Husband for Hire

by Susan Wiggs

  Deciding it was impolite to speculate on people’s reading choices, he turned his attention to the collection of family pictures. Framed photos hung everywhere or stood propped on every available surface. Seizing on a way to fill the silence, Rob said, “So give me the grand tour. These photos don’t have captions.”

  “It’s just family stuff. Boring, really,” she said.

  He picked one up. The photo featured Twyla as a girl, playing outside a double-wide mobile home. “I’ll be the judge of that. Humor me.”

  “Lord, I was a skinny thing, wasn’t I?” she said. “That’s the Lazy Acres Mobile Home Court, where I spent most of my childhood. Classy place.” With a wry smile, she gave a shake of her head. “Here I am with my father on the miniature golf course he built. He spent all his savings on it.”

  “Quite the place.”

  She set down the framed photo. “I’m sorry to say it failed despite the marvelous innovation of sound effects. Bells and whistles when the ball went in the hole.”

  “He must’ve been way ahead of his time.”

  “He was a dreamer,” Gwen said, not unkindly. She had entered the room with a tray of coffee and rolls. “And a bit of a dabbler, never settling on one project.” She stared fondly at the golf course photo, then wiped her hands on her apron. “I’ll leave you two, then.”

  “No, please, join us—”

  She held up a hand. “I promised Brian I’d sugar down those blackberries he picked. We’ll have a cobbler tonight.”

  Rob grinned, watching her go. “Don’t tell me. She’s in on the matchmaking along with the other two.”

  Twyla nodded. “I swear, I get tired of it sometimes. They’re so convinced I need someone. They’ve tried to set me up with a tractor mechanic, a cow buyer, a rough-stock rider, the sheriff’s deputy…and a bunch of others.” She smiled a little shyly. “This is the first time they’ve actually paid for a man to match me up with.”

  “The pressure’s killing me.” Rob poured coffee and helped himself to a roll, savoring the fresh-baked taste of it. “So keep going. I want the rest of the tour.”

  The photos of Twyla chronicled a life that probably should have added up to something different than it had. At the age of thirteen, she stood proudly beside an adjudicator, having won her first local piano competition. She was the cutest cheerleader he’d ever seen, and valedictorian of her high school class. The prom picture was a classic—the oversize corsage, the nervous smiles, the stiff poses. She had learned to speak French by correspondence course and was accepted at no less than four private colleges.

  “So did you go?” he asked.

  A faraway look softened her face. “I sure wanted to, but things didn’t work out.”

  “Would it be getting too personal to ask what those ‘things’ were?”

  She flinched, pain darkening her eyes. “I got married right out of school to a guy who was a junior in college. We were too young, of course. Every couple that’s too young believes they’ll be the exception to the statistics—ever notice that?”

  “Never really thought about it.”

  “Have you ever been married, Rob?”

  “No.” He didn’t bring up Lauren. They weren’t married or even engaged. They just…were. He finished his coffee, gulping it too fast. “Why do you ask?”

  “No reason.” She bit her lip, and a troubling emotion glittered in her eyes.

  “Hey, you don’t have to explain,” Rob said quickly. This was exactly why he practiced medicine in a laboratory. He didn’t have the patience and compassion to deal with people getting emotional, baring their souls.

  “No, I don’t mind talking about the past, really.”

  Great. Rob reminded himself that she had offered him a chance to back out. Instead, like an idiot, he’d shown up at her house. Her poor, decrepit house that smelled of baking bread and furniture polish and rang with the laughter of a little boy.

  Her eyes, hazy with remembrance, looked unseeing out the window. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be melodramatic. But what happened was big stuff for a small town like Hell Creek.”

  She took a sip of her coffee and visibly tried to compose herself. She had a great face, Rob thought, watching her. She had the subtle freckles and fair coloring of a natural redhead, eyes that said too much, a mouth that smiled too easily.

