Rescued in a Wedding Dress (4 page)

It was his annoyance at himself for allowing those thoughts into his business world that made his tone even sharper than it had to be, even if he was testing her ability to run a million dollar corporation.

“Have you ever been hungry?” But even as he asked it, he knew that question, too, stemmed not so much from professional interest as from a dark past he thought he had left behind.

“No,” she said, “but I think I can imagine the desperation of it.”

“Can you?” he said cynically.

Without warning a memory popped over the barrier of the thick, high wall he had constructed around the compartment of his childhood.

So hungry. Not a crumb of food in the house. Going into Sam’s, the bakery at the corner of his street, Houston’s heart beating a horrible tattoo in his chest, his mouth watering from the smells and the sights of the freshly baked bread. Looking around, it was crowded, no one paying any attention to him. Sam’s back turned. Houston’s hands closing around one of the still-warm loafs in a basket outside the counter, stuffing it under his thin jacket. Lifting his eyes to see Sam looking straight at him. And then Sam turning away, saying nothing, and Houston feeling the shame of the baker’s pity so strongly he could not eat the bread. He brought it home to his mother, who had been indifferent to the offering, uncaring of what it had cost him.

Molly was looking at him, understandably perplexed by the question.

Stop it,
he ordered himself. But another question came out anyway, clipped with unexpected anger. “Out of work?”

“I don’t suppose the summer I chose to volunteer here instead of taking a paying job counts, does it?”

“The fact you could make a choice to volunteer instead of work indicates to me you have probably not known real hardship.”

“That doesn’t make me a bad person!” she said sharply. “Or unqualified for my job!”

“No,” he said, taking a deep breath, telling himself to smarten up. “Of course it doesn’t. I’m just saying your frame of reference when choosing projects may not
take into account the harsh realities the people you are helping live with.”

Another memory popped over that wall. His father drunk, belligerent, out of work again. Not his fault. Never his fault. His mother screaming at his father. You loser. The look on his father’s face. Rage. The flying fists, the breaking glass.

Houston could feel his heart beating as rapidly as though it had just happened. Molly was watching him, silently, the dismay and anger that had been in her face fading, becoming more thoughtful.

He ordered himself, again, to stop this. It was way too personal. But, master of control that he was, he did not stop.

“Have you ever had no place to live?”

“Of course not!”

Homelessness was so far from her reality that she could not even fathom it happening to her. Not that he had any right to treat that as a character defect, just because it had once been part of his childhood reality.

The eviction notice pounded onto the door. The hopeless feeling of nowhere to go and no place to feel safe. That sense that even that place he had called home was only an illusion. A sense that would be confirmed as the lives of the Whitfords spiraled steadily downward toward disaster.

Again Molly was silent, but her eyes were huge and had darkened to a shade of green that reminded him of a cool pond on a hot day, a place that promised refuge and rest, escape from a sizzling hot pressure-cooker of a world.

Her expression went from defensive to quiet. She studied his face, her own distress gone, as if she saw something in him, focused on something in him. He
didn’t want her to see his secrets, and yet something in her steady gaze made him feel seen, vulnerable.

“You’re dealing with desperation, and you’re doling out prom dresses? Are you kidding me?”

Houston was being way too harsh. He drew a deep breath, ordered himself to apologize, to back track, but suddenly the look on her face transformed. Her expression went from that quiet thoughtfulness to something much worse.
Knowing.

He felt as transparent as a sheet of glass.

“You’ve known those things, haven’t you?” she guessed softly.

The truth was he would rather run through Central Park in the buff than reveal himself emotionally.

He was stunned that she had seen right through his exquisite suit, all the trappings of wealth and success, seen right through the harshness of his delivery to what lay beneath.

He was astounded that a part of him—a weak part—
wanted
to be seen. Completely.

He didn’t answer her immediately. The part of him that felt as if it was clamoring to be acknowledged quieted, and he came back to his senses.

He had to apply his own rules right now, to set an example for her. Don’t form attachments. Don’t care too deeply. Not about people. Not about programs.

And he needed to take away that feeling he’d been
seen.
Being despised for his severity felt a whole lot safer than that look she’d just given him.

He was laying down the law. If she didn’t like it, too bad. It was his job to see if she was capable of doing what needed to be done. Miss Viv wanted to hand this place over to her. There was absolutely no point doing
any of this if six months later soft hearts had just run it back into the ground.

“Prom Dreams is gone,” he said coolly. “It’s up to you to get rid of it.”

