“PRETEND divorce, here we come,” Jo sighed, resting her head back as they finally got out on the freeway, heading for the mountains that seemed much farther away than they really were. They were off to a late start and Matt suspected it was deliberate—she was trying to shorten the weekend. He sent her a look.
“Can’t wait to be a free woman again, can you?”
“No.”
Something clawed at his heart as it occurred to him for the first time that there might be someone else already. Could it be? “Why? Are you seeing someone? Someone who isn’t happy about this?”
She turned her face and he felt her gaze bite into his temple. “It’s only been six weeks since we broke up, Matt. And if I were seeing someone, do you really think I’d have agreed to this fake marriage—let alone gone on a pretend honeymoon with you?”
“No, I suppose not,” he conceded. “No guy in his right mind would allow you to go on a pretend honeymoon with someone else. Sorry.”
She snorted and tossed her head in a way that reminded him of her lost hair. “There you go again. Allow. Sometimes you’re incredibly old-fashioned, Matt.”
“It goes both ways,” he defended himself. “I wouldn’t want my woman to allow me to go on a honeymoon with someone either.”
“So I suppose that means you’re not seeing anyone either?”
Casual indifference in her voice, and his hands tightened on the wheel. “Of course not. We just broke up.”
“It’s been six whole weeks.”
He grinned at her, but it was forced. “When we were talking about you, you said it’s ‘only’ been six weeks. Why the difference?”
“It is different for men. The way some guys act, it seems your masculinity is threatened if you haven’t been to bed with someone for a whole week.”
“Well…” he glanced at his watch. “It’s been six weeks, two days and twenty hours, and nothing’s shriveled up and died so far.”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jo blush slightly, and now she could no longer flick her hair in front of her face to hide it. She might not want to remember what they’d been doing six weeks, two days and twenty hours ago, but she did. So did he. In vivid detail.
“Congratulations,” she said dryly, looking out the side window, away from him. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“Feels like it’s been a lot more than six weeks,” he remarked after a heavy silence.
“Time’s relative, they say,” Jo muttered. She was obviously coming to the conclusion that this hadn’t been the brightest idea in the world. She fidgeted in her seat, even twisted around to look with longing back to the city.
“Something wrong?” Matt asked, picking up speed a bit. He wasn’t turning around now. No way.
“Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.”
“It was the best one I could come up with.”
“We don’t actually have to go to that cabin, you know. Why don’t we just go home? To our respective homes, I mean. When we tell everybody we broke up on our honeymoon, they’re not going to be asking for pictures and postcards. There’s no need to actually go.”
Matt felt his heart pick up speed. She wasn’t going to sabotage the brightest idea he’d had in…six weeks, was she? “We’re halfway there already, Jo. Why not just go through with it, and look at it as a vacation? It’s not that often you’re offered a free vacation at a luxury cottage in the mountains, is it? And it’ll make it easier to answer Esther’s questions when we get back.”
Jo kept squirming in her seat. “How can we possibly look upon it as a vacation if we’re together?”
“Is it really that terrible to be around me?”
Without turning his head he felt the force of her glare. “What kind of a question is that? It does tend to be rather painful—at the very least uncomfortable—to be around your ex just after you’ve broken up!” She folded her arms and stared straight ahead again. “Obviously, it’s no big deal for you. No surprise there. Fits the picture.”
Matt shook his head. “I don’t know where you got the idea that our relationship meant so little to me.”
Jo shrugged. “Was it ever a ‘relationship’? Nobody knew, except Grandma. You didn’t want anybody to know.”
“Do you really think I’d have included Esther in this if it didn’t mean something to me? The only reason I didn’t want other people to know was because of work. It’s not easy for a junior staff member to be dating the CEO. Hell, it’s against company policy. Of course I wanted to keep it a secret.”
“But you never…”
Matt swiveled his head toward her impatiently when she didn’t continue. “Never what?”
She sighed and shook her head. You did not say to a man a month after you broke up But you never said you loved me. “Apart from the whole suspension issue—you didn’t even understand why I didn’t want you to plant me in another job when I left, why I wanted to do that on my own.”
“What’s the big deal? I got you your first job with me, and you didn’t freak out then.”
