Wife for Hire - By Janet Evanovich Page 0,51

dog is mean to my cat.”

“Is that all?”

“No, that’s not all. I’m going nuts sitting in this room day in and day out staring at apple trees. I don’t think I’m cut out for farm life. If I don’t get to a shopping mall soon, I’m going to go into withdrawal. I want to talk to someone who doesn’t say ‘yup.’ I miss the air pollution. I have a craving to stand in line and curse out someone. I miss being on the road and having other drivers make rude gestures to me.”

Hank put his hand to her forehead. “You running a fever?”

“This town is filled with weirdos.”

“Yeah, but most of them are pretty nice. You’d get used to Skogen if you just gave it a chance.”

“Never!” Maggie said. “I will never get used to Skogen. I’m going back to Riverside, and I’m going to take a job at Greasy Jake’s, and I’m going to finish my book. And then I’m moving to Tibet.”

“Tibet isn’t the paradise it used to be,” Hank said. “I hear Tibet has problems too.”

Maggie stuffed another stack of clothes into her suitcase. “Uh! No one ever takes me seriously.”

“That’s not true. I’ve always taken you seriously…until now. Now I’m not taking you seriously.”

Hank picked the suitcase up and dumped Maggie’s clothes out onto the bed. “We made a deal. The deal was that you would be my wife for six months. I expect you to honor that.”

Maggie felt tears burning behind her eyes and angrily blinked them away. Why was he making this so difficult? It wasn’t as if she really wanted to leave. She loved him. But some of the things she’d said were true. She thought she would be miserable in Skogen in the long term sense of things. And eventually Hank would be miserable too. And then they’d have a miserable marriage. And maybe by that time they’d have miserable children.

No, she thought, she didn’t want to prolong the inevitable. She wanted to leave immediately and start to forget him. Didn’t he understand that every moment in his presence was an agony for her?

“There’s no reason for me to stay. You’re just making things more difficult.”

He set his chin at a stubborn angle. “We made a deal.”

Her eyes were glittery with renewed obstinance.

“Okay,” he said. “I live out in the barn for the next five months. Those are my terms.”

She took on a defiant posture. “Fine. I’ll stay. But don’t expect me to like it. And don’t expect me to cave in again. I intend to devote my energies to finishing my book. I’ll perform what ever social duties you require, but don’t impose your personal needs on me. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly.”

Chapter 10

Maggie hung up the phone and sat back in her chair, staring sightlessly out her study window. It was early afternoon but the sunlight was weak, the world gray and obscure behind a curtain of falling snow. The orchard had been reduced to white mounds where snow had drifted from the last storm. The trees endured the cold in silence, reduced to skeletons beyond the sound of the muted footfalls and slamming doors that signaled life in the farm house.

It was the sort of snow people said would continue for a long time. Small, dry flakes that sifted straight down. Maggie knew a lot about snow now. Wet snow, dry snow, windblown snow, snow that was good for skiing, snow that was good for sledding, snow that was good for building snowmen. At happier times she would have been thrilled by it because she was usually a woman with an adventuresome spirit. But these weren’t happy times.

Maggie was lonely in a house filled with people. She’d imposed it upon herself. She saw no other way. For five months she’d kept to her room, working day and night on Kitty’s book. Hank had respected her isolation; Elsie had groused about it.

Now her tenure was coming to an end. Her six months would be complete in January. She’d accomplished her goal. She’d written the book. She’d even managed to sell it. Just minutes ago she’d spoken to her agent and learned she was a rich woman. Apparently she wasn’t the only one who found the information in Kitty’s diary to be interesting.

But the victory was flat. She was miserable. Cutting Hank out of her life had only produced heartache so strong that at times it left her breathless. Thank goodness the book had demanded her attention throughout most of her waking hours.