Wife For A Week Part 7

Her frown deepened as she looked at her notebook again. She had to think of something. Everyone had little quirks, tiny habits that drove their mates crazy. Like squeezing the toothpaste from the middle or leaving the toilet lid up.

But, in their time together, Hank hadn't left the lid up and she didn't know how he squeezed his toothpaste since his toiletries were always picked up and put away when she went into the bathroom.

Mind racing, she started to write, realizing it didn't have to be true. Their marriage wasn't real, why did the quirks that bothered her have to be real? She smiled, beginning to enjoy the exercise.

Barbara gave them about fifteen minutes to write. "Okay, by now you should have listed the biggest offenses," she said with a smile. "Let's start with Angela. What's the first thing you wrote down?"

"He never calls when he's going to get home late from work," Angela replied, not looking at Hank. She was almost afraid to look at him for fear of bursting into giggles.

"And how does that make you feel?" Barbara asked.

Angela thought for a moment. "Like I'm not important to him. He takes me for granted." She warmed to the fantasy. "Sometimes I go all out to cook a wonderful meal. I set the table with our best china and light candles, you know, plan a wonderful romantic evening. Then he doesn't call and he doesn't come home until everything is ruined." She shot a surrept.i.tious glance at Hank. His eyes gleamed with humor...and the warning of payback.

"Hank, do you hear what Angela is telling you? That by not calling her you make her feel as if she isn't important to you," Barbara said.

"I hear her," he replied.

"Tell her that you're sorry she feels that way." Barbara smiled, the smile of a mother watching her children playing nice together.

Hank nodded, and reached for Angela's hand. "I'm sorry, darling. I didn't realize how my not calling made you feel. I promise to do better in the future." He squeezed her hand, a renewed promise of payback.

"Okay...good." Barbara smiled. "Now Hank, it's your turn."

"She uses s.e.x as a weapon," he replied.

Angela gasped. "I do not," she protested.

Hank nodded solemnly. "She does," he said to Barbara. "You do," he repeated to Angela. He focused back on Barbara. "If I do or say something that makes her unhappy, she won't make love to me that night. She won't let me kiss her or hug her. I feel like there are times I have to practically beg her to get the opportunity to physically love her."

"That's ridiculous," Angela exclaimed.

Hank cast Barbara a hangdog look of sadness. "And now I probably won't be able to touch her tonight, no matter how much I yearn for her."

Barbara looked at Angela. "Is s.e.x uncomfortable for you, either physically or emotionally?"

"No." She glared at Hank. He smiled rather sadly, giving her a wounded look. Oh, he was good. He was definitely good.

Angela gazed down at her lap, then once again directed her focus on Hank. "I'm sorry. It isn't a conscious thing to withhold myself from you. It's just when I don't feel important to you, I'm not in the mood to be with you intimately. And most of the time your work is more important than me and my needs."

Satisfaction flooded through her as she realized how neatly she'd placed the issues back in his lap.

"So, it sounds like one of the issues you two need to work on is mutual respect," Barbara replied. "Mutual respect and making sure your mate feels important. Hank, what else do you have on your list?"

"She binds her hair."

Angela looked at him in surprise, a hand automatically shooting to the nape of her neck where her hair was tied with a pale blue scarf. "I tie it back because it's easier than messing with it."

"I wish you'd wear it loose. You have gorgeous hair, but you never show it off," Hank said. All glints of humor were gone from his eyes. Instead, Angela saw a whisper of yearning, a s.h.i.+mmer of truth in their dark-blue depths.

"I...I could wear it down sometimes," she said. The light in his eyes caused a strange, evocative warmth in the pit of her stomach.

"That's seems easy enough," Barbara said, drawing both Hank and Angela's attention away from each other and toward her. "Some days you can wear it down, and other days you can pin it back. A happy compromise." She smiled at Angela. "Your turn again. What else did you write down?"

Angela picked up her notebook and gazed down at it, trying to forget that solitary moment when she'd seen those odd, unfamiliar emotions in Hank's eyes.

Surely she'd only imagined them. Uncomfortable with the sudden somber mood between herself and her pretend husband, she chose another item on her list that she thought would make him laugh.

"Sometimes he treats me like his secretary instead of his wife," she announced. "And, I can tell you for a fact he doesn't pay his secretary half what she's worth." She was relieved to see the familiar light of humor in his eyes.

The rest of the session sped by as Barbara talked to them about compromise, avoiding bad habits and how to reinforce good habits. She explained to them that it was better to talk about pet peeves than to let little irritations grow out of control. "Communication between the two of you is the key to a healthy, happy marriage," she concluded.

"I'm going to take a ride with Trent. He wants to take me over to his brother-in-law's place to see a couple of horses," Hank said after the session was finished. "We'll be back in an hour or so."

