The Doctor’s Husband’s Job

(Author’s Note: Huge, huge, gigantic thanks to @Hedge_Bette from Instagram for her reel from which I stole the running gag in this story. I am both grateful and still willing to join her cult.  Tell her I said so, if you know her.)

It was her first day back to work since getting married.  She had actually argued with Eliot that nobody could call the truant officer on her, and there would be no real repercussions if she called in sick. A better judgement, and certainly against his own self interests, he had lured her out of bed with French toast before sending her on her messy, disorganized, and charmingly disheveled way with a long kiss at the door.

She was sure he understood (he did) that a week-long honeymoon in the privacy of their very own brand new house was not a long enough honeymoon.  Having resisted the temptation three times to turn around and drive back home, she barely made it to her first class in time. The students were already passing around a sheet of paper when she arrived, signing in to prove they had been there and they had waited.

“Sorry!” she said, sliding to a stop in front of the desk. Her students were glad to see her, but would have been just as happy to miss class today. “Sorry I’m late! I let the time get away from me this morning! Does someone remember where we were before Fall Break?”

She was wearing a complete outfit, but further examination would show she had on two different earrings, her scarf (Eliot’s scarf) didn’t match anything else she had on, and despite trying three times, her shirt was buttoned up wrong. Her boots weren’t tied. She shoved a sloppy stack of papers at the nearest student, hoping they could figure out to pass them around.

“Anyone?” she asked.

“Crop storage that doesn’t aid and abet the enemy?” Jenna, one of her sharper students, ventured.

“Right!” Ophelia said. “Who has ideas?”

“Dr. Mason, is there something on your mind?” another student asked.

“No! Of course not! Why would you think that?”

“Because these aren’t our handouts. These…look like research for your book.”

She extended her hand and three students leaped forward to hand over the pages. She scanned them briefly and discovered they were, in fact, a page of notes she had written while researching for her next book. She sat on the desk, looking down at her unlaced boots.

“Dr. Mason?”

“I am not prepared to teach a class today,” she admitted. Her students tended to be upperclassmen, so they were marginally more discreet and slightly more mature about waiting until they were out of the classroom to celebrate. “So you can split if you want to, or you can hang out here and study for your next class or work on whatever papers you have to do, and we’ll try this all again on Wednesday, okay?”

“Did you get engaged over Fall Break, Dr. Mason?” Jenna asked, indicating Dr. Mason’s shiny new ring to the rest of the class with a tilt of her head and a gleeful grin. They were, she reminded herself as she twisted her ring around her finger, observant little monsters too.

“No, I didn’t,” she answered in her most professional voice. She was their leader for the next 80 minutes, after all. “I got married!”

Her entire class cheered; one went down the hall to get some drinks out of the machine, another produced a bag of miniature candy bars from his backpack. A third raced up to an empty classroom where the professors stashed paper cups and plates, a place they were certain the students knew about but that they still never mentioned. They were more concerned about hiding the contraband party supplies from Janet the admin. When everyone returned, they pulled their chairs closer around the desk while she told them about her Fall Break wedding to Dr. Wes Abernathy, who had become a legend spoken of only in whispers among the students in the history department. That the faculty resolutely denied his existence only fueled the fire.

She shooed them out earlier than usual to get back to her office for a few moments, hopefully to collect her thoughts.

<Jones>: Can I bring you lunch?

<Peaches>: Yes! I’ve got three hours before my next class.

<Jones>: Dessert too, then?

<Peaches>: Absolutely.

<Peaches>: You mean you, right?
<Jones>: 😉

Eliot knew there was a problem when he saw Melanie standing outside Ophelia’s door, her arms crossed and her face a mask of worry. He listened for about three seconds and heard an angry male voice shouting.

“Is that one of her students?” he asked roughly. Melanie looked at him, startled, before she realized who he was.

“Oh. The pirate,” she said. Eliot pretended not to notice her glance of appraisal. She did it to everyone. “No, I don’t think it’s a student.”

“Pirate?” He was momentarily very confused.

“From the Faire, you were the pirate she met there, right? The one she won’t introduce us to? The one her students think is a spy?”

“I thought that was Dr. Abernathy,” he evaded.

“Go ahead and convince me you’re not both,” she challenged. “This has been going on about 20 minutes. It’s not her office hours and it keeps getting louder. I’m kinda worried, especially since you’re out here.”

He would think about why she thought they’d have this kind of argument in her office some other time. For now, he set his bag to the side, carefully, because it had lunch in it.

“Is it one of her parents?”

Melanie looked startled at the idea before she realized what he meant.

“I doubt it. Ophelia Mason has saved more than one kid from not graduating. Even the worst helicopter parents wouldn’t show up here to talk to her like that.”

Well.  She wasn’t arguing with another staff member, who Melanie probably would have known, and she wasn’t arguing with the angry parent of a student.  He doubted they got a lot of door to door salesmen here. The possibility of who was in the room with her were narrowing at a rate that made Eliot’s heart turn to stone then lava.

“Go back in your office,” he said. If she hadn’t been so concerned for Ophelia, his tone would have made all the hair on the back of her neck stand up; it was an idea that wouldn’t occur to her until the middle of the next day. “Wait 10 minutes, then call the campus police.” She nodded while he glanced at the other doors on the hall. “Are the keys to all these offices the same?”

“Yeah,” she said. “It was a cost-saving measure.”

It was a security nightmare, but he’d deal with that later too.

“Then can I borrow your key?” She pulled it off the ring and handed it over without asking questions. “10 minutes,” he reminded her.

“You know they’re not a rapid response team,” she warned.

“I’m counting on it.”

He waited for whoever the man was to start yelling again to unlock the door; he could barely hear Ophelia, which meant she wasn’t close enough that he could just reach in and grab her. Whoever this was stood between her and the only exit.

The scene wasn’t pretty: She was backed against the wall, as far from this man as she could get, her office chair in front of her. He was at the opposite wall, which made Eliot wonder if she’d used the chair to keep him that far away. The color had drained out of her face except where her cheeks had turned red; since her colleague said this had been going on for 20 minutes and Ophelia wasn’t crying, she must have skipped straight to rage. Having earned a lash of it himself made him wonder both who this guy was, and who the hell this guy thought he was.

<Sophie>: How did it go? Are you two okay? Does Hardison need to set you up a new identity in a new town?

<Eliot>: Fine. It’s fine.

<Sophie>:…

<Sophie>: I’m going to come down there and “fine” you. You’re off who knows where explaining to your girlfriend that she’s dating a not-contract killer and you’ve introduced her to a bunch of criminals and you think you’re going to get by with FINE?!

<Eliot>: Dammit, Sophie! Fine: first there was screaming, then raging, then crying, then silence, then crying and I think just maybe she’s at the point where she might not turn me over to the FBI herself, mostly because I think she may be unconscious. 

<Sophie>: Finally found the button that activates her temper?

