Be My Neat-Heart (12 page)

“W
hat on earth could she have done that was so awful? And why is her self-esteem so low? She's smart, attractive charming, funny…” I caught myself before adding,
just like you.

“First, I'd like you to understand how it is with Molly, how it's always been.” I saw him run his tongue over his lower lip as he took a breath. Always, it seems, he has difficulty talking about Molly.

“I was the happiest little boy in the world when Molly was born. I'd wanted a sibling my entire short life. I'd wanted someone ‘of my own' to play with and reasoned that my parents had brought her into the family just for me.” He frowned. “It wasn't long before I realized that Molly was in our family because there were three of us to raise her instead of just two.

“Molly, as a child, was a full-time job. She had the attention span of a flea. She was impossible to teach new games to—they were all too slow moving for her. She wet the bed and she wriggled and squirmed almost constantly. She always acted before she thought and couldn't sit still if her life depended on it. She was bright as a whip but still had a hard
time in school, mostly because she didn't pay attention. She drove my parents wild.”

He sighed. “I spent most of my time bailing her out of difficulties of her own making. She would do things impulsively and I'd have to undo them. Even now, she's usually late for appointments and, while she's always enthusiastic about everything she does, she has a difficult time getting projects finished. But because she functioned well in the banking world with all its rules and regulations, I thought that working with me would be a piece of cake for her.

“Molly has never had much self-esteem. She knows she's not living up to her potential and she hates herself for it. She's convinced herself that she's too big a burden for me. Since I don't see it that way, she's trying to force me to deal with her like I would any other employee who'd done what she did.”

“Jared, you keep talking like this ‘thing' Molly did is irreparable. No one has died over it, have they?”

He chuckled. “Not that I know of.”

“Then what could be so bad?”

I heard him shift in place, as if the swing were suddenly too small for him.

“I wanted Molly to succeed and I wanted her to gain some self-esteem. I thought the way that might happen would be to trust her with a couple of large accounts. There's nothing wrong with her mind, only her self-discipline. She assured me that she was up to it, so I turned two important accounts over to her.”

“And?” I felt a sinking sensation in my stomach. This story seemed to be heading to a very bad end.

“And she lost both accounts at the presentation stage. She came without her materials to one and showed up a day late for the other. Said she'd gotten it ‘confused' in her calendar.”

Uh-oh.

“It was, of course, a mistake which cost us two very important clients.”

I closed my eyes and imagined how devastated Molly must have been—and Jared.

“Molly overheard one of them tell me that they'd consider coming back when I removed her from the business.”

“But could it have been
so
bad? Surely she wouldn't let it happen again.”

“It scared Molly. She had no excuse for her behavior other than to say that she'd lost her files in her ‘mess.' What has troubled her more was the loss of the money these clients would have brought to our company.”

“How much could it be?” I stammered. “Surely it could be made up….”

“Let's just say, over a ten-year period it could potentially add up to a million or more dollars.”

My jaw dropped and hung there. I was speechless.

“You see, don't you, why I was angry with her? First, because she nearly brought Hamilton and Hamilton to its knees, and second, because she's been absolutely pigheaded about not believing that she can still remain in the company.” He looked into my eyes, and, even in the dimness of lamplight, I could see his pain. “She really pushed me, Sammi. Hard. She made me angry with her for her behavior about the mistake, not the mistake itself.

“And that's when you came into the picture. I was furious for all sorts of reasons yet still ready to play the big brother and attempt to protect her from herself. Molly was contrite, penitent and completely unwilling to see reason or to forgive herself. I know it doesn't make much sense, but you haven't lived with Molly as long as I have. There's not a lot about her that
does
make sense sometimes.

“Yes, I was furious with her. Yes, she did make me want to fire her. And, yes, I did finally do what she wanted. She's
bent on paying some kind of penance and thinks this is the only way to do it.”

He sank back against the swing and we rocked a little harder.

“You figure it out,” he finally said, his voice muffled. “I certainly can't.”

I felt, rather than heard, him sigh, and experienced a wave of shame overtake me.

Lord, You certainly do know how to point out my shortcomings, don't You? Every time I see and acknowledge a weakness and turn it over to You, You shine Your light on another even more glaring flaw. Every time I experience this I wonder how it is You tolerate us frail, imperfect children of Yours. I have been unjustly judgmental about Jared and believed I was so righteous about his behavior toward his sister. Now I see that I knew nothing about their relationship or Jared as a man. I'm so ashamed. Forgive me.

