“IS THAT CLEAR, Dr. Burke?”
Bowen referred to…something. Mel nodded anyway. Everything was clear now. All it took was seeing her with Amber for Jack to realize just how little he wanted to do with her. And why.
“I don’t intend to be your house spouse much longer.”
“Damned hypocrite,” Mel muttered, which had Bowen turning back, ready to rumble again. She fended him off with a not-applicable, ignore-me gesture.
Jack Halloran could talk a good equal-rights line, but when push came to shove, when real life happened along, he turned into just another damned chauvinist. Wanting a wife who stayed home cooking, cleaning and child rearing, while he went out and managed other people’s money.
Big deal. She’d devoted her whole life to medicine. To saving lives.
That’s what she’d studied and worked and sacrificed for. That’s why she’d survived when Harry had developed the heart problem that cut his life short.
She refused to give up her career to serve Jack’s fantasies—or his beer.
Very righteous, Burke. Except he hadn’t asked her to do anything.
Mel’s fingers squeezed her pager. She didn’t want him to ask. She knew her answer if he did. Saving lives was more important than having one.
She started over. Lecturing herself again on the wisdom of concentrating on her surgical career instead of wallowing in a diaper-induced and Jack Halloran– enhanced sea of female inadequacy.
“SOUNDS GREAT.”
“Count me in!”
Jack breathed a short sigh of relief as the men filling the den verbally jumped on his bandwagon.
“Bet the wife’d like ta sign up, too,” Bob said. “Think there’d be any call for handy women?”
“I don’t see why not,” Jack replied while other seniors volunteered their wives. “I can’t mend hems or wrap presents worth spit. And I’m sure there are packs of executives with busy families, working couples strapped for time and—”
He looked at Chester, a recent widower newly recruited by Preston. They’d keep him too busy to get lonely. Chester was a retired carpenter.
“—ah, suddenly single home owners who’ve never cleaned a gutter, planted flowers or caulked a window in their lives,” Jack finished. “Rent-a-Spouse is practically a success already.”
Leave it to Preston to locate the black cloud in the silver lining. “What about the Social Security earnings limits?” he asked.
“He’s all over it, Pres.” Bob came to Jack’s rescue. They’d discussed the plan in exhaustive detail before presenting it to the larger group. “Jack’s brother is writing some software to track each Spouse’s earnings, tax bracket, preferred work area—everything.
“This is gonna be the sweetest deal since the GI Bill. For us, for our neighbors, for Halloran. Everybody wins.”
Jack nodded agreement. He had no doubts about Rent-a-Spouse’s appeal. Where else could one find reasonably priced, dependable, skilled workers to do all those little tasks that piled up around the house? The oldsters would have more work than they could handle in no time.
And Jack, who’d agreed to set up and run the business, foresaw a decent income stream while he built his financial consulting business, giving him the freedom to take only clients he really wanted to work with.
Most importantly, running Rent-a-Spouse would leave him with plenty of time to lavish on his own home and family.
The only unknown was just who would constitute that family.
In five years, would he be living with a surgeon named Melinda and maybe a kid or three? Or would he be keeping tabs on his brother Mike between SEAL missions and nagging Tess to go on a damned date?
After Mel’s reaction two days ago, when his heart had puddled at the sight of her, looking like a Madonna, holding her niece…Some kind of primitive, possessive, totally macho urge had just overtaken him and he’d blurted out, well, whatever he’d blurted out. Something about wanting to be her man.
All he knew for sure was it had ticked Mel off. Royally.
Okay, he’d made a mistake. It happened. But Jack was too intelligent to let his mouth try to fix the trouble it had gotten him into in the first place.
Not without some tangible assets to back him up, anyway.
Hence, Rent-a-Spouse. And he’d pass the next CFP exam or die trying. He’d offer both accomplishments as proof he was worthy of consideration as a husband. Spouse. Life partner. Legally recognized significant other.
Terminology didn’t matter. Only one thing did: sharing a life with Mel. A home. A bed.
Love. Meals. Chores. Vacations. Extended families. Sickness. Savings. Shopping. Gray hair. Midlife crises. Everything.
Nothing about love and commitment scared him anymore as long as they went through it all together.
They could divide up the damned housework, the bookkeeping, the child care any way she wanted.