<Eliot>: She does not hold back when she’s mad.

<Sophie>: She speaks poniards and every word stabs.

<Eliot>: She was right: having a Shakespeare quote for everything isn’t as great as it sounds.

 

She didn’t turn to look directly at him, but he wasn’t sure whether she didn’t want to look away from a clearly very angry man or didn’t want to draw attention to him.

“Come back later, kid,” the man instructed without looking in Eliot’s direction. “Her office hours are booked.”

“Get out,” she hissed back, clearly trying to keep her voice down. “Get out of my office and get out of my university and get out of my town!”

“Not without you,” he said, apparently again because he sounded impatient, like she was making him repeat something they’d already been over.  Eliot immediately realized one of the man’s problems:  he tried to make her do something she did not want to do and that she had been abundantly clear that she was not going to do either. “This is not your town, Ophelia. Kid, I’m not going to tell you again,” he snapped, turning what he thought was a fierce gaze on Eliot, the master of the fierce gaze. He actually took a step back from Eliot, which wouldn’t be enough to save him.

“I ain’t a kid, and she asked you to leave,” he said in a tone she’d never heard him use. Any other human on the planet would have made a man-shaped hole in the wall to get away from Eliot when he spoke like that. He didn’t raise his voice.

“What?” he tutted to Ophelia. “You’re dating gym teachers now? What will your mother say.”

“Thou hast no more brains than I have in mine elbow, John,” she answered with a sigh, like she’d also said that before. “He’s not a gym teacher, and you need to leave.”

Whether she intended to or not (although Eliot suspected she wanted him to know but didn’t want to make introductions), now Eliot knew who he was. The man standing in her office shouting at her was the man she didn’t marry. And he was pretty sure she’d just called him a moron.

“You ruined my career!” he shouted, causing Ophelia to shove the chair towards his knees again. “The very least you could do is try to help me save it by marrying me like you were supposed to!”

Eliot had spent enough time around Sophie’s victims (not the word she would have used) to recognize a trauma response.  While he had only brought up her previous engagement a couple of times, the way she talked about it had all the hallmarks of a thing she would prefer stay buried and not dug up, dragged to Oregon, and rehashed.  Which meant Eliot didn’t have a clear picture of the man at all, and it never crossed his mind to have Hardison look into the man.  He was in the past, after all, and absolutely no good would come from bringing up anyone’s dating history. So he’d let the subject drop and then forgotten about it. She hadn’t mentioned her ex-fiancé was so tall, or that he looked like a magazine model. He had, Eliot guessed, East Coast good looks, tanned and wind-blown. But his second-hand (not vintage) Rolex was broken, and his deck shoes were nearly worn through; he had fallen on hard times. Probably because he couldn’t keep his hands off teenage girls, and no amount of family money could continually save him from that.

“You slept with your underage students!” she shouted back. “Well after I warned you that I knew! You did it for years, and I had nothing to do with everyone finding that out! What are you going to do?” she flicked a desperate glance at Eliot. “Shoot me right here in my office?”

He took a second to appreciate that this adorable woman who was worried about his safety instead of her own was, in fact, his. Needlessly worried, but his nonetheless. And with everything going on, she had said the one thing he needed to hear that alerted him to the scope of the problem. The husband gig, in his opinion, was way underrated.

“Phee?” Before he solved this problem, he wanted to make sure she wanted the problem solved. His way.

John strutted ridiculously in a complete circle to make the point that Eliot annoyed him, which let Eliot see that he had shoved a gun in the back of his khakis. How he hadn’t shot a hole in his ass already was a mystery to Eliot.

“I wish that we should become better strangers,” she answered. “Please.”

He was sure he understood her: ‘Please be careful’. She would have used his name if she meant ‘Eliot, please don’t hurt him.’ In turn, he would have taken her request into consideration, but there was no way this guy walked out under his own power after this; he was glad she wasn’t worried about the man he wanted to make the Ghost of Christmas Past.

“What are you gonna do, make me drop and give you 50?”

Eliot gave an ironic chuckle before snatching the gun out of his belt and punching him once in the gut and once in the face. The pretty boy went down like a sack of threadbare potatoes.

“Stay right there. Cover your ears,” he instructed, then fired a shot into the back wall of her office. Since it was an outside wall, the bullet would lodge there, not endangering anyone while still sounding like a very real gunshot. Then he pulled John’s hand out from under him and put it over the gun. And kicked him in the ribs while he was at it. Jackass.

Only after that was accomplished did he go to Ophelia and start prying her fingers off the back of her chair. The imprints she left behind would be there as long as the chair was useful. He shoved the chair out from between them.

“You meant for me to be careful, right?”

“I meant for you to leave before he could shoot at you,” she said, her face buried in his shoulder. “But, yes, also be careful.”

“Not a chance I would have left you here, Princess,” he answered, running his hands over her carefully to make sure she was okay. None of her outfit matched. “Did he hurt you?”

“That didn’t work in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” she pointed out shakily. It was one of her favorites; she’d read it to him at least three times which meant there was pretty much no need to read it himself, but he read it anyway and even enjoyed it. She was more like Savannah than she seemed to realize, but he enjoyed that too.

“He’s not dead, and neither are you,” Eliot replied, keeping his tone even. “And he’s trespassing in your office.”

He heard the campus police coming down the hall; obviously they hadn’t covered how to be stealthy.

“Listen, Princess: the campus police are going to be here any second. I’ll keep them off you as much as I can, but you have to talk to them, okay? Can you do that?” She nodded, right as the campus police ran in the open door.

“What happened here?” the officer asked. Eliot could only assume he meant to be demanding. Since he was barely more than a student, he sounded like he hoped one of the two adults in the room could explain.

“I don’t know, man,” he said, letting his Oklahoma accent break out. “I just came to pick up my wife for lunch and this guy was waving a gun around. I hit him and he shot the wall.”

“Is she okay?” The second officer reached for her wrist to check her pulse. “She didn’t get shot, did she?”

“No,” she managed, portraying a shock victim with an authenticity Sophie would have appreciated had Ophelia not been an actual shock victim. “He didn’t shoot me.”

“Wait—wife?” the first officer asked. “Dr. Mason, did you get married?! Congratulations!”

She looked at Eliot as if to be sure she’d just heard that correctly. He shrugged. She gave the officer a weak smile.

“Good thing you were here,” the first officer said. “How hard did you hit him?”

“He was threatening my wife, man!”

“I would have done the same,” the officer replied. “I’m glad you did. Dr. Mason, do we need to call an ambulance for you?”

“No,” she said faintly. “I’m fine.” All three men agreed they’d never seen a woman who was less fine, but the officers could check “refused medical care” on their forms and be done with it. Her husband seemed to have it in hand, anyway.

“Call one for him,” Eliot suggested. “If you don’t mind, we’ll leave. I can take care of her.”

