Somehow that single fact had wriggled through everything else, and disturbed his dreams all through the night, never mind small things like a fake wedding ceremony, a pretend marriage and all the complications that came with it.
Jo’s hair was gone, the gorgeous soft mane that he’d so loved to bury his hands in. Her hair was almost shorter than his now.
It would grow again, he reminded himself as he settled in to work at the kitchen table, trying to squash that ridiculous—but nonetheless overwhelming—sensation of loss. Her hair wasn’t gone for good. It would grow back, just as long and thick and beautiful.
If she wanted it to.
His “wedding night” hadn’t been a very comfortable one. The blanket was too short, Esther’s bed unfamiliar—and Jo’s picture was on the nightstand. It seemed to have been perfectly placed so that her smiling eyes sparkled in the faint glow from the moon peeking in through the curtains. Even after the moonlight was no longer toying with him, he’d spent a big part of the night staring at her face, relaxed in laughter. It had been a while since he’d seen anything other than anger and distrust in her eyes.
Seeing her again had been a shock. He’d expected that—expected a jolt of sadness or anger—but he hadn’t been prepared for an onslaught of guilt and a return of that fierce protective instinct that had been one of the most surprising aspects of his feelings for her before.
Why guilt? He’d done his best—he had nothing to feel guilty about. It had been her choice not to accept his help, her choice not to trust him when he promised to do his best to fix a very sticky situation. She hadn’t wanted his protection—hadn’t wanted him.
The feelings were there, nevertheless. Guilt, a longing to protect…and a resurgence of the emotions that had exploded between them during the short weeks of their relationship.
No, he admitted to himself. It wasn’t over. He was just as hooked as he’d ever been—which was probably the real reason he’d gone through with the marriage ceremony despite his suspicions about Esther. Jo was worth fighting for, and he would fight if that was what it took.
She looked different now. Not only her hair—although just that had punched him in the gut the moment he’d seen her—but she was thinner, looking tired. Maybe the new job wasn’t agreeing with her. Maybe Carl was driving her too hard.
His cell phone was in his hand before he’d consciously made a move to get it, but he shoved it back into his pocket with a decisive move. This wasn’t any of his business. Jo wasn’t his protégée—she could take care of herself. He’d already interfered more than she wanted him to—she was on her own now.
He rubbed the wedding ring, for a moment absently thinking that he had to get them real rings—not props borrowed from the bridge trio. He shook his head, irritated at himself. Was he getting dragged into Esther’s fantasy of happily ever after? Of course he wouldn’t be getting real rings—not any time soon, anyway. This wasn’t a real marriage.
Or rather it wasn’t a fully legal marriage—but that wedding band on his finger felt real enough. And now that the urgency of yesterday had met the cold logic of morning, his conviction that they’d been tricked had been confirmed. Esther wasn’t dying—thank God. She’d been bouncing with energy this morning, so pleased with herself that he’d almost confronted her, almost demanded to know how she could do something like exaggerate her bad health in order to make them get married.
But that would have to wait. He had other plans.
He just wasn’t sure they would work. Jo was among the most stubborn creatures in the universe.
Matt sighed as he started tapping on his keyboard, almost eager to escape into work, a few hours’ distraction from the current dilemma.
Esther was still in bed with her puzzle books. He’d spoiled her with breakfast in bed and helped her out with a few tricky crossword problems. The old lady was looking very chirpy this morning, and seemed to be calling off her bluff already. She hadn’t even mentioned dying today. After grumbling a bit that he should be bringing his bride breakfast in bed, and not an old crone, she’d asked him how he liked being a married man.
The question had come as a bit of a shock—his wedding band seemed tighter in the light of day, even knowing it wasn’t official, no papers had been signed, and the bride most definitely hadn’t put her heart in her “I do.”
And now what?
His fingers slowed on the keyboard, and the diagrams on the screen blurred as he pictured Jo’s laughing face, her hair spread over his pillow, her cheeks flushed with excitement and joy.
No, it wasn’t over.
This was his opportunity, a blessing in disguise after all, a second chance.
The last month had been hell, on all fronts. He’d tried to do his best, for all people concerned, but he’d ended up losing Jo and risking his own position as CEO, in one glorious package. The theft of documents hadn’t been a particularly serious incident in itself—but the uproar it had caused in the firm was the serious part, as it had to have been an inside job.
Jo and the board of directors had been a particularly nasty rock and a hard place. But this would be over soon. The investigation would come to an end. Jo’s name would be cleared—he had no doubt about that, and he would regain the trust of the directors—including his father. Or so he hoped.