As long as he ended up with Mel. For the rest of their lives.
Dammit, he needed her! Without Mel, his life wasn’t meaningful enough to get him out of bed every morning.
Of course, with Mel—he’d be uninterested in getting out of bed any morning. But he’d do it. For her. Hell, he’d get up at four-thirty every day for the rest of his life, if that’s what it took. Love made the painful bearable, the irritating unimportant.
“Let’s hook it up, guys,” Jack spoke over the group’s rising chatter level. “I’ve gotta get going.”
Noreen remained in the hospital and Amber remained fussy, so Jack continued to baby-sit during the day while Bobby pulled vigil with his wife.
Yesterday Mel had stopped off on her way home, first at Presbyterian to check on Noreen, then at the apartment to take a baby shift. She’d gotten back to her folks’ house about thirty minutes after the nurses kicked Bobby out and gone right up to bed. Hers. Alone.
Looked like they were doing that passing ships thing again.
Which even Jack realized was not conducive to romance. And romance, he decided as he headed toward Amber and the apartment, was probably his best bet to regain lost ground. Some big Romeo-style gesture to get Mel back and keep her.
But what? Imaginative ideas were not his strong suit.
FINALLY. Six days after her accident, Noreen went home.
After enduring a flood of gratitude, so did Jack and Mel. Together at last. But not for long.
Dr. Burke dodged dinner and locked herself in her room “to read.”
Halloran ate two corn dogs and paced his room half the night, coaching the televised Rangers, then telling Chef Jewels where to get off.
The next morning, though, he woke with a plan and leaped out of bed to put it into action. ASAP.
After dispatching the day’s rent-a-spouses, Jack went shopping.
He bought candles, flowers, a bottle of Oregon’s finest pinot gris and a point-84, square-cut carat of native crystalline carbon—that’s dictionary for “diamond”—mounted in platinum. Matching wedding bands to follow.
Then he enlisted Dr. Bowen to send Mel home at a decent hour. Okay, he lied. Told the grouch it was Mel’s birthday and her dying grandmother had a surprise party planned.
As Jack tested the pecan-crusted cornish hens for doneness, he glanced at the microwave’s clock.
Took a deep breath. It was almost the “decent hour” he and Bowen had agreed on. Mel might be home any minute. Let’s see…the ring was in his pocket. Candles and flowers on the dining table. The wine chilled.
Quickly Jack checked on the roasted garlic for the mashed potatoes, the baby yellow squash and the nasturtium blossoms to garnish them.
Okay. Now, was it time to mash the potatoes, sauté the squash or start the orange-cranberry sauce for the cornish hens? Or should he wait ten more—?
Phones shrilled.
Better not be Bowen reneging or Mel detouring to visit her cousin. “I’ve got a totally romantic evening planned, complete with bended-knee proposal,” he muttered as he crossed the kitchen. A proposal nobody was going to defer.
He couldn’t stand another day of not knowing where they stood with each other. He wanted their life together to begin now.
The phones rang again.
Jack snatched up the receiver. “What?”
“Hey, bro, it’s Tess. Just thought I’d call and see how you’re—”
“Get to the point,” Jack suggested. Okay, he barked it.
Tess pretended to be hurt by his brusqueness. That took forever.
“Whatever, Sis. Why’d ya call?” Jack eyed the clock. He really needed to get back to his cooking.
“Well, you know how you’ve been pushing me to date?” Tess began, her voice growing more hesitant with every word. “Um, well, I wondered what you’d say if I…ah, if a guy asked me—”
Jack cut her off. “You’re an adult, Tess. If you think you’re ready, you’re ready.” Sisters. Sheesh. “I really have to go now.” He hung up just as Mel walked in.
“Wait! I’m not ready!” Dammit, he didn’t want her in here watching him run around like a crazy person finishing up the meal. “I mean, hi. Say, you look tired. Why don’t you go take a bubble bath while I finish dinner? I’ll call you when it’s ready.”
GET IT, BURKE? He didn’t ask you to stay and help, did he? You’ve been dismissed as useless. Again. “Okay,” she said, moving toward the stairs. “I’ll be in the tub if you…need me.”
She’d almost said want to join me. But even three or four days after the fact, Jack’s pronouncement still rang in her ears, amplified by years of insecurity about her femininity. Insecurity masked by hard work and studying medicine instead of moisturizers.