“We’re gonna have to call the Portland police for him,” the older of the two officers decided. “Do you maybe want to leave before we call, Dr. Mason?” He asked Ophelia, but he looked at Eliot. “We know how to reach you if we need to.”

“I think we will do that,” Eliot decided. “Let me give you my name and number in case the police need to speak to us.”

“Thank you, sir. Do you think they’ll need that?”

“I think they will,” he answered with a confiding smile. And they were probably going to be super angry that the campus gendarmes let the only eyewitness leave. That was their problem and not his. He wrote down his name and number on a page out of one of her journals, handing it over before they realized they should ask some questions.

“Where’s the weapon?” the younger officer asked. His tone strongly implied that he didn’t want to know.

“Here,” Eliot picked the gun up by the barrel. “You need to put in one of those…what do you call them? Evidence bags.”

Ophelia stared at her new husband as he gave an extremely convincing act of having no idea how crime scenes worked. And he’d just put his hands all over the gun. She knew he had more experience at this kind of thing than she did but could not fathom why he wasn’t acting like it.

“Can you clear out whoever’s in the hall?” he requested. “They’re just kids, man.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Spencer! Just give us a minute!”

Eliot estimated that once they actually called the real police, it would take about 20 minutes for them to reach the campus.

“Get what you need,” he instructed Ophelia gently. “And we’ll go home.”

She got her bag and her typewriter and he shepherded her out of the room, past the unconscious form of her ex-fiancé, and down the nearest staircase to the parking lot, where he closed her gently in the car. Through the upstairs window, he could see students gathering in the hall outside her office again. Someone else could deal with them today. Before he got in the car, he sent a brief text message to Hardison to make sure the man who’d been caught in the act of harassing her didn’t get out on bail.

A crowd had gathered at the end of the hall; Dr. Allen sent them all away with the assurances that everything was fine and the man had been arrested and Dr. Mason wasn’t having office hours today. After everyone had cleared out, three girls remained.

“Can I help you girls?” she asked. She recognized them all as students from Ophelia’s early class.

“Can we come in?”

“To my office?”

“Yes,” they answered in unison.

She didn’t speak before they got home.

In defiance of the new house rules, Devil took one look at Ophelia and jumped up on the couch, concerned for his person. He looked at Eliot, who didn’t tell him to get down. Her teeth were chattering. Devil sat as much of himself as he could on her lap, resting his snout on her shoulder.

“Stay here with her,” Eliot requested. “I’ll be right back.” He sprinted up the stairs to grab her favorite blanket off the loveseat in their sitting room, taking the steps two at a time on the way back down. Once she was wrapped up, he relaxed a little. “You’re okay, Princess. You’re okay.”

“Oh god, Eliot, he could have shot you. Why didn’t you leave?” She grabbed for him like he was a life raft in a storm.

“And let him shoot you? That’s not better, Princess. Besides, a bullet wouldn’t have stopped me, okay?”

“You’re not bulletproof,” she insisted.

“But I bet he’s a lousy shot,” Eliot guessed. “He couldn’t have hit me on a dare, could he? He couldn’t have hit me if I’d jumped up and down yelling ‘here I am! Shoot me!’, could he?”

She gave a hiccup of a laugh that ended in a sob; as painful as it was to hear, it was the reaction he’d been trying to get. She was ugly crying against him, sobbing out all of her terror. Finally, she cried herself out, but never relaxed her grip on Eliot.

“Are you awake?” he asked. It was a courtesy; he knew she was.

“Yeah,” she said. Her voice was scratchy. He handed her the glass of tea he had poured in anticipation of her waking up.

“Was that him?”

“Yeah.” Quieter this time.

“Did you know he was in town?” he asked. “It’s okay if you did. I just want to know if he threatened you or not before he showed up in your office.”

“I didn’t know he was here,” she said, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. He reached for the handkerchief he’d put on the back of the couch, blotting under her eyes. “I don’t know how he found my office. I haven’t heard from him since I moved here. I thought he’d given up.”

“You want him to give up, right? You don’t want to see him again? Don’t want to just be friends?”

“I never have,” she swore. “I’ve had almost exactly that scene before, and I’ve always told him to leave. Eliot, I promise I’ve never contacted him or told him anything that would make him think I wanted to see him. You have to believe me.”

“I do, Princess,” he said gently. “This is not your fault. Some guys just can’t take no.”

“Are you going to kill him?”

“Only if you want me to. But I don’t think you do.”

“It’s not worth the risk you’d get caught,” she said, clinging tighter. “And I’m not willing to let you go after just one week.”

He didn’t mention that if he killed her ex-fiancé, nobody would ever find the body or be able to identify it if they did. Feeding his remains into a woodchipper would be satisfying. Ophelia would be rid of him, as would every teenage girl who didn’t have to work with him later. He’d be doing the world a favor, really. But she wasn’t bloodthirsty, and right now all she could see was the threat to Eliot.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

“Why?”

“For dragging you into this. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t even think to tell you.” She was on the verge of tears again.

“Shhhhh,” he soothed. “You didn’t.” A little ex-boyfriend drama was nothing, although he could see how huge it looked from her perspective. Taking out frat boys was so easy, he almost found it boring. And John was nothing more than a frat boy who wouldn’t grow up.

She was still upstairs the next day when the police arrived. Eliot wasn’t surprised; Hardison had texted. But he had also texted the matter was all but out of Ophelia’s hands, and they just had questions for her as a witness.

“We got guests coming,” he said to Devil. “Be nice.” Just to drive home his point, Eliot handed over a cheese treat. “Consider this an advance.” Devil gobbled up his bribe before looking up the stairs with a whine. “She’ll be okay. They just want to talk to her. She’s not in trouble. Scout’s honor.”

A lady detective and a large burly sergeant arrived fifteen minutes later, exactly when Hardison said they would.

“Officers,” he said politely. “Please come in.”

“I’m Detective Tatum,” she said. “This is Sgt. O’Malley. We have some questions for Dr. Mason about yesterday’s events.” Devil whined again, drawing the attention of both officers. “Is that your dog, sir?”

“He’s her dog,” Eliot supplied helpfully. “Devil, how do we greet guests?”

The detective visibly braced herself, only to be surprised when Devil sat down before her and held up his paw to be shaken. Once she had complied, he padded to Officer O’Malley to offer him a shake. The big officer dropped to one knee to pat him on the head. Devil responded by flopping on his back for a belly rub.

“Ladies first, that’s right,” Eliot said to Devil with a look. “Won’t you have a seat? Ophelia’s awake, but she hasn’t come downstairs yet. Can I get you a drink or anything while I go get her?”

“No, thank you,” the detective said. “I have some questions for you. The campus police said you gave them your name as Eliot Spencer?”

“That’s right.”

“And her name is Dr. Ophelia Mason.”

“That’s right too.”

“You said she was your wife?”

“She is,” Eliot agreed. Detective Tatum raised an eyebrow. “We’ve been married 11 days today,” he said. “So I doubt our marriage certificate is on file yet.”

