MATT opened his eyes grumbling about the terrible suffering he’d endured on his night on the air mattress and he kept complaining all the way through breakfast. She just smiled sweetly at him, and told him patience was a virtue.
Of course, she hadn’t slept any better on the luxurious double bed. She’d tiptoed to the door more than once, tempted to join him on the uncomfortable air mattress—tempted to open the door and invite him to share her fancy honeymoon pillows.
But she’d resisted temptation. She was rather proud of that. Last night, she’d gotten way too wrapped up in his suggestive whispers of second chances and promises not to hurt each other again. Go slow. That had to be the motto here.
At least for now. She wasn’t sure how long she would be able to stick to that motto.
Matt had melted back into the man he’d been during the time they’d dated. The grim exhaustion in his eyes had almost vanished, and when she walked barefoot to the kitchen without even giving him a morning kiss first, he resorted to his laptop trick, grinning at her with a teasing dare warming his eyes.
It was impossible to resist.
Squirming between him and the sofa table, she crossed her arms and stared down at him. “Okay, I’m between you and your computer. This is where you want me, right?”
He frowned. “No. I’d prefer you much closer.” He grabbed her hand and yanked her down for a kiss that told her just how much he’d missed her since last evening.
“What do you want to do today?” she asked when they came up for air, and held up a finger to stop the predictable response. “Let me rephrase the question: what clothed activity would you like to pursue?”
Matt groaned. “You’re no fun.”
“I’ve been reading a travel guide about this area,” he told her over breakfast. “There’s a small village close by. It’s supposed to be ‘quaint’. I’ve always wanted to see a definition of ‘quaint’. Want to go there today?”
“Sure. But when did you have time to read a travel guide?”
He sent her a hurt look. “I had all night. All the long eternal lonely night. Alone.”
She just smirked at him.
The small village turned out to be busier than they’d expected. Obviously, the tourist industry was thriving. There was even a decent-sized department store, and Jo asked Matt to park close by.
He cursed, but did as she asked. “Come on! Shopping? You want to go shopping on your honeymoon?”
“It’s not a real honeymoon. And even if it was, why wouldn’t I go shopping?”
“This is a practice honeymoon and the same rules apply. You tell me I can’t work on my honeymoon, but it’s quite okay for you to go shopping? Do you know shopping is the single most horrible torture you can inflict upon a guy? It’s right next to Chinese water torture. I’m sure it’s in the UN charter that you can’t make a guy go shopping on his honeymoon.”
Jo rolled her eyes. “Fine. You can sit by that pond and feed the ducks while I shop.”
“What do you need so urgently, anyway?” He glanced down at her sneakers-clad feet. “Shoes, right? You want to buy some horrible pair of shoes, don’t you? Something that’ll try to squeeze your feet into permanent triangles, right?”
“Not at all. No shoes. I want to buy you a present,” she said smoothly. “Is that romantic enough for a practice honeymoon for you?”
He gave her a distrusting look. “Are you sure that’s what you have in mind?”
“Of course. Trust me.” She opened the door and got out of the car, and he mirrored her movement on the other side. “Are you going to bond with the ducks while I’m inside?”
“No way.” He locked the car and came around to grab her hand. “I’m going inside too. If I get a present, you get a present.”
They picked a bench by the pond outside the department store to meet at after splitting up for the shopping trip, and it wasn’t a surprise for Joanna to exit the store and find Matt already there, reading a newspaper. Most men just didn’t know how to shop. It wasn’t in their genes. Such a shame. They had no idea what they were missing.
But he did have two large white plastic bags at his feet. Was that her present?
Looked like a big present.
“I’m done,” she said with a satisfied sigh and plopped down next to him, dropping her own bags and trying to sneak a discreet peek into his bags. No go. The contents were boxed and gift-wrapped. “Is that my present?”
Matt closed the newspaper and grinned at her. “I’m impressed. Only two hours, and only three bags?”
“I’m practicing for my honeymoon, remember? Don’t want to bore my new husband too much.”
“What did you buy?”
