LITMIR.BIZ

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      Chapter Four

      Sitting outside at a table for two at a nearby trendy restaurant, Jason solemnly watched the late-afternoon sun making shimmering patterns on the surface of his coffee.

      The noise of the city pushed its way in, surrounding him and Mindy. The silence that existed between them was all he was aware of.

      He had to admit that he hadn’t thought this out.

      Being moved exclusively by the desire for Mindy’s company, he’d forgotten that in order to share it comfortably, he was going to have to talk with her.

      Talking, when it didn’t involve the care and feeding of investment funds, was not his long suit. It never had been. He had never been accused of being one of those people blessed with a golden tongue. Not even fool’s gold. And right now, his tongue felt as if it had been forged out of two tons of lead.

      “So,” was all he could manage before he had utterly depleted his supply of words. It sank to the bottom of his cup of coffee like a stone.

      Mindy smiled at him, looking over the rim of her recently stirred cup of foam and decaf, her eyes stirring him.

      “So,” she echoed, waiting for him to make some kind of stab at conversation.

      Well, that had gone nowhere, he thought darkly. When in doubt, ask questions. That way the spotlight was focused somewhere other than on him.

      He took a sip of the strong, black cup of unaffected coffee, let it wind its hot, dark path down his throat and through his chest, then ventured forward. “Care to fill in the blanks?”

      She tilted her head in that way he’d always thought hopelessly endearing. “Excuse me?”

      He was going to have to stop talking in bits and pieces, he thought, and make sense before she thought he was hopelessly sentence challenged.

      “The blanks between walking on stage to get your diploma and arriving at Mallory and Dixon on Monday morning.” He did a quick subtraction. “That leaves us with what, eleven years?”

      Eleven years. The simple statement stunned her. My God, was it really all that time? Had that many years actually gone by since she’d left for Northwestern, determined to set the world on fire?

      It didn’t seem possible.

      She felt as if the distance between then and now was a little more than a blink of an eye. A year, maybe two, no more than three. Eleven? How had that happened?

      “Eleven years,” she echoed out loud. Her mouth curved in a self-deprecating smile. “That suddenly makes me feel very old.”

      He hadn’t meant to do that. “Someone once said everyone has to grow older, but you don’t have to grow old.”

      She recalled reading that someplace. Mindy thought for a second, then her eyes brightened as she remembered. “George Burns, I think.”

      He was surprised that she knew something like that. But then, she’d been surprising him all week. He took another sip of coffee, wishing there was something in the drink that would transform his stilted tongue into a glib one. He began to understand what had driven Christian to approach Cyrano and ask the character to do his talking for him.

      “Good words to live by.” He allowed himself to study her face for a moment. He’d noticed women looking in her direction enviously as they walked by. “In any case, I don’t think you have anything to worry about in that department for a very long, long time.”

      She raised her eyes to his, and for one moment he forgot to breathe.

      “That’s very sweet of you.”

      Embarrassed, not knowing what to do with his face, his eyes, his hands, Jason shrugged. “Just stating a fact.”

      Sweet. Who would have ever thought that Jason Mallory could actually be described that way? Mindy mused. Tough, rugged, sexy, yes, but sweet? That was a new one.

      She sat back, enjoying this lovely island of time that had materialized out of nowhere, not unaware of the envious looks she was garnering. She would bet that every woman who walked by wished that she was in her place.

      The conversation had stopped again. Searching for something to move it along, Jason looked down at her hand. He heard himself asking another personal question before he had a chance to think it out. “So, are you divorced, or—?”

      “Or,” she replied. It was a state of limbo, really, not quite married anymore, not yet divorced. “It’s not final yet.” Anyday now, she thought.

      The sun was pushing its way into the restaurant, brushing against the wide gold band, highlighting it. “Oh, I was just wondering because you’re still wearing your wedding ring.”

      Mindy looked down at the gold band as if it had somehow managed to offend her through no fault of its own. She wasn’t wearing the ring because of any real sentimental attachment. The truth was, the only part of her that had gained weight since she’d become pregnant was her hands. Actually, not even her hands, just her hand. Her left one.

      The fingers of her left hand had swollen just enough to make easy removal of her wedding ring an impossibility. Tugging at it was futile. Like a guest who had intentionally overstayed their welcome, the ring refused to be dislodged. The only way to rid herself of it was to cut it off, and she really wasn’t ready to do that at the moment.

      Somehow that would have underscored the mistake she’d made in giving her heart to Brad and putting her life on virtual hold. Cutting the ring off would have symbolized her making a complete break with that part of her life, and though she was struggling to be independent now, she wasn’t ready to bury everything just yet. But soon, very soon, she promised herself. And then she was going to have to send it back to Brad.

      But she didn’t want to tell Jason any of this.

      She thought of a movie she’d once seen. The heroine pretended to be married in order not to have anyone hit on her.

      Mindy ran her thumb over the row of winking diamonds slowly. “Oh that. I just wear it to keep the wolves away.”

      He felt a sense of relief and told himself he shouldn’t. “I thought that you were still wearing it because you and your husband were trying to reconcile.”

      The very idea threatened to make Mindy gag. “Never happen,” she told him flatly. She set the cup down a little too hard and some of the liquid sloshed over the side. She moved her napkin over to sop up the mess. If only the mess that her life had become was as easily cleaned up, she thought. “I’ve always disliked having to take a number and wait in line, like in a bakery or at the post office.”

      His eyes narrowed as he tried to fathom what the remark had to do with the state of her marriage. “I don’t understand—”

      “Neither did I. Glossed right over the evidence, even though it was right there in front of me.” The excuses, the late nights, the faint scent of perfume that wasn’t hers, the hang-up calls when she answered the phone. “Believed every word he said when he told me he was working late.” She looked at him. Did he think her a hopeless fool to be so naive? “People do work late in this day and age.”

      “But he wasn’t working.” It wasn’t a question, it was rhetorical. And hit so close to home that he couldn’t believe it. Debra had played the same game with him, lying to him when she bothered saying anything at all to him.

      She laughed shortly. “Oh, he was working all right.” Holding up her hand, she enumerated, counting the women off on her fingers one by one. “Working over his secretary, his assistant, some of his prettier clients. I always thought that Brad’s main problem was that he spread himself around too much.” She shook her head. Sometimes, it was hard even for her to believe how blind she’d been, how trusting. “I had no idea how right I was. It was like he spread himself and his seed all over the state of Illinois.” Mindy looked down at her hands. She’d knotted them together

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