Matthew Douglas Powell wasn’t happy.
No matter that the fund-raiser he was attending was for a very worthy cause and that the guests with whom he was mingling included some of Georgia’s top movers and shakers.
No matter that his date for the evening was the abundantly appealing Melinda “Honeychile” Reeves.
No matter that—
Matt froze in the act of lifting the wineglass he’d snagged from a passing waiter to his lips. His gaze locked onto a couple who’d just strolled into the cream-and-gold ballroom of one of Atlanta’s premier hotels.
It was Annie.
His Annie...and that damned Trent Barnes.
The two of them. Together. Performing the meet-and-greet routine like a pair of perfectly matched professionals.
Exhale, his brain instructed him trenchantly.
Matt released the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He took a gulp of wine. The alcohol burned across his tongue and down his throat like acid.
No, not “his” Annie, he corrected himself with an uncharacteristic surge of bitterness. The woman with Trent Barnes wasn’t the Annie he knew.
She’d done something different with her hair. In place of the smooth, chin-length bob he was used to, there was a tousled froth of curls.
She’d done something different with her makeup, as well. Different as far as he was concerned, at least. Maybe her concrete-coiffed escort was accustomed to a Hannah Elaine Martin who emphasized the flirtatious sweep of her lashes and the provocative fullness of her mouth. He certainly wasn’t!
And then there was the dress she was wearing. Short, scoop-necked and sleeveless, it looked a lot like expensive lingerie. The fabric it was made of seemed to be basic brown silk. Until Annie moved, that is. Then the garment began to shimmer with a subtle copper sheen.
Matt took another deep drink of wine. He knew he should look away. He also knew he couldn’t. Not yet.
Not.
He assessed the gentle swell of Annie’s breasts against the bodice of her dress...
Quite.
The languid sway of her hips beneath the petal-hemmed skirt...
Yet.
The sleek movement of her long, sheerly stockinged legs...
Matt drained the last mouthful of his wine, fighting down an urge to toss the emptied glass aside. The need to smash something—anything!—was very strong.
He’d seen Annie with men before, he reminded himself. Not all that many men, to be sure. And not all that many times. But a sufficient number on enough occasions so that there was no rational reason why the sight of her keeping company with Trent Barnes should affect him so deeply.
There was an irrational reason for his reaction, of course. The men with whom he’d seen Annie—including the nice-guy jock who’d taken her to the senior prom, the pre-law preppie who—Matt was ninety-nine percent certain—had taken her virginity, and the transplanted New York architect who had taken her to the Caribbean three years ago—had been part of her life while Lisa had been part of his. More to the point, they’d been part of her life before he and she had shared a kiss that had blown his assumptions about their relationship to smithereens.
Matt went rigid, his fingers tightening on the slender stem of his wineglass. What the—
God. Now Barnes was touching her! The broadcasting bastard had just slid a hand down her spine and let it come to rest on the curve of her bottom!
Even at a distance, the possessiveness of the gesture was unmistakable. What was equally unmistakable—but infinitely more galling—was Annie’s acceptance of it.
No, Matt told himself with an inexplicable sense of having been betrayed. She definitely wasn’t “his” Annie tonight. His Annie was an independent, stand-on-her-own lady who’d never allow some media hotshot to stake a public claim on her backside!
“Matt, darlin’, are you all right?”
The source of this sudden inquiry and the tactile demand for attention that accompanied it was his date.
“What?” he responded blankly, trying to focus on Honeychile Reeves’s exquisite face. There was a flush on her cheeks that instinct told him had nothing to do with cosmetics.
“I asked if you were all right.” She stroked his jacket with peony pink nails.
“I’m fine.” He disciplined himself not to step away from Honeychile or glance back toward Annie. “What makes you think I might not be?”
Perfectly penciled eyebrows arched upward. “Let’s just say I’ve stirred up more interest in half-dead blind men than I seem to be arousin’ in you this evenin’.”
The tone was half syrup, half steel. Matt experienced a pang of remorse, acknowledging his companion’s right to reproach him.
He’d accepted Melinda Reeves’s unexpected invitation to this event of his own free will and for less than pristine purposes. Why she’d asked him to be her escort he couldn’t begin to guess, although he’d gotten the distinct impression that he wasn’t her first choice for the job. Why he’d overridden his initial impulse to plead a previous engagement and agreed to her request was simple. He’d desperately wanted a distraction and Honeychile had seemed like the best bet around.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment.
