Hired by Her Husband (6 page)

“We’re not legally divorced. I told you that.”

“But you haven’t lived together for years, since right after Lily was born. He hasn’t been around at all.”

“I didn’t want him around.”

“And now you do?”

Sophy didn’t know what she wanted. Her emotions were in turmoil, had been since the emergency room doctor’s call last night. Besides, it didn’t matter what she wanted. This wasn’t about her.

“Of course not. I’m just being a rent-a-wife, Nat,” Sophy said with some asperity. “It’s what we do.”

“Oh, okay,” Natalie said after a long moment, and from her tone Sophy could tell her cousin wasn’t exactly convinced.

“I need to do this, Nat.”

“Do it then,” Natalie said more convincingly. There was a pause. Then she said, “I’ll bring Lily out on Saturday.”

It was far more help and cooperation than Sophy had any right to expect. “You’re a gem,” she said, relieved beyond measure.

“I’m glad you think so,” Natalie replied. “But the truth is, I want a look at the man who’s playing fast and loose with your life.”

The man who was playing fast and loose with her life looked like death by the time he was dressed in the clothes Sophy had brought and was leaning on a pair of crutches, waiting while she flagged down a taxi.

Fortunately one turned up almost immediately. If it hadn’t Sophy would have been sorely tempted to march him right back into the hospital and suggest they rethink things.

He had taken the clothes from her with barely a word when she’d returned with them. She’d gone out to get last-minute instructions from Sam while George got dressed. And while Sam had given her a lengthy commentary complete with all the dire things that could happen, George still hadn’t come out of the room when Sam finished.

When he finally had, he was white as the sheets on the bed he’d just left, and Sophy had wanted to push him right back into it.

But George had said, “Let’s go,” through his teeth, and so they’d gone.

He hadn’t spoken again, and he still didn’t say a word when the taxi pulled up and Sophy opened the door. He just got in, not without difficulty, and slumped back against the seat, eyes shut, perspiration on his upper lip, when she shut the door again and Sophy gave the driver George’s address.

Because he had his eyes closed, she studied him. And the longer she did so, the more concerned she got. His breathing seemed too quick and too shallow. His knuckles were white where he clenched his fists against the tops of his thighs. With his head tipped back, she could see his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed. She thought he was swallowing too much.

He didn’t open his eyes or his mouth until the driver pulled up outside his place. Sophy eyed him nervously.

“Can you manage?” she asked when she opened the door.

“Yes.” The word came from between his teeth.

She didn’t know if he could or not, but if he couldn’t, she supposed they’d deal with it then. So she got out and paid the driver, then waited as George eased himself slowly out of the car.

Inside the house, Gunnar was barking. She could see him at the bay window, his paws up on the sill as he looked at them on the sidewalk. “He’s glad to see you,” she said and was pleased to see George’s features lighten fractionally as a faint smile touched his mouth.

“I’m glad to see him.”

Getting up the stairs was a chore. He wouldn’t have had a problem with the crutches if he hadn’t also hurt his shoulder in his dive to get Jeremy out of harm’s way. As it was, one complicated the other. Finally he thrust the crutches in her direction and said, “Just go on in. I’ll get there.”

As Gunnar was still barking, she did as George said, opening the door and staying out of sight so he could get up the stairs without an audience. Or at least without her. Gunnar was delighted to see her. He bounced eagerly and nosed her hands. But then he went back to the window to check on George.

Sophy went to the door to hold it open for when he finally got there, which he did at last. He looked like death.

“I know Sam said to get you to bed, but we’re not doing any more stairs right now,” she told him.

He didn’t argue. Wordlessly he headed straight down the hall to the living room, then sank down onto the sofa as soon as he got there. Sophy ran upstairs and got the pillows off her bed and grabbed the comforter folded at the bottom of it, then hurried back down. George hadn’t moved. He didn’t open his eyes when she returned. The north-facing windows let in some light, but his face was in the shadows. His head rested
against the back of the sofa, the skin beneath his stubbled cheeks almost white. He looked completely spent.

Sophy plumped the pillows at one end and said, “How about lying down?”

