WHEN Joanna arrived home, Matt wasn’t there yet, but Grandma was standing in the hallway, hands on hips, and looking like a stooped, gray-haired Fury.
“You’re not sleeping together!”
Grandma balanced anger, upset and hurt nicely, with a healthy dose of completely unjustifiable indignation thrown in. Jo fought the urge to tell her to mind her own business, then succumbed. It was only the honest truth, and the old lady seemed sturdy enough to take it. “Our sleeping arrangements really aren’t any of your business, Grandma.”
“Why are you sleeping in separate bedrooms? Didn’t you even spend your wedding night together? What sort of a marriage is it that starts off in separate beds?”
Jo put her briefcase down and removed her coat. “Grandma, I love you to pieces—but I repeat: this is none of your business, so put it out of your mind. Did you go upstairs? By yourself? Where’s Matt?”
“Matt went to the grocery store. I may or may not be dying, but I’m not an invalid. I needed something from my bedroom upstairs. And guess what I saw. A sleeping bag on my bed. A sleeping bag! What do you think this is, a camping site?”
“Well, all the sheets were gone, so a sleeping bag was the only option until we can find them. Any idea where they might be, Grandma?”
“A friend borrowed them for a few days. She’ll be returning everything before the weekend. But that’s neither here nor there. We’re talking about your marriage now. You’re married! You should sleep in the same room!”
“Your record is broken, Grandma,” Jo told her, softening the words with a kiss on her cheek. She heard the front door open and shut, and then felt Matt’s presence behind her. Grandma found a new victim to fix with her icy stare. “You’re not sleeping together! Why?”
The question didn’t seem to surprise him. “That isn’t any of your business, Esther,” Matt said calmly. “It’s between me and Jo, and whether we sleep in the same room is our decision. Plenty of couples have separate beds, even separate bedrooms. Butt out—and I mean that nicely.” Just as Jo had, he kissed Esther’s cheek in compensation for his harsh words.
Esther glowered at him, then turned an accusing eye back on Jo. Despite deep admiration for Matt’s “butt out” philosophy she did not feel up to sending her grandmother quite such an explicit message herself.
“You don’t know the damage this can do to your marriage,” the old lady said darkly. “This is no way to start a marriage.”
“Grandma, it’s not a big deal. We’re just not…I mean…” Jo looked at Matt, pleading for help. He shrugged. “Grandma, Matt snores,” she explained, proud of her sudden inspiration, although the barb of Matt’s stare practically stabbed her temple. He didn’t snore, and she knew that very well. “The noise is terrible,” she continued, warming to her subject. “It’s like trying to sleep in a noisy factory. I do need my sleep if I am to function at all at work.”
“Talk to a doctor,” Grandma said promptly, but Jo thought she saw relief in her eyes at this simple explanation. “Snoring can be fixed. I saw something about it on TV. And if it can’t be fixed, in the meantime there are always earplugs. In my experience, a sharp jab with an elbow also does the trick. Whatever works. Nothing is worse for a marriage than separate beds. Take my word for it.”
Matt grinned at Grandma. “I’ll talk to a doctor, Esther.”
“Good. And Jo, you will buy earplugs today?”
Jo rolled her eyes. “Grandma…”
“I’m sure Matt will have the snoring under control soon, but in the meantime, earplugs work wonders. I should know, your grandfather snored something terrible the last ten years of his life, bless him. Come to think of it, there might even be a small stash of earplugs left over, somewhere around here.”
“I don’t like to wear earplugs, Grandma, even antique ones. We’ll wait for the doctor’s verdict, and in the meantime Matt will borrow your room.”
Esther pretended not to hear. “Well, it doesn’t matter. The point is moot anyway, as I’ll be moving up to my bedroom now.”
Jo narrowed her eyes and folded her arms on her chest, suspicion radiating off her. “I see. You’re feeling that much better that you can handle the stairs again?”
“Absolutely. The stairs are good exercise for me. And I look forward to sleeping in my own bed.”
“Fine.” Matt patted Jo on the shoulder. “But don’t worry, darling, you won’t have to put up with my snoring. I’ll sleep downstairs in the guest room, then.”
Grandma looked chagrined at this small hitch in her rather obvious plan. Then she looked cunning for a microsecond, before shaking her head. She whistled for Aron and Aaron, and the dogs rushed to her side. She ushered them toward the front door.
“Grandma!” Jo rushed after Esther. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to walk the dogs.”
“Walk the dogs? Outside? By yourself?”
“Yes. It’ll do me good. You know I like to go for a daily walk.”
