The Right Choice(37)
Author: Carly Phillips

“Unfair, Carly. He told me he wanted to dump Peter on his partner-climbing ass. You talked him out of it. He seemed genuinely concerned about you, not Pete.”

She had finished the pancakes and added bacon to the frying pan. Her jerky motions were at odds with the casual air of indifference she tried to maintain.

“Tell me about it,” he urged.

Silence reigned until finally she spoke. “Remember what it was like being a kid?” she asked. “When life was one big illusion?”

“After my parents died, reality killed any hopes of that. Do you?” he asked.

“Yes. One day we were a happy family, no major problems that I knew of. The next we’re front-page news. Scandal of the year.” She plucked the half-cooked bacon off the pan and stacked it next to the pancakes. He didn’t see any reason to point that out. “Breakfast is served.” She executed a mock curtsy and placed his dish before him.

“Thanks.”

She smiled. “No problem. And because I like you, I caved in.” Opening the refrigerator, she pulled out a large pitcher. “Freshly squeezed. Never say I don’t accommodate you.”

“Who me?” he asked. “Never.”

He waited until she had seated herself across from him before continuing his questioning. “What kind of scandal?”

Her dark eyes met his, and though they beseeched him to drop the subject, he wanted her to unburden herself, to trust him enough to share her pain. “Well?”

“You should have been a cop,” she muttered. “You never give up.”

“I’m the next best thing to a journalist. What did you expect?”

She groaned and paused to eat something before beginning. “We lived in a small town in upstate New York. Everyone knew everyone else and gossip ran rampant. So when Roger Wexler, district attorney with political aspirations, hit the news he did it in style.”

She flicked her bangs out of her eyes and looked at him. He waited for her to continue in silence. “Want to take a guess?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“My dad carried on an affair with his secretary for one year. Until the woman forced him to choose between her and his family. In political terms, that’s your lover or your career. Take your pick.” She toyed with her pancakes, staring at the now cold stack.

“He chose your mother?” Mike asked.

“Yes, but that doesn’t make the man a saint. I have no illusions that his decision was politically motivated. And I guess he thought his choice was the end of it.”

“But it wasn’t.”

She shook her head, her pained gaze meeting his. “The woman killed herself, Mike. But not before leaving a suicide note and mailing it to the local paper. She was pregnant.”

Mike sucked in a breath, wishing he had never forced Carly to resurrect these memories. But he had… “Then what?” he asked, knowing he had to hear the end.

“Life went on. Dad’s political career was in ruins, but he never let it get him down. After a while we packed up and moved to the city. Dad hooked up with some old law school buddies and started his own firm.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“How did all of this affect you?” he asked.

“I was fifteen. Your friends are your friends so long as there’s nothing to laugh at. I went to school surrounded by gossip and laughter. I got used to it.”

“I doubt that.”

She shrugged. “Eventually we moved and I finished up in private school.”

“But how’d you survive? Being a teenager is tough by definition. Add your problems…”

“I kept busy. Joined the teen crisis hot line. It kept me out of the house after school so I didn’t have to go home where talk of our family problems was prohibited. I couldn’t watch my mother pretend life was fine.”

Bingo, Mike thought. Carly’s problems weren’t with her father alone. She resented her mother’s behavior as well, and she’d closed them both out of her life. “So that’s how you got started helping teenagers,” Mike said.

She nodded. “I did similar work in college, majored in psychology, and eventually it translated into my column. End of boring story.”

“You never forgave him, did you?” he asked, thinking of the distraught older man he had seen days earlier.

“Not in here.” She placed a hand over her heart.

“Your mother did… or appears to.”

“That’s debatable. Mom’s tough. She believes in handling your private pain in private. I got no support from her because she refused to admit we…” She gestured around the room, the house she’d visited as a child. “We as a family had a problem. I don’t agree with how she chose to live her life, but I can’t fault her for her coping mechanisms.”

Mike disagreed. Carly blamed her mother every bit as much as her father but hadn’t come to terms with her relationship with either one of them. But now wasn’t the time to push her further.

“I’m not as big a person as my mother… you’ve seen that. She stuck by her man. I didn’t stick with Peter. But my parents taught me one important lesson in life.”

“And what’s that?” he asked, sensing this was the key.

“I discovered firsthand what a destructive force passion can be and I’ll never allow it to rule my life,” she said with a vehemence that would have once shocked him.

But after experiencing her extreme reactions to their intense physical attraction, he now understood. She obviously believed she could separate their physical relationship from the emotional and thereby never repeat her father’s mistakes.

He glanced across the table. Carly had begun clearing their half-eaten meal. When he had arrived in the Hamptons, Mike had feared he needed the safety Carly represented and not the woman herself. As he watched her clatter the plates into the sink, he realized how very wrong he had been. And how very much a part of him she had become. The truth frightened him almost as much as it obviously frightened her.

Carly turned from the sink with tears in her eyes.

He held out his arms and she sank into them. Burying his face in her hair, he comforted her the best he could and pushed aside all questions about the future.

NINE

After their emotional discussion, Carly tossed Mike out. Pushing the morning’s events out of her mind, she set about organizing her columns into broad topics. Family, Friendships and Male-Female Relationships seemed like perfect headings, and hours later she had three distinct piles.