It was an indication of how bad he must feel that he didn’t argue. Slowly, laboriously, wordlessly, eyes still shut, George stretched out on the sofa. She covered him with the comforter.

“Can I get you anything?”

Okay, she knew she was hovering, and he didn’t like hovering. But she wanted a response. Yes, he was doing what she suggested. But she needed a word or two. It unnerved her to see him like this. It was so out of character. George took charge. George could do anything, always had.

“No,” he said, lips barely moving, his voice low and a little rusty. “I’m fine.”

“Of course you are,” she said with a smile and tucked the comforter in around him, unable to fight the feeling of fondness—no, not simply fondness…
love,
God help her—that swamped her.

“Oh, George.” She swallowed hard and blinked back sudden unexpected tears.

His eyes flicked open. “What?”

But Sophy turned her head away. “Nothing. I’m going to get you some water.” She started toward the kitchen.

“I don’t need water,” she heard him say.

“Well, I need to get it,” she replied, not turning around. And she hurried toward the kitchen where, please God, she would get a grip.

She could not survive the coming month if she got teary-eyed at the drop of a hat.

Death didn’t seem like such a bad alternative.

George was appalled at how weak he was, how badly his
head hurt—how badly
he
hurt—and how dizzy and dazed and out of control he felt.

There was no way on God’s earth he could climb the stairs to his bedroom. Not now. Maybe not even today. All he wanted to do was close his eyes and lie perfectly still.

What he did not want to do was deal with Sophy.

Of course it was his own damn fault Sophy was here.

When he heard her footsteps returning, he forced his eyes open, even though as soon as he did the room began spinning again. “You don’t have to stay.”

“Of course I don’t,” Sophy said. But she made no move to leave. She set the glass on a coaster behind his head on the end table. She was so close when she bent to do it that he could smell the scent of her shampoo, enough that he could have reached up a hand and touched her. But God knew what he’d do if he did.

And George, for one, didn’t want to find out.

“So go,” he said with all the firmness he could manage. “You were right before. At the hospital. There are plenty of home nurses in New York. Call one.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Sophy—”

“I’m going to put Gunnar out. C’mon, buddy,” she said as if he hadn’t even spoken. She snapped her fingers lightly. And George heard the clink of Gunnar’s tags as the dog—
his
dog, damn it!—jumped up from beside the sofa and obediently followed Sophy down the stairs.

He didn’t hear them come back.

He must have slept. He didn’t know how long. The first thing he was aware of was a mouthwateringly delicious smell. The second thing was that his head didn’t hurt quite as much. He moved it slowly, experimentally. The pain was still there, but less explosive now. It hurt, but not enough to make him sick to his stomach.

He cracked his eyes open.

Sophy was sitting in the recliner, her laptop on her outstretched legs, her head bent, her burnished copper hair, almost brown in the shadows, hiding her face as she looked at the screen. He turned his head to try to see her better.

Her gaze flicked up. “Ah, you’re awake. How are you doing?”

The first time he’d met her—with Ari at some cousin’s wedding—George had been struck not just by her amazing hair and her pretty animated face, but by her voice. Amid what he thought of as “stage five rapids” of conversational white noise wedding chatter surging all around them, Sophy’s clear soft voice had seemed like a cool still welcome pool. It still did.

He shifted his head again experimentally. “Better.”

“Can I get you anything?”

He flexed his shoulders and discovered that most of his muscles were still on strike. So he said, “Maybe that water you brought earlier.”

Immediately Sophy set aside the laptop and got up to fetch the glass for him. He considered saying he could get it himself, but he wasn’t sure he could—not without making a production of it. So he just said, “Thank you,” when she handed him the glass.

He wasn’t expecting her to kneel down next to him and slide her arm under his shoulders to lift him up enough to drink easily. He let her do that, too, because it did help—and because her hair brushed his cheek and he could breathe in the scent of her just as he used to. Hers was a scent so uniquely Sophy that even if he hadn’t known it was her, one breath would have taken him straight back to the night’s he’d lain next to her in bed, wanting her.

Now he swallowed too quickly and choked, coughing, making his head pound once more.