She bit her lip. She looked at her shoes. She glanced back at him, and tears were stinging her eyes.

There was no room for crying at work!

And absolutely no room for the way it made him feel: as if he wanted to fix it. For Pete’s sake, he was the one who’d created it!

“I can see we are going to have a problem,” he said. “You are a romantic. And I am a realist.”

For a moment she studied him. For a moment he thought she would not be deflected by Prom Dreams, by his harshness, that despite it she would pursue what he had accidentally shown her.

But she didn’t.

“I am not a romantic!” she protested.

“Anyone who shows up for work in a wedding gown is a romantic,” he said, pleased with how well his deflection had worked. It was about her now, not about him, not about what experiences he did or didn’t know.

“I didn’t arrive in it,” she said, embarrassed and faintly defensive, again. “It was a donation. It had been put on my desk.”

“So naturally you had no alternative but to try it on.”

“Exactly. I was just checking it for damage.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, not even trying to hide his skepticism. “Anyone who wants to buy dresses instead of feeding people is a romantic.”

“It’s not that black and white!”

“Everything is black and white to a realist. Rose-colored to a romantic.”

“I might have been a romantic once,” she said, her chin tilted proudly, “but I’m not anymore.”

Ah, the cad.
He shoved his hands under his desk when they insisted on forming fists.

“Good,” he said, as if he were the most reasonable of men. “Then you should have no problem getting on board for the kind of pragmatic changes that need to be made around here.”

He knew she was kidding herself about not being a romantic. Despite the recent heartbreak Miss Viv had told him about, it seemed that Molly had hopes and dreams written all over her. Could she tame that enough to do the job Second Chances needed her to do?

“Couldn’t we look at ways to increase funding, rather than cutting programs?”

Ah, that’s what he wanted to hear. Realistic ideas for dealing with problems, creative approaches to solutions, coming at challenges from different directions, experimenting with angles.

For the first time, he thought
maybe.
Maybe Molly Michaels had the potential to run the show. But he let nothing of that optimism into his voice. It was just too early to tell. Because it couldn’t work if she was so attached to things that she could not let go of the ones that were dragging the organization down.

“Believe me, I’m looking at everything. That’s my job. But I still want every single thing Second Chances funds to have merit, to be able to undergo the scrutiny of the people I will be approaching for funding, and to pass with flying colors.”

“I think,” she said, slowly, “our different styles might work together, not against each other, if we gave them a chance.”

He frowned at that. He wasn’t looking for a partnership. He wasn’t looking to see if they could work together. He wanted to evaluate whether she could work alone. He wasn’t looking for anything to complicate what needed to be done here. It already was way too complicated.

Memories. Unexpected emotion.

Annoyed with himself, he put Houston Whitford, CEO of Precision Solutions, solidly back in the driver’s seat.

“What needs to be done is pretty cut-and-dried,” Houston said. “I’ve figured it out on paper, run numbers, done my homework. A team of experts is coming in here tomorrow to implement changes. Second Chances needs computer experts, business analysts, accounting wizards. It needs an image face-lift. It needs to be run like a corporation, stream-lined, professional.”

“A corporation?” she said, horrified. “This is a family!”

“And like most families, it’s dysfunctional.”
That
was the Houston Whitford he knew and loved.

“What a terribly cynical thing to say!”

Precisely. And every bit of that cynicism had been earned in the school of hard knocks.
“If you want Walt Disney, you go to the theater or rent
Old Yeller
from the video store. I deal in reality.”

“You don’t think the love and support of a family is possible in the business environment?”

The brief hope he’d felt about Molly’s suitability to have Miss Viv turn over the reins to her was waning.

“That would assume that the love and support of family is a reality, not a myth. Miss Michaels, there is no place for sentiment in the corporate world.”

“You’re missing all that is important about Second Chances!”

“Maybe, for the first time, someone is seeing exactly what
is
important about Second Chances. Survival. That would speak to the bottom line. Which at the moment is a most unbecoming shade of red.”

She eyed him, and for a moment anger and that other thing—that soft
knowing
—warred in her beautiful face. He pleaded with the anger to win. Naturally, the way his day was going, it didn’t.

“Let me show you
my
Second Chances before you make any decisions about the programs,” she implored. “You’ve seen them in black and white, on paper, but there’s more to it than that. I want to show you the soul of this organization.”

He sighed. “The soul of it? And you’re not romantic? Organizations don’t have souls.”

“The best ones do. Second Chances does,” she said with determination. “And you need to see that.”

