How To Win (Back) a Wife (Harlequin Silhouette Desire)

by Lass Small

  And softly, into the phone mouthpiece, Tyler had the gall to say a soft “Ahhhh” of sympathy.

  However Kayla was snide. “Don’t give me such a compassionate sound. You took me to that dogfight.”

  “I had no idea it was a dogfight.” Tyler was ticked. He said, “A little prairie dog and a great big old dog are two different things.”

  So she informed the city boy, “Those prairie dogs have a tunnel system that grows with the expansion of the mass. They proliferate quite rapidly. They ruin good soil. Nothing grows there because they eat the roots.”

  Tyler was profound, “You protect big, mean dogs and commit the lives of darling little prairie—”

  “Oh, be quiet! You don’t know anything about the prairie dogs. They’re a nuisance!”

  With some exasperation, he asked, “How can you be compassionate to fighting dogs and think prai—”

  While he couldn’t see it through the phone, she still waved one hand in irritation. “There is no comparison! How could you have taken me to such a place?”

  And vulnerable, he told her into the phone’s mouthpiece, “I wanted to see what was drawing all those people there. I looked. It’s why I found a phone booth on the road and called the authorities to stop it.”

  She was silent. Then she told him, “You’re a superior man. You—”

  “You think I’m...superior?”

  And she said, “You’re aware of that. You know your potential. You’re not only curious, you want to help. You throw yourself into anything and—”

  And he interrupted strongly, “That was why I wanted to see the dogfights! You can’t make a charge if you aren’t a witness.”

  She huffed, “You could have asked if I wanted to stay there!”

  “You’d have refused!” He told her in surprised logic.

  “Of course!” she shouted.

  And he elaborated with intensity, “But you would have missed being witness to a happenstance experience!”

  “Good gravy, Tyler, why would I want to experience such a brutal thing?”

  He told her, “You love fights between men.”

  “Well, they know what they’re doing and they choose to do it. With dogfights they just have a bitch in heat that stimulates the males into challenging the other dogs.”

  With compassion, Tyler said kindly, “Life isn’t easy for males.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake!”

  “What would you do... what would you have done if some other woman had wanted me?”

  And in a sour voice, Kayla said, “Trilby.”

  That boggled Tyler and he questioned, “Trilby? Who’s Trilby?”

  “That witch who tried to shove me aside so she could have you. Remember her?”

  “Some other woman—wanted me?” He was astonished.

  And with derision, Kayla snorted. “You never guessed?”

  “I was so taken with you that I couldn’t see any other woman. You say there was somebody who... wanted me?”

  “I did.”

  “I meant some other woman.”

  She asked in a hostile way, “Why would you look beyond me?”

  “I didn’t.”

  And she dusted it off. She mentioned yet again, “You divorced me.”

  “Kayla, Kayla, you know damned good and well that I didn’t want a divorce. You were neglecting me. I filed to get your attention. You let me go ahead. You ignored me.”

  She snorted. “Men are so pushy.”

  He questioned in a hostile manner, “Who’s been pushy with you? Just give me his name.”

  “No man.”

  “A woman’s after you?” He was shocked.

  “No, idiot.”

  “No idiot is after you so it’s somebody that’s—”

  “You are the idiot.”

  “Now, how in the world could you make such a decision? You haven’t even been around me enough in the last year to know whether or not I can behave like an adult. I can.”

  “I’ll have to check this out.”

  “Come over for supper tomorrow.” That sounded casual enough, but he’d ignored his own gasp before he said the words.

  Kayla had heard it and she smiled. Since they were on the phone, he didn’t see the smile. Sometimes it’s just best to talk to a man over the phone so he doesn’t leap to any odd conclusions.

  She said, “No, thank you. I want to go to the club.”

  “Oh. Okay. What time? I need to get reservations.”

  And she replied, “Next to the dance floor.”

  He admitted, “I’m not the greatest dancer in the world.”

  “You did Mrs. Gates’s sessions okay. I know that’s true because I was a level below you, being so much younger, and I saw you dancing. At that time you couldn’t talk and dance at the same time.”

  “I’ve learned to just move back and forth first on one foot and then on the other so that it seems like we’re dancing, but we can talk.”

  She said, “I know.”

  He was disappointed. “I thought I’d been real sly with that.”

  “You’re sly in a lot of things, but a dancer has a lot of problems if he just sways back and forth.”

  “That way I get to concentrate on y—the lady.”

  “Who else have you been dancing with lately?”

  “Oh,” he lied. “There’ve been a couple of partners. Old friends.” He diminished it all, saying, “Nothing serious.” He knew that would tick her curiosity.

  While it did tick her curiosity, it irritated the very liver out of her. She asked bluntly, “Who.” It was a lead-in and not a question.

  “Well, let’s see. There was that redhead down at the men’s bar by the river. And—”

  “A redhead?” She had gasped that out without realizing how jealous it sounded. But who can compete with a redhead?

  Tyler silently smiled into his phone. Kayla loved him. All he had to do was make her realize it enough for her to tell that to him. He said to her, “She probably dyes her hair. The roots looked a little light. She’s probably gray-haired.”

