A/N: Oh, you know what's coming, so I won't even say it. As always, many, many thanks to my betas. Thanks to Jan for suffering through multiple icky iterations of this chapter before she finally got it to make sense, and to Barbara for coming up with the big plot twist tying it all together.

Chapter 7

early November 2006

One Saturday evening in early November, Lizzy was in her office and just packing up her stuff-briefcase, overnight bag, and laptop-to head to Will's place when her boss emailed her a document that had to be revised RIGHT NOW. Shit! God, this was the last thing she needed after a long and trying week. Things had gone badly in a pro bono case, and her client was going to be deported. One of the other junior associates on a major case they were working on had really fucked up and sent some documents he shouldn't have over to the opposition, resulting in the senior partner tearing him a new one and leaving the rest of the associates to pick up the pieces. The list went on. All she wanted was to get something to eat and then put it all out of her mind with a good romp in bed.

So, she called Will and told him she'd be late. Then she put her head down and got the thing done, but it wasn't until 10:30 or so that she finally was able to shut down her computer and head Uptown.

When she got to Will's place, she gave him a quick peck as he held the door for her to come in. She dumped her stuff in the foyer, and they headed into the breakfast nook attached to the kitchen. He'd been doing some kind of paperwork, and shoved it aside to make room for the foam container holding her chicken kebab salad and pita bread.

"Ugh," she said as she ate, "Shitty week."

"Sorry to hear that." He asked her for the rundown, and she went down the list.

In return, she asked him about his week.

"Did I tell you?" he asked, "I had to go down to Atlanta for a couple of days to resolve some issues in a company we just acquired." As it turned out, she hadn't known about that. Was that weird, she wondered, that he had left town for days without telling her? Well, maybe not, since she wouldn't say they were in a real relationship, exactly.

Energy restored by her meal, Lizzy sat up straight, took a deep breath, and got a good look at Will, the first really good one since she'd come in the door. He looked yummy, all tousled and weekend-casual, and he was in a good mood. Sometimes it could be hard to tell when he was, but she knew the signs now-the little twitch of the lips, the slightly raised eyebrows, the drumming fingers.

She smiled at him. "You seem cheery tonight. What do you say, do you want to...?" she nodded in the general direction of the bedroom. That's how they always said it, never "make love" or even "have sex."

He agreed with some enthusiasm, so she dumped her takeout containers in the trash and they raced down the hall together, dropping their clothes as they went.

She happily turned off her brain and let herself enjoy the sensations, his touch, the physical closeness, the mutuality. They were well matched here, at least. Tonight she was energetic and unfocused, taking the more strenuous and athletic route, but he was very persistent, keeping her in the moment, treading with her upward on the path toward their mutual goal, observing and adapting until the final catch of breath and tumbling fall.

Afterwards, she lay exhausted, boneless, relaxed, blissful. Mellow. Will rolled over and held her while she lay on her back. He stroked her belly.

He looked at her profile and the satisfied smile on her lips, and out of nowhere he said in a low voice, still a little out of breath, "You know, I think I love you."

Startled but too sluggish to react much, she turned her head to look at him with a touch of incredulity. "What?" This was not something she had expected to hear him say.

He nodded. "Yeah, I think I do. I'm just as surprised as you."

She relaxed back into the pillows. "Hmm...well, anyway, it's probably just the afterglow. It'll pass. Thanks, though. You're a nice person, a nice man."

He pushed himself up onto his elbow, and reached over with his top hand to take hers. "No, really. Don't you think we have something here?" He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it.

"Will..." Hadn't they settled all of this long ago, when they'd established the terms of their whatever it was, liaison? This wasn't going in a good direction.

But he continued. "I know it's unexpected. I never expected to feel this way about someone like you. But I think we could be good together."

This irked her. She could see he was laying his heart on the line, opening himself up to being hurt, and she didn't want to hurt him, because he was a nice man. But did he not see how insulting his words were? She exhaled hard to help keep calm, and then, looking up at the ceiling said, "When you say 'someone like me,' what do you mean, exactly?"

"You know, a smart, driven, hard-working, ambitious woman. That just hasn't been my thing."

She chuckled, just a little sourly. "I'm flattered, I guess, but you know that makes it sound like you actually have a thing for stupid, unmotivated women with no goals in life."

He looked appalled. "What? No, of course not. That's not what I meant. I meant, I figured I'd end up with a woman kind of like my mother. She was a homemaker, and she took care of my dad and me and Georgie, and supported my dad in his career. That's what a man in my position needs."

She almost laughed out loud at this as she sat up and pulled the sheet up over her chest. A man in his position? Jesus, and people said that social class didn't exist in America. But this wasn't the point. Focus, focus. How could she talk him out of this madness without hurting his feelings, get him to come to the conclusion on his own that this was ridiculous? "So, um, I don't quite understand how I fit into your vision, here."

He sat up, too, and put on his best business negotiation face. "I don't know why you're fighting it-I think we both know you feel the same way about me, too." At this she took in a breath sharply to speak, to call him on his presumptuousness, but he kept on going.

