Janet Evanovich - Wife for Hire

“I can’t figure it,” Hank said. “You had almost fifty dollars in small bills laying on your dresser top. And he left it. He didn’t take your pearl earrings or watch. What the devil was he looking for?”

A silly idea skittered through Maggie’s mind. Ridiculous, she thought. I’m getting paranoid. But when she looked at Hank, she knew he’d had the same thought. “You don’t suppose he was looking for this?” She opened her night drawer and pulled out Aunt Kitty’s diary.

“Hard to believe. I’m sure everyone thinks it’s got a lot of hot stuff in it, but I can’t imagine someone breaking and entering just to get their hands on a dirty book.”

Maggie gave him a look.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “So, it crossed my mind too, but you have to admit it doesn’t make any sense. This isn’t the Hope diamond we’re talking about here. This is an old lady’s diary. I know everyone in Skogen. I can’t come up with anyone who would want that diary enough to steal it.”

“Everybody too honest?”

“No. All the likely candidates are too lazy.”

“Maybe it’s not someone in Skogen,” Maggie said. “Maybe word has spread throughout the state, throughout the country.”

“Maybe someone followed you up here from New Jersey. This could be serious,” Hank said, flopping back onto the bed. “I’d better sleep here to night and make sure you’re safe.”

“You never give up, do you?”

“This is an emergency situation.”

She looked at him sprawled across her bed and swallowed. He was magnificent. Smooth, tanned skin, a hard, flat stomach, and jeans that were zipped but not snapped.

Good thing she wasn’t one of those women who lost control at the sight of perfect flesh and muscle, she thought. Actually she had to admit her control was slipping a little. There was a certain appeal to spending the rest of the night with him, and it had nothing to do with safety. It had to do with the lovely flush of desire his presence generated. The need to touch him was almost overwhelming. If she’d been more experienced, she might have given in to it. But as it was, she regarded it curiously and with a little awe.

She’d never felt such a compelling, delicious ache to know a man. Never needed to be loved. She wondered if he had similar feelings, and then she realized with a shock that of course he did…he was the sex fiend of Skogen. He probably felt that way about every woman he met.

Disappointment hit her like a hard slap in the face. She narrowed her eyes. “I’m giving you thirty seconds to get off my bed. I don’t sleep with indiscriminate womanizers.”

She saw the expression of playful affection change to one of hurt and surprise, then anger. Direct hit, she thought grimly.

Hank heaved himself to his feet. He thought she understood the man behind the reputation. Hank whistled for Horatio. The dog trotted into Maggie’s room and looked at his master expectantly. “Stay,” Hank told him, and without even so much as a backward glance at Maggie, he strode from the room and slammed the door behind him.

He’d been honest with her. Hank fumed. What more did she want? He turned on his heel and went back to Maggie’s room, yanking the door open. “You have a lot of nerve calling me an indiscriminate womanizer. I’ve been beyond reproach since you’ve been here.”

“I’ve been here for three days!” Maggie shouted. “You expect me to be impressed with three days of abstinence? And for all I know you’ve been sneaking out at night, burning down barns.”

He felt the heat flooding into his face again. He stormed into his own room and slammed his door.

Maggie sprang up from her bed. “And don’t come barging into my room without knocking!” she shouted. Then she slammed her door too.

She threw herself into bed and pulled the quilt up to her chin. She grunted and rolled over, stuffing her face into the pillow. “Men!” she said. “Ugh!” She thrashed around for a few more minutes until her bedclothes were totally tangled. She got up, remade the bed, and calmly crawled back in. She was hot and exhausted and sorry. She shouldn’t have made that crack about the barn burning.

“Damn stubborn temper,” she said. A tear rolled down her cheek. She wanted Hank to love her. Only her. She didn’t want to be just one more conquest, one more event. She wanted to be special, and she didn’t want to suffer the fate of his other girlfriends. She didn’t want to turn into a Hank Mallone groupie.

