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“I need to talk to her again.”
“Not yet,” Harriet intervened. “You need to give her space, Daniel.”
“Yes. Give her space. Good plan. Maybe you should spend a month in Texas. Then you can’t be tempted to drop around and see her.” Fliss stood up and started clearing the living room. She stacked magazines that were already neat and straightened a plant that didn’t need straightening. “This is tough for you to handle. The first time you fall in love with a woman, and she doesn’t love you back. That’s got to hurt.”
“She loves me.” He ignored the internal voice that suggested he might have got that part wrong.
“What? I thought you said—”
“She loves me. That isn’t the problem.” At least, he hoped it wasn’t. He hoped he was right about that part.
“Well, if she loves you, why did she throw you out of the apartment?” Fliss slammed a stack of books down on the table. “I don’t want to dent your confidence or your ego, Daniel, but why would she tell you she doesn’t love you if she didn’t mean it?”
“Because she doesn’t know. She doesn’t recognize it. She’s convinced herself she can’t fall in love, that something is missing inside her. And she’s so scared of not being able to feel the way she thinks she’s supposed to feel, she doesn’t want to recognize it. That’s my problem. How do I make her see she’s in love with me?”
Fliss shook her head. “Solving that problem is way beyond my pay grade.” She picked up a plant and Harriet shot off the sofa and took it from her hands.
“Don’t take your stress out on my plants. They’ve taken enough punishment lately.” She placed it carefully back on the windowsill, positioning it so that it had exactly the right amount of light. Then she turned back to her brother. “If you’re right, and she is in love with you, then that’s good, isn’t it?”
“No. It isn’t good. Falling in love is the thing she is most scared of. For some people it’s heights, for others it’s the dark—”
“For me it’s ex-husbands who show up in my town,” Fliss said darkly but for once Daniel couldn’t focus on anyone’s problem but his own.
“Maybe it would be easier to handle if she didn’t love me. I could have accepted that.”
“Are you sure? Because accepting things isn’t really in your nature. Generally you try and change things you don’t like.”
“That’s true, but I wouldn’t have tried to change this. I would have respected her decision.”
Harriet frowned. “You still have to respect her decision, Daniel.”
“I know, but it’s the wrong decision, made for the wrong reasons. That’s what makes it all so difficult to handle.”
And he wasn’t handling it. Right now, he wasn’t handling it at all. He didn’t need to see the way his sisters were looking at him to know that.
“I never thought I’d fall in love. I never thought I’d feel this way, but now I do and not being able to act on those feelings is—” he ran his hand over his jaw “—hard.”
“I still think you need to give her space,” Harriet said.
“I agree. Stay away from her,” Fliss said. “Maybe she’ll miss you or something. Maybe she’ll call. Not that she has any chance of reaching you, because you’re always on the phone.”
Daniel surreptitiously checked his phone but it was depressingly silent. It was the first time in his life he’d been desperate for a woman to call.
“How long should I wait to call her? Five hours? Five days? A week?” He wasn’t sure he could make it through a week. And it wasn’t just his own emotions that were torturing him, it was hers. Was she really panicking? The thought that he’d upset her was as hard to deal with as his own issues.
What was she doing now? Was she on her own in the apartment? Had she gone to talk to Mark and Gabe? Was she walking Valentine?
“Sit down, Daniel.” Harriet spoke calmly. “Let’s work this through and come up with a plan.”
“Plan? Isn’t that a bit ambitious?” Fliss looked at her sister. “Let’s be honest, the only person around here who knows anything at all about relationships is Molly. Which kind of makes the whole thing awkward. Maybe we should call her and ask her to come over and help fix this.” She pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose and then let her hand drop, triumphant. “Okay, I’ve got it. You write to her.”
Daniel looked at her blankly. “What?”
“She’s used to analyzing emotional problems that are written down. Everyone else writes to her. You should do the same.”
“I have never had to ask for advice on my love life before.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve never been in love before.” Fliss shrugged. “If it bothers you, use a fake name or something. You could be ‘Clueless.’ I mean that’s pretty accurate in the circumstances. Or you could be—”