“Just…stuff.” She poked his bags with her toe, squirming with curiosity. “Did you buy me a present? Is that it?”
“Yup. Did you get me one?”
“I said I would, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but I thought that might just be an excuse for you to buy shoes.” His eyes danced as she kept trying to sneak glances into the bag. “You like presents, don’t you?”
“You know I do. When do I get to open it?”
“Anytime.”
“Really? I was sure you’d try to hold off as long as you possibly could.”
“Why would I do that?”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “Because that’s what you always did.”
Matt laughed and stuffed his newspaper in one of his bags. “That’s right. It’s so much fun to watch you jump up and down with anticipation. But I’ll make an exception. Want to open it now?”
The teasing glint in his eyes had her hesitating. He was up to something. “Sure.”
Matt pulled the large gift-wrapped box out of one of the bags and dumped it in her lap. She tore the wrapping paper off, then looked at him suspiciously. “This is a shoebox, isn’t it? It looks like a shoebox. You didn’t buy me shoes, did you?”
Matt rested his arm on the back of the bench and squinted against the sun, grinning at her. “Open it and see.”
She removed the lid and browsed through the tissue paper until she found the contents. She pulled them out, for once dubious about his present.
“You bought me Rollerblades?”
Matt winked at her. “You do know how to ice-skate, after all. Ever tried this?”
“No. Can’t say I’ve ever had a desire to try them, actually.” He was trying to recreate their first date, she realized, turning the Rollerblades over in her hands. It was sweet. It was also scary.
And not only because she was pretty sure she’d break something if she tried to stand on these wheels.
“There’s no ice rink anywhere near here, so this is the closest we can get to the real thing.” He crouched down in front of her. “Sit still. I’ll get you into them.”
“Shouldn’t we wait until we get back to the cottage?”
“Sure, if you want to roller-skate on that potholed country road.”
“No, I suppose that wouldn’t be a good idea,” she muttered. She let him untie the laces on her sneakers, although not at all sure this was what she wanted. “I don’t know, Matt, I kind of like my bones their current shape.”
He was removing her shoes, and sent a hot tingle slithering up her leg when he grabbed her ankle and maneuvered her into one of the Rollerblades. He laced her up, and jiggled the foot in his hand. “How is it? Does it fit?”
She scowled at him. “It fits perfectly. What did you do, sneak into the bedroom last night while I slept and take a cast of my foot?”
Matt grinned, already removing her other shoe. “No. I have a good memory.”
The bathtub. The memory zapped to the forefront of her mind, and refused all attempts to be slapped away. They’d taken a bath together, and Matt had made it a challenge for himself to wash her feet without sending her into a paroxysm of ticklish laughter. It hadn’t been long until he had mastered that skill, and although his hands moving over her foot had continued to stop her breathing, it wasn’t because of ticklishness.
Both her feet were in the Rollerblades, and Matt was sitting on the bench beside her, trying on his own. They looked new as well. “Oh, Lord…” she muttered. “You’ve never done this before either, have you?”
“It’ll be fun. Can’t be that different from ice skating, can it?”
“Well, as I remember it, neither of us was particularly good at ice skating.”
He winked at her. “All the more reason to cling to each other. That was the best part.”
Yes. It had been the best part.
Matt grabbed the other shopping bag and pulled out a helmet. He handed it to her with another wicked smile, then got out a matching one for himself. Then knee pads and elbow pads.
“Matt…this isn’t very reassuring.”
“If you fall, do you want to be with or without that gear?”
She stared at the orange knee and elbow pads. “It isn’t very cool either.”
“Trust me on this, love, either way we’re not going to look cool.”
“Okay. But do we have to look quite so…” She frowned, searching for the perfect word for glow-in-the-dark orange elbow pads. “…uncool?”
“Didn’t you say something about not wanting to break your bones?”
“Can’t you just break my fall?”
“Better safe than sorry. I’m pretty sure we’re going to fall, somewhere along the way.” He fastened her protective gear quickly, then donned his own.
“Matt…you look absurd.”
