She crossed her arms and tried to ignore the tingling lingering on her skin from his touch. Wouldn’t he remember her for a long time if she helped him that much?
“I don’t want to say yes,” she told him.
“I didn’t want to have to ask you.”
“Just so we both know where we stand going into this.”
“Of course.” This was precisely what Matt wanted. “I was just kidding before, you know. I’ll pay you if you want. Same rate as I offered the other women.”
“I’m not like the others.”
“I already knew that,” Matt said.
She whooshed out a breath. “I don’t want money, but after we visit your father, you’ll tell me who the vandal is?”
“No seduction?”
“Get real!” she said, emitting a small laugh that could be taken a lot of ways.
Matt was disappointed, but not surprised. Gina was smart enough to keep her heart well out of an arrangement like this, just like he was—assuming, of course, he still had a heart. Asking Gina to do this, he wasn’t so sure.
6
“We’ll be over at seven this evening, then?”
“Sounds good,” Luke Gallagher said to Matt, holding the phone receiver so tightly his hand was shaking again. He didn’t want to disconnect. It had been over a week, and Luke had given up hope that Matt would ever call back.
Matt didn’t say anything else, so Luke finally had to let him go. Putting down the receiver, he walked over and sank into his huge armchair, oblivious to the talk show he watched every afternoon.
Her name was Gina. His son had found somebody. Once Luke met her and saw whether or not this woman truly did make Matt happy, Luke thought that maybe he could stand it if his son walked out of his life forever. He prayed he wouldn’t, but if Matt did, he’d survive, and he’d understand.
Luke swept up the old magazines on his coffee table and began to clean up the place. So far, Matt had remained in touch with his mother. That was a good sign. Someday, if he could only find his other son, West, maybe then, God willing, Matt would forgive him for abandoning his family and ruining a big part of his life.
And if Matt did, maybe then he could finally forgive himself.
Matt spent more than an hour and a half with Gina getting their background stories straight earlier that day. He’d called Luke the minute Gina had told him she had the day free. He just wanted to get this whole thing over with so he could leave tomorrow. He’d already told Gina that, too, right before she’d gone home to change.
Matt locked his door and headed down his drive. Telling Luke his wife’s name was Gina had felt sweet on Matt’s lips. How sweet, he wasn’t sure he wanted to admit even to himself, except that when he’d hung up the phone, he’d been grinning.
Boy, but he was getting carried away with this. Another hour or so, and the visit would be over. His point made, he could then pack his things and leave town, go ahead and set up in Virginia before he had to report to duty, or take a quick vacation to Hawaii if he wanted. He’d be free of his past. Maybe he still wouldn’t be exactly happy, but what the hell. Except for his unceasing desire to find his brother, he wouldn’t have a care in the world. Except…
Except that after he left, he’d have to forget the heart-shaped face and big brown eyes he’d left behind in Bedley Hills.
Damn, he thought, reaching Gina’s door. He had to quit thinking this way. He didn’t have anything to offer a woman like her. His emotions were so dried up he would make a lousy partner in life for any woman, let alone one that gave love out as freely as Gina. He didn’t even remember what love felt like.
She pulled the door open before his fist hit twice, flashing Matt a huge smile. Warmth, he thought. Every time he was around her, that’s what he felt.
“Exactly what are you so happy about?” he asked.
“I’m acting,” Gina said through her smile, showing all her teeth. “Pretending to be happily married to you. An Academy Award performance, isn’t it?”
Suppressing a grin, Matt was surprised to feel contentment take the place of his tension. “You have the strangest way of seeing things.”
“It’s called optimism,” she said, and then she really smiled. “Okay, maybe I enjoy helping a neighbor in need.”
Matt’s eyes took on a suggestive gleam that took Gina’s breath away. “Just how far does this helpfulness extend?”
“Not half as far as you’d like it to, I’d bet,” she teased back in a light voice, reaching up to pat his cheek in a sisterly fashion. But the second she put her hand on the rough whiskers of his chin, she thought, Big mistake, Gina. There was absolutely nothing of a sisterly sense to the surge of desire that came over her.
Hurriedly, she dropped her hand back to her side and smiled wanly. “Be careful. A stodgy type like you can’t have had a whole heck of a lot of practice at teasing, and you might find it backfires on you,” she said.
“Would that be interesting—if it backfired?”
“It might.”
“I can’t wait.”
He might not have to. The way she was feeling right now, standing next to him and smelling the pinewoods scent he was wearing and seeing that sexy, provocative look in the depth of his dark eyes, she was beginning to think she was the biggest fool around. He was obviously unattached—or he’d be bringing a real wife along with him this evening—and she was so obviously caught up by his whole persona of sexiness…
And it was also so obvious that he was slowly making her crazy.
“You look nice,” he told her. She did, wearing a tailored, modest halter-top dress in black-and-white checks that set off the black of her hair and the gorgeous slope of her white shoulders. Matt suddenly wanted to take her back inside and kick the door shut. He had to swallow to keep from suggesting it.
