“We’ve been planning this for months,” Matthew added.
I looked back and forth between them, amazed that neither of them seemed the slightest bit perturbed by the obvious line being crossed here. Hadn’t Jane been a lawyer too before moving here? Hadn’t Matthew and I just established that we needed to stay as far away from each other as possible.
“Jane,” I said once I was able to control my features again. “Would you mind helping Olivia into the back seat, please? Matthew, might I have a word?”
“Come on, kiddo.” Jane turned to Olivia and began shuttling her into the car. “Let’s let the grownups fight for a second.”
“What?” Olivia asked as she crawled in. “Why would Mama and Matthew fight? I thought they were friends?”
“They fight because they’re friends, love bug,” Jane said. “Some of us are weird like that.”
Olivia glanced curiously between me and Matthew before Jane closed the door. I stepped behind the open trunk, which helpfully hid Matthew and me from view once he followed.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said quietly.
“You shouldn’t look so beautiful.”
I looked up and huffed. “I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
I sighed. “Matthew…”
His smirk disappeared. “Look, it’s just a weird coincidence, all right? Brandon and I have been friends a long time. We always go to this game together. We really have had these tickets for months. And don’t worry, I got a hotel near Fenway, so I’ll be nowhere near you guys, all right?”
I tipped my head. “You must think I’m an absolute idiot.”
At that, his mouth turned slightly grim. “I think you are a lot of things, doll. An idiot is definitely not one of them.”
We stared at each other for a solid minute, trying very hard to stay angry. It was difficult, though, with the way his eyes continued to drop to my lips, and the way I couldn’t stop noticing the perfect, stubbled line of his jaw.
Matthew’s mouth twitched. He knew exactly what I was thinking. I exhaled, and all the tension wrapped in my shoulders seemed to go with it. I couldn’t stay angry when he was looking at me like that, green eyes wide and guileless.
I tried again. “You’re the one who keeps saying we need to stay apart, Matthew. If you need to get to Boston quickly, I’m happy to get you on the next flight out of Newark. You’ll beat us there, and it will be much more comfortable than sitting in the back seat with my nine-year-old.”
“Nina, come on. I’m already here. I’m not going to jump you in the car in front of Jane and Olivia. Much as I might like to, anyway.”
“Matthew!”
He chuckled. It was infuriating.
“Are we walking a shady line here?” he asked. “Maybe, yeah. But I’m not breaking any laws sitting in a car, Nina. It’s not my fault we run in the same social circles. Now, can I please sit in the back of your”—he balked as he turned to the car—“holy shit, is that a Volvo?”
I rolled my eyes. Good lord, not this again. At this rate, we’d never get out of the city.
“Get in,” I said. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“Besides, doll,” Matthew added with another cheeky grin. “Who’s going to know? Outside this city, we’re free.”
He closed the trunk and sauntered around the car to get into the passenger side. I stood in the back for a moment before I got in too, thinking to myself how I wished those words could be true.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have worried. The four-hour drive north was quiet, mostly filled with Jane and Matthew’s chatter, especially after we stopped midway and I traded seats with Matthew, allowing him to chat with Jane while she drove, since she knew the way to her friends’ house. Olivia kept herself firmly shoved in the corner, too well trained at this point to do something so untoward as lean on her mother’s shoulder the few times she grew sleepy. It was my fault, of course. How could she know how to snuggle with anyone when I had been teaching her for so long to be purely independent?
“I’m staying right by Fenway,” Matthew said as we neared the city. “You can just drop me at one of the green line stops near Sky and Brandon’s. I’ll meet him at the game tomorrow.”
Jane, however, just gave Matthew one of her trademark withering stares. “I’m sorry, have you met our friends? Do you think they would be all right with that? Just keep your ass in your seat, bucko. You’re at least coming home for dinner.”
Matthew turned toward me and raised his shoulders, as if to say I tried, doll. I sighed and tried again.
“Really,” I said as Jane turned off the main freeway just west of Boston. “Are you sure it won’t be strange, Livy and me staying with your friends? We really can get a hotel for the weekend.”
