He's finally met his dream girl, but Kate's father unexpectedly up and dies and off she goes cross-country to join her grieving family and to console her mother, leaving Malcolm to wallow in his loneliness and slip back into his 'old' ways. Like a lot of people, he'd developed the habit of looking for love in all the wrong places. He really wasn't all that bad of a fellow. Yeah, he was selfish and self-absorbed, but Malcolm Clay had some redeeming qualities, too. Something had changed, something he couldn't quite put his finger on, and it was driving him, as well as a few others, half nuts. He might have been chasing his tail, he might have been making mistakes, but he was still trying. One thing was certain: Malcolm hadn't given up! He'd just become a little distracted, that was all.