Husband: Some Assembly Required

by Marie Ferrarella

  That was just the problem, something whispered within her, she wasn’t one hundred percent sure. The slight touch of ambiguity had her stiffening defensively.

  “This isn’t a social call, remember? You used the word ‘urgent.’ If it’s not, I’ll go.” Murphy was wearing the most polite, conscientious look she’d ever seen, but she would bet her soul there was a smirk lurking beneath it. She hated being played for a fool. Her face was deadly calm as she took a step toward her car. “I’m a very busy woman.”

  She was going to leave. Without thinking, Murphy clamped his hand around her wrist.

  “You must be.” His voice was casual, as if he was carrying on a conversation in his living room with an old friend rather than with a doctor who had come rushing to his aid. “You don’t look as if you even changed.”

  She looked down expectantly at his hand. He dropped it to his side. “I didn’t. I took the call from my answering service as I walked in.”

  He felt guilty. He hadn’t meant her to drop everything and come running over. Murphy locked the door behind him. “I could have waited.”

  He was hedging again. Not this time, Counselor. “And waited and waited.” The fact that she was onto him pleased her. She wasn’t aware of the fact that she was smiling as she turned and led the way to her car, but Murphy was. “No, I think that whatever made you sensible for a minute is already beginning to fade. I’m not about to let this opportunity pass.”

  He found himself admiring her legs as he followed her. “Dedicated.”

  She couldn’t tell whether he was playing up to her or mocking her. “That’s the word for it.” Murphy stood staring at her car even after she unlocked the passenger side for him. “Now what’s wrong?”

  He looked at her uncertainly before his gaze returned to the small vehicle. They didn’t make this model anymore. There were a couple of small rust spots threatening to break through the faded white paint. The car appeared to have all the comfort of an early torture chamber.

  “This is your car?”

  A deaf man could have heard the surprise in his voice, and Shawna wasn’t deaf. “Yes.”

  It seemed inconceivable to him that anyone in her position would be driving something so worn looking. It was a car begging to be towed. “Haven’t your patients been paying you?”

  “Not that it’s any business of yours, but yes. Most of them,” she amended. The ones at the clinic paid her in gratitude. The way she saw it, she got more than she gave. “Why?”

  He circled the car slowly. There was a dent on the side, another on the hood. It would be an easy matter to take them out. All he’d need was a free Saturday.

  “It’s pretty old.” He said it in the same tone people once had uttered the word leper.

  She arched a brow in his direction. “Very astute, Counselor.”

  Murphy shoved his hands into his pockets, still scrutinizing the car. Old cars were of special interest to him. Well-preserved, kept-up old cars. “Shouldn’t someone in your position be driving something, I don’t know—”

  “A little flashier?” she suggested as she got in on the driver’s side.

  Murphy got in quickly as she started up the car. He shrugged and felt his shoulder brush against the side of the car. “For lack of a better word, yes.”

  Shawna backed out of the driveway and headed toward the freeway entrance two miles away.

  “Why?” She ran her hand along the steering wheel. There was a shimmer of affection evident that was not wasted on Murphy. She’d had the car for eleven years and seen the mileage indicator go around the odometer twice now. “It gets me to where I want to go.” There was also a more practical reason she drove the car, if that was what he was after. “I work at a free clinic in a rough neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles two to three evenings a week. I wouldn’t want to drive temptation into their midst.”

  Shawna changed lanes, getting out from behind a slow-moving car. She wanted to get this over with as fast as possible. She’d called ahead and had someone waiting for them at the radiology department. She was sure the technician wanted to go home as soon as he could.

  “Is that safe?”

  “What?”

  “Driving in downtown L.A. at night.”

  It was a rhetorical question and she resented his patronizing her. “Driving is. It’s the stopping that might not be. To get back to my car,” she said forcefully, “I’m sentimental about it.” A nostalgic smile slipped over her lips. “It was the first large purchase I ever made. It wasn’t new at the time, either.”

