This Heart of Mine (Chicago Stars #5)(108)

"Go to hell!"

"Okay, I'll say it for you. You won't fight for your books because you might fail, and you're so competitive with your sister that you can't risk that."

"I'm not competitive with Phoebe. I love her!"

"I don't doubt that. But your sister is one of the most powerful women in professional sports, and you're a screwup."

"I am not!"

"Then stop acting like one."

"You don't understand."

"I'm starting to understand a lot." He circled his hand over the back of one of the farmhouse chairs. "As a matter of fact, I think I've finally got it."

"Got what? Never mind, I don't want to know." She headed for the kitchen, but he moved in front of her before she could get there.

"That thing with the fire alarm. Dan talks about what a quiet, serious kid you were. The good grades you got, all the awards you earned. You've spent your whole life trying to be perfect, haven't you? Getting to the top of the honor roll, collecting good-conduct medals like other kids collect baseball cards. But then something happens. Out of nowhere the pressure gets to you, and you flip out. You pull a fire alarm, you give away your money, you jump in bed with a total stranger!" He shook his head. "I can't believe I didn't see it right away. I can't believe nobody else sees it."

"Sees what?"

"Who you really are."

"Like you'd know."

"All that perfection. It's not in your nature."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the person you'd have been if you'd grown up in a normal family."

She didn't know what he was going to say, but she knew he believed it, and she suddenly wanted to run away.

He loomed in the door between her and escape. "Don't you see? Your nature was to be the class clown, the girl who ditched school so she could smoke pot with her boyfriend and make out in the backseat of his car."

"What?"

"The girl most likely to skip college and—and run off to Vegas to parade around in a G-string."

"A G-string! That's the most—"

"You're not Bert Somerville's daughter." He let out a bark of rueful laughter. "Damn! You're your mother's daughter. And everybody's been too blind to see it."

She sagged down on the glider. This was silly. The mental meanderings of someone who'd spent too much time inside an MRI machine. He was trying to take everything she understood about who she was and turn it topsy-turvy. "You have no idea what you're—"

Just like that, she ran out of air.

"What you're—" She tried to say the rest, but she couldn't because deep inside her something finally clicked into place.

The class clown… The girl most likely to ditch school…

"It's not only that you're afraid to take a risk because you're competing with Phoebe. You're afraid to take a risk because you're still living with the illusion that you have to be perfect. And, Molly, trust me on this, being perfect isn't in your nature."

She needed to think, but she couldn't do it under those watchful green eyes. "I'm not—I don't even recognize this person you're talking about."

"Give it a few seconds, and I bet you will."

It was too much. He was the bonehead, not her. "You're just trying to distract me from pointing out everything that's screwed up about you."

"There's nothing screwed up about me. Or at least there wasn't until I met you."

"Is that right?" She told herself to shut up, this wasn't the time, but everything she'd been thinking and trying not to say spilled out. "What about the fact that you're afraid to make any kind of emotional connection?"

"If this is about Lilly…"

"Oh, no. That's way too easy. Even someone as obtuse as you should be able to figure that out. Why don't we look at something more complicated?"

"Why don't we not?"

"Isn't it a little weird that you're thirty-three years old, you're rich, moderately intelligent, you look like a Greek god, and you're definitely heterosexual. But what's wrong with this picture? Oh, yeah, I remember… You've never had a single long-term relationship with a woman."

"Aw, for the… " He sprawled down at the table.

"What's with that anyway?"

"How do you even know it's true?"

"Team gossip, the newspapers, that article about us in People. If you ever did have a long-term relationship, it must have been in junior high. Lots of women move through your life, but none of them gets to stay around for long."

"There's one of them who's been around way too long!"

"And look at what kind of women you choose." She splayed her hands on the table. "Do you choose smart women who might have a chance of holding your interest? Or respectable women who share at least a few of your—and don't even think about arguing with me about this—a few of your rock-bottom-conservative values? Well, surprise, surprise. None of the above."

"Here we go with the foreign women again. I swear, you're obsessed."