"Okay," Angela replied. Angela had a feeling his outing was less about seeing horses and more about seeing less of her.

He probably hadn't realized how long a week would be pretending to be bound to a woman he wasn't interested in. He hadn't consciously thought about how intimate it would be, sharing not only workshops geared to marital bliss, but also a bedroom... a bed.

Angela went upstairs to the bedroom. She had a couple hours to herself before dinner. She knew Stan and Edie would be in their private session with Barbara.

She sat on the edge of the bed and opened a magazine she'd packed to bring. She thumbed through the pages, but none of the articles interested her, none of the pages took her mind off her boss.

She knew what was happening. The crush she'd once had on Hank, the infatuation she'd thought had ended long ago, had returned with a vengeance.

She wasn't sure exactly when it had reappeared... whether it had been when he'd kissed her, or during one of their sharing sessions with Barbara. In any case, the timing didn't matter.

Standing from the bed, she stared at the diamond ring on her finger. It sparkled as a ray of suns.h.i.+ne flooding through the window danced on its surface.

It was a beautiful ring, but it didn't fit quite right. Just like she and Hank didn't fit right. The ring could be sized, made smaller or larger, but she and Hank would always be a misfit. She'd do well to remember that.

It was foolish, entertaining any romantic thoughts where Hank was concerned. She knew better than anyone the kind of women he liked. She'd sent them all flowers, had ordered them gifts, had made dinner reservations at fancy restaurants for Hank and his lady of the moment.

She couldn't compete with those gorgeous, poised women, and she'd be crazy to even try. Funny face. Her dad's pet name echoed in her mind. Hank obviously liked physically beautiful women, that's all she'd ever seen him with. One after another, his love life was like a parade of contestants from a beauty pageant.

Hank might think her hair was pretty, he might say he enjoyed her sense of humor. But, that was a long way from love. Men like Hank didn't love women like Angela.

Besides, she wasn't in love with him. She just had a crush, a harmless little crush that would never evolve into anything more. She couldn't let it evolve into something deeper, because only a fool would allow her boss to break her heart.

Chapter Seven.

"Whoa. Easy boy." Cameron Gallagher gentled the huge stallion with a caress on the neck.

The black stallion was enclosed in a large, wooden corral. Hank and Trent stood outside the corral, watching Trent's brother-in-law, Cameron, work with the half-wild beast. Dust rode the wind as the horse anxiously pawed the dry ground.

"He's a beauty, isn't he?" Trent observed.

"He sure is," Hank agreed.

"Cam caught him two weeks ago in a box canyon where several packs of wild horses roam," Trent explained. "He'd had his eye on that stallion for months before he actually managed to rope him."

"He's good with horses," Hank said as he watched the tall, dark-haired cowboy working with the stallion.

"Yeah, about the only things Cameron really likes are horses, his wife and his daughter...not necessarily in that order."

Trent nodded as Cameron approached where he and Hank stood. "Hey Cam."

"Trent." Cameron nodded.

"This is Hank Riverton from Great Falls. I've been telling him about your success in breaking the horses in the wild pack."

"Are you a rancher, Mr. Riverton?" Cameron asked as he shook Hank's hand.

"Not at the present time...but maybe in the future. Sometime I'd like a little place...maybe keep a couple of horses," Hank replied, surprised to realize his words were true.

"There's lots of prime land around Mustang," Cameron said.

"I'd probably be looking around the Great Falls area," Hank replied. He made a mental note to himself to check out the possibility of buying some property when he returned to Great Falls. It would be nice to have several acres, nothing too big, but enough land to keep some horses for pleasure purposes.

"Well, best of luck to you," Cameron said, obviously itching to get back to his work with the stallion.

Trent looked at his watch. "Yeah, I suppose we ought to get back. Elena and I have our session with Barbara right before dinner."

"What made you decide to do this week-long marital enrichment thing?" Hank asked as the two men walked back to Trent's pickup.

Trent shrugged. "Elena thought it would be good for us." He cast Hank a conspiratorial wink. "You know women, they love this bonding stuff."

"And you didn't mind?" Hank asked.

Trent smiled, a smile that made him appear as if he had the most fantastic secret in the world. "Nah. I'm happy doing whatever makes her happy. This seemed to be a small enough price to pay to please her."

An uncharacteristic surge of envy once again shot through Hank. As the two men drove back to Brody's place, Hank thought of Trent's smile. It had been more than the simple gesture of a happy man...it had been the smile of a man who'd found the secret of profound bliss...and he'd found it in the happiness of his wife.