  She remembered the way her hand had shaken when she had signed the papers. And the swell of pride that had overtaken her as she’d driven the car from the lot. Hers, completely hers. It had felt good.

  Murphy ran his hand along the black dashboard. “They’re not that reliable.”

  So she had been told. But she had lucked out. “This one is.” He seemed inordinately interested. “Are cars a hobby with you?”

  Murphy settled back as she eased the car onto the freeway. He preferred being in the driver’s seat, but there was nothing he could do about that. Besides, if he was, she wouldn’t have been here tonight. “A passion, actually. My sister calls it an obsession. I’ve been working on restoring an old ‘57 Caddie for the last three years.”

  So he didn’t spend all his time just going from woman to woman in his off-hours. “Why so long?”

  He enjoyed working on his car. It relaxed him. He thought it prudent not to say that he worked on the vehicle the same way he made love to a woman—slowly, languidly, with feeling. Savoring every nuance. That was where the correlation stopped. His relationship with his car had outlasted any that he had had with a woman.

  When he had bought the car it had been little more than a heap. He’d spent the past three years working on its exterior. Now he was attempting to get the engine to come to life. It was a labor of love.

  He shrugged. “Busy.” He turned his head slowly in her direction, afraid of making a sudden move that would bring on another dizzy spell. “And parts are all hard to come by.” She should be home after a long day at work, he thought, not chauffeuring him around. “You know, you really don’t have to be going out of your way like this.”

  He sounded as if he meant it. Her attitude toward him softened. She laughed quietly, unaware that the sound wafted over him as seductively as a spring breeze. “I have a feeling that you won’t go for the M.R.I. if I don’t take you there myself.”

  He grew silent for a moment. It had gone beyond where he could just shrug off the matter. “I don’t know about that.”

  “Oh?” Shawna glanced at Murphy as a motorcycle whizzed by them on the left. “Tell me what made you change your mind.”

  She was his physician, and who better to talk to about this? Still, he couldn’t get comfortable with the topic, or with the admission that something might really, really be wrong. “Better safe than sorry, right?”

  That would be the sensible, cautious approach. It wouldn’t be his approach. “You don’t seem like the type to think that way.”

  Her observation amused him. “What type do I seem like?”

  She turned her face forward. Rush-hour traffic was choking off the road. “Irresponsible.”

  Murphy winced. “Ouch.”

  She supposed that did sound a little harsh. And there were other factors to take into consideration, besides his persistence in hitting on her. She sighed, revising her diagnosis.

  “But then, you did save that little girl. Irresponsible men don’t risk their lives for strangers.” She looked at him as she thought of something. “Or was she someone you knew?”

  He began to shake his head, then stopped abruptly as pain whispered along his brow from a distance, threatening to consume him. He hoped Shawna didn’t detect anything in his voice.

  “Only by sight,” he told her. “And irresponsible men take all sorts of risks without thinking about it,” he observed. “That’s the basis of irresponsibility, Doctor. Fo
olish risks.”

  She knew without knowing why that he hadn’t taken a foolish risk. It had been a calculated one. A selfless one. He deserved his due, no matter what else she thought about him.

  “I stand corrected,” she amended softly. “I don’t think you’re irresponsible, Murphy.” She cast a side glance at him. “Flippant and irreverent, maybe, but not irresponsible.”

  Murphy concentrated on the dialogue and told himself that his head didn’t hurt. “Ah, an upgrade.” As he drew a breath, he could catch a faint whiff of her perfume. Gentle, sultry. It probably cost more per ounce than the car did. “Does this mean you’ll go out with me?”

  Shawna felt herself smiling and bit her lower lip to hide it. “You can consider this our date.”

  He took the ball that had been passed to him and ran for the goalpost. “Our first date?”

