“That’s the second time today you’ve said that to me. But this time you’re not getting your way. In fact, I’m calling Jordan and letting him know I’m staying here tonight.”

“This is my apartment. Nobody stays here unless I invite them.”

“Wrong again. Get undressed, get in bed. I’ll make you some soup or something.”

“I don’t want soup, I don’t want you. And I certainly don’t want to be coddled.”

“Then what the hell do you want?” He lunged to his feet, vibrating with fury and frustration. “One minute you’re all over me, telling me you’re in love with me, you want to spend your life with me. Then the next you want me to hit the road. I’m sick to death of women and their mixed signals and capricious minds and their goddamn expectations of me. Right now, you’re going to do what I want, and that’s getting into bed while I make you something to eat.”

She stared at him. A dozen vile and vicious words leaped into her throat. And she lost them all in a burst of tears.

“Oh, Christ.” Flynn scrubbed his hands over his face. “Nice job. Take a bow, Hennessy.”

He stalked to the window, stared out while she wept wildly behind him. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do about you. I can’t keep up. You don’t want me here, fine. I’ll call Dana. But I don’t want you to be alone.”

“I don’t know what to do about me either.” She reached in the drawer for a pack of tissues. “If I’ve sent you mixed signals, it hasn’t been deliberately.” She mopped at her face, but the tears simply wouldn’t stop. “I don’t have a capricious mind—at least I never used to. And I don’t know what my goddamn expectations of you are. I don’t even know what my goddamn expectations are of me anymore. I used to. I’m scared. I’m scared of what’s happening around me and inside me. And I’m scared because I don’t know what’s real. I don’t know if you’re actually standing over there.”

He came back, sat beside her again. “I’m here,” he said as he took her hand firmly in his. “This is real.”

“Flynn.” She steadied herself by staring at their joined hands. “All my life I’ve wanted certain things. I wanted to paint. For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be an artist. A wonderful artist. I studied, and I worked. And I never came close. I don’t have the gift.”

She closed her eyes. “It hurt, more than I can tell you, to accept that.” Steadier, she let out a breath, looked at him. “The best I could do was work with art, to be around it, to find some purpose for this love.” She fisted a hand on her heart. “And that I was good at.”

“Don’t you think there’s something noble about doing what we’re really good at, even if it wasn’t our first choice?”

“That’s a nice thought. But it’s hard to set a dream aside. I guess you know that.”

“Yeah, I know that.”

“The other thing I wanted was to love someone, to be loved by him. Absolutely. To know when I went to bed at night, woke in the morning, that this someone was with me. Understood me and wanted me. I never had much luck with that one either. I might meet someone, and we’d seem to click. But it never got inside me. I never felt that leap, or the burn that eases into that wonderful, spreading warmth. When you just know this is the one you were waiting for. Until you. Don’t say anything,” she said quickly. “I need to finish.”

She picked up the water again, soothed her throat. “When you wait all your life for something and then you find it, it’s like a miracle. All the parts inside you that’ve been on hold, they open up and start beating. You were okay before, you were good. You had purpose and direction, and everything was just fine. But now it’s more. You can’t explain what that more is, but you know, if you lose it, you’ll never be able to fill those empty spaces in just the same way again. Not ever. That’s terrifying. I’m afraid that what’s inside me is just a trick. That I’ll wake up tomorrow and what’s beating in here will have stopped. It’ll be quiet again. I won’t feel this way. I won’t feel the way I’ve waited all my life to feel.”

Her eyes were dry again, her hand steady as she set the water down. “I can stand you not loving me back. There’s always the hope that you will. But I don’t know if I can stand not loving you. It would be like . . . like having something stolen from inside me. I don’t know if I can handle going back to the way I was.”

He brushed a hand down her hair, then drew her close to his side so her head rested on his shoulder. “Nobody’s ever loved me, not the way you’re talking about. I don’t know what to do about it, Malory, but I don’t want to lose it either.”

“I saw the way things could be, but it wasn’t true. Just an ordinary day that was so perfect it was like a jewel in the palm of my hand. He made me see it and feel it. And want it.”

He eased back, turning her to face him. “The dream?”

She nodded. “It hurt more than anything I’ve ever known to let it go. It’s a hard price, Flynn.”

“Can you tell me?”

“I think I have to. I was tired. I felt like I’d been through this emotional wringer. I just wanted to lie down, have it go away for a while.”

She took him through it, the waking with that sensation of absolute well-being, of moving through a house that was full of love, finding him in the kitchen making her breakfast.

“That should’ve clued you in. Me, cooking? An obvious delusion.”

“You were making me French toast. It’s my favorite lazy-morning treat. We talked about going on vacation, and I remembered all the other places we’d gone, what we’d done. Those memories were inside me. Then the baby woke up.”

“Baby?” He went icy pale. “We had—there was . . . a baby?”

“I went up to get him out of the crib.”

“Him?”

“Yes, him. Along the walls on the way were paintings I’d done. They were wonderful, and I could remember painting them. Just as I could remember painting the ones in the nursery. I picked the baby up, out of the crib, and this love, this terrible love for him. I was full of it. And then . . . and then I didn’t know his name. I had no name for him. I could feel the shape of him in my arms, and how soft and warm his skin was, but I didn’t know his name. You came to the door, and I could see through you. I knew it wasn’t real. None of it was real.”