“Early days yet,” Sophy replied.
Natalie raised her brows. “You think?”
“Of course.”
“Seems to me like they get along fine.”
“Yes. But as I said, early days. She’s only been here a few hours.”
Natalie shrugged. “Maybe you’re right.”
“I am right,” Sophy said in an uncompromising tone.
Natalie laughed. “Famous last words.” She glanced at Sophy and added, “But you haven’t been here just a few hours.”
Sophy felt something like a frisson of danger on the back of her neck. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve got eyes. And it doesn’t look to me like it’s business as usual with George. I’ve seen you working. I know.”
Sophy shrugged. “So we have a history. It’s over.”
Natalie laughed. “Sure it is. That’s why you watch him when he’s not looking.”
“He’s been hurt,” Sophy said defensively. “I have to make sure he’s all right. I have to make sure Lily doesn’t inadvertently hurt him more.”
“Of course you do.” Natalie dismissed that excuse with a wave of her hand. “And that’s why he watches you the same way. Hungrily. And that’s not in the past, not by a long shot.” She paused and then slanted a glance in her cousin’s direction. “Wouldn’t you like it to work, Soph?”
The question cut far too close to the bone. Instinctively Sophy turned away from it.
“I’m not a dreamer,” she said sharply. “I’m a realist. We married for the wrong reasons and maybe he does want me, but that’s not the same as loving me. Sex is easy for men.”
Not for her. She couldn’t separate her emotions from the act. It was why she hadn’t slept with anyone since…since George, that one night four years ago.
Natalie stared at her, eyes wide, wordless.
And in the face of her cousin’s astonishment, Sophy hugged her arms across her breasts and plunged on. “What I would really like,” she said fiercely, “is for him not to be quite so charming because when we leave, I do not want Lily to be hurt!”
Natalie’s eyes got even wider, but she still didn’t say a word.
Of course she didn’t, Sophy thought disgustedly. What could you say in the face of a completely unexpected outburst? Damn it. She wanted to crawl into a hole. Why had she shot her mouth off? Why had she acted as if she cared?
Why did she care?
The realization that she did pulled her up short. Stopped her dead.
Wouldn’t you like it to work?
Casual innocent words. Words that she’d blithely believed would come true once upon a time four years ago.
And when it hadn’t, she’d turned her back. She’d had to turn her back. She’d had to make a life for herself and her daughter. She’d had to refuse to hope.
And now hope—a tiny tempting flicker of hope—stirred to life deep inside her.
It made her question her sanity, to tell the truth. Surely she couldn’t be contemplating the possibility of life with George again…
Could she?
No. She couldn’t!
But…
But she found her gaze once more drawn to the garden where George and Lily were laughing together. It was pure, unaffected laughter between two people totally in tune with each other.
Father and daughter.
No.
Lily was Ari’s daughter.
But George was the only father she’d ever known. Not that she remembered him, Sophy reminded herself. But George was the one Lily asked about when she talked about her daddy. George was the one whose picture she kept alongside one of her mother on her dresser. George was the one she had recognized instinctively at the airport, the one she hadn’t let go of since they’d arrived.
And he seemed to feel the same way.
Early days, Sophy cautioned herself, distrusting it all, doing her best to kill the flicker of hope.
It didn’t make sense. None at all.
Why, given what she knew about why George had married her, was she fool enough to wish?
Of course it was true what Natalie said, on a physical level George probably did want her. Once he had. Once she had wanted him, too. To be honest, she still did.
But so what? She wanted more than that. She wanted love. To love. To be loved.
Not to be a duty. Not to be “one of Ari’s messes” that George felt obliged to clean up. The very words she’d heard him say the day of Lily’s christening. The day when her world collapsed.
George hadn’t said it to her. He hadn’t said anything much to her. She thought it was his way to do, not say, and she was fine with that.
But at Lily’s christening, she’d come to fetch them for the family pictures and what she’d heard him say to his father had changed everything.
They had been arguing, voices raised. Socrates was a notorious shouter, but she’d never heard George raise his voice until that day. She could still remember the exact words of their conversation as if they were emblazoned on her brain.
It was George’s voice she’d heard first as she’d approached the closed door. He was insisting loudly that he didn’t want to do something—something that Socrates was just as loudly demanding that he should.
She had been just about to knock, to call them for the family pictures and also to defuse whatever their argument was about, when George said, and she would remember his words forever, “I’m tired of cleaning up Ari’s messes, damn it! Give me one good reason why I should?”
Sophy felt as if she’d been punched. She stopped dead outside George’s father’s office door, unable to breathe, only able to listen.
So she heard Socrates’s one good reason. Actually he provided several—all very rational. “Because you’re good at it,” he’d said. “You don’t take things personally. You don’t overreact. You do what needs to be done and you never get emotionally involved.”
Sophy’s mouth went dry. Her heart was hammering so loudly she was surprised they didn’t think there was someone knocking at the door.
But they didn’t hear her at all. They simply continued, oblivious.
