A Proper Wife

“Do you have any idea,” he said, “what a lucky so-and-so you are to be spending the evening with me?”

Frank snatched his jacket from the stool and fixed Ryan with a baleful glare.

“It’s bad enough I had to spend the last fifteen minutes threatening death and destruction to everybody who tried to steal this seat from me. You don’t really expect me to bat my eyes at you and simper, do you?”

Ryan laughed as he sat down next to his friend.

“Sorry I’m late, old buddy. I got hung up at the office.” He nodded his thanks as an ever-observant Harry set his usual drink before him. “So,” he said after a long swallow, “how’s it going?”

Frank shrugged. “Depends on what we’re talking about. Business is fine. My love life’s in the toilet.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, I broke up with Emma.”

“Was that your latest?” Ryan smiled. “I know you always tell me their names and give me a full des

cription—”

“—but lately, you haven’t been paying attention, pal.” Frank sighed. “Yes, Emma was my lady of the month.”

“What went wrong?”

“The usual. She began making noises about forever after.” Frank shuddered dramatically. “We sure as heck don’t want ’em to do that, do we?”

“No,” Ryan said after an almost imperceptible pause. “No, we certainly do not.”

“And how’re things in your world? Still putting in lots of overtime?”

What he was putting in, Ryan thought, was lots of time just sitting in his office long after the workday had ended, but what was the sense in hurrying home?

If he got home before seven, he and Devon ended up having dinner together, she at one end of the long dining room table, he at the other. How was her day? he’d ask. She’d say it had been fine and how was his? And then they’d slip back into the same polite silence that had surrounded them since their quarrel the day of their wedding.

He frowned and cleared his throat. “Yes, I’m still working late. I—I find I can get a lot done at night, when people are gone and the phones aren’t ringing.”

Frank nodded. “Well, why not? There’s no point in hurrying home.” He looked at Ryan, a sly grin easing across his mouth. “Unless, of course, the situation’s changed and you’re making the most of having a temporary wife under your roof.”

Ryan’s eyes went flat. “What in hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Hey, take it easy. I was just wondering if the status quo was still the status quo, OK?”

The cold look eased from Ryan’s eyes. “Sure,” he said. “Sorry, Frank, it’s been a rough week.”

“That’s OK, man. I know how it is.”

No, Ryan thought, Frank couldn’t possibly know how it was.

Frank didn’t share a house with a woman who might as well have been a ghost. He’d never entered a room she was in only to have her smile politely and walk out. He’d never walked into the unexpected scent of her perfume lingering in a hallway. And he sure as hell had never heard the soft sound of her laughter when she was on the phone and then spent the next hours going crazy, wondering who in hell was making her laugh when he couldn’t.

No, Frank didn’t know any of that. And he didn’t lie alone in his bed, night after night, his body on fire with the knowledge that the most beautiful woman in the world lay alone in hers, just up a simple flight of stairs....

“...the old man?”

Ryan cleared his throat. “Sorry, Frank. I missed that.”

“I asked if you and Devon are still making the weekly pilgrimage to your grandfather’s house—or have things slackened off after five and a half months?”

“Are you kidding? It’s a command performance. He and Brimley expect us at one o’clock sharp, every Sunday.”