“Thanks,” George muttered. Yes, it hurt, but he kept pushing himself up. He wanted to clutch his head in his hands. Instead he clutched the bedclothes until his knuckles turned white.
“For heaven’s sake, stop that! Lie down or I’ll call the nurse.”
“Be my guest,” George said. “Since it’s morning and I know my name and how old I am, maybe they’ll finally let me sign myself out of here and go home. I have things to do. Classes. Work.”
Sophy rolled her eyes. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re lucky you’re not in surgery.”
“Why should I be?” He scowled. “I don’t have any broken bones.” He was half-sitting now so he stopped pushing himself up and lifted his arm to look at his watch. His arm was bare except for the intravenous tube in the back of his hand. He gritted his teeth. “Damn it. What time is it? I have a class doing an experiment tomorrow. I need to go to work.” I need to get away from this woman—or I need to grab her and hold on to her forever.
Sophy rolled her eyes. “Like that’s going to happen.”
For a terrible moment, George thought she was responding to the words that had formed in his concussed brain. Then he realized she was talking about him going to work. He sagged in relief.
“The world doesn’t stop just because one person has an accident,” he told her irritably.
“Yours almost did.”
The baldness of her statement was like a punch to the gut. And so was the sudden change in Sophy’s expression as she said the words. There was nothing at all light or flippant about her now. She looked stricken. “You almost died, George!” She even sounded as if she cared.
He steeled himself against believing it, making himself shrug. “But I didn’t.”
All the same he knew the truth of what she said. The truck was big enough. It had been moving fast enough. If he’d been half a step slower, she would likely be right.
Would they have called Sophy if he’d died? Would she have come and planned his funeral?
He didn’t ask. He knew Sophy didn’t love him, but she didn’t hate him, either.
Once he’d even thought they actually stood a chance of making their marriage work, that she might have really come to love him.
“What happened?” she asked him now. “The nurse said you got hit saving a child.”
He was surprised she’d asked. But then he realized she might want to know why they’d tracked her down and dragged her here. It didn’t have anything to do with caring about him.
“Jeremy,” George confirmed. “He’s four. He lives down the street from me. I was walking home from work and he came running down the sidewalk to show me his new soccer ball. He dropped it so he could dribble it, but then as he got closer he kicked it harder—at me. But it—” he dragged in a harsh breath “—went into the street.”
Sophy sucked in a breath.
“There was a delivery truck coming…”
Sophy went very white. “Dear God. He’s not…?”
George shook his head, then instantly wished he hadn’t. “He’s okay. Bruised. Scraped up. But—”
“But not dead.” Sophy said it aloud. Firmly, as if to make it more believable. She seemed to breathe again, relief evident on her face. “Thank God.” And her gaze lifted as if she was in prayer.
“Yes.”
Then she lowered her gaze and looked at him. “Thank George.”
There was a sudden flatness in her tone, and George heard an unwelcome edge of finality, of inevitability. Almost of bitterness.
His teeth came together. “What? Did you want me to let him run in front of a truck?”
“Of course not!” Sophy’s eyes flashed. A deep flush of color rushed into her pale cheeks. “How could you say such a thing? I was just…recognizing what you’d done.”
“Sure you were.” He gave her a hard look, an expectant look, waiting for her to say the words that hung between them.
She wet her lips. “You saved him.”
He almost expected it to be an accusation. She had certainly made it sound that way when she’d flung the words at him the day she’d said she didn’t want to be married anymore.
“That’s what you were doing when you married me,” she’d cried bitterly. “You married me to save me!”
He had, of course. But that wasn’t the only reason. Not that she would believe it. He hadn’t replied then. He didn’t reply now. Sophy would think what she wanted.
George stared back at her stonily, dared her to make something of it.
But whatever anger she felt seemed to go out of her. She just looked at him with those wide deep green eyes for a long moment, and then she added quietly, “You are a hero.”
George snorted. “Hardly. Jeremy wouldn’t have been out there running down the street at all if he hadn’t seen me coming.”
“What? You’re saying it’s your fault?” She stared at him in disbelief.
“I’m just saying he was waiting for me.” He shrugged. “We kick the ball around together sometimes.”
“You know him well, then? He’s a friend?” Sophy sounded surprised, as if she considered it unlikely.
“We’re friends.” Jeremy with his dark hair and bright eyes had made him think about Lily. He didn’t say that, though.
Sophy’s brows lifted slightly, as if the notion that he knew who his neighbors were surprised her as well. Maybe it should. He hadn’t known any of their neighbors during the few months they’d been together.
But he hadn’t had time, had he? He’d been too busy finishing up the government project he was working on and trying to figure out how to be a husband and then, only weeks later, a father. The first had been time-consuming, but at least in his comfort zone.
Marriage and fatherhood had been completely virgin territory. He hadn’t had a clue.
Now Sophy said, “I was surprised you were back in New York.” It wasn’t a question, but he assumed that she meant it as one.
“For the past two years.”
“Uppsala didn’t appeal?”
Ah, right. Uppsala. That was where she thought he’d gone—the job he had supposedly been up for—at the University of Uppsala in Sweden.
He couldn’t have told her differently then. He hadn’t been permitted to talk about it. And there was no point in talking about it now.
“It was a two-year appointment,” he said.
That much was the truth. And though he could have continued to work on government projects, he hadn’t wanted to. He’d agreed to the earlier one before he’d ever expected to be marrying anyone. And if things had worked out between him and Sophy, he would have bowed out and never gone to Europe at all.
When their marriage crumbled, he went, grateful not to have to stay in the city, grateful to be able to put an ocean between him and the reason for his pain.
But after two years, he’d come home, back to New York though he’d had several good offers elsewhere. “This one at Columbia is tenure track,” he told her.
Not that tenure had been a factor. He’d taken the job because it appealed to him. It was research work he wanted to do, eager graduate students to mentor, a freshman class to inspire and a classload he