“I don’t intend to be your house spouse much longer.”
They’d been great in bed together. So the problem had to lie beyond the sheets. And it had to be her. Jack Halloran was all man—as masculine with a dust rag in his hand as with a Harley between his legs.
She had to be the problem: not being woman enough for a man like Jack. How could she be? She’d needed a wife herself.
Upstairs Mel ran the water, tossed in a handful of scented bath crystals and disrobed. After pinning up her hair, she stepped into the tub and lowered her body into the warm, soothing, bubble-topped water.
Where she sat soaking—and admitted, finally, to wishing with all her heart that she could transform herself into a woman Jack Halloran would want as his wife.
Could she? If she knew what kind of woman that was, could she become it? Mel wondered, gazing at her toes peeking through the mounds of frothy bubbles.
“You won’t know what he wants till you ask,” she advised herself. “So go ask.”
Before she could chicken out, Mel left the tub, dried off, pulled on her peach silk robe and unpinned her hair.
As she brushed out the tangles, she heard that small-animal torture again.
“That’s a good sign, isn’t it, if he’s singing while he cooks?” Heart pounding with equal parts hope and anxiety, Mel edged down the hallway to the staircase.
JACK TWEAKED the squash arrangement on Mel’s plate and tried to pull together a speech. Something about undying love and staying married happily ever after.
A series of strange sounds disturbed his ruminations. First, clicking, then a snick, a creak, then—ba-aam!
Someone was coming through the front door! Jack looked around for a weapon.
An unknown male voice muttered, “Damn! I always forget how easy that door swings open.”
“My, it’s good to be home.” Another voice. Female. Tired.
Home? Jack was still processing that information when a sunburned couple appeared in the doorway of the kitchen.
The man—big, beefy, sixtyish—dropped most of the suitcases he carried. His hands, Jack noticed, were ham sized. “Who the hell are you?” the hulk demanded. “And what the hell are you doing in my house?”
“Aah…” Jack stared at what had to be Mel’s parents. Go ahead, Halloran. Tell them you’re sleeping with their daughter. That you married her to quit work.
No way. Even caught off guard he wasn’t that stupid.
“Hello!” Jack said as heartily as possible. “You must be the Burkes.” He plastered on a big doofus smile. “Jack Halloran. I’m…ah, here just, ah, helping out. You know, cooking, yardwork….” He fiddled with the dinner plates to prove his point. “Surgeons work awfully hard. Long hours. I’m just, just studying. Financial planner stuff. So when good ol’ Mel couldn’t get everything done, she asked me…”
Jack prayed to be struck by lightning. Run over by a monster truck. Anything. “…strictly as a friend, of course, to…help…out.”
He shot a glance at Mel’s parents to see how they were taking it. Not very well. Then Jack’s glance shot right past them to Mel’s pale, stricken face. He groaned.
“Uh, here’s Mel now.” In her robe. Great. Any other time…
“Hi, Mom, Dad.” Mel greeted her parents dully. She’d be happier to see them once she removed the big no-commitment, no-thanks stake Jack had just driven into her heart. “I see you’ve met Mr. Halloran. I believe he’s just leaving.”
“Mel, no!” Jack cried. Then he pushed between her parents and grabbed her wrist. “Excuse us,” he said to her mom and dad as he pulled Mel past them, then through the kitchen and into the utility room. “We’ll just be a minute,” he said, and shut the door.
Plapf! The fold-out ironing board snapped down like a guillotine, separating Mel from her—her nothing. He wanted to be nothing to her.
He was going to get his wish.
“How much did you hear?” Jack asked. The lock of hair that sprouted from his cowlick was bobbing around like a drunk on a pogo stick.
“All of it.” Enough to answer every question she’d had. Enough to shatter any stupid dreams she’d had, too. She might learn to be more traditionally female, but she couldn’t make a man want what he didn’t want. And damned if she’d try.
“I just didn’t want to shock them,” Jack claimed, waving his hands around, the hands that had stroked her so intimately. “I thought we’d sort of break it to them gently. ’Cuz, you know, the whole ‘I married a stranger’ thing might sound too, ah, bizarre for parental units to handle.”
Come on, Burke. Make a clean excision. “There’s nothing to break.” Except my heart.