Hank had never given much thought to marriage and family. He simply hadn't been interested before. But now he found himself contemplating the idea, trying to imagine what it would be like to love a woman every day, every night for a lifetime. What would it be like to hold a newborn Hank Jr. or a little Ashley in his arms? For the first time in forever, the idea didn't exactly scare him, but rather held a strange appeal.

Maybe it was time to start wife hunting. He was thirty-three years old. If he intended to have children he didn't want to start a family when he was too old to enjoy little ones.

"You like being a father?" he asked Trent.

Trent nodded. "If I do nothing else in my life but raise my little boy, I've done something important," he replied. Trent grinned at him knowingly. "Does your wife's pregnancy make you just a little bit nervous?"

"My wife's....oh...yeah...sort of..." The words stuttered out of Hank and for a brief moment he felt the need to come clean, to tell Trent that his marriage, Angela's pending motherhood, all of it was nothing more than a manufactured lie for business' sake.

"Don't sweat it," Trent said with a rea.s.suring grin. "Having babies is almost as much fun as making babies."

Hank gave him a weak smile in return. The impulse to come clean pa.s.sed. There was no point in telling the truth, no point in risking the Robinson account because of a momentary flare of his conscience.

When they got back to the ranch, Trent met up with Elena for their private session with Barbara, and Hank found Angela pacing in their bedroom.

"You trying to wear a hole in that rug?" he asked as he walked into the room.

"No, just thinking," she replied. She sank down on the love seat, a touch of uneasiness in her eyes. "Did you see Trent's brother-in-law's horses?"

"Some of them." Hank sat on the edge of the bed. He knew he'd left abruptly with Trent, leaving her to cool her heels here by herself.

But, somehow he felt as if all his disturbing thoughts about marriage and family revolved around the woman who sat facing him. It frightened him.

Since Angela had begun working with him two years ago, not only his business, but his life had run smoothly. She'd taken care of things for him, reminded him of not only business appointments, but personal engagements as well.

He'd had five secretaries in the year before finding Angela. He had a feeling that finding an appropriate wife would be far easier than finding a good secretary. He wasn't about to jeopardize what he had by acting out on a crazy impulse or giving into the absurd desire for her that struck him at brief intervals.

She looked especially attractive at the moment, wearing a pair of worn, tight jeans that emphasized the length of her legs, and a caramel-colored blouse that perfectly matched the golden brown of her eyes.

"So, what do you want to do before dinner? Or have you made plans to do something else?" She looked at her watch. "We've got about an hour and a half."

"You go ahead and do whatever you want." Hank stretched out on the bed. "I think I'll take a little nap." It was time to regain his distance from her, regain and maintain. He closed his eyes, far too aware of her presence in the room.

"Okay. Then I'll see you at dinner?"

He grunted a noncommitted reply. He heard her stand, felt her gaze on him as she hesitated. Then he heard her footsteps leading her out of the room.

He sighed in relief, hoping the scent of her perfume went with her rather than remained in the air to agitate him.

Four more days and they would be finished with this crazy week. Four more days and they would go back to Great Falls, back to their positions as boss and secretary.

Surely he could be smart for four days. Surely he could manage to pretend to be her husband, yet keep himself distanced enough so that he wouldn't jeopardize their future work together.

And for the next two days, Hank did manage to keep his distance. They ate each meal together, laughing and joking with the others. They attended the workshops with Barbara, talking about fears, and dreams and goals. He managed to be cordial and polite as they spent their free time with the other couples.

Hank was pleasant to Angela, played the role of happy husband, yet somehow managed to keep his emotional distance from her.

He could tell she felt his withdrawal from her. He could see questions in her eyes, but he didn't answer them. What point was there in confessing that he had the hots for his secretary? Especially since he intended to do nothing about his feelings for her.

The only time they touched was in the dead zone of sleep. Every night, despite his resolve to the contrary, their bodies sought the warmth, the tactile pleasure of one another. And every morning they awakened, wrapped in each other's embrace, and pulled apart as if burned by the contact.

By Sat.u.r.day afternoon, Hank silently congratulated himself on a job well done. They had fooled not only Brody and Barbara, but all the other couples as well and Hank had managed to put his strange feelings for Angela behind him.

Those moments of desire, the crazy need to kiss her, to hold her, had pa.s.sed and first thing in the morning they would be back on the road to Great Falls, back to their normal and very separate lives.

He gave Angela a confident smile as they started their last private workshop with Barbara. As they had done all week long, they sat on the plush throw rug in front of the empty fireplace as Barbara sat in a chair some distance away from them.

"I have really enjoyed working with the two of you this past week," Barbara said. "Next week I'll be mailing you a short questionnaire. I hope you'll take the time to tell me what you thought of your experience here, what worked and didn't work to increase your marital fulfillment."