“Your wife didn’t change her name?”

“She hasn’t said whether she would or not,” Eliot replied honestly. “But she’ll probably keep her name.”

The detective made a note.

“Let me run up and get her,” he offered. “I’ll be right back.”

She was awake and in their sitting room, staring out the window like she didn’t see anything.

“Phee, are you dressed?” he asked. She was still in his shirt and a pair of shorts. “The police are here and they need to ask you a couple of questions.” He sat down on the loveseat and took her hands in his as her eyes filled with tears. “It’s fine, they just have some questions. They don’t think you did anything wrong.”

“What do I tell them?” She was already halfway back to panic.

“The truth, Princess. What else would you tell them?”

“About you?” she answered, frustrated that he didn’t see the problem. “What do I tell them about you?”

She had him there; he had not seen that coming.

“What about me? I don’t understand.”

“They’re going to have your name, Eliot. What do we do about that?”

He hugged her to him gently.

“Princess, I appreciate that you’re really worried, but I gave them my name yesterday. Do you know what they found?”

She shook her head, afraid to even voice the question.

“They found a guy named Eliot Spencer from Lawton, Oklahoma, who did two tours in the Army and now works in private security for a tech firm here in town owned by Alec Hardison. That’s it.” He gave her a minute to contemplate that, of all the things they did, setting up clean identities was among the first. “Here’s what you’re gonna do, okay? Go put on some jeans and come downstairs. You can talk to the officers then I’ll make you some lunch. Whatever you want, okay? Since we didn’t get to have our lunch yesterday.”

“I can’t see them looking like this,” she said suddenly. It was the first sign he’d had in this conversation that she was really in there and not a million miles away in Savannah. “Do I need to put on makeup? I’ll look like I’ve been crying all night.”

“Princess, it’s all right if they think that. But put on makeup if it’ll make you feel better.” He stroked her face carefully. “Just know that you don’t have to. You don’t have to sell them anything. Just tell them what happened. We’re downstairs when you’re ready.”

He puttered around in the kitchen while the detectives sat at the table. Devil was the first one to hear her, his ears perking up at the sound of her bare feet on the steps, giving a happy woof when he saw her.

Sgt. O’Malley stood up with a gasp.

“It’s you!”

Ophelia froze on the stairs as Eliot came around to see what the sergeant was talking about. Even Detective Tatum looked alarmed.

“You’re OJ Mason!” he continued, as if he hadn’t just startled everyone in the room. “I didn’t know we would be talking to you today Miss Mason! I didn’t know you lived in Portland!”

She turned a look on Eliot he could only described as bewildered. Like maybe this was some sort of strange joke he was in on but hadn’t shared with her yet. He answered her look with a barely perceptible head shake. Not a joke he was in on either, then. She descended slowly, still watching the officer suspiciously. The officer had no idea why.

“I’ve read all of your books!” he continued to gush. Eliot wasn’t sure who her target audience was, but thought her popularity among grown-ass men was as much a surprise to her as it was to him. “I’ve already pre-ordered Blitzkrieg Bop!”

Just to be sure, she flashed another look at Eliot, who shrugged and handed her a glass of tea.

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting, officers,” she said slowly.

“We understand yesterday was a bad day for you,” Detective Tatum answered. “May we ask you some questions?”

“Yes,” she said, twisting her hands in her lap. Devil came to sit by her; she buried one hand in the scruff of his neck to keep from fidgeting. Eliot leaned against the back door to watch.

“Mr. Beaufort said you two knew each other, is that correct?”

“Yes,” Ophelia said quietly.

“Can you elaborate?” Detective Tatum asked.

“We were engaged in the ‘90s,” she said.

“Why did you break up?”

“We weren’t right for each other.”

“Nothing in common?” The detective interpreted.

“No,” Ophelia said. Hearing the echo of what she said, she offered one of the only explanations she would give today. “I mean: we had a lot of things in common. That wasn’t the problem.”

It was the wrong time, but Eliot realized Nate had been right: she didn’t want someone with whom she had everything in common, because she wasn’t interested in hearing her own thoughts repeated back to her. She and Eliot had almost nothing in common and every day was an adventure for them both.

“What was the problem?”

“He got caught on multiple occasions assaulting minors who worked with him,” she said, looking down at her hands. “He used to be in archaeology, but his university got tired of paying off young women and fired him. He couldn’t get grant money after that. He’s always blamed me for the university finding out.”

“Did you tell them?”

She swiped the back of her hand across her eyes.

“My grandmother was very well connected. She made sure they had enough credible evidence to fire him without my involvement. But I confirmed the story when the head of his department asked me.”

“Before yesterday, when was the last time you saw him?”

“I think it was around 6 years ago?” Ophelia said. “I was teaching in Tennessee at the time.”

“Were you aware he was in Portland before yesterday?”

“I wasn’t,” she said. “I haven’t talked to him in years. I don’t send Christmas cards to him. I haven’t contacted him directly since before 2000.”

The detective nodded, jotting another note on her pad.

“Out of curiosity, have you filed a complaint about him before?” Detective Tatum asked. To Eliot, it sounded like she already knew the answer but was required to ask anyway.

Ophelia rose from the table and went to the living room bookshelf where she pulled a folder. It had been sitting there the entire time, but Eliot had paid it no mind. He had flipped it open once to see several hand-written pages, but assumed they were notes for one of her novels. She slid the folder across the table to Detective Tatum.

“All these,” she said. Eliot turned to look out the window, not because he suddenly cared about the view, but he cared very much about the detective seeing his expression.

The detective paged through the folder, which was in chronological order.

“Did any of these officers ever follow up on these complaints?” the detective asked. She definitely knew the answer to this.

“No.”

The detective sighed; this was not an uncommon story. After a lot more questions reconstructing the incident, Detective Tatum flipped her notebook closed. Ophelia had lied about John shooting at her without even blinking. Eliot couldn’t decide how he felt about that. Technically, he had planted evidence. On the other hand, her ex-boyfriend was clearly there to threaten her, if not to do her bodily harm. Eliot knew that escalating violence killed more women than nearly anything else.

“The state is going to bring charges against Mr. Beaufort,” she said. “And there will be a federal weapons charge as well. Would you also like to press charges?”

Eliot ran a hand over his face before turning back to the group at the table.

“What charges?” Ophelia asked. She sounded genuinely confused.

“Attempted murder, Dr. Mason.”

There was a long silence.

“It’s your call, Phee,” Eliot said. She turned to face him for the first time the entire conversation. “I’ll back you, whatever you want to do. You know that.”

Ophelia swallowed hard before she answered.

“No, detective, I don’t want to press charges.”

Detective Tatum glanced at Eliot, who nodded.

“I’m going to leave you my card, in case you change your mind.”

“And I’m going to leave you mine,” Sergeant O’Malley chimed in. “I can’t wait until your next event!”

