His hand was gentle again when he touched her face. “You said you hadn’t taken the blame.”

“Responsibility and blame are different things.”

“No.” He shook his head. “There’s no responsibility or blame this time, either. Don’t you think it’s the height of egotism to feel responsible for someone else’s actions?”

She started to snap at him, but the words hit home. “Maybe. Maybe it is.” It wasn’t easy, but she shook off the mood and smiled. “I think the hamburgers are done. Let’s eat.”

Chapter Seven

Maggie found the kitchen cozy with the smell of hot food and the patter of raindrops that had just begun to strike the windows. When she thought of it, she decided she’d never really experienced coziness before. Her parents had lived on a grand scale; huge, elegant rooms and huge, elegant parties, boisterous, eccentric friends. With her own home in Beverly Hills, Maggie had followed the same pattern. Extravagance might’ve been what she needed during that phase of her life, or it might’ve been a habit. She wasn’t sure when it had begun to wear on her, any more than she was certain if she’d ever been as relaxed as she was at that moment, eating in her half-finished kitchen with a man she wasn’t quite sure of.

He was strong, she mused. Perhaps she’d never allowed a strong man into her life. Her father had been strong, Maggie remembered. He’d been the type of man who could do and get precisely what he wanted simply because he wanted it. The strength hadn’t been a physical one, but one of personality and will. But then, her mother had matched him with her own combination of grit and exuberance. Maggie had never seen a more perfect relationship than theirs.

Theirs had been an all-consuming, enduring love, with qualities of practicality, compassion and fire. They’d never competed, never envied each other’s success. Support, she thought. Perhaps that had been the real key to the quality and lasting power of their relationship. Unquestioning mutual support. She hadn’t found that in her own marriage, and she’d come to think her parents had been unique.

Something had happened to the balance in her relationship with Jerry. As he’d grown weaker, she’d grown stronger. Eventually, they’d come to a point where all the support had been on her side and all the need on his. Yet she’d stayed, because it had been impossible to forget that they’d been friends. Friends don’t break promises.

She wondered, as she studied Cliff, what sort of friend he would be. And she wondered, though she tried not to, what he would be like as a lover.

“What’re you thinking of?”

The question came so abruptly that Maggie almost overturned her glass. Quickly, she sorted out her thoughts and chose the least personal. She could hardly tell him what had been the last thing on her mind. “I was thinking,” she began, picking up her wine again, “how cozy it is eating here in the kitchen. I’ll probably demote the dining room to the last thing on my list.”