“I don’t want your apology,” Honeychile replied throatily, edging further into his personal space. She tossed her mane of champagne-colored hair and turned on a practiced smile. Matt decided the expression would have been more seductive if the glistening white teeth she revealed hadn’t been clenched. A little less desperation in her artfully made-up eyes would have helped the cause, too. “I want your undivided attention.”
* * *
Annie was rapidly becoming convinced that she’d overdone her determination to get on with her life.
“Stop it, Trent,” she snapped, whisking her escort’s hand off her derriere. She’d endured the contact during the few seconds it took to exchange pleasantries with the chairman of Atlanta’s Olympic planning committee. But now that the distinguished-looking official had moved out of earshot, the time for tolerance was over.
“I can’t help myself, Annie,” Trent responded in a mellifluous, made-to-be-miked undertone. “You look really hot tonight.”
“Don’t let the new packaging fool you,” she advised acidly, adjusting the neckline of her dress. “Inside, it’s still the same old me.”
“No.” The broadcaster shook his head without stirring a hair. “You’re differ—” He broke off, focusing on something behind her. His eyes narrowed speculatively. “Now that’s interesting.”
Under normal circumstances, Annie probably would have resented losing her escort’s attention so precipitously. But these were not normal circumstances. And far from resenting Trent’s abrupt shifting of emotional gears, she actually felt relieved by it. Better he should be chasing after a journalistic scoop than chasing after her!
“A scandal in the making?” she inquired, turning to discover what was so intriguing. She scanned the gathered crowd curiously. There were plenty of well-known faces, but nothing out of place as far as she could—
Annie went very still.
There, on the other side of the room.
It was Matt.
Her Matt...and Melinda “Honeychile” Reeves.
Standing close. Obviously coupled. Practically joined at the hip!
A lump the size of a cantaloupe seemed to form in Annie’s throat. She swallowed hard several times.
She tried to avert her gaze.
She failed.
How can he let her touch him like that? Annie wondered, watching Honeychile run her fingers up and down the front of Matt’s well-tailored, navy suit jacket. She’s acting as though she owns him! Doesn’t he realize—
No. Apparently not.
Then again, maybe he did but he didn’t mind. Maybe her best buddy enjoyed being buttered up like a piece of toast!
Maybe he enjoyed the opportunity to drool down Honeychile’s gravity-defying décolletage, too.
Annie stiffened suddenly, still staring across the ballroom. Surely Honeychile wasn’t going to resort to that old trick, she thought disbelievingly.
Oh, Lord. She was! The ex-beauty queen was actually trotting out the clichéd fluff-the-hair-and-flash-the-teeth routine! And Matt was reacting to the ploy as though—
“What did you say?” Annie demanded sharply, her eyes slewing back to her escort. As incredible as it sounded, she would have sworn she’d just heard Trent mention something about Melinda Reeves being involved with an up-and-coming member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
“There was a rumor Congressman Emerson might use this event to go public with his relationship with Georgia’s favorite platinum-haired peach,” the newsman informed her, clearly relishing the opportunity to dish a little inside dirt.
“Congressman...Emerson?” Annie flashed back to the conversation she’d had with Zoe. “Are you talking about Talcott Emerson the Third? That Congressman Emerson?”
“Hard to believe, huh?” Trent displayed a set of flawlessly capped teeth. “I mean, T.E. Three’s a total stiff and Honeychile’s a—well, uh, let’s just say the much-married Ms. Reeves isn’t likely to win many votes from the ‘family values’ crowd the congressman’s been trying to cultivate. One of her doting ex-husbands—number two, I think, he’s a major campaign contributor—apparently introduced them at some political fundraiser about six weeks back and ka-blooey. Hormonal overdrive on both sides. I hear Emerson’s handlers are fit to be tied, what with their positioning him for a senate bid. They thought he had the perfect political wife picked out a couple of years ago. Some woman from the social circuit in Washington. Well-heeled, well-connected and well-behaved. The kind of lady he could take anywhere, including home to meet that steel magnolia mama of his. But something went wrong.”
Annie resisted the temptation to comment that the validity of this last assessment depended on one’s point of view. From her perspective, Zoe Armitage’s evasion of the straitjacketed life of a “perfect political wife” meant that something had gone very, very right.
“And now the congressman’s dating Honeychile Reeves?” she asked.
“Only behind closed doors,” Trent stressed. “Nobody’s been able to get any concrete proof. Like I said, there was a rumor Emerson might go on the record—so to speak—this evening. I guess he wimped out. Which is no big surprise, really. Everybody knows the guy’s shorts are stiffer than his spine.”
Annie’s gaze strayed back to the other side of the ballroom. She didn’t know what to think. What to feel.
