Hired by Her Husband (13 page)

This one did. She even gave a firm nod of her head. Then she said, “How many days until Wednesday?”

Sophy smothered a laugh.

Hearing it, George couldn’t help grinning, too. “It’s Sat
urday afternoon,” he told Lily. “Then Sunday.” He ticked it off on his fingers. “Then Monday.” Another finger.

“An’ Tuesday,” she said. “An’ Wednesday.” She counted up on her fingers, too, then looked at the total in dismay and turned sad eyes on him. “Four days is a long time.”

“Not that long,” George assured her. “You’ll have other things to do as well.”

“Like what?” Lily and her mother and even Natalie, who was up front with the driver, all looked at him with interest.

Obviously generalities wouldn’t work. He tried to think what little girls liked to do. Trouble was, he had no idea. He’d played with his brothers. He only had nephews so far. And his one sister, Tallie, wasn’t any help at all. She had always played cops and robbers like “one of the boys” or fashioned herself as “chairwoman of the board,” when playing make believe on her own.

“Well, obviously playing with Gunnar,” he said because he knew Lily wanted to do that. “And walking Gunnar. Taking Gunnar to the park. He’s really looking forward to meeting you,” George added, sure that Gunnar wouldn’t mind a little prevarication in the aid of a good cause. “And it won’t be long now,” he added as their car passed the Natural History Museum heading up Central Park West.

Apparently Gunnar was distraction enough. Lily bounced forward on his knee, looking out the window eagerly. “How much farther is it?” she wanted to know. “How old is he? Do you think he’ll like Chloe, too? Can we take him for a walk as soon as we get there?”

The questions spilled out far faster than George could answer them. But he tried. And all the while he could see Sophy next to him, torn between shushing Lily and enjoying the spectacle of his having to deal with a four-year-old.

Let her smile.

She didn’t have any idea how glad he was to have to deal
with this particular four-year-old, how much he’d missed her—and her mother—these past four years, or how very badly he wanted them back in his life forever.

I
T WOULDN’T LAST,
Sophy assured herself.

Yes, George was being kind now. He was answering Lily’s endless questions with remarkable patience, allowing himself to be clambered upon and clung to, and generally tolerating far more childish behavior than any man should have to endure. More than tolerating, he really seemed to enjoy it.

But this was the first day. The first few hours, in fact. And it was a weekend, as well.

It wouldn’t last.

George was a busy man, a physicist who was far more at home in the lab than in the playroom. He would soon tire of a four-year-old’s chatter and want to get back to meaningful work. He had certainly worked long hours when they’d been together four years ago. She knew from the work she’d seen him doing on the computer that he was working just as hard now.

And though he’d been there to help her in the first months of Lily’s life, he hadn’t done it because he wanted to.

He’d done it because he’d felt obligated.

Obligated,
Sophy forced herself to repeat in her mind now as she looked out the window down to where George was showing Lily how to throw a ball for Gunnar in the back garden. He’d felt obligated.

But there was no need for him to feel obligated any longer. George didn’t owe them anything. He never had.

She needed to make sure he remembered that. So that when he lost patience, he didn’t need to feel bad. She would just have to make sure he didn’t hurt Lily in the process.

“He’s a lot more kid-friendly than I imagined,” Natalie said, coming to stand beside her and watch George, Lily and Gunnar in the garden. She held a coffee mug to her lips and sipped from it as she watched.

“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 expected 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?”