She flipped to the back of her folder, which had an envelope full of her older bookplates. She signed one and handed it to the sergeant.

“I’m sorry, it’s an older one,” she said. “We’re in the middle of moving and I haven’t unpacked my new ones yet.”

“It’s vintage!” the sergeant crowed, right before his detective snapped him a look that Eliot thought must have left an exit wound. “Congratulations!”

“I’ll check on you in a few days, Dr. Mason. In the meantime, if you think of anything else, please call me.”

“Thank you, detective.”

Eliot and Devil showed them out, watching the car until it made the turn for the entrance road. Eliot wondered whether Hardison could put up a camera to catch anyone who turned in, because if it wasn’t Eliot or Ophelia, they probably had no business there. Then he wondered if that was paranoid.

Ophelia hadn’t moved from the kitchen table. He sat in the chair closest to her, his elbows on his knees.

“If I press charges, I’ll have to see him again,” she explained, staring at a knot in the wood floor. “I can’t. I can’t sit in a room with him and his lawyer and answer questions.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” she started.

“I promise you don’t, Phee,” he said gently. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me. Let me make you some lunch; you haven’t eaten in at least a day.”

<One Hit Wonder>: I’m gonna kill him.

<Nerd>: Give me like 2 hours

<One Hit Wonder>: Not today. He’ll get moved to state. Find out when.

What Hardison meant was give him time to find a police car and some uniforms, to say nothing of rearranging John Beaufort’s transport from the Portland city jail to a state facility. He’d deal with Eliot’s intentions later. Just maybe he’d try to get Sophie to explain how it would look really bad for Ophelia’s ex-fiancé to suddenly become dead after being arrested in her office when she’d been married less than two full weeks.

He half-heartedly reviewed a file while she flipped through channels on the tv, failing to light on anything even after her third trip around the dial. When she started the fourth time, he set his file aside before reaching over to tweak the remote out of her hand.

“We can agree,” he said casually, “that there’s nothing you want to see on tv. Let’s try something else.”

“Like a movie?” she asked.

“Not like a movie,” he assured her. “Come on.”

“You’ve had some self-defense classes?” he guessed. He put his hand on her back, guiding her to his gym.

“Yeah, some,” she nodded. “They’re usually free for faculty. And I’ve sponsored some for campus women’s groups.”

“Great,” he smiled, then handed her a pair of boxing gloves. “Put these on. I’m about to help you unlearn all that.”

“You…are?”

“I’m not here to teach you how to throw daggers, but I am a resource. Let’s try some hand to hand combat just to unwind, okay?”

As he suspected, some hands-on teaching her on how to hit things for half the night was extremely satisfying.

Hours later, when she could barely keep her eyes open anymore, he helped her get the gloves off.

“I wasn’t finished,” she mumbled.

“You are, Princess. You’re asleep standing up.” In this one specific instance, he wasn’t so much concerned that she’d hurt herself; he was worried for his own safety. A wild punch wouldn’t help either of them right now.

He picked her up before she could argue some more, carrying her up to his office. Installing a Murphy bed in the cabinets of his study had not been his idea, and he wasn’t at all sure it had been worth the effort, until now. She had been awake most of the night before, and he didn’t want her to associate being upset with being in their bedroom; his study was the best compromise under those circumstances. Within minutes, she was soundly asleep, while he sat at the desk she had chosen, under the shield she had acquired for him, watching her and contemplating all the possible fates her ex-fiancé could suffer.

“This is a terrible idea,” Hardison said again. “Even if they didn’t find your fingerprints on the gun, all of her students know she got married and you were in her office while he was.”

“I’m not gonna kill him,” Eliot growled. “I’m going to make sure he doesn’t bother her again.”

“It’s just that, usually when you say that, you mean by making them dead. Everyone, including Ophelia, will think it was you.” As he had suspected, Eliot didn’t answer. “Where does she think you are right now?”

“I told her I was going with you to investigate a job,” he snarled. “So I told her the truth, didn’t I?”

“Stay here,” Hardison advised. “Try not to call attention to yourself. Or to me.”

Eliot didn’t know how long he sat there muttering to himself before Hardison returned to shove John Beaufort in the back of their car.

“Where’s he headed,” Eliot asked, reaching for Hardison’s papers. “You do this?”

“You said you didn’t want her bothered any more, man. He can’t bother her from there.”

“Where? Can’t bother her from where?!”

“Shut up,” Eliot advised. “Right now.” He looked over at Hardison. “Drive.”

They were well outside town when Hardison turned off a paved road that led to a flat spot of desolate land out of sight of the interstate.

“What are you doing?!”

“I ain’t telling you to shut up again,” Eliot warned. He got out and yanked the back door open, grabbed the prisoner by the collar and threw him out on the ground. He walked steadily towards the man, who scrambled backwards hampered by handcuffs.

“Careful, man,” Hardison said. “We need to return this car with all the doors.”

He closed it so quietly, Hardison almost got back in the car and drove away, leaving John Beaufort to his much-deserved fate.

“You,” he said to Beaufort.

“You’re not a cop! You’re that gym teacher!”

“I’ve already told you I’m not a gym teacher,” Eliot said quietly. “And you’re the guy who’s never going to bother Ophelia Mason again.”

“Did she send you?! I’ll have you both arrested!” he turned a desperate look on Hardison. “Do something, man! He’s going to kill me!”

“I think maybe he should,” Hardison shrugged. He leaned against the car and shoved his hands in his pockets. “You really shook up Ophelia when what you should have been doing was leaving her alone.”

“You’re not a cop either?!”

“We could both be dirty cops,” Hardison answered. “Did that even cross your mind?”

“I mean, obviously Phee was the brains here, right?” Eliot said to Hardison, who nodded his agreement.

“We can do this one of two ways,” Eliot said as he loomed over his wife’s stalker.

“The easy way or the hard way, right?” the not-very-smart stalker jeered.

“Oh no. They’re both going to be hard. For you. The first is that we abandon your sorry ass here and report you as escaped, and you never ever contact Ophelia in any way ever again. And don’t think she won’t tell me; she absolutely will. She’s called me three times today about guys who just sort of look like you, despite being repeatedly assured you are in jail.”

John tried backing away again, only to back into a tree.

“The second is that I just kill you here and report that we shot you while you were trying to escape. Then you can’t contact her again but she doesn’t jump at every shadow she sees either.”

“If I was you,” Hardison offered, “I would pick the first one. Ophelia doesn’t want him to kill you. Not because she doesn’t want you dead, but because she doesn’t think you’re worth the effort. I gotta say I agree.”

“What’s it gonna be, sport?”

“If she’d just let me talk to her—”

“Get me that tire iron out of the trunk,” Eliot instructed. Beaufort tried to scramble behind the tree, falling three times in the attempt.

“Shooting him would be quicker,” Hardison pointed out.

“It won’t hurt enough.”

“I’ll leave her alone! I’ll leave her alone!”