“You look great, too.” He had dressed up, with a midnight blue shirt and beige cotton slacks. She almost wished they weren’t going anywhere…
Get a grip, Gina, she told herself, letting out a long breath.
When Gina sighed, the sound reached into Matt’s gut, and he wondered if she was tense about the upcoming meeting, or if she was just suffering under the same sexual tension he was. She was holding a paper plate covered in tin foil, and grinning to break the tension, he pointed to the plate.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“I made your father a lemon cake.”
Matt looked down again at the shiny foil, feeling a pang of jealousy. No woman had ever made him a cake. “Why?”
“Because we’re going to meet him and I’m your wife.” She smiled brightly at him. “And because I never go visiting at a stranger’s house emptyhanded.”
“Have you ever met a stranger?” Matt asked, lifting the edge of the foil to sniff. Gina lightly slapped his hand.
“Only people who are strange.” She gazed at him pointedly. “Are you ready?”
Since they’d already agreed to go in his car, they began walking down her driveway. Gina gazed at him for a few seconds, taking in every detail of the man from the waviness of his dark hair, to the broad shoulders under that shirt, to the slacks that fit him delectably well.
That he wasn’t showing the least bit of nervousness about the meeting tonight didn’t surprise her. When they’d rehearsed their stories earlier, she’d figured out that he was acting on gut instinct in respect to his father, because he was the type of person who found it easier to act than to feel. Too many years of being alone had done that to him.
Remembering the abandoned child he’d been, Gina found herself feeling afraid for him. She was worried that when he walked away from his father, he wouldn’t be able to bury the emotions he’d be feeling deep enough. There was already too much intensity behind those dark eyes of his, and she didn’t believe he could maintain this cool facade forever. Something was bound to break.
She just prayed it wouldn’t be him.
But Matt had already made her promise not to try to change his mind about
tonight. She’d seen the sense in that—there couldn’t be any tenseness between them when they arrived. Of course, that had been Matt’s rule, not hers…
You agreed, Gina, so leave him alone.
“Uh-oh. I forgot to lock my door.” She started to hand him the cake. “Here, hold this—”
“Oh, boy,” he said, grabbing for it, his eyes brightening with anticipation.
She yanked it back, her body melting as their fingers connected. “Uh-oh. You have the same look Frankie gets in his eyes when it comes to treats.”
“Frankie, greedy?” His eyes widened in disbelief. “Surely the boy genius doesn’t have a fault?”
“All I meant is that he likes to eat!” she protested.
Eat, or swipe food? Matt knew if he asked her outright, it might lead to a discussion he wanted to avoid right now about her wonder boy. No sense in inviting trouble when he had Gina firmly in his clutches. He grinned, determined to charm her. “If you will let me sniff it while you’re gone, I promise not to eat a crumb,” he said. “On my honor as an escaped prisoner.”
Gina groaned.
“Sorry,” Matt said, his eyes twinkling, “but I never was a Boy Scout, so I couldn’t take an oath on that.”
“Hmm. Well, since you took an oath—here.” She handed him the cake.
“Did anyone ever tell you how gullible you are?”
“Yes, but no one ever said it like it might be a problem.” Her hands on the cake, Gina quirked an eyebrow. “Are you going to make me sorry for my trusting nature?”
“I don’t ever want to make you sorry for anything, Gina,” he said, reaching for the plate.
Matt sounded serious, but also sincere, so Gina held the plate back out of his immediate reach and plunged in. “In that case, I have to tell you that I think this evening is going to be a mistake. What could entice you to change your mind about lying to your father?”
“That depends. What do you have in mind? Do I get to have my cake—” Matt’s lips spread in a slow grin as he glanced from the cake to her eyes “—and eat it, too?”
He wasn’t referring to the lemon confection caught in the tug-of-war between them. The way he was looking at her made Gina feel like she was the only woman in the world he’d ever want. That was so erotic. She suddenly became fully aware of every part of her body and began having visions of every part of his, especially when he stepped closer to her, with only the cake between them.
“I do believe I’ll save my answer until you give me yours,” she said softly.
“My answer is that we’re going to have to be late—” He leaned over, and despite her disappointment that he wasn’t calling off the visit set for the next hour, she ran her tongue over her lips in anticipation of his kiss. But then he grinned and added, “Unless you give me that cake and go lock your door so we can get into the car.”
“Very funny,” she said. Letting go of the plate, she shook her head. “You certainly are a challenge.”
“That’s why you put up with me,” Matt said. “I bet you thought I was going to kiss you.”
So he wouldn’t be able to tell she was about to lie by the look on her face, she turned sharply and hurried back toward her house, calling behind her, “I did not!”
“You wanted me to,” Matt yelled back.
That he was right really irritated her. Matt had a way of making her forget what was best for her. She dug in her pocket for her keys to her dead bolt and pursed her lips. He was just a bit too confident about her for his own good. If she didn’t put him in his place soon, he was going to get her into bed in the blink of an eye.
Thanks to Gina’s short hair, Matt was treated to the view of her bare shoulders when she turned her back and walked away. He swallowed back the urge to run his lips over their silkiness…down to where the low back of her dress was, and then back up again. He wanted to hear her sigh in that delectable way she had, just for him.
