Hired by Her Husband (16 page)

“I thought you were going to wash my back,” Sophy said, shivering with delight at the feel of his lips on her skin and at the press of his erection against her bottom. She leaned back into him, moved.

George groaned. “Getting there,” he muttered and went right back to nibbling. But one hand did leave her breasts long enough to snag the soap. He skated it over her belly, then slowly and sensuously worked up a lather, which he spread over her breasts, along her ribs and around to her back.

But washing her back meant stepping away, leaving space between them. And just as she was about to object to that, George turned her in his arms and wrapped them around her, rubbing soapy hands over her back while his chest and her
breasts got better acquainted. Then his hands dipped lower, slid between her legs.

Sophy’s knees trembled. Her breath caught. She ran her hands up his abdomen, then caressed his chest, his flat belly, his sex.

A breath hissed out from between George’s teeth. “Soph,” he warned.

But Sophy was beyond warning. She was learning his body all over again. She touched her tongue to his nipples. She scraped her fingernails along his ribs. She smiled at the low growl of need and pleasure when she stroked him.

At that touch his whole body went rigid.

“George?”

“Just…getting a grip,” he said through his teeth. His eyes were dark as midnight, glazed with desire.

“I could…get a grip,” she murmured.

He gave a strangled half laugh. “Don’t.”

“No?”

He shook his head. “It will be better…this way.” And he rinsed his hands, then grasped her ribs and lifted her.

Instinctively Sophy wrapped her legs around him and felt him fill her. Her breath caught.

“All right?” George held her, didn’t move.

Sophy nodded, putting her arms around him, giving a little wiggle that made him bite his lip.

“Ah,” he breathed. And then he began to move.

Sophy’s nails bit into his shoulders. Her heels pressed against the backs of his thighs. And as they moved she felt the tension grow, the power surge between them, felt her body tighten and then shatter around George even as he came within her.

He sagged back against the shower wall, still holding her, wrapping her tight. And Sophy clung to him as she tried to find words to express what this meant to her. But the words were lost in the emotion. Her heart was too full. And when
she tried, when she lifted her face to look at him, and saw him looking down at her, his gaze dark and intent, no words would come.

He stroked her face with the tips of his fingers, then touched his lips to hers. “Beautiful,” he said.

Yes, just one word. She could live with that.

They washed all the soap off. They dried each other slowly and carefully. And then George took her to bed and they made love all over again.

Sophy said it now as she curled into George’s side and rested her cheek against his chest. He was already asleep. But it didn’t matter. She could tell him tomorrow. She could tell him every day for the rest of their lives.

She would, too.

George would have preferred to stay in bed with his wife.

His wife.
The words made him smile.

When his watch alarm went off at five-thirty, he briefly debated calling up his colleagues and grad students and the grant from Washington and telling them so, then grinned as he imagined the dropped jaws and the sputtering that would greet any such announcement.

He turned his smile on Sophy, who slept curled against his side, her cheek resting on her hand. There had been no tears last night. No Ari, hovering like a specter, over their lovemaking. This time she was his—wholly and completely.

George bent his head and pressed a light but possessive kiss to her cheek. Then, because there was never any doubt about what he had to do, he levered himself quietly out of bed and headed to the bathroom.

He took a quick shower, trying not to let his mind linger on the memories of what had happened in this shower just scant hours before when he’d last stood under this spray—with Sophy in his arms.

But it wasn’t easy, especially when the merest recollection
had him ready to go back to the bedroom, slide back into bed next to her and take things up all over again.

Deliberately he turned the water to cool, then cold. It helped, but not much.

He shaved, dressed and combed his hair, then went into the bedroom to put on his shoes. It was still quite dark and his eyes, unaccustomed to the dimness, didn’t notice that Sophy was awake until she said sleepily, “Good morning.”

He could hear the smile in her voice. George smiled, too, then finished tying his shoe and crossed the room to bend over the bed and kiss her. “Good morning yourself.”

She shoved herself up on one elbow and looped her other arm around his neck, deepening the kiss, making him ache.

God, he wanted her. He glanced at his watch. It was still too dark to make out the time, But he knew he didn’t have enough without even looking. Regretfully he pulled back from her embrace. “I have to go, Soph.”

She sighed. “I know.” She settled back against the pillow and he could feel her gaze on him as he tried to knot his tie in the dark. “Do you always do what you have to do, George?”

