Hired by Her Husband

by Anne McAllister

  George shifted—and winced as he tried to roll onto his side. His shoulder hurt like hell. Every muscle in his body protested. If Sam thought this was funny…

  George flicked open his eyes and his whole being—mind and body—seemed to jerk.

  It wasn’t Sam in the room. It was a woman.

  George sucked in a breath. He didn’t think he made a noise. But something alerted her because she had been sitting beside his bed looking out the window, and now as he stared, dry-mouthed and disbelieving, slowly she turned and her gaze met his.

  For the first time in nearly four years he and Sophy—his wife—were face-to-face.

  Wife? Ha.

  They might have stood side by side in a New York City judge’s office and repeated after him. They might have a legally binding document declaring them married. But it had never meant anything more than a piece of paper.

  Not to her.

  Not to either of them, George told himself firmly, though the pain he felt was suddenly different than before. He resisted it. Didn’t want to care. Sure as hell didn’t want to feel!

  The very last thing he needed now was to have to deal with Sophy. His jaw tightened involuntarily, which, damn it, made his head hurt even worse.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded. His voice was rough, hoarse from tubes and dry hospital air. He glared at her accusingly.

  “Irritating you, obviously.” Sophy’s tone was mild, but there was a concern in her gaze that belied her tone. Still, she shrugged lightly. “The hospital called me. You were unconscious. They needed next of kin’s permission to do whatever they felt needed doing.”

  “You?” George stared in disbelief.

  “That’s pretty much what I said when they called,” Sophy admitted candidly, crossing one long leg over the other and leaning back in the chair.

  She was wearing black wool trousers and an olive green sweater. Very tasteful. Professional. Businesslike, George would have said. Not at all the Sophy of jeans and sweats and maternity tops he remembered. Only her copper-colored hair was still the same, the dark red strands glinting like new pennies in the early morning sun. He remembered running his fingers through it, burying his face in it. More thoughts he didn’t want to deal with.

  “Apparently you never got around to divorcing me.” She looked at him as if asking a question.

  George’s jaw tightened. “I imagined you would take care of that,” he bit out. Since she had been the one who was so keen on it. Damn, but his head was pounding. He shut his eyes.

  When he opened them again it was to see that Sophy’s gaze had flickered away. But then it came back to meet his. She shook her head.

  “No need,” she said easily. “I certainly wasn’t getting married again.”

  And neither was he. He’d been gutted once by marriage. He had no desire to go through it again. But he wasn’t talking about that to Sophy. He couldn’t believe she was even here. Maybe that whack on the head was causing him to hallucinate.

  He tried shutting his eyes again, wishing her gone. No luck. When he opened them again, she was still there.

  Getting hit by a truck was small potatoes compared to dealing with Sophy. He needed all his wits and every bit of control and composure he could manage when it came to coping with her. Now he rolled onto his back again and grimaced as he tried to push himself up against the pillows.

  “Probably not a good idea,” Sophy commented.

  No, it wasn’t. The closer he got to vertical, the more he felt as if the top of his head was going to come off. On the other hand, he wasn’t dealing with Sophy from a position of weakness.

  “You should rest,” she offered.

  “I’ve been resting all night.”

  “I doubt you had much,” Sophy said frankly. “The nurse said you were restless.”

  “You try sleeping when they’re asking you questions.”

  “They need to keep checking, you have concussion and a subdural hematoma. Not to mention,” she added, assessing him slowly as if he were a distasteful bug pinned to paper, “that you look as if you’ve been put through a meat grinder.”

  “Thanks,” George muttered. Yes, it hurt, but he kept pushing himself up. He wanted to clutch his head in his hands. Instead he clutched the bedclothes until his knuckles turned white.

  “For heaven’s sake, stop that! Lie down or I’ll call the nurse.”

  “Be my guest,” George said. “Since it’s morning and I know my name and how old I am, maybe they’ll finally let me sign myself out of here and go home. I have things to do. Classes. Work.”