“Of course I didn’t freak out. But that was different. You weren’t my…” She waved a hand irritably. “My whatever, back then. But I still didn’t like it. Do you think I was happy with having you take me on originally as a favor to my grandmother?”
Matt shook his head. “Most people get jobs through some sort of a connection. It doesn’t mean they’re any less deserving or capable.”
“You stuck me in a brainless position! I was essentially moving piles of papers from one end of the office to the other!”
Matt grimaced. “Well, if you knew what some of the kids I’ve hired out of college have gotten up to at my workplace, you wouldn’t be surprised I had trouble trusting new employees. You got a promotion as soon as you’d shown what you were capable of.”
“Did I?”
“Did you what?”
“Did I get the promotion because I deserved it?”
Matt’s profile looked blank, then he glanced at her sideways, looking confused. “Of course you did. Why else would you get a promotion?”
“I don’t know. Why else?”
Matt stared at her, silent for a moment. “I see. That’s been biting at you all this time?”
She squirmed. “Well…yes.”
Unexpectedly Matt grinned. “You got the promotion because you deserved it. I started chasing after you, despite company policy and my better judgment, because I couldn’t help myself.”
“Oh.”
He was stealing glances at her again, but she kept her own eyes firmly on the road—as he should be doing. “I wouldn’t be much of a businessman, Jo, if I let my heart choose my employees.”
Just a figure of speech, Joanna yelled at her own heart, silly enough to start galloping at this news.
She still loved him, didn’t she? Not only was she not “over him,” she was still in love.
The discovery blurred her vision and made her deaf for a long while as she stared out the window, feeling almost sick. Matt’s touch on her knee woke her up at last. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Would you keep your eyes on the road, Matt? I’m fine. Just thinking. I hate to leave Grandma,” she added after a small pause. Grandma. She’d keep her concentration on the old lady, either to worry about her or be furious with her. It didn’t matter. Just as long as she kept her focus on Grandma and not on herself and Matt.
“She’ll be fine. We’ve got our cell phones, we can check up on her whenever we want to. She’s got three people—at least—staying with her.”
“How do you think she’ll take our ‘divorce’?”
“She won’t like it, that’s a given.”
“Yeah. But I think it will be fine. It has to be fine. We probably need to break it to her gently, stress that we’re still friends, still like each other, but just aren’t suited to be man and wife…”
“Careful what you say. Don’t mention incompatibility or she might sic the sex therapist on us again.”
Jo laughed, then covered her face with her hands and shook her head. “Oh, Matt—can you believe it?”
“I’ll never recover,” he told her.
Jo rested her head against the side window and giggled. She looked at Matt sideways, and he was looking at the road, smiling. She half closed her eyes, and kept looking at him. Whoever said men couldn’t be beautiful had a warped meaning of the word.
And it was so good to see him laugh.
She closed her eyes completely as the pain set in again.
How was she going to last for a long weekend in a romantic honeymoon cottage—alone with him?
Jo fell asleep on the way, her head lolling against the window, her hands loosely clasped in her lap. Matt tried to keep his driving smooth enough not to wake her, but when they got onto the potholed road leading to the cottages, the bumps woke her up. She stretched, a movement that tempted him far too much, and looked around.
“We’re almost there,” he told her. “Just twenty more minutes or so.”
“It’s gorgeous here,” Jo said, staring wide-eyed at the view, after rubbing her eyes like a sleepy child. “Grandma sure knows how to pick honeymoon spots. I didn’t know she’d ever been here.”
Matt winced. Finding the right place had been a nightmare, but with the frantic work of several travel agents, he’d managed to locate a cottage that had all the trimmings Esther had given her imaginary one.
They finally pulled up at their destination, and Jo jumped out of the car as soon as it came to a stop. He wasn’t sure if it was to escape him, or to take a closer look at the cottage, but either way he didn’t blame her. He got out himself, dug the keys to the cottage out of a pocket, and got their suitcases out of the trunk. Jo was staring around with an awed expression. The view was even more magnificent out of the car, with no dirty windshield to dampen the experience.
The cottage was no less impressive, at least not from the outside. It wasn’t big, but it looked lovely, and it should have all conveniences, including the outdoor tub Esther had again insisted upon. That amenity had made it particularly difficult to find a cottage that suited Esther’s fantasy.
“Want to take a look inside?” he asked, and Jo smiled.
