Hired by Her Husband

by Anne McAllister

  But when she turned around, he hadn’t moved. He was still standing there, still looming, still watching her, his dark hair tousled, his eyes hooded. “It’s good,” he said. “The soup.”

  “Thank you,” she replied shortly, then looked expressively toward the living room again, in the hope that he would go sit back on the sofa. Instead he hobbled past her and, wincing, hitched himself up on one of the bar stools in the kitchen.

  “That can’t be comfortable.”

  “It’s fine. I’ll eat here,” he said. “Keep you company.”

  Just what she needed. Sophy shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  She turned away again and focused on the last of the dishes. Unfortunately there weren’t a lot of them left.

  “Thanks for coming along today,” George said to her back.

  She turned, surprised. “I enjoyed it. I never knew much about what you did.”

  George’s mouth quirked. “I do other stuff, too.”

  “I’m sure. But that was interesting. I wouldn’t have expected you to teach freshmen.”

  “I like it. They’re rewarding. Some of them,” he qualified. “When you can wake one or two up to see the world in a new way, you feel like you’ve accomplished something.”

  “I can see that. Did you—” she hesitated, then decided to ask “—teach freshmen in Uppsala?”

  George hesitated for a moment, too, then shook his head. “No.”

  She thought he was going to leave it there, expected that he would because he’d always shut her out of that part of his life.

  But then he said, “I didn’t teach in Uppsala.”

  She blinked, digesting that, then nodded. “So, you did research?”

  He drew a breath. “I wasn’t in Uppsala. Not often.”

  Now she frowned. “You went there to teach. At least I assume you did. You were gone.” She shook her head, then shrugged. “How do I know what you did?” she muttered.

  “I was working for the government. Several governments, actually. It was a multinational effort. Top secret. Not teaching. Not Uppsala.”

  She stared at him. Top secret? “Not Uppsala,” she echoed faintly.

  “No.” He opened his mouth again, as if he were about to say something else, but then he pressed his lips together briefly and cast his eyes down to focus on his bowl once more.

  Sophy stood there, disconcerted, studying him, trying to rethink, to fit this new bit of information into the puzzle that was George. “I had no idea.”

  He lifted his gaze and met hers. “You weren’t supposed to.”

  She understood that much. “You wouldn’t have taken us with you,” she said, understanding, too, now why he’d never talked with her about any plans for them to move. There had been no plans.

  “I wouldn’t have gone.”

  That made her blink. “What?”

  “If we’d stayed together, I’d have told them no.” His gaze didn’t waver.

  Sophy shook her head. “I don’t understand at all now,” she admitted.

  “It was a job that came up before…before Ari died. Before we—” He gave a wave of his hand.

  He didn’t have to explain. She knew what he meant: before Ari’s girlfriend turned up pregnant and alone, in need of a Savas rescue mission.

  The memory stiffened her spine. “Another reason you shouldn’t have married me,” she said flatly.

  George gave a quick shake of his head. “No. It was a matter of priorities.” He made it sound cut-and-dried—and as if he’d made the obvious choice. “Anyway,” he went on, “if we’d stayed together I would never have gone.”

  “Why not?”

  “It wasn’t a situation to take a wife and child into. It was potentially dangerous, certainly unstable. No place for dependents. I wouldn’t have risked the two of you.”

  “But you risked yourself!”

  He shrugged. “It was my job.”

  Duty. Always and forever, duty.

  And she had just been another one, Sophy thought heavily. She turned away and went briskly back to cleaning up the kitchen, then put the leftover soup in the refrigerator. George finished his bowl and gave it to her when she held out her hand.

  “It was good,” he said with one of his heart-stopping smiles. “Thanks.”

  Sophy resisted it. “You’re welcome,” she said stiffly. “Are you going upstairs now?” she asked as he struggled to his feet.

  “I think I will.” His mouth twisted a bit ruefully. “Head’s not pounding quite so much, but I’m beat. I may have overdone it a bit today.”

