Husband for Hire (8 page)

Without breaking stride, Rob loosened his tie and opened the top of his shirt. What was it with him lately? He seemed to be a magnet for rich hypochondriacs.

Manna from heaven, his partners in the practice would declare. They loved patients like Mrs. Lloyd-Morgan. Diagnose an important-sounding illness, prescribe a nice mild laxative and she declares you Albert Schweitzer.

The trouble was, Rob was beginning to resent the time he spent on patients who had no complaint more serious than boredom or neglect from a busy husband. He had chosen to practice medicine for more than just the money and prestige, though some days he forgot the real reason. It was his dream. He liked getting to the root of a problem, liked the precision and accuracy of lab work. He liked doing something that mattered.

But lately, he felt like an overpaid lab technician. At first, a pathologist’s practice had seemed the ideal setup
for him. Figure out the problem, pass the course of treatment on to someone who would administer it. But for the past year or so, he had been wondering what it would be like to go into practice as a GP. He’d tried to explain to Lauren that he might want patients who were his to worry about, his to heal. Lauren hadn’t understood at all. She loved his flexible schedule—he was free to travel, he didn’t have to be on call. It suited their lifestyle perfectly.

Then why didn’t it feel right anymore?

His strides lengthened in agitation. It had been a lousy week, that was all—following the strangest weekend of his life. The bachelor auction had left him distracted and out of sorts. He’d get over it. The sooner he got this reunion thing behind him, the better.

He passed through the bustling commercial area of Lower Downtown Denver. Rescued from urban blight, former railroad warehouses had been transformed into a mecca for shoppers, tourists and brew-pub fans. He was tempted to stop in at Champion’s for a growler of lager, but passed it by.

A few blocks from his vintage condo on the corner of Drake and Albert, Rob found himself in front of the plate-glass window of Breaknell Designs, staring at a necklace displayed on a field of black velvet. He had passed the jeweler’s shop hundreds of times, but he’d never been tempted to look. Today, the window display had caught his eye. Behind him, the smog and bustle of Denver’s LoDo district steamed and swelled, but he ignored the familiar rhythm of the city. He just kept staring at the necklace.

Each link in the chain was an oval-shaped setting for a ruby, tapering gradually to a slender thread at the fas
tening. In the center, the jewel was large and set between a pair of unusual triangular-cut diamonds.

The sound of traffic on hot pavement faded to nothing, because all Rob could hear was the echo of his last phone conversation with Twyla.

What color is your dress?

Red. Ruby red. Mrs. Spinelli wouldn’t take no for an answer. I’ve never owned anything this red in my life.

It was Lauren who had taught him the importance of knowing the color of a woman’s dress on a date. In fact, it had been Lauren who had insisted that he ask Twyla about her dress. Lauren even went so far as to suggest a cummerbund color for Rob that would complement the red dress. At first he’d thought she was kidding, but it turned out that this sort of thing actually mattered to most women.

He thought he should probably get Twyla a corsage or something. But when he saw the ruby necklace, he forgot all about a corsage.

With a doomed sense of inevitability, he went into the jeweler’s and asked to see the necklace. The price staggered him, though he could easily afford it. He’d always had trouble spending money, even now that he had plenty. He’d grown up with virtually nothing, had worked his way through school by depriving himself of everything except the most basic essentials, but now that he was a partner in his lab practice, he no longer suffered from money troubles. Lauren had been instrumental in getting him to relax about spending. She deprived herself of nothing. She had no patience with being conservative. It was probably healthy, he realized, giving in to impulse every once in a while.

But even so, the price of the necklace made him break out in a sweat.

“What’s your return policy?” he asked.

“Thirty days, and keep your receipt.” The jeweler sent him a look of incredulity. “What, you think she’ll refuse this? You got to be kidding.”

Rob shook his head. “I don’t know her that well.”

“You will after you give her this.”

At the very least, Rob reasoned, if Twyla refused the necklace, he could give it to Lauren.

As soon as he had the thought, his head reeled. What was he thinking? You didn’t recycle one woman’s gift to another. He slapped a bank card on the counter.

The jeweler rang up the sale and couched the ruby necklace in a long black velvet box. Handing it to Rob with the charge slip, he said, “Congratulations. It’s going to be a great weekend.”

G
WEN
M
C
C
ABE BEAMED
at her daughter. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this day,” she said. “I thought you’d never get over your disenchantment with men.”

“What makes you think I’m over it?” Twyla asked, checking the latch on her overnight bag. It was a wonder she even had an overnight bag—she never went anywhere.