And God was not the only one to whom I needed to apologize.

“Jared?”

“Hmmm?” He was gazing up at the stars.

“Will you forgive me?”

I felt him turn toward me in the darkness.

“For what?”

“For being a self-righteous, smug, holier-than-thou, judgmental snob.”

The swing shook a little as he chuckled. “For all that?”

“I have been completely off-base concerning your relationship with Molly. I thought you were bad-tempered, hard-hearted, egotistical, selfish and without feeling.” Tears began to pool behind my eyes and I choked on my words. “Now, when it's too late, I realize you are loving and caring toward your sister and have never desired anything but the best for her. I am so sorry.”

If, at that moment, I could have disappeared into the ground, I gladly would have. What a brat I'd been in my attitude toward him! Would I ever learn?

“What do you mean, ‘too late'?” came the amused question out of the darkness. “It's not too late for Molly and me. We love each other. We've fought this battle over our vast differences before and we'll fight it again. Just because she drives me crazy doesn't mean I don't love her. ‘Love conquers all,' right?”

He leaned forward and his face was partially lit by the lights on the walking path. “And I'd like to think it's just beginning for us, Sammi. We got off to a lousy start. What would you say to a fresh one?”

“I…you mean you would…you still…” I blubbered into the crisp white handkerchief he gave me and blew my nose until I sounded like a honking goose. Lovely. When I finally take a look at my shortcomings, they are all over the map.

He unfolded from the swing, drew himself to his full, imposing height and stretched out his hand to me. “Ms. Smith? My name is Jared Hamilton. I'm so pleased to finally meet you. I've heard so many good things about you from my sister.”

A grin tweaked the corners of my mouth. I stood, too, stretching up to
my
full height and was still able to tilt my head upward to look at him. “Mr. Hamilton, charmed, I'm sure. Your sister says wonderful things about you, as well. I'm so glad to finally meet you.”

The real you.

“I hope you don't think I'm too forward, but since I already feel like I've known you for a very long time, I was wondering if you'd like to go to the main spa facility and listen to the musical trio that's playing there.”

I laid my hand in his and the warmth and strength of his palm filled me with a sense of security and delight. “Mr. Hamilton, your sister never mentioned what a charmer you are.”

His teeth flashed white in the moonlight. “Good. That's something I'd like to show you myself.”

The clubhouse was filled with light and music. Although I'm not sure the staff was telling the truth, they insisted that the dessert buffet they served was absolutely low calorie. I, with my highly efficient metabolism, took them at their word and ate double just to make sure I didn't fade away before morning.

If this is a movie, then I'm the star, I thought as I drifted in a giddy haze through the rest of the evening. I felt beautiful. More accurately, Jared made me feel beautiful. On the inside, where it counts. He also made me feel smart, witty, wise, exuberant, calm, excited, happy…

What had happened to bat-man, the grouchy creature hovering in the corner of Ethan Carver's office? No wonder he'd been upset. Molly had spun him into a tizzy. I'd met him on a doubly awful day, with a crisis on each of the sibling and financial fronts. Thinking back now, I realize that he was probably actually pretty
nice
considering what he'd been going through.

I watched him moving across the floor to me carrying another plate of food—if one could call it that. But it didn't matter that all the food on the plate didn't add up to eight total calories because the guy carrying it was yummy enough to count as a double fudge chocolate cake.

I felt a tightening in my chest as he came nearer. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Love wasn't supposed to happen so fast—not, at least, by my definition. I've always believed that love could be planned, sketched out in a day-timer, so to speak. First came casual coffee meetings, then a lunch or two. After that came dinner, movies, long walks in the park. When I met the man I would fall in love with, I was sure it would follow a formal, proper sort of path of getting to know and trust each other, taking each other to church and to meet
our families. Then, and only then, would we know each other well enough to allow ourselves to fall in love.

At least that's the way I had it figured until I met Jared.

The path got turned on its head with him. First I disliked and mistrusted him. Then came resentment, frustration and anger. I was furious with him, didn't understand him and wished him out of my life. And
then,
almost overnight, I fell in love with him.

This was definitely not the way this organizational planner would have designed it.

Then he came near, leaned down and put a gentle kiss on my forehead and all sensible planning went out the window.

