Free Bleeding Heart by Liza Gyllenhaal Page B

designs are—”
    “What difference does any of that make? You’re still working
for
a man who stands for everything we’re
against
. I’m just stunned you don’t seem to get this.”
    “You must not know him very well,” I said. I was tempted to tell him about the Mackenzie Project, but I had to remind myself that Mackenzie had made it clear he wanted to keep the foundation under wraps. “He’s really remarkably knowledgeable about landscape design.”
    “Oh, is he?” Tom said, taking a step back and looking me over. “And Hitler painted watercolors!”
    He turned on his heel and walked away without giving me a chance to respond. Not that I could have. He’d left me speechless.

    Later, though, and in the days ahead, I thought of any number of comebacks. From the reasonable:
I try not to judge other people based on what they do for a living, but rather on how they act in their daily lives—and Mr. Mackenzie has been a perfectgentleman
. To the downright petulant and furious:
Who made you the boss of me?
But no matter what I came up with, I knew that none of it would be convincing enough to change Tom Deaver’s mind. Or his downgraded opinion of me. And I began to realize that how he viewed me mattered more than I cared to admit.
    No, not
you
, Alice
.
I really thought better of you. . . .
So he’d had me in his sights—or at least in his peripheral vision—just as I’d had him in mine.
For some reason . . . I thought you had some integrity
. And he’d liked what he’d seen. At least until now. It was interesting how our argument had suddenly brought him into sharp focus for me—and to the forefront of my mind. What I knew about him, though, could fit on a sticky note. He’d been widowed about five years ago, after his wife suffered through an almost decade-long series of cancer treatments.
    “That man’s a saint,” Brigitte, our postmistress, had confided to me one Saturday right after I’d moved back to Woodhaven. Tom had just left after buying stamps in front of me in line. “Never complains. Always has something nice to say—and him with his wife living at home in hospice care for almost a year!” A few months after this encounter, Gwen told me that Tom’s wife had finally passed away.
    “That’s the kind of man I want at my deathbed,” she’d said. “Apparently he held her in his arms as she breathed her last. I’m going to give him a year—then I’m going to pounce.”
    Gwen hadn’t followed up on her threat, though, which was unlike her. I kidded her about it from time to time.
    “He’s fair game now,” I’d told her when we saw him shopping at Guido’s with two of his teenaged children a couple of years after his wife had died.
    “Yeah, he’s pretty tempting, isn’t he?” Gwen said as we watched him surreptitiously. He was wearing jeans and a batteredbaseball cap. He was standing in front of the meat counter, and the butcher was laughing at something he’d said. “But there’re those four teenage kids to contend with. I think I’m going to wait until they’re out of the house.”
    As far as I knew, the Deaver children were in college now, though I think I’d heard the oldest one had already married. It was only recently—around the time of Tom’s lecture at the library—that I became vaguely aware I didn’t have my eye on Tom Deaver for Gwen’s sake, but for my own. Not seriously, though. I was through with men. But theoretically, if I ever was to get involved with anyone again—which I wasn’t—I’d want him to be someone like Tom. Thoughtful. Committed to a job he really believed in. Making a difference in the world. That he looked damned good in jeans and had a voice that made my mouth go dry was definitely a plus. But I knew now that I’d clearly blown it with him before I had to worry about dealing with any of these fantasies in a real way. And when I asked myself if I would have refused to work for Mackenzie because it might have improved my