  Some men are especially crafty. They know when to say what to a woman. Tyler had just said three such sentences exactly right to Kayla. Some men are gentlemen and never say unkind things to a wife or ex-wife about a competitive woman. They’re dumb.

  So Kayla didn’t hang up but went on talking to Tyler and listening. Actually, it was the first time in their rather short acquaintance that they’d exchanged as many thoughts and opinions.

  The two talked for a long while. Their voices got sleepy, and he heard her yawn. He finally yawned almost silently, and she said, “Good heavens! Look at the time!” But she was pleased he’d been talking to her for so long.

  He said sleepily, “You ought to be here in your own bed.”

  “Only half of it was mine.”

  “I wouldn’t...crowd you. It would just be nice to have you—close.”

  She almost said a snippy reply, but instead she said a soft, “Good night.”

  “’nite, honey. It was nice to talk to you.”

  She was silent for a while and then she gently hung up the phone.

  Thoughtfully, Tyler got up from the bed and began to undress. His sex leaped out of his underwear, and Tyler sighed in sympathy. Mentally, he’d called it Godzilla from the time he was fourteen.

  He’d never mentioned the naming to any of his male friends. He thought their reaction would not be positive, but their hilarity would smother him. And which ones would keep the name to himself? None of them. Word would have spread through the entire male population of San Antonio and on beyond until it had leaked out to other cities then to other states and foreign countries and everybody would have known.

  Women never know what all a man has to endure. That’s why men are strong and silent. They’ve fought or threatened so many dissidents, and they don’t dare to tell anything or it’ll be zinging around the circuit in the next hour!

  Tyler took a cold shower and went to bed. He was a
lready tired and it was late, so he did sleep... mostly. Of course, he wakened and the bed was again torn apart. Rumpled? He’d been restless.

  Tyler went to the office the next morning on time, as usual, and Jamie observed his approach. Jamie had turned his chair and watched Tyler enter the room and go to his desk. Since their shared office was not all that big, it didn’t take Tyler long to finish the goal.

  Jamie asked kindly, “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  Tyler looked at his friend with cold eyes. He enunciated clearly, “Nothing.”

  “You look like you’ve been pulled through a knothole.”

  “I’ve cleaned ou—my apartment, and I’ve organized my desk.”

  “And you’ve found there is a crew who files things that are backups. Your computer works miracles and you look like hell. What’s the matter with you? Are you sick?”

  Tyler nodded as he turned on his computer and shifted the newly laid papers on his desk. He told Jamie, “I’m sick of being hassled by overlings who have no business at all of harassing me to entertain—himself.” That narrowed down the overling.

  Jamie considered Tyler. Then he said gently, “I beg your pardon.”

  “I forgive you.”

  “We’re due to go with Mr. Reardon to a conference. He believes it will stimulate you.”

  Tyler asked, “Not you?”

  “I get to go along. Mr. Reardon didn’t want anyone to think he is singling you out for attention.”

  “He wants me to experience this?”

  “He’s a little sentimental about you. First Kayla and now this trial. He thinks you were brilliant.”

  With some indignation, Tyler protested, “You were in charge of the whole shebang!”

  And Jamie smiled. He told Tyler, “Barb thinks I’m brilliant. That’s enough for me. But he thinks you will become the fairhaired boy and brilliant. That’s one hell of a burden on anyone, and I gladly give you that spotlight. Good luck.”

  “Aw,—!”

  Jamie laughed. His eyes sparkling with his humor, he told Tyler, “I wouldn’t trade knowing you for any other guy in this entire organization. I don’t know of another man who is so brilliant in law who is also so normal. You’re okay.”

  And it was that compliment which Tyler held to his heart as a token of worth. With that confidence, he might convince Kayla to reconsider him.

  Would she?

  Who ever knew what a woman would do or think or wear? They were such strange creatures. God probably made them that way so that men couldn’t be bored. Men spent most of their time trying to figure out what they’d said wrong or why she wanted that?

  Well, female bodies sure felt good up against a man’s. It had been almost a year by then since the divorce. That was sure as hell a long dry spell. And Godzilla urgently agreed.

  Nine

  So Tyler and Kayła talked on the phone. He didn’t try to push it. He didn’t beg her to come back to him. They were getting acquainted again. It took a lawyer to realize that while they’d been sexually intense, they really hadn’t known each other very well.

  For a couple their ages, now twenty-eight and twenty-five, their lust had led them into a rather quick marriage. Now they were beginning to know each other over the phone. Separated that way, without the intimate allure, they could concentrate more on getting to know each other’s thinking. Their opinions.

  She asked, “How did the filing go?”

  “I found out they have a whole section in the firm of filers. They tidy up the files and find those needed, and I hadn’t realized what all the different sections of the firm do. I know about the secretarial pool, but I hadn’t paid any attention to how much filing was done. With the computers, you can pull up just about anything, but if we ever lost the computer files, we still have the real files.”

  “Ummm.” That was agreement but obviously she was not terribly interested in the subject of filing.