“I don’t know. It looks so wonderful from the outside, I’m almost afraid to.”
He unlocked the door, and waited for her to step in.
Phase two of Getting Jo Back had begun.
Jo took one look at the romantic inside of the cottage and then fled out to the balcony, clutching the banister and grinding her teeth to keep herself from hyperventilating. She’d never last three days here alone with Matt. Not without some serious damage to her heart and spirit.
What had she been thinking? What had they been thinking?
She shook her head, trying to rid her mind of the panic and stared out over the valley below. She was here. It was done.
Maybe they could just return tomorrow, instead of staying the entire time. Yeah, that’d be better. Take a few snapshots for Esther and go back to the city to get the fake divorce. She could survive twenty-four hours with Matt, couldn’t she?
The view down the mountain was amazing—the trees and the rocks forming a perfect symphony of green and gray. She looked up at the blue skies, thinking that the only thing to rival that view might be the night sky. She tried to remember when she’d last seen the night sky outside the city. Probably not since she was a child, camping with her parents on one of their infrequent attempts at family bonding.
She heard Matt come up behind her, and saw his arms brace themselves on the railing. She didn’t look to her side, but she felt his presence in every cell. “This is a lovely place,” she whispered. It was impossible not to whisper here. “It would be perfect for a real honeymoon.”
“Yes.”
She leaned on the balcony. “It’s so quiet. When you’re living in a city, you stop noticing that it’s never fully quiet. There’s always some sound. Here there is real silence.”
He didn’t reply, but she could almost hear him nod in agreement.
Then he was touching her.
Jo stood absolutely still, wondering what his hand was doing on her arm. His thumb stroked the bare skin on the inside of her forearm, and she realized she was holding her breath. “Matt?” she asked, in an explosion of a whisper, but still did not dare look at him.
“Yes?” he asked.
“Why are you touching me?”
“You dislike it?”
She pulled away, but didn’t look at him until she was safely a few steps away. “I don’t dislike it. But I don’t play games. What’s going on?”
Matt was still leaning on the railing, but there was a warm calm glow in his eyes. “It was all a mistake, wasn’t it?”
“What was?”
“The mess at the company. Breaking up. All the misunderstanding and stupid pride that broke us up. There was no good reason.”
“Trust. That’s a good reason. You didn’t trust me.”
“Ditto,” he said softly. “You didn’t trust me. You don’t trust anyone, do you?”
“What do you mean? I’m not untrusting.”
“Yes you are. And I don’t blame you. You could never count on your parents—and now you won’t allow yourself to count on anyone. One suspicion that I might have let you down, and you ran away and didn’t even give me a chance.”
“Don’t psychoanalyze me.”
“I don’t have the training for that, Jo, but it’s obvious.”
“I did trust you. I waited for you, I didn’t spill about our relationship because I was waiting for you. Hoping you could make it right.”
“And when I did something other than what you expected—you ran without giving me a chance to do things my way. Your trust was only provisional.”
She raised her gaze toward the ceiling and gave an exaggerated grimace. “Great, now you’re talking in lawyer-speak on top of the psychobabble.”
“Do you honestly believe there is no truth in this?” he asked.
Jo rubbed her face with her hands, tired, too tired to think about what he was saying, but his words had nevertheless taken root somewhere deep in her mind. Could he be right? Had she let some stupid childhood issues influence something so important? He was right that she’d never been able to count on her parents—but she hadn’t transferred that to Matt, had she? “We’re never going to agree on this.”
“What do you say we forget about it, then? And try to do better in the future?”
“We can’t do that.”
“Okay,” he said impatiently. “Fine. Let’s not forget it. Let’s deal with it until it’s dead, and then we’ll be free of it.”
“Matt…do you really want to rehash something that was painful and horrible for both of us?”
“No. I don’t want to rehash it, I want us to get over it and move on.”
“We have moved on. We’re past it. We’re over it. We’re over each other.”
“Really?” His eyes narrowed and his gaze was laser sharp. “We’re over each other? Is that why we can’t even breathe normally when we’re in a room together?”
She stared at him, breath caught in her throat to prove his point. He was right. She did have trouble breathing around him. For the longest time she’d managed to deceive herself that it was no longer because of the sensual pull between them, only because of anger and resentment—but it wasn’t true.
