Husband: Some Assembly Required

by Marie Ferrarella

  She stuck the remainder of the pad into her pocket and rose to her feet. “I’m listed with Harris Memorial Hospital and with the AMA. Either will tell you all you want to know.”

  He fingered the prescription thoughtfully before slipping it into the back pocket of his jeans. “I sincerely doubt it.”

  She had no idea how he managed to create such an intimate air between them out of absolutely nothing. It was probably his talent. And it was wasted on her. “Those kind of answers you’re not about to get from anyone.”

  He rose. “Don’t you know better than to challenge a lawyer?”

  Shawna ignored his question as she stopped in the doorway. “I trust you have someone to drive you home.”

  He shrugged. “I’ll manage.”

  Shawna frowned. The man was an idiot. “You drove here yourself, didn’t you?”

  “I do have one twenty-twenty eye,” he reminded her glibly.

  She could only shake her head as she retreated into her office. There were more pressing matters awaiting her attention than a daredevil, irresponsible lawyer with a killer smile.

  It wasn’t until after she closed the door to her office that Shawna acknowledged the fact that her pulse was just a wee bit accelerated. In addition, there was a very amused smile on her lips. She wasn’t really conscious of the latter until she saw her reflection in the glass of the curio she had in her office.

  It came as a surprise.

  As if to assure herself that it was her own face, Shawna ran her fingertips lightly over her lips, bemused. The man was a hopeless flirt.

  He had flirted with her, she thought, and she had responded. It had been a long time since she had done anything so lighthearted.

  It felt good.

  The next moment Shawna shook her head, as if that would erase something so trivial from her system. She had no business flirting with anyone. No business, she thought, even being alive.

  God, where were all these thoughts coming from, so fresh after all this time? It was as if seeing someone from her past had unearthed everything all over again.

  Shawna ran her hands over her face, wearied beyond words.

  She had walked away from the car accident with a three-inch scratch on her arm and a mile-long gash across her heart.

  Tears sprang to her eyes as she looked at the framed photograph on her desk. Doug holding Bobby. Her heart constricted even as their names whispered across her mind. She’d taken that photo just two weeks before the accident. They’d been at the Grand Canyon. They had gone together, one of those rare holidays that Doug had permitted himself.

  Usually he was so busy at the hospital that the only time she saw him was when they passed each other in the halls or consulted over a patient. Douglas James Saunders had been a widely respected neurosurgeon, at the top of his field.

  She closed her eyes. The tears still managed to squeeze through.

  He’d been so like her in temperament it had been almost scary. It was as if they had been carbon copies of each other, only with different faces. They’d had the same tastes, the same likes, the same thoughts. Life with Doug, when she’d had a chance to see him, had been blissful. No waves, no traumas. Predictable. And so terribly soothing and comforting.

  She’d never had to ask him how he felt about something—she knew. In all the time they had been together, they had never disagreed on a single thing.

  Except driving.

  She loved it. He hated it. So she had been behind the wheel that horrid day the world ended.

  Shawna squeezed her eyes tighter, but the tears still wouldn’t retreat.

  The slight rap on her door startled her.

  She cleared her throat twice before she trusted herself to say anything. With the heel of her hand she pushed aside the telltale streaks on her cheeks and then sniffed twice.

  “Come in.”

  But when she turned her head to look, it wasn’t Jeanne she saw in her doorway. It was Murphy.

  Murphy strode into the room at her invitation. “I just—hey, are you all right?” He stopped abruptly, hesitating, then quickly crossed to her. He took her hand, and there was something infinitely warm and comforting about the way he held it.

  Still, she was embarrassed at being caught this way. Shawna nodded her head a bit too rigorously. “Yes, I’m fine.”

  The hell she was. “You’re crying,” he observed gently.

  For the second time that day she withdrew her hand from his. Annoyance cloaked her embarrassment. “I just hit my shin against the corner of the desk.” She shrugged. “Brought tears to my eyes.”

