Read Online Husband for Hire by Susan Wiggs - Free Book Online Page B

thinking about a poorly ventilated gymnasium filled with people he didn’t know, overdressed and hugging one another, sucking in their guts, squinting at name tags and talking about the past ten years. Trying, in a way that was so achingly human, to make those years seem better, more important than they really had been.
    “Do you know why she’d want to drag you along to a reunion?” Stan asked.
    “It wasn’t her idea,” Rob said. He explained about Mrs. Spinelli and Mrs. Duckworth. He thought about the tacky pink-and-white salon next door. It would be so damned easy to help her. Her friends from the salon were making it easy. “They think they’re doing her a favor. They want her to waltz back to her hometown with her head held high and her pride intact.”
    “Sounds like a B movie.” Stan eyed Rob critically. “And she needs you in order to do that?”
    “Nope. She doesn’t need anything. She’s fine.”
    “Then why?”
    “The old biddies, I guess. They want everyone to see Twyla as a big success, even in the marriage department.”
    “Twyla? Her name is Twyla?” Stan swallowed hard, apparently trying not to spew his beer.
    “Yeah, Twyla. You got a problem with that?” Rob asked, annoyed by the third degree. “It’s a scheme cooked up by these cute little old ladies.”
    “So blow the whole thing off.”
    “No. I said I’d do it.”
    “Damn. This Twyla must be something else.”
    He shrugged.
    “So what’s she like?” Stan persisted.
    Rob pictured her big misty eyes, and the way her hand stroked her son’s head with unconscious affection. He’d be better off not remembering what it had been like to put his hands on her waist and lower her down from that tree, but he couldn’t help it. Though brief, the contact had made a vivid impression on him. She’d felt young and firm, pleasantly damp with sweat. And she’d blushed as only a redhead can blush.
    “Let’s just say she’s no mongrel.”
    Stan signaled for a refill of their beer mugs. “I suppose there’s no harm in being some woman’s trophy date for a night, if that would fix things for this Twyla. Let’s go have a game of darts.”
    All the rest of the evening, Rob thought about being a trophy date. Stan was still as smart as he’d been during their school days here. Still knew how to get to the heart of the matter. The truth was, Rob did like fixing things. In his practice, he never let go of a case until he figured out the right answer. If it meant pacing the floors all night, reading huge tomes in the medical library or online, he doggedly looked for answers.
    Lauren liked to boast about his deep commitment to his profession, but that always made Rob feel like a fraud. Because deep down, he knew what motivated him, and it didn’t have anything to do with high principles and a commitment to the greater good of mankind.
    It was as simple as a boyhood memory and a vow to put security first. As simple as his last glimpse of his mother, a pale, pretty woman with tears in her eyes and a bruised jaw. With eerie clarity, he recalled standing in the ranch director’s office, intimidated by the big overstuffed leather chairs and the Bierstadt and Remington prints on the walls.
    With a schoolgirl scrawl, his mother signed her name to a long document. “You’ll be better off this way,” she’d said, and three decades later Rob could still feel the dry, warm touch of her hand on his cheek. “I can’t give you no kind of life, not now. Maybe later…”
    “Maybe later” had haunted him for years afterward. Sundays at the ranch were family day, and Rob used to show up at twelve o’clock on the dot, hair combed and shoes shined, wearing his best jeans. “In case she comes today,” he used to tell Mr. Duncan. But she never did.
    Even after Mr. Duncan gently suggested that Rob find some other Sunday activity, he kept showing up, kept hoping. He’d sit unobtrusively in the Spruce Room of the main lodge, watching as boys got hugs