She’d never before known he’d had trouble breathing around her, and that news was as fascinating as it was frightening.
“Breathe normally…?” she asked, stalling, and he stepped closer, again proving his point. Scent of leather, soap—Matt.
Oh, no. Now her knees were turning weak.
She hated it when that happened.
He touched her upper arms with the flats of his palms, just barely. “Yes—and when we touch…breathing is very low on my list of priorities. Don’t you know that? You have to know that, at least.”
She stepped back, but even when she was against the wall, his hand was still on her arm. She desperately reminded herself of why they were here in the first place—of everything that had happened. They wouldn’t even have met again if it wasn’t for Grandma and her health problems. Why did he keep making it about them? “We don’t even have trust, Matt. Trust is the foundation of every relationship. If we don’t have that, we have nothing.”
Matt’s hand finally dropped and he looked away, staring at the view again. His shoulders had drooped in defeat and she ached to go to him. “Why are you so stubborn, Jo?”
“Inborn trait,” she quipped. There was relief that he wasn’t touching her anymore—but she was all too aware of her breathing difficulties, now that he’d brought it up. “Just look at Grandma.”
“Doesn’t everybody deserve a second chance?”
Jo bit her lip. Yes. He was right. Everybody deserved a second chance. “Yes,” she whispered, and Matt’s head snapped back, eyes dark in disbelief and hope.
“Jo…?”
She held up a hand. “We have a truce this weekend, okay? We’ll just take it easy and see what happens. Maybe we can get a second chance…but I don’t want to rush into anything just because…”
“Just because what?”
“Just because we’re still lusting after each other,” she admitted gruffly, and Matt’s laugh was loud enough to echo in the mountains. She turned away to hide her own grin, the release of tension welcome. “That’s not funny,” she reprimanded him.
“Well, we only have one bed.”
She rolled her eyes. “I know. This is a honeymoon cottage. That’s why we brought the air mattress, remember?”
“I do remember. I was just hoping you’d forgotten.”
Playful. She could take a playful and teasing Matt, couldn’t she? Or would she just get her heart in even deeper trouble? “No such luck, buster. I remember.”
Matt sighed theatrically. “You’re really going to make me sleep on the air mattress when we have a pink heart-shaped bed to sleep in?”
“Pink heart-shaped bed?” Jo repeated, and shot back into the cottage and into the bedroom. He didn’t follow, and she returned to the balcony after a good hard stare at a bed that was neither pink nor heart-shaped. “You were joking.”
“Of course I was joking. Esther’s taste isn’t quite that bad.”
Jo leaned on the balcony railing again. “So, what are we going to do while we’re here? Besides stare at the scenery, of course?”
Matt shrugged. “I don’t know. What do people usually do on their honeymoons?”
She gave him a wry glance, which he returned with the most innocent green stare she’d ever seen. “Catch up on their reading?”
“My laptop is out in the car. I can always do some work, I guess.”
She groaned. “Matt—a word of advice: when you go on a real honeymoon, don’t bring your laptop.”
He grinned. “You hate my laptop, don’t you?”
“I don’t hate your laptop. I used to be slightly annoyed at all the attention it would get.”
Matt grinned lopsidedly. “I loved the methods you used to regain my attention.”
She stared at him suspiciously, and his grin widened. “Matt, you mean…no.” She shook her head. “You didn’t do it on purpose. I don’t believe it.”
He kept grinning at her. “I’m a quick study. When I found out all I had to do was turn on the computer and you’d be right there in my lap, obscuring the screen….” His grin was wistful, and it melted her. “Well…it worked.”
“There are other ways to get me into your arms, you know.”
She’d said are. Not were. She wouldn’t correct it—that would just draw attention to it. She’d have to watch out for these kinds of slips. Things were rapidly sliding back to the way they had been—and it wasn’t safe.
“I know. But that one has always been my favorite.”
“Sneaky. It’s not going to work now that I know about it,” she warned him. “I mean—it wouldn’t. If we were still…Hell.”
Matt tapped her shoulder as she turned her back on him, and then his arms came around her from behind, hugging her close, but carefully. Then he let go, and she felt alone. “Don’t think too much, Jo. Second chances, wasn’t that the deal?”
“Second chances,” she agreed, trying to resist the temptation to go to him for a second hug.
Why had he let her go so quickly?