"Look at it objectively. It's a win-win situation. One, how many times have you told me that you're only working this hard because you need the money? Problem solved-money is no longer an issue. Two, you're always saying how much you hate your job, and how you'd like to work less. So, you can quit your job and do whatever you want. Three, you could help me by taking care of all the social stuff that's part of my position, parties and dinners and that kind of thing to recruit investors for WPD." He was really on a roll now. His eyes were sparkling and he was gesturing animatedly.

"Four, I know how much doing good is important to you. You could get involved in the family foundation. That's something I haven't been able to give as much attention as I'd like." He paused, "And, five, of course you could raise our kids." He smiled. It seemed to Lizzy that he didn't notice he'd lost the thread of his argument as he'd wandered off into La-La Land there at the end.

"Will, I'm not...this is not..."

He interrupted, "Don't you see the benefits for both of us in this?"

Well, she could certainly see the benefits for him. It was really pissing her off that not only did he not know she wasn't interested in leading that kind of life, but that he was trying to convince her that he knew better than she did what she wanted in life. He wasn't going to let her let him down easy. Shit. She needed to clear her head and come up with some kind of exit strategy. That wasn't going to happen here in bed.

She pushed down the covers and made to get up. Tightly, she said, "You know what, I'm thirsty. I'm going to go get a glass of water. I'll be right back." She grabbed the first item of clothing she came across, his blue button-down shirt. She didn't do her best thinking naked, so she pulled it on as she crossed the room, leaving him open-mouthed, mid-argument.

She stalked into the kitchen, found the cupboard full of glasses, and filled a glass with water from the dispenser on the outside of the refrigerator. There was no place to sit down in this damn huge, shiny black-and-stainless kitchen, so she headed toward the breakfast nook where they'd sat to eat dinner, and perched on the edge of a chair while she tried to organize her thoughts.

And that's where she saw the pile of papers that Will had been working on. She knew how to read business documents, and these were documents setting out the details of WPD's takeover of Lucas Safe & Lock. The purchase itself was complete. These were the papers laying out how they were going to tear the place apart now that they owned it. Fuck! Fuck. She slammed her glass down on the table and ran for her BlackBerry to find out just how the fuck long this had been going on. She stood, aghast, in the foyer by her bags as a Google search revealed the terrible details.

The Wall Street Journal reported that after several months of negotiations, WPD had bought the firm from Charlotte's father, mostly on credit. The firm would have to pay back all those loans itself, meaning it had to turn a profit, fast. WPD had already announced that there would be a major restructuring. More than half of the management positions were going to go. Worse still, all but a few of the manufacturing jobs were going to be shipped overseas to China, where they could do the work more cheaply. The only jobs that would still be left in Artemis were some of the specialized, higher-tech safe lock mechanisms, which required particular technical skills and couldn't be made yet in China.

This was devastating news for Artemis. It would spell the end of its long history of manufacturing, and it would leave the town and surrounding areas without more than two hundred jobs that kept thousands of people above water. In the region there was already a lot of rural poverty-lots of people living in trailers in the middle of nowhere, living hand to mouth. After this, the food pantries and homeless shelters would be swamped. Foreclosures, repossessions, the whole lot, were coming their way.

Oh, God. She had of course always known that this was what Will did for a living, but this brought it home to her more personally than before. How could he do this to her, to her hometown? And, how could he not have told her? How could Charlotte not have told her, either? Charlotte had been saying for ages that the company was struggling, but she'd never hinted that things were this bad. Apparently WPD-Will?-thought it still had some kind of potential. Or at least he saw the potential to make some money out of it. Had WPD forced Mr. Lucas into the sale in some kind of hostile takeover? Oh, this was bad.

And worse, this was the life, the business, that he wanted her to give up everything up for? No fucking way. No more Ms. Nice Guy. The gloves were off.

Eyes flashing, big shirt and hair streaming behind her, she stormed back into the bedroom, where Will was still sitting up in bed looking cross. She practically threw herself onto the bed and sat cross-legged next to him, shoving the shirttails down to cover her nakedness.

"OK," she spat out, waving her hand in the air, "you asked me if I could see the benefits for both of us in the life you were talking about. The answer is, no, I can't. You would want me to support you and your career, and help you succeed. Oh, and raise your children and be the Little Mother. And basically be invisible and have no identity of my own except as your wife and the mother of your children. Is that about it?" She had been mad earlier, but just saying this out loud made her furious. Had he not been listening to her at all when she'd talked about how much her work meant to her? Did he really think that she was just keeping herself busy until she could catch a man and move on to her true calling, being Suzy Homemaker?

He squinted at her in disbelief. "No, of course not! Don't you understand? I can't do what I have to do without a wife to do all this stuff." He said this as if it were totally, totally self-evident.

"Oh my God. Did you really just say that? Basically, you've decided you love me, and that means that I therefore have to do whatever you want. You are so goddamned entitled."

