Wife for Hire - By Janet Evanovich Page 0,54

of diamond stud earrings. “Oh!”

He pushed a curl behind her ear so he could see her face more clearly. “Do you like them?”

“Yes! Of course I like them. They’re beautiful. But…”

“But what?”

She slouched against him, some of the old tiredness returning.

“I can’t accept these. This isn’t the sort of present you give to a…” She searched her mind for the appropriate word, but couldn’t find one that defined their relationship. “Friend,” she finally said. “This isn’t the sort of present you give to a friend.”

“It’s the sort of present I give to my best friend.”

“I thought Bubba was your best friend.”

“Bubba is my second best friend.”

She thought he’d given up, but he’d only been lying low. She had to give him something for tenacity. And she had to admit—she was pleased. The dream was dancing around inside of her. She couldn’t control it.

“It isn’t going to work,” she said. “Skogen hasn’t changed.”

He looked confident. “It’ll work. It was never necessary for Skogen to change. You just haven’t seen it yet. You haven’t figured it out.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I was just like you. I had to get away. Trouble was that for a while my problems kept following me. That’s because you can’t run away from your problems. You only end up with the same problems in a new location.

“Then one day I was sitting in a crummy hotel room in Baltimore, and I realized I’d grown up. Somewhere along the line I’d sorted things out. My identity wasn’t dependent upon the people around me. I didn’t need my parents’ attention or approval. I didn’t need to be the class clown or the macho stud or the star quarterback. I just needed to do things I found personally satisfying. Like studying about agriculture, and improving my granny’s apple orchard.

“I think you’re a little like that. I think you needed to get away and write your book. And I think you needed some time alone to get in touch with Maggie Toone.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know if it’s that simple. I don’t know if I can stand the isolation of living on a farm.”

“You’ve imposed your own isolation. We brought your little red car up here, but you haven’t used it. You just need to get yourself out on the road. You need to cuss out a few old ladies, give a few rude hand signals. You need to hit those shopping malls once in a while.”

“Vermont has shopping malls?”

“Mostly we have towns,” he admitted. “But they’re just as good as a mall. Burlington even has a pedestrian street. Doesn’t that get your adrenaline going?”

Not nearly as much as sitting on his lap, Maggie thought. Still, it might be worth an investigation.

“And if you want to get out of the house on a regular basis, you could go back to teaching.”

“No. I don’t think so,” Maggie said. “I think I want to write another book.”

“Have you got an idea?”

She shook her head. “My creative energy hasn’t exactly been at an all-time high.”

“My Uncle Wilbur ran the county newspaper for forty years. He retired in 1901. We have crates and crates of papers in the basement of this house. I went down to check on them the other day. They’re fragile, but they’re still readable. Maybe you could find a new story in one of them.”

Maggie’s heart beat a little faster. Forty years’ worth of old newspapers in her very own basement! It might be worth marrying Hank just for the newspapers alone!

Wait a minute. Hold the phone. She was getting carried away. Okay, so the Gap had come to Vermont and there was a book lurking somewhere in Hank’s cellar. What about all those weird Skogenians who didn’t like her? What about Bubba? What about Vern? What about Mrs. Farnsworth and her quilts?

Hank kissed her on the nose and set her on her feet.

“We need to get going. We don’t want to miss Santa Claus. You go put your earrings on and finish getting dressed, and I’ll warm up the truck.”

Ten minutes later Maggie was sitting in the truck, studying her earrings as they sparkled in the rearview mirror. She really shouldn’t be wearing them, she thought. She hadn’t intended to, and then somehow they’d managed to become attached to her ears. She wouldn’t keep them, of course. She’d wear them to the dance, so as not to be rude, and then as soon as she got home, she’d swish them in alcohol and put them back in