  Agitated, she stood up, rubbing her hands up and down her arms as if she felt a sudden chill. “To make a long story short, my father died suddenly and my mother—” she glanced at the doorway and dropped her voice “—was left pretty devastated, emotionally and financially.”

  Rob suddenly wished he was far away. Very far. “Twyla, are you sure you want to talk about this?”

  She stopped rubbing her arms. “Does all this emotional baggage bother you?”

  “No,” he lied.

  “Let me know if it does, and I’ll stop.”

  “You mean there’s more?”

  She took a sip of coffee. “Stay tuned. Where were we? Oh, yeah. It didn’t help that my husband was dumping me right about the time of my father’s death. So much for my own plans. I couldn’t go away and leave my mother twisting in the wind. Since I already knew how to do hair, I looked for a salon to buy so we could stay together as a family. Practically overnight, I had my own business.”

  “Twyla’s Tease ’n’ Tweeze.”

  A smile curved her mouth as she took a seat. “Call it a moment of mad whimsy. Mom and I were hitting the zinfandel that night.”

  Family, Rob realized, was a tender trap. When he had graduated from high school, there was no one to stand in the way of his plans. No parent in need or sibling in trouble or lover making demands. He had to wonder if he would have given up his future for the sake of a family member who needed him.

  Rob glanced down. In her lap, Twyla had torn a napkin to shreds. “Hey,” he said, “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  She noticed the napkin and shook her head. “Don’t worry. In a town like Lightning Creek, no one has any secrets. I expect the entire membership of the Quilt Quorum knows you’re here right now.”

  “And is that a problem?”

  “No, not at all. But I absolve you of your obligation to go through with this reunion thing.”

  “That’s what I came to talk about.”

  “Good. I’m glad you agree—”

  “We’re going.”

  She laughed, an easy laugh that was indulgent and the slightest bit condescending. He imagined her laughing that way in her salon as her customers enumerated their husbands’ quirks.

  “Rob, really. That’s a nice gesture. But I know how boring it would be for you.”

  “I mean it. We’re going to your reunion.”

  “Why?” She seemed astonished, vaguely suspicious. “Why are you being such a good guy about this?”

  “You have something against good guys?”

  “No, I’m just amazed that you’re one of them. Most rich doctors wouldn’t bother.”

  “Thanks for reducing me to a stereotype,” Rob said. “Look, your little old ladies planned this thing down to the last detail. If we go through with it, maybe the town matchmakers will back off for a while.”

  She sat in pensive silence. Rob wondered what it would be like to know her, to be privy to the thoughts behind her light, expressive eyes.

  No, he didn’t want to know. They’d best remain polite strangers. He wouldn’t see her again after the reunion, so there was no need to mess things up with rambling heart-to-heart talks. No need to wonder what might happen if—

  He reeled with the thought. People complicated each other’s lives. Twyla McCabe was living proof of that. He didn’t need any part of it.

  “Would you like to take a walk?” she asked suddenly.

  Caught off guard, he said, “Sure.”

  They walked outside and up the sun-warmed slope at the back of the house. Bees grumbled indolently through the daisies and blue lupine and Indian paintbrush that covered the hill, but Rob found
his gaze straying to Twyla.

  He kept telling himself to keep his distance, but it wasn’t working. He noticed everything about her—the way the breeze lifted her hair, the fact that she wasn’t wearing any panty hose, the way her face softened when she looked down the hill and spied Brian and her mother, sorting berries on the railed back porch. There was a certain way a woman had of looking at those she loved. Rob had noticed this during his pediatric rotation. It was the most subtle, soft and tender look he could imagine. Twyla did it so naturally.

  She showed him around with the mock formality of a tour guide, and he discovered a shed filled with a treasure trove of tools, a handyman’s dream. “The former owner had a woodworking shop,” she explained. “Have you ever done any woodworking?”

  “Carpentry was part of the program at Lost Springs. I liked it.” Rob surprised himself with the comment. He had liked the work, but he hadn’t worked with his hands in years.