“What?” He threaded the end through the loop, then frowned. “Pretty much. Doesn’t everyone?”

“Ari didn’t.”

Ari! Damn it to hell! Was it still Ari? Was it
always
going to be Ari?

“I’m
not
Ari,” George said through his teeth.

“I know that.”

“I’m not ever going to be Ari,” he went on, jerking his tie tight, practically strangling himself.

“You married me because of Ari,” she said quietly.

He sucked in a breath, wanting to deny it entirely but knowing that he owed her the truth. “Yeah, I did.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “And I’m sorry I did,” he added harshly because God knew that was the truth, too. “I shouldn’t have done it.”

Sophy sucked in a sharp breath, but she didn’t speak. She didn’t move. She didn’t say a word.

George ground his teeth, then glanced at his watch and could finally see the hands well enough to know there was absolutely no time to discuss and explain anything as important as this right now. He raked a hand through his hair, undoing everything the comb had accomplished minutes before.

Then he sighed and shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “But we can make this work, Soph. But right now I have to get to this meeting…”

Sophy lifted a hand and gave it an almost dismissive wave. “Go,” she said quietly. “By all means, just go.”

S
OPHY DIDN’T TELL
Elias they were leaving New York when she and Lily left the house that morning.

She just said goodbye to George’s brother-in-law and told him what a wonderful family he had and how lucky he was to have them. And if she teared up a little saying it, well, the adults in the house were all a little emotional that morning.

Elias was still a bit rattled from his daughter’s birth. He still looked tired, and he was clearly distracted, busily chivying the twins into the car to go to school and then putting Digger in his car seat so they could go from school directly back to the hospital to see Tallie and Thea. He didn’t notice the quaver in her voice at all. He was simply very grateful she had stayed the night.

“We’ll have you guys over when we’re home and organized,” he promised. “Tallie will want to say thanks. And the boys will want Lily to come over.”

“Thank you,” Sophy replied because it was all she needed to say. She and Lily saw them off, Sophy did up the breakfast dishes and then they took the subway back to George’s.

“Where’s Daddy?” Lily wanted to know. “Where did he go?”

“To the lab,” Sophy said. “He had an early meeting.”

“So we couldn’t go with him,” Lily said. “Maybe we could
go now?” she suggested brightly after a thoughtful moment’s consideration. “We could take the kites.”

“No,” Sophy said. She had almost said, “Not today.” But that wouldn’t have been fair. That would have been misleading. “No,” she repeated. “We have to go—” she almost said home, too, and stopped herself before she did “—back to the house and let out Gunnar.” Then she took a deep breath and added, “And then we have to go home.”

“Gunnar is home,” Lily said, misunderstanding.

Which just made it that much harder. “No, to our home. With Natalie and Christo. In California.”

Lily shook her head. “This is our home,” she said. “With Daddy.”

Sophy didn’t argue. She tried another angle. “It’s Daddy’s home. And you can come stay sometimes—” because that was obviously necessary now “—but it’s not my home. And I need to go home, Lily.”

“But—” Lily might only be four, but she had mastered the art of argument.

Sophy tuned it out. She stared straight ahead and didn’t listen, though doubtless everyone else in the subway car was. It was a blessed relief to get to their 86th St. stop and get off.

Gunnar was delighted to see them. Lily took him out in back and threw tennis balls for him, pointedly ignoring her mother since Sophy had ignored her arguments. It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than the alternative, which was Lily kicking and screaming her way back to California.

Sophy stood in the living room, waiting for an airline ticket agent to take her call, simultaneously looking through the window down at Lily and Gunnar, and remembered the day George had been there with them. She remembered his arm around Lily, their two heads close together as he’d talked to her about the dog. It was then that she’d begun to let her defenses crack. She should have known better.

Well, now she did. She wiped a tear away just as the agent came on the line.

“I need two tickets to Los Angeles,” Sophy said. “Yes, for today.”

George was not distractable.

His single-mindedness was legendary, his preparation exemplary. He always focused on the object at hand. And he never ever, as his father was fond of saying, got emotionally involved. He was perennially practical and perpetually unperturbed.

Except today.

Today he had to fight to keep his concentration focused on the meeting taking place. He was thinking about Sophy. He had to struggle to remember the details that usually sprung from his lips at the slightest question. He was remembering their night together and the way she closed up on him this morning.