Elsie slammed bowls of oatmeal onto the table. “Anyone who doesn’t eat this and like it gets liver for supper.”

Hank rattled his paper, and Maggie tapped a spoon against her coffee mug.

“And I don’t put up with spoon tapping neither,” Elsie said. “I feel darn cranky. I didn’t get any sleep last night. Bad enough we got some fool wandering around the upstairs, then the two of you decide to have a shouting match and door-slamming contest. I got more rest when I was living in the old people’s home. The most noise anybody made was when they dropped their bedpan. Except for the time Helen Grote set her walker down on the cat’s tail.”

The memory brought a smile to her face. “That was something.”

Hank folded his paper and placed it on the table beside his oatmeal. He glared briefly at Maggie and splashed milk onto his bowl.

Maggie glared back. Fine. If he wanted to be childish and stay angry, so would she. No problem for her, she thought. She could stay angry forever. After all, she was the most stubborn female Riverside had ever spawned. She could show him a thing or two.

The trouble was she didn’t want to stay angry. She wanted to cuddle up behind him while he was eating his oatmeal, wrap her arms around his neck, and kiss him on the top of his head. His hair was freshly washed and shiny and looked like it would be nice to kiss. His cheek looked like it would be nice to kiss too. And his mouth…Maggie sighed at the thought of kissing his mouth.

The sigh prompted him to glance up from his oatmeal. He stared at her, but he didn’t say anything. He looked annoyed.

“Well, excuse me,” she snapped. “Did my sigh disturb you?”

“Don’t flatter yourself. It would take a lot more than a sigh to get me to notice you.”

Elsie made a disgusted sound and plunked a platter of French toast on the table. “What are you two so bent out of shape about? This is the most realistic fake marriage I’ve ever seen. If you get any more married, you’ll have to get a divorce.”

The back door opened and Bubba ambled in. “I knew I smelled French toast.”

Elsie stood with her hand on her hip. “How many loaves do you eat?”

“One will be fine,” Bubba said. “Don’t go to any bother.”

Elsie took more eggs out of the refrigerator. “Don’t you have a home?” she asked. “Why aren’t you married?”

“I’m not the marrying type,” Bubba said. “Besides, it wouldn’t be right for me to tie myself down to one woman. It wouldn’t be fair to all those other females out there that crave my attention.”

Maggie hid behind her half of the newspaper and made a gagging gesture.

“It’s especially critical that I keep my bachelor status now that Hank’s no longer in circulation,” Bubba said. “Someone’s gotta take up the slack.” He shook his head. “All those heartbroken women…” He sighed and poured syrup on four slices of French toast. “I’m just about exhausted with it.”

Hank grinned. “Bubba’s been going with the same girl since high school. If Bubba so much as looked at anyone else, she’d nail his shoes to the floor and turn him into a gelding with a bread knife.”

“Oh man,” Bubba said, “you’re always ruining my image.”

Maggie thought Bubba was the human counterpart to Brer Bear. And he was probably almost as smart as Brer Bear, she decided. She reprimanded herself for being snide, but she couldn’t help it. She was in a foul mood this morning.

Bubba forked toast into his mouth. “This sure is good,” he said. “I might think about getting married if I could find a woman who could cook like this.” He gave Elsie a questioning look.

“Forget it,” Elsie said. “I’m too old for you, and besides, if I wasn’t getting paid, I’d be eating TV dinners.”

“Too bad,” Bubba said. “Peggy keeps wanting me to go on a diet. For breakfast she fixes me half a cup of those little high-fiber nugget things in some skim milk. It’s like scarfing down buckshot in water.”

“Maybe you could stand to lose a few pounds,” Elsie offered, as she watched him wolf down the French toast.

Bubba glanced at his stomach. “It’s cause I sit on a loader all day. I don’t get enough exercise.”

“Bubba has a backhoe and a front-end loader,” Hank explained. “He does construction jobs. He’s working on the site for my bottling plant this week.”