“You’re going for a walk?” Matt asked. “You feel up to taking a walk?”
“Yes. I’m feeling much better.” She smiled, even as Jo and Matt looked at each other, dumbfounded. “Maybe I’ll even live to see your children. That would be nice. Not that I’m pushing or anything. I understand that a couple may want time to themselves before that. Besides,” she muttered under her breath as she grabbed her coat, smile replaced with a petulant frown. “There’s not much chance of you having children while you’re sleeping in separate rooms, is there?”
Jo suppressed a snarl. Matt helped Esther with her coat. “I’ll join you,” he said. “I don’t get nearly enough exercise, anyway.”
“You’re lying, Matt,” Esther murmured, pulling on her gloves and searching the shelves for her umbrella. “It’s obvious even to me that you’re in great shape. But it’s nice of you to accompany an old lady.”
“Be careful,” Jo called after them, standing in the front door. “Just a short walk. You’ve hardly been out of bed for more than two weeks, don’t overdo it.”
She stared after the two of them. Grandma had her cane, but she wasn’t even leaning on it, and only had a light hold on Matt’s arm. And she was striding. Matt didn’t even have to adjust his steps to hers.
Jo stared after them until they disappeared. There was no question about it: Grandma was back to her normal, robust, healthy self. Which of course, left the dilemma: how to get out of this “marriage” to Matt that everybody now knew about.
But at least Grandma’s little bedroom scheme wouldn’t work—she might be moving up to her own room, but there was still the downstairs guest room for Matt to sleep in. Jo grinned as she turned toward the guest room, hoping there would be some extra sheets in the closets there.
Grandma might be forcing them to live together, but she wouldn’t win this battle.
After dinner, the three of them had settled down to a game of Scrabble in the living room when the doorbell chimed. Esther jumped to her feet with all the energy of a fifteen-year-old and almost ran to the door. Jo and Matt looked at each other, sensing trouble ahead.
There was noise out front. Matt closed his eyes and groaned. “What now?”
They stared at each other, a strange truce in the air now that they were both aware of the trap they were in. “Do we want to know?” Jo asked, eyeing the doorway. “Should we go check, do you think?”
Matt slowly shrugged, cocking his head to the side to listen. She did the same. There was a murmur of voices. There was some kind of squeaking noise. The dogs went crazy, but were quickly hushed. Then there were whispers and strange noises, and movement at the front of the house. Jo braced her elbows on the table, rested her head on her hands and closed her eyes. “I don’t think I want to know.”
“I agree. I suppose we could just wait and hope for the best.”
“Yeah, let’s do that.” She started to rearrange the tiles on her slate. “I’ll try to get a triple word score while Grandma is away. She never gives me enough time to think.”
Matt chuckled. “If everybody took the time you take, each game would last a week.”
His tone was indulgent, and when she glanced up there was a faraway smile on his face. Something inside tightened as she realized he was remembering their own Scrabble games. She looked back down at her letters and concentrated.
Esther finally got rid of her company and came back, but that did not leave the house silent.
“What is that noise?” Jo asked, still not sure she wanted to know, and the way Matt was huddled over his own tiles told her he wasn’t any keener to find out just what the old lady and her buddies were up to this time.
Esther maneuvered back into her seat and fiddled with her letters. “Oh, nothing. Just a few birds I’ll be baby-sitting for a couple of days. Nothing for you to worry about.”
“Birds?” Jo yelled.
“Birds?” Matt repeated. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his forehead with a hand, looking almost resigned. “I see. Birds. Inside the house?”
“Yes. Parrots. The big kind. Very colorful and beautiful. They don’t speak though. Not English, anyway. Don’t think it’s French either. Maybe it’s Spanish—don’t they all come from South America originally? Or is it Africa? Anyway, whichever language it is, they do squeak quite a bit, don’t they?”
“The sound is coming from the guest room.” Jo jumped out of her seat to follow Matt as he strode out of the room and toward the guest room. He opened the door, and from a few steps behind, Jo saw his jaw drop. “Esther…” he groaned. “What have you done?”
Jo stopped. He was blocking the doorway, and she didn’t want to get too close to him. It tended to make her shiver. “What? What’s in there?”
Matt looked toward her and gestured. “Look for yourself.”
Jo carefully inched closer in the narrow space Matt left between himself and the doorjamb. Her mouth fell open in astonishment equal to Matt’s as she saw inside.
“Oh, my God,” she said in a high squeaky tone.