“Well, I don’t want to,” George said, sounding as quietly rational as his father expected now. “I have other things to do.”
He didn’t elaborate. Socrates didn’t ask.
It struck Sophy that Socrates didn’t care. He only cared about cleaning up the loose ends of Ari’s life—“Ari’s messes.” And George was clearly the man he wanted to do it.
“It won’t take long. It’s hardly a big obligation,” Socrates had said. Then he’d continued persuasively, eventually promising that this would be the last time.
“The last time?” George had said doubtfully.
“Well, he’s dead, isn’t he?” Socrates sounded exasperated. “What more trouble can he make?”
George hadn’t answered that. He’d only said grimly, “It damned well better be. Because after this, I’m finished. I’ve got a life, damn it. Or did you forget that?”
“Of course I didn’t,” Socrates said indignantly.
“At least you can’t expect me to marry this one,” George said.
The words were like a knife through her heart.
But as she stood there, Sophy knew them for the truth. He’d married her to satisfy the family’s expectations.
It all made a certain horrible sense. That job in Uppsala that George had been supposed to get, the job he hadn’t bothered to mention to her—she knew now why he hadn’t bothered. It was a part of his life that he’d put on hold because of her. He hadn’t mentioned it because he wasn’t going to take it—because Ari had died leaving her alone and pregnant.
Needy. A mess.
One that marrying her would clean up. For the family, For her. For Lily.
He’d as much as said so when he’d asked her to marry him.
He’d said they would take care of her. They! His family. Not him. She understood then that he had been simply doing what was ex
pected because he was “the unemotional one,” the one who didn’t take things personally, who came in and did the dirty work when it needed to be done.
He’d never loved her.
She’d only hoped.
She’d believed his actions spoke for him, that by marrying her he was showing how much he did care. And the night before Lily’s christening, when they’d made love for the first time, she dared to believe then that he more than cared—that he loved her the way she’d grown to love him.
That night had been magic to her.
But the next afternoon, she discovered how very wrong she’d been. Worse, she had realized that she was standing in the way of George’s real life, that he’d married her to “do the right thing,” and that she had to do the right thing in turn.
She had to stand on her own two feet, end their marriage and send him away. Set him free. Obligation free.
So she had.
She hadn’t done it calmly or rationally or with any of that unemotional detachment that allowed George to do difficult things. No. She’d just turned on him, had told him to get out, that their marriage had been a mistake, that she wanted him gone!
He’d looked at her, astonished, as if he couldn’t believe his ears. Then he’d argued a little, had told her she needed “to see reason.”
But reason was the last thing Sophy had wanted to see then!
“Go away! We’re through.” Not that they’d ever really begun. She’d been adamant through her tears.
And in the face of them, George had gone.
He had quietly disappeared from her life as efficiently as he’d appeared in it, leaving her empty, hollow, more shattered even than she’d ever felt in her life.
But she’d pulled herself together and coped. She’d crossed the country and made a new life for herself and her daughter. She was a strong, self-reliant woman who didn’t need a man to make her whole.
She and Lily were not obligations, or duties, or, God help her, a mess to be cleaned up.
Did George understand that now?
Did they have a chance this time? Was Natalie right? Was there more to their relationship than even Natalie saw?
Sometimes over the past week, Sophy had thought so. But she’d been afraid to trust. She still was. But was turning her back the coward’s way out?
Did she wish their marriage would work?
God, yes. In her heart of hearts, unacknowledged to anyone, even her cousin and best friend, Sophy knew she still wanted it all.
Now, standing next to Natalie, looking down into the garden where George hunkered on the grass with his arm around Lily, their two dark heads bent together as he talked to her, Sophy felt her heart squeeze tight with love.
Yes, she loved him. Still. Yes, she wanted him. Always. Yes, she wanted forever with him.
But did she have the courage to risk gain?
George wasn’t sure when he started to hope.
Maybe he’d never stopped. Certainly he’d never got the divorce and he’d never felt the urge to make a commitment to another woman. Hell, he’d never got beyond a few casual dinners.
But he knew exactly when he started to believe they might make it again as a couple—as a family.
It was when they’d seen Natalie off the next morning in a cab to the airport.
They’d stood waving on Central Park West until she was out of sight. And then it was just the three of them.
For a moment it seemed as if there was no sound in all of Manhattan—as if everything stopped. And then Lily had grasped one of his hands and one of Sophy’s and then she’d swung between them, beamed up at them and gave a little skip. “Let’s go home,” she’d said.
And when George’s gaze had met Sophy’s over Lily’s head, she had smiled at him.
Smiled. A real smile. Not a polite one. Not a strained one. Not a defensive one.
It was a little tremulous, perhaps. Even a bit tentative, he admitted, because George believed in accurate assessment of evidence. But it was a smile. It was something to build on.
And George wanted to build.
He met her gaze, held it. Then he offered her a smile, too. “Let’s go home.”
It was the most amazing thing, but Sophy felt as if she were being courted.
She’d never really been “courted” in her life. She’d had dates with boys and she’d been taken for a ride by Ari and she’d been married in a rush and cared for by George.