He said, “Sorry?” And “What?” and once he even said, “Huh?” which had his colleagues confused and his grad students befuddled and made the grantors scratch their heads and say they thought they’d like to come back and discuss the project another day.

“Good idea,” George said briskly, grabbing at the possibility of an early departure. “Let’s do that.”

“Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?” Karl VanOstrander, the senior physicist on the committee murmured.

“What?” George was already stuffing papers in his briefcase.

Karl just shook his head and clapped George on the shoulder. “Nice to see you’re human,” he said.

George didn’t realize there had ever been any doubt. But he just nodded absently and headed off to the station at a brisk pace.

He tried calling Sophy’s phone as soon as he was on the
train, wanting to know whether he should come back to Elias and Tallie’s or go to his own place. He supposed he should stop at his place even if Sophy was still at Tallie’s. Gunnar would need letting out.

She didn’t answer, so he called Tallie and Elias’s. No one answered there, either, which didn’t precisely help him know where she was. She might even be at the hospital seeing Tallie and the baby.

He cracked his knuckles and punched in Sophy’s number again.

In the end he decided to go back to his place. Gunnar would need out. And if Sophy wasn’t there, he could always grab clean clothes for all of them and head back over to Brooklyn.

He bought a bouquet of daisy mums at the corner market on his way. It had never occurred to him, but these flowers reminded him of Sophy—they were fresh and bright, and just looking at them reminded him of the joy Sophy brought into his life.

Clutching them, he pounded up the steps to the brownstone. Gunnar was in the entry hall. Sophy and Lily weren’t there.

Well, fine. He’d go over to Elias and Tallie’s. If Tallie were home, she’d laugh at the sight of him with flowers. She might even think they were for her—and the baby. He’d buy her some if it made her happy, but these were for Sophy.

“Go on out,” he told the dog, opening the door to the back garden. Then, while Gunnar was outside, he went up to get Sophy and Lily clean clothes.

The closets were bare.

George stared at them. Shook his head. Felt it begin to pound at the same time that his stomach turned over.

Get hit by a truck? It was nothing compared to getting hit by this.

She’d left him. Turned away from him. Again.

She couldn’t do that, damn it! He’d let her do it once because he’d pushed her too fast, had wanted too much.

Now?

He kneaded the back of his neck, tried to ease the pain in his head. Nothing at all would ease the pain in his heart.

Only Sophy’s love could do that.

In her university days, Sophy had had one of those old posters on her wall that proclaimed splashily,
Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

When she was in college that sort of thing had been inspiring. It had urged her to look forward, to see endless possibilities, to forget about the past, the failures, the shortcomings.

Nice work if you can get it.

And Sophy had been able to when she was at university because her past had been short, her failures relatively inconsequential and her shortcomings no big deal.

Now it was different.
She
was different.

Her past was long enough to include Ari and George and consequent disasters. Her failures in these relationships bordered on magnificent. Her shortcomings were obviously substantial.

All that she saw in the future was misery and all that she felt was pain.

And a stiff neck which came from spending much of the night in Lily’s bed with her daughter and Chloe to keep Lily from crying on and off the whole night long.

It was what she’d done all day.

Sophy didn’t blame her. The fault was hers. If it had been necessary to bring Lily out to New York, she should have made sure her daughter knew it was only temporary. Saying so after the fact didn’t have the same effect.

Lily just glared at her or said, “We didn’t have to leave without saying goodbye.”

And Sophy could only shrug and say, “Yes, we did. I needed
to get back,” when what she really meant was “
I
needed to leave.” It was as simple as that.

And as selfish, she admitted. So she promised Lily that she could go back and spend time with her father soon. She didn’t doubt that George really cared for the little girl. It would be good for both of them.

Lily didn’t think that was much consolation. “I want Daddy,” she’d sobbed when she went to bed last night. “I want Gunnar.”

“You have Chloe, darling,” Sophy assured her.

Lily had flung Chloe across the room, then bounded out of bed, grabbed her, then threw herself on the bed, clutching Chloe and sobbing harder.

“She’ll get over it,” Natalie had said earlier in the evening. “Kids are resilient.”

She hadn’t asked what happened. She’d just picked Sophy and Lily up at the airport and given them both hugs. Sophy had been grateful for the understanding and the lack of questions. All night long, listening to Lily’s periodic sniffles, Sophy had hoped that Natalie was right.