She didn’t want Matt to get hurt. And if he discovered that Melinda Reeves was using him—which, given the circumstances, she plainly was—he would be.
On the other hand, she didn’t want him not to realize what Honeychile was up to. Although he wasn’t naive, Matt was a genuinely trusting man. The notion of him being sucked in...seduced...
Annie clenched her hands.
God, it made her so angry! She’d warned Matt about that bleached-blond bimbo. But had he paid any heed? Obviously not! Maybe he deserved to—
“You know him, don’t you?” Trent said suddenly.
Annie started. She turned back toward her companion, stammering, “Wh-what?”
“Honeychile’s date. You know him.”
Her first impulse was to lie. But the impulse gave way to the realization that Trent’s reference to Matt had been more assertion than inquiry. “Yes,” she affirmed after a second or two. “I know him.”
“He looks vaguely familiar to me.”
Annie hesitated, gauging the implications of this remark. That Trent was angling for information was obvious. Whether the bait he was using was legitimate was open to question. “His name is Powell,” she said carefully. “Matthew Powell.”
Her companion frowned, apparently sorting through his voluminous mental Rolodex. Suddenly his face cleared. “Powell Programs, right? The computer consulting firm?”
Annie nodded.
“I knew I’d seen him before.” Trent was smug. “His company did some contract work at the station about six months ago.” He paused, his gaze bouncing from Annie to the other side of the ballroom and back again. “Are you and he—”
“No!”
“No?” The newsman tilted his well-groomed head to one side. His expression made it clear to Annie that the question she’d just so vehemently denied was not the one he’d intended to ask.
“No,” she repeated, berating herself for assuming that he’d assumed that she and Matt were, uh...whatever. “Matt Powell and I have been friends all our lives. We grew up together. There’s nothing—I mean, he and I—well, we’re like...like...”
“Brother and sister?” Trent suggested, a suspicious glint in his eyes.
Oh, God, Annie thought miserably.
“Exactly,” she agreed aloud.
Whether Trent believed her assertion about her pseudosibling relationship with Matt was something Annie never found out. Still, he acted as though he did, and that was all that mattered.
Whether he believed her claim—made less than an hour after their arrival at the fundraiser—that she’d developed a migraine was something else she never learned.
Since he agreed to take her home as soon as she asked him to, that didn’t matter much, either.
* * *
“Now I truly do have a headache.” Honeychile Reeves snuffled, dabbing at her face with a dainty lace-trimmed handkerchief.
“I’m sorry,” Matt responded. They were sitting in his car, which was parked in the driveway of his tear-stained passenger’s two-story town house. He wondered how long it was going to take to get Honeychile out of his automobile and into her anything-but-humble abode.
“Gettin’ emotionally overwrought always does that to me.”
What was he supposed to say? That after listening to her semicoherent confession, his temples were pounding, as well?
Although Matt was fuzzy about many of the details—small wonder, considering they’d been sobbed into the front of his shirt—he was pretty sure he understood the basic outline of Melinda Reeves’s sad story.
To wit: after a lifetime of flitting from man to man like a heartless butterfly—her phrase, not his—Honeychile had tumbled into true love with Congressman Talcott Emerson the Third. The congressman, who’d always struck Matt as being blander than white bread, apparently had been ensnared by emotion, as well. Unfortunately the burden of civic responsibilities—a bunch of people steering him toward the U.S. Senate—made it difficult for him to go public with his passion. Weary of sneaking around, Honeychile had decided to salve her wounded feminine pride—again, her words—by going out with other men.
But only nice men, she’d emphasized, fluttering moisture-spangled lashes and stretching the adjective out like an elastic band.
Honeychile wielded her lace-trimmed handkerchief again. She cried very prettily, Matt noted. Lisa had had a similar knack. Not that she’d ever employed it as manipulatively as he suspected Honeychile did. Still, he knew his late wife had been aware that she had a certain talent for tears.
Unlike Annie. Lord! When he thought about the way she’d looked on the rare occasions he’d seen her—
Matt halted this ill-considered detour down memory lane. Images of his best buddy weeping—her eyes swollen, her nose running, her complexion blotchy—were the last thing he needed cluttering his brain.
She was off somewhere with Trent Barnes at this very moment, he reminded himself. He’d seen his former practice date and her helmet-haired newsman exit the fund-raiser shortly before Honeychile had declared she’d had a headache and needed to go home. They’d appeared to be in quite a hurry. Given the grab-and-grope routine he’d observed when they’d come into the ballroom, the reason for their haste had seemed pretty obvious.
Damn her! And damn himself for being—
“Can you ever forgive me?”
Honeychile’s plaintive inquiry jolted Matt back into the present.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” he said flatly.
