Practice Husband. Judith McWilliams
Addy beat down a childish impulse to say “Queen Victoria” and dutifully gave her own name.
The blonde picked up the phone, held a brief conversation with someone at the other end and then said, “Mr. Barrington can spare you a few minutes. Just go through there.” She pointed toward the door to her right. “Mr. Barrington’s office is at the end of the hall.”
“Thank you.” Addy smiled at the woman and, clutching her purse like a lifeline, headed down the hall. Despite her curiosity about Joe, she wasn’t looking forward to this interview. Whoever J. E. Barrington turned out to be, he still wanted her property and she still wasn’t going to give it to him. He’d probably get insistent, and when that didn’t work, he could well get sarcastic, and she hated dealing with sarcasm. It made her feel ten years old again. Overweight and unlovely and somehow not quite as good as everyone else. Almost as if she didn’t have the right to say no.
But you aren’t ten years old. You’re a very competent thirty-two. And you aren’t fat anymore either, she reminded herself, something that she found herself doing on an almost daily basis because, despite what her mind told her and her mirror showed her, she still felt fat on the inside.
At the end of the short hallway, Addy found herself in a reception area filled with comfortable leather chairs. Several doors led from it to what Addy assumed were offices. As she watched, one of them opened and a man in his late thirties wearing a well-cut black suit and a very conservatively striped tie hurried toward her.
“You must be Miss Edson?”
Not her Joe. Addy felt a flash of disappointment, the strength of which caught her by surprise.
“Yes, and you’re Mr. Barrington?”
The man smiled self-deprecatingly. “No, no. I’m Bill Bernette, Mr. Barrington’s executive assistant. Mr. Barrington’s office is through here.”
He lead her across the room. Knocking perfunctorily on the heavy oak door, he opened it and gestured Addy inside. “Mr. Barrington will be with you as soon as he finishes his call,” he whispered, motioning her toward a seat in front of the desk.
Addy sank down in the chair and glanced curiously at the man on the phone. A feeling of disorientation hit her as she recognized his face. It was her Joe! Her eyes swept over his short, inky-black hair, then skittered across the tiny scar high on his left cheekbone to land in the sparkling depths of his deep blue eyes.
She felt as if she’d suddenly been transported back in time at a dizzying speed, leaving her stomach behind. She watched as he nodded at her, his lips shaping a brief, impersonal smile. Didn’t he remember her? To her surprise, the idea hurt.
She remembered him. Her eyes focused on his mouth, tracing the firm contours of the dusky pink flesh. A shiver chased over her at the thought of pressing her lips against his. Of feeling them moving against hers. Of... Addy jerked her gaze away in a vain attempt to control her uncharacteristic thoughts. She watched as his hand impatiently tapped out a rhythm on the highly polished mahogany of his desktop. His long fingers were lightly tanned and the nails immaculately clean. She automatically looked for a wedding band, but didn’t find one.
Because Joe wasn’t married, or because he didn’t wear one? Addy felt a shimmer of uneasiness at her curiosity. Her intense reaction to him wasn’t like her, and it worried her. Jet lag, she told herself, dredging up the first excuse that came to mind and trying hard to believe it.
“Good God!” The exclamation cut through her thoughts and she glanced up, to find her gaze snared by the glittering sparks in his eyes.
“Addy? Is that really you?”
Addy winced at his incredulous tone. “Did I look that bad that you don’t believe the improvement?”
“Improvement?”
She stated the obvious. “I’m not fat anymore.”
He took her comment as an invitation to look at her, and Addy felt her skin tighten as his hot, blue gaze slowly wandered over her. She could feel her breasts tightening as his gaze lingered on them.
“No,” he agreed, “you’re not fat anymore.” His eyes narrowed. “In fact, you look downright skinny. What have you been doing to yourself?”
Addy blinked at his description. No one had ever called her skinny in her life. It wasn’t an idea she could relate to, so she ignored it.
“I’ve spent the last four years with a bunch of nuns trying to save the world,” she said self-mockingly.
“From what I’ve seen of the world, you’re lucky to still be in one piece. The world generally takes exception to being saved.”
“Not my part of it. I work with children, and they’re darlings no matter where you find them.” Her voice unconsciously softened.
“Teacher?” he guessed.
Addy felt a stab of disappointment that he didn’t know. A feeling that she told herself was ridiculous. She was nothing more than an old school friend. There was no reason why he should have kept up with her life. She hadn’t kept up with his.
“I’m a pediatric nurse-practitioner.”
“As well as the owner of a parcel of land that we need.”
His reference to her land brought Addy back to reality with a thump.
“We really need that land, Addy.”
“You really need that land,” she corrected. “I already have it, and I intend to keep it.”
Addy watched as his eyes narrowed, showing a line of fine wrinkles at the corners. As if he laughed a lot. Her gaze dropped to the firm set of his jaw, and she mentally rejected the idea. He probably just spent a lot of time outside in the sunlight.
“Addy, be reasonable.” His plaintive words echoed through her mind, dislodging old memories. He must have said those exact same words to her hundreds of times when they were children. The familiar sound of them served to dispel the strangeness of her reaction to him. Suddenly, he was simply Joe. Her childhood friend.
She grinned at him, inexplicably feeling carefree. “If memory serves me right, your idea of being reasonable means that I do exactly what you want.”
Joe shrugged, and Addy watched in fascination as his powerful shoulders moved beneath the perfection of his custom-tailored suit In some strange way, his highly civilized clothes didn’t make him seem civilized. They actually seemed to make him more ruggedly masculine, as if their purpose was to highlight the difference between the way he really was and the way he wanted people to perceive him.
“I really need that land Addy,” he said. “Our present plant has reached capacity, and we need to expand to meet the increasing demand.”
“Demand for what?” Addy asked, curious about what he did.
“Computer chips.”
“Oh,” Addy said, “You’re one of them.”
“One of who?”
“One of those fanatics who want to put computers everywhere. Do you know they’re even putting the blasted things in libraries?” she said in remembered outrage. “They’re getting rid of card catalogues and making you use computers, and half the time they don’t even work.”
Joe grinned at her, giving her a glimpse of his gleaming, white teeth. “You may look a lot different, but you haven’t really changed. You can still divert a conversation quicker than anyone I know.”
Addy felt her spirits rise at the warmth of his smile. A smile that was echoed by the sparkle of humor in his eyes.
“But the fact remains that I need your land.”
“I know you want it, but I want it, too. It’s...” Addy struggled to explain her feelings. “That house is all I have left of my folks. I grew up there.