But Jo had never believed that he trusted her. When he’d tried to protect her, she’d taken that as an accusation, she’d refused to cooperate and left the position he’d fought so hard for her to keep, leaving both of them looking bad. That had made his struggle even harder—and yes, he’d been angry at her. But perhaps it had been partly his fault. In his fervor to make things right, to protect Jo, he’d kept her out of the decision-making—out of the know, even. He’d just wanted her to cooperate while he worked to fix things. In retrospect, that was probably a mistake. Now that his anger had faded, he could see her point of view, understand why she’d assumed he thought she was guilty—but it still hurt that she hadn’t trusted him.
He was certain he’d soon regain the trust of the board, and then everything would go back to normal at the firm. His personal life, however, was a different story.
He sighed, losing his concentration completely as his eyes caught on Jo’s bridal bouquet sitting on the dining-room table. Someone had shoved it into a small crystal bowl. The blossoms hung forlornly off the edge, petals trailing on the tablecloth. There was water in the bowl, but the flowers were already wilting. Of course, they hadn’t been new yesterday when they’d been transformed from sickbed flowers to wedding flowers. Even he could see the colors and types were mismatched.
But they were beautiful nevertheless, and it was sad to see them wilting already.
Not that he usually cared when or if flowers wilted.
Without quite knowing why, Matt stood up, crossed the room and lifted the flowers out of the water, unraveling the white strip of material that had been wound around the stems, and that was now soaked in water. He squeezed most of the water out of the wet ribbon and wound it around his hand like a bandage. It looked like silk.
“It’s one of Joanna’s old hair ribbons.”
“Huh?” Matt whirled around and came face to face with Esther. She nodded at the ribbon in his hand.
“The ribbon. It’s Joanna’s. A lot of her old things are here. You know, when she was a little girl, she often stayed with me when her parents were away.”
“I know,” Matt said dryly. He also knew that a more accurate statement would have been that Jo occasionally visited her parents when they could spare the time to have the inconvenience of a child hanging around.
“This was her favorite ribbon when she was eight years old. She always said it made her feel like a princess.” Esther sank down in an easy chair, and spread a comforter over her legs. She sent him a penetrating glance. “That’s what a woman needs on her wedding day, Matthew. She needs to feel like a princess.”
Jo had looked like a princess in the antique wedding gown—but he didn’t think she’d felt much like one. Unless it was a princess about to be locked in a tower—a princess without long hair.
First flowers, now fairy tales.
Who had been messing with his head?
Three guesses, Matthew, an inner voice commented with just the slightest touch of sarcasm.
“She made a beautiful bride, don’t you think?” Esther sighed. “Lovely. A shame about her hair though.”
“Yes,” he agreed wholeheartedly, and Esther turned her head to fix him with her stare.
“Why did she cut it like that?”
He shrugged, and started unwinding the ribbon from his hand. “I don’t know. Fashion? Short hair is probably in right now.”
Esther snorted. “Fashion? Not good enough. Do you like her hair like that?”
“Jo is always beautiful.”
“You hate it.”
He chuckled. “Yes, Esther. I hate it.”
“Good. Then maybe she’ll let it grow back. For you.” She reached for the phone on the table and gave him a haughty look. “Don’t you have work? Dishes to do? I’ve got phone calls to make, things to do.”
He grinned and saluted her. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.” He held out the damp silk ribbon. “Where should I put this?”
Esther stared into his hand for a moment, then her gaze flickered up to his face. “Keep it, Matthew. You never know when a silk ribbon might come in handy.”
Jo couldn’t reach her grandmother all day. The phone was constantly busy—Matt was probably online, working. She slammed the phone down one more time, and glanced at the clock. Still a couple of hours before she could leave. She considered explaining to her boss that she needed to take the afternoon off, but reluctantly dismissed the idea. She was overreacting. Grandma was fine. She was with Matt.
Besides, she’d been unbelievably lucky to get a job so soon after being kicked out of Matt’s company, but she’d only been here for a month and however nice her new boss was, she couldn’t afford to take any chances.
However, being cut off from the chance to check up on Grandma in her current condition was intolerable. She’d stop by on the way home and buy Esther a cell phone. If Matt was really going to be staying for a few days, this wouldn’t do at all.