Don’t do it,
he ordered himself.

But suddenly it seemed like a life where a man was offered a glimpse at soul and refused it was a bereft place, indeed. Not that he was convinced she could produce such a glimpse. Romantics had a tendency to see things that weren’t there. But realists didn’t. Why not give her a chance to defend her vision? Really, could there be a better way to see if she had what it took to run Second Chances?

Still, he would have to spend time with her. More time than he had expected. And he didn’t want to. And yet he did.

But if he did go along with her, once he had seen she was wrong, he could move forward, guilt-free. Make his recommendations about her future leadership, begin the job of cutting what needed to be cut. Possibly he wouldn’t even feel like a cad when he axed Prom Dreams.

Besides, if there was one lesson he had carried forward when he’d left his old life behind him, it was to never show fear. Or uncertainty. The mean streets fed on fear.

No, you set your shoulders and walked straight toward what you feared, unflinching, ready to battle it.

He feared the
knowing
that had flashed in her eyes, the place that had called to him like a cool, green pond to a man who had unknowingly been living on the searing hot sands of the desert. If he went there could he ever go back to where—to what—he had been before?

That was his fear and he walked toward it.

He shrugged, not an ounce of his struggle in his controlled voice. He said, “Okay. I’ll give you a day to convince me.”

“Two.”

He leaned back in his chair, studied her, thought it was probably very unwise to push this thing by spending two days in close proximity to her. And he realized, with sudden unease, the kind of neighborhoods her projects would be in. He’d rather hoped never to return to them.

On the other hand the past he had been so certain he had left behind was reemerging, and he regarded his unease with some distaste. Houston Whitford was not a man who shirked. Not from
knowing
eyes, not from the demons in his past.

He would face the pull of her and the desire to push away his past in the very same way—head-on. He was not running away from anything. There was nothing he could not handle for two short days.

“Okay,” he said again. “Two days.”

Maybe it was because it felt as if he’d made a concession and was giving her false hope—maybe it was
to fight the light in her face—that he added, “But Prom Dreams is already gone. And in two days all my other decisions are final.”

M
OLLY
was glad to be home. Today easily qualified as one of the worst of her life.

Right up there with the day her father had announced her parents’ plan to divorce, right up there with the day she had come home from work to find her message machine blinking, Chuck’s voice on the other end.

“Sorry, sweetheart, moving on. A great opportunity in Costa Rica.”

Not even the courtesy of a face-to-face breakup. Of course, if he’d taken the time to do that, he might have jeopardized his chances of getting away with the contents, meager as they had been, of her bank account.

A note had arrived, postmarked from Costa Rica, promising to pay her back, and also telling her not to totally blame him.
Sweetheart, you’re a pushover. Don’t let the next guy get away with pushing you around.
To prove she was not a pushover, she had taken the note directly to the police and it had been added to her complaint against Chuck.

A kindly desk sergeant had told her not to hold her breath about them ever finding him or him ever sending a check. And he’d been right. So far, no checks, but the
advice had probably been worth it, even if so far, there had been no
next
guy.

Besides, the emptied bank account had really been a small price to pay to be rid of Chuck, she thought, and then felt startled. It was the first time she had seen his defection in that light.

Was it Houston, with his hard-headed pragmatism, that was making her see things differently? Surely not! For all that he was a powerful presence, there was no way she could be evaluating Chuck through his eyes!

And finding the former coming up so lacking.

Perhaps change in general forced one to evaluate one’s life in a different light?

For instance, she was suddenly glad she had never given in to Chuck’s pressure to move in with her, that she had clung to her traditional values, that it was marriage or nothing.

She had actually allowed Chuck access to her bank account to take the sting out of that decision, one she’d been unusually firm about even in the face of Chuck’s irritation.

Because of that decision today she could feel grateful that her apartment remained a tiny, cozy space, all hers, no residue of Chuck here.

Usually her living room welcomed her, white slipcovers over two worn love seats that faced each other, fresh flowers in a vase on the coffee table between the sofas. The throw cushions were new to pick up the colors from her most prized possession, acquired since Chuck’s defection from her life.

It was a large, expensively framed art poster of a flamboyantly colored hot air balloon rising at dawn over the golden mists of the Napa Valley.

There were two people standing at the side of the basket of the rising balloon, sharing the experience and each other at a deep level that the photographer had managed to capture. Tonight, Molly Michaels looked at it with the fresh eyes of one who had been judged, and felt defensive.

