Leigh Michaels - The Husband Project

“Did she?” Alison buried her face in a folderful of blank paper and did her best to sound entirely uninterested.

“So what’s going on there?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“Come on, Ali. Don’t tell me you’re just going to add him to your string of male pals.”

“Not on your life.”

Susannah sat up with the grace of a ballerina, grinning broadly. “Aha! Now we’re getting somewhere. If you don’t want to be friends with the man, it must mean you’re seriously attracted to him.”

Alison put the folder down with a snap and looked levelly at Susannah. “You know, Sue, my life was a whole lot less complicated before both you and Kit went nuts and fell in love.”

“Mine, too, but it was much less fun. So when are you going to see him again?”

“I’m not.”

“Really?” Susannah rose slowly. “Then why were you calling him at the office just now? I heard the receptionist answer. That’s a terrible name for a medical practice, don’t you think?”

Alison choked.

“And why, instead of admitting it, did you hang up on the poor woman when I came in? What, I wonder, didn’t you want me to overhear?” Then Susannah smiled like an angel and walked out without waiting for an answer.

The thinness of the stack of messages waiting for her on Rita’s desk had been a mirage; the fact was that every client Alison possessed—including some she hadn’t heard from in a year—called in the next week. Caught between too much work and the lingering effects of her surgery, Alison even considered installing an air mattress in her office. The main reason she didn’t was that she couldn’t find time to call the store and arrange a delivery.

She yawned as she climbed the steps to the main floor, carrying the final draft of yet another letter to be personalized and sent out to a mailing list of hundreds. She’d leave it on Rita’s desk to be taken care of in the morning, and then she was going home.

Used to the bright lights in her office, Alison was startled by the dimness on the main floor. She’d known it was late, of course—she’d drawn the curtains over her office windows hours ago, and the stillness of the entire brownstone had told her everyone but she and the calico cat. had departed. Still, she’d expected the last bit of twilight to still be trickling through the windows at the head of the stairs. Instead, there was only the yellow light which spilled from the entrance porch through the beveled glass panels around. the front door.

She flipped the hall lights on and crossed toward Rita’s office. A shadow moved on the steps outside, and Alison’s heart jolted. Tryad’s hours were clearly posted on the door; why would anybody be lurking outside now? A public relations office wasn’t even the sort of business she’d expect to draw the attention of any self-respecting burglar...

But if she was wrong about that...there she stood, spotlighted in the hallway.

She dived for the switch to kill the lights. Her eyes were slow to readjust to the dimness, and she’d managed to convince herself that she’d been startled by the movement of a tree branch in the breeze when a face pressed against the glass. The bevels distorted the image, so it wasn’t her eyes so much as the way her stomach tightened which told Alison who was outside. She unlocked the door, pulled it open, and looked up at Logan Kavanaugh.

“So you are here,” he said. “I saw lights on in the basement and then that sudden flash up here, and I suspected it would be you.”

“Congratulations. Does finding me make you eligible for a prize?” She didn’t move aside.

“Are you going to invite me in?”

“Any reason I should? Business hours are—”

“Looks to me like your business hours are about like mine—whatever it takes to get the job done.”

He did look tired, she thought. There was a network of fine lines around his eyes. She stepped back from the door. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“If it’s already made.”

“It won’t take a minute. Believe me, you don’t want to drink the tar that’s left in the pot.”

Logan shrugged. “I’ve no doubt had worse.” He followed her down the stairs and into the big kitchen next to her office.

Alison dumped the glass carafe, rinsed it, and started a fresh pot brewing. “So what brings you here?” She didn’t look at him. “No, don’t tell me. I bet you’re so shaken at being done with work at this hour—my goodness, it’s only eight o’clock!—that you’ve decided to take me on as a patient after all.”

“This was supposed to be my afternoon off,” he said gloomily. “If I was out beating the bushes for anything, it’d be a doctor—we’re short one just now.” He shook his head at the sugar bowl she held up. “I thought perhaps you’d decided on another approach to your problem, since you haven’t called for a referral.”

Alison set a steaming cup in front of him. “I’m amazed, with all those rafts of patients to see, that you’d bother to keep track of me.”

He grinned, and the tired lines around his eyes crinkled with humor. “Purely in self-defense, I assure you. Though as a matter of fact, I didn’t know till today that you hadn’t called.”

Alison poured her own coffee and sat down across from him. “So what was special about today?”

“This came in the mail.” He reached into the inside breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out an envelope. “I don’t suppose you know anything about it.”

His tone, Alison thought, said that he’d already convinced himself differently.

She looked warily at the envelope. The return address was Tryad’s, the envelope identical to the ones they had printed by the thousands. Logan’s name and office address had been neatly typed. She turned it over, looked up at him, and shook her head. “I can’t imagine why you think I’d be sending—”

“Go ahead, open it.”

“The cloak-and-dagger way you’re acting, I’m not sure I want to leave my fingerprints,” she muttered, but she slid the contents out. She recognized the long, narrow card immediately; it was one of the elegant gift certificates she’d produced, good for one year’s membership in the Chicago Singles.

She tried without much success to choke back a laugh. Susannah, she thought, the little matchmaker! The whole notion of gift certificates had been Susannah’s; Alison should have seen this coming. “And you thought I’d enrolled you? No, I can’t take credit for that. Lucky you. It’s a pretty pricey gift, you know.”

“Can’t take credit? Or won’t?”

“I had nothing to do with it. I have to admit I have my suspicions about who’s responsible, but—”

“It’s your signature, Alison.”

“Of course it is. I signed a whole stack of blanks, but they’re not valid till Rita numbers and registers them. She no doubt has a record of who paid the bill. If you like, I’ll ask her tomorrow. I can also—”

“It’s a shame, you know. I was so certain it was you I brought you a gift in return.” From the other inside breast pocket, he took a small, flat white box and set it down on the table beside his cup.

“Very thoughtful,” Alison said dryly. “But I still don’t quite understand why you’d think that I—”

“Because the whole idea sounds like one of your fruitcake plans—and when I found out you hadn’t pursued the medical alternative, it all fit with your twisted logic. What better way to meet a transient population of males than to set up your very own singles club?”

Alison shook her head in confusion. “So I can look over the selection and choose one to father my baby? Oh, please. Even if I was crazy enough to do that, why would I let you in on it?”

“In the hope that I’d feel so bad about the risks you’d be taking that I’d volunteer to help after all.”