  It wasn’t a very convincing story, but he let it slide. Instead, he merely smiled in response. Let her have it her way.

  Indignation reared. It was better than accepting sympathy. “I don’t see why that strikes you as amusing.”

  “It’s not. It’s just nice to know you’re human like the rest of us.”

  What kind of signals was she sending out to him? Whatever they were, they couldn’t be all that flattering. She squared her shoulders and sat up a little taller. “I never pretended to be anything else.”

  He grinned at her and inclined his head. “There was a little walking on water back there.”

  She assumed he meant her attitude about not dating her patients. Did he find that aloof? Maybe it was at that, and maybe it was a good thing besides. “That wasn’t walking on water, that was separating doctor from patient. That, Counselor, is ethics.”

  “I know all about ethics.” Murphy leaned a hip against her desk, as much for comfort as for support. He wasn’t about to admit it, but he wasn’t feeling entirely confident about the reliability of his equilibrium. It hadn’t really bothered him until a moment ago. But there was no reason to tell her that, just as there was no reason to admit that he had driven the short distance from his house to the medical complex with his left eye shut in order to clearly see the road.

  “The trouble with ethics, Shawna, is that you have to keep a tight rein on them. Otherwise, they might turn you into a holier-than-thou kind of person.”

  Shawna’s sigh was a mixture of exhaustion and exasperation. He wouldn’t take her advice, he wouldn’t take no for an answer, and now he seemed bent on taking her dignity. “Mr. Pendleton—”

  “Murphy,” he prodded genially. “We have a history together, remember?”

  The man was incredible. Despite the fact that he was confounding her, he was also managing to amuse her. “We don’t have a history together,” she corrected. “We took history together.”

  “We did?” He laughed softly to himself. The momentary dizziness had receded and he felt infinitely better. “Thomas recalled only English and bio.”

  He lit up a room when he laughed, she thought, struggling not to let it undermine her. “I have things to do. Why did you come back here?”

  “To see if I could change your mind about dinner.” He raised his brows innocently at the first sign of mounting annoyance in her face. “Can’t right now, huh?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  As he moved away from her desk he accidentally knocked over a photograph. Murphy caught it before it fell over and before Shawna had a chance to catch it herself.

  He righted it carefully. “Nice family.”

  “Yes.”

  Hers. Judging by her reaction, she was divorced. Recently, he guessed, and probably leery of rebounds. Murphy smiled to himself. He could readily understand that, probably better than most.

  He looked down at her, not ready to leave just yet. “Want to swap sad stories?”

  There was a note of sympathy in his voice. It surprised her. Shawna raised her eyes to his. “I thought you believed in humor.”

  “I do. Because of the sadness. Remember?”

  “Oh, yes, the philosophy.” There was just the smallest smattering of regret as she turned him down this time, but that was a holdover from the distant past. “I’m not interested in any stories just now.”

  That wasn’t aloofne
ss in her eyes, he decided, it was sadness. He had a weakness for sad eyes. “Even if I have an M.R.I. done for you?”

  He still wasn’t taking any of this seriously, was he? The immortal jock. “If you have it done, it would be for you, not for me.” She looked at him squarely, something she wouldn’t have had the courage to do years ago. “And why are you so interested in going out with me?”

  That, he mused, was the million-dollar question. But there was no denying that he was interested. A man could do a lot worse than be interested in a sensual, willowy blonde with sad blue eyes. Besides, he wanted to see her smile again. Genuinely. With feeling.

  “I told you, I love a challenge.”

  That was his problem, Shawna thought. The only challenges she was up to were found in patients’ folders. “Then I’d suggest that you go climb Mount Everest—when your vision is better.”

  The smile on his face told her that he was taking her flippant advice in an entirely different context. “I think I just might do that.” He crossed to the door, then looked at her over his shoulder. “Yes, I just might do that,” he repeated.