In the half hour she’d used to compose the word irrupt for a double word score, the guest room had been demolished. The furniture had been squeezed into corners, and draped in plastic. In the middle of the room there was a huge cage, reaching almost from floor to ceiling.
Inside were six colorful birds.
“She’s doing this to make you sleep in my room,” Jo said, her voice on the verge of hysteria. “She’s turned the guest room into a zoo just to force us to sleep together. Can you believe it?”
“Yes.” Matt was actually chuckling. Then he rested his head against the wall and closed his eyes and the chuckles turned into full-blown laughter, although he kept it quiet enough not to reach Esther’s ears.
Jo looked into the guest-room-turned-aviary. “Get a grip, Matt. This isn’t funny. We’re not going to let her get away with this, are we?”
“It is funny. It’s hilarious.”
“Well, turn off your sense of humor!” Jo hissed. “This is serious. We’re pretending to be married, remember? We’re pretending to be in love! Well, I don’t want to do it forever, so we have to do something about this!”
Matt’s grin died, and as they stepped out of the door, he pulled the door shut, dampening the noise of the birds. “Do something about this? Of course.”
He turned around and strode back to the lounge where Esther was sitting, innocently playing with her Scrabble tiles. He sat opposite the old lady, and leaned on his elbows toward her. “Esther…there are six huge parrots in the guest room.”
“I know, dear,” Esther said without even looking up from her tiles. “Nora’s grandson raises them. They’ll be staying with us for just a little while. They’re no problem, just keep the door shut and the noise shouldn’t bother you too much.”
“This is ridiculous…” Jo sputtered.
Esther gestured vaguely. “They needed a place for them, just for a while.”
“How long is a while?”
“I don’t know, a week, a month, however long it takes.”
“However long what takes?” Jo asked.
Grandma finally peered up at her over her glasses. “Is there a problem, dear?”
Is there a problem, dear? Had she seriously asked that?
“Yes. Yes, Grandmother, there is a problem. Matt was going to sleep in there, you know that.”
“Matt should sleep in your bed, anyway. Did you buy earplugs yet?”
Jo went back to other arguments—Grandma loved her house. “There are six birds! The noise, the smell…we’ll never get the smell out of that room!”
“Nonsense. Nora promised to take care of all that. The room will be good as new. There are no carpets there, which minimizes the smell problem, and we took out the loose rugs. We should probably take down the drapes too, shouldn’t we?”
“The noise!”
“They’re downstairs, dear. Won’t bother us at all. And, well, you’ll be wearing earplugs anyway, won’t you, because of Matt’s snoring?”
“You’re doing this to make us sleep in the same room. Well, it won’t work. I won’t be forced to sleep with…to stay awake all night just because you think a wife should learn to tolerate her husband’s snoring. I have a job to go to in the morning and I need my sleep.”
Esther waved a hand at her, and frowned down at her Scrabble slate. “Ssshhh, dear, I’m trying to concentrate here. I only have one vowel and some tricky consonants.”
Jo turned on her heel and stalked into the kitchen for a reprieve. She couldn’t remember ever having been tempted to yell at her grandmother before, but she sure was now.
Matt had followed her. She twisted around, gesturing randomly in her wrath. “Can you believe this?”
“She’s one determined lady,” he acknowledged, the small grin on his face totally infuriating.
She glared at him. “You still find this funny, don’t you?”
“Yes. Don’t you?”
Jo shook her head. “No. No, I don’t. Maybe in ten years time I’ll see this as brilliant comedy, but not now. This isn’t working out. We have to tell her right now, end this charade.”
“Are you sure? She may have manipulated us into marriage, but are you sure you want to tell her not only is this a pretend marriage, but we’re not even together anymore? You know it’s going to break her heart.”
“Oh, hell.” Jo’s anger drained out of her in an instant. “No, Matt, of course I don’t want to tell her. That’s why we got into this mess in the first place, remember? Because I didn’t tell her! I just couldn’t. Even if she’s not sick, she’s still old and frail and she was so happy that we were together…but we have to tell her somehow, sometime…”
“She’s a devious manipulator, but she’s a devious manipulator that we love. I’m sure we’ll figure something out soon—as soon as she admits she’s back to normal. I’ll just sleep on the sofa tonight.”
“Or you could go home,” Jo suggested hopefully. “Why not? This is just a temporary situation anyway, with me staying here. It’s perfectly understandable that you sleep at your place until…”
“Until we move in together?” Matt supplied when she ran out of steam.
“Very funny.”
“I haven’t seen you smile for weeks. Did I ruin your sense of humor along with your career and your life?”