She could call him on his cell phone, of course, but she’d rather not. Not unless there was a serious urgency to reach Esther, and there wasn’t. Not when he was there, at Esther’s beck and call. There was no need for Jo to worry in the first place. She knew Matt well enough to know that he’d call her the moment Esther had any problem.
But worrying had become a habit in the last few weeks. She groaned and rested her head in her hands for a moment.
She’d always had trouble breaking bad habits.
By concentrating on work, she forced herself to stop calling, but left the office the minute the clock told her she could decently get away with it. There would be one stop on the way. Grandma would enter the twenty-first century, whether she liked it or not. She would soon be the proud new owner of a state-of-the-art cell phone.
Matt’s car was still parked outside the house. He’d probably not moved away from the house all day, been tied to his computer. She dithered for a while in the car, postponing going inside.
They were married. Not legally, not binding—but as far as Grandma was concerned they were married, and they would have to act accordingly when Esther was around. Only a few weeks ago, marriage to Matt would have been a dream come true. Now—it wasn’t.
She dug into her purse, finding the wedding ring she’d pushed into a corner at the very bottom, and slid it on. It seemed to weigh much more than any normal ring should, she thought, disgruntled, staring at it. How did Matt feel about wearing a wedding band? Did it make him feel tied down, as though he was choking? Or didn’t he care at all, knowing it was all just temporary playacting?
She smirked as she pushed the door open, thinking about the dirty dishes they’d left behind last night. She hadn’t lived with Matt, but they’d spent enough time together at his apartment for her to know housework wasn’t his favorite chore any more than it was hers. It was unlikely that he’d actually done the dishes. She just hoped he hadn’t allowed Esther to do them.
Esther was fully dressed, for the first time in over a week, and sitting at the dining-room table, working on a jigsaw puzzle. Matt sat opposite her, his laptop humming, and he was stabbing at the keys with one hand, while holding a cell phone to his ear with the other.
Typical Matt.
Esther smiled. “Welcome home, Joanna.”
“I tried to call all day,” she told Esther, and sent Matt a nasty look. “But the phone was busy.” She moved to her grandmother’s side, and put the brand-new cell phone on the table. “There. It’s best if you carry it in your pocket. That way I can always reach you, and you can call whenever you need me.”
“Another phone?”
“Matt’s using the phone line,” she explained. “So I couldn’t get through. This way, I can reach you even if the phone line is tied up.”
Esther examined the phone. “Good. I can chat while walking the dogs. Not bad. But Matthew wasn’t on the phone, I was. I’ve been telling everybody about the wedding!”
Jo felt her heart drop to the pit of her stomach. Did Grandma mean… “You were telling—”
“Everybody,” Esther repeated, beaming. “Well—except your parents, of course, I don’t even know which continent they’re on right now.” She examined her new phone, still smiling. “It took me all day, but I’ve reached almost everyone. It’s amazing how big the extended family is when you’re my age. Granted, you may not know any of your cousins when you pass them on the street, but they’re your blood. Matthew’s mother was especially thrilled.”
Jo leaned back against the wall. She looked at Matt, but he was staring at his screen, his jaw clenched, looking as if he were determined to ignore the conversation no matter what.
“Grandma…please tell me you didn’t call Matt’s mother…”
“She told me you two hadn’t even met, not since you were a child.”
“Oh, my God…”
“Remiss of you, Matthew. She’s coming to town next month, just to meet you, Joanna.”
“What?” Jo almost yelled. “His mother? Here?”
Esther cackled. “Matthew’s responses were about the same. I understand about the nerves, but there’s nothing to be worried about. Jane is a lovely woman. You remember her, don’t you? You have a wonderful mother-in-law.”
“Mother-in-law…”
“Mothers-in-law aren’t that bad. Really. Not as long as you treat their sons right.”
“Oh, God.”
“Don’t be nervous, dear, she’s just stopping by for a weekend. Just a casual visit. It’s not as though we have to arrange a dinner party for fifty. Relax.”
“Relax?”
“Of course,” Esther mused, “we do owe people a proper wedding reception, don’t we? Perhaps you two would like to repeat your vows in a church?”
“Grandmother!”
“Esther!”
Their admonitions formed a shocked and angry chorus, even hurtling Matt out of his catatonic state at the computer. Esther grinned. “Just a thought, children, just a thought. No hurry. I’m sure you’ll want a real ceremony sometime, but there’s no hurry.”
Jo shook her head and stalked away into the kitchen, irritated and annoyed at the entire universe—and more than a little upset.