  Sophy rolled her eyes. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re lucky you’re not in surgery.”

  “Why should I be?” He scowled. “I don’t have any broken bones.” He was half-sitting now so he stopped pushing himself up and lifted his arm to look at his watch. His arm was bare except for the intravenous tube in the back of his hand. He gritted his teeth. “Damn it. What time is it? I have a class doing an experiment tomorrow. I need to go to work.” I need to get away from this woman—or I need to grab her and hold on to her forever.

  Sophy rolled her eyes. “Like that’s going to happen.”

  For a terrible moment, George thought she was responding to the words that had formed in his concussed brain. Then he realized she was talking about him going to work. He sagged in relief.

  “The world doesn’t stop just because one person has an accident,” he told her irritably.

  “Yours almost did.”

  The baldness of her statement was like a punch to the gut. And so was the sudden change in Sophy’s expression as she said the words. There was nothing at all light or flippant about her now. She looked stricken. “You almost died, George!” She even sounded as if she cared.

  He steeled himself against believing it, making himself shrug. “But I didn’t.”

  All the same he knew the truth of what she said. The truck was big enough. It had been moving fast enough. If he’d been half a step slower, she would likely be right.

  Would they have called Sophy if he’d died? Would she have come and planned his funeral?

  He didn’t ask. He knew Sophy didn’t love him, but she didn’t hate him, either.

  Once he’d even thought they actually stood a chance of making their marriage work, that she might have really come to love him.

  “What happened?” she asked him now. “The nurse said you got hit saving a child.”

  He was surprised she’d asked. But then he realized she might want to know why they’d tracked her down and dragged her here. It didn’t have anything to do with caring about him.

  “Jeremy,” George confirmed. “He’s four. He lives down the street from me. I was walking home from work and he came running down the sidewalk to show me his new soccer ball. He dropped it so he could dribble it, but then as he got closer he kicked it harder—at me. But it—” he dragged in a harsh breath “—went into the street.”

  Sophy sucked in a breath.

  “There was a delivery truck coming…”

  Sophy went very white. “Dear God. He’s not…?”

  George shook his head, then instantly wished he hadn’t. “He’s okay. Bruised. Scraped up. But—”

  “But not dead.” Sophy said it aloud. Firmly, as if to make it more believable. She seemed to breathe again, relief evident on her face. “Thank God.” And her gaze lifted as if she was in prayer.

  “Yes.”

  Then she lowered her gaze and looked at him. “Thank George.”

  There was a sudden flatness in her tone, and George heard an unwelcome edge of finality, of inevitability. Almost of bitterness.

  His teeth came together. “What? Did you want me to let him run in front of a truck?”

  “Of course not!” Sophy’s eyes flashed. A deep flush of color rushed into her pale cheeks. “How could you say such a thing? I was just…recognizing what you’d done.”

  “Sure you were.” He gave her a hard look, an expectant look, waiting
for her to say the words that hung between them.

  She wet her lips. “You saved him.”

  He almost expected it to be an accusation. She had certainly made it sound that way when she’d flung the words at him the day she’d said she didn’t want to be married anymore.

  “That’s what you were doing when you married me,” she’d cried bitterly. “You married me to save me!”

  He had, of course. But that wasn’t the only reason. Not that she would believe it. He hadn’t replied then. He didn’t reply now. Sophy would think what she wanted.

  George stared back at her stonily, dared her to make something of it.

  But whatever anger she felt seemed to go out of her. She just looked at him with those wide deep green eyes for a long moment, and then she added quietly, “You are a hero.”

  George snorted. “Hardly. Jeremy wouldn’t have been out there running down the street at all if he hadn’t seen me coming.”

  “What? You’re saying it’s your fault?” She stared at him in disbelief.

  “I’m just saying he was waiting for me.” He shrugged. “We kick the ball around together sometimes.”

