She clenched her hands together. "What do you mean by that?"
"Explain something to me. Explain how you justify spending so much time minding my business instead of taking care of your own?"
"I do take care of it."
"When? For two weeks you've been plotting and scheming over this campground instead of putting your energy where it belongs. You have a career that's going down the toilet. When are you going to start fighting the good fight for your rabbit instead of lying down and playing dead?"
"I haven't done that! You don't know what you're talking about."
"You know what I think? I think your obsession with my life and this campground is just a way of distracting yourself from what you need to be doing with your own life."
How had he managed to turn the conversation? "You don't understand anything. Daphne Takes a Tumble is the first book on a new contract. They won't accept anything else from me until I revise it."
"You don't have any guts."
"That's not true! I did all I could to convince my editor she'd made a mistake, but Birdcage won't budge."
"Hannah told me about Daphne Takes a Tumble. She said it's your best book. Too bad she'll be the only kid who gets to read it." He gestured toward the notepad she'd left on the couch. "Then there's the new one you're working on. Daphne Goes to Summer Camp."
"How do you know about-"
"You're not the only sneak. I've read your draft. Other than some blatant unfairness to the badger, it looks like you've got another winner. But nobody can publish it unless you follow orders. And are you doing that? No. Are you even forcing the issue? No. Instead, you're letting yourself drift along in some never-never land where none of your troubles are real, only mine."
"You don't understand!"
"You're right about that. I never did understand quitters."
"That's not fair! I can't win. If I make the revisions, I've sold out and I'll hate myself. If I don't make them, the Daphne books are going to disappear. The publisher will never reprint the old ones, and they sure won't publish any new ones. No matter what I do, I'll lose, and losing's not an option."
"Losing isn't as bad as not fighting at all."
"Yes it is. The women in my family don't lose."
He gazed at her for a long time. "Unless I'm missing something, there's only one other woman in your family."
"And look what she did!" Agitation forced her to move. "Phoebe held on to the Stars when everybody in the world had written her off. She faced down all of her enemies-"
"Married one of them."
"-and beat them at their own game. Those men thought she was a bimbo and wrote her off. She was never supposed to have ended up with the Stars, but she did."
"Everybody in the football world admires her for it. So what does this have to do with you?"
She turned away. He already knew, and he wasn't going to make her say it.
"Come on, Molly! I want to hear those whiny words come out of your mouth so I can have a big cry."
"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."