Bubba took a sip of coffee. “So, how’s the book going?” he said to Maggie. “I was talking to Elmo Feeley at the feed store, and he said the book is full of sex, and you’ve already been asked to make it into a movie.”

Maggie’s fork slithered through her fingers and clattered onto her plate. Her mouth hung open, but she couldn’t find her voice. Even if she’d had a voice, she wouldn’t have known what to say.

Hank set his coffee cup down and looked from Maggie to Bubba. It was the first time he’d seen Maggie tongue-tied and he rather liked it. She’d been quick to believe the worst about him, he thought. Now he was interested to see how she handled a little false notoriety about herself.

“Yup,” Hank said, smiling at Bubba, “Cupcake here is going to be rich.” He leaned closer to Bubba and dropped his voice to a whisper. “That’s why I married her, you know. I needed money for the cider press and the bakery equipment.”

Maggie sucked in her breath and narrowed her eyes. He was doing it again!

“And is the book really full of sex?” Bubba asked.

“You wouldn’t believe what’s in that diary,” Hank said. “Maggie and I have been going through it, page by page, for the last three nights, and it’s got stuff in there I’ve never even thought of. We’ve been trying it all out just to make sure a person can really do it. Maggie wouldn’t put anything in her book that she hasn’t personally experienced. You know, sort of like testing recipes before you write a cookbook.”

Bubba chuckled and punched Hank in the arm. “You dog, you.”

Elsie hit Hank on the head with her wooden spoon. “The Lord’s gonna get you for that.” She bit her lip to keep from laughing out loud and quickly turned back to the stove.

Maggie’s mouth was still open, and she’d taken hold of the table. Her knuckles were turning white and her eyes were small and glittery.

“Maybe you should go easy on the diary stuff for a while,” Bubba whispered to Hank. “She looks a little on edge, you know what I mean?”

“It’s the way she gets,” Hank said. “Hungry. All you have to do is mention the diary, and she turns into an animal. She’s just trying to control herself. That’s why she’s holding on to the table. She doesn’t want to rip my clothes off at the breakfast table.”

“Wow,” Bubba said. “Are you doing okay? I mean, she isn’t hurting you or anything, is she?”

Hank finished his coffee and winked at Bubba. “I can handle her.”

Bubba chuckled and punched him in the arm again.

Hank pushed away from the table. He kissed Maggie on the top of the head and gave her shoulders a squeeze. “I know you’re feeling desperate, but I have to go to work now, pumpkin. Maybe you can find some techniques for when I come home at lunch.”

“I-you-” she said. She grabbed a jar of strawberry preserves and threw it at the door, but Hank and Bubba had already disappeared down the back stoop. The jar ripped through the screen and smashed against a stack of empty wooden apple crates.

“Did you hear something crash?” Bubba said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Hank told him. “Sometimes she gets violent when I leave her.”

“Crazy about you, huh?”

Maggie and Elsie stood staring at the hole in the screen door.

“You didn’t miss him by much,” Elsie said. “It was the screen that slowed you down.”

“I didn’t really want to hit him. I just wanted to throw something.”

Elsie nodded. “Good job.”

Maggie grinned. “He would have been disappointed if I hadn’t thrown something. He likes to provoke me.”

“You mean you weren’t really mad?”

“Of course I was mad. He makes me crazy.”

Elsie shook her head. “This is too complicated for me. I’m going to do the dishes.”

Maggie cleaned the back porch and went upstairs to work. It was going to be another perfect day, she thought. Blue sky and warm with just the tiniest of breezes. In the distance she could hear an engine turn over and guessed it was Bubba on the loader.

She reread the handwritten notes she’d been compiling. The diary lay to her right. It was open to December 3, 1923. Aunt Kitty had talked of the weather, the tragedy of the Thorley baby’s death from the croup, and Johnny McGregor, whom she declared to be the handsomest man she’d ever seen. The “diary” actually consisted of seven diaries, covering a span of thirty-two years. Among other things it was a chronicle of love for John McGregor.