Love Can Be Murder

predictable." He probably hated Thai food.
    "Don't you get lonely?"
    "I stay pretty busy." A definite meat-and-potatoes man.
    "Have you ever come close to getting married?"
    "Not that I know of." In fact, he probably wrestled his meat to the ground and killed it with his bare hands.
    Angora groaned. "Men are such pigs—why do we want one?"
    She scowled. "Who says I do?"
    "You don't want a family of your own?"
    "Maybe. Someday." The last two items on her life list came to mind, but that little part about the sperm contribution posed a bit of a problem.
    "Someday? Roxann, do you realize that at our age we're already considered high-risk for pregnancy?"
    Her own gynecologist had said the same thing on her last annual visit. Blah, blah, blah.
    "The way I see it, we have another good year left to find a husband, then one year of decent sex before getting pregnant. If we can get pregnant at our age. Our eggs are getting old, you know. With every month that passes, we're becoming more barren."
    "Stop."
    Angora sniffled. "Maybe it's not important to you, but I always pictured myself with a little boy and a little girl. I'd never want an only child because it's just too much..."
    "Pressure," Roxann supplied.
    "Right. But Uncle Walt never pressured you."
    "No." That would've required being attentive. "But I think most only children realize that the expectations of the family ride on their shoulders." If she didn't make her life matter for something, the Beadleman name would be remembered as a flirtatious mother who'd met an untimely end and a drunkard father who would probably meet his Maker while stretched out in his recliner.
    Angora sighed. "That kind of pressure can make you do crazy things, all right."
    "Like marrying a man just to make your mother happy?"
    She hadn't meant to hurt her, but Angora closed her eyes and pressed her lips together. "Or turning your back on men to become a martyr for abused women?"
    Roxann was so astounded at how closely Angora's assessment had matched her own, that she had no choice but to lie. "That's ridiculous."
    "Really? So you're open to having a man in your life? To getting married?"
    Suddenly she was reminded of the upside of traveling alone—you didn't have to answer irrelevant questions. "I, uh... suppose. I really don't think about it much. If it happens, it happens."
    "Oh, now see—that's a myth. Nothing 'just happens.' You have to help things along."
    "To what end?"
    "Well...to happily-ever-after, of course."
    "You were jilted at the altar yesterday, and you still believe in happily-ever-after?"
    "Well, sure. What else is there?"
    "How about 'contentedly-ever-after'?"
    "Can you be content without a man?"
    Roxann nodded. "I am content without a man." Eighty-four percent true.
    Angora sighed. "Then you're a stronger woman than I am. I couldn't stand it, working with scared women all the time, moving around, changing jobs, having no money, being alone." Another sigh. "You're so brave."
    She frowned. "Thanks."
    "I mean it. It takes guts to chuck your education and go out on a limb for people you don't know and might never see again."
    She frowned harder.
    "To sacrifice your own happiness so that—"
    "Okay, Angora. You're making me blush."
    She sighed again, with more drama. "I thought by now I would have done something with my life, and now I'm starting over."
    "Have you been working for the museum all these years?"
    "Yes, and it's dreadful. They treat me like I'm an idiot."
    "So why do you work there?"
    "Well, Ms. Valedictorian, after graduation, I didn't have as many options as you did. Not much I could do with a degree in art history—even Daddy couldn't find a place for me in the hotel business—so the museum job seemed promising. By the time I realized it was a dead end, I had met Trenton and wanted to be near him and his family." Her laugh was hollow. "I guess I am an idiot. I was never smart, like you. Of course you know that."
    Except a high IQ did not a smart person make. If she was so smart, for instance, why had she brought Angora with her on the lam? Right now the woman was sitting there waiting for a nugget of brilliant advice.
    "You can't make someone love you," Roxann said slowly. "You're only responsible for your own feelings and actions." She'd counseled hundreds of women with those same lines.
    Angora lifted her head. "You know, you're absolutely right."
    Encouraged, she continued. "Isn't there some small part of you that's relieved you didn't marry