And now, sitting at her computer, she knew there’d only ever been one honest reason for not telling Matt two weeks ago: fear that the instant he knew, she’d lose him.
Okay, that wasn’t quite true. It was more that the instant he knew, she’d have to accept that she’d already lost him. She could even pinpoint the exact moment it had happened: when he’d put his hand where their baby might have been and what he’d done had become real.
The mind-blowing sex he’d almost immediately launched into made no sense after that...but Romy had a nagging feeling that if she figured out what had motivated him to “go for broke” following that club to the head, she’d have the key to the tower Matt kept himself barricaded in.
Not that she’d had time to test any locks! The vortex into which he’d hurled her had been so wild, she hadn’t been able to so much as catch her breath from start to finish. No words, no instruction, no invitation—just his touch driving her inexorably on until her eyes rolled back in her head and her toes curled. The crescendo? Two soaring, thrilling orgasms, the last one adroitly, effortlessly, synchronized to his own.
And yet despite his almost slavish attention to her pleasure, and despite that careful synchronization she though may well have curled his toes, too, she’d felt...alone. Flung away, like an electric guitar that had been played for maximum flash and drama before being pounded onto the stage and obliterated.
Her self-preservation instincts had kicked in, and she was up, preparing to leave, desperate not to face being Matt’s first-ever regret.
She’d reached for her mobile phone so many times that night, wanting to jump back over that crossed line and at least open the door to reclaiming their friendship, but every time she’d started a text, she’d lost her nerve. There’d been no adequate words for what she was feeling. Or at least, none he’d want to hear. Don’t call it love, he’d said, and she hadn’t, she wouldn’t. But she had no other words, either.
So here she was, still with no words, effectively in limbo, with Matt’s email address staring accusingly at her from the To box above the blank message space.
She scrubbed her hands over her face. Had it really been only six weeks since that phone call, when Matt had assured her having a baby would be the easiest thing in the world?
She closed her eyes, steeling herself to call up the image of his face after he’d come inside her that first time—the bleakness of it. To remember the way his expression had changed to something cool and calculating as he’d said, I’m recharged—let’s go for broke this time. The silence as he’d walked her downstairs. The desolation in his eyes when she’d kissed his cheek—as though in going for broke, he’d broken himself.
And she knew what she had to do was formally, officially, let him go.
She opened her eyes, and started typing.
Hi, Matt
The big news is I’m not pregnant, so no Yippie-Kai-Yay motherfucker just yet.
Been thinking that with you there and me here and all that paperwork we never got to the end of, a donor closer to home makes more sense. So consider this an official notification that Plan A is extinct—in other words you’re off the hook, services no longer required.
She paused there, not sure how to sign off.
Would these be her last words to Matt? If so, she knew what she’d want them to be. She’d broken the cardinal rule before she’d known it existed and said them in her heart ten years ago. She may not have said the words aloud but she wanted to. She was tired of keeping them inside. So tired, her fingers trembled on the keyboard with the need to type them...
I love you
Almost by magic the words were there on the screen. Her heart raced as she read them; she knew if she sent them it really would be over.
In which case, wouldn’t the words be useless?
If she wanted to get him back into her life she had to be more strategic. She had to let him know there was a cleared path back to their old friendship...but only if he chose to tread it. And so she deleted those three words and tapped out a new closer. Light and bright and cool and unthreatening:
But I owe you a favor of your choice for giving it the old college try. If you’re still hankering for paella, I’ve got a new twist on the old recipe so give me a shout when you’re next in London if you’d like to collect.
Romy
X
And then she hit Send, closed her laptop and burst into tears.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“I NEVER PRETENDED to be a computer whiz,” Romy said, bringing Teague’s fourth cup of coffee over to him.
“Neither did I,” Teague said, “so say a prayer that between us we haven’t lost everything while you open that damn door! With any luck it’ll be Matt, come to save us.”
She checked, but only for an instant, at hearing Matt’s name. “It won’t be him.” She plonked Teague’s coffee on the dining table beside her laptop, within reach of his hand. “So keep going. And remember, you can lose anything you like as long as you find the—”
“Romy—the door—I beg you.”
“—Lennie_SanFrancisco file,” she finished, before heading for the door, calling out an en route “Keep your shirt on!” to whoever was outside.
She swung the door open...and her mouth snap-froze in a gape.
Her heart jolted, then hammered, as Matt—it really, astoundingly, unbelievably, was Matt!—lowered the clenched fist he’d raised as though preparing to pound a hole through the wood.
When had she sent her email? She counted back, lightning fast. Less than twenty-four hours ago. If her email was responsible for rocketing Matt across the Atlantic, was that a positive, negative or neutral development? She didn’t know, couldn’t work it out because her thoughts were flying past each other, refusing to land.
“Keep my shirt on?” Matt asked, sounding oddly breathless, and when one corner of his mouth quirked up in a rueful smile, her thoughts stopped flying and stuttered to a halt. “You sure about that?”
Shirt. On. Here. London. Matt! Gorgeous.
Her brain was too mangled to form actual sentences and her mouth was too dry to say them. She was reduced to stepping back and vaguely beckoning with her hand, a mute version of Come in.
