Wife On Approval. Leigh Michaels

seemed to him that outlook of hers hadn’t changed in the least, despite the passage of time. Her attitude showed not only in her hairstyle—for flattering though it was, the cut had obviously been chosen for convenience as well as looks—but in her manicure. He watched her slim fingers as she worked with the flowers. Even from across the room, he could see that though her nails were evenly trimmed and buffed to a shine, they were completely innocent of polish.

      She’d always avoided bright nail polish, he remembered. He’d told her once it was a shame not to emphasize the delicate grace of her shapely hands by painting her nails red, but she’d simply shaken her head and said brilliant nails were a waste of time, requiring almost constant care and upkeep, with attention to each minuscule chip or scratch.

      Yes, he thought, she was the same old Paige….

      He drew himself up short. She wasn’t the same old Paige, he told himself. If anything, she was probably even more set in her ways than she’d been seven years ago—and he’d be wise to remember it.

      She stabbed another stem into the mug. “I should have thought our divorce would be an easy date for you to remember.”

      Austin frowned. “I don’t celebrate it, if that’s what you mean.”

      “Of course not. I’m certainly not saying that our divorce is important enough for you to recall it for its own sake.”

      She’d gotten better at sarcasm, Austin reflected. More controlled, far more subtle. It flicked him on the raw nevertheless.

      “But you can surely remember how old your daughter is,” Paige went on sweetly, “and how long it was before she was born that you met her mother. From there it should be no step at all to recall—”

      “How long I’d been free at the time. I see what you mean now. If we’ve been divorced nearly seven years, and Jennifer’s soon going to be six…You’re quite right, Paige.” He let a congratulatory note creep into his voice. “It was very nearly the same time as when you filed for divorce.” He saw her tiny, almost-concealed shudder. “What’s the matter? Are you jealous because I moved on with my life, and you haven’t?”

      “Of course I’m not jealous. Your choices have no significance for me. Besides, why would you think I’m stuck in a rut somewhere?”

      “Your name, for starters,” he said. “The super called you Ms. McDermott—just as you asked of the judge in the divorce petition, when you got tired of being Paige Weaver.”

      She shrugged. “I made the mistake of giving up my name once, when I married—and it was terribly untidy to get it back. Perhaps the next time around I was just wiser.”

      “And perhaps,” he said curtly, “if you were talking about the truth instead of vague possibilities, you’d be making definite statements instead of subjective ones.”

      She tilted her chin up. It was a gesture he remembered well; in the old days it had usually meant she knew she was on less-than-solid ground. “All right, so I haven’t married again. At least I learned my lesson.”

      “Meaning what? That I didn’t?”

      “What other conclusion is there? You got yourself mixed up with a woman while you were on the rebound—”

      He picked up an apple from the polished fruit bowl on the counter and rubbed it against his sleeve. “You’re giving yourself quite a little credit there, I see.”

      “If you’re talking about your bad choices, they’re not my responsibility.”

      “No. I mean your assumption that I was on a rebound from you,” he said gently, and watched with slightly malicious pleasure as the dart hit her dead center. He bit into the apple with a satisfying crack.

      Irritation flared in her big hazel eyes. “Oh, come on, Austin. Even bad marriages—especially bad marriages—have aftereffects. People do crazy things after a divorce, no matter how much they wanted to be free.”

      “You sound as if you’re speaking from personal experience. What crazy things did you do?”

      “None,” she said crisply.

      Austin shook his head sadly. “What a shame—to be so repressed that you’ve forgotten how to let your hair down.”

      “Attacking me doesn’t change the circumstances. It’s obvious just from the timing what happened to you—to say nothing of the fact that the relationship obviously wasn’t successful. You’re here, with your little girl, and her mother is—do you even know where?”

      He said wryly, “I don’t have a forwarding address, no.”

      “As I said, at least I learned my lesson.”

      “Have you.” He didn’t intend it to be a question. “How is your mother, by the way?”

      Paige looked wary. “She’s fine.”

      “Still enjoying her invalidism, I suppose?”

      “There’s nothing fictional about Mother’s disability.”

      “Only about her dramatic way of coping with it.”

      “I don’t have any idea why you would think I’m interested in your opinions about my mother, Austin.”

      “Really? That’s just about the way I feel concerning your opinions about my life.”

      She closed her eyes momentarily and he saw a flicker of pain in her face, as if the shaft had gone home.

      “It’s ironic,” he mused, “that the woman who didn’t want to be married to me ends up as my hired wife.”

      “But not for long.” Paige wiped off the counter and set the mugful of flowers to one side. “I’ve left a chicken casserole in the oven for you, and a salad in the refrigerator. Don’t worry, neither includes anything but healthy ingredients—the last thing Rent-A-Wife needs is a case of food poisoning laid at our door.”

      Jennifer bounced down the hall and across the kitchen to fling herself against her father. “It’s exactly like my old room! It’s just like you promised!”

      Over his daughter’s head, Austin met Paige’s eyes. “Thank you,” he said stiffly.

      She shrugged. “Not me. Jennifer’s room was entirely Sabrina’s doing.” She washed her hands. “The grocery list you sent has been filled and everything stored away. And now that I’ve done all I can to make the place ready for you, I’ll get out of your way and leave the two of you to settle in.”

      She brushed past him and picked up her coat from a kitchen chair. “Goodbye, Jennifer.” Her voice grew softer. “I hope you’ll learn to like Denver despite the cold.”

      Then she was gone, through a back door Austin hadn’t even seen.

      Jennifer stared after her. “Why did she go away?”

      “Probably because she had other things to do right now.”

      “Why did she sound like she’s never coming back?”

      “Perhaps because she doesn’t intend to.”

      “Oh. That must be because she doesn’t like you.” The child’s voice was matter-of-fact.

      It wasn’t the first time that Jennifer’s precocious insight had set Austin back on his heels. Sometimes, he thought, she seemed to be five years old going on thirty—both perceptive and acute.

      And even more dead on target than Paige had been, as she’d so curtly diagnosed his weaknesses. Paige, he thought, had missed the mark in a couple of critical areas.

      He’d made his share of bad choices, just as she’d deduced, and he wouldn’t deny it. But not everything he’d done in the months after their divorce had fallen into the category of things to be regretted.

      Take Jennifer, for example.