  His admission made her eyes widen. There was something George couldn’t handle? But she didn’t say that.

  “Can you make it on your own?” she asked. “Or do you want me to stand behind you to catch you if you fall?” She was only half-joking.

  “I believe I can make it.” One corner of his mouth tipped up. “I’ll call if I need you.”

  So she let him go on his own. It didn’t stop her keeping an ear out for any sounds of trouble, though. And she ventured over to peer up the staircase more than once to see how he was doing. It took him a long time, but at last the stairs stopped creaking and she didn’t hear him anymore. Sophy didn’t know how George felt after his climb, but she breathed a sigh of relief when he was up the stairs.

  “Come on,” she said to Gunnar, who jumped right up. “Let’s go out one last time.”

  She didn’t take him for another walk. They’d get up and go to the park in the morning early, she promised him. He seemed almost to sigh, but he went out back willingly enough. Sophy went out with him. If she stood in the garden and stared up at the windows, she could see the light on up in George’s bedroom. There was, every once in a while, a shadow as he moved slowly around the room and passed in front of the lamp.

  “He needs to lie down,” she said to Gunnar.

  Gunnar looked hopefully at his bucket of tennis balls.

  “Tomorrow,” Sophy promised him. “Let’s go in now.” When they had, she shut off the lights, picked up her laptop and climbed the stairs, Gunnar bounding on ahead to wait at the top of the stairs.

  She put the laptop on the bed in the second-floor room, the one she’d used the day she’d arrived—the one she’d use again tonight because she certainly would be sleeping with George again.

  She even flipped it open and turned it on, thinking she’d get some work done because it wasn’t all that late yet. She might give Natalie a call and perhaps get a chance to see Lily on a video call before her daughter went to bed.

  But before she did that, she should check and make sure George was settled. She didn’t know what on earth he was hobbling around for. He needed to go to bed. And if he needed something, she didn’t want him calling her while she was on the phone. So she climbed the stairs and went down the hall to George’s room.

  “Do you need anything?” she began—and stopped dead.

  There was George—in all his muscular naked glory—on his way to the shower.

  A slow grin spread across his face. “You could wash my back.”

  Sophy blushed.

  George loved it when she blushed.

  In four years he had never forgotten the way her eyes snapped with emotion and her cheeks grew redder than her hair. It was rewarding when her normally quick wits seemed—for the merest instant—to desert her. He reveled in it.

  She didn’t turn and run. No. She stopped in the doorway, her fingers lightly touching each side of the doorframe as she let her gaze rove over him. Then she said slowly, still considering him, “Now there’s an idea.”

  He knew her tone wasn’t soft and sultry intentionally. It didn’t have to be. It sent a shaft of longing straight through him. And it was certainly no secret which part of him found the words most enticing.

  Now it was his turn to feel his face burn. Face, hell. It wasn’t his face that felt as if it was going up in flames.

  George cleared his suddenly parched throat, then casually turned and limped as non
chalantly as possible into the bathroom where he’d left the shower running.

  “Right this way,” he suggested over his shoulder. He only hoped his voice didn’t sound as rusty as it felt.

  He stepped into the shower, shut the door behind him and waited. And waited. Hoped against hope.

  But he wasn’t really surprised when minutes passed and Sophy didn’t come and open the shower door and step in behind him.

  He had turned the water on to let it warm up when he’d first come upstairs. He’d decided on the way up that a nice hot shower would soothe his aching body and make him feel better.

  Now he thought that cold water—ice water—would have been a damn sight smarter.

  Still, if he turned the tap to cold right now, while his ardor might fade, his muscles would seize up and his head would start pounding again. Hell of a choice. The proverbial rock and hard place, he thought, and groaned at the appropriateness of the cliché.

  Served him right for still wanting her, he thought and tried to will his body into quiescence. His body had other ideas. They wouldn’t go away.

