Hired by Her Husband (17 page)

George just shook his head, dazed.

“I almost didn’t even go to his funeral,” Sophy confided. “But then I thought I should go—for Lily. She might want to know about it when she got older.” Sophy spread her hands. “I didn’t love Ari,” she said earnestly. “Truly. I might have thought I did once—but not later. And definitely not when we got married.”

George shook his head, still coming to terms. “But you cried.”

Sophy frowned. “Cried? About Ari?”

“I thought so. That first night…when we…made love.”

Oh, God. Yes, she remembered those tears. “I wasn’t crying for Ari. I wasn’t even thinking about Ari—except maybe briefly when I thought how unlike making love with Ari was. Making love with you was…beautiful.” Just like the last time they’d made love—at Tallie and Elias’s. She hesitated, and
then thought she had nothing left to lose and gave him the words she had been afraid to say at the time. “And I loved you.”

George didn’t speak. His Adam’s apple moved convulsively in his throat. His fingers flexed, made fists, then opened again. He took a breath and let it out. “Then why were you so angry the next day? Why did you tell me to go?”

“I didn’t believe you loved me. I thought I was a duty—one of Ari’s messes you always had to clean up.”

George grimaced and said a rude word. “No! I never—”

“I heard you say so, George. You told your father you’d always cleaned up Ari’s messes and you were sick of doing it and that whatever it was he wanted you to do was the last one. I heard you, George, with my own ears.”

“When?”

“At the christening. Upstairs. You and your father were arguing. About a woman. One of Ari’s women.” She forced herself to be frank. “You said you wouldn’t clean up any more of his messes. And that at least he—your father—couldn’t expect you to marry this one!”

“Because I was married to you!”

“Because I was one of Ari’s messes!”

“No! You got it all wrong. I didn’t mean you—for God’s sake, how could you think it?”

“What else was I to think?”

“Not you! Not ever you! There was other stuff. Lots of other stuff. Most of my life I was cleaning up after Ari. He got in a car accident in college. His fault. He didn’t have insurance. His dad had died the year before. We paid the bills, compensation, that stuff. I took care of it. My father was busy. Theo was gone. And—” he shrugged “—so I did it. Ari was the closest to me in age. We grew up together. People sometimes thought we were the ones who were brothers because we looked the most alike. There were other things, too.”

“This woman?”

He shook his head. “She was claiming Ari owed her money. No, but before…there were other things…”

He was silent for so long that Sophy wondered if he would continue, but finally he did.

“He borrowed money from me when I was in grad school. He had a project that he was working on, he said. I believed him. I lent him the money. He was a smart guy, no reason why it couldn’t have been a good thing…”

“It wasn’t?” Sophy guessed.

George shook his head. “He’d got some girl pregnant.” His voice was low, hard to hear. He swallowed. “Paid for her to have an abortion.” He looked at her, his expression grim, his gaze grim. “When I found out you were pregnant, I was glad he was dead.”

Sophy hugged her arms across her body. “I would never—”

“I know. I knew then. But I didn’t want you to have the baby alone. I wanted to be there. Hell, from the first time I met you, I felt a connection, but how could I act on it? You were…his!”

Sophy came then and stood in front of him, looked up at him and met his gaze, stopped being afraid, stopped running. “I wasn’t ever his the way I’m yours.”

For a moment they just stared into each other’s eyes. Then hers brimmed with tears and spilled over as he wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her hair. She felt a tremor run through him, knew her own body trembled. Held him tight. Felt his arms crush her.

“I love you,” she whispered. “I’ve loved you since the beginning. Our beginning. I didn’t say yes so you’d take care of me. I said it because I wanted you, thought I could build a life with you, a good one, with you and me and Lily. And when I thought that family duty was the only reason you were doing it, I knew I had to let you go so you could live the life you wanted.”

He drew her down onto the sofa with him and wrapped his arms around her again, kissed her cheek, shook his head. “Family duty has nothing to do with us. Never did. The life I wanted—the life I still want—is with you. Understand?”

But Sophy needed all the loose ends tied up. “What about…Uppsala? You didn’t even mention it.”

He shook his head. “Top secret multigovernment project. Once we got married there was no way I was going to do that. I told you that last week.”

“You didn’t tell me what it was,” she protested.

He grinned. “Because if I did I’d have to kill you.”

She grinned, too, but then her grin faded. “Are you still…?”

“No. Everything I’m doing now would bore the socks off you. But it’s what I want to do—if you’ll come home with me.” Deep green eyes bored into hers. “Will you?”

For just a moment Sophy paused to savor the moment, to breathe in the calm and the peace and the love she’d never hoped to win. It was hers. It always had been. She regretted for an instant the time they had lost, but then thought about all the time they had left that they might never have got if these past three weeks hadn’t happened.

Today was the first day of the rest of her life—and it was looking better and better.

She smiled and framed his face in her hands. “I will. Oh, George, yes, please. I will!”

They were kissing when the door opened and small footsteps came padding down the hall. “Daddy!” Lily’s joy echoed around the room.

She flung herself on them and they gathered her in.

And then George pulled back. “Hang on,” he said and got to his feet. Lily clung to him as he started for the door. “No,” he told her. “You wait here. I’ll be right back.”

Lily looked disgruntled, but reluctantly went back to Sophy and crawled into her arms. Her eyes were bloodshot, too, from
all of last night’s crying. But her smile was real and brilliant. “I knew Daddy would come,” she said.

“You’re a smart girl,” Sophy told her. “You believed.”

Lily nodded. “You gotta.”

Then the door opened again and a large exuberant black dog bounded in and leapt onto the couch with them.

“Gunnar!” Lily shrieked and threw her arms around him.

“You brought Gunnar?” Sophy stared at George, amazed. “On the plane?”

“He’s part of the family,” George said simply. Then he grinned and picked Lily up to find room on the sofa for all of them. “And I figured if you wouldn’t listen to me, Lily and Gunnar together couldn’t help but convince you.” He threaded his fingers in her damp, tousled hair, making her aware of what a wreck she must look.

She said so.

George shook his head. “You are beautiful—inside and out. And I am the luckiest man in the world.”

Sophy’s tears spilled again. “And I am the luckiest woman.”

“We are the luckiest family,” Lily said. “Aren’t we, Gunnar?”

Gunnar made his agreement noise and bumped Lily with his nose. She wrapped her arms around him and giggled. “Gunnar’s a good brother,” she said. “But I wouldn’t mind one like Digger. Could I please have a brother like Digger?” she asked her parents.

Sophy looked at George. George looked at Sophy. They put their arms around each other—and around Lily and Gunnar.

Then George kissed his wife and said, “You know, Lil, that’s a really good idea.” He smiled into Sophy’s eyes. “I think your mother and I will see what we can do about that.”

All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

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First published in Great Britain 2010
Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited,
Eton House, 18–24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

© Barbara Schenck 2010

ISBN: 978-1-408-91936-1