“But the way I’ve behaved! Actin’ like I wanted to be with you when all the time I was yearnin’ for Talcott.”
“You weren’t the only one at fault tonight, Honeychile.”
“I—” a delicate sniffle “—don’t—” a slight narrowing of the eyes “—understand.”
Forking his fingers back through his hair, Matt considered replying that he didn’t understand, either. But he realized this would be a lie. He’d understood—not completely, but pretty close—for the better part of two months. He simply hadn’t been willing to face up to it until this evening.
“Let’s just say I’ve spent too much time trying to substitute a lot of different women for the one I really want,” he finally replied.
There was a silence. Matt got the distinct impression that Honeychile was revising a host of assumptions. Her entire demeanor seemed to change. “Oh, sugar.” She leaned forward and patted his arm. Her touch was compassionate but impersonal. “Is this about losin’ your wife? Are you still missin’ her?”
A wave of sorrow washed over Matt, then receded. In its wake came another emotion. Although nascent and still nebulous, it was as potent as any he’d ever known.
He drew a deep breath, like a diver preparing to take a plunge. “Yes, I still miss Lisa,” he answered. “But this isn’t about her. It’s about Annie Martin.”
Honeychile withdrew her hand and sat back, regarding him without speaking for what seemed to Matt like a very long time.
“Well, if that’s the case,” she eventually said, her voice as tart as a slice of lemon. “What in blazes are you doin’ here with me?”
* * *
“Do you have any idea what time it is, Matt?”
“Eight weeks after,” came the infuriatingly obscure response. “But not too late.”
“Excuse me?”
The headache Annie had claimed to have earlier in the evening was rapidly becoming a reality. She’d been thirty seconds away from crawling into bed when her front doorbell had rung. Heart pounding, she’d answered the ding-donging summons.
“Who is it?” she’d demanded through the door.
“It’s me, Annie,” a familiar male voice had answered. We need to talk. Please. Let me in.”
She had. After undoing the various locks, smoothing her shower-dampened hair and squaring her shoulders, she’d opened the door and allowed Matthew Douglas Powell into her house.
And what did she get in return? Some mumbo-jumbo muttering about it being “eight weeks after.”
Eight weeks after what? she wondered, trailing after Matt as he strode, without permission, into her living room. The only thing that had happened eight weeks ago was—
Annie halted in midstep, her fingers spasming in the folds of the terry-cloth robe she’d thrown on over her skimpy nightdress before she’d gone to answer the door. No, she thought. Oh, no. He couldn’t be talking about that!
Not now. Not tonight.
“Is he here?” Matt demanded, pivoting to face her. There was an expression in his blue-gray eyes Annie had never seen before. It did peculiar things to her pulse and breathing pattern.
“Wh-who?” she stammered.
“Trent Barnes.”
“Why would you think—”
“I saw you with him at tonight’s literacy fund-raiser, Annie.”
She hadn’t realized Matt had spotted her in the crowd. The fact that he’d noted her presence but hadn’t approached her seemed to underscore the gulf that had opened between them. Of course, she was guilty of the same sin of omission. But that was...well, it was...uh...
“I saw you, too,” she admitted stiffly. “You were with—” She stopped, suddenly focusing on the front of her visitor’s shirt. It was badly rumpled, partially unbuttoned, and mottled with pinky white splotches and black-brown smudges. “Is that makeup?”
Clearly startled by this abrupt question, Matt glanced down at himself. “Uh, yeah,” he replied after a moment. “I guess it is.”
Annie opened and shut her mouth several times, feeling like a fish gasping for oxygen. Indignation—and another emotion she wasn’t prepared to name—exploded within her.
“You show up at my house, uninvited, at eleven-thirty at night, smeared with Melinda Reeves’s makeup,” she exclaimed, “and you have the nerve to ask whether I’ve got Trent Barnes stashed away someplace?”
“It’s not the way it looks,” Matt countered, gesturing. “Honeychile got a little weepy when I took her home this evening.”
“So you calmed her down by letting her dry her eyes on your chest?”
“My shirt and tie, not my chest.” There was a hint of exasperation in the correction. “And it wasn’t a question of ‘letting.’ She flung herself on me and I couldn’t very well shove her off. She’s having personal problems.”
“So I hear.”
“Who—” Matt broke off, grimacing. “Oh. Barnes.”
Not inclined to confirm or deny the source of her information, Annie sniped, “Melinda Reeves and Talcott Emerson the Third. Talk about politics making strange bedfellows!”
“Honeychile’s not as bad as you think, Annie.”