  Finally, deliberately he leaned forward, braced one palm against the tile beneath the shower head, and put the other on the tap. Then, as the water sluiced down his body, he gradually but inexorably turned it all to cold.

  He stayed there until he could stand it no longer. Then he yanked the towel off the top of the door to scrub at his eyes before he stepped out. His teeth were chattering, his head was hammering and his whole body was rigid with cold.

  “What on earth is the matter with you? You’re blue!”

  George jerked the towel away from his face and found himself staring into Sophy’s wide eyes. They looked as shocked as he felt.

  He clamped his teeth together because he’d have stuttered if he’d tried to speak.

  Sophy had no such problem. She put out a hand and touched his arm, then frowned. “You’re as cold as ice,” she accused him.

  Better than the alternative.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “It’s all right.”

  “Of course it’s not all right! I thought you were supposed to be smart! Why on earth would you take a cold shower and—oh!” The bright spots of color were back in her cheeks with a vengeance again, and Sophy was opening and closing her mouth like a fish.

  George smiled wryly at her.

  “Men!” she fumed.

  “Pretty much,” George agreed. He snagged another towel off the rack and hitched it around his waist. “You could leave,” he suggested. “Unless you want to solve the problem another way.”

  For a rare and amazing moment, he thought she almost considered it. Then she gave a quick shake of her head and began backing toward the door.

  “I’ll wait outside,” she said. “Don’t fall over.” She ran her tongue quickly over her lips, Then, as if a three hundred percent explanation were required, she added, “That’s what I was doing in here. Making sure you didn’t.”

  George grinned. “And here I thought you’d changed your mind and come to scrub my back.”

  Sophy rolled her eyes. But the color was back in her cheeks and he thought she ran her tongue over her lips as she shut herself firmly on the other side of the door.

  For a moment George stood staring at it. Then he shook his head. The woman was a walking mass of contradictions. She came close, she backed away. She told him to get out of her life. She came clear across the country when he was hurt. She hovered over him as if he mattered to her. Then she went cool and distant in the blink of an eye.

  It was no wonder his head hurt, George thought as he dried his body slowly and carefully. And it was irritating as hell that he’d suffered through that damned cold shower because its effect had been instantly nullified by his body’s reaction to Sophy’s unexpected presence.

  Still he wasn’t apt to disgrace himself when he finally finished pulling on his boxers and a clean T-shirt, then opened the door to his bedroom.

  Gunnar was lying in the middle of the bed. He lifted his head and thumped his tail happily.

  Sophy, damn it, was nowhere to be seen.

  Chapter Seven

  JUST WHAT SHE NEEDED, Sophy thought, flinging herself onto her back on the bed—an image of a lean, muscular, stark-naked George Savas indelibly emblazoned on the insides of her eyelids!

  Eyelids, ha. She had the image burned right into her retinas. Probably branded on her brain.

  It wasn’t fair!

  Even as she thought it, she knew she was whining like a plaintive four-year-old. But it was true.

  She was only here trying to make things square between them—to do her duty—just as George, by marrying her, had done what he misguidedly perceived to be his. It was a responsibility. A job—because George had even “hired” her, though she’d be damned if she would let him pay her a cent. She was doing this to pay him back. She didn’t want his money.

  Mostly she didn’t want to be tempted. She didn’t want to want George again.

  It was bad enough to have lost her heart to him once. Four years ago she had believed that however inauspicious the beginning of their relationship had been, they could love each other.

  She had already been well on her way to loving him by their wedding day.

  Strong and stalwart and dependable, George was the exact opposite of his cousin. The only things George and Ari had in common were some of their genes and their gorgeous good looks. But while Ari knew how to use his looks to his advantage—and did!—George seemed unaware of his. And while Ari had been there when things were fun and frivolous, George had been there when she’d needed him. Always.