She told herself she hadn’t bought it because she was a
romantic,
as a subliminal nod to all she still wanted to believe in. No, Molly had purchased the piece because it spoke to the human spirit’s ability to rise above turmoil, to experience peace and beauty despite disappointments and betrayals.

And that’s why she’d tried on the wedding dress, too?

The unwanted thoughts made her much loved living space feel like a frail refuge from the unexpected storm that was battering her world.

Hurricane Houston,
she told herself, out loud trying for a wry careless note, but instead she found she had conjured an image of his eyes that threatened to invade even the coziness of her safe place.

Which just went to show that Houston Whitford was a man she
really
would have to defend herself against, if the mere remembering of the light in his eyes could make him have more presence here in her tiny sanctuary than Chuck had ever had.

That begged another question. If someone like Chuck—unwilling to accept responsibility for anything, including his theft of her bank account—could devastate her life so totally, how much more havoc could a more powerful man wreak on the life of the unwary?

Molly remembered the touch of Houston’s hands on her neck, and shivered, remembering how hard the texture of his skin had been, a forewarning he was much
tougher than the exquisite tailoring of the suit had prepared her for.

Have you ever been hungry?

What had she seen in him in that moment? Not with her eyes, really, her heart. Her heart had sensed something, known something about him that he did not want people to know.

Stop it,
she ordered herself. She was only proving he was right. Hearts sensing something that the eyes could not see was romantic hogwash.

He had already axed Prom Dreams. That’s what she needed to see! She was dealing with a man who was heartless!

Though she rarely drank and never during the week, she poured herself a glass of the Biale Black Chicken Zinfandel from the region depicted on the poster. She raised her glass to the rising hot air balloon.

“To dreams,” she said, even though it was probably proving that Houston Whitford was right again. A romantic despite her efforts to cure herself of it. She amended her toast, lifted the wineglass to the photo again. “To hope.”

With uncharacteristic uncertainty tormenting her, Molly spent the evening reviewing her projects—alternately defending each and every one, and then trying to decide which ones to take him to in the two days he had reluctantly allotted her.

And she tried desperately to think of a way to save Prom Dreams. They always had lots of donations of fine gowns, but never enough. It had to be supplemented for each girl who wanted a dress to get one. The thought of phoning the project coordinator and canceling it turned her stomach. Hearts would be broken! For months, girls
looked forward to the night the Greenwich Village shop, Now and Zen, was transformed into prom dress heaven.

Could she wait? Hope for a change of heart on his part? A miracle?

If she could convince him of the merit of her other projects, would there be a chance he might develop faith in her abilities? Could she then convince him Prom Dreams had to be saved?

She was not used to having to prove herself at work! The supportive atmosphere at Second Chances had always been such that she felt respected, appreciated and approved of! None of her projects had ever come under fire, none had ever been dismissed as trivial! Of course there had been a few mistakes along the way, but no one had ever made her feel incompetent because of them! She had always been given the gift of implicit trust.

That was part of the
soul
of Second Chances. It trusted the best in everyone would come out if it was encouraged!

Could she make Houston Whitford see that soul as she had promised? Could she make him feel that sense of family he was so cynical about? Could she make him understand the importance of it in a world too cold, and too capitalistic and too focused on those precious bottom lines?

But she was suddenly very aware she did not want to think of Houston Whitford in the context of a family.

That felt as if it would be the most dangerous thing of all, as if it would confirm what her heart insisted it had glimpsed in him when he had talked about hunger and hardship.

That he was lonely. That never had a man needed a family more than he did.

Stop it, she told herself. That was exactly the kind of thinking that got her into trouble, made her a pushover as Chuck had so generously pointed out from the beaches of Costa Rica, no doubt while sipping Margaritas paid for with her money! Molly took far too long the next morning choosing her outfit, but she knew she needed to look and feel every inch a professional, on even footing, in a position to command both respect and straight answers.

She had to erase the message that the wedding dress had given. She had to be seen as a woman who knew her job, and was a capable and complete professional.

The suit Molly chose was perfect—Calvin Klein, one-inch-above-the-knee black skirt, tailored matching jacket over a sexy hot-pink camisole. But somehow it wasn’t quite right, and she changed it.

“You don’t have time for this,” she wailed, and yet somehow
looking
calm and confident when that was the last thing she was feeling seemed more important than ever.

She ended up in a white blouse and a spring skirt—splashes of lime-green and lemon-yellow—that was decidedly flirty in its cut and movement. She undid an extra button on the blouse. Did it back up. Raced for the door.

