Wife for Hire by Christine Bell Page B

want to please you, it’s unreasonable to expect it three and four times a day.” He leaned close, letting his gaze trip over her lips and down to pass over her breasts like a caress. “And, frankly, some of your requests make me feel,” he wrinkled his nose and dropped his voice to a whisper, “so dirty.”
    Lindy squeezed her eyes closed, wracking her brain for a coherent response, but she couldn’t manage more than a choked gack before Sarabeth interceded.
    “This is all really good stuff.” She cleared her throat and pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. “Thank you both for your willingness to share your truths with me, and one another. What say we put a pin in that, and once we work through some of the basics we can revisit this topic later in the week, hmm?”
    The room positively hummed with tension, but her sure smile never wavered. She jotted down some notes in the file in front of her before continuing. “Okay, back to the exercise. Owen, why don’t you go first? Tell Lindy what you hope to get out of this experience, and the one thing you expect from her in your marriage, above all else.”
    She stared sightlessly at the sheet of paper trembling in her hand. She could sense Owen’s gaze drilling into her. Antagonizing him had been a crucial misstep on her part and she had no clue how to get back on safer ground. She’d poked the beast, and now he was awake and on the prowl. Aside from brief flashes of it that were quickly masked, like when she’d sprayed him in the mouth with perfume, or when they’d kissed earlier, he’d come across as confident but affable most of the time. Smart move on his part. If she’d seen more of this side of him—the wilder side—she would have never taken the job. It was hard enough being around him when he was on a leash. Without the civilized veneer in place, he would eat her alive.
    As she met his knowing gaze, heat sizzled between them, building an ache low in her belly, and she couldn’t for the life of her recall why that would be such a bad thing.
    …
    Owen couldn’t take his eyes off Lindy as she regarded him with a heady mix of want and trepidation. Good. She should be afraid. Hell, he was so close to the edge he was scaring himself. She dampened that smart mouth of hers with the tip of her tongue and he stared, enthralled. His body amped to high alert, and it took every ounce of his willpower not to pounce on her.
    Sarabeth cleared her throat delicately again, breaking the spell. “Owen?”
    Focus.
    He came back to reality with a thump and tore his gaze from a relieved looking Lindy. “Sorry, yes.” He glanced at the piece of paper on his lap. “I’m here to connect with my wife the way we used to earlier in our marriage.” A bit of fluff that actually said nothing at all, but he couldn’t imagine many of the other men coming up with anything better.
    Sarabeth nodded encouragingly. “Very good, Owen. Over the next few visits we’ll try to pinpoint the things you miss most about that time, all right? Now tell us the one thing you expect from Lindy in your marriage, above all.”
    “Loyalty,” he said instinctively. Lindy shot him a puzzled look. That hadn’t been what he’d written down and she knew it. He’d better learn to separate Owen Phipps from Owen O’Neil, or he was in danger of revealing more to his accomplice than he’d ever revealed to anyone.
    “Now you, Lindy.”
    “I’m here because life’s too short to be unhappy, but we made a commitment. I don’t just want to make it ‘work.’ To me, that means settling…jury-rigging it up until it functions. That’s not what I’m looking for in my forever relationship. I want to fix it until it’s right and really…good.” Her voice rang with sincerity, and Sarabeth gave her a beaming smile.
    “Excellent,” she said, scribbling furiously in her book.
    It sure was. A pretty reasoned approach to a relationship. Why should a person settle for “so-so” if, with a