Husband from 9 to 5 Page 9

  Molly peered down at herself. This didn’t feel right, either.

  “Our entire department was at a bar Wednesday night, cel- . ebrating. Some oaf jumped over the pool table, swung into Molly and knocked her over. She fell and bit her head. She wasn’t knocked out but I brought her here to keep on eye on her. When she got up the next morning she thought we were married.”

  Molly listened to Jack’s explanation objectively, but when he was through she got a sharp pain in her head. It felt as if a bolt of lightning had streaked through her brain. Instinctively her eyes squeezed shut and she clutched her temples.

  “And you apparently took advantage...”

  Odd images flitted through her bead. Pictures of her and Jack shopping. Pictures of her and Jack running into her parents’ friends. Pictures of her and Jack eating lunch together. Pictures of her fixing breakfast. Pictures of Jack rejecting her advances. Pictures of her friends telling her there were none of her clothes in the bedroom closet...

  “Stop it!” she shouted, suppressing the strange images that were rolling around in her head. Unfortunately, that was the first thing she’d actually said out loud, and the entire room silenced.

  “Stop it,” she said more quietly, more calmly, and pulled her hands away from her head. She gazed at Jack. “We’re not married,” she said softly.

  He nodded. “I know.”

  “But I’ve been living here for the past three days and you’ve been making me think we were married....”

  “So help me, I’ll beat you to a pulp if you hurt my daughter....” Molly’s father began, but Jack ignored him.

  “No, no, Molly,” he said, scrambling over to where she sat on the floor in front of the sofa and hunkering beside her. “That’s not how it was. I tried to tell you that we weren’t married but...”

  “You tried to tell me when?”

  “Well, when I first realized you thought we were married and again when your friends were here.”

  Her friends were here? Had she remembered that? Her mind was so cloudy and everything was so confused she didn’t know what was real or what was imagined. “My friends were here?”

  “I thought seeing them would jog your memory. It didn’t.”

  She groaned and pulled her fingers through her bangs. “Oh, God.” She’d made a fool of herself and all she had were vague images and odd disoriented memories.

  “It’s not so bad, Molly,” Jack said, and brought his fingers to her cheek. She jerked away from him. “Everybody understood that the knock on the head had confused you. It was evident from the way you were showing the house that you genuinely believed that we were married.”

  “I showed them your house?” she asked incredulously.

  He nodded.

  “Oh, God.”

  “Molly, it’s not that bad.”

  She wrenched herself away from him. “Not that bad?” she echoed, astounded. “Tell me, Jack, how many other people know about this?”

  “Not many,” he insisted. “Your friends...a couple people we ran into. My doctor.”

  “Your doctor?” Darcy Doyle said with a gasp. “Did you ever think you should have called her doctor...or maybe you should have called us....”

  “I didn’t know where you were,” Jack said honestly. “I didn’t know how to find you.”

  “Don’t try to tell me my own daughter doesn’t talk about her parents.”

  Molly wished for the sharp pain again, so she could focus on that instead of on her own personal embarrassment, but it didn’t come. Instead, a warm wave of humiliation washed over her, as the sound of her mother’s voice caused even more memories to tiptoe into her brain. She remembered the tape. She remembered the affirmations. She remembered creating the very images that probably caused her to believe she was married to Jack.

  “Son, I’m going to look into this....”

  “Stop, Dad,” Molly said, waving her hands. To Jack it appeared that she was conceding defeat. Instinctively he stepped over to help her, to comfort her, but he remembered that now that she had her memory back she didn’t welcome his comfort anymore.

  “I know what happened. I know I’m at fault.” She faced Jack. “Mr. Cavanaugh, I’m sorry for any inconvenience this might have caused you....”

  “Molly, no, it wasn’t...” Jack said, but she held up her cautioning hand again.

  She swallowed. “This is really, really embarrassing for me. And homiliating. I would have thought that you should have kept trying to tell me we weren’t married, not moved me in with you. This is so uncomfortable for me that I can’t see how either one of us is going to get over it.”

  “Molly, I tried to tell you. But you were so sure, that I couldn’t convince you otherwise, and I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  Jeck’s voice was soft and patronizing. Molly looked down at her bare feet. “If you were trying to make me feel better, you failed.” She pivoted to walk to the doorway, but halfway around she lifted her chin and faced him again.

  “My resignation will be on your desk in the morning.”

  Chapter Nine

  “How could you let me live there?”

  “Molly, you have to understand,” Olivia said, patting the nubby taupe sofa cushion beside her, indicating that Molly should sit down. But Molly shook her head and continued pacing her living room. Though they’d only been talking for a few minutes, Molly had already recognized that she and her friends weren’t going to be able to come up with anything to fix this.

  In spite of her misery, she’d spent the afternoon convincing her worried parents that she was fine—because physically she was fine—and even talked them into going to dinner without her. But the minute they were gone Molly called Olivia and Olivia had gathered the troops. All five of Molly’s friends from Barrington Corporation had assembled in the living room of her apartment to try to sort this whole mess out, but so far everything they said only added to her embarrassment.