  “I think the owner before him was even more interesting,” Twyla said, pointing out an abandoned chicken coop that had concealed a whiskey still in the twenties. She went on to show him a stream trickling from a crack in the rocks on the hillside and a half-buried thresher so rusted and ancient that she had planted it with morning glories and called it a yard ornament.

  As he checked out the place with her, he told himself he was looking forward to getting this over with.

  But as the moments wore on, soft and drowsy with the flavor of a summer afternoon, Rob felt something happening to him. Against all good sense, against the central tenet of his life’s plan, he felt drawn to her.

  Drawn to this girl who grew up in a trailer park, nurtured on grand dreams that had no chance of ever coming true. This girl who dyed hair for a living.

  As they walked along a beaten earth path that bordered her property, he kept trying to focus on Denver, his plans, his ambitions…Lauren. But his attention kept getting tugged in a different direction altogether. It was nuts. A basic animal attraction. Twyla had the most amazing looks. No guy with eyes in his head could help himself.

  And Brian was simply an added distraction. He reminded Rob painfully of himself at six—abandoned at Lost Springs, hungry for a connection, showing up in the Spruce Room every Sunday during family hour, “just in case.”

  He eyed the weary-looking, paint-thirsty house. There was something sorry and neglected about the property, an air of thwarted plans, aborted possibilities.

  This was bad, he told himself. He barely knew this woman yet he wanted to know everything.

  He had spent his whole life trying to forget and escape small towns, small farms, small people and their small dreams. So what was he doing back here, finding himself more concerned about Twyla’s broken porch rail than anything else in the world?

  “We need a game plan,” he said, walking to his car.

  “What do you mean?”

  “For your reunion.”

  “But I never said I’d—”

  “I never asked. I’m telling you.”

  “Just like a doctor,” she said. “Arrogant.”

  “Now, look. People are going to ask how we met, all that stuff. It would probably be a good idea to coordinate our stories.”

  She burst out laughing. “Oh, this is so insane, and it’s going to be so much fun!”

  He looked down into her laughing face, her merry eyes. “You need more fun in your life.”

  “You’re beginning to sound like one of my customers.”

  “Just stay away from me with your scissors.” He grinned. “I’ll be up sometime Friday on a flight to Casper. I’ll call you during the week. Mrs. Spinelli’s travel agent took care of all the bookings to Jackson.”

  “Oh, God. We’re really going to do this, aren’t we?”

  “Are we ever.” He hesitated. Instinct made him want to say goodbye with a kiss. Instead, he handed her a business card. “All my numbers are there.”

  “Thanks. See you on Friday, then.”

  As he drove away from the farm, a plume of dust obscuring the view, Rob had a feeling that he had just done something he shouldn’t have.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “SOMETHING’S WRONG,” Twyla said, scowling at Sadie Kittredge’s reflection in the circular rose-tinted mirror.

  “It’s my usual set.” Sadie craned her neck, turning her head this way and that.

  “I don’t mean your hair,” Twyla said. “I mean with this whole thing. This whole reunion thing.”

  She took a rake and added some loft to Sadie’s bright, glossy curls. All week long she had been thinking about going back to Hell Creek, returning like a conquering hero with a trophy doctor at her side. The problem was, she wasn’t the conquering-hero type. Or conquering heroine, for that matter.

  But a long time ago, she had been. Her father had taught her to dream, and she knew there was magic in dreams. Meeting Rob, facing the challenge of going back home made her want the magic back. It made her want the fire—even at the risk of getting burned.

  “Okay, so tell me what you’re thinking,” Sadie said, “and I’ll tell you why you’re wrong.”

  “That’s why I love you so much,” Twyla said. “What I’m thinking is that I’m such a different person from the one who left Hell Creek seven years ago. I’m too old to play games like this. I shouldn’t care what they think of me.”

  “You’re never too old to find validation.” Sadie worked for the county schools as a family therapist, and she was annoyingly good at what she did.

