Husband for Hire (16 page)

“W
HAT TIME IS YOUR
flight to Denver tomorrow?” Twyla asked as Rob unloaded her bags from the car.

“Around eleven in the morning,” he said, keeping his back to her. The day had gone from bad to worse, he decided. Or, depending on how he looked at it, from good to incredible. Twyla was great. Sex with her was great. But he had to get the hell out of here and back to the real world.

Until Twyla, he thought he and Lauren had an understanding. A solid relationship, one that had a good chance of being permanent. But maybe deep down he was afraid. Maybe he didn’t want anything to be permanent, because life hadn’t prepared him for that.

Excuses, he told himself. Lame excuses. The truth was, he had no control over himself when it came to Twyla. She was everything he told himself he didn’t want, yet she was all he wanted. He had to get away, regain his sanity, reclaim his life in Denver. Lauren would never find out, but even so, everything with Lauren had changed, and the hell of it was, she didn’t even know.

He hadn’t told Twyla about Lauren. He hadn’t seen the point. And after he knew he should come clean with Twyla, it was too late. If he said anything now, she’d be hurt that he’d deceived her. The best thing to do was
to get back to Denver and forget this whole thing happened. He hoped Twyla would agree.

They hadn’t talked about it on the plane. The flight had been full, and conversations carried weirdly on airplanes, so they had made small talk. A couple of times, she had touched his arm, his leg, quite naturally, as if he were a familiar and comfortable presence.

Why was letting go so damned hard? he asked himself, carrying her bags up to the sorry-ass house she lived in. Why couldn’t he just walk away, forget about her?

When he stepped on the top step to the porch, the riser collapsed. Rob dropped the bags and found himself sunk to the thigh in rotten wood.

“Rob!” Twyla rushed to his side. “Did you hurt yourself?”

He shook his head, extracting himself from the gaping hole. “I’m okay. That step’s a doozy, though.”

Gwen and Brian came to the door. Dinner smells wafted out through the screen. Feeling stupid, Rob brushed off his jeans.

“I’m so sorry,” Twyla said, blushing. “I’ve been meaning to get that step fixed.”

He forced a smile. “You’ve got no choice now.” Patting Brian on the shoulder, he said, “Hey, you. I bet you know where I can find some tools.”

“You bet, Rob,” the kid said, and led him to the shed behind the house.

T
WYLA CAUGHT HERSELF
chopping basil to the rhythm of Rob’s pounding on the porch outside. She smiled, enjoying the sense of busy purpose that the hammering and sawing seemed to lend to the atmosphere around the place.

Then she felt her mother’s stare. She could always tell
when her mother was looking at her. She felt a prickle of awareness, and when she looked up, Gwen stood leaning against the kitchen counter, studying her.

“What?” Twyla asked.

“You know what. Spill.”

“Mom, I told you everything.” Twyla attacked the basil with new vigor, frowning down at the cutting board. “We had a great time, everything went better than I thought it would.” She stopped working to enumerate with her fingers as she spoke. “Darlene Poole and Tommy Lindstrom have four kids, Sandra Jaffe’s been saved, Harold Fox is an alcoholic, I saw Jake, and the world didn’t come to an end.”

“That’s not everything,” Gwen insisted, giving the spaghetti sauce a brisk stir. “You like him, don’t you?”

“Sure I like him.” She scraped the basil onto a plate of sliced tomatoes, then concentrated on drizzling olive oil over them. “What’s not to like? He was a good sport about the whole thing, he impressed the pants off the whole town of Hell Creek, and now he’s keeping my son company and fixing my front porch. Can you blame me for liking him?”

“I mean you really like him. In the romantic sense.”

Twyla put the plate of sliced tomatoes in the fridge. “Slow down, Mom,” she said, even as a warm rush of emotion flowed through her. “I’ve only known him a couple of days.”

“Sometimes a couple of days is all it takes. Especially when you’re made for each other.”

Twyla thought of the first time she had met Jake. Three years her senior, he’d been in front of her in the lunch line at school and had come up a dollar short. Twyla had lent him the money. He’d promised to pay her back and had asked her out that weekend. She’d been
so flattered by his attention, she’d hardly noticed that he never did pay her back that dollar. Odd. It had been a sign, and she’d ignored it. A single dollar might have saved her scads of heartbreak.

