Andi leaned forward, frowning. “What do you mean by that?”
“Just that all those altruistic, spiritual dreams of yours must have flown out the window when you got involved with your father’s company. When you were nineteen, you were planning to be a missionary in Africa or somewhere by now.”
“And so were you,” she said in a hollow voice. “Instead, you’re working at the Mutual Bank Building as a security guard.”
It was a low blow, but no lower than the one he’d just dealt her.
“My cartoons are an evangelism tool,” he said. “They touch lives.”
“And so will my park.”
For a moment there was a thick silence between them, silence wrought with history and bitterness, silence that spoke volumes about betrayal and loyalty, and that fragile emotion called love.
Struggling to get past that history, Andi leaned on her elbows and clasped her hands under her chin. “As I was saying, Justin, the cartoons are good. And I understand that you haven’t been able to sell them to a network or any other lucrative medium.”
“So far,” the animator conceded, leaning back in his seat and resting his chin on his fingers. “I’ve come close, but the Christian theme and all the biblical parallels play against them. I’ll find a place for them soon enough. I’m a patient man.”
“You don’t have to be,” Andi said. She shifted her gaze to the television screen, where the nearsighted farmer was making his way across a cornfield, his animals running ahead of and around him, protecting him without his knowledge from the traps set by the troll.
It was time to make her move.
Andi turned back to Justin, praying he would see the sense in her offer and not some underlying motive. “I have the answer,” she announced. “I’d like to buy the exclusive rights to your cartoon and use the characters in Promised Land.”
Contrary to Andi’s expectations, there was no change in Justin’s expression, in his breathing, or in the steadfast way he studied her over steepled fingertips. There was no indication, in fact, that he’d heard her at all.
“Did you hear me?” she asked finally.
“I heard you. It’s just that I’m not surprised, really. When your secretary called, I assumed there would be some such offer.”
Andi forced a smile. “Good,” she said, not quite certain that she meant it. “Then you’ve thought about it.”
He breathed a mirthless laugh. “Thought about it? I guess you could say that. But it didn’t take much thought. I have no intention of handing over the exclusive rights to my cartoons to you or anybody else.”
Vexation rippled through Andi’s stiff muscles, and she cleared her throat and opened the file on her desk. “Justin, I hope you aren’t putting our past problems in the way of something that could help us both. You do realize, don’t you, that there’ll be a lot of money involved?”
“There’s always money involved, Andi. Aren’t you the one who taught me that?”
She closed her eyes. Of course they couldn’t get past that history, that stuffed baggage they both dragged behind them. Some things just didn’t go away.
She took a deep breath and decided to face the problems head-on. “You can’t blame me for what happened to us, Justin.”
“Then who can I blame?”
She got up and shoved her chair back, then crossed her arms and paced over to the window. “My father lied to me, Justin. He told me he’d offered you fifty thousand dollars to break things off with me and leave town, and he said you took it.”
“And you believed him!” The words