She leaned against it, as the tears began to roll. It hurt her deeply. She was shocked how deeply it hurt. And it wasn’t because she was mourning the reality of any wonderful relationship. She was mourning the prospect of one. She felt, when she was with Mick tonight, that something could actually become of this. They seemed good together. He seemed to so enjoy her company.
But that old discomfort called reality slapped her in the face again. That man didn’t want her! He had his pick of the litter! She was his pick last night, and by the way he wouldn’t even return her calls he planned to keep it for that one night only. But she went to his hotel tonight, which made him her pick for tonight. But it never was going to work that way. Her father always told her that if the man was riding in the wagon and the woman was the one pushing it, the weight of that kind of relationship would ultimately break it down. It wasn’t even a fortnight, and it had already broken down. But the pain of the promise, of the hope she should not have even had, was still there.
Mick made his way down the stairs of her apartment building, out of the front door, and into the limousine whose door Deuce held open. And as he sat in the backseat of his own limousine, his eyes were bright with unshed tears. The best thing that ever happened to him was up those stairs, only a few feet away, but they were a lifetime apart.
Deuce got in behind the wheel and looked at Mick through the rearview. He saw the pain in Mick’s eyes. He had made a decision. Deuce feared it was the wrong decision. “Where to, boss?” he asked over the open intercom.
Mick just sat there. Every selfish bone in his body wanted to race back up those stairs and claim that woman as his own, her happiness be damned! He wished there was another way. He wished there was a middle ground. Because he felt so out to sea. Love was not his lane. Romance was not something he invested a lick of time in cultivating. Now it was catching up with him. Now he met a woman more than worth it, but he lacked every skill imaginable to understand how to reach her without hurting her.
Then he blurted out four words. “I don’t deserve her,” he said heartfelt, not even realizing he had said it aloud.
Deuce heard those words as he looked at his longtime employer. He knew he would be taking an awful risk if he spoke up, but he cared too much for Mick to remain silent. Roz was right for him. He knew it the first night he saw her. “That’s not for you to say, sir,” he said to Mick.
Mick, amazed that he had been heard, looked at Deuce.
Deuce’s heart fell through his shoe. But he didn’t back down. “She’s an intelligent woman,” he continued. “Nobody knows what’s best for her better than she does. It’s up to her to decide if you deserve her.”
Mick could have easily dismissed Deuce’s unsolicited advice as nothing more than a man stepping into waters he had no business stepping into. Deuce didn’t walk in his shoes. He didn’t understand what he was going through.
But Deuce was much older than Mick and he had wisdom behind those years. He was right. Mick knew he was right. Rosalind was no sheltered violet. She was a strong, independent woman. She should be respected enough to make up her own mind.
But then Deuce, when he could have stepped completely out of bounds and Mick could have fired his ass on the spot, actually provided the icing on the cake.
“Sometimes the worse pride of all,” Deuce said to his boss as if he was Roz’s advocate, “is the pride of selflessness. The pride of deciding for somebody else what they should be allowed to decide for themselves.”
Deuce waited for the outburst. Mick respected him, he knew. But he respected him as his chauffeur, not his therapist.
But Mick didn’t lash out. He was too busy contemplating the wonderfully terrifying possibilities. He was actually giving Deuce’s words considerable thought. Just thinking about being with Rosalind was selfish. In the end it would be very selfish. But Deuce was right. Deciding for somebody else was selfish too. Especially somebody like Rosalind.
When Mick suddenly got out of the car, made his way across the sidewalk and back into the apartment building, Deuce actually exhaled and leaned his head back in relief. “Thank you, Jesus,” he said. “That man could have killed me!”
But Mick didn’t have a murderous thought on his mind as he climbed those stairs to the second floor. Rosalind was on his mind. It was going to be a long journey. A long, hard struggle he knew. And it could all backfire all kinds of ways and devastate both of them. But it could work. It could actually work! The chances of it working were slim, but it was a chance, if she was willing, that he was willing to take.
He knocked on her door. It didn’t take her long to open it, as if she was still standing by it.
When he saw that she had been crying, despite the fact that she had attempted to wipe her tears away, made him more convinced he was doing it the right way.
Roz, too, saw the pain in his eyes. And now she was worried. “What’s wrong?” she asked him.
“I want you to come to Philadelphia.”
Roz considered him. “Where you live?”
Mick couldn’t believe it either. “Yes,” he said.