Swiftly Sophy set the glass down. Her arm tightened around his shoulders. “Are you all right?”

George coughed again, wincing, then made himself nod even though it hurt. “Yeah. Just…swallowed the wrong way. I’m okay.”

She eased him back down and slid her arm from beneath him. Then she sat back on her heels, her gaze intent. “Are you sure about being home, George? I can call Sam. Tell him you’ve changed your mind. Or he can come over. He said he’d stop by after work.”

“No.”

“But—”

“No! I’m not going back and Sam is not coming over. No way. Not having him here hitting on you and—”

“What?”

He gave her a derisive look. “You didn’t notice Sam was just a little bit interested?”

“Interested in what?”

George stared at her. “In you!”’

“Me? Sam? Oh, don’t be ridiculous. We just met. We spent five minutes talking about you and—”

“Doesn’t take Sam long. He’s a fast worker,” George muttered. “You don’t want to fool around with Sam. He’s not dependable.”

“I don’t even know Sam.”

“And now you won’t have to. Got you out of there before he could work his wiles on you.”

“What?”
Sophy’s cheeks were nearly as red as her hair.
“You got me out of there?”

“Don’t shout.” George put a hand over his eyes.

“I’ll shout if I want. And I’m not shouting. I’m enunciating. I don’t believe you!”

George heard the sound of her standing abruptly and stalking away. He squinted to look for her, but the room began tilting again. “Just doing you a favor,” he said to her back.

Sophy turned and slapped her hands on her hips. “I don’t need you—or anyone—doing me favors like that!”

He looked up at her. “Just saying, you don’t want to go out with Sam.”

“I’ll go out with whomever I damn well please!”

“Sam’s a womanizer.”

“Ari was a womanizer,” Sophy said. “I know all about womanizers.”

George went suddenly cold. Ari. It always went back to Ari. He dropped his head back on the pillows. “And that’s what you want, isn’t it?” he said dully. “Go away, Sophy. You’re making my head hurt.”

Deliberately he shut his eyes.

He refused to eat the chicken soup she made.

She told him if he didn’t, she’d call Sam.

He gave her a baleful look, but when she picked up her phone and started to punch in Sam’s number, George glared at her, but picked up his spoon and began to eat.

In the end he ate two bowlfuls because once he started he finished the first bowl quickly and Sophy refilled it without even asking him.

She hadn’t intended to eat with him, retreating to the kitchen after she’d filled his bowl a second time. But when she didn’t come back into the living room, he called after her, “Hiding in the kitchen, Soph?”

“No, I’m not hiding in the kitchen,” she retorted irritably. “I’m feeding Gunnar.” But then, when Gunnar finished his food and trotted happily back to be with George, she had no recourse but to bring her own bowl and return as well.

He looked a little better now. After another hour’s sleep following the Sam incident, he had a bit of color in his cheeks again. He said his headache was better and the room had stopped spinning. So he had sat up on the sofa to eat and he was still sitting up now.

“It’s good soup,” he told her.

“Thank you,” Sophy said stiffly.

“You always were a good cook.”

“Thank you again.”

He looked up at her. “You could sit down. A guy could get a stiff neck staring up all the time.”

She wanted to say he didn’t have to look at her. But instead she just sat or, to be more accurate, perched on the edge of the recliner, holding her soup bowl in one hand and her spoon in the other. But she couldn’t help giving him an arch look. “Better?”

“Oh, much,” George said drily, which had the effect of making her feel as if her irritation was petty and unreasonable at the same time he made her want to laugh.

Damn George could always make her laugh.

It was one of the most surprising things about him—that a man so serious, so responsible and so…so…annoyingly “right” all the time could have a certain subtle wryness that could make her stop taking herself so seriously, could make her smile, could make her laugh.

Could make her fall in love with him again.

No, oh, no. He couldn’t.

Abruptly Sophy stood up. “I’m going to take Gunnar for a walk.”

She didn’t wait to hear what George thought about that. She just grabbed Gunnar’s leash and they left. Because it was night, she took the dog over to Amsterdam Avenue and they walked south from there. Tomorrow morning, she promised him, they would go to Central Park where dogs could run off the leash before nine.