  “So what do I need to validate, Herr Doktor?” Twyla asked.

  Sadie swiveled herself around in the chair to face her. “The choices you’ve made.”

  “Honey, I don’t have time to stop for lunch, much less validate my life choices.”

  “Going back is necessary closure. You’ve told me enough about the circumstances of your leaving that I understand you left a few loose ends untied.”

  “That’s a diplomatic way of putting it.” The truth was, she had fled a town that had humiliated her father, left a husband who had hung her out to dry, and found herself alone with a mother so devastated by events that she couldn’t bring herself to leave the house. After a couple of glasses of wine one time, Twyla had confessed this to Sadie, whose eyes had filled with angry tears for the broken young girl Twyla had been and for the panic-stricken Gwen, who had yet to step off the porch of the old McCabe place.

  “It’s not too late to cancel,” Twyla said. “I really should stay. I know Diep can do hair as well as nails, but Saturday’s always a big day at the shop, and I’ve never spent a night away from Brian—”

  “You worry too much,” Diep Tran scolded, bustling past with a tray of clanking nail supplies. “I keep the salon open, your mother keep Brian, you go to Jackson with Dr. Hunk. No worries, none at all.”

  “Ha. Easy for you to say.” She pumped down the swivel chair and untied Sadie’s smock, shaking it out and tossing it into a stainless steel pail. “If I really wanted validation, I’d go alone instead of leaning on Dr. Hunk.”

  “Why would you want to when you have a willing hunk to lean on?” Sadie asked.

  “That’s what I mean about something being wrong. He’s too willing. There’s got to be something the matter with this picture.”

  “Good God, did you leave your self-esteem hanging on the back of the bathroom door this morning?” Sadie demanded. “Why can’t you simply allow the idea that a gorgeous, successful man wants to take you away for a weekend?”

  Twyla would never admit it, but just hearing the words made her stomach jump with a forbidden thrill. Maybe he did find her attractive and interesting, though they had so little in common. On the other hand, maybe he was simply a responsible guy who wanted to fulfill his end of the bargain. Every time she was tempted to believe in him, she reminded herself that logic could explain his actions. Best to be practical, she told herself briskly. Hopeless romantics were just that: hopeless.

  Diep checked the clock. “No appointments fo
r half an hour. You sit, Twyla. Time to do your nails.”

  “I never get my nails done,” she protested. “It interferes with my work.”

  “No more working today. You take tomorrow off. Get ready for Dr. Hunk.”

  “Oh, God—”

  “Quit being such a baby.” Sadie pressed the small of her back, propelling her to Diep’s station. “Do as Diep says and call me tonight. I have to run.”

  After Sadie left, Twyla sat down and laid her hands on the table. “Okay. I’m all yours.”

  “Feet first,” Diep said sternly. “Shoes off.”

  Twyla knew she would get no peace unless she complied, so she took off her shoes. The pedicure, she had to admit, was pure heaven. Silky, heated lotion in the foot tub. A massage that made her shut her eyes and groan. Delicate strokes of the brush, applying a perfect seashell pink.

  “Too bad it’s not a real date,” Twyla said. “I wouldn’t mind showing off my feet.”

  “It is a real date. And you better show off your feet,” Diep said sternly.

  “Maybe I’ll wear sandals on the flight to Jackson,” Twyla conceded.

  “Maybe you go barefoot.”

  Twyla bit her lip sternly, trying not to picture herself naked…with Rob Carter.

  Diep finished, then plucked Twyla’s hands out of the heated gloves. “Okay, now the hands.”

  There were women who drove as far as seventy miles to get their nails done by Diep Tran. When it came to nails, she had no peer. She bent industriously over Twyla’s hands, transforming the blunt, workmanlike nails into the elegant, sculptured ovals of a lady. They looked as if they belonged to someone else. To someone who traveled the world, played piano in concert, spoke French to foreign diplomats. To the woman Twyla had once had every intention of becoming.