“For the rest of your life?” Eliot pressed. “She would be disappointed in me if I killed you now. She won’t always.”

“Never again!”

“Her parents too,” Eliot stipulated. “They, like you, have no claim on her anymore. If I find out you ran to them about this, you’ll be dead in a foreign country. I got a lot of friends who really enjoy killing people without asking questions and a lot of them owe me favors.”

“How long do you think she’ll be happy as queen of the trailer park?” Beaufort shouted. “She’s nothing like you.”

Eliot tested the weight of the crowbar against his hand, then leaned down to look the other man in the eyes.

“You’re right: I’m nothing like her. We don’t have anything in common. But I’m the one she chose, not you. So I’ve done something right. And as for being queen of the trailer park? She’s the queen of wherever she goes. It’s your fault you couldn’t see that.”

Hardison reached for the crowbar, tugging it away from Eliot as gently as he could.

“What are you doing?” Eliot asked.

“She didn’t say I couldn’t kill him,” Hardison suggested. “First,” he addressed this comment to John, “it’s rude to call someone trailer trash. Second, coming from a trailer park ain’t nothing compared to running around assaulting little girls, so I suggest you keep your mouth shut.” He turned back to Eliot, draping the crowbar across his shoulders. “I don’t see how everyone ain’t better off if he’s dead. Ophelia is, you are, I am, cause I ain’t got to keep moving him around, every teenage girl wherever he goes, and his family who don’t have to pay off his lawsuits anymore. C’mon, man. Let me kill him. Just this once.”

“Man, I can’t let you do that,” Eliot said bashfully.

“I don’t see why not,” Hardison retorted. “It ain’t like I don’t owe you.”

“I don’t know,” Eliot evaded. Hardison thought John’s eyes might pop out of his head like a cartoon. “I mean, killing him won’t take any time at all, but then we gotta dispose of the body and these clothes and probably the car. That’s gonna use up most of the day, and I left Phee with Sophie for the afternoon. Shopping.”

“It’s up to you,” Hardison said. “Just know that I don’t mind. I’ll even go find a woodchipper, that always makes you feel better.”

“You’re both crazy!” John shouted.

“Shut up,” they answered together.

Eliot glared at him a few minutes more.

“Uncuff him,” he said to Hardison.

“You don’t want to do it?”

“She’d probably say tearing his arms off is technically trying to kill him,” Eliot noted. “She wouldn’t be wrong.”

Hardison wrestled the man to his feet and unlocked one cuff.

“You wanna punch him?” Hardison offered. “I know you do, man. Make it look like more of a struggle.”

“All right, but just once,” Eliot agreed.

“I said I’d leave her alone!”

“I know,” Eliot answered. “And I appreciate that. I’m feeling generous, so I’ll let you keep all your teeth.”

“We can all agree that’s fair,” Hardison nodded.

They left him on the ground, reporting the escape on the way back to returning the borrowed cop car. Eliot made Hardison stop so they could fill it up with gas first.

“This ain’t like you, is all I’m saying. You didn’t kill the guy and you’re returning a stolen police car full of gas. Marriage must be working for you.”

He met Sophie and Ophelia for drinks later, having changed into non-incriminating clothes and after dropping Hardison off at the bar. He hadn’t exactly asked Sophie to hypnotize away her nightmares, but he wouldn’t be mad if she’d done it, either. Whether Ophelia shared his opinion or not, she’d given her ex-fiancé years of acknowledgment he hadn’t earned and didn’t deserve. It was time to take that time back.

He passed the hostess at the restaurant, indicating he had found his party and therefore needed know help. Ophelia sat with her back to him. When he heard how the conversation was going, he had a real moment where he couldn’t decide whether to go back out to the car and scare some kids in the parking lot, or stay here and possibly scare Ophelia with his reaction.

“Is this a champagne sword?!” Ophelia asked delightedly. “I’ve always wanted one! How did you know?” 

Behind her, Eliot dropped his head into his hands.

“Just a lucky guess,” Sophie lied. “It’s Spanish steel, just like a real sword. I thought you’d like to have something small to keep around if Eliot’s gone on a job, or even in your car, just in case. They’re so handy and unexpected. You don’t already have one, do you?”

“I don’t, and I’ve wanted one since I found out they were a thing. Is this an antique? This isn’t one of your family pieces, is it? I couldn’t possibly take something so sentimental…even though I really love it.”

It wasn’t one of Sophie’s family pieces, and the family to whom it had originally belonged had lied on the insurance claim, so as far as she was concerned Eliot could just stop glaring at her.

“I’m glad you like it and I hope you’ll find it useful,” Sophie said with a glance to Eliot saying he could scowl all day but safety was important. “I’m not here to teach you how to throw daggers, but I am a resource.”

Eliot kept his groan almost to himself as he slid into the booth next to Ophelia. Out of respect for both their status as colleagues and because this booth was not in a secluded area, Ophelia limited herself to a quick peck on his cheek, but didn’t slide away from him.

“You’re here! How was your day investigating?” Sophie asked. “Find what you were looking for?”

“We just found an empty lot and an unpaved road,” Eliot answered. “Nobody was around. Better luck next time. But it looks like you two found everything?”

“We did!” Ophelia exclaimed. This was the happiest he’d seen her in days. “You should see the boots Sophie found!”

“I’m sure I will,” he grinned. “What about you? What did you find?”

“Boxing gloves that fit me!” She leaned against him, very excited. “Isn’t that great?!”

“Great, Princess,” he said, ignoring Sophie’s slightly disgusted look. “I was going to find you some. Now it looks like I don’t have to. I’ll check them out for you when we get home.”

“You should come over some time,” Ophelia bubbled to Sophie. “I mean, call first, so Devil doesn’t think you’re an intruder. But I want you to see the house now that everything is finished!”

“Little too much, Soph,” Eliot mumbled.

“I know that now,” she agreed.

They were driving home when she realized he had something on his mind.

“What is it?” she asked. “Did today not go like you hoped?”

“Maybe not like I hoped,” he allowed. “But it went like I expected. Don’t worry about it. I was thinking about you, though.”

“You’re sweet,” she answered. He’d remember if it ever came up again that the combined power of Sophie and non-stop champagne was not a good one for her. He pulled her hand out of his lap, where he’d grabbed it, because that seemed like a better idea than wrecking the car, to kiss the inside of her wrist.

“I was thinking about your job,” he clarified. They had never had a discussion even approaching this.

“What about it?”

“Let’s…let’s go talk somewhere. Before we go home.”

He drove to the Japanese garden and picked the lock on the fence.

“Do you ever worry about getting caught doing this?” she asked.

“Never,” he assured her. “Are you cold?”

“A little.” He helped her into his jacket before putting a hand to her back, guiding her to their bridge.

“Is something wrong?”

“No, no. Nothing’s wrong. I just…I wondered if you were thinking about going back to work.”

One hand flew to her mouth.

