elimination centers,” she said softly. She knew it now with blinding certainty.

  “Undoubtedly,” agreed Brendan.

  Michelle flinched as everything fell into place with ferocious precision. She had been certain that she herself must’ve unthinkingly told Steve about the sites and that he had used the information to his client’s benefit. After all, she confided in him about everything and anything. Wasn’t it obvious to assume that she was the leak?

  Michelle’s face burned. Steve had admitted having the information but denied getting it from her. And she had accused him of being a liar as well as a back-stabbing dou-ble-crosser.

  But he was neither. Steve had received that information directly from Ed and had used it without compunction. There had been betrayal, but not from her. Ed Dineen had betrayed his wife and his staff and his constituents. And she had betrayed Steve by her appalling lack of faith in him.

  Michelle stood up, her legs so shaky she felt as if she were walking on rubber. “Brendan, I—I’m going out.” She grabbed her purse and headed out of the office.