Hired by Her Husband Read Online Free PDF Page A

never existed.
    And even worse was the realization that, however desperately she might wish it, she wasn’t over him at all.
    When she’d walked into the hospital room to see George lying there, his head bandaged, his arm in a sling, his whisker-shadowed jaw bruised, his normally tanned face unnaturally pale, she felt gutted—exactly the same way she’d felt seeing her daughter fall off the jungle gym at her preschool.
    The sight of Lily slipping and tumbling, then lying motionless on the ground, had shattered Sophy’s world. That same sickening breathlessness had hit her again at the sight of George in his hospital bed.
    The difference was that Lilly, having landed on wood chips that cushioned her fall, had only had the wind knocked out of her. Seconds later, she’d bounced up again none the worse for wear.
    But George hadn’t moved.
    It was early when she’d arrived, straight from the airport, still stiff and groggy from a sleepless night on the plane. He should have been asleep. But it looked like such an unnatural sleep. And Sophy had stopped dead in the doorway, clutching the doorjamb as she stood watching him never flutter so much as an eyelash. She had been too far away to see the rise and fall of his chest.
    She must have looked stricken because the nurse had said, “Watch the monitor.” Its squiggly line was moving up and down jerkily. But at least it proved he was breathing because absolutely nothing else did.
    “You can wake him if you want,” this same nurse had said.
    But Sophy had shaken her head. If George wasn’t dead yet, the sight of her first thing when he opened his eyes might very well do it for him.
    “No. Let him sleep,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper. “I’ll just wait.”
    “If he’s not awake in an hour, I’ll be back. We have to wake him regularly to see how he responds and if he remembers everything.”
    No doubt about his memory, Sophy thought grimly now.
    She turned to the nurse. “He thinks he’s going to leave today, to go to work. The doctor wouldn’t really let him…”
    The nurse smiled. “I don’t think you need to worry about that. They’ll be watching him today and probably tomorrow. You should go home now and get some rest. Come back this afternoon. Chances are he’ll be much brighter by then.” She gave Sophy one more encouraging smile, then checked her beeper and hurried down the hall.
    Sophy stood there with her overnight bag and her briefcase and realized she didn’t have a home to go to.
    Home was three thousand miles away.
    On the other hand, why shouldn’t she go home? What was keeping her here? George had clearly dismissed her. As far as he was concerned, she needn’t have bothered to come in the first place.
    And she certainly wasn’t going to come back this afternoon. She’d done her duty. “Payback,” he’d called it.
    And he’d rejected it. Consider it paid, he’d said.
    That was fine with her. Shooting one last glance toward his room, she turned and wheeled her overnight bag down the hall to the elevator and pressed the button and waited, trying to keep her eyes open and stifle a yawn.
    She was in the midst of the latter when the elevator door opened. There were several people in it, but only one, a young, dark-haired, very pregnant woman, swept out, then stopped dead and stared at her.
    “Sophy?”
    Sophy blinked, startled. “Tallie?”
    “Oh, my God, it is you!” And before Sophy could do more than close her gaping mouth, George’s sister, Tallie, swept her into a fierce delighted hug. “You’ve come back!”
    “Well, I—” But whatever protest she might have made was muffled by the enthusiastic warmth of Tallie’s embrace. And Sophy couldn’t do much more than hug her back. It was no hardship in any case. She’d always adored George’s sister. Losing the right to count Tallie as her sister-in-law had been one of the real pains of the end of her marriage.
    Before she could say anything, a firm thump against