  “The day Jack brought you to work,” Olivia continued, “we all tried to push you into remembering that you weren’t married to him, but nobody could make you budge.”

  “I understand that I was confused,” Molly conceded wearily, pacing between her black tapestry chairs. “But what I don’t understand is how could you let me live with him for three days.” And now that she was home and rested she remembered every second of it The private conversations, the unexpected intimacy, as well as the times and ways Jack pulled away from her. For every bit as much as she realized he had done that to protect her, Molly also felt acute humiliation. She’d practically thrown herself at him.

  “We didn’t have much choice,” Rachel said. “You were so absolutely positive that you were married that every time any one of us told you you weren’t, you couldn’t handle it. Your face would crumble in despair and you’d put Jack on the spot. Jack refused to hurt you, so he went along with you.”

  Molly sighed and flopped down on the couch beside Olivia. “I’m so embarrassed.”

  Olivia ruffled her hair. “But no one’s ever died from embarrassment.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going back to Barrington. I told Jack he’d have my resignation in the morning. And he will. I’ll type it up before you leave and one of you can deliver it.”

  “No way!” Rachel said. “You’ll go in there and face the music. This entire predicament might have been a fluke, but it could have happened to any one of us,” she said, motioning with her hand in such a way that she reminded Molly that all of them had a crush on their boss at one time or another.

  “I suppose,” Molly agreed quietly, though she doubted that any one of them would ever get a self-help tape on visualization and create an entire marriage in her head—fancy wedding, elaborate gown and all.

  “Then we’ll see you at work tomorrow?” Rachel asked, nudging Molly when she didn’t want to be nudged.

  She sighed. “I guess. But just because I go to work, it doesn’t mean I’m not submitting a notice.”

  “And just becau
se you feel lousy now, it also doesn’t mean you should quit your job,” Patricia pointed out logically. “You shouldn’t make a decision about quitting or staying until you actually get to work and see how you feel.”

  All of Molly’s friends agreed with Patricia, and eventually they got Molly to commit to keeping an open mind about her job. But with that they let the discussion of Molly’s three days as Mrs. Jack Cavanaugh die. It was another two hours before her parents returned from dinner, and her friends stayed with her until they did. If these were any other women, Molly might have thought they didn’t want to give her a chance to change her mind about returning to work. Because these women were her closest friends, people who loved and trusted her, she knew they simply didn’t want her to wallow in misery. She loved them for that.

  The next morning, she dressed carefully. The temptation was strong to wear something mousy and nondescript, but since the cat was out of the bag about her parents, and since she didn’t want Jack to think she was a coward, Molly wore a flashy red silk dress. She fluffed her hair, wore her favorite heels and marched into Barrington as if she owned the place.

  Only a few people gave her strange looks. One or two asked why she’d been out all day Thursday and half of Friday, but basically everyone treated her the same way they normally did. By the time she reached the elevator, Molly realized that the general population of the company didn’t seem to know the embarrassing details of her accident. In a sense, she was safe—at least safe enough that she knew she could enter and exit the building without needing a trench coat and dark glasses.

  Her steps became a little lighter, her smile a little less forced. Riding the elevator, she felt some of her stiff muscles loosen. When the bell rang, signaling her floor, Molly drew a long breath. This was the real test. Her own department, the people who had been at Mahoney’s. The people in whom Jack might have confided.

  The door whooshed open and she stepped out.

  “Hey, welcome back,” Sandy Johnson said with a smile as Molly entered the reception area. “How are you feeling? Jack said you hit your head after we left Mahoney’s last Wednesday night. Did you have to go to the hospital? Did you have a concussion? Was that why you had to leave after lunch on Friday?”

  Molly shook her head. “No. I was...dizzy,” she said, not able to think of anything better. “I saw a doctor,” she added, though she didn’t say that the doctor was Jack’s friend from grade school. “And he told me I was fine. I simply had to wait for the dizziness to go away.”

  “Well, you look terrific,” Sandy said with a sigh, taking in Molly’s chic outfit and perky hair. “No one would ever guess you’d been sick.”

  There. That wasn’t so hard, Molly thought If nothing else, she knew Jack hadn’t told Sandy. “Where’s Mr. Cavanaugh?”

  Sandy’s brow furrowed. “You mean Jack?”

  Molly nodded.

  “Jack is out of the office this week,” she said, emphasizing the fact that everyone used his first name. “He called me yesterday afternoon and told me that something had come up, so he wouldn’t be in until next Monday.”

  Molly felt her heart stop. “Oh,” she said, wondering if he was staying away to give her time to get comfortable again, or if he was staying away because he was too embarrassed to face her. Humiliation reddened her cheeks. “Well, I guess we’ll see him next Monday, then.”

  “Yes, we will,” Sandy agreed, as she strode to her desk.

  As everyone began to arrive for work, saying good morning and then funneling off to their respective workstations, Molly stood in the center of the room, her shuffling co-workers maneuvering around her.

  Suddenly she got a strange surge of understanding that caused her heart to swell with hope. It was all the same. Absolutely and completely the same. Nothing had changed. No one treated her any differently—because no one knew.

  It was as if those fateful three days hadn’t happened.