  She’d met him while she was dating Ari, had even danced with him at Ari and George’s cousin Gregory’s wedding. In fact George had been drafted in as an usher because he and Ari were the same size and he could wear Ari’s tux when Ari hadn’t showed up on time.

  “It’s not like they weren’t going to have the wedding without me.” Ari had dismissed the matter when Sophy had fretted about them arriving late.

  That had certainly been true enough. In fact, Gregory and his bride were already man and wife by the time she and Ari had arrived.

  Ari had shrugged. “Works for me. Anyway, they had George. He’ll do.” Ari had given his cousin a light punch on the arm. “Good old George.”

  Later, when she’d danced with George at the reception, she’d apologized for their tardiness even though it hadn’t been her fault.

  George had just shrugged and said wryly, “That’s Ari. Not exactly Mr. Dependable.”

  At the time Sophy had still been a bit starry-eyed about Ari Savas. He was fun and flirtatious and he had charm to spare. He’d got her into bed, hadn’t he? And then he’d left three days later to go skiing out west and she hadn’t seen him for a month. She had written to him when she found out she was pregnant, but he’d never replied. And when next she saw him, he seemed surprised that she would have bothered to tell him.

  That was the way it was with Ari. He had little interest in anyone else—and none at all in becoming a father.

  Sophy got the message. In fact, because he’d bailed on her and their incipient child, she’d been tempted not to go to his funeral three months later. There didn’t seem any point.

  Eventually she’d decided to go because she thought that someday their child would ask about his or her father.

  While Sophy was under no illusions about Ari’s fidelity or love by this time, she’d once, however foolishly, cared about him. She knew she would love their child. And she owed it to that child to be able to share what she could of the man who had fathered him or her.

  It was a huge funeral for a popular young man who had died before his time. All of Ari’s family had been there. Most of them had paid no attention to her. She was just another one of Ari’s many girlfriends. The last girlfriend, perhaps, but not a member of the family.

  Only George had made a point of coming over to her afterward, taking her hand in his and not just accepting her condo
lences, but offering his own sympathy to her.

  His lean handsome face and tousled dark hair reminded her of Ari, but the resemblance to his cousin stopped there. Ari had always been the life of the party and probably would have been even at a funeral. George was quiet and self-possessed. There was a remoteness about him even though, as they talked, Sophy was aware of his jade-green gaze boring into hers.

  They didn’t talk long and she never mentioned her pregnancy. It was winter. She was wearing a heavy coat, and at just five months along, she wasn’t yet as big as the house she would become before Lily’s birth. So George had had no idea. None of his family had. If Sophy had ever imagined that Ari might have proudly proclaimed—or even quietly admitted—he was going to be a father, she knew that day that he’d never said a word.

  She’d felt a little bereft as she was leaving, and it must have showed on her face because George had drawn her into his arms and given her a hard, steadying hug. It had felt so good, so supportive, so right that Sophy had wanted to lean into it, to draw strength from it.

  From George.

  But fortunately common sense had prevailed and she had stepped back, decorum prevailing.

  Still he’d held on to her hands. “Take care of yourself.” His voice had been like rough velvet. Stronger than Ari’s. Deeper.

  Sophy had nodded, exquisitely aware of her hands being chafed and squeezed lightly between George’s strong fingers.

  “Yes,” she said, throat tightening. “Yes. You, too.”

  She’d given him a watery smile, then desperately pulled her hands out of his and fled before sudden tears from God knew what complicated emotions spilled over onto her cheeks.

  She’d hung on to that memory of George to get her through the days and weeks that followed. She told herself it was because he reminded her of Ari—but not Ari as he’d been, but rather the man she’d wanted him to be. If this child was a boy, she’d told herself, she hoped he’d be more like George than like Ari.

  Not that she had a lot of time to think about either one of them. She had been teaching at a preschool-cum-day-care, a fun but exhausting job, and every day she came home more tired than the last. She loved the children, but as she’d grown bigger and the baby had become more active, simply getting through the day took a lot out of her.