She could live without it as long as she didn’t lose her purpose. “We were never really married. Legally but not really.”
Mel stuffed her hands into the pockets of her robe and concentrated on not showing Halloran how hurt she felt. If all she had left was her pride, she’d protect it.
“I think you’d better go,” she said, looking down at one of the things separating them. Surgeons don’t iron. “I’ll explain you to my folks…later.”
Jack moved toward her, to hug away whatever was bothering her—and got a nice shot to the groin from the barricading ironing board.
Then her words hit him even harder.
“Explain me? How?” Dammit! He didn’t know what to say, what to do. How to get the damned ironing board out of the way.
Or how to convince her he really was serious about her, committed to their relationship—after his little tap dance around the pop-up parents.
“You’re right,” Mel interrupted his desperate search for a strategy. “There’s nothing to explain. Because you—this whole marriage has been nothing but a fantasy all along.”
“Right and I’m not interested in fantasizing,” Jack snapped. He wanted a real, forever marriage. “Not anymore.”
Didn’t their time together mean anything to Mel? Their incredible lovemaking? The baby-sitting trials? Their shared taste in videos? “I don’t understand. I thought what we had was real. Was I alone out here?”
Mel didn’t respond. Just stood there. Looking more and more remote.
Fear overwhelmed him, like waves washing over a drowning man, which was what he felt like. He fought it with bluster. “Okay. I see. Well, with your parents home now, you don’t need me any longer, do you?” He paused, waiting, hoping for a dissenting opinion.
Nothing. Survival instinct sent in the Halloran temper with orders to override the pain crushing him.
“Fine. Go back to that hospital, then, Melinda! Hide behind your patients!” Jack shouted. “But let me tell you one thing before I go.”
Of course, even a six-year—okay, a female six-year-old—would know that the “one thing” he should tell her ought to be something along the lines of “I love you, just the way you are, and I’m nothing without you.”
But Jack being a man, he bumbled on instead. “Your life’s a precious gift, Mel. A gift to you. Don’t waste it trying to make up for your brother’s death. You can’t replace Harry. You don’t need to! The way to honor his memory is to live your life, to fill it with joy and love and—”
“Go to hell, Jack.” Mel’s quiet instruction stopped the rest of his words in his throat. It was hopeless. “Now, please.”
“Your wish, my command,” he replied, digging in his pocket for the ring. Slamming it down on the ironing board. “Here. I won’t be needing this.” Jack pushed himself out of the utility room, then stormed out of the kitchen, shouting instructions as he went, if anyone cared to listen, to dry the clothes in the washer on delicate and only for ten minutes.
By the time that ten minutes would have been up, Jack was packed and downstairs. Nobody tried to stop him, so he left the house, the marriage and, he realized before he’d gone a block, his damned heart in Mel’s keeping.
Since he was suddenly technically homeless, Jack drove to Tess’s.
“It’s just until I find my own place,” he said. And put his meaningless life back together.
Though he doubted Tess was thrilled with her new roommate, at least she didn’t throw him out. He was family. And no trouble.
No energy, either. He could barely field the forwarded Rent-a-Spouse calls.
Tess kindly took over a lot of the business stuff. She said he was grieving and she felt a duty to help him past it.
Grieving—like hell. He had the flu or something. What could he be grieving about—other than his heart being broken in a kazillion pieces and his body aching, aching, aching for his sweet surgeon spouse, who didn’t want him.
Who, with her parents home, probably didn’t even miss him.
Jack lay on the sofa, the TV tuned to the Who Cares? Channel, and slipped back into his fog of funk.
If Jack felt depressed, Mel felt nothing.
At least, she tried very hard to feel nothing. She reverted to her old schedule: working, pulling a lot of thirty-sixes. If Bowen hadn’t banned her from 24/7s, she’d have worked continuously. As it was, she only went home occasionally to eat, sleep—and change pink underwear.
Her mother hadn’t asked a single question since the utility room showdown. Just patted her arm while saying, “It’ll all work out, dear” every chance she got.
Mel’s father kept trying to ask questions her mom wouldn’t let him finish. She’d switch the conversation to their adventures in Oman and why they’d been sent home so early.
Why had they come home the very night Jack—?
Here’s a better question, Burke. He’d prepared that fancy meal and had a ring in his pocket, but he’d bailed the minute she agreed their marriage wasn’t real. What was that about?