Now she eased herself out of bed so as not to wake Lily, then flexed her shoulders and moved her neck. It hurt. Her eyes felt as if someone had thrown a pailful of sand into them.

“Today is the first day of the rest of my life,” she said to herself as she padded into the bathroom.

It did not sound promising.

She took a long hot shower and refused to think about the shower with George. She washed her hair, then put on a clean summer-weight T-shirt and a pair of shorts. It might be fall in New York, but it was nearly always summer in California.

She put on the coffee and then booted up her computer. Work was solace. Or it should have been. But thinking about renting wives was too close to home. She shut off her computer and stared into space—not a good place to be.

The knock on the door was a welcome jolt out of her self-pitying misery. It was barely seven-thirty. Hardly time for visitors. But maybe Natalie had come to see how she was doing on the way to the office. Natalie, after all, had come back from Brazil in a similar state some months ago.

She raked her fingers through still-damp hair and hoped that Natalie wouldn’t notice—or at least wouldn’t comment on the dark circles under her bloodshot eyes. Then, pasting on her best “I’m doing fine” smile she opened the door.

“What the hell did you think you were doing?” George strode past her into the room and wheeled on her, eyes flashing.

Sophy, stunned, stared at him. This was the first day of the rest of her life, damn it. George was not supposed to be here!

But he was—and he looked as bad as she felt. His hair was tousled, his jaw was stubbled. His eyes were bloodshot, too. He looked strained and pained and angry as hell.

She’d never seen George angry. She didn’t want to now.

“Go away,” she said, still holding the door open, making a sweeping gesture toward it, hoping he would do just that.

He ignored her, walked in and flung himself on her sofa. “I’m not going anywhere.” He looked up at her defiantly, then raised one dark brow. “Want to try to make me, Sophy?”

She ground her teeth, and shut the door, then set her hands on her hips. “I shouldn’t have to,” she told him. “I don’t know what you’re doing here. Well, I do know, but there’s no reason.”

He stared at her, then frown lines creased his forehead. “You know, but you don’t think there’s a reason?”

“No, I don’t.” She folded her arms across her chest and met his gaze with a steely one of her own.

For a minute he didn’t say a word. She dared hope he would get up and walk out before she begged him to stay.

But then he said, “Why am I here?” in that quiet, measured
very George-like tone. That was the tone she recognized, the one completely at odds with the one he’d used when he’d burst in here.

She could deal with that one. So she made herself shrug negligently. “Because you always do what you’re supposed to do. We talked about this yesterday.”

“We did not talk about it yesterday!” Calm, measured George vanished in an instant. He jumped up and began to pace around. “You brought it up as I was going out the door to a meeting,” he said. “I didn’t get to talk about it at all!”

“You said you married me because of Ari.” She wished he’d sit back down again. He made her already small room seem even smaller.

“Yes,” he said tightly. “I did.”

She nodded, justified. “I knew it.”

“Partly,” he added firmly.

She frowned. “What do you mean, partly?”

“I mean, you don’t know everything.” He hesitated, rolled his shoulders as if they were stiffening. His gaze flickered away, but then he brought it back to meet hers. “I married you because Ari left you…”

“Yes.”

“But mostly I married you because I wanted to. I wanted you.” He paused, looked straight at her unblinkingly. “I loved you.”

Sophy simply stared at him.

She wondered briefly if her stiff neck had affected her hearing. If it had brought on the sudden wobbliness of her knees. She reached out and grasped the back of the chair she was closest to. It was barely enough to keep her upright. She shook her head, ran her tongue over her lips.

“No,” she said. “I don’t—” she began and trailed off, afraid.

“Believe it?” George finished for her bitterly. “No, I suppose you don’t. I couldn’t tell you then.”

“When?” she said stupidly.

“When we got married. You still loved Ari and—”

“I did not!”

Now it was his turn to stare. “You loved Ari,” he insisted. “You had his child. My child,” he corrected firmly.

“Your child,” she agreed with that much of what he said. “Ari’s genes. That’s all. But I didn’t love him. Not when I married you!”

“But—” George said a single word of protest, then stopped.

“I did think I loved him in the beginning,” she admitted. “He was a charmer.”

“He was that,” George agreed grimly. “No bigger one on earth.”

“And no less dependable man on earth, either,” Sophy said. She sighed. “I began to figure it out when he kept running off all the time. He was fun to be with when he was with me. But he never stayed. How could I love a man who didn’t care about me or our child?”