Jane shook her head vigorously. “Oh, no, they love to host. Not huge parties or anything, so don’t worry. But close friends and family? The more the merrier. This time of year, they usually have Skylar’s half brother and sister with them too, plus their own kids, so Liv will have some playmates too.”
I blinked. While I was sure that Olivia had friends at school—she had mentioned a few—I had never really seen her play with other children casually at home. I realized with a pang of guilt I had no idea what that would look like for her.
“Hmm,” I said. “I don’t know. I feel bad about imposing on people I’ve never met.”
Jane snorted. “Nina, I hate to break it to you, but you’re not getting out of this either. Skylar is like a sister to me and Eric, and we asked her to help you get settled. I’m afraid you’re stuck with her now, because my best friend is equal parts stubborn and loyal.”
Matthew chuckled. “That’s putting it lightly.”
Catching my skeptical gaze in the rearview mirror, Jane just grinned. “Relax, Nina,” she said as she turned onto a familiar offramp that suddenly made me feel eighteen again. “Once you’re friends with the Sterlings, it’s for life. There is no safer place in Boston for you or Liv. I promise.”
I straightened at the word “safer.” Why would she think I needed that in particular? Why didn’t I want to admit it?
I ignored the glances Matthew gave me over his shoulder too. The last thing we needed was for his odd radar about my safety to go up again.
“Where are we, Mama?” Olivia piped up, saving everyone from the strange awkwardness that had almost descended.
Matthew turned fully around in his seat to flash his bright grin at Olivia. “Hey, kiddo, you’re awake. This is Brookline.”
Olivia eyed him right back with an iciness I regretfully recognized as my own. I sighed. I had hoped that in living away from me, she would have forgone that particular trait. I’d hoped it was learned, not inherited.
“Brooklyn?” she wondered. “You mean we’ve been driving for hours and we’re still in New York?”
Matthew’s deep green eyes flickered playfully in the mirror. “No, sweetheart, Brookline. It’s a suburb of Boston. Some friends of mine live here.”
When he called her “sweetheart”—foreign to someone certainly no more accustomed to such endearments as I was when I met him—Olivia started toying with one braid. I watched curiously as the corner of my daughter’s mouth twitched once she knew Matthew wasn’t looking at her anymore.
The ice was thawing. I knew the signs. She liked Matthew. She liked him very much.
“Brookline,” she murmured to herself, over and over again. “Sweetheart.”
Ten minutes later, we pulled up to a solid iron gate barring entrance to a large property surrounded by stone walls. Jane wasn’t joking when she said this was one of the safest places we could possibly be. The Sterlings’ property was a veritable fortress in the middle of Boston.
“Hey, it’s Jane here with a bunch from New York,” Jane spoke into the intercom clearly manned by some kind of security center inside the compound. She also waved at the cameras pointed at the car.
“They had some issues with security when they first got togethe
r,” Matthew murmured as the gates opened for us almost immediately. “Brandon is pretty protective over his family.”
I nodded. “Well, yes. He would have to be, wouldn’t he?”
“What do you mean?”
“Wealth makes you a target,” I said with a shrug. “It can be quite a burden, you know.”
Matthew snorted. “Yeah, I’m sure it’s terrible to have all those millions and billions you have.”
It was hard to explain to those who didn’t live it. I had had security on and off since I was born, depending on the family’s visibility and what kinds of threats we were receiving. There were several years during my adolescence when multiple stalkers meant I needed twenty-four-hour bodyguards.
“No, she’s right,” Jane put in a little too sharply.
Her gaze flickered back to mine through the mirror with the same kind of knowing, though hers was threaded with more than a little residual terror. Of course, she’d experienced the realities of that targeting in the worst possible way only a short time ago. She had jumped right into the frying pan, whereas I had built up a tolerance against the sizzle all my life.