She undid the top button again as she walk-ran the short distance to work. She was going to need every advantage she could call into play to work with that man! It seemed only fair that she should keep him as off balance as he made her.

Only as soon as she entered the office she could see they were not even playing in the same league when it came to the “off balance” department.

The Second Chances office as she had always known it was no more.

In its place was a construction zone. Sawhorses had been set up and a carpenter was measuring lengths of very expensive looking crown molding on them. One painter was putting down drop cloths, another was leaning on Tish the receptionist’s desk, making her blush. An official looking man with a clipboard was peering into filing cabinets making notes. A series of blueprint drawings were out on the floor.

Molly had ordered herself to start differently today. To be a complete professional, no matter what.

Bursting into tears didn’t seem to qualify!

How could he do this? He had promised to give her a chance to show him where funding was needed! How could he be tearing down the office without consulting the people who worked there? Without asking them what they needed and wanted? Why had she thought, from a momentary glimpse of something in his eyes, that he had a soft side? That she could trust him? Wasn’t that the mistake she insisted on making over and over again?

Worst of all, Prom Dreams was the first of her many projects being axed for lack of funding, and Houston Whitford was in a redecorating frenzy? There were four complete strangers hard at work in the outer office, all of whom would be getting paid, and probably astronomical amounts! Molly could hear the sounds of more workers, a circular saw screaming in a back room.

Calm and control,
Molly ordered herself. She curled her hands in her skirt to remind herself why she had taken such care choosing it.
To appear a total professional.

Storming his office screaming could not possibly accomplish that. Not possibly.

Instead, she slid under an open ladder—defying the bad luck that could bring—and went through the door
of her own office. Molly needed to gather her wits and hopefully to delay that temper—the unfortunate but well-deserved legacy she shared with other redheads—from progressing to a boil.

But try as she might, she could not stop the thoughts.
Office renovation? Instead of Prom Dreams?

Houston Whitford had insinuated there was
no
money, not that he was reallocating the funds they had. She needed to gather herself, to figure out how to deal with this, how to put a stop to it before he’d spent all the money. Saving Prom Dreams was going to be the least of her problems if he kept this up. Everything would be gone!

A woman backed out of the closet, and Molly gave a startled squeak.

“Oh, so sorry to startle you. I’m the design consultant. I specialize in office space and you need storage solutions. I think we can go up, take advantage of the height of this room. And what do you think of ochre for a paint color? Iron not yellow?”

He’d told her there was no money for Prom Dreams, but there was apparently all kinds of money for things he considered a priority.

Foolish, stupid things, like construction and consultants, that could suck up a ton of money in the blink of an eye. How could complete strangers have any idea what was best for Second Chances?

Molly was suddenly so angry with herself for always believing the best of people, for always being the reasonable one, for always giving the benefit of the doubt.

Pushover,
an imaginary Chuck toasted her with his Margarita.

She had to make a stand for the things she believed in. Be strong, and not so easy for people to take advantage of.

“The only colors I want to discuss are the colors of prom dresses,” she told the surprised consultant.

Molly’s heart was beating like a meek and mild schoolteacher about to do battle with a world-wise gunslinger. But it didn’t matter to her that she was unarmed. She had her spirit! She had her backbone! She turned on her heel, and strode toward the O.K. Corral at high noon.

This had already gone too far. She didn’t want another penny spent! He had called her favorite program frivolous? How dare he!

She stopped at the threshold of Miss Viv’s office, where Houston Whitford had set up shop.

He looked unreasonably gorgeous this morning. Better than a man had any right to look. “Ready to go?” he asked mildly, as if he wasn’t tearing her whole world apart. “I need half an hour or so, and then I’m all yours.”

Don’t even be sidetracked by what a man like that being
all yours
could mean, she warned the part of herself that was all too ready to veer toward the romantic!

Molly took a deep breath and said firmly, not the least sidetracked, “This high-handed hi-jacking of Second Chances money is unacceptable to me.”

He cocked his head at her as if he found her interesting, maybe even faintly amusing.

“Mr. Whitford, there is no nice way to say this. Miss Viv left you in charge for a reason I cannot even fathom, but she could not have been expecting this! This is a terrible waste of the resources Miss Viv has spent her life marshalling! Construction and consultants? Are you trying to break her heart? Her spirit?”

She was quite pleased with herself, assertive, a realist, speaking a language he could understand! Well, maybe the last two lines had veered just a touch toward the romantic.