Mallory just wasn’t getting it. “Are you not listening to me?”
“Actually I think that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
“You want me to open myself to possible feelings for a man who might be stealing from my father? And who has a newborn?” How could Mallory suggest such a thing?
“I want you to be honest with yourself.” Mallory’s words fell gently between them.
“I am,” she insisted. “It’s not like I can bring him home to dinner with the folks, Mal. And even if I could, I can’t take on his baby. He already had a woman leave him because of Diamond Rose and he just doesn’t deserve another kick in the teeth.”
She started to tear up, took a deep breath and then said, “His whole life, Flint has done nothing but try, and give, and work hard. And his whole life, people have done nothing but desert him. It’s not even like he lets that get to him. He’s the least victimized person I’ve ever met. He’d doesn’t get bitter. Or lay blame. He just picks up the pieces and keeps trying. Giving one hundred percent to whatever he does.”
“It sounds to me like you know him pretty well.”
“I’ve been...investigating him.” At work. At lunch. In his home. On the phone. She’d spent more time with him than any other person since she’d been home.
“Really? Is that all?”
It had to be all.
For so many reasons.
But there was one that could convince Mallory...
“How do you suppose he’s going to feel when he finds out that I’m Howard Owens’s daughter? And that I’ve been spying on him because my father, his one-time mentor and current boss, thinks he’s a thief?”
“You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
“I’ve never even kissed the man!”
“You want to.”
“I imagine half the women he meets want to.”
“Maybe two-thirds.” Mallory smiled. And then immediately sobered.
“I wish I knew what to tell you, Tamara. I just know that you don’t get to choose love. It chooses you.”
“It chose you and you’re alone.”
Tamara realized how cruel that sounded but Mallory didn’t seem offended.
“I am,” Mallory said. “Because human beings are fallible. Love gave Braden and me a chance. We failed it. But you’re right. More than anything, I want to be married again, to have a family. And yes, I’m thirty-three. If I’m going to have a houseful of kids, I have to get moving on that. And here I sit. You know why? Because I can’t choose to fall in love. I have to keep my heart open and wait for it to find me.”
“You could go out more.”
“I’ve been dating.”
“Ask Flint out. Like I said, maybe love will choose the two of you.”
If it was half as powerful as Mallory believed, it would choose her and Flint. It should! The match was obvious.
“I’m not doing anything with Flint Collins with you feeling the way you do about him.”
“I don’t feel any way about him except for horrible. I’m deceiving him, and he’s such a great guy.”
“Aside from possibly stealing from your father.”
“Aside from that,” she said. In spite of the number of times she kept reminding herself of the facts, such as they were, she just couldn’t believe Flint was a thief.