As she’d guessed, the dishes were stacked in the sink, unwashed. She gritted her teeth and turned on the water, squirting liquid soap over the dishes. Men! Grandmothers! She wasn’t sure which was worse.
“Leave them.” Matt was standing right behind her and she jumped, almost screaming. He put his hand on her shoulder, steadying her, and she recoiled, turning around to face him, hand clenching the end of the counter. He tucked his hand in his pocket and shrugged, as if in an apology for touching her.
“Matt, your mother is coming. Did you hear? Your mother is coming to meet me! Oh, and why don’t we just have a church wedding? She tricked us, didn’t she? I bet she’s been planning this for weeks. I bet her health was never failing at all. I bet tomorrow she’ll be taking her usual walk around the block with the dogs, the way she used to do every morning.”
“That pretty much sums up what I suggested yesterday,” Matt said dryly. “And you bit my head off for it. But to look on the bright side, at least she’s not dying.”
The wind went out of Jo. “That’s wonderful. I didn’t mean…”
“I know what you meant.”
“We should tell her exactly what we think of her interference.” Jo turned on her heel to do precisely that, but Matt grabbed her arm.
“Are you sure? She may have pushed us to get married before we were ready, but she did think we were a couple. She’ll no doubt be pretty devastated to find out differently. Can we take that risk now?”
“But you know she’s fine. Don’t you? You’ve been saying that all along!”
“We can’t be sure. It’s probably safer to assume she’s been telling the truth.”
“So we don’t confront her?”
“Not yet.”
Jo rubbed her forehead, feeling tired already. Duplicity was exhausting. She wondered how Esther did it—if that was what she was doing. Matt was right. They couldn’t be sure. “What’s the alternative? To keep pretending?”
His shoulders lifted in a weary shrug. “I suggest we stick it out for a few days at least—play it by ear. The news is already all over town. We’d make Esther look like a fool, coming out with the truth now that she’s told everybody that we’re married.”
Jo sagged against the counter. “Instead, we’ll be the fools. I forgot. Everybody knows. Your mother knows. Your mother is coming to meet me.” Everything was suddenly overwhelming, and dizziness swamped her. She felt Matt’s hand on her shoulder.
“Jo? You okay?”
“Yeah.” She straightened up, now furious with herself for displaying weakness. “I’m fine. I was just dizzy for a minute. Everything’s so weird.”
“Don’t worry about my mother. That’s next month—we’ll probably have figured something out by then.”
“Figure something out,” she muttered. “That’s how this whole thing started, wasn’t it? We jumped into this with our eyes closed to what a big mess we were creating, sure we’d ‘figure something out’.” She turned back to the sink to get Matt’s hand off her shoulder, and grabbed the brush for some forceful dishwashing.
“Leave the dishes,” Matt said again. “We’ve got plenty for tonight’s dinner.”
“Leave them?” she repeated. “Forever? I know it is hard for men to grasp, but these things don’t get clean by themselves, however long you give them. Well, unless there’s a dog in the house, and your definition of clean is flexible.” She made an attempt at stabbing him with her glare, ignoring the fact that she had to be sounding like a bad-tempered witch. “Last night you said you’d do the dishes. You didn’t keep your word.”
“I know. I will. I bought a dishwasher. It should be here within the hour.”
“A dishwasher?”
“Yes.”
“You bought a dishwasher, just so you wouldn’t have to wash a few measly dishes?”
“I bought a dishwasher so that Esther wouldn’t have to worry about that chore in the future,” Matt said with exaggerated patience that infuriated her.
“She doesn’t do the dishes. Not while she’s sick and I’m staying with her.”
He shrugged, unconcerned. “Whatever. The dishwasher will be here soon.”
Jo bit back a scathing remark about men and the lengths they’d go to in order to avoid housework. She’d just sound like a shrew, and she wasn’t.
Not normally, anyway.
“Where will you put it? There isn’t room for it.”
Matt pointed. “We can easily remove that cupboard. It fits there. Esther has already approved it.”
“And what do we do with all the stuff in there?” Matt stared at her, and she looked away. She was being unreasonable about a tiny issue. She knew that. It was a nice way not to think about the big issues.
She shrugged. “Fine. We’ll find a place for the stuff.” She folded her arms on her chest. “Matt, this has gone way out of hand. Why didn’t you stop her from calling everybody?”
“Do you think I willingly let her make those calls? To my mother and my grandmother?” He swore. “I didn’t know until my mother called me on my cell phone, screaming with joy and fury at the same time.”