His voice was dry, and she had a feeling he was quoting her. She might have said something along those lines. Yes, she had accused him of ruining her life and her career. At the time, it had felt like the truth—because his denial of their relationship had left her heart in pieces.
“No. My sense of humor is fine. There just hasn’t been much to smile about recently.”
“I could tell you a joke.”
Jo groaned, but the simple mention of Matt telling a joke had a smile jerk at her lips. She couldn’t help it. “No. Please don’t tell me a joke. You’re the worst joke-teller in the world.”
“It always makes you laugh.”
“Yes, but I laugh at you, not with you. You’re worse than a four-year-old. Your jokes are so unfunny that it’s hysterical. It’s not fair. Please don’t tell me a joke.”
Matt grinned. “Okay. Let’s finish the game and put our torturer to bed.”
“Well, I’m going to bed,” Jo announced, giving in before Esther did. She had a job to go to in the morning—Esther didn’t. Matt, on the other hand, did, and he noticed Jo send him a pitying glance. He hoped he’d get Esther to vacate the sofa soon. It was the only remaining sleeping space in the house. “Good night,” Jo chirped before vanishing up the stairs.
“Night,” Esther and Matt echoed. Then Esther sent her godson a glare. “Aren’t you going with her? You’ll have to stay in her room, snores or not. I’ll be using my room, and the guest room is occupied.”
“Jo needs to get to work in the morning. I’m not going to keep her up with my snoring, so I’m sleeping right here on this sofa, Esther.”
His voice was firm and determined, but it didn’t seem to make the slightest difference to Esther. She just got more comfortable in her corner of the sofa, smugly clutching the remote control. “You can’t sleep while I’m watching TV, can you?”
“No problem. I’ll stay awhile longer, and watch TV with you.”
“You’re newlyweds. Go tuck your wife in, Matthew. I’ll be fine. I intend to stay up awhile.”
“I’ll wait.”
A few hours later, at 3:00 a.m., Grandma was making a fresh batch of popcorn in preparation for a documentary about flower pressing.
And Matt was exhausted.
He rubbed the face of his watch, confirming how late it was, and tried to stifle a yawn. Time had passed slowly the last couple of hours.
Wouldn’t she ever go to bed? There was no way he was going to get any sleep, not sitting up and with the TV on.
“Why don’t you go to bed, Matthew?” Esther suggested, trotting back with her bowl of popcorn. “You have to get up at six. It’s nice of you to want to keep me company, but you should go to bed.”
“What about you?” he protested. “Shouldn’t you get to bed?”
“Insomnia is one of the side effects of old age,” Esther informed him as she sat down and pulled the blanket over her legs. “I just need a couple of hours these days.”
“So you’re not going to bed any time soon?” he asked, resigned.
“Television is such a wonderful invention, isn’t it?”
Devious lady. Matt gave up. He stood up, kissed Esther on the cheek and bade her good night before heading upstairs.
If Esther was going to be sleeping down here, fine, he’d steal her bed. Why hadn’t that occurred to him before? He smiled in triumph as he reached her door.
But life was never that easy. Anticipating his move, Esther had actually resorted to locking her bedroom door.
Obviously, this was war.
Matt leaned back against Esther’s bedroom door and groaned, staring at Jo’s door on the opposite wall. What he wouldn’t do for a couple of hours of sleep. It wasn’t as if he’d gotten any decent sleep for the last two nights.
Jo’s bed was plenty big enough for both of them. And he needed to get up in three hours. She wouldn’t begrudge him a quarter of the mattress for a couple of hours, would she?
He knocked softly on the door, then harder when there was no response. Jo had always been a sound sleeper. He tried the doorknob. It was unlocked, and he tiptoed inside, not sure what he was going to do. Just crawl into bed beside her, hoping she wouldn’t even notice he was there until morning? Wake her up and ask for permission?
He’d never get her permission if he asked.
The dilemma was solved as Jo sat up in bed, gasping like an insulted virgin sacrifice. “Matt? What the hell are you doing in here?”
Her outrage somehow made it easy for him to make up his mind. He ignored her shocked gasp and started undressing. He had work tomorrow, meetings and important engagements. She’d gotten hours of sleep, he deserved a few winks too. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t shared a bed before. “It’s past three in the morning and your grandmother is still downstairs, watching TV. And she locked her door, so I can’t even steal her bed.”
“I don’t care. You can’t sleep here.”
“Be reasonable, Jo.” He raked a hand through his hair and hoped he looked pitiful. “Hell, be merciful. I can’t sleep anywhere else. Your grandmother’s room is locked, the living room is occupied, and the guest room has been turned into a bird conservatory.”