“Well, of course you’re over it if you’re going to your reunion with that nice young doctor from Denver.”

Twyla decided not to burst her mother’s bubble. Gwen believed this weekend meant more than it did, and Twyla didn’t see the harm in letting her think this was something fun and pleasurable. She privately hoped that her return to Hell Creek would inspire Gwen. Perhaps seeing her daughter take this big step to face the past would help her take a step of her own.

Off the porch.

Twyla shut her eyes briefly. Her mother’s panic attacks had grown so severe that Gwen no longer left the house. She made it as far as the top step of the porch, then nearly collapsed from anxiety. Her mother’s condition had gone on so long that they seldom spoke of it anymore, because they got nowhere.

“You must be so excited,” Gwen continued, oblivious of Twyla’s thoughts. “Remember how you used to
look forward to your dates when you were in high school?”

“That was high school, Mom.”

“Nevertheless, you must feel like you’re walking on air.”

“I feel like projectile vomiting.”

“Oh, Twyla—”

“He’s here!” Brian came charging through the house from the kitchen, Shep right behind him, toenails clattering on the scratched wood floor. Twyla had brought him home from school early today, so that she could say goodbye. “Rob’s here!” Brian left the house at a run, pausing at the top of the porch steps to leap over them, landing on the battered earth with full symphonic sound.

“Someone’s glad to see him, at least,” Gwen pointed out.

Brian bounced like a rubber ball, peppering Rob with questions as he led him up to the house. Twyla was, for a moment, entirely captivated by the picture of her small son walking beside a tall man, Brian’s worshipful face turned up and Rob’s dark head bent low as he listened intently to whatever the boy was saying.

Don’t do this, she warned herself. Don’t start thinking…But she was already thinking it. Already thinking that no matter how much she loved Brian, no matter how hard she worked to raise him, no matter what she taught him, there was one thing she had never given him—a father. And no matter how many times she’d tried to convince herself Brian was fine without one, she couldn’t help thinking that it was important.

Her own childhood was filled with memories of her father. There were certain things a mother couldn’t give a child—the bristly feel of a cheek rough with five-o’clock shadow. The belly-deep laughter set off by taste
less jokes that made a mother roll her eyes. The way to punch a baseball mitt down into the palm of your hand. The illicit joy of sneaking downstairs at midnight to eat sandwiches made with peanut butter and marshmallow fluff. The big-shouldered protector who appeared in the doorway to ward off a nightmare.

Many boys had grown up with less, she told herself. Rob Carter was a perfect example. Raised at Lost Springs, he had been deprived of both parents—and look how he turned out.

Just look.

“Hi.” She could barely choke out a greeting when he came into the house. The prospect of throwing up was becoming progressively more real.

He gave her a dazzling prime-time TV smile. “All set for the big event?”

“As set as I’m ever going to be, I suppose.” She knew it was too late to chicken out, but Lord, she wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to.

He picked up her overnight bag and zippered garment bag. “Is this everything?”

“Yes.” She clutched her purse in front of her like a shield, and went down on one knee in front of Brian. “Be good, sport. You do everything your grandma tells you, all right?” She looked deep into her son’s face, dreading his reaction. What if he got hysterical over the prospect of her leaving for the weekend?

Then again, what if he didn’t?

He didn’t. He gave her a big hug and a kiss on the cheek and said, “Bye, Mom. Bye, Rob.”

Gwen beamed like a chaperone on prom night. “Don’t give us a thought.
The Wizard of Oz
is on TV tonight, and we’re making Yellow Dinner for supper.”

“Yellow dinner?” Rob asked.

“A family tradition,” Twyla said, a little embarrassed.

“Everything yellow,” Brian explained. “Corn on the cob, macaroni and cheese, chicken nuggets—”

“Hey, that’s almost worth staying for,” Rob said.

Gwen laughed. “Don’t tease. Just have a Midori on the airplane. You know, that yellow melon liqueur.”

“Mom, I don’t think this airplane is going to have Midori on board.”

“Oh, heavens, I forgot the camera. Don’t move—I want a picture of you two flying off on your big adventure.”

Twyla stood up with a shudder. The last time—the only time—she had been in a plane, it had been with her father.

And they hadn’t been drinking Midori.

“I’
VE GOT A LINE
on a new crop-dusting formula,” her father had shouted over the clatter of the Stearman’s radial engine. “As soon as I close this deal to be the exclusive agent in the state, your mom and I’ll be on easy street.”

She had felt a momentary thrill for him, thinking that perhaps this time his luck would hold. It was pleasant, flying low across the valley scooped out between the Tetons, imagining her life shaping into something that remotely resembled her dreams. “It was nice of you to ask Jake to look over the legal contracts.”

