The Husband Project. Leigh Michaels
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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.”
“You’d be more likely to issue a general warning in the name of protecting your fellow men.” She tapped the heavy vellum gift certificate on her palm. “I’ll give this back to Rita tomorrow and have her issue you a refund check.”
“Didn’t your mother ever tell you it isn’t polite to return a gift for the money?”
“As a matter of fact,” Alison said dryly, “no, she didn’t.”
Logan extracted the gift certificate from her hand and put it gently back into his breast pocket. “Besides, someone obviously thought I’d find this fun—and who knows? They might just be right. And the least I can do is stand by to give—what did you call it? A general warning to protect my fellow men, wasn’t that it? Thanks for the coffee.” With a theatrical sweep, he bowed and was gone, leaving Alison sitting with cup in hand staring at nothingness.
Finally she shook her head a little and smiled. Let the man have his joke. He wouldn’t show up within miles of the Chicago Singles; he just wanted her to think he might.
She stood up and started to clear the table. Only when she picked up his cup did she realize that he’d gone off without the small, flat box.
I was so certain it was you I brought you a gift in return, he’d said.
If the box had been seated or wrapped, she wouldn’t have opened it. But it was neither, and it would have taken a lot more willpower than Alison possessed to keep from lifting the lid and peeking inside. She wasn’t hurting anything, after all. He’d never even know she’d looked.
On a bed of white cotton lay a silver pin just a couple of inches tall, in the shape of a musician with a flute raised to his lips. The workmanship was delicate, the most beautiful Alison had ever seen. And what instinct had told him that the flute was the instrument she’d always wanted to play?
Her fingertip went out hesitantly. The silver warmed instantly to her touch, and—almost frightened