Mom Over Miami - By Annie Jones Page 0,32
and the perfume she’d spritzed on her neck just before coming into the silent waiting room. And she said, “I appreciate how hard you work, Payt. But—”
“Some of these cases, Hannah—” he raised his gaze but did not meet hers “—they’d break your heart.”
“Oh.” How could she have acted like no one else figured in this scenario? Payt had patients. Sick little children depended on him to ease their suffering.
“And if I don’t check all the right boxes and fill out the right forms, the hassles with insurance can shoot these poor parents’ stress levels through the roof.”
“Never thought of that.” And she’d been ready to read him the riot act for not paying enough attention to her.
Her. With the two beautiful healthy children, the bighearted husband and the meddling aunt come from halfway around the world to help with them all.
For someone who liked to think she never thought of herself, she sure did think a lot of herself.
“Give me forty minutes, and if you’re not done, I’ll pitch in and we’ll knock off the cleaning,” he muttered.
Cleaning. She hated to seem ungrateful, especially on the heels of such a humbling moment but…“You know, when you called today you never said a word about cleaning. I, uh, I actually thought you invited me to dinner.”
“Dinner! What a great idea. Let’s grab some burgers or a pizza on the way home.” He bounced a kiss off her cheek and turned away to begin leafing through a stack of files on his huge, dark cherry desk.
“Payt!”
He worked a single page loose from the brass brackets in the file in his hand. “What?”
She held her arms out to her sides and shook her head.
With the paper wedged between his thumb and first knuckle, he swept his fingers back through his hair, leaving it as disheveled as his expression looked dumbfounded. “What?”
She let out a soft sigh and tried not to laugh at her adorable but clueless man. “Not what, honey. Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why have me come to your office to empty trash and clean the break room? Don’t you have a service for that?”
“I asked Dr. Briggs the same thing, and turns out he, um, that is, we…don’t.” He waved the paper hard enough to make it crackle. “Gotta run make a copy of this.”
And he slipped away.
Hit and run. Deliver the bad news, then disappear. The man hated confrontation. Always had. So on those rare occasions when he couldn’t charm his way out of dealing with unpleasantness, he avoided it.
Unfortunately for her hubby, this tactic wasn’t going to work. Not anymore. She now had experience with eight-year-olds.
“Payt?” she singsonged ever so sweetly, padding barefoot behind him down the hall.
“Yes?” He parroted her tone.
“Even if you don’t have a cleaning service, you do have a staff.”
“Hmm?” He slid the paper into the copier.
“You know, the people who make the mess in the first place. Shouldn’t they clean up after themselves?”
He punched the copy button, and the machine whirred to life.
“Shouldn’t they be doing the cleaning, instead of me? It’s not that I mind a little hard work but…you do have a staff for that kind of thing. Right?”
He pulled out the copy and examined it a little too long before grabbing the original and brushing past her, saying, “We have a staff, Hannah, but they aren’t here right now, and now is when the work needs to be done.”
She clenched her teeth. Her cheeks burned. Not in anger but because she felt like such a dope.
Obviously he didn’t want to tell her why he’d asked her in to do someone else’s work. Or maybe he just didn’t understand why she wanted him to tell her. Either way, it made her feel…disconnected. Dismissed. Just plain dissed.
He didn’t mean it that way. She knew he didn’t mean it.
But…
“Payt, honey, can’t you just tell me what’s going on?”
His eyes searched her face.
For a second she thought he might just tell her to mind her own business. No, strike that. He’d tell her to mind him and his business and stop presuming she deserved an explanation.
He’d never done anything like that before.
She had no reason to believe that he ever would.
But in her anxious heart, in the depths of her imagination, in the fears and self-doubt that bubbled just below the surface of her practiced persona, she suddenly suspected he wanted to.
Then he heaved out a world-weary breath, shook his head and, wearing a sheepish grin, he leaned against the door frame. “I’m so embarrassed, Hannah. How