“Thank you.” He kissed her cheek. “So do you.” He stood, and, holding on to the bench with one hand, held out a hand. “Come on, Jo. Stand up.”
She stood up, hesitantly, and grabbed his hand. “If I fall, will you catch me?”
“Always, Jo. If you’ll let me.”
She pulled her hand away from his grasp, slowly, holding his gaze. “But you must also allow me to stand on my own wheels.”
“Of course.”
“And not push me and pull me if I prefer to stumble along myself?”
“How could I? I don’t know how to do this either. I’m going to have to cling to you too.”
“And if I fall and you don’t manage to catch me, you’ll pull me to my feet, but still let me dust myself off, won’t you?”
Matt laughed, none too steady on his own feet, and hastily reached out to grab the back of the bench for support. “Jo, you suck at metaphors. Just tell me whatever it is you want to tell me.”
Two kids whizzed by, one of them turning around and skating backward as he stared at them. “Look,” he called to his companion. “Two old people on Rollerblades!”
“Old people?” Jo stared after them for a moment, then nearly foamed at the mouth as she pushed herself away from the bench. “I’ll show him old people…”
A couple of hours later she was feeling rather old as they limped back to the car after resting on their bench for a while. Jo was glad to have her sneakers back on. “I prefer ice skating,” she said decisively.
“Me too. Much more romantic.”
“No cars on the ice rink.”
“This was fun, though.”
“Right. I especially liked the part where you went straight through those rosebushes and scared that old lady into throwing her watering can at you.”
Matt looked down at his still-damp shirt with a grimace. “Slight miscalculation on my part,” he grumbled, starting the car. “I’ve almost learned how to brake now.”
Jo dug her cell phone out of the glove compartment and checked for messages or missed calls. Several—all from the same person. She sighed. Her mother always seemed to think that calling nonstop for fifteen minutes would ensure an answer. She keyed in the number to call her back, remembering that her parents probably still knew nothing about the “marriage”. Esther had been unable to reach them, wherever they were.
Helen’s voice was bubbling as always, so cheerful it made Jo’s teeth hurt. She burst instantly into a monologue on where they were and what they’d been doing, and then switched abruptly to the wedding. “We heard you got married, darling! Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” Jo said wanly. Helen switched back to an extended travelogue, then called a hasty goodbye as someone spoke to her in the background. Jo tossed the phone on the back seat with a sigh.
“Your parents?” Matt asked.
“My mother. Yeah. Congratulating us.”
“That was nice of her.”
“Sure. She didn’t even ask about you, or if I was happy, she didn’t even say she was sorry to have missed the wedding—nothing.”
“Did you expect her to?”
“No. Yes.” She leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes. “I never expect. That would be pointless. But somewhere there’s always hope. You know? Even though I hate myself for it, whenever they call unexpectedly, somewhere at the back of my mind there’s always this tiny hope that this time it’ll be different.”
“But they always let you down.”
“Yes.” Her eyes opened wide. “Matt, you’re analyzing me again, aren’t you?”
“Still don’t think you have trust issues?”
“No. I don’t have ‘trust issues.’ I have realistic expectations of people.”
“Esther has never let you down, has she?”
“Yes. She made me marry you.”
Matt laughed, but she ignored him and changed the subject. “And since we’re talking about Esther, how do you suppose we do things when we get back? Do we just go straight to her and tell her we’re divorcing?”
“Do we want to divorce?”
“We’re not married!”
Matt turned the key in the ignition and dragged the seat belt over his middle. “Let’s discuss this back at the cottage, okay?”
He was stalling, wasn’t he? Jo didn’t blame him. This had now become even more complicated; it looked as though they might be divorcing, but not breaking up. How had everything ended up such a complicated mess?
“So,” she said, once they had dumped the shopping bags by the door and Matt had got the fire going. She headed straight for the coffee. “How do we tell her? Suggestions?”
Matt was right behind her, watching her as she made the coffee. “Well—actually, we don’t have to do anything,” he said. “She already knows.”
Jo twirled around, nearly throwing a bag of coffee over them both. “What?”