 

I looked for Jared at breakfast, but he didn't come to the dining room. I was amazed to realize how disappointed I felt not to see him.

It had been late when we'd finally said good-night, but Jared hardly seemed like the kind of person who'd be sleeping in on a morning like this….

Then I saw him coming across the room. He was wearing low-slung denim jeans and a soft white cotton shirt that stretched across his muscular chest. His hair was wet and raggedly slicked away from his face and he had a white towel draped around his neck. When he neared, I smelled the faint hint of chlorine from the pool.

“So that's where you've been.” I beamed at him like a lighthouse. What had ever made me think he was mean and cantankerous? Then my logical mind reminded me that he
had
been bad-tempered. But I'd been perfectly happy to believe that was the sum of him.
Lord, You do have ways of opening a person's eyes!

“Water's great. You should try it.”

“I might. If I have time, that is. Molly signed me up for another full day.” I pushed my schedule toward him.

He read it and his eyebrow lifted quizzically. “Odd, but my schedule is exactly the same as yours. Do you think my sister was counting on the two of us running into each other a few times over the weekend?”

“We've underestimated her, Jared. She may appear disorganized, but when she sets her mind to it…”

“I've been handling Molly all wrong. I should have hired her an assistant at the start and just let her be an idea person. ‘The Art of Romance'? Not too subtle, is she?”

“Like a Mack truck on an open highway.”

Jared took my hand and grinned. “I'll have to tell her how much I love that quality in her when I get home.”

D
espite all Molly's scheming to throw Jared and me together, even she couldn't have planned the bit about the plumbing. That was the unintentional crowning touch in Molly's little design.

The receptionist in the spa area looked up with a worried expression as I entered, ready and eager to be turned into a summer beverage by my green tea and lime leaf body treatment.

“The plumbing isn't fixed yet,” she apologized. “We have you scheduled at the same time as one of our male guests. We'll have to use adjoining treatment areas. We will make sure you don't cross in the hallway but if that's a problem…”

Nothing was a problem to me right now. After last night with Jared, I was floating slightly above the ground on my own little happy cloud. I waved my hand dismissively. I could share the building with an ice floe full of polar bears and not mind today.

As I walked toward my appointment, I heard a loud complaint. Someone had gotten here before me.

“That stuff smells like a Chinese restaurant…I don't care how much it costs,” the familiar voice roared. “I'll pay you double to take it away!”

Jared's take on these relaxing ablutions was quite different from mine, I thought as I tried to snuff out the grin spreading across my face.

I really don't know how much money he had forked out by the end of the morning, but I did hear him offer a hundred dollars to the reflexologist if she would just leave his feet alone.

The full body wrap that afternoon was much like being wrapped in warm, wet canvas and steeped like a minty organic tea bag until every toxin, even those hanging on for dear life, was sucked up and out of my body.

I recognized when Jared entered the treatment room on the other side of the wall by his incessant patter of questions.

“What's that smell? Why is it so steamy in here? Did you graduate from the Spanish inquisition Spa School, too? Whaddayamean you're going to wrap me up in sheets? I'm not a cabbage roll, you know.”

Even now that I'd fallen head over heels for him, I couldn't help smiling. There's something so helpless and absurd about a tough-guy businessman being subjected to the mysterious world of pampering and relaxation.

There's also something rather pathetic about that same man pleading to have his arms unwrapped so he didn't feel like King Tut about to be placed in his sarcophagus.

By the time I was done with my massage later that afternoon, I was so relaxed that my legs were soft rubber. I groped my way to my room and collapsed across the bed. I don't believe I even twitched before I fell asleep.

I woke up at five, still in the rag-doll position I'd fallen in. There was a pool of drool on the pillow by my mouth and I had to lift my eyelids with my index finger. Now
that's
a sound sleep.

My phone rang as I finished putting on my makeup. It was
a jarring sound in my tranquil cloud. I wanted to ignore it but I'm far too snoopy to do that.

“Hello?”

“Sammi? How is it?” Molly sounded like a child with a new toy. “Is it wonderful?”

“Yes, it is, you sneaky thing, you! Bliss!”

“Are you mad at me?”

“Let's just say it's a good thing you weren't here when I discovered that your brother also checked in for the weekend.”

“And now?” Her voice practically quivered with hope.

“You were right and I was wrong. He's a gem, Molly.”

She chortled with delight. “I told you so! Isn't he just the best?”