“Fury?” Jo’s stomach clenched as she focused on that one word. “She hated the idea of you marrying me?”
“No, Jo. She was furious that she hadn’t been present at the wedding. She’s over the moon with joy that I married you.” He shook his head and took a deep breath as he crossed his arms on his chest. “She’s not going to be happy to hear the truth.”
“She was pleased?”
“Why is that so hard to believe?”
“She doesn’t know what happened?”
“She never knew we were seeing each other, no.”
“I’m not talking about that,” Jo snapped. “I know how well you kept that little secret.”
Matt’s eyes narrowed. “You mean does she know about the incident at work? Yes. She’s a major shareholder, so of course she knows.”
“And knowing that I’m accused of being a thief, she’s still happy thinking we got married?”
“She doesn’t think you’re guilty.”
“Hah! Everybody thinks I’m guilty.”
Matt shook his head. “No. Not everybody. Just most people.”
“Just most people?”
“Yeah. Including my father, who, unlike my mother, refuses to believe I’m a solid enough judge of character to be trusted when I say you didn’t do it.”
There was bitterness in his voice, which had her momentarily wondering if he could be telling the truth. He’d always said he believed her—but his actions hadn’t borne it out. He’d cancelled the suspension, but nevertheless pushed her aside “while they investigate this,” expected her to quietly stay out of the way in an obscure position on the other side of the city. In the eyes of her colleagues, that had clinched it—she had to be guilty.
“Careful, Matt, you might convince me you all along believed I was innocent,” she retorted.
His mouth moved in what was half a grin, half a grimace. “I always did. I told you I did.”
That was one way of putting it. He’d worked hard at hushing things up and hiding her away—and it had to be either because he believed she was guilty—or because he didn’t want to embarrass himself if it came to light that he’d been involved with the person robbing the company.
After all, if he’d believed her—or if he had loved her, her brain inserted as a side note—he wouldn’t have transferred her out of the main office, he wouldn’t have gone along with having her office searched…. He would have come forward as the reason for her late nights at the office, those evenings when the computer logs showed that she hadn’t touched her workstation.
She changed the subject. “None of this changes our current crisis—your mother is coming next month.”
“I know. She’s going to bring my grandmother, too.”
He was being far too calm about this, while she could hear her own voice rising in an embarrassing approximation of hysteria. “Your mother and your grandmother are coming to meet me. Your wife.”
“Yeah. I know.”
She stared at him. “How can you be so calm about this?”
“I’ve had several hours to calm down. I even jogged almost five miles just to get rid of all that excess adrenaline.”
Knowing that made her feel a little better, but maybe that was just because the image of Matt jogging did a great job of distracting her hormonal system. He was back in jeans and a shirt now. What had he worn while jogging?
Jo dragged her mind back to the matter at hand, trying to punch into her system that Matt’s jogging attire didn’t matter in the slightest.
“What are we going to do? Call her and tell her the truth?”
He shook his head, once. “If we don’t want the truth to get out and possibly back to Esther, that wouldn’t be a good idea. My mother isn’t good with secrets.”
Jo pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down abruptly. “So what you suggest is that we let your mother think we’re really married?”
“There’s nothing else we can do at the moment, is there? But we have plenty of time. There are weeks until she plans to visit. Things may have changed by then. It’s probably best just to play it by ear for a while.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“I told you—she called. I wouldn’t say we talked, exactly, but she talked at me, quite extensively.”
“What do we do?” She buried her face in her hands. “Everything was in such a panic yesterday. We didn’t think at all, did we?”
“We let Esther’s gloomy talk draw us in.”
“At least I did,” Jo mumbled. “I was sure she was on her deathbed. For once, I should have listened to you. We can’t keep this charade up forever. What can we do? Everybody will be expecting us to move in together.”
“While Esther is sick—or pretending to be sick—it’s understandable that we’re staying with her.”
“We?”
“I spent the day with Esther,” he reminded her. “She’s got strong opinions about the importance of married couples living together. If I go back to my apartment while you’re staying here, she’s going to suspect something’s wrong. She really doesn’t know we broke up, remember?”
“I don’t care if she suspects something! She can’t be expecting you to live here!”
“She can. She does. If you stay, as your husband, I stay. That’s what she expects, like it or not. She expects us to want to be together the first days of our marriage—even under the circumstances.”
Jo shook her head, almost speechless over the situation she was finding herself in. “She’s probably lying and faking, and when she expects something—we just jump?”