Matthew stayed quiet for the rest of the short drive to the house at the end of the maple-lined driveway. It wasn’t nearly as large as the Long Island compound, but still big enough to contain two separate guesthouses at the far end of several acres, a small orchard, and a huge meadow surrounded by other bright green trees that seemed perfect for climbing. One of them even had a tree house in it.
But I was too busy meditating on the previous conversation to appreciate Olivia’s apparent excitement about her new surroundings.
The note of accusation in Matthew’s voice was still ringing through my ears.
“I didn’t choose this life,” I said quietly.
Matthew turned back again, and his glance flickered to my wedding rings, then back up again. “Didn’t you?”
We stared at each other hard. But before I could answer, the car pulled to a stop.
“Come on, doll,” Matthew said quietly as Jane and Olivia scrambled out of the car. He glanced around, then reached a lightning-quick hand back to squeeze my knee before retracting it. “Meet some good people. You deserve a few more of them in your life.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
I had met the Sterlings a few other times. Close friends of Jane and Eric, both Brandon and Skylar were in their wedding last year, and Skylar, as matron of honor, had treated the entire bridal party, including me, to a trip to London for Jane’s bachelorette party. I didn’t know her well, but I did recall her being kind, genuine, and straightforward in the best possible way.
The two of them were standing outside the large white colonial farmhouse when we emerged from the car at the end of the gravel drive, but it wasn’t in welcome. Instead, it sounded more like they had escaped the house to have an argument. Skylar’s small, tomato-red head was swinging angrily as she gesticulated wildly at her husband’s towering form. He simply crossed and uncrossed his arms grumpily.
“Brandon, this is insane,” she was saying. “I do not need a bunch of random women performing spa treatments on me for an entire day while you and Zola are at the game. Please just call the salon back and cancel. It’s too much. Way, way too much!”
Brandon’s face screwed up with frustration while he ripped a mangy Red Sox cap from his head and shoved it back on again. “Girls like that kind of crap, Red.”
“That’s a massive generalization,” Skylar snapped back. “Just because I have a vagina doesn’t mean I’m genetically predisposed to cosmetic pampering. Are you trying to say I need a little work done? Is that it?”
“Jesus Christ, Skylar, no! I just—fuck!”
“Can you tell she’s a lawyer?” Matthew said into my ear. “Better than Brandon was, and that’s saying something.”
I chuckled. “If I couldn’t before, I would now.”
“He hasn’t even gotten started,” Matthew replied. “It’s pretty funny once they get going.”
I peered at him sideways. “It takes one to know one, I suppose.”
For that, I received a generous wink that made warmth pool in my belly.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Skylar,” Brandon grumbled. “It’s nice. Jane likes this stuff. Eric told me.”
“Jane likes the black nail polish she gets at CVS, not the medieval caste system exemplified by the modern nail boutique.”
“I do like CVS,” Jane said, only to receive a blue-eyed glare from Brandon. “What? I do. But, Sky, there are plenty of salons where—”
“And I don’t want to have to negotiate an entire day around a bunch of weird staff who are forced to be nice to us because of your big wallet, Brandon,” Skylar rattled on like Jane hadn’t even spoken. “Seriously. It’s really nice, but I just want some alone time with my friends. It’s not that complicated!”
“Am I missing something?” I asked Matthew. “Is she angry because he surprised her with some estheticians?”
A knowing half-smile reappeared. “Skylar’s got issues with money. It drives her crazy when Brandon does extravagant shit for her. And it drives him crazy when she won’t take it.”
I frowned. “Aren’t they married? Or was there a very strict prenuptial agreement?”
“Oh, there was a prenup, all right. And a postnup too after she got her firm started and his lab took off. Skylar wrote them both.” He chuckled. “Brandon keeps tearing them up, and she keeps writing them all over again.”
“Maybe that’s the secret to longevity,” I joked.
“What, never finishing the damn thing?”
“No,” I said. “Never taking each other for granted.”
