Husband for Hire by Susan Wiggs Page B

pleasant, flying low across the valley scooped out between the Tetons, imagining her life shaping into something that remotely resembled her dreams. “It was nice of you to ask Jake to look over the legal contracts.”
    “Hey, he’s family.”
    “More than you know, Daddy,” she yelled, clutching the sides of the cockpit. “I suppose I should tell Jake first, but I can’t help myself—I’m pregnant.”
    He had crowed with sheer delight, throwing back hishead and laughing into the wind.
    It was the last day she had seen her father alive.
     

    “R EADY , T WYLA ?” R OB asked. “Smile for the camera.” With smooth familiarity, he slid his arm around her.
    Shaken by the memory, she took a deep breath, burying the old hurt as best she could. Then she lifted her chin and grinned broadly, blinking in the aftermath of the flash.
    “All set,” she said, taking the proffered arm of Rob Carter.
    They walked out on the porch. At the last second, she spun around and opened her arms. “One more hug and kiss,” she insisted, and Brian plowed willingly into her. She felt the warmth of him, smelled the little-boy scent of earth and grass and dog, and a loving ache tugged at her heart. “See you, sport. I love you.”
    “Love you, Mom. Gotta go help Grammy in the kitchen.”
    When the screen door slammed behind him, she turned to Rob.
    He was staring at her with a fascination that reminded her of a hungry wolf.
    “What?” she asked.
    He kept staring. “You’re a good mother, aren’t you?”
    “I have no idea. I’m making it up as I go along. So you think I’m a good mother?”
    He hesitated. “Yeah. I guess.”
    Before she could reply, he turned away, picked up her bags and walked to his rental car. She followed, feeling strangely guilty, as if his admission had slammed a door shut between them. He had been raised at Lost Springs, not by a mother. What did he feel, watching her with Brian? She wanted to ask him, but she didn’t know how.
    She got into the rental car—a Cadillac STS—and looked over at him.
    Lord, that profile.
    “I guess we should stay away from touchy subjects, huh?” she asked.
    He turned to her and propped an elbow on the back of her seat, his scowl melting beneath the charm of a boyish grin. “Not if we’re about to become engaged.”
    “What?”
    “Engaged. You know, to be married.” With a casual lack of haste, he turned on the car and backed down the rutted driveway.
    “I know what engaged means,” she said, her fingertips suddenly cold as she folded her hands nervously in her lap. “I don’t see what it has to do with us.”
    “It was Mrs. Spinelli and Mrs. Duckworth’s idea. They think we should tell people at your reunion that we’re engaged.”
    “That’s absurd.”
    The Cadillac cornered low and smooth around a curve in Brown’s Branch Road. “I know. Maybe that’s what I like about it.”
    “We really don’t have to—”
    “I know that.” He put on his sunglasses. “But we’re going to. If I show up as your date, people will think I’m just some Joe Schmo you picked up at random.”
    “Or picked out of a catalog like a packet of burpless cucumber seeds.”
    “Yep. Can’t have that, can we?”
    “I don’t see why—” She broke off when he turned west off the Shoshone Highway. “This isn’t the way to the county airport.”
    “We don’t leave for two hours.”
    “So where are we going?”
    “Just sit tight and you’ll see.”
    She watched the landscape slip by, a whir of wildflowers and sage and low scrubby hills rising to the far-off Owl Creek peaks, topped with eternal snow. “This is the way to Lost Springs.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    He wasn’t much for explanations. Ever since the day of the auction, Twyla had felt strangely disoriented and out of control, and the present moment was no different. But there was something else she felt when she was in the presence of Rob Carter—alive. Her skin and scalp tingled with awareness in the breeze, and