“The best.”

“Are you friends now?”

More than!

“Yes, dear. Mission accomplished.”

I could practically feel her lean back with a satisfied sigh.

Then she seemed to think better of relaxing quite yet. “How's Jared feeling about this?”

I thought about last night and grinned to myself. “Fine and dandy, I believe.”

“I love it! I shouldn't have called and interrupted you, but I had to know. One of my friends invited me to her lake cabin for the week and I won't be here when you get back. Now I can go to the lake happy, content that the two of you finally got to know each other without me in the middle, confusing matters.”

“You don't confuse me, Molly.” Something had occurred to me this morning that might actually clear up some confusion. “In fact, I've been thinking about you a lot the past couple days. About why you've had such a hard time at Hamilton and Hamilton…”

“That can wait, Sammi. When I get back on Thursday I
want to hear everything.” She sounded breathless and in high spirits. “I see my ride pulling up. Tell Jared ‘hi' and that I'd planned to call him but, as usual, I've run out of time. Give him a kiss for me, will you?”

Gladly.

“You're the greatest, Sammi.”

I felt tears scratch the backs of my eye. “And you're pretty terrific yourself, Molly. Now go have fun.”

She hung up, and the dial tone hummed in my ear.

Thank You, Lord, for the gift of friendship. My cup overflows. It is shaken down and spilling over in my life now that I know Molly and Jared.

What more could I want? I thought, as I smoothed my hair into a soft wave that fell across one eye. It feels as though I already have it all and…yet…the part of me that wants my world in order, loves planning and mistrusts impulse is agitating within me. It's the strong, vocal part of me that always says, “Better safe than sorry, Sammi” and “Plan ahead.” It's the same part of me, of course, that reminds me that Barbie was a fool to let go of a steady, reliable guy like Ken, that tells me that following my heart might lead me into disaster.

And now I've fallen in love…in the short space of a weekend…with my former client's brother…whom I disliked intensely only forty-eight hours ago. This is totally out of character for me, as foreign a language to me as Swahili.

It's almost too much for a pragmatic, cool-headed Scandinavian girl to bear.

 

“There you are!” Jared waited for me by the door, and by the way his eyes lit up when I walked in, I knew he was overjoyed to see me.

What an amazing turnaround it had been for us in the last few hours. We'd not only made peace with each other, we
were buzzing around each other like two bugs drawn to each other's light. Molly's idea was inspired. If we could send all our world leaders to a spa for a month or two, they'd be so mellow we could get things like world peace worked out and have time left over for a facial.

As his fingers touched my elbow and he cradled my arm in his hand, a sense of
rightness
washed over me like a blessing. It was a rightness I'd never felt with anyone else in my life.

Is he the one for me, Lord? Now? When I was least expecting it?

Isn't that the way with God? He's a Father who loves to surprise us with gifts far more wonderful than we could ever expect or design for ourselves. I looked up and into Jared's eyes—a gift in itself for someone my height—and saw my feelings mirrored there.

For a person who is risk-averse like me, who likes preplanning and loves caution, this is a brand-new experience. Prudence was replaced by infatuation as I drifted through dinner in a delirious haze. Cardboard would have tasted divine. I could have been eating chicken lips and fish eyebrows and loved it all. And what made it all the more wonderful was that Jared seemed to share my happiness.

“I certainly underestimated you,” I admitted. “I was sure your heart was made of stone—or ice—and now…”

“Molly says it's my biggest flaw—being too soft with her.” His voice softened.

“That reminds me. She called. I'm supposed to tell you ‘hi.' She'd planned to call you as well but was running late, and her ride came. Apparently she is headed to a friend's lake cabin.”

“She called you?” He seemed surprised.

“She wanted to know if I'd learned to like her big brother as much as she does.”

His eyes twinkled. “And?”

“As much. Maybe even more.”

“Imagine that.” His voice softened and the way he looked at me made my heart leap in my chest.

“And she told me to give you this.” I leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss on his cheek.

“Now I have even more to thank her for.” He shook his head and I saw sadness creep into his expression. “Sometimes she just breaks my heart.”

What a strange thing to say!

“You haven't heard any of the Molly stories, have you?” he asked ruefully.

“What do you mean?”

“Molly, the Lake and the Mislaid Car, Molly and the Missing Children, Molly and the Mystery of the Lost Purse, Vanishing Graduation Diploma and Straying Lawn Mower?” He sighed and leaned back in his chair as if this might take a long, long time.