“Hey, he’s family.”

“More than you know, Daddy,” she yelled, clutching the sides of the cockpit. “I suppose I should tell Jake first, but I can’t help myself—I’m pregnant.”

He had crowed with sheer delight, throwing back his
head and laughing into the wind.

It was the last day she had seen her father alive.

“R
EADY
, T
WYLA
?” R
OB
asked. “Smile for the camera.” With smooth familiarity, he slid his arm around her.

Shaken by the memory, she took a deep breath, burying the old hurt as best she could. Then she lifted her chin and grinned broadly, blinking in the aftermath of the flash.

“All set,” she said, taking the proffered arm of Rob Carter.

They walked out on the porch. At the last second, she spun around and opened her arms. “One more hug and kiss,” she insisted, and Brian plowed willingly into her. She felt the warmth of him, smelled the little-boy scent of earth and grass and dog, and a loving ache tugged at her heart. “See you, sport. I love you.”

“Love you, Mom. Gotta go help Grammy in the kitchen.”

When the screen door slammed behind him, she turned to Rob.

He was staring at her with a fascination that reminded her of a hungry wolf.

“What?” she asked.

He kept staring. “You’re a good mother, aren’t you?”

“I have no idea. I’m making it up as I go along. So you think I’m a good mother?”

He hesitated. “Yeah. I guess.”

Before she could reply, he turned away, picked up her bags and walked to his rental car. She followed, feeling strangely guilty, as if his admission had slammed a door shut between them. He had been raised at Lost Springs, not by a mother. What did he feel, watching her with Brian? She wanted to ask him, but she didn’t know how.

She got into the rental car—a Cadillac STS—and looked over at him.

Lord, that profile.

“I guess we should stay away from touchy subjects, huh?” she asked.

He turned to her and propped an elbow on the back of her seat, his scowl melting beneath the charm of a boyish grin. “Not if we’re about to become engaged.”

“What?”

“Engaged. You know, to be married.” With a casual lack of haste, he turned on the car and backed down the rutted driveway.

“I know what engaged means,” she said, her fingertips suddenly cold as she folded her hands nervously in her lap. “I don’t see what it has to do with us.”

“It was Mrs. Spinelli and Mrs. Duckworth’s idea. They think we should tell people at your reunion that we’re engaged.”

“That’s absurd.”

The Cadillac cornered low and smooth around a curve in Brown’s Branch Road. “I know. Maybe that’s what I like about it.”

“We really don’t have to—”

“I know that.” He put on his sunglasses. “But we’re going to. If I show up as your date, people will think I’m just some Joe Schmo you picked up at random.”

“Or picked out of a catalog like a packet of burpless cucumber seeds.”

“Yep. Can’t have that, can we?”

“I don’t see why—” She broke off when he turned west off the Shoshone Highway. “This isn’t the way to the county airport.”

“We don’t leave for two hours.”

“So where are we going?”

“Just sit tight and you’ll see.”

She watched the landscape slip by, a whir of wildflowers and sage and low scrubby hills rising to the far-off Owl Creek peaks, topped with eternal snow. “This is the way to Lost Springs.”

“Uh-huh.”

He wasn’t much for explanations. Ever since the day of the auction, Twyla had felt strangely disoriented and out of control, and the present moment was no different. But there was something else she felt when she was in the presence of Rob Carter—alive. Her skin and scalp tingled with awareness in the breeze, and a sense of anticipation built in her chest. She felt almost reckless, ready to take chances again. Those were two things she had never felt in her life when it came to men.

Her father had been interesting, certainly. Fascinating, truth be told. But with his freewheeling ways and wild dreams, he had never, ever been safe. Jake, on the other hand, had been safe. Comfortable, predictable and—she should have known this from the start—dull. Perhaps that was why, after the pain of abandonment had dulled, she had never regretted his leaving, hadn’t considered contesting the divorce, the papers served to her by a stranger who represented Jake had seemed a fitting conclusion to their relationship.

She decided to enjoy the novelty of feeling interested and reckless all at once. It was a rare man who could inspire that. She relaxed in the passenger seat and watched out the window. Rob drove through the peeled-log gateway of Lost Springs, stopped briefly at the security booth, then continued on to the main campus. He drove slowly to the spreading oak tree where she had hung the raffle quilt. She flushed, remembering the way he had rescued her as she dangled from a branch.

“Now what?” she asked.

He stopped the car in the shade. “Now…it’s time you learned something about the man you’re about to marry.”