“Oh, Jones. Am I driving you crazy already?” She had arranged guest lecturers for the rest of her classes that week, but had clearly forgotten she did so at Eliot’s suggestion. It was possible he would have to call Sophie in to undo some of this damage.

Maybe she was under too much influence and duress to be having this conversation.

“No, Princess. If it was my choice, I’d have you around all day every day. I just meant, if you don’t want to go back to work, you don’t have to. I mean, you don’t have to quit if you love it, but you don’t need to work if you don’t want to.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, every word sincerely meant. “What would I do?”

“Write full time,” he offered. “Do that history series you keep making notes on but not writing. Be a guest lecturer. Learn how to sew from something besides a video on the internet. Be my wife. But you don’t have to do anything.”

He gave her a few minutes to think about his offer. Because he hoped she’d think his intentions were good even if he had said it badly.

“You don’t have to decide now,” he clarified. “But you said your contract was up, so you don’t owe them anything. And I never told you that I had been thinking about this, so I know you think this is coming out of left field.”

“Did…I mean…have the police called?” Her oblique question nearly broke his heart. He moved closer, to put an arm around her waist. She leaned against him.

“They didn’t,” he said. “But you don’t ever need to worry about him again.”

“Did you kill him?” Her voice didn’t hold a single note of accusation. She might as well have asked about the weather.

“You said you didn’t want me to. I can if you’ve changed your mind, because he’s just in jail.” Well, he would be again soon enough if he wasn’t already. Eliot suspected he had the stealth and survival skills of a deflated hot air balloon. “It’s not too late. But he doesn’t have anything to do with this. Do you believe me?”

“I do,” she said softly. “Do you need to know now?”

He kissed her on the temple.

“No, Princess. We can talk about it. Take all the time you need.”

“Did you build me a writing room and a library with this in mind?”

“I’d like to take credit for thinking ahead like that,” he said wistfully. “But no. I built you a writing room and a library because I thought you’d want them. No motive.”

She called Melanie the next day to arrange a little coffee talk for them. They met at a café near the school; Melanie arrived first. She was so excited she was nearly bouncing in the booth.

“Your students told me!” she said as Ophelia sat down. “How could you marry a hot guy like that and not tell anyone?! And then not tell me! We’ve shared a wall for five years! Five years, Ophelia! I thought we meant something to each other!”

“If I buy you a brownie, will you stop shouting?” Ophelia grinned. “We’ll talk about that in a minute.”

“Then what on earth are we going to talk about now? Because it seems like a surprise wedding that doesn’t involve a shotgun is the single most important thing in the world right now.”

“You mean, except for my ex-fiancé showing up in my office on a college campus full of students with a gun and getting arrested on a federal charge, Melanie? Because that seems fairly important. To me, anyway.”

“Okay, I’ll admit that your students are completely freaked out, but mostly because they believe that guy was there to assassinate Dr. Wes Abernathy and you got in the way.”

“Yeah, talking them out of believing that my life is not a spy novel seems pretty high up on the list of things I have to deal with too,” Ophelia nodded.

“Fine, if you don’t want to talk about any of that, what did you drag me out here for?”

Ophelia sat back against the booth and stirred her tea; she could turn tea into sweet tea here, which was part of the reason she’d chosen this place. She called it sweet tea; Eliot thought whatever it was she called tea and drank here needed to be regulated by the DEA. Immediately.

“I think Eliot wants me to quit being a professor,” she said finally. Melanie had been among the first people to get a copy of the campus police report, owing to her proximity to the events. The report had called him Eliot Spencer. She, like most of Ophelia’s students, thought this was Dr. Abernathy’s alias. On his own, Hardison decided to encourage this line of thinking. He’d fix it if Eliot ever found out about it.

“Oh. Did he say those exact words?” Melanie asked.

“Pretty much,” she shrugged. “Said he’d been thinking about it for a while. I mean, my contract is up, so I don’t have to keep teaching.”

“Did he suggest you do something else? Like, is the problem you need a higher paying job? Or do you have the higher paying job and he wants you to get a lower paying job so he doesn’t feel like you’re the top banana?”

“I swear to god, if you follow that up with a joke about bananas being on top…,” Ophelia threatened good-naturedly. “But no. He said I could just leave. Take the time to write the other series I’ve been trying to develop. Or volunteer. Or do nothing but be his wife.”

“I am genuinely perplexed,” Melanie announced.

“By which part?”

“The part where you don’t tape a note to your door and stay home in bed with him all day every day,” Melanie answered. “I mean, make me that offer, Mason. I dare you. I triple dog dare you. I can’t believe you’re even considering this!”

“Really?”

“Oh no,” Melanie said suddenly. “You’re not about to go all post-feminist on me now, are you? Like, you’re not here talking this out because you think you’re going to diminish your life or something by not working, right? Promise me you’re worried about something besides that, because that’s garbage.”

“It’s just—”

“Unless!” Melanie continued, ignoring Ophelia. “Unless it’s some macho bullshit on his part where he thinks he’s got to provide for his little woman. Did he make you sell your house?”

“No,” Ophelia answered, blinking in confusion. “I mean, I might sell the house, but it’s mine. It’s not ours. I’d have to have his name added to the deed for him to do anything with it.”

“Mmm-hmmmm,” Melanie answered skeptically. “What about your new house? Are you on that one?”

“We both are,” she said. “Both of our names are on the new place.”

“I’m back to not understanding, then. If you still own your own property in your name plus own half of the house he built—when can I come see that, by the way? I’ll check my calendar. When will he be home?”

“Was there a question in here somewhere?”

“Yes. My question is are you out of your mind? If this isn’t some controlling, you can’t own anything business, I don’t see why you’d have a problem with not working. Or at least not working here.”

“I’m worried his friends will think I’m a gold digger,” she admitted. “I mean, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t, but how’s it going to look?”

“What about your friends? Aren’t you afraid we’re going to think you’re a gold digger?”

“Depends on whether or not you’re waiting for the right time to ask if he comes from oil money,” Ophelia answered, closer to herself than she’d been for this conversation. “And I’m not worried about what you think at all. You know I married him for his body.”

“I don’t suppose you have pictures—”

“Focus!”

“Do you?”

“Not that I’m willing to share in a café with free public wi-fi. Can we get back to me now?”

But as a conciliatory gesture to her friend, Ophelia opened her phone to a picture she’d taken of Eliot one afternoon that he’d been working on his car. While it was a good picture and captured its subject well, Ophelia doubted Eliot would want it out there where just anyone could see it. Which was generally fine with her, but Melanie was a trusted friend.  Ophelia had taken it one day while he was working on his car. No shirt. Sweaty. Greasy. Sexy as hell. Bemused as he was to find himself in the middle of a scenario where his otherwise intelligent wife asked him about blinker fluid levels, he quickly got what she was doing and played along. He was still trying to figure out if it was a mechanic kink too, or just her peculiar way of trying out ideas for her novels on him.