She didn’t know the answer, so Mel went back to work. No, she was already there—catnapping in one of the residents’ rooms until her hip vibrated. Trauma calling.
Lab coat flapping, Mel raced down to the trauma center. This was what she did. What she’d trained for. She wasn’t sacrificing herself to—what had Jack implied?—relieve her survivor’s guilt.
She wasn’t. Was she?
As she consulted with the attending physician and studied the X rays, Mel wondered if that idiot Jack Halloran could just possibly be right.
Had she given up her own life for Harry? And was that wrong? Jack had shown her so many things she’d missed while she focused on pediatric surgery: afternoons in the sun, really dumb movies, earth-shattering kisses, laughter….
She suddenly recalled one of her fondest memories of her brother—his belly laugh making everyone who heard it smile. Sharing his joy. Reveling in his aliveness.
That was Harry’s true legacy, Mel thought as she went in search of the trauma patient’s parents. His own bright spirit. Finding the anxious pair, she explained the procedure their son needed and got the waiver forms signed, assuring the parents that, barring unforeseen problems, they’d save the child’s life.
From that point on, she thought to herself, what he did with it only he could choose. His choices would shape his life; his life would be his gift to the world.
And my life should be mine, Mel realized as she introduced the chaplain. Thanks to Jack, she knew that the most meaningful thing a person could do was to choose life. All of it.
Which made the rest simple. Choosing life meant just one thing: love. And, for Mel, love meant just one man.
As she sketched the spleen’s location and explained its removal, Mel made a new commitment.
No way she was giving up medicine, but if winning Jack back required more time at home, she’d drop the surgical fellowship for a well-baby practice with saner hours and fewer traumas. She’d use what she’d learned so far to catch potential health problems before they became crises.
Good plan, she congratulated herself as she returned to the trauma room and prepped her patient to go upstairs.
Maybe she could convince Jack to give their marriage another shot if she signaled her willingness to renegotiate terms and responsibilities.
How?
Hmm. Perhaps she ought to consult some experts with more experience in the ways of men and the wiles of women. Mel had a feeling she’d need all the wiles she could get.
ABOVE THE TELEVISION’S soothing noise, Jack heard his sister on the phone. Again.
That’s all she’d done since he got here. Talk. To him. About him. Mostly bashing him for walking out on his marriage.
He was supposed to stay when Mel didn’t want him?
“Nope, other than run Rent-a-Spouse, he’s still just imitating a large houseplant. Eat, mope, sleep. That’s it.”
It’s Sherry, she mouthed when he looked up from the TV; he’d apparently been watching a documentary about termites.
Jack shook his head. He didn’t want to talk to bright, brittle Sherry. Or to ol’ Bob except about the business. Or even to Tess, who’d inexplicably chosen his darkest hour to become cheerful and outgoing again.
“Yes, I think so, too,” Tess told Sher.
Since nobody was asking him a direct question, Jack’s attention drifted to its usual subject: Melinda. Why hadn’t she listened to him?
I should have dragged Mel upstairs and loved her into listening to me. Loved her till she believed me.
“Don’t worry. I’ll get him there.” Tess again.
Now what? Jack wondered when she hung up and struck a confrontation pose: hands on hips, feet apart.
“Come on, bro, snap out of it. You’ve been in my hair—er, here two weeks. Time to get on with your life!
“This brainchild of yours,” Tess went on, “is turning into a huge success. So huge, in fact, that if you pass that CFP test and get even halfway busy with financial planning, I’m going to have to quit my other job to help you out.”
“You’d do that?” A faint shock rippled through him. He’d always been big brother the caretaker. When had the tables turned?
“Sure,” Tess said, then lifted her chin. “And it looks like sooner rather than later. We need more Spouses already,” she declared, and before Jack could even finish a nod, she extended an index finger in his direction. “Sherry knows someone who’d be a real asset to the business.”
“So hire ’em.” Jack sighed. He should be happy Rent-a-Spouse had taken off, but no matter how busy he stayed, he also stayed miserable. Without Mel, nothing mattered. Not one thing.
“No,” Tess said with a firm headshake. “Your business, you hire.” She punched his upper arm. “Sherry’s setting up an interview for tomorrow.”