“Fine!” Brandon shouted, a thick Boston accent emerging along with the rising volume. “Stubborn woman, fine. You wanna stay here and write briefs and babysit instead of having your nails done with your girls, be my guest. But Mattie and I are not leaving if it goes to extra innings this time, Red. I mean it.” He took a deep breath to rearrange his features, then turned to face us. “Hi. Sorry about that. I love my wife, but she is damn near impossible sometimes.”
“Brandon!”
“Red.”
I couldn’t see the look he gave her over his shoulder, but Skylar suddenly turned as scarlet as her nickname and resolutely shut her mouth. Jane started giggling where she stood next to her friend.
When Brandon turned back to smile at me, Matthew, and Olivia, I couldn’t help but smile back. The man actually could have fit right in with my family—he was very tall, with wavy blond hair that flopped over his ears and a pair of the most penetrating blue eyes I’d ever seen. But unlike my icy family, his expression was open, kind, and full of humility and humor.
“Nina, right?”
I accepted a kiss on the cheek, ignoring the way Matthew watched the entire exchange carefully.
“Yes,” I said. “Lovely to see you again, Brandon.”
“You too. Welcome.”
“Daddy?”
A little red-haired girl who couldn’t have been more than four or five appeared at the door holding some kind of stuffed creature with a large horn sticking out of its nose.
“Hey, Pea,” Brandon said. “Come on down and meet our guests.”
“Yeah,” Matthew said as the girl skipped down the steps. “I’m a guest this weekend, Jenny. Did you hear that? Tell your narwhal there.”
As all children, the little girl seemed to fall almost immediately under Matthew’s spell as she skipped down the steps and immediately into his arms.
“You’re not a guest,” she said as he swung her up for a bear hug. “You’re just Uncle Zola.”
“Dang, I guess you’re right. I better pay the piper. Put her there, slugger.”
Matthew offered his chin to the tiny girl, who giggled, then touched her fist lightly to his stubbled jaw. He promptly stumbled backward as if punched, causing Jenny to laugh hysterically.
A hand touched my hip. I looked down to find Olivia drawn close, one h
and curled into the silk while she watched Matthew and Jenny’s antics intently. By the time they had finished, even Skylar was smiling again. Children’s joy is infectious.
Finally, Matthew set Jenny back on the ground and acted like he needed to catch his breath. The little girl returned to her parents and peered at me and Olivia with a pair of intense blue eyes that matched her father’s.
“Who are they, Daddy?” she asked.
“Remember I told you we invited some friends for the weekend? This is Nina and her daughter, Oliva. Can you say hello?”
Jenny turned toward us and waved a tiny hand. “Hello.”
I bent down so I was face to face with her and offered a smile. “Hello, Jenny. My name is Nina, and this is Olivia. We’re related to your uncle Eric. It’s very nice to meet you.”
“You look sad,” she told me, blue eyes guileless. “Do you need a hug?”
It was a harmless question, but one that took me off guard nonetheless. “I—how kind of you,” I said. “But I think I’m—”
“She’s my mama,” Olivia cut in suddenly, with a sharp voice that surprised even me. “If she needs a hug, I’ll be the one to give it to her.”
She turned, swallowed thickly, and then, before I could stop her, threw her arms around my neck so tightly I could barely breathe. And yet I found I wouldn’t have removed them for the world.
Something inside me uncoiled. I closed my eyes for a moment, clasping my daughter’s head to my shoulder and breathing in her sweet, nameless scent she had had since she came into the world. Oh, I had forgotten that lovely smell. A bit sweaty, warm, but somehow full of life. Love, really. That’s what it smelled like. A unique kind of love that only belonged to her.
Over her shoulder, I found Matthew staring at us, his brow furrowed with need. He cleared his throat and looked away, but not before I saw a wet shimmer over his deep green eyes.
“Thank you, darling,” I whispered, then let my daughter go and stood up.
Brandon and Skylar were just chatting with their daughter, clearly used to this sort of display of affection. Jane, however, was watching me with understanding as I stood and brushed the creases out of my skirt.
The Perfect Woman (Rose Gold Book 2) Page 28