“Jesus, tag your porn,” Melanie said reverently. “Can you send that to me?”

“No. What do I do about this whole not working thing. Help me.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Ophelia, I’ll be honest. But consider this,” she offered.

“Great. Something else to consider,” Ophelia muttered.

“Consider whether you love teaching history at a state school more than you’d love being the author of another series. Or if you love teaching history more than you’d love volunteering for that dog charity you and Devil like so much. Or if you love teaching more than you love hanging out wherever that picture happened. Please, please tell me you jumped him immediately after you took this picture, because I’m going to have to revise my opinion of you if you didn’t. I mean, he was clearly asking for it.”

Ophelia blushed down to the vee in her sweater, answering the question in a way more satisfying than mere words could have been.

“You have to give me all the dirty details,” Melanie said, laughing louder when Ophelia’s blush turned a deeper red.

“Keep it down, you hyena!”

“Look,” Melanie said seriously. “I can’t tell you what to do here, and for some reason you don’t want to let him tell you what to do.” She lifted a curious look to Ophelia, who refused to meet it. “Fine. Keep all the details to yourself. Which, fine, assert your independence, whatever. Live up to your ideals. I wouldn’t expect any less of you. But seriously, what are you going to gain teaching here some more that you wouldn’t also find somewhere else?”

“I’m not just being a kept woman?”

“Who cares if you are? It’s the 21^st century, girl. Let him keep you. Is that real?” she gestured at Ophelia’s wedding ring, which replaced the wolf ring he’d bought her on the boardwalk in Santa Barbara. “And did you ask for that?”

“It is,” she said, “and I didn’t, because I didn’t know such a thing existed. He found it himself.”

“Did he have to sell a kidney?”

“He didn’t mention it.”

“Does he have a scar?”

“Quit changing the subject.”

“Ah-ha! Then he does have scars, and you are depriving me of all of this because your weird Southern morals tell you it’s wrong to keep nude pictures of your husband on your phone to share with your best friend.”

“I can’t believe we’re doing this here,” Ophelia moaned. Melanie decided that dead horse would still be around later.

“He really does have money, then,” she observed. “Because someone who didn’t wouldn’t spring for a rock like that if you didn’t either pitch a giant fit for or withhold sex for it. I think you should quit today.”

“I’m…I can’t quit today,” Ophelia protested. “We’re only halfway through the semester.”

“I cannot stress enough how I wouldn’t have come back at all after marrying a guy like Dr. Wes Abernathy. Even if he is a spy.”

Ophelia pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed so deeply it could be heard for three tables.

“Melly…”

“I know! Still. Just ask yourself what Portland State has to offer and contrast that with what not working at Portland State has to offer. I might think it was different if you’d gone to school here, but probably my advice would be the same: you can definitely find a better opportunity with a man who has offered you the freedom to do whatever you want, even if you want to do nothing. You feel me?”

“I do.”

“Can I feel him?”

“No.”

“Killjoy.”

True to his word, he didn’t ask her about it again. Didn’t even bring it up. They were just short of Thanksgiving when he came home late (not all that late)(relatively) from a night out with some of his service friends to find her asleep in his chair, Devil crated for the night, and a book open across her lap, sitting in a puddle of light from the one lamp she had been using. The dog stuck his face out of the crate (she never latched it in case he needed to get out, which Eliot thought defeated the purpose even though he couldn’t argue with her logic.) to woof a quiet greeting at Eliot. Eliot rubbed the dog’s ears gently to acknowledge him before turning his attention to Ophelia, stroking his fingers along her cheek.

“You’re back?” she sounded sleepy but glad.

“You know you don’t have to wait up for me,” he reminded her.

“I know, but I wanted to talk to you.”

He kept his grin to himself.

“You could have called. I would have come home earlier.”

She had already expressed a number of times the idea that she didn’t want to be that wife who was always calling to check up on him and embarrassing him in front of his friends. His friends had given him a good-natured hard time when he did leave, but they all agreed she’d been a good influence on him. Several of them had asked to meet her, which he wasn’t at all sure was a good idea. Not because he thought they wouldn’t like her, but more he was afraid if they started coming around, he’d have to turn the hose on them to make them leave.

“I said I wanted to talk to you,” she pointed out. “Not disrupt your evening.”

“Okay,” he grinned. “Can we talk upstairs?” She raised one curious eyebrow at him. She was right: there was a definite motive to his suggestion. “Fine. In the sitting room, then.”

She took one of the chairs when they reached the sitting room. He took the other, watching her carefully from across the rug.

“I thought about what you said,” she started, which didn’t help him at all. “A lot. And I think I’ve made a decision.”

He tried to look intrigued, but guessed that he probably just looked lost. She could be talking, at this point, about literally anything. Just last night, they’d been awake until 4 talking about how the world would be different if the French had invented powered flight. They’d stayed up until 6 having an entirely different sort of conversation, but that was hardly the point.

“What did you decide?” he asked, hoping she’d throw out something he recognized.

“I think you’re right,” she said. The way she struggled with the words let him know this was important for her, and that he should have taken her more seriously from the start. “I can retire from Portland State and do something else with my time. Maybe even something better. But you need to understand that I’m not doing this just because you suggested it.”

“No, of course not,” he said gruffly. No wonder she had such a hard time with it. “I told you, it’s entirely up to you. I just…I don’t want you to think you have to work. At the school, I mean.” He waited to see if she would go on. “If you don’t mind, why are you doing it?”

“Because you suggested it,” she admitted. “I just said that because I didn’t want it to go to your head.”

“Good strategy,” he smiled. “I would never let it go to my head, Princess.” To save himself the embarrassment, he didn’t mention that she frequently did, to the point where he forgot himself. It was a pleasant sensation.

“I’m going to work through the end of this semester, because we’re already into it, and then I’ll be done in December. Then maybe I’ll find something else to do.”

“You don’t have to jump into anything,” he repeated. “And if you can’t find anything else you want to do, of course you can go back to being a professor. But you don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to. How many more months?”

“It’s weeks, really,” she said absently. “Maybe 4. Maybe 5. My students would know more precisely.”

She still seemed troubled.

“You have something else on your mind?” he ventured.

“What would your friends think?” she asked candidly.

“Sophie and Parker and Hardison? They really wouldn’t—”

“No,” she interrupted. “The friends you were out with tonight. Your service friends whose wives probably all work. The guys you play cards with. If you told them I quit my job after we’d been married less than six weeks, how many of them would think I just married you for your money?”

“Princess, none of them think you married me for my personality,” he assured her. He meant it to be a joke.

“Eliot.” He heard the plea in her voice that time. He crossed the room to her, putting his hands on the arms of her chair.

“Still not as many of them who think I married you for yours,” he whispered. “Not as many who can’t figure out what a smart, literate, southern girl like you sees in a guy like me.”

She looked up at him then, a glint in her eyes.

“None of them have figured out that I married you for your body?”