“We already jumped, didn’t we?” He shrugged. “The damage is done. We went this far, I don’t think the situation can get much worse if we go along with this for a while longer.”
“Don’t be so sure. And despite appearances, there are limits to the rings I’m willing to run around that woman,” Jo bit out. “She manipulated us. And now we have to stay in the same house together! It’s horrible.”
“Thank you,” Matt drawled.
“I didn’t mean you. Yes, I did mean you. Hell, I’m getting a headache,” Jo groaned.
“You are a headache,” Matt muttered. “And I think you work too hard at that new job. You look exhausted.”
Jo barked a laugh. “I work too hard? That’s rich, coming from Mr. Workaholic.”
“I’m not a workaholic.”
“Hah! You didn’t even take the evening off on your birthday.”
“Yes, I did.”
Jo gritted her teeth and looked away. What in the world had possessed her to bring up his birthday? Matt had indeed taken the evening off, but that was because she’d sneaked into his office when everybody else had gone home and distracted him. The plan had been to take him out to dinner, but they’d never made it out of the building.
That day had been one of the incidents in evidence against her. The security cameras showed her entering the building after hours—but the logs showed she’d never turned on her own computer. The directors had demanded to know what she’d been doing. All she could do was stubbornly cling to her story of having done some paperwork in her office, say that she hadn’t needed her computer, but it had been a weak argument. She hadn’t thought she needed better arguments—she’d been sure Matt would explain when he got back from his trip, provide her with the alibi she needed.
He hadn’t.
“Seriously, how long do we keep this up, Matt?”
Matt’s shrug was noncommittal. “Until she’s strong enough to take the truth, or until there is no longer need to pretend—or until we can find an easier lie to replace this one with. Any other ideas?”
“What do you mean, an easier lie?”
“We can divorce.”
Jo stared at him. Then she laughed. This really was the icing on the cake. “This is fantastic, Matt. You mean, we get a fake divorce on top of everything else that’s fake about this entire thing?”
Matt just shrugged.
“Well, that certainly is one solution. In the meantime, have you told your father yet that you married a spy and a thief?” she asked, not caring that bitterness was leaking off her tone.
Matt didn’t flinch. “I don’t believe you’re a spy and a thief, Jo. I never did. Don’t you even believe that much? What did I do to convince you of that?”
“You treated me like a spy and a thief.”
“That’s not true. I did what I had to do, the only thing I could do under the circumstances.”
“Hide me away as if I was guilty and you were covering up for me?”
“I had the board to deal with, Jo. They’d already suspended you. I annulled the suspension, didn’t I? All I did was transfer you for the time being, get you out of the way while we figured out what was going on. It was the only thing I could do—and it was difficult enough.”
“You transferred me because you didn’t believe me, you got me out of the way instead of going after the real culprit and proving my innocence.”
Matt sighed, and this time the sigh got to her. He sounded tired, hopeless. Why? “We’ve had this conversation before, Jo. I had no choice. If I hadn’t transferred you, there would have been some pretty dire consequences—not to mention a pretty hostile environment for you in the meantime. I went against the board’s wishes, against my father’s wishes—I did everything I could. Things could have gone a lot worse.”
Worse than losing her job and the man she loved? She didn’t think so.
She glanced at Matt, but looked away. It was discomfiting to see the weariness in his eyes.
“I did the best I could, Jo.”
“Sure. Fine. Okay.”
“Very convincing,” he said dryly.
“There’s no point in rehashing this. It’s in the past.”
“While you’re still furious, it’s not in the past.”
“I’m over that.”
“You’re not.”
“I have a new job. A job I got myself, without any help from you or anyone else. I’m happy. I’m doing great. And I’ll be doing even better when this ridiculous charade is over and I can go back to my normal life.”
Matt stepped closer, invading her personal space even though he didn’t touch her. “Let’s have some real honest emotion here, Jo, instead of this cold shoulder.”
“Go away.”
“You never told me how angry you were at me, Jo. You never yelled. You just told me in that icy tone of yours that it was over and you never wanted to see me again.”
“You were quick enough to take that for an answer.”
“You made yourself pretty clear when you said I’d ruined your life.”
If you’d loved me, you wouldn’t have let that be the end, she wanted to say. But she didn’t have the right. “You didn’t believe me. You didn’t trust me.”
“I was trying to protect you, Jo! It had nothing to do with trust. It didn’t matter if I believed you or not, this could have ruined your career. I did the only thing possible to salvage your reputation. It wasn’t easy for me either.”