“Sounds better than a Nancy Drew series,” I commented. “Tell me more.”

“When Molly was sixteen, my father bought her a car. Nothing fancy. A used Cavalier. Granted, it wasn't much of a car, small and inexpensive, but it got good gas mileage. Molly was only supposed to drive it to specified places like school, the park near home and to a few reliable friends' homes.

“My sister has always been…distracted. She's always thinking ahead and sometimes forgets to live in the present. Anyway, she and her friends decided to have an afternoon birthday party for one of the girls in her group and hold it at the park. It's pretty there, a nice little lake, more of a pond, really, shelters, fire pits, the works.

“Molly, as usual, volunteered to do about seven things, including decorations, the cake, start the fire…well, you get the idea.”

I nodded. I could just see her bustling around, trying to make things nice for the birthday girl.

“She went early, of course, so by the time the other girls arrived, she had everything ready. Apparently they had a good time, because it was early evening when the party began to break up. Molly was taking down the decorations when one of the girls asked her if she needed a ride home.

“Of course, Molly said she'd driven herself and turned to point to her car. That's the first anyone noticed that the car was missing.”

“Stolen?” I gasped. “Poor kid!”

“Not exactly. The police and my parents were called. It was the first officer to arrive to take down a description of the car who noticed the rear bumper of a red Cavalier jutting out of the lake just below the girls' campsite.”

I clamped a hand over my mouth to keep my jaw from dropping.

Jared looked both weary and amused as he said, “Close as anyone can figure, Molly drove to the shelter, unloaded the decorations and cake and then parked the car. Unfortunately she parked the car close to the lake in a spot where the ground falls fairly steeply toward the water. There's no real shore there and there's a drop-off. That, combined with the fact that Molly turned off the ignition without shifting the car into Park or Neutral, made it easy for the car to roll into the water.”

I suddenly felt much of Jared's weariness—and no little portion of his amusement, as well.

“The girls admitted to having a boom box on full blast so no one heard a thing when the car rolled into the water.”

“What did your parents…the police…” I heard myself stammering.

“They called someone to retrieve the car, but no one even scolded Molly. She took care of that herself.”

He smiled at my quizzical gaze. “She grounded herself for three months, took away all her own dating privileges and promised to get a job to pay for having the car refurbished.”

“That's harsh.”

“She's always harsh with herself. Far worse than my parents would have been. I think she's so disappointed with herself sometimes that whatever punishment she metes out is more painful than anyone else would ever dream up.”

“So did she do all those things?”

“My parents made her pay for the car. The rest they didn't press. Nobody wants Molly miserable—except Molly.” Jared chuckled. “She told everyone from then on that she was on probation and that they should all hide their keys when she came around.”

“Well, it was just a one-time incident.” I looked into Jared's eyes. “Wasn't it?”

“Not exactly. There's also the story of Molly and the Lost Car at the Airport Parking Lot and dozens of Molly and the Missing Keys stories.”

“Well, at least that was the worst of it.”

“Not exactly.” Jared played with his spoon, tapping it on the water glass, the centerpiece, his coffee cup. It was as though thinking about these things made him nervous.

“What do you mean, ‘not exactly'?”

“There was the time Molly lost some children.”

“I'm not sure I want to hear this one.”

“It has a happy ending.”

“Okay, then.”

“While she was babysitting for our neighbor, who has three children, Molly got the brilliant idea that she would take the kids into downtown Minneapolis to go Christmas shopping for the children's mother. After that, just think major department store, lost children, chaos and panic.”

I sometimes feel lost, chaotic and panicky when I'm Christmas shopping. I could hardly imagine Molly as a teenager with three little kids…

“Apparently, Molly got distracted by some jewelry and took her eyes off the children for a few moments.”

“Quick. Tell me the happy ending.”

“It didn't come quickly. She did have the presence of mind to ask for help immediately. They locked the doors and scoured every inch of the store.”

“And the children?”

“It seemed that they'd vanished into thin air.”

“Where did they find them?”

“In the last place they looked.”

“Of course.”

“The kids had found the door that leads to the outside display windows. It being Christmas, there was one entire scene of Santa's workshop, another of a line of children waiting to see Santa and a third of a family of kids waiting by the fire for Santa to arrive.”