She went to the front door to see how the work was coming. Rob and Brian had dragged a pair of sawhorses and a stack of old lumber out of the shed. Rob wore an old baseball cap. Tools that couldn’t possibly have been used in decades lay strewn in the yard or dangled from the stiff old tool belt he wore slung around his waist. He handed Brian the end of a tape measure, and with the deep absorption of a pair of brain surgeons, they marked off a plank for sawing. The picture they made, the large man and the small boy working together, caused Twyla’s throat to constrict.

Rob finished sawing and took off his baseball cap. Then, saying something to Brian, he peeled off his golf shirt and slung it over the porch rail. Watching him closely, Brian did exactly the same, slinging his Godzilla T-shirt over the rail, as well. It was amazing how perfectly he’d emulated Rob’s actions.

“Now, there’s a sight we don’t see around here too often,” Gwen commented, joining her in the vestibule.

Flushed and dry-mouthed from the sight of Rob’s muscular, athletic body, Twyla hurried back into the kitchen. “I think I’ll make a pitcher of lemonade.”

Gwen followed her, fetching a mesh bag of lemons while Twyla got out the wooden hand juicer. “I wonder why the steps waited until today to collapse. I guess everything happens for a reason, even your date this weekend.”

“This weekend happened because you Quilt Quorum ladies can’t seem to mind your own business.”

“It all worked out for the best. You went back home
with your head held high, and got yourself a new beau in the process.”

“Now, wait a minute. No one said anything about a beau.” She went to the sink and rinsed her hands, drying them on a tea towel. “I don’t want to hear another word about a beau. He’s going back to Denver and we won’t be seeing each other again.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s the way things are, Mom. My life is here. His is there.” She took out a sharp knife and started cutting the lemons in half.

“Does it have to be that way?”

Twyla hesitated, setting down the knife. “You tell me, Mom.”

Gwen pressed her lips together, her expression pained. “Twyla, I’m so sorry. I’m so ashamed of my—this—illness.”

“Mom, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.” This was a familiar topic, but today Twyla felt more urgency than usual. “You’re a beautiful woman. Youthful and full of energy. But if you won’t leave the house, life will pass you by.”

“We’ve been over this so many times.” Gwen turned a lemon half on the juicer. “Lately Brian’s starting to ask why I never go anywhere. I want to get better, but I just panic. Even thinking about it makes me panic.”

Twyla felt a lump rise in her throat. Her mother’s strange affliction frustrated her, angered her, but mostly it made her sad. What must her mother have been thinking, looking out the window of their trailer that day and seeing her husband crash his plane into the sheer rock face of Lost Horse Mountain? How could Twyla convince her that it was safe to live again?

“Dear God,” Gwen said, “it’s me, isn’t it? I’m the
reason you won’t get on with your life, try to find love again—”

“No, Mama, don’t be ridiculous.”

“And don’t you be a martyr to my problems. Tell you what,” Gwen said, industriously squeezing more lemon halves with the juicer. “I still have that card your friend Sadie gave me—the one with the number of the anxiety disorder specialist in Casper. And I still have the pills they gave me last time I tried to snap out of it.”

Twyla felt a dawning of hope. “Why the sudden change of heart, Mama?”

“Because I saw the way you were looking at Rob Carter just now. And it was the way I used to look at your father.”

“And how is that?”

“Like you’d follow him anywhere. I want you to be free to do that, Twyla. Follow a man anywhere.”

“That’s not freedom,” she objected. “I tried that with Jake, and he led me to my own ruin, practically.”

“This one is different. You know he is.”

They poured the lemon juice with ice and the sugar syrup into a pitcher. “It doesn’t matter, Mom. This was a weekend thing. He’s out of here tomorrow, and I won’t be seeing him again.”

While Gwen drained the pasta, Twyla went out on the porch. With a grin of triumph, Brian held something aloft, pinched between his thumb and forefinger. “Mom, look! Rob pulled my loose tooth.”

“How about that?” She held out her hand and he dropped the tiny tooth in her palm, then pulled back his lip to show her the gap. “You’ve never let anyone pull a tooth,” she said.

“I used a clean handkerchief,” Rob said hastily. His bare chest and shoulders gleamed with sweat.

“It didn’t hurt one bit,” Brian declared.