  Her swell of hope was unexpectedly replaced by a tingle of regret. Molly grasped the handle of her briefcase and headed for her office.

  What a shame.

  She’d been “married” to Jack Cavanaugh for three days. In spite of the fact that their relationship had remained platonic, and in spite of the fact that she was furious with Jack for taking advantage of the circumstances, those had been the happiest three days of her life.

  Those had been the happiest three days of Jack’s life, too, he realized, throwing darts in a neighborhood bar somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains. Snow still fell in this part of the country in March and it was bitterly cold outside, but that chill didn’t rival the one enveloping Jack’s heart.

  He knew the safest, easiest thing to do would be to give Molly a week to get over her embarrassment. So, he angled a trip to western Pennsylvania with Rex Barrington II, telling him that he wanted to get a feel for the area for advertising purposes before Barrington Corporation made any decisions about the hotel they were considering.

  The senior Barrington’s trip lasted all of two days, but Jack managed to finagle another three days and he’d spent most of them alone and bored—thinking about how dull his life had become, thinking about what a surprise Molly had turned out to be, thinking about how interesting it would be if she were his wife.

  His feelings weren’t based merely on the fact that she was attractive—dynamite, actually. No, there were plenty of attractive women in the world. Some of them had even come on to him in the past five years. But he’d managed to skirt the issue of women and dating by more or less becoming everybody’s best friend, rather than a potential boyfriend, lover or mate. With Molly, everything was different. They had connected.

  But he wasn’t in the market for a girlfriend, lover or mate. He’d been down that road once, and the end was so painful it nearly killed him. He didn’t want to go through that again, couldn’t even entertain the possibility.

  Besides, those three days weren’t real, Jack reminded himself, throwing a dart that stuck in the wall a good six inches to the right of the dartboard, reflecting his mood, his life. Everything was always off the mark. In the beginning it appeared good, but when the dart landed it was nowhere near where it was supposed to be. Even if Molly did have a crush on him, she didn’t know him. Not really. And he didn’t know her.

  The whole thing, the connection, the intimacy, even the friendship wasn’t real.

  He deliberately arrived two hours late for work the following Monday morning. When he stepped off the elevator, the entire department was hushed.

  Talking on the phone, while leafing through a magazine, Julie Cramer was oblivious to his entry.

  Dictaphone headphones in her ears, Sandy Johnson typed furiously.

  Her head bent in concentration, Molly worked diligently. Through the glass top of her door, Jack could see her marking a computer printout, her pencil racing across the paper.

  Everything was right with the world.

  Jack almost breathed a sigh of relief, except he couldn’t do that until he knew his desk didn’t hold a letter of resignation from Molly, giving him a two-week notice.

  He entered his office, found the usual avalanche of clutter and began digging. After ten minutes, Sandy came in with a cup of coffee.

  “I know this isn’t in my job description,” she said pleasantly, “but you look like you could use this.”

  Jack smiled. “I’m fine.”

  “You seem nervous,” Sandy insisted. “Like you didn’t sleep all night.”

  He hadn’t He also hadn’t found a letter of resignation from Molly. Sighing, he gave up the ghost. “Sandy, Molly didn’t by any chance submit a letter of resignation?”

  “Oh, gosh, no! She’s happier than I’ve ever seen her. Her parents are spending two weeks with her here in Phoenix and she’s walking on air.”

  “Really?” Jack asked, leaning back in his chair before sipping the piping hot coffee Sandy had brought for him. He remembered the things Molly had told him about her parents—the high expectations, her inabil
ity to fulfill them, her loneliness. “A visit from her parents is probably exactly what she needs right now.”

  And since that end of Molly’s problem was getting straightened out, and since she was happy, content and back to normal emotionally, Jack concluded they should broach their problem head-on and get that awkwardness out of the way, too. Now that she’d had a week to reconcile herself to what had happened and to discover that only a few of her closest friends knew the story, Jack felt she was probably ready to rationally discuss their situation. Despite the terrible way they’d parted company the previous Sunday, they would sort out this problem like mature adults and get on with the rest of their lives.

  “I think we should wait until after lunch to tackle this heap,” Jack told Sandy, who nodded with agreement.

  “I have tons of typing for the creative types,” she admitted, then glanced at her watch. “I’d say that two o’clock would be good for me.”

  That sounded fine to Jack, too. “Great. I’ll see you after lunch then.”

  Sandy nodded and happily left his office. Jack picked up his coffee and followed her, swerving toward Molly’s office when Sandy went straight ahead to her desk.

  He tapped the glass twice before opening the door and entering without invitation.

  “Good morning, Molly.”

  She blinked a few times as if adjusting her eyes after looking at the green bar paper for so long. “Good morning, Mr. Cavanaugh.”

  Realizing she hadn’t been adjusting to looking up from her printout, but rather, adjusting to seeing him—and the result of that adjustment wasn’t exactly good—Jack closed her office door. “Molly, calling me Mr. Cavanaugh only brings attention to the fact that there’s tension between us. I came in here to tell you that I think we can both go back to normal....”

  “Normal?” she said with a gasp, surprising him with the intensity of her response. “I lived with you for three days. You let me believe we were married.”