  She gave him a reproving look. “Our only date. Now stop flirting with me long enough to answer my questions seriously.” The end of the freeway was up ahead and she eased off the gas pedal a little. Cars were queuing up for the exit. “What changed your mind about the test?” She heard his intake of breath and raised her hand in a solemn oath before he could say a word. “And I swear if you give me one more vague, cute answer, I’ll stop the car right here and have you walk home.”

  She would, too, he thought. The idea that she was a tough little cookie tickled him. The woman next to him was light-years away from the quiet, mousy young girl he was beginning to recall.

  “Heartless.”

  Shawna lifted her chin. The exact opposite was true. She had too much heart. And all of it ached, but she wasn’t about to share that with him. Or with anyone. “That’s me.”

  Murphy had to make a conscious effort to steel himself as he spoke. “All right. While I was in court this morning, everything looked as if it had been dropped into a bowl of soup, all hazy and distant.” It gave him a chill just to remember. “Through both eyes.”

  Damn, she thought. There were times she hated being right. She glanced at him as they came to a stop before a red light. “But it cleared up?”

  “Yes, almost immediately.” And he had been overwhelmingly grateful when it had.

  Shawna nodded thoughtfully as she took her foot off the brake. “Is that all?”

  He would have been happy to say yes, but there was no sense in lying. “No. It happened again just before I left court. Except that this time the haziness was just in my right eye.”

  He had been complaining of trouble with his left eye previously. “The other eye was unaffected?”

  Murphy stared straight ahead at the road. When he spoke, his voice was low, emotionless. “I couldn’t see anything out of it.”

  She looked at him incredulously. “And you waited to call?”

  He didn’t care for the accusing tone she used. The experience had momentarily unnerved him. “I waited to get myself under control again.” To downplay the situation, he flashed a smile. “I don’t like having something wrong with me.”

  There was that ex-jock mentality again. “You’d be a masochist if you did.”

  “If I’m going to be flat on my back, being pampered, I want to be able to enjoy it. I don’t want to need it.” He shifted, restless. He’d never thought about having anything seriously wrong with him before. He didn’t want to think about it now. The world around him was slowly getting dark. Was darkness in his future? “I’ve never really been sick before.”

  “You had a perfect attendance record,” Shawna recalled absently before she could catch herself. She saw his quizzical look and shrugged, a hint of embarrassment coloring her cheeks. “So did I. I noticed you were never out.”

  If she knew that, then she had to have been around a lot more than he actually remembered. “Were you always in my classes?”

  Traffic had thinned out and the hospital loomed just ahead. For a moment she let her thoughts drift back. “I was always in at least one of them every semester for four years.”

  He laughed self-consciously. “You know, I really don’t remember you all that well.”

  At least he was honest. “I’m not surprised.” She’d been shy. And still was. “I tended to blend in with the scenery a lot.”

  As they drew closer to the hospital, his restlessness increased. “No chance of that happening now.”

  Shawna made a left turn and slowed down to five miles an hour as she entered the hospital grounds. “Don’t get predatory on me now, Murphy. I was just beginning to relax around you.”

  “Do I make you nervous?”

  “No.” The denial was automatic. Her guard snapped into position like a switchblade that had been suddenly pressed into service.

  Her response was too adamant. “Then why do you need to be on constant alert?”

  “Because I don’t like leaving myself open for things,” she replied matter-of-factly. And that included charming men with nothing on their minds but an evening of hot sex and passion. With his jet black hair, brilliant eyes and chiseled good looks, Murphy Pendleton no doubt ran with that pack—if he didn’t lead it.

  She pulled her car into the physicians’ parking section directly in front of a modern-looking building.

  “That makes two of us.” His voice had dropped. Murphy wasn’t looking at her; he was looking at the hospital.

  He was afraid, she suddenly realized. Without thinking it through, Shawna reached over and placed her hand over his in mute comfort. Turquoise eyes turned toward her in surprise.

  “It’s a harmless test.” Compassion swelled in her voice. “All you have to do is lie still for half an hour. Forty-five minutes, tops. It doesn’t hurt at all.”