She put the tooth in her pocket. Brian wasn’t a coward, but he’d never let her get near him, even when a loose tooth was hanging by a thread. He was a different kid with Rob—more confident, more…himself, perhaps. Don’t get used to him, Brian, she wanted to warn her son. Don’t start needing him.

“You two had better get washed up,” she said, chiding herself for wishful thinking. “Supper’s ready.”

“Man, I could eat a horse,” Brian said. He seemed to be making a special effort to deepen his voice. Nothing like a set of tools to raise the testosterone level.

“Show Rob where the powder room is,” Twyla said.

“Not the powder room,” Brian said impatiently. “The can.”

Ducking her head to hide a smile, she went in to get supper on the table.

“R
OB
,” T
WYLA SAID
, looking across the dining room table at him, “I can’t thank you enough for fixing the step.”

“It’s the least I can do, since I’m the one who put my foot through it.” Both Rob and Brian had shown up at the dinner table with hats removed, hair combed and hands washed. He helped himself to a slice of warm bread and added more pasta to his plate. “If this is the thanks I get, I’ll stomp holes in the back steps, too. This is delicious.”

Both Twyla and Gwen beamed. It was a family trait that they loved to feed people who appreciated being fed. To Twyla’s amusement, she saw that Brian kept emulating everything Rob did, from the way he buttered his bread to the way he twirled his spaghetti. Yet even as she hid a furtive smile, she felt a now-familiar tight
ness in her chest. Her son was growing up without a father. It was not such a rare thing these days, but there was a special energy between a small boy and a man that she couldn’t supply, no matter how hard she tried.

Did she want Rob because Brian was smitten with him, or because he made her laugh, or because when they were making love, he made her feel like a goddess? All of the above, she decided.

Her mother was her usual charming self during dinner. Rob listened with polite interest as she chatted on about the Quilt Quorum, the books on Brian’s summer reading list, a pro golf tournament she’d seen on TV.

The four of them ate and talked as if they had known one another forever, and there was a delightful ease between them, no strain or awkward tension. Because, she supposed, there were no expectations on either side. On the few occasions she had tried dating, the strain had been there, palpable, because an invisible weight of anticipation pressed on the shoulders of these reluctant suitors. With Rob, no expectations existed. She knew she should take comfort in that, but instead, the thought of it made her unaccountably glum.

Rob took a last swig of lemonade and carried his dessert plate to the sink. “Ladies, I can’t thank you enough for the home cooking,” he said.

“You already have,” Gwen assured him. “Those steps have been a hazard for years.” She stood to clear the table. “Brian, I’m going to need help with the dishes tonight.”

“Aw, Grammy—”

“And then I’ll need help popping the popcorn before the Sunday-night movie.”

He dragged a step stool over to the sink.

“Good night, Gwen, Brian,” said Rob, taking his hat
from his back pocket. “I’ll be back in the morning to finish up.”

Twyla followed him outside, down the new steps into the yard. “You’re not finished?”

He turned, propping one hip on a sawhorse. His eyes never left her. “Not even close to finished.” Then he blinked as if he’d been disoriented. “Actually, the steps are done, but you need a railing.”

“I’ve never had a railing here. I think it fell off before I bought the place.”

“Probably violates some building code. I might as well do it right, Twyla, okay? Humor me. I don’t get to work with my hands too often.”

Everything he said seemed to have a double meaning. Everything reminded her of last night.

“Okay, so we need a railing,” she said.

“I’d hate to think of your mom losing her footing.”

Twyla hesitated, then lowered her voice and said, “She never comes down the stairs.” Catching the expression on his face, she said, “I’m not kidding, Rob.”

He held out his hand. “Come here. Walk with me.”

It felt good to touch him again, even if it was just holding hands. They headed down the slope to where his car was parked and stood together in the yard, watching the evening breeze stir the tire swing in the big oak tree.

“I know what you’re probably thinking about my mother,” Twyla said. “Everyone considers her a charming, bright lady, a good talker and a clear thinker. That’s why her agoraphobia is so strange, and so devastating. Everyone thinks that surely she’s not the sort of person who could be afflicted with some weird psychosis.”

“That’s more or less what I was thinking,” he admitted. “I did a psych rotation in med school. Anxiety disorders are pretty common, and your mother fits the
profile. You probably know more about this than I do at this point, but I want you to know, it’s treatable.”