Free Husband for Hire by Susan Wiggs Page B

“I swear, I get tired of it sometimes. They’re so convinced I need someone. They’ve tried to set me up with a tractor mechanic, a cow buyer, a rough-stock rider, the sheriff’s deputy…and a bunch of others.” She smiled a little shyly. “This is the first time they’ve actually paid for a man to match me up with.”
    “The pressure’s killing me.” Rob poured coffee and helped himself to a roll, savoring the fresh-baked taste of it. “So keep going. I want the rest of the tour.”
    The photos of Twyla chronicled a life that probably should have added up to something different than it had. At the age of thirteen, she stood proudly beside an adjudicator, having won her first local piano competition. She was the cutest cheerleader he’d ever seen, and valedictorian of her high school class. The prom picture was a classic—the oversize corsage, the nervous smiles, the stiff poses. She had learned to speak French by correspondence course and was accepted at no less than four private colleges.
    “So did you go?” he asked.
    A faraway look softened her face. “I sure wanted to, but things didn’t work out.”
    “Would it be getting too personal to ask what those ‘things’ were?”
    She flinched, pain darkening her eyes. “I got married right out of school to a guy who was a junior in college. We were too young, of course. Every couple that’s too young believes they’ll be the exception to the statistics—ever notice that?”
    “Never really thought about it.”
    “Have you ever been married, Rob?”
    “No.” He didn’t bring up Lauren. They weren’t married or even engaged. They just…were. He finished his coffee, gulping it too fast. “Why do you ask?”
    “No reason.” She bit her lip, and a troubling emotion glittered in her eyes.
    “Hey, you don’t have to explain,” Rob said quickly. This was exactly why he practiced medicine in a laboratory. He didn’t have the patience and compassion to deal with people getting emotional, baring their souls.
    “No, I don’t mind talking about the past, really.”
    Great. Rob reminded himself that she had offered him a chance to back out. Instead, like an idiot, he’d shown up at her house. Her poor, decrepit house that smelled of baking bread and furniture polish and rang with the laughter of a little boy.
    Her eyes, hazy with remembrance, looked unseeing out the window. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be melodramatic. But what happened was big stuff for a small town like Hell Creek.”
    She took a sip of her coffee and visibly tried to compose herself. She had a great face, Rob thought, watching her. She had the subtle freckles and fair coloring of a natural redhead, eyes that said too much, a mouth that smiled too easily.
    Agitated, she stood up, rubbing her hands up anddown her arms as if she felt a sudden chill. “To make a long story short, my father died suddenly and my mother—” she glanced at the doorway and dropped her voice “—was left pretty devastated, emotionally and financially.”
    Rob suddenly wished he was far away. Very far. “Twyla, are you sure you want to talk about this?”
    She stopped rubbing her arms. “Does all this emotional baggage bother you?”
    “No,” he lied.
    “Let me know if it does, and I’ll stop.”
    “You mean there’s more?”
    She took a sip of coffee. “Stay tuned. Where were we? Oh, yeah. It didn’t help that my husband was dumping me right about the time of my father’s death. So much for my own plans. I couldn’t go away and leave my mother twisting in the wind. Since I already knew how to do hair, I looked for a salon to buy so we could stay together as a family. Practically overnight, I had my own business.”
    “Twyla’s Tease ’n’ Tweeze.”
    A smile curved her mouth as she took a seat. “Call it a moment of mad whimsy. Mom and I were hitting the zinfandel that night.”
    Family, Rob realized, was a tender trap. When he had graduated from high school, there was no one to stand