He opened his car door. He had to stop thinking like this. Despite the attraction between them, a relationship would never work. Gina deserved nothing less than total happiness and a man who would love her. He didn’t know how to love, and from experience, he knew he was incapable of learning. He didn’t know where to begin.
Gina wanted him to cancel this meeting—he’d even bet her reasons were strictly charitable. But he had to do what he had to do. A long time ago, he’d promised himself he’d never live by others’ desires again—unless you counted the air force, and that wasn’t what he meant.
As long as he lived, he’d never be able to stand to love and lose another person. A shame, too, since Gina definitely seemed one-hundred percent woman, and that made her one-hundred percent his type, at least where sex was concerned.
He sighed. So went life.
“What’s wrong?” Gina called on her way up his driveway. “I thought you’d be in the car and revving up the motor by now.” Before he could answer, her eyes widened and darted wildly from his empty hands to the car to the front porch steps.
“Matt, where’s the cake?”
He couldn’t tell her the only things he’d been feasting on were the sight of her shoulders and the thought of her naked. So he said, “I ate it.”
She raised her eyebrow in disbelief.
“Okay, okay, even you aren’t that gullible. Would you believe Frankie ate it?”
“I’ll believe it better be in the car,” Gina said, charging past him. He’d put it on the passenger seat. She breathed a sigh of relief and turned to him. “It’s a good thing we aren’t really married. If we were, I’d be chewing you out by now.”
“No, you’d be in my bed by now, because if we were married, there would be no way I’d waste our time together trying to convince my father I’m happy.”
Her forehead wrinkled for only a second as she tried to decide how to take that coming from him. She decided he was only pretending to be a gracious husband. She was proved right when he extended his arm to her.
She raised her eyebrow again in question.
“I thought I’d escort you to your side of the car so we can get used to touching each other,” he said.
“I’ll just have to grin and suffer through this part, I guess.” She tried hard not to think about the way her fingers were resting on the hard muscles of his forearm, how large his hands were, or how strong he seemed. He made her feel petite and delicate, instead of a bit too plump, as Mac had called her from time to time.
Startled, she realized she hadn’t thought of her dead husband in a while, that all her thoughts had been filled with the man who was now opening her car door for her. Matt, who made her breathe just a little too fast. Matt, who made her crazy. She was just beginning to understand that he had changed her life from the second she’d slid under the bushes.
And he was leaving tomorrow. He’d told her that.
The breeze blew the scent of roses from her bush around them. Breathing deeply as she got into the car, Gina decided it was an evening for lovers. Watching Matt round the front of the car to get in, she wondered. Should she? Dare she give in to this desire that had begun to permeate every inch of her being? A desire that had absolutely nothing to do with the very thing she lived, breathed and hoped for—love?
As Matt backed the car out, he braked abruptly as the Simmons boys whizzed by on their bikes and kept going. Normally, Gina wouldn’t have thought twice about that, but instead of continuing to back out when the street was clear, Matt watched them ride toward the corner, frowning.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Not a thing.” Turning his head, Matt smiled at her. She decided to get back to why he’d been watching Frankie later if she remembered. Right now, there was business to take care of.
“Before you pull out—did you remember a ring?”
Matt slapped his palm against the steering wheel and then put the car in park. “I knew there was something—”
“That’s what I figured.” Balancing the cake on her lap, Gina unzipped her purse and pu
lled out a small, black-velvet-covered box, which she flipped open with a smirk that said she was pleased with herself. “Some husband you are.”
Matt, watching her take the ring from the case, felt suddenly distressed. His hand covered hers, stopping her, and she looked up at him, startled.
“This wasn’t from your marriage?” he asked.
A horrified look covered her face. “I wouldn’t use Mac’s ring!” Her heart thumped painfully at the very thought, and she took a breath, feeling like she was slowly coming to her senses. What in the world was she doing, posing as Matt’s wife, making a sham of the institution of marriage and purposely lying to someone? No matter how understandable Matt’s reasons, this went against every grain of morality in her body.
“This ring is a sample from my shop. I told you, I consider marriage sacred—and that included the one I had.”
“I know you do.” Matt reached out and tilted her chin upward. The seconds seemed to tick away as Gina’s heart melted at the look in his eyes. It was a look of loneliness, heartache and need all rolled into one.
“I shouldn’t be putting you through this,” he said. “I know it isn’t right of me to ask anyone into my mess. Only if I call tonight off, Gina, I’m afraid I’ll never put my past behind me.” He hesitated. “Please don’t desert me now. I need you.”
Matt didn’t even know it, but to Gina, he’d uttered the magic words. He needed her. He was hurting, and she’d never been one to put her own needs first. She was strong. She’d survive tonight—as long as she remembered this was only a game for her and Matt. So she wouldn’t back out on him now, even though she’d probably be damned in the process.
His hand fell back to the wheel, and he waited.
“You need me just for tonight?” she whispered, wanting to have this absolutely clear in her mind so there were no false hopes later.
The One-Week Wife Page 8
