Falling Awake(52)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

It wasn’t the crude words that jolted her, it was the pure male petulance, the accusation in his tone.

“It’s not like you’ve got any right to be judgmental here, Ian,” she shot back. “You’re the one who took me out to dinner one evening and told me that you didn’t think we had much of a future and that it would be a good thing for both of us to date other people. Remember?”

“It wasn’t as if you wanted to climb all over me, was it? Hell, every time I suggested we go away together or spend the night at my place, you came up with some weak excuse about having to work late at the office.”

“You’re blaming me for the fact that we broke up?”

“Why not? You’re the one who put the physical and emotional distance between us, Izzy. You’re the one who turned whatever we might have had together into a nice, safe, platonic friendship because that’s the way you wanted it.”

If he had whipped out a sorcerer’s wand and used it to generate a lightning bolt, she could not have been more thunderstruck. As it was, she was so dazed by the burst of insight that she almost dropped the partially eaten pickle.

“Huh.” She dug deeper, going for something more intellectual. “Huh.”

Ian regarded her with a sullen air. “What’s wrong? You’ve got a really weird expression on your face. Are you okay?”

“Yes.” She gave him her brightest, warmest smile. “Yes, I am, thanks to you.”

“What?”

She leaped to her feet, circled the table and gave him a big hug. He did not move. She released him quickly, went back to her chair and sat down. Enthusiasm bubbled through her.

“What the hell?” Ian mumbled.

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this conversation, Ian. You have enlightened me.”

Ian was looking increasingly uneasy. “What are you talking about?”

“That’s it.” She waved the pickle in a sweeping voilà gesture. “That’s what I’ve been missing in my self-analysis.”

“Uh, Izzy—”

“I thought I had it all figured out but I was lacking a piece of the puzzle. You just gave it to me. It’s perfectly obvious now.”

“It is?”

“You’re absolutely right. I should have seen the pattern myself.” She shook her head, amused at her own failure to grasp the big picture. “I guess it’s one of those cases of being able to diagnose everyone but yourself.”

“Pattern?” Ian repeated, wary now.

“It was my fault all along, every time.” She aimed the pickle at Ian. “Thanks to your observation, it’s clear to me that all of my previous attempts to construct healthy relationships with men have been doomed right from the start because I unconsciously squelched the possibility of romance and passion, to say nothing of love and commitment, in every instance from the outset.”

Ian cleared his throat. His gaze darted to a point behind her right shoulder. “Yes, well—”

“I see now that I developed a pattern of deliberately encouraging men to talk to me about their problems.” She nibbled on the pickle. Juice dripped. “That had the effect of making them instinctively switch gears.”

“Uh.” Ian glanced again from the pickle to the point beyond her shoulder and then he looked back at the pickle, riveted.

“You see, as soon as men started sharing their problems with me, they stopped seeing me as a potential lover and started viewing me as a buddy or a therapist. But that happened because I unconsciously manipulated that outcome early on in the relationships, long before another type of bond could be formed.”

A hunted expression crossed Ian’s face. He jerked his gaze off the pickle and stared at the space behind her chair. “Maybe we should discuss this some other time.”

“Sorry, I need to talk about it now.”

He put both hands on the table and started to get to his feet. “I’d better be on my way—”

She motioned forcefully with the pickle. “This is important, Ian. Sit down. You owe me that much.”

Ian sat.

“Lord knows, I listened to enough of your problems while we were dating,” she reminded him. “The least you can do is listen to me tell you about my epiphany. You know how it is with epiphanies. When you have one, you can’t resist sharing it.”

“I didn’t come here to talk about us,” Ian said quite forcefully. He was looking more and more agitated. “We’re supposed to be discussing your return to the center.”

“Later.” More pickle juice dripped onto the table. She grabbed a napkin and dabbed the corner of her lips. “By the way, I’m not discussing our relationship. That’s finished, remember? This is all about me. As I was saying, it’s clear that I deliberately manipulated all of my relationships, including ours, in such a way that there was no hope of long-term success.”

Ian’s gaze was flickering wildly back and forth between the half-eaten pickle and the region behind her chair.

“I don’t really see the point,” he said.

“The point is that I was the one who made sure that things stayed in the safe zone. I was never in any real danger of falling in love. And deep down that’s just the way I wanted it.”

“That’s very interesting,” Ian said weakly. “But—”

“I know what you’re about to say.” She held the pickle straight up to stop him. “You’re going to ask me why I wanted to play it safe. What motivated me to go out of my way to see to it that every relationship I ever had fizzled before it could grow into something deeper and more intimate.”

“Uh—”

“The answer is obvious to me now, thanks to you.”

“Well, hey, that’s great.” Ian shoved himself to his feet again. “Glad I could help. But I really did not come here to talk about your problems with relationships.”

“Don’t you want to hear why I’ve had those problems?”

“Not really.” He was trying very hard not to look at either the pickle or the space behind her chair. “I’ve got to be on my way. Long drive back to the center.”

“Don’t rush off on account of me,” Ellis said to Ian.

“Ellis.” Isabel turned in her chair. She smiled up at him. “I didn’t know you were here. Meet Ian Jarrow. He and I were colleagues at the center. Ian, this is Ellis Cutler. He’s my new client.”