  “You know him well, then? He’s a friend?” Sophy sounded surprised, as if she considered it unlikely.

  “We’re friends.” Jeremy with his dark hair and bright eyes had made him think about Lily. He didn’t say that, though.

  Sophy’s brows lifted slightly, as if the notion that he knew who his neighbors were surprised her as well. Maybe it should. He hadn’t known any of their neighbors during the few months they’d been together.

  But he hadn’t had time, had he? He’d been too busy finishing up the government project he was working on and trying to figure out how to be a husband and then, only weeks later, a father. The first had been time-consuming, but at least in his comfort zone.

  Marriage and fatherhood had been completely virgin territory. He hadn’t had a clue.

  Now Sophy said, “I was surprised you were back in New York.” It wasn’t a question, but he assumed that she meant it as one.

  “For the past two years.”

  “Uppsala didn’t appeal?”

  Ah, right. Uppsala. That was where she thought he’d gone—the job he had supposedly been up for—at the University of Uppsala in Sweden.

  He couldn’t have told her differently then. He hadn’t been permitted to talk about it. And there was no point in talking about it now.

  “It was a two-year appointment,” he said.

  That much was the truth. And though he could have continued to work on government projects, he hadn’t wanted to. He’d agreed to the earlier one before he’d ever expected to be marrying anyone. And if things had worked out between him and Sophy, he would have bowed out and never gone to Europe at all.

  When their marriage crumbled, he went, grateful not to have to stay in the city, grateful to be able to put an ocean between him and the reason for his pain.

  But after two years, he’d come home, back to New York though he’d had several good offers elsewhere. “This one at Columbia is tenure track,” he told her.

  Not that tenure had been a factor. He’d taken the job because it appealed to him. It was research work he wanted to do, eager graduate students to mentor, a freshman class to inspire and a classload he could handle.

  It had nothing to do with the fact that when he took it he’d thought Sophy and Lily were still living in the city. Nothing.

  Sophy nodded. “Ah.”

  “When did you leave?” he asked. At her raised brows, he said, “I did drop by. You were gone.”

  “I went to California. Not long after you left,” she said. “I started a business with my cousin.”

  “So I heard. My mother said she talked to you at Christo’s wedding.”

  “Yes.” Then she added politely, “It was nice to see your parents again.”

  George, who knew exactly what she thought of his father, said drily, “I’ll bet.”

  He’d been invited to Christo’s wedding, too. He hadn’t gone because he had had no clue who his cousin Christo was marrying and no interest in flying across the country to find out. To discover later that Christo’s bride was a second cousin of Sophy’s blew his mind. He wondered what would have happened if he’d gone to the wedding, if they’d run into each other there.

  Probably nothing, he thought heavily. There were times and places when things could happen. It had been the wrong time before. And now? Now it was simply too late.

  Yet even knowing it, he couldn’t help saying, “What about your business? My mother said it’s called Rent-a-Bride?”

  “Rent-a-Wife,” Sophy corrected. “We do things for people that they need a second person to cope with. Things wives traditionally do. Pick up dry cleaning, arrange dinner parties, ferry the kids to dental appointments and soccer games, take the dog to the vet.”

  “And people pay for that?”

  “They do. Very well, in fact.” She met his gaze defiantly. “I’m doing fine.”

  Without you.

  She didn’t have to say the words for him to hear them. “Ah. Well, good for you.”

  Their gazes locked, hers more of a glare than a gaze. Then abruptly she looked away, shifted in her chair and tried to stifle a yawn. Watching her, George realized she must have had to fly all night to get here from California.

  “Did you sleep?”

  She bit off the yawn. “Some.” But her gaze flicked away fast enough that he knew it for the lie it was. And he felt guilty for her having been called for no reason.

  “Look,” he said roughly, “I’m sorry they bothered you. I’m sorry you felt you had to drop everything and fly clear across the country to sign papers. It wasn’t necessary.”

  “The doctor said it was.”