Matt shrugged. “She guessed.”
“And the…sex therapist and the honeymoon…?”
“Attempts to bring us back together. It worked, didn’t it?”
“How long has she known?”
Matt took her hand. “All along, I’m afraid. She planned it all out.”
“So she was never sick?”
“No.”
Jo felt rather indignant when she realized that instead of fury toward the old woman, she was feeling grudging gratitude. Not that she would ever, ever let her know about that.
But if Grandma knew, and Matt knew she knew….
She narrowed her eyes and glared at Matt. “Okay. And why exactly are we here? You let me think my grandmother was dying!”
“No, Jo. I told you all along that I didn’t think she wasn’t really sick, remember? I didn’t know she knew about our break-up until after the therapist. She seemed better then and you were no longer as worried—so…” He looked almost embarrassed. “Okay, so I took advantage. In my defense—it was for a good cause.”
Jo scowled. “Nevertheless, deceiving me like this isn’t exactly the perfect way to deal with my ‘trust issues,’ Matt.”
“Yes, it is. Can you trust me to have deceived you only because I thought this trip could help us reconcile?”
She held his gaze. “Can you trust me to make up my mind about reconciliation without manipulating my life?”
Matt winced. “Touché.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m used to taking charge. Bad habit.”
“Well, I can’t say I don’t appreciate it—sometimes.”
“Does that mean I’m forgiven for being a hopeless manipulator?”
Jo closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath, thinking about her mother’s phone call and the superficial way her parents dispensed love from a distance, the way they loved her—but weren’t there when she needed them to be.
Matt hadn’t been there either when she’d needed him—but she hadn’t given him a chance to support her in whatever way he’d thought best, had she? She’d insisted things be done her way.
It hadn’t had anything to do with the way he felt about her. But her response had had everything to do with it. She’d let her feelings for Matt cloud her judgment regarding what was logical.
“Yes. You’re forgiven.”
Matt failed to look relieved. “Are you sure? That was surprisingly easy.”
She touched a palm to his shoulder, then curved it around the side of his neck. She pushed at his chest with her hand and walked him backward until he fell into the sofa. “I’m distracted.”
Matt grinned at her, and she wasn’t sure she was too happy about that. He was supposed to take this a bit more seriously. “Does that lustful look in your eyes mean I don’t have to make do with that terrible air mattress tonight?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “That depends on how the seduction is.”
“Yours or mine?”
“I don’t know. Do you want to seduce or be seduced?”
“I get to pick?”
She felt she could suddenly breathe easier as the subconscious decision was suddenly made. “Yes.”
“Excellent,” he whispered, pushing at her cheek with his nose. “Does that mean I can get you into that tub outside?”
“With or without my demure black swimsuit?”
“With. Absolutely, with. That means I get to peel it off you.”
She shivered slightly, and he automatically reached around her, pulling a blanket off the back of the sofa and over her shoulders. “I’m not cold, you idiot,” she mumbled against his neck, shrugging the blanket off and unbuttoning the top button of his shirt because he needed a kiss there. “I was trembling with uncontrollable desire. Can’t you tell the difference?”
“Sorry. I haven’t done the uncontrollable desire thing in over six weeks, you know.”
“Do you think you remember how?”
Matt shook his head. “No. I have no idea how this works.” He dropped on his back and pulled her over him. “You’ll have to show me. Teach me. Guide me. Be gentle with me, will you?”
At any other time, she’d have giggled, but his hand was on her bare waist and she couldn’t even breathe. Somehow he’d unbuttoned her shirt while gazing at her with eyes that were deceptively soulful and innocent. She returned the favor. The soft glow from the fire illuminated his skin as she bared it, and the heat of his skin almost seemed to burn her fingers. Too long.
Was he worth the risk?
“Which is more dangerous to me, you or the fire?” she murmured.
“Hmmm?”
She pushed his shirt out of the way and bent her head to kiss his bare shoulder, opened her mouth to gently bite at his flesh, and realized she didn’t care.
Some burns were worth it.