“Why don’t you just go home?” Jo was peering at him in the darkness and he remembered her myopia. She was practically blind without her contacts, and it was one of the cutest things in the world to watch her fumble for her glasses in the morning. “We can’t let her get away with this!” she hissed. “This is exactly what she wants! Don’t you see? You’re playing right into her hands!”
“I know.” He kept undressing. “But I’m not driving home now, it’s a two-hour drive and by the time I got home, it would be time to get up.”
“I don’t care. You’re not sleeping in my bed.”
“Give me one good reason why.”
Only one? Jo was feeling disoriented, having woken up so suddenly. She knew there were a million reasons, but it was difficult to articulate them at this precise moment. “Because I don’t want you to,” she ended up saying.
“Jo!” Matt was looking grim, as well as exhausted. He was also looking rather…naked by now. She could see that even without her contacts. “I don’t care what you do. You can put a coil of barbed wire in the middle of the bed, a nest of cobras, an execution squad. You can even put Esther there. I don’t care. I’m not going to touch you. I just need to sleep.”
He ripped the covers off the unoccupied side of the bed and got in. “Good night.”
“Okay,” she said. There wasn’t a choice. She couldn’t exactly pick him up and cart him out. At least in the bed he’d be decently covered up and her insides might stop trembling. “But stay on your side of the bed.”
“Absolutely. Wouldn’t dream of anything else,” Matt muttered into his pillow, and she turned on her side, resolutely facing the other direction. The bed was big enough. What was she worried about?
Well, she might be worrying about her old habit of rolling close to Matt, putting her arm around him and her leg around one of his, ensuring that he wasn’t going anywhere. She might be worrying about his old habit of kissing her in his sleep whenever he moved. Then there was the slight problem of the way they’d always woken up tangled in a heap that, to their mutual pleasure, had always taken a while to untangle.
Dammit. She’d never get to sleep now.
She sat up. “Matt?”
“Yes?” His voice sounded drowsy. He wasn’t seriously falling asleep? With no trouble at all? How infuriating!
How rude!
“I really don’t think we should be doing this. I mean it. It’ll only encourage Grandma, and we’re in big enough trouble already, don’t you think? This is exactly what she wants us to do.”
Matt was silent for a couple of seconds and she was wondering if he’d fallen asleep when he spoke again. “Not quite. She’d not approve of us clinging to the edges of the bed like this and leaving a waste-land in the middle.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I don’t care. I have a lot of work to catch up on tomorrow, and I could really use some sleep.”
There was silence for a while, until she could hear his breathing even out. He was going to fall asleep in a matter of minutes, right there next to her! How could he do that?
“How long do you suppose we keep this up?” she asked in a loud voice.
“Don’t know,” Matt murmured. He sounded like he didn’t much care at the moment. Well, he was not getting away with just falling asleep.
“We can’t do this much longer. We’ll have to tell her the truth.”
“What’s the truth?”
She turned to face him, but his back was still to her. This had sounded suspiciously like a rhetorical question. He wasn’t talking in his sleep, was he? “You know, Matt. The closest we can get to the truth. We need to tell her that we’re not in love and don’t want to be married. That it was a mistake, we realize we’re not meant to be together.”
“I see.”
“We don’t have a choice, Matt, we have to tell her. She’s doing fine; I hope she’ll live for many more years. I’m not prepared to go through this farce for years, and I’m sure you’re no more eager than I am. She’s going to expect me to move in with you, or us to buy a house together—I’m not going to take this lie that far. We’d never get away with it, anyway.”
“What do you suggest?”
“I don’t know!”
“That’s why I suggest waiting and seeing. If you don’t have a better suggestion…?”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. That’s the ‘wait and see’ part.”
“I can’t do this,” Jo said. She shook her head, not that he’d see it, turned away from her in the darkness. “I can’t keep this up. It exhausts me to pretend like this—and your mother hasn’t even shown up yet.”
“You can’t keep this up? You mean you don’t want to.”
“Does it make a difference?”
“We’ve come this far. Trust me, to keep going will be easier than backtracking now.”
“Trust you?” Jo squeezed the sheet at her chest, furious now. “Remember the last time you asked me to trust you?”
Matt’s frustrated sigh was almost a growl. “I have to be at work in a couple of hours—I don’t feel up to defending myself again. Would you please let me get some sleep before we go back to the ongoing grand trial?”
Jo stood up and grabbed her robe. “Night.”
Matt sat up. “Where are you going?”
“Downstairs to watch TV with Grandma.”