Dreaming of His Pen Pal's Kiss - Jessie Gussman Page 0,43

make sure that your family knows you love them. Maybe you’re right about women doing that more, but I think that makes them smarter.”

He held his hands up, the glue gun on one side above his head. “Hey. I didn’t want to fight about it. Just saying. That’s why men hit the top more often than women. Not because we’re smarter, just because we’ve got that single-minded focus where we put our eyes on where we’re going and we don’t let anything distract us from it. Including wife and family.”

“You can’t think that that’s a good thing.” Her voice held just a touch of disbelief and maybe a little derision.

He dabbed glue right where her finger tapped, and she pressed a piece of shimmering lace that would serve as garland, apparently, on it.

“It’s a good thing if you want to be successful in the business world.”

“Aren’t families more important?”

Chapter 16

Dante knew he was pushing the limits. He weighed his words carefully. “I think people are important. But I think sometimes a man’s family knows that they had to make certain sacrifices if that means he’s going to be successful.”

She pressed her lips together and nodded, but he wasn’t fooled. She didn’t agree with him.

He could explain further, but he’d be digging a deeper hole for himself, because he knew if he had a wife and kids, his wife and kids would take up his time and attention and focus, and he wouldn’t be able to put all of himself into practicing and training and studying and memorizing and getting better.

He wouldn’t be as good as what he was if he had to give more of his attention to someone else than to football. And it wasn’t just football, it was anything that anyone wanted to excel at. They had to work toward it with a single-minded focus.

“Maybe that’s why I’m not married.”

“I’m sure that there are ballplayers who are.”

“You’re right.” He ran through some of them in his head, more convinced than ever that he was right.

Once they got married, their focus wasn’t on football a hundred percent even when they were at camp, in practice, and of course in games, at least most of the time.

“I do a lot of work outside of practice and games. When I say I live football, I mean it. Maybe some guys don’t have to be quite as diligent and they’d still be good. It just wouldn’t work for me.”

“So you’re not getting married.”

“I didn’t say that.” He could hardly say if he wanted a woman; he was looking at the woman who would be his first and only pick. He hadn’t been doing a very good job of convincing her to be with him. But he also couldn’t pretend to be something other than what he was. It wasn’t fair. Not when he was looking for a serious commitment. “I just need to find a woman who understands.”

“I see.”

He searched his brain for something to make his position look better to her. When he came up with a blank on that, he tried to think of something to change the subject, because obviously what they were talking about wasn’t something they were going to agree on.

It didn’t make him like her any less, but he had a feeling that her opinion of him was going downhill. And fast.

“Okay, let me ask you this. I’m not saying that you’re wrong that a family should come first. That just makes sense. I was neglected as kid, and I pretty much agree with that. But in order to be successful, you have to put everything into what you do. Right?”

She lifted a shoulder, digging through the box for another bulb. “I agree. The more time you devote to something, the more successful you’ll probably be.”

“Women admire success in a man. They do. They admire a man who’s at the top. Are you telling me that after they marry him, they want him to stop doing what it was that they admired and that attracted them to him in the first place, and they would prefer that he be less successful in order to spend more time with them?”

She held the Christmas tree up, looking it over, before digging in the box and finding a cylinder type ornament, which she set about attaching as the base of the Christmas tree, speaking as she adjusted it. “I see your point. I suppose if that’s what attracted her in the first place, then it would almost be like