Wife On Approval. Leigh Michaels

Чтение книги онлайн.

      CHAPTER TWO

      PAIGE’S voice sounded so taut that Austin wouldn’t have been surprised if it had cracked under the strain. “Seven,” she said. “It’s been almost seven years since the decree was final.”

      “Has it really?” Deliberately, he kept his tone lazy. “How time does get away.”

      “When one is having fun, I suppose you mean to say?”

      He moved across the kitchen and perched on the edge of a tall stool pulled up to the breakfast bar. Besides being more comfortable than standing, the seat had the advantage of being a safe distance from the counter where Paige was arranging flowers. The downside was that from the breakfast bar he could see three of her—the real one and two hazy blonde reflections in the highly polished stainless-steel doors of the refrigerator.

      She didn’t look much different, really, than the last time he’d seen her all those years ago. She didn’t even look older. Her face was a bit thinner, the fine bone structure more prominent. But perhaps even that change was simply the result of her hairstyle—shorter than he’d ever seen it before, like a fluffy mane that looked as if she could run her fingers through it in the morning and be done with it for all day.

      How typical of Paige that would be, he thought, with her almost-Puritan practical streak. While she’d always taken care to look neat and attractive and feminine, Paige had never put much emphasis on the glamorous extras.

      He almost laughed at the understatement. In fact, he thought, she’d practically gone out of her way to avoid them…

      It 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.”