She broke off again, and Conal watched the light in her eyes go dim. “Yes, I know. I’m so sorry. I missed the ferry and…”
Saying nothing, he moved past her and got down mugs for tea. He had no intention of leaving her to her privacy.
“Yes, you’re right, it was irresponsible. Inexcusable, yes, that, too, to leave you shorthanded this way. I tried to…”
He saw the moment she gave up, when her shoulders slumped and her face went carefully blank. “I understand. No, of course, you can’t be expected to keep me on after this. Oh, yes, I know it was against your better judgment in the first place. You were very clear about that. I’m sorry I let you down. Yes, again.”
Shame, fatigue, resignation closed in on her, a dingy fog of failure. She shut her eyes. “No, Margaret, excuses don’t matter when people are de pending on you. Did you call Mom and Dad? No, you’re right. What would have been the point?”
“Bloody bitch,” Conal muttered. They’d just see how Margaret liked being on the other end of a tongue-lashing, he decided, and grabbed the phone out of Allena’s hand. The buzz of the dial tone left him no victim for his outrage.
“She had to go,” Allena managed. “Schedule. I should—Excuse me.”
“No, damned if I will.” He took her shoulders in a firm grip before she could escape. There were tears on her lashes. He wanted Margaret’s neck in his hands. “You’ll not go off to lick your wounds. Why did you take that from her?”
“She was right. I was irresponsible. She has every reason to fire me. She’d never have taken me on in the first place without family pressure.”
“Family pressure? Bugger it. Where was her family concern? Did she ask if you were all right? What had happened? Where you were? Did she once ask you why?”
“No.”
A tear spilled over, slid down her cheek and inflamed him. “Where is your anger?” he demanded.
“What good does it do to be angry?” Wearily, she brushed the tear away. “I brought it on myself. I don’t care about the job. That’s the problem, really. I don’t care about it. I wouldn’t have taken it if I’d had a choice. Margaret’s probably right. I bungle this way on purpose.”
“Margaret is a jackass.”
“No, really, she’s not.” She managed a wobbly grin. “She’s just very disciplined and goal-oriented. Well, there’s no use whining about it.” She patted his hand, then moved away to pour the tea. “I’ll call my parents after I’ve settled down a little, explain…oh, God.”
Pressing her palms to the counter, she squeezed her eyes shut. “I hate disappointing them this way. Over and over, like a cycle I can’t break. If I could just do something, if I could just be good at something.”
Shaking her head, she went to the refrigerator to take out last night’s soup to heat for lunch. “You don’t know how much I envy you your talent and your confidence in it. My mother always said if I’d just focus my energies instead of scattering them a dozen different ways, I’d move beyond mediocre.”
“It should have shamed her to say such a thing to you.”
Surprised by the violence in his tone, she turned back. “She didn’t mean it the way I made it sound. You have to understand, they’re all so smart and clever and, well, dedicated to what they do. My father’s chief of surgery, my mother’s a partner in one of the most prestigious law firms on the East Coast. And I can’t do anything.”
There was the anger. It whipped through her as she slammed the pot on the stove. Pleased to see it, Conal folded his arms, leaned back, and watched it build.
“There’s James with his glossy practice and his gorgeous trophy wife and certified genius child, who’s a complete brat, by the way, but everyone says she’s simply precocious. As if precocious and rude are synonymous. And Margaret with her perfect office and her perfect wardrobe and her perfect home and her perfectly detestable husband, who won’t see anything but art films and collects coins.”
She dumped soup into the pot. “And every Thanksgiving they all sit around patting each other on the back over how successful and brilliant they are. Then they look at me as if I’m some sort of alien who got dumped on the doorstep and had to be taken in for humanitarian purposes. And I can’t be a doctor or a lawyer or a goddamn Indian chief no matter how hard I try because I just can’t do anything.”
“Now you should be ashamed.”
“What?” She pressed her fingers to her temples. Temper made her dizzy, and fuzzy-headed, which is why she usually tried to avoid it. “What?”