Housekeeper Under The Mistletoe. Cara Colter
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summed up her problem. Leaving the wedding ring in her jewelry box had been a foolish gesture, and the loan of her sister’s ring hadn’t made her finger feel any less forlorn.
“You have to talk things out,” Anne continued. “Forget this new-look stuff, that’s not what you need. Not that you don’t look wonderful—”
“You’re only saying that because I look like you.”
Her sister grinned, acknowledging the point. With Beth’s brand-new haircut, they looked more alike than they had in years. “Strawberry blondes are better with short curls, that’s all there is to it. But anyway, talking to Rafe would be the fastest way to fix things. I mean, if you want to stay married.”
“That’s what’s so embarrassing!” She still wanted him as her husband, and a whole week of vacation hadn’t made any difference in that fierce, heartfelt yearning for Rafe Montoya. “What kind of woman wants a husband who doesn’t need her?”
Anne hesitated, gazing at her coffee cup before meeting her gaze with an uncomfortable expression. “Bethie, I know you’ve got this thing about taking care of people, but being needed isn’t the same thing as being loved.”
Maybe such statements made sense for a career woman who didn’t understand the essentials of love, but Anne was completely wrong. “That’s what marriage is about!”
Her sister thought that over long enough for Beth to realize there was no comfortable solution to be found, then tapped the page on the table with her usual executive determination.
“You need a list of pros and cons,” she announced. “Reasons to stay married, and reasons to get divorced. Come on, write it down.”
“But…” What if the reasons for divorce outweighed the reasons for marriage? And how on earth had she and Anne traded roles so quickly, when normally she was the one taking care of her sister? “I don’t want to give up on him yet.”
“That goes in the pro column,” Anne ordered, taking another sip of her coffee. “What else do you like about him?”
It wasn’t a question of liking him, though. It was more a matter of loving him.
And suspecting he would never love her.
“Come on,” her sister prompted. “Is he smart, handsome, rich, charming, good in bed—”
“Anne!” They were in the middle of a dining car, with people all around them, and here she was asking about Rafe in bed?
“Good-looking, punctual, courteous, good athlete—”
“All of that,” Beth interrupted hastily, trying to dismiss the memory of his athletic body pressed against hers. At least while making love to her, Rafe Montoya could be wonderfully free with his emotions. “Well, except rich. He’s still paying back his student loans, and the legal clinic won’t ever make big money.”
“So that goes in the con column, along with waiting for a baby and leaving the lid off the toothpaste,” Anne directed. “Good thing he’s punctual, though, if he’s picking us up at the train station.”
They had arranged last week that Rafe would meet them at nine-thirty this morning, so he and Beth could show Anne their new house before taking her to the airport. And, knowing him, he had phoned the station at dawn to check on their arrival time.
Because while Rafe Montoya would never give his heart, neither would he give up a responsibility.
“Probably coming right from work,” Beth said, drawing a wavy line between the two columns on her page.
“He’s at work this early?”
No hour was too early for a man whose workday could easily begin at three in the morning. Or last for seventy-two hours at a stretch…especially if a juvenile gang member needed someone to post bail, a ride home from the police station, or a temporary place to stay.
“He probably spent the night at Legalismo,” she explained. “I mean, with me on vacation, there’s not much reason to come home.”
But as soon as she heard the words “not much reason to come home,” she wished she hadn’t spoken. Because they sounded like a death knell for her marriage.
And she wasn’t quite ready to accept that yet.
“Some people,” Anne said dryly, “might think sleeping in a real bed was worth driving home for.”
People who’d grown up sleeping in a real bed, yes.
“People like you and me,” Beth agreed. “But you know how Rafe is.”
Anne raised her eyebrows in agreement, as if confirming her initial opinion of Beth’s husband. On the night of Beth and Rafe’s engagement party, the first time she’d ever met him, she had drawn Beth aside and observed that the man was “incredibly gorgeous if you like that reformed-rogue, dark-and-dangerous look. But, Bethie, do you really want to spend the rest of your life with this Saint Rafael of the street kids?”
A question which had haunted her for the past six months.
“I know how Rafe is,” Anne agreed, glancing at her wristwatch. “If you say he’s gonna be on time, he’s gonna be on time.”
“You’ll make your flight home just fine,” Beth promised, noting with a touch of amusement that her sister was already slipping from vacation mode back into work mode.
Because she was still staring at her watch.
Or rather, at Beth’s engraved confirmation gift, which Anne had borrowed on the first day of their trip. Leaving her own watch at home, Beth’s twin had announced, was a stupid idea, and she was never listening to that stress-reduction tape again.
“Okay,” Anne said now, looking up with an apologetic smile as if realizing how quickly she’d shifted gears. “So I’ll be in Chicago by dark. But, listen, if you want time alone with Rafe, you don’t have to give me the house tour yet. I can see it next time I come out.”
“No, you have to see it! You’ll love how I did the guest room like an office, and next time you visit it’ll be like having your own desk right there.”
Anne grinned at her. “Humor the workaholic, right? I did pretty good this week, though.”
If you counted phoning the business manager twice a day as pretty good, then she had.
“You did,” Beth agreed. “And we even found time for shopping.” Her sister had insisted on new clothes to complement Beth’s midvacation makeover at San Diego’s trendiest salon, which had left them looking more like twins than they’d looked since seventh grade.
“Wasn’t that fun? The waiter just now, I could tell, was dying to ask.”
Anne always enjoyed fielding questions about what it was like to have an identical twin, and Beth had always been glad to let her sister do the talking. “You can tell him when he comes back with the coffee,” she offered, returning her gaze to the list of pros and cons. “I wish we had another few days of vacation.”
Sometimes a sympathetic look spoke more loudly than words, and Beth felt a flicker of dismay as she caught Anne’s expression. Her sister evidently suspected that a few extra days of vacation wouldn’t make any difference to the Montoyas’ marriage, but she was too tactful for such an observation.
“Listen,” Anne offered instead, “you know you can always come visit me. Actually, it’d be wonderful to have you looking out for things.”
“What, at the office?” That wasn’t Beth’s domain, even though they shared ownership and responsibility for their nonprofit company. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“But you could learn. I mean, if you decide you want a change in your life.”
Regardless of what happened with Rafe, though, she couldn’t imagine trading roles with her five-minutes-older