“Oh—” she gave a sardonic little sniff “—I’m sure she’s better than I could possibly imagine!”
There was a long pause. Then, “Jealous?” Matt suggested softly.
“Jealous?” Her voice soared on the first syllable, shredded on the second.
“Yeah.”
“No!”
Her vehement denial didn’t seem to faze Matt at all. “Too bad,” he commented after a moment or two. His voice was still soft, almost reflective. A wry smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Because I sure was.”
Annie’s lungs emptied. “You...were?”
He nodded.
There was another long pause.
“It isn’t working, you know,” Matt eventually said, slipping his hands into the pockets of his trousers and rocking back on his heels.
Annie blinked, completely confused. “What isn’t working?”
“My dating.”
She heard an odd little laugh. A moment later she realized it had come from her. The realization did nothing to restore her emotional equilibrium.
“You’ve got to give it some time, Matt,” she advised, striving for a reasonable tone. “After all, you’ve only been going out for two months. I mean—well, look at me! I’ve been dating for years and I still haven’t got it right.”
He nailed her with a look. “Have you really wanted to, Annie?”
“I—I beg your pardon?”
“Have you really wanted to ‘get it right’?”
Annie’s chest tightened. Averting her gaze, she started to fiddle with the tie belt of her bathrobe. “Of course I have.”
“And what does ‘getting it right’ mean to you?”
“Uh, well...”
“For most people,” Matt said slowly, answering his own question, “‘getting it right’ means finding someone they can care about. Someone who’ll care back. Someone they can be with, long term. Maybe even marry. But that’s never been on your agenda, has it?”
Brown eyes collided with blue-gray ones. Annie discovered she was trembling. “Matt—”
“Did you ever play Wedding when you were growing up?”
Had she ever played— What in heaven’s name did that have to do with anything?
“I played with you when I was growing up,” Annie observed pointedly, hating the defensiveness she heard in her voice. She had absolutely nothing to feel defensive about. Her life was hers to live as she chose. She wasn’t required to explain her choices to anyone. “The closest we came to a wedding was the time you wanted me to pretend I’d married Frankenstein’s monster.”
Matt smiled fleetingly. “Lisa told me she used to parade around her house with a lace-trimmed slip pinned to her head, singing ‘Here Comes the Bride.’”
Something inside Annie went cold. Lisa, she thought, biting the inside of her cheek. It always comes back to Lisa, doesn’t it?
“I wasn’t being critical,” Matt said, obviously misinterpreting her response.
“Well, thanks for that!” she snapped. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your assuring me that you didn’t drop by to trash my social life. Especially since you’re the one who asked me to help you with yours!”
“Annie—”
Time’s up, Annie decided. She’d had enough of her best buddy. More than enough.
“I think you should leave now, Matt.”
He stiffened, clearly surprised. Then he shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Sure you can.” Turning away, she pointed. Somewhere in the back of her mind she acknowledged that the gesture would have been more authoritative if her hand hadn’t been shaking. “The door’s that way.”
Matt caught her by the shoulder and forced her to face him again. “There’s something I need to say to you, Annie.”
It was the first time he’d touched her since he’d arrived at the condo. Annie felt the contact clear down to the soles of her feet. Flushing, she jerked herself free of his fingers and took a quick step backward. Her heart was thumping, her pulse throbbing.
“So say it and go away,” she told him.
Matt took a deep breath, then expelled it in a slow, steady stream.
“I’ve discovered that dating is a form of...searching,” he began. “The problem is, you don’t always know what, or who, you’re trying to find. And when that’s the case, you date and date and nothing—nobody—seems to click. You can’t get it right. And you can’t figure out why.” He spread his hands, palms up. “Take me, for instance. I’ve gone out with quite a few women during the last eight weeks. Attractive women. Intelligent women. Women I’ve enjoyed being—”
“I don’t...need...to hear...this,” Annie declared through gritted teeth.
“Okay,” Matt acquiesced, a hint of huskiness entering his voice. Emotion shimmered in the depths of his eyes the way heat shimmers above a highway on a scorching summer day. “The point is, there’s been a lot to like about the women I’ve dated. But even though I’ve known that with my head, I haven’t felt it in my heart. None of them really interested me. And tonight, I finally faced up to why.”
Annie looked away. She knew. She knew with absolute certainty what he was about to say. Something impelled her to say it first.
“You wanted them to be Lisa,” she whispered.
There was a shocked silence. Then, for the second time in as many months, Matthew Douglas Powell rocked Hannah Elaine Martin’s life to the core.
“No, Annie,” he contradicted with devastating simplicity. “I wanted them to be you.”