A Marriage Worth Fighting For. Lilian Darcy

      “Forgive me if I get the semantics wrong,” he almost yelled.

      “You’re right. There’s so much else wrong. Semantics is not even the tip of the iceberg.”

      “What else is wrong?”

      “Everything, MJ. What’s right? Tell me one thing that’s right about our marriage?” She pushed at his arms. They were so rigid they were almost painful, and she had no desire whatsoever to soften into them when they were like that.

      But then she caught the drift of scent from his skin, a mix of soap and nuttiness, and for a moment it made her crumble inside. The scent of safety, she’d thought when it first became familiar to her, seven years ago. A precious, desperately valued scent that said everything was going to be okay now. She didn’t need to be scared anymore. She didn’t need to be alone.

      It was such a powerful memory. It almost undermined her resolve. Unconsciously, she relaxed a little and felt his hold on her grow closer, but at the same time softer, a little less like a vise. His hands slipped down the back of her robe, warming her spine, coming to rest in the inward curve of her waist.

      He laced his fingers together, leaned back a little and looked at her, eyes raking over her as if taking inventory or examining a precious possession in search of flaws. Hell, he couldn’t possibly think he’d won this already, could he?

      She’d left him, left her marriage, and it wasn’t a mere gesture. She meant it. She was serious.

      And yet, why shouldn’t he think he’d won? He won so many things, so often. Discussions about where and when to go for their vacation, inevitably choosing status destinations that they could talk about with their friends. The decision about building his medical career in New York City, following his father’s and grandfather’s tradition. She hadn’t even dared to suggest that somewhere else might be a worthwhile choice. The debate about when they should start trying for a baby, when Alicia would have preferred to wait another year or two—and then of course she had gotten pregnant the first month.

      But if Alicia thought she was winning this one, why wasn’t she pushing him away? she wondered. She should be!

      “You have a beautiful apartment,” he said, still angry but softer about it. “You have a platinum credit card. I buy you gifts. I take you out. When do I ever say no to any of it? Your personal trainer, your wardrobe, the help we pay top dollar for.”

      There.

      Right there.

      That was the whole problem.

      In a nutshell.

      She was bitterly unsurprised that he’d come out with such a catalog of material benefits, too. Of course it was the first thing he would think of, and the fault lay as much at her own door as at his. More so. The only thing that surprised her—always surprised her, in a guilty, self-doubting way—was that he seemed satisfied with his side of the bargain. What did he get out of the arrangement? There must have been hundreds of women who would have been worth more to him and who would have married him for better reasons.

      This was the thing that made it impossible for her to continue their marriage.

      He thought she’d married him for what he could give her. The money. The status. The pampered lifestyle. And for whatever reason, he was content with that.

      Worse, when she searched her heart and searched her memories, she couldn’t find the proof to tell him he was wrong. She’d been too desperate at the time to even think about love or the deeper levels of a partnership.

      She wrenched herself out of his arms, sick with shame and disappointment at herself and at him. Of course their marriage had failed. How could either of them expect any other outcome, given its flawed foundations?

      “Go back to New York, MJ,” she said on a harsh whisper, while she wondered if she was a different person from that terrified twenty-three-year-old seven years ago, or if she would soon discover that she hadn’t changed at all.

       Chapter Two

       Seven years earlier …

      “Mail,” Alicia’s boss said shortly, tossing her a handful of envelopes, which made her heart sink as soon as she saw them. “Came yesterday.”

      The last time she’d moved apartments, she’d won Tony Cottini’s permission to use his restaurant address for her mail delivery, since her job seemed a more stable entity than her place of residence, but she regretted it every time these letters came.

      It was so obvious what they were. Overdue account notices, containing increasingly strident demands for payment. They were cold things, echoing the cold of the November day outside.

      “Thanks,” she told him quickly, then stuffed the mail in the battered purse hanging on a hook in a dingy alcove and hurried to the serving window in front of the kitchen to line four plates of hot food along her arm.

      Tony wasn’t a bad boss—if he had been, maybe she wouldn’t have fallen into her current trap with the mailing address, because she wouldn’t have dared to ask—but he still had a healthy interest in her attaining maximum productivity levels at all times.

      She delivered the food with a smile, took the order from the next table and skimmed back to the kitchen to slap it in front of the short-order cook, calling it out as she did so. “Three specials, two eggs over easy with bacon and hash browns, one on whole wheat, one scrambled, sausage and home fries, white toast.”

      Okay, now Table Three.

      It was only seven in the morning. Her feet had already begun to ache, but that would taper off after the rush hit its peak at around eleven. By the time she finished her double shift twelve hours after that, the rest of her would be so tired that the old reliable feet almost wouldn’t care.

      Table Three had a doctor at it, eating by himself. She could tell he was a doctor because a) the restaurant was only a block from a major Manhattan hospital, so doctors grabbed a quick meal here quite often, b) he was reading a gigantic medical textbook and c) he’d forgotten to take off his name badge, which read Dr. Michael McKinley, Jr.

      “What can I get you?” she asked him, coffeepot in hand.

      At Tony’s, they didn’t bother with all that hi-my-name’s-Alicia-and-I’ll-be-your-server-today stuff. Again, he was a decent boss that way. He just growled at them every now and then, “Say whatever greeting you like to the customer. Just be sincere and say it with a smile.”

      Oops, she’d forgotten the smile.

      She put it on.

      The one she’d practiced.

      The one she’d paid for.

      Or rather, borrowed the money for, at the kind of horrible interest rate you had no choice about when you had an unimpressive credit history.

      The one she was, in other words, still paying for.

      Dr. Michael McKinley Junior looked up from the giant book in response to her question, and his gaze arrived at her face in time to see the smile—its dutiful dawning, its practiced beauty and its slow fade when she thought about how much she still owed for these perfect straight white teeth.

      He ordered the biggest breakfast on the menu and held out his cup for coffee like a thirsty man in the desert, which made her think he’d probably been working all night. She filled it neatly, to the perfect height.

      There was a pride in doing good work. She’d learned that as an actress—okay, wannabe actress—and she’d always tried to carry it through into the rest of her life. Look at it this way: What if she had to play a waitress in a major movie someday? What if she was chosen to front a lifestyle TV show? Or feature in a national ad campaign for a top-selling brand of coffee? Or if a modeling photo shoot called for her to pose with a steaming cup in her hand?

      Those fantasies didn’t come very