A little querulously, he asked, "What are you talking about? Didn't we just go over how this would be good for you, and give you what you wanted?"

She was so furious she couldn't even yell. Firmly and icily, she said, "No! You never asked me what I wanted, you just inferred what I wanted from some random collection of words that made their way into your ears. What you are talking about would not be good for me, Will. Because, as you would know if you had actually been listening to me for the last three months, this is the exact opposite of what I want. I live for work, for my job. That's who I am, it's what I do. It's what gives my life meaning. The last thing in the world I would ever want to do is to give up my job. I wouldn't even know who I was anymore if I did that."

Now Will began to look resentful. He huffed, "I thought you'd be more appreciative of the kind of life I could give you. Most women would."

Lizzy rolled her eyes. In a sarcastic voice, she bit out, "Do you hear how totally self-centered you are? This is all about you, and what you want, and what you need, and how you think you love me. You haven't once asked me how I feel about you, or what I want my life to be like. Or what's really important to me."

"OK, do you love me? And what do you want, and what's important to you?" he raised his voice, sitting up straighter, looking thunderous.

She hadn't wanted to come out and say this, but he'd left her no alternative. Coldly, she said, "Well, thanks so much for asking. We started this thing between us with the understanding that we were not getting serious, that your life was 'complicated,' and that I didn't have time for a real relationship. So you can imagine how surprised I am to hear that all of that is out the window. No, I don't love you. I don't care about the money, and I don't want to give up my identity, and throw away my education and all the hard work I have put in for the last five years so you can have your brilliant career. Do you even know what I'm working for in my career? What path I'm on?"

"Yeah, sure," he snapped. "You always say you want to help the little guy. So, what, you want to, um, fight the good fight by working for a little law firm somewhere. A David and Goliath thing, right? I don't really see why giving that up is such a big thing, considering what you'd get in return."

He really hadn't been listening. He didn't have a clue. That made her even madder, and finally she blew.

"No. No! I was top in my class at Yale Law School, editor of the Law Journal. I clerked at the Supreme Court. I'm at a Top Ten law firm, Top Ten in the country. I don't know where this is going and how I'm going to get there, exactly, or if I'll be lucky enough or smart enough or want it enough, but this is the path that can get you to a place like chief legal counsel at Amnesty International, or White House Counsel. Or Supreme Court Justice. Or something like that. And that is how you help the little guy most, where it can make a difference for everyone. And that is why I am not going to quit my fucking job so I can serve fucking canapés to your investors."

"Well, I'm sorry I asked..."

"Yeah, me, too. And if you'd paid even the slightest attention to who I actually am, and what I value, and why it is that I work this hard, instead of imagining I was some fantasy Barbie doll plaything, you wouldn't have asked. But anyway, even if I didn't feel that way, you know how I feel about WPD. In what conceivable world would I give up my dreams to support a company that would destroy my town? How could you do this to Artemis?"

"Do what?" He looked bewildered

"Don't you know? Lucas Safe & Lock is the only thing standing between Artemis and total economic collapse. I saw the papers you left on the table, and I read the reports about the deal in the Journal. You're closing the place down. Hundreds of people, some of them people I know who are already living on the edge, are going to be destroyed. Families with kids, people struggling to take care of their parents. How could you do this to them? How could you do this to people I care about and not even have the courtesy to tell me?"

"That's what you think of what I do? You think I'm that kind of person? Do you also think I knock down babies and steal their candy?"

"I don't think you're a bad person. I wouldn't have been here with you all this time if I did. But I think your company does bad things, yes. And I am sure as hell not giving up everything I believe in in the service of that." By this time she was up on her knees, waving her hands around wildly. Now she stilled and sat back on her heels.

They sat for a full minute without saying anything, both staring down at the bed.

Lizzy looked up and spoke first because she couldn't stand the silence. "OK, then, I guess we're through here." She got off the bed and walked across the room, picking up her clothes from the floor as she went. She went into the bathroom, yanked off his shirt and threw it on the floor, and pulled on her underwear, jeans and top. She jammed her bra in her pocket and looked at herself in the mirror. Her face was flushed and her eyes were watery. She hadn't even realized she was so close to crying.

She splashed some water on her face, and pulled her hair up in an elastic she found lying on the counter. She looked around the bathroom and realized that that was the entirety of the belongings she had at Will's place. No underwear in a dresser drawer, no toothbrush in the bathroom, no key to complicate things...that was it. And it made it really, really easy to walk away.

She pulled herself up straight and walked back into the bedroom, where Will was still sitting up in bed.

"See you around, I guess," she said.

"That's it?" he asked angrily.

"Well, isn't it? You've just told me that you really don't like women like me, and that you want me to change myself completely so I can be what you need. Fuck that. I don't need you or anyone else to judge me that way. Go find yourself a nice society wife. You're a real catch, so I'm sure there are a million women who'd jump at the chance. I'm just not one of them."

She left him still sitting there wrapped in the sheets, and she made sure to slam the front door on the way out.