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"Rebecca— "
"I thought you liked me." She lifted her head and looked at him, her wide gray eyes reminiscent of a small woodland animal watching an eighteen wheeler bearing down on it and unable to do anything to get out of the way. "After last night, I thought.... But being a reporter is more than just what I do. It's who I am. And if you hate reporters— "
"Rebecca, please. You're getting yourself all worked up over nothing." He forced a hearty smile, and covered her fisted hands with a gentle caress. He wanted to pull her into his arms and sear her with kisses, proving just how much he liked her. But he couldn't. He refused to turn her into emotional roadkill by promising something he couldn't deliver. Whatever the nature of the relationship between them was, he couldn't risk letting it develop any further. Not until he was sure of her.
"I don't hate reporters," he continued. "And I don't hate you. It's just that working here in the Institute, I'm used to a very high level of security. Some of your comments were...alarming."
Her face could have belonged to one of Philippe's wooden carvings for all the expression she showed. He let down his mental shields bit by bit, unfolding the layers like tissue paper until they were virtually nonexistent, but not a trace of her thoughts reached him. Her mind was sealed behind a wall as impenetrable as the look in her eyes.
"Why would you say that? Unless you have something to hide? I already know all about Dr. Chen's discoveries, and the new kind of white blood cell."
Damn! For a shy introvert with all the social skills of an orangutan, the doctor had engaged in a surprising amount of chitchat. Desmond flashed on the scene used in so many old war movies. A beleaguered captain stood on his bridge, water streaming around him, red lights strobing and an angry klaxon wailing, as he shouted, "Damage control!" She'd torpedoed him well below the water line. And he didn't know how many shots she had left.
"What made you decide to become a journalist?" he asked. His counterattack cracked her mental wall enough for him to glimpse an abstract melange of construction equipment and building plans. Before he could probe further, she recovered her composure and sealed the flaw.
"The Great American Dream is just that, a dream. No one really has it. I spotlight the illusion, and show it for the sawdust and paint it is. Too many things are covered up or swept under the rug, under the pretext that it's better if people don't know about them. I think it's better if people know what's really out there."
"Rhetoric." He might not understand her mental images, but one thing was clear. They were thoughts of building, of the joy of creating. They didn't match her cynical words.
"What?"
"That might be the party line you think all good journalists are supposed to spout, but it's not true. Not for you. At least, that's not all there is to the truth."
She frowned, her forehead creasing as she studied him. "You're right. I do enjoy the writing, for the writing's sake. I like taking a jumble of incoherent facts and making an easily understood story out of them. But no one's ever seen past the stock answer before. They hear what they expect to hear and move on. What makes you so different?"
He sighed theatrically. "Now I'm the subject of your investigation. Can't you ever just have a conversation?"
"Not when the person I'm conversing with is trying to hide something." She leaned forward, a new spark in her eyes.
"Must you know everything? Don't you realize there are reasons for keeping secrets?"
"Of course there are."
He started to relax.
"And most of them are bad," she finished.
"Even when you're protecting someone? Keeping a secret when you know they couldn't handle the truth?"
"That's exactly the sort of self-aggrandizing hypocrisy I mean!" She slapped the arm of the couch in disgust. "How can anyone ever make that judgment for another person? You don't know what someone can or can't handle until they've tried."
He thought he discovered a chink in her armor.
"What if telling someone the truth would cause a lifetime of misery? Would you still want them to know?"
Crimson shame flooded her cheeks.
"Oh, God," she whispered. She squirmed on the couch. "Gillian. I'm sorry. I didn't mean...That is...There are always special cases. Of course you would only tell her what she was old enough to understand."
He hadn't been thinking of Gillian, but of the way things had turned out for Philippe and his wife. Still, as long as the misconception stopped Rebecca's attack, Desmond wouldn't quibble with it.
"You can never know the truth about the future," she said, trying to escape from the corner she'd painted herself into. "By truth, I meant things that have already happened. Things you can prove. But a best guess about the future doesn't necessarily come true. A doctor's prognosis is not a guaranteed outcome."
He sat up straighter, finally seeing a way to keep his secret from her without guilt.
"Then you'd pardon someone for withholding information, if it was only an opinion?"
His gaze bored into her, riveting her with the bright green of his eyes. She swallowed with a suddenly dry throat, no longer certain what they were discussing. As happened in so many of her conversations with him, she sensed that Desmond was layering another meaning on top of his words. She couldn't possibly answer him correctly, because she didn't understand the question behind his question.