  The man had a Casanova complex. She didn’t know why she was smiling. Annoyed with herself, she turned her chair away from the doorway. “Don’t forget to close the door behind you,” she murmured.

  Very deliberately, Shawna picked up the closest file on her desk. But though she scanned it, she didn’t see any of the words before her. She was too busy listening for the sound of the door being closed.

  When she heard the reassuring click, Shawna shook her head and let out the breath she had been unconsciously holding. The man was completely irresponsible. As irresponsible as he had been in high school. Back then she had found it charming.

  Now it was simply irritating.

  Chapter Four

  Kelly Sheridan turned the knob and eased open the door to her brother’s office. Her three o’clock appointment had canceled and she thought she’d take the opportunity to look in on Murphy. He’d been out of the office the entire morning and had returned less than ten minutes ago.

  He shouldn’t even be here, she thought. Murphy gave a whole new meaning to the word stubborn.

  Kelly barely knocked as she entered his recently redecorated office. The faint smell of varnish still hung in the air and teased the senses.

  “Hi, Murph. Heard you blew them out of the water today in court.” She crossed to his desk. Above objections, he had gone in to conclude pleading a client’s case. And skillfully gotten the man acquitted. “The word ‘partnership’ is being bandied about in the halls even as we speak.”

  Damn, why hadn’t Kelly waited a few minutes before she came in like gangbusters? He had wanted a little time alone to pull himself together, to shake off the clammy hand of fear that had clamped onto his soul. Right in the middle of his first cross-examination this morning, the courtroom had suddenly become veiled in an opaque curtain. Mercifully, that had cleared up almost immediately. But then, just before he’d left court, it had happened again. This time he’d seen only ghostly shadows through his right eye, and nothing through his left.

  It had scared the hell out of him.

  But it had passed, just as it had previously. He just needed a minute to compose himself, a minute to push aside the tendrils of anxiety that were swaying around him.

  Murphy slowly took in a deep breath and turned his swivel chair to face her. Try as he might to talk himself out of it, he was unnerved and didn’t need someone else adding to his tension right now.

  “Really?” He forced a glib smile to his lips. “A partnership? Certainly took them long enough.” The sound of his own voice, robust and confident, did a great deal to calm him.

  “Well, you know how these rumors have a way of spreading like wildfire, sometimes entirely without any foundation.” Kelly perched on the edge of his desk, her long legs dangling casually over the side. She couldn’t quite keep her artificial smile in place. He looked awful. Kelly dropped the act. “Murphy, are you all right?”

  The concern in her voice was as thick as molasses in January. He didn’t want it aimed in his direction. Even as a boy he had never felt comfortable being on the receiving end of sympathy, only on the giving end.

  The grin on his face deliberately widened. “Haven’t you heard? I’m perfect.”

  The man gave mules a bad name. “I wasn’t talking about your overbloated ego or the pitifully underdeveloped women you choose to associate yourself with.” As her anger with him heightened, the tempo at which she swung her legs increased.

  Amusement slivered through him. He raised a brow. “Underdeveloped?”

  She was tempted to wipe the smirk off his face physically. She was being serious and he was doing his best to throw up a smoke screen. “I was referring to their mental capacities. Or lack thereof.”

  He had to admit that ever since Janice, the women he’d seen socially had been on the light side as far as mental prowess went. But there had been a reason for that. It decreased the danger of entanglement.

  The expression on his face was deliberately lascivious. “I don’t debate world politics with them.”

  It broke Kelly’s heart that Murphy had been hurt the way he had and that he had retreated from a world that she knew in her heart he wanted. “Maybe you should.”

  Thoughts were scrambling in his brain and he wasn’t up to sparring with his sister. “Isn’t there a tax audit you should be looking into or something more productive than nagging me?”

  Kelly leaned closer. She didn’t have to scrutinize him very hard. “You’re pale.”

  He lifted a shoulder carelessly as he turned from her and turned on his computer. “Just means I need to get out into the sun more.”