  “My fault. I should have updated the contact information.”

  “To whom?” Her question was as quick as it was surprising. And was she actually interested in his answer?

  George shrugged. “My folks. My sister, Tallie. She and Elias and the kids live in Brooklyn.”

  “Oh. Right. Of course.” Sophy shifted in the chair, sat up straighter. “I just wondered. I thought—” But she stopped, not telling him whatever it was she’d thought, and George didn’t have enough working brain cells to try to guess. “Never mind.”

  “I’ll get it changed as soon as I get out of here,” he promised.

  “No problem.” Sophy’s easy acceptance was unexpected. At his blink of astonishment, she shrugged. “You were there for me. It’s my turn.”

  He frowned. “So this is payback?”

  She spread her hands. “It’s the best I can do.”

  “You don’t need to do anything!”

  “Apparently not,” she said in a mild nonconfrontational tone that reminded him of a mother humoring a fractious child.

  George set his teeth. He didn’t want to be humored and he damned well didn’t want Sophy patronizing him.

  “Fine. It’s payback. So consider your debt paid,” he said gruffly. He’d had enough. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get some rest. And,” he went on for good measure, “as you can see, I’m conscious and I can sign my own papers now. So thank you for coming, but I can take care of things myself. You don’t need to hang around taking care of me. You can go.”

  As the words left his mouth he knew he heard the echo of almost the exact words she had thrown at him nearly four years ago: I don’t need you! I’m not a mess you need to clean up. I can take care of myself. I don’t need you doing it for me. So get out of here! Leave me alone. Just go!

  And from the expression on her face, Sophy knew it, too. She looked as if he’d slapped her.

  “Of course,” she said stiffly and stood up, pulling her jacket off the back of the chair and putting it on.

  George watched her every move. He didn’t want to. But, as usual, he couldn’t look away. From the first moment he’d seen her on his cousin Ari’s arm at a family wedding, Sophy had always
had the power to draw his gaze.

  She didn’t seem to notice. Something else that hadn’t changed. She zipped up her jacket and picked up her tote from the floor by the chair. Then she stood looking down at him, her expression unreadable.

  George made sure his was, too. “Thank you for coming,” he said evenly. “I’m sorry you were inconvenienced.”

  She inclined her head. “I’m glad you’re recovering.”

  All very polite. They looked at each other in silence. For three seconds. Five. George didn’t know how long. It wasn’t going to be enough. It never would be.

  He couldn’t help memorizing her even as he told himself it was a stupid thing to do. And not the first, he reminded himself grimly, where Sophy was concerned.

  She gave him one last faint smile and turned away.

  Her name was out of his mouth before she reached the door. “Sophy.”

  She stilled, glanced back, one brow lifting quizzically.

  He’d thought he could leave it at that. That he could simply let her go. But he had to ask. “How’s Lily?”

  For a moment he thought she wouldn’t answer. But then the smile he hadn’t seen yet suddenly appeared on her face like the sun from behind a bank of thunderheads. Her expression softened. And she was no longer supremely self-contained, keeping him determinedly outside the castle walls. “Lily’s fine. Amazing. Bright. Funny. So smart. We had her birthday party yesterday. She’s—”

  “Four.” George finished the sentence before she could. He knew exactly how old she was. Remembered every minute of the day she was born. Remembered holding her in his arms. Remembered how the mantle of responsibility felt on his shoulders—unexpected, scary, yet absolutely right.

  Sophy blinked. “You remembered?”

  “Of course.”

  She swallowed. “Would you…like to see a picture of her?”

  Would he? George nodded almost jerkily. Sophy didn’t seem to notice. She was already opening her purse and taking out her wallet. She fished out a photo and came back across the room to hand it to him.

  George took one look at the child in the photo and felt his throat close.

  God, she was beautiful. He’d seen some snapshots that his mother had given him from the wedding so he had an idea of what Lily was like. But this photo really captured her.