Mom Over Miami - By Annie Jones Page 0,31

technically a person not getting a paycheck doesn’t have ‘hours’—then whatever electricity you use can hardly be called wasted.” Hannah took a few steps toward the closed-in reception area.

“I know. You’re right, but Dr. Briggs—”

“Is not coming back here tonight.” She’d met the man who had taken Payt on as a junior partner a whopping total of two times. Even so, Hannah grasped the improbability of the fiftysomething, single-again-and-had-the-foreign-sports-car-to-prove-it man returning after hours for a “lights-out” check. “At this very moment Dr. Briggs is probably filling himself to the gills at the Maisonette or wherever it is men of his ilk stuff themselves.”

Payt’s dark brows slanted in over the most innocently perplexed eyes in the world. “What’s your point?”

“At least tell me that while you’re putting in overtime here, Dr. Briggs has taken on call for the night.”

Payt shook his head, almost smiling as he said, “I was going to be working anyway.”

Hannah groaned and started to rub her eyes. Her fingertips touched her mascara-coated lashes. The first time she’d worn more than a smidge of makeup in months. She didn’t want to smear it all over the place. So she cupped her hands over her cheeks and dropped her gaze to the floor.

“I’m not saying to turn the lights off while you’re in the room, Hannah. Just have the courtesy to hit the switch on your way out when you’re done.”

“If I were going to hit anything on my way out, Bartlett, it wouldn’t be the switch.” She folded her arms and waited.

“Thanks, sweetie. I’ll be in my office catching up on paperwork.” He slid the glass partition closed between them.

“Catching up. This is what you meant by catching up?” All she saw was a blur where her husband had stood moments ago.

He had cut her off. In every way possible. Visually. Verbally. Audibly. Emotionally.

As she stood there with her mouth open and heart exposed, her initial responses of denial, determination and even the first wash of anger evaporated. And shame flooded in to take their place.

“I shouldn’t. I don’t deserve a new outfit,” she had told Aunt Phiz, who had encouraged her to pull out all the stops. “This money should go for something the kids need. Besides, someone who hasn’t lost all the weight from her baby shouldn’t indulge in clothes. What if it makes me too comfy in my new shape?”

“It will make Payt happy to see you looking so pretty,” her aunt had countered.

And Hannah had bought it. The line of reasoning and the pretty dress.

Pride had made her do it, and she knew better. What did she have to be proud of?

As for making Payt happy? Obviously she could have accomplished that in coveralls and a hair net, or a sweat suit or…any outfit that said she had come to get some work done. Hannah took a deep breath.

Hmm. No “doctory” smell of rubbing alcohol, the astringent odor that had made her pulse race as a child. Not even the odd clash of freshly baked goodies brought in by clients and sterile biohazard-approved disinfectant spray that permeated the clinic in Wileyville. This place smelled…empty.

And she didn’t like it.

She kicked off her sandals and set them carefully by the door. She had run the gamut of emotions. What else remained but acceptance?

Or action.

Why not? She’d stood up to Jacqui Lafferty. And Jacqui Lafferty was a lot more intimidating than Payton Bartlett, boy-faced pediatrician.

“Payt, honey.” She pushed through the door and made a beeline for the tiny back office that Payt had inherited from the other two young pediatricians Dr. Briggs had driven off over the past five years. “What are you doing here?”

He stood right beside the door collecting pieces of paper from a plastic “in” box. “You wouldn’t believe how many forms I have to deal with in a day.”

Don’t start with me about not knowing what your spouse deals with in a day. You are the absolute king of that.

Early in her marriage she had learned not to let every sharp or sarcastic thought she had pop out of her mouth. She’d learned that from watching—and listening—to her sister Sadie, who never seemed to let a smart-mouthed remark go unuttered.

That wasn’t the way to win friends or mend marriages, Hannah thought. So she entwined her fingers in front of her. She pulled back her shoulders. She drew in the warm, lingering scent of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich she’d made Sam as part of the chaos of getting out of the house,