“Am I supposed to be grateful?”
Matt shook his head in aggravation, but his eyes were ablaze with emotion. “You don’t realize what almost happened. Jo, if I hadn’t stepped in, not only could you have been fired, this would have gone to the police. Did you realize how serious this was?”
“I was innocent!” she spat back at him. “If things had gone to trial, I would have been acquitted.”
“I wanted to prove your innocence without going through that. You know trials always color people, even if they’re innocent. You could have been branded forever.”
“And I’m not now?”
“No, you’re not. Few people know about this at all.”
“Because you hushed things up, for the sake of the reputation of your precious company.”
He grabbed her wrist, but she yanked it away. “For your sake, Jo.”
“It would never have gone to trial. There was no proof. There was circumstantial evidence at the best.”
“People are convicted on circumstantial evidence. There was no way of knowing what would have happened to you. They’re coming down hard on white-collar crime these days, Jo. It isn’t just punished by a slap on the wrist anymore.”
“The circumstantial evidence was planted. I didn’t do it.” She sank to the sofa and covered her eyes with her hands. “Matt, you never even realized this was the worst part of it all, that you never believed me.”
“I believed you,” he said in a low voice. “That was never the issue. I never for a moment believed you were guilty.”
She looked up at him, again for a second wondering if that could be true. “Why…”
“I had to do what I did, in order to get you—get us—out of this mess.”
“Transferring me away from my job? Getting me out of the company? Matt, you could as well have written Guilty on my forehead with a black marker. The few friends I had left were convinced of my guilt then.”
“The board had suspended you, Jo. I wasn’t there, I had nothing to do with it.”
“Your father had suspended me.”
Matt sighed. “We’re talking in circles here. I cancelled the suspension and brought you back, remember?”
“Only to plant me in a distant corner of the galaxy instead.”
“You couldn’t stay at the main office during the investigation, Jo. Don’t you understand?”
“What investigation?” She jumped away from him, trembling with anger now. “There was to be no investigation. Your father made that clear. He just wanted to put this in the past, and I was an excellent scapegoat.”
“I know. He was wrong. You know I started an investigation as soon as I got back. It’s still ongoing and we should have the results in soon. You’ll be cleared. If you’d stayed, as I asked you to, you’d know all about it.”
Jo rubbed her face with her hands, feeling the exhaustion and anxiety of that time all over again. She couldn’t have stayed in the job Matt had created for her so he could get her out of the office where she was considered a criminal—why didn’t he understand that? “Did your father ever find out about…us?”
Matt turned away now, crouching down by the cupboard where the dishwasher was to go and opening it. “Yes. Where are we putting all this stuff?”
Her head snapped up. “He did? How?”
“Today. Esther called everybody, remember?”
Suddenly her breathing seemed very loud in the silence. “So? What was your father’s response, finding out his new daughter-in-law is the ‘immoral criminal’ he had fired a few weeks ago?”
“Pretty predictable.”
“Angry?”
Matt piled up cans on the counter, gradually emptying the upper shelf. “More like disgust.”
“Disgust?” Jo frowned.
Matt looked up, impatiently tossing his head to get the hair out of his eyes. “Don’t you get it, Jo? Didn’t you understand why I couldn’t provide you with that alibi? Didn’t you ever think about what would happen if I explained to people why you were at the office those evenings? Don’t you realize how that would have looked?”
Realization came in a flash—and with it chagrin, almost horror, that she hadn’t realized that sooner. She hadn’t asked Matt to provide the alibi. She’d waited for him to offer it when he realized it was one of the big factors against her, and he hadn’t, clinching her terrible suspicion that he was embarrassed about their relationship. “Oh.”
Matt nodded. “The company policy is clear, and it’s strictly enforced. That’s why we had to hide our relationship in the first place, remember? Providing you with an alibi would have made things worse, not better—it would have looked as though you’d been using me. So I did the only thing I could do—the best I could do for both of us. Got you out of there for the time being and started work on finding out the truth.” He shoved both hands through his hair and turned away. “Only it didn’t quite work out the way I thought it would. You didn’t cooperate.” His groan echoed in the small kitchen. “Do you have any idea how it looked when I fought so hard to get your suspension cancelled, and then you arrived the next morning with your box, emptied out your desk and vanished?”