Whenever. Time no longer mattered. He’d lost Mel two weeks ago, but it’d take more like two hundred years to get over her. To stop remembering the feel of her silky chocolate hair sliding over his skin. To stop hearing her velvety voice breathing his name. To stop reliving her heat and tightness surrounding him.
“I’m sorry.” Jack gazed up at his sister. “I’m sorry I tried to rush you past your grief. I didn’t understand. Now I do.”
Tess patted the top of his head. “Bygones, bro. I appreciated the concern behind your insensitivity. Now be sure to look nice tomorrow.”
Why? Oh. Jack sighed. “Better write down the time and address.”
WEIRD, HE THOUGHT the next day as he confirmed the address against Tess’s slip of paper. The Mansion on Turtle Creek—Dallas’s preeminent luxury hotel? One of the housekeeping staff must need extra money.
His sister’s instructions said to give his name to the desk clerk. When he did, the guy smirked.
“Welcome, Mr. Halloran. You’re in the Presidential Terrace Suite.” The clerk smirked harder as he handed over a key card. “Your party’s waiting for you.”
Jack’s heart pounded in his chest. Sherry was his best friend; Tess his sister. They couldn’t, they wouldn’t be this cruel. “H-how do I get there?”
“Ninth floor, follow the signs.”
He took off for the elevator bank at a dead run. Leaping into an empty car, he punched the requisite button. And started praying before the doors closed.
Please let her be there. Let it be okay. Let it be forever.
MEL PACED the huge suite, oblivious to its size, its color scheme or its opulence. All she could think about was the gamble she was taking with her heart, her happiness, her whole future.
Okay, surgeons are bold, she told herself, but what if Jack—provided he even showed—just laughed his posterior off, then retreated as fast as humanly possible?
Maybe she should retreat from the extreme position she’d taken.
Get dressed, at least.
She shook her head and lifted her chin. No. She had to give Jack a clear message of what she was prepared to do if he’d come back. And stay. That’s wh—
Mel froze in mid-thought and mid-pace as the door to the suite flew open.
And there stood Jack. God, he looked good! His hair disheveled, his jaw stubble covered, his khakis rumpled.
His eyes the color of the midnight sky. Glowing hotter by the second. With what?
Time to find out. Clearing her throat, Mel began her prepared speech. “H-hi. I asked you here—”
“What are you doing—?” Jack’s hoarse voice interrupted her. He extended a shaking index finger in her direction, moved it up and down. “—in that?”
Reflexively Mel’s hands touched the ruffled edge of the gauze-thin French maid’s apron she’d rented from a costume shop. It and a couple of pieces of her sexiest pink underwear were all she wore. And a pair of skyscraper-high heels.
“Applying for a job.” Here came the tough part, but nothing was tougher than living without the man she loved. “As your wife.”
“You—”
Mel held up her hand, palm out. “Let me finish.” Reaching behind her, she began untying the apron. “Now, my résumé isn’t very strong in some of the traditional wife areas.” She removed the apron. Her hands went to her bra closure. “But I’m highly motivated. In fact, I’m making arrangements to join a well-baby practice so I’ll be able to spend more time at home. With you. And I’ll do my best to acquire the necessary skills to become the wife you want.”
Jack was tearing off his clothes. “Melinda, darlin’, I’ll be happy if you’re happy. We don’t have to spend every minute of the rest of our lives together, as long as we spend every minute we’ve got left loving each other.
“So let’s throw out the role rules and just figure out who does what as we go along.” He picked her up and carried her into the suite’s bedroom, to the huge canopied bed.
“You already are my perfect wife,” he told her between hot, tender kisses, “just the way you are, as long as you love me the way I love you.”
“Which is?” Mel asked, when he’d lowered her onto the bed.
“Totally, completely, forever,” Jack said as he followed her down.
“That’s exactly how I love you,” Mel assured him happily.
Jack covered her mouth with his for a long, satisfying moment, then he promised, “I’ll do my best, darling, to be your perfect husband, too.”
Mel grinned as her hands reached for him. “Maybe I’d better review your qualifications for the, ah, position,” she purred.
They quit talking then. After all, they’d have a lifetime together for things like that.
Now…ah, now they compared résumés, made and accepted partnership offers and signed up for a permanent, full-time, forever benefit package called love.