  It wasn’t pain he was worried about. It was what the test might find. As long as he didn’t know, he could pretend everything was fine. “Piece of cake.”

  She gave his hand a squeeze. Then, as if the contact had suddenly penetrated, Shawna withdrew her hand. “Exactly.”

  Murphy got out of the car, but remained next to it, looking at the hospital as if it were an opponent to be faced in a duel. “So why do I feel like a defenseless little kid?”

  “Easy.” She flipped on the security alarm on the car, something she had added since she had begun traveling to the clinic. “Peter Pan was a little kid.”

  “Peter Pan.” So far, the image he seemed to be projecting to her wasn’t all that flattering. “Is that what I seem like to you?”

  Actually, yes. But then, she had always loved Peter Pan. Her mother had taken her to see the feature-length cartoon. It had been one of those rare instances when her mother had actually acted the part. It was nestled in among Shawna’s fondest memories.

  If she told him that, she knew she would regret it.

  “Let’s forget about my impressions of you, Murphy. They have absolutely nothing to do with your condition.” The first thing a physician learned to do was separate personal feelings from professional ones. Why was she having trouble remembering that?

  She led the way to the entrance a short distance away.

  Murphy fell into step beside her. “Exactly what do you think my condition is?” It was the first time he had asked. The first time he had dared to.

  Now that he was finally asking, she was almost reluctant to discuss it until she saw the results of the test. “That’s hard to say.”

  He’d been here many times before for various reasons, but only once as a patient. The trip to the E.R. had permanently colored his reaction to the hospital. The halls felt forbidding. “I won’t sue for malpractice for an educated guess.”

  They turned left in the hall, following the arrows that ultimately led to the radiology department. “All right. Your symptoms match a variety of conditions.”

  So she was telling him that she didn’t know. “That’s reassuring.” Visiting hours, in effect all day, were winding down. The halls were relatively empty. He wanted to turn around and leave.

  She ignored the sarcasm she heard. “But my cursory exam doesn’t indicate a tear
of any sort or any outstanding damage to the optic nerve.” She wished she could give him good news, but she couldn’t lie. He knew there had to be something wrong as well as she did. “It might be some sort of hematoma. A small clot behind your eye, pressing against it.”

  That would explain the pressure he felt off and on. Murphy stopped before the darkened gift shop. “If it is, what are my options?”

  “Surgery.”

  The single word felt like a concrete blanket draped over him. “You?”

  “Me.” She didn’t want him to think she was pushing him into anything. All her patients were always encouraged to get as many opinions as they needed to make them feel confident. “Unless you want someone else.”

  Murphy shoved his hands into his jeans, studying her. She looked as if she would be more at home doing needlepoint than holding a scalpel in her hand.

  “I don’t know. How good are you?”

  She was relieved to see his humor returning. Relieved and oddly comforted, as well. More than that, she could feel something kindred stirring within her. “I’m very good. I graduated near the top of my class.”

  The one thing he did recall clearly about her was that she had been one of the studious ones. “Can I request a printout of your transcripts?”

  She laughed. “If it comes to that.” And maybe, just maybe, if he was lucky, it wouldn’t. That was for the M.R.I. to determine. “Not very trusting, are you?”

  “I’m a lawyer. I’m not supposed to be trusting.”

  “C’mon.” Though she was not a physical person, somehow it seemed natural to thread her arm through his. “I have a spot reserved for you.”

  Murphy smiled as they began to walk. He glanced down at the link between them. It was a start. “Too bad it’s in an imaging lab.”

  Shawna merely shook her head as she led him down another corridor.

  * * *

  He didn’t like it.

  It was like being swallowed up by a large silver cylinder. The technician, a large-boned Hawaiian with an incredibly gentle manner, was very genial. But it didn’t negate the fact that Murphy didn’t want to be here. The sound of the machine, muted but steady, was getting on his nerves.