Wife for Hire - By Janet Evanovich Page 0,3
do you think, do you still want the job?”
She’d already decided she wanted the job, but she thought it wouldn’t hurt to grill him a little.
“The employment agency said you simply wanted a woman-in-residence, and that I’d be expected to act as hostess once in a while?”
“Yup.”
“Nothing else would be required of me?”
“Nope.”
She gave him a long, considering look. If he wanted a wife so bad, why didn’t the man simply fall in love and get married? It was a little suspicious. “What’s the matter with you anyway? Are you weird?”
The color returned to his cheeks. “No. Jeez, I just need a wife for a few months!” He pushed his hand through his hair. “I want to expand my business, but none of the local banks will advance me any money. They say I’m not a stable member of the community.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Why would they think that?”
“I was born in Skogen, but I took off as soon as I could read a road map. I’d played hockey all my life, and I was pretty good, so I tried going pro. I was this close to making it.” He measured the air with his fingers.
“I was always good enough to get picked up in the draft, but never good enough to make final cuts. When that didn’t work out, I bounced around for a while, trying to find something else that interested me. I guess I looked pretty shiftless to the folks in Skogen. Finally I decided to go back to school. I went to the University of Vermont and studied agriculture and business, but I never graduated.”
The grin he’d been holding back finally broke through. “Exams were always at the beginning of fishing season, or when there was good powder on Mt. Mansfield. It didn’t seem right to waste good powder just to prove I knew something.”
She nodded sympathetically; she’d often had similar sentiments.
“Most people think I have an irresponsible attitude,” he said.
“I suppose it depends on what you want out of education. If you want the knowledge but don’t need the grade, then you can go skiing at exam time. Of course I’d never stand for that baloney from one of my students.”
“I didn’t actually skip all my exams. We had a lot of rain for the first two years. Anyway, everybody in Skogen thought I was just wasting time and money, except for my Granny Mallone. She owned acres and acres of rolling fields that weren’t being used for much of anything, and she let me come in and plant apple trees. I’ve got only one oar in the water, but I know there’s a market out there for good organic food.”
He forked in a mouthful of french fries. “My Granny Mallone died last year, and she left me her house and the orchards. The apple trees are finally maturing. I need to build a cider press and some sort of bottling plant, and I need a better facility for baking. I could eliminate almost all waste from my orchards if I produced more apple products.”
“I think it sounds terrific, but I don’t see what this has to do with me.”
“You’re going to make me look respectable, so I can get a loan to expand. You’re going to get Linda Sue Newcombe off my back. And Holly Brown. And Jill Snyder…” He saw her mouth fall open. “I’ve had some bachelor ways,” he explained. “But that’s all in the past.”
Maggie rolled her eyes.
“It’s a small town,” he said. “The people are fine, but they’re stubborn, and it’s damn hard to reshape opinion. I like growing apples, and I want to make a living at it, but I’m going to go down the drain if I don’t get money from somewhere. I’ve been turned down for a loan once, but the bank has agreed to reconsider their position after the fall harvest. You help me look like I’m married and settled, and I’ll help you write a book.”
“Why don’t you marry Linda Sue Newcombe or Holly Brown?”
Hank sighed and slouched back in his seat. “I don’t love Linda Sue or Holly. I don’t love Jill Snyder or Mary Lee Keene or Sandy Ross.”
Maggie was beginning to feel peevish. “Just how many women have you had traipsing through your granny’s house?”
He saw her wrinkle her nose in annoyance and heard the alarm bells go off in his bachelor brain. “You’re not going to start making wife noises, are you?”
“Listen here, Hank Mallone. Don’t you think for one minute