Jo didn’t know how to feel—what to think. Maybe she hadn’t reacted rationally under the circumstances, but things had looked so black and white at the time. Anger—although she wasn’t sure anymore if it was directed at him or herself—made her lash out at him again. “Oh, that’s just terrific. Now I’m supposed to thank you and apologize for not cooperating?”
“You never trusted me, Jo. I did everything in my power to protect you.”
“Protect me? I didn’t need protection, I needed my name cleared.”
“To protect you and clear your name.”
“And you expected me to just take that job you planted me in?”
“Well—yes!”
“And keep seeing you.”
Matt squeezed his eyes shut in obvious frustration. “This had nothing to do with you and me. Nothing! It was just business.”
“Just business,” she repeated, her voice almost a whisper now. “And it ruined everything, didn’t it?”
Matt wasn’t looking at her. He was staring out the window, his profile hard now. “We allowed it to ruin everything, Jo. It was our own fault.”
After dinner, the three of them spent the evening in front of the television, Jo and Esther watching a movie, Matt on a recliner with his laptop, still working, his face serious in the pale glow from the screen. She couldn’t help herself—her gaze strayed constantly from the antics of the actors on the television screen and to the face of the man who for a short while, such a short time ago, had been the most important being in the world to her.
It was hard, straddling that fence between intimate lovers and casual pseudo-relatives. Hard to know how to treat him. Painful just to look at him.
He glanced up and met her gaze, raising an eyebrow in question. She gestured at his computer. “You’re still working on the Ottesen project?” she asked.
He looked at her, startled, almost as if he’d forgotten she’d once been a vital part of that project. “Yes. We’ll be working on it until the end of summer, probably.”
“What did you decide?” Curiosity pushed her forward, trying to sneak a look at Matt’s screen. This had been in part her project, many of her ideas were mingled in the data and blueprints on Matt’s screen.
Matt glanced up at her, and despite their conversation, despite the blinders that had been ripped from her eyes, the remains of her former convictions inched toward the forefront of her mind. He might still think she was an industrial spy. Of course he wouldn’t want to show her his work, she might sell it to the highest bidder.
Matt shook his head, evidently reading her mind without effort. “No, Jo,” he said in a low voice so Esther wouldn’t hear. “Do you still not believe me? How long are you going to keep this up? I’m not afraid to show you my work.”
“It’s fine,” she said. “I’m not that interested.”
Matt dumped the laptop on her knees and stood, walking toward the kitchen. “I’m going to get something to drink. Look as much as you like. Can I get you something, Esther? Or you, Jo?”
Jo shook her head, and watched him head toward the kitchen, realizing he didn’t like being close to her any more than she did to him. Pushing the thought away, she adjusted the screen and started looking through the contents of the file. A lot had happened in the last month. Some of the changes she agreed with, others not. It was only to be expected.
Matt returned, carrying ice tea for Esther and a beer for himself. Jo handed him back the laptop. “Thanks for letting me take a look.”
“No problem,” he said. “What do you think?”
Jo hesitated, then launched into an explanation of what she did and didn’t like. Matt listened attentively, taking the occasional note, and she almost forgot their past. This was what it had been like in the beginning, after she’d started working for him, and before they’d become lovers. She’d excitedly told him her ideas, her proposals, and he’d listened, sometimes pointing out problems from his own vastly superior experience, sometimes asking questions that reduced her plans to ashes, but most of the time guiding her forward until her ideas become something more, something better. He was an excellent teacher. It was one of the things she’d liked best about working with him.
Esther went early to bed, planning to finish a book on tape, and Jo used the opportunity to escape to her room as well.
“Night,” she told him, then paused. “Did you solve the mystery of the missing sheets today?”
“Not sure,” Matt said dryly. “Apparently one of the bridge ladies borrowed them, but I didn’t quite follow her explanation of why.”
“I guess I’ll take the blanket. I should have gone home and fetched my own sheets today.”
“You still can. Or, if you’d rather, you can try to get that sleeping bag from the attic. I found a flash-light this morning, it’s on the kitchen counter.”
Why did she care? Why was she helping?
Matt glanced up, his eyes focusing on hers again. There was warmth in them again—or was it a trick of the lighting? “Sleeping bag—attic. Flashlight—kitchen. Okay. Thanks.”
“Are you going to work tomorrow?”
He nodded. “Esther seems fine. She has plans of having friends over. I’ll try to get back early though, see that she eats properly.”
“How are we…” She paused. The plan had been to play it by ear for a few days. It wouldn’t do any good to agonize over the details. “Never mind. Good night.”
“Night, Jo.”