  He said, “We have baseball on Thursday. Want to go?”

  “Maybe.”

  And he was smart enough not to push for her commitment.

  They talked about mutual friends and discussed what those people were doing and how they were getting along. How interesting it was that they, who were divorced, could be critical of other couples.

  Actually, they gossiped. She knew everything about everyone, and he was interested and exclaimed in shock.

  She asked with curiosity, “Now why would you be surprised by John doing that?”

  “John’s always seemed so stable. Maybe I ought to talk to him?”

  “How are you going to convince John to make up with Connie when you’ve divorced me?”

  “John’ll understand.”

  “John will? He’s off the wall!”

  But as Kayla had mentioned that Tyler had divorced her, Tyler could hardly say anything about his knowing women. Connie was an airhead. Actually, John would be better off without her. He’d talk to John and see how he really felt.

  Kayla asked, “Would you like to go out tramping this weekend?”

  He was silent as he controlled his shock. She had asked him to meet with her! To be with her! Together! He said, “Oh—okay.”

  “I’ll bring something to eat. Could you bring the drinks?”

  He’d take 100 Proof whiskey and get her drunk! He’d seen her drunk once. Her heavy eyelids. Her flopping hands. He knew how she’d be after drinking that dynamite. She’d be unable to control him, and he’d just go ahead.

  He said in a rather husky voice, “I’d be glad to bring the drinks. What would you suggest?” He’d let her choose, but for the picnic, he’d take the wicked stuff. And, shucks, out there in the boondocks, in the thirsty day, that would be all they’d have to drink!

  Into his ear against the phone, Kayla suggested, “Cokes...7-UP? Something like that?”

  “I’ll see what they have.” Sure he would. His feet turned into hooves and his ears changed, elongating, and little horns began to sprout from his skull poking through the skin on his scalp and into his hair. He smiled.

  It was then that Godzilla enunciated, “Uuuuhhhhh. No.”

  Godzilla said that?

  And Tyler felt Godzilla shrug as he said, Later.

  In all that time, Kayla said she’d get back to Tyler after she found out where they could tramp.

  Tyler agreed, “Okay.” And they hung up their phones. Tyler sat there thinking. Well, hell. And mentally, Tyler made some excessively critical and sneering remarks to his phantom creature who was his libido, Godzilla.

  Godzilla said, Shame on you!

  It is disillusioning to have one’s counterself take up the flag of purity that way. And snidely, Tyler told Godzilla, “It’s your loss.” And he half-closed his eyes in a mean way as he waited for the response of his sex.

  But instead of razzing the host of his being, Godzilla sighed in regret and just said, We know!

  What can a man do whose very sex has empathy for the man? And strict rules for behavior? Something he’d called...Godzilla?

  So it was all thrown back into Tyler’s lap. And it was right there that Godzilla lived.

  In a rather nasty way, Tyler said mentally, “I believe I’ll change your name. You’ve gotten beyond the Godzilla stage, and you’re a wimp. I shall call you Wimp.”

  There was no reply.

  Slowly, Tyler realized that the name fit not his sex, but him! He needed to be more aggressive with his ex-wife who had divorced him. Well, actually, he had divorced her, but she had never even once protested or questioned or anything!

  So he and she were going out tramping. She would tell him where. She would scare off everybody from some vacant land, and she’d molest him and ravish him just for practice.

  Okay.

  He could handle that. And he thought what an available handle Wimp was. The Wimp was already puffed up and ready at the very idea of being molested. How does a man keep his sex under control? Who is in charge? Who has control?

  And Tyler
knew it was all his own responsibility. If he didn’t take the Wimp out of his pants, it would have to behave...enough. Kayla was safe.

  The very idea of a safe Kayla sent Tyler into a decline.

  So on the next day, Tyler had begun another case concerning a will. When someone with money dies, there are people who will contest the will, if they aren’t on it. Or if they are, they’re positive they ought to get more money. They then will file a petition with Probate Court to set the will aside.

  There would be other people who complained they were due money and/or property.

  They said the deceased was incompetent or under the influence of others. A mistress was supposedly promised caretaking. The remnants of the family rejected such a thing. They said she was pushy trash.

  So Tyler was to interview all those people, question the deceased’s relatives and verify who owned what. He’d be checking banks, interviewing and taking notes besides going through papers.

  Having committed himself to interfering, Tyler called his friend John for lunch at a Mexican restaurant down by the man-made newest river loop.

  John responded sourly, “Okay. Your treat.” And he hung up.

  Tyler replaced the phone slowly. His head tilted as he considered that perhaps Connie had good reason not to want John around? Hmmmm.

  At noon, a disgruntled Tyler went through the building and off down the street. Being a Good Samaritan wasn’t all that much fun or satisfying. He went into the restaurant and, fortunately, had reservations. He sat down and waited.

  John drifted in eventually. He was sullen and didn’t give one damn that he was late. He stood and looked around, and Tyler stood up so that John could see him. Tyler thought he really ought to have turned his back to John and hidden.

  John came over to the table, didn’t reply to Tyler’s greeting but just sat down. He told the waitress he’d have a beer.