But until now she’d never really been courted.
She told herself it was silly to feel that way. But something about George’s attentiveness awoke the feeling and she couldn’t quite shake it.
Not that she wanted to.
She liked to cook and she would have happily made dinner that night listening to the sounds of Lily and George talking in the living room. But it was so much more enjoyable to have them appear in the doorway as she was peeling the potatoes and hear George say, “What can we do to help?”
She tried to tell them she was fine on her own. But they didn’t leave. George showed Lily how to peel carrots, and then he chopped them into pieces for Sophy to add to the potatoes and meat in the stew she was making.
They prepared the food together and then, while it was cooking, George suggested they take Gunnar for a walk in Central Park.
Lily was already running to the door. But Sophy had to say, “Are you sure? You’ve been on your ankle a lot today. And what about your head?”
“My head doesn’t hurt at the moment and the ankle isn’t bad. I won’t overdo it. Promise.” He flashed her a grin that was half-hopeful, half-conspiratorial and altogether too appealing. “Come on, Sophy. Don’t be a spoilsport. How often do we get such a perfect day?”
And so she went. She wouldn’t be a spoilsport. And he was right about the perfect day.
It was a bright sunny crisp autumn afternoon and the leaves were turning gorgeous shades of red and gold. Lily, unused to seasonal changes, was thrilled with the “painted leaves.” She loved scuffing her feet through the piles on the ground, then picking up armfuls of them, twirling around and tossing them over her head.
“You should choose a few good ones,” George told her, “and you can make stained glass window pictures.”
“With leaves? Window pictures? How?” But Lily stopped spinning and began hunting leaves with George.
“We want whole ones,” he told her. “As perfect as you can find them. And the brightest colors. My mother used to do this with me and my brothers and sister every year. Don’t you want to help?” he said to Sophy when she stood back watching them, not wanting to intrude.
And so she began looking, too. They ended up crawling around on the ground, sorting through the leaves, picking and choosing, saving the best of the best.
“This can’t be good for your ankle,” Sophy protested once.
But George just shook his head. “Some things are more important than my ankle.” His gaze left hers, found Lily, and then after a moment of just watching his daughter crouched down in silent consideration of which was the better of two leaves, it came back to Sophy again as if to say, “See?”
“You’re right,” she said. “They are.”
Eventually they had collected a dozen brilliantly colored leaves, which Sophy was pressed into transporting as carefully as possible while George held Gunnar on the leash and carried Lily on his shoulders as they walked back home again.
There, while Sophy watched, George taught Lily how to make the leaves into “stained glass” window pictures by laying them between two sheets of waxed paper, then spreading one of his old T-shirts over them and ironing them with a warm iron.
“Not too hot,” he explained. “We just want the wax from the two layers to melt together with the leaves inside. Here.” He lifted Lily up onto a chair and helped her lay the iron on them, then smooth it back and forth.
Sophy opened her mouth to tell him to be careful, to say that Lily was barely four, that she could get burned. But then she shut her mouth ag
ain because George was being careful. He was helping Lily do it herself, but at the same time making sure she didn’t get burned.
When at last Lily had pressed them to George’s satisfaction, he took the iron and set it over on the counter where she couldn’t accidentally touch it. Then he removed the T-shirt and held the rectangle of waxed paper up against the window.
The late afternoon sun shone through it, lighting up the leaves, making them gleam like stained glass against the windowpane.
Lily clapped her heads. “’S beautiful,” she said. “Look at the red. An’ the gold. Let’s do another.”
They had leaves enough left to do several more. So she did another. Then George started one. But after he’d put down two leaves, he looked over at Sophy. “Don’t just stand there,” he said. “Help me. I have no artistic skill whatsoever.”
It was patently not true. He knew what he was doing, but she appreciated the invitation. She stepped up to the ironing board to help. George handed her the leaves. Their fingers brushed.
It meant nothing.
Nothing! Sophy assured herself. Yet hers seemed to tingle after the barest touch. Surreptitiously she rubbed the tips on the side of her jeans, as if that would mask the feeling. It did nothing except make her fumble one of the leaves and tear it as she tried to lay it on the paper.
“Oh! I’m making a mess of this.”
“No, you’re not. It’s only torn. Nothing’s missing. Besides, it’s easily mended.” He took the leaf and laid it flat. Then with careful capable fingers, he pressed the tear together and laid the second piece of waxed paper on top of it, then flattened it down. Sophy took the T-shirt and spread it over them. Then, because he made no move toward the iron, she reached over and picked it up.
With the iron she pressed firmly down on the shirt, moving it slowly, rubbing it back and forth as George had done, then finally lifting it away. “Enough?”
Wordlessly George picked up the shirt and lifted the waxed papered leaves, holding them up to the light so the sun shone through them. “Beautiful,” he echoed Lily. Then he pointed to the leaf that had been torn.
“See? It’s fine. All better,” he said as Lily examined it closely. “Good as new.”
Hired by Her Husband Page 14