  “It means you should stop playing cat and mouse with me.”

  He had absolutely no idea what screen he was pulling up on the computer. Exasperated, he glanced at Kelly over his shoulder. The room threatened to tilt a little before it righted itself.

  “Look, Kell, I’ve got a few things to catch up on.” He gestured toward the computer. “That little unexpected holiday of mine the other day threw me off schedule.”

  She hated it when he was so glib. “It wasn’t a holiday and you’re an idiot to come back so soon.” She fairly spit the words out.

  “I’m fine,” he insisted, struggling to maintain his good humor. “And besides, as you noted, I had to be in court.”

  He was good at twisting things around. “I said you were in court, not that you had to be. I was prepared to take that case for you. I told you that yesterday.” She’d stayed up half the night reviewing the case, only to discover that Murphy had gone to court anyway.

  The grin on his lips purposely teased her. “You wouldn’t have been as brilliant.”

  Kelly laughed shortly. “Nothing wrong with your ego, I see, though it might do with some downsizing.” She placed a hand on his shoulder and silently cursed him when she felt it stiffen. Why was he being so defensive? Why couldn’t he be sensible when it came to himself? “Murphy, talk to me. What’s wrong?”

  He shrugged off her hand before he could think better of it, his temper flaring for a moment. He was fine, just fine. All he needed was a little peace and quiet. And maybe some rest. “Nothing,” he snapped. “I’m fine.”

  She knew him better than he knew himself. “In a pig’s eye.”

  A glint of humor returned. “I wouldn’t fit.”

  She was through debating this. Kelly slid off his desk and picked up the telephone receiver. “All right, what’s her number?”

  He drew his brows together and was relieved that the automatic action hadn’t spawned an accompanying sharp stab of pain the way it had earlier. That was a good sign, right?

  “Which ‘her’ are we referring to?”

  Kelly fisted her other hand on her hip to keep from hitting him. “The ‘her’ who obviously didn’t do her job in examining you.”

  That brought back an image of Shawna and the interest she had aroused
in him. And a trace of mischief to his smile. “That was not for lack of trying on my part.”

  Violence wasn’t going to solve anything, though right about now it might have felt good. Kelly made a conscious effort to curb her temper. The receiver slipped from her fingers back into the cradle.

  She took his hands in hers. “Murphy, it’s me, remember? You can lose the love-’em-and-leave-’em act. I was at the church, I shared the pain.” She looked into his eyes and saw that it was still there, a pain that had nothing to do with the blow he had received to his temple. A pain that wouldn’t go away until the right woman picked up the pieces and helped Murphy put his life together again. “You don’t have to be the world’s greatest playboy with me.”

  He squeezed her hands in mute gratitude, then let them drop. He wouldn’t accept sympathy, not even from her. “You’re my sister, Kell. They have laws against that in every state in the union.”

  Kelly moved restlessly through the elegantly furnished room. If she ever ran into Janice Wilson she was going to cut the woman’s heart out. Just the way Janice had done to her brother.

  Sympathy tugged at her the way it always did whenever she thought of Murphy being literally left standing at the altar. The strains of “Here Comes The Bride” had just begun to fade into the huge church as Janice’s older sister had come running up the aisle to Murphy, her face a mask of anxiety. Janice had called the officiating priest to say that the wedding was off, that she was marrying someone else.

  Stunned, Murphy had appeared to recover quickly and had made a joke out of it. He’d invited everyone to attend the reception anyway, since the tab had been paid for. He had gotten royally and roundly drunk that night, but not so drunk that she couldn’t see his broken heart.

  Kelly sat down, sorry the topic had been dredged up and that she had been the cause of it. “It was a case of cold feet creating a huge mistake.”

  “Yeah.” He laughed shortly. He’d been a fool to believe in happily ever after. That only happened to a chosen few. And he wasn’t one of the chosen. “Mine.”