Matt stepped over the threshold, and ever-careless of his possessions, ignored the coat stand to drop his overcoat on the floor along with his duffel bag. For a hopeful moment, Romy thought he was going to pull her into his arms, but a sound behind her—Teague’s chair scraping against the floor—distracted him.
“Yay! The hero arrives!” Teague said.
Shock sparked in Matt’s eyes as he looked past her, but when Romy turned to uncover the problem all she found was Teague looking at them over the top of her laptop screen.
“Uh-oh,” Teague said.
Uh-oh? Romy’s eyes went from Teague to a now-expressionless Matt.
“Just to be clear, Matt,” Teague said, “all I was doing was reinstalling Windows for her.”
“I’ll finish it,” Matt said.
“It’s finished. But by all means check what I did.”
Romy looked from Matt to Teague this time. Something was wrong.
Teague closed her laptop and made his way over to them.
“But...are you leaving?” she asked him as he retrieved his overcoat from the stand.
“Yes, Romy, I am.”
“Where are you going?”
Shrugging into his coat. “Back to my hotel.”
“Why?”
Grabbing his scarf. “Because dinner appears to be canceled.”
“It’s not canceled!” Romy said, and turned to Matt. “Tell him to stay.” Getting nothing from that quarter, she tennis-balled back to Teague. “Teague!”
Teague laugh-winced. “Are you trying to get me killed, Romes?”
“What? No! I mean—What?”
&
nbsp; Teague’s response was to look squarely at Matt as he draped his scarf around his neck. “Just one thing,” he said. “Prove to her I’ve recovered the Lennie_SanFrancisco file or you’ll have a meltdown on your hands. She’s got a meeting with him tomorrow.”
“Fuck Lennie!” Matt said with extreme loathing.
Teague grinned. “He wishes she would, anyway!” He knotted his scarf. “But it’s your job to rescue her if Lennie steps out of line, isn’t it?”
Matt’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’ll swoop in to save Romy’s day, as usual.”
In the hanging moment that followed, Romy found herself holding her breath. She could feel tension rolling off Matt in thick waves, but his voice was calm when he asked, “Do you want the job, Teague?” Almost too calm.
“Oh, I can’t do that job,” Teague said. “Lennie’s not scared of me.”
“What makes you think he’s scared of me?”
Teague kept his gaze steady on Matt. “Intuition.”
Matt made an infinitesimal adjustment to his stance. “Are you scared of me, Teague?”
“No,” Teague said. “Because I know you know I’m not a threat.”
On the verge of passing out from oxygen deprivation, Romy took in a tiny breath, then held it again when Matt made a sound like a cut-off growl as Teague pulled her into his arms for a hug.
“Call me if you need me, Romes, okay?” Teague said in a stage whisper, before letting her go. “But now, if you’ll excuse me...”
“Wait!” Romy cried, and caught Teague’s hand. “You don’t have to leave!”
Teague squeezed then released her fingers. “Yes, Romy, I do.”
“Then...then at least let me walk with you to the train station and...and explain,” she urged—even though she didn’t know what the explanation was.
Teague touched her cheek briefly. “I don’t need an explanation. And I’d prefer it if you stayed to soothe the savage beast.” He flashed her a whiter-than-snow smile. “For all our sakes, hmm?”
And then he clapped a hand briefly on Matt’s shoulder, said, “Play nice with my girl,” and left.
Romy stared at the door after it clicked shut behind Teague, trying to figure out what had just happened.
She sensed Matt moving, heard him settling into Teague’s chair at the dining table. Play nice with my girl, Teague had adjured him. But Matt didn’t appear to be in a “nice” mood.
Or maybe...thinking back to Matt’s smile as she’d opened the door...maybe seeing Teague had changed Matt’s mood. It had certainly upped the testosterone quotient. But that would mean Matt was jealous, wouldn’t it? And he was never jealous. He didn’t care enough to be jealous. Or maybe...maybe he did...?
She turned, intrigued by that notion, to find Matt tapping away at her computer, and cleared her throat to get his attention.
Matt ignored her. And that was interesting, because he’d never ignored her before and she was p-r-e-t-t-y sure he hadn’t flown all the way from San Francisco just to do so now.
So why was he here? Question of the day.
She took two steps, and cleared her throat again. “Are you going to tell me why you’re here, Matt?”
He stilled, eyes on her keyboard. “Are you going to tell me why Teague was here?” And then he raised his eyes, pinning her in place. “Because fixing your computer is my job, isn’t it?”
Okay, that definitely smacked of some kind of jealousy, and it made her heart flutter like a leaf in a storm. “You were in San Francisco.”
“I’ve installed updates on your computer remotely before.”
“It’s just...he was here.”
“So I noticed.”
“For dinner.”
“So I gathered.”
“He’s working on a big corporate merger, and one of the parties is British so he’s here for a couple of weeks and he called me and I offered to cook—just like I do for you when you’re here. And when he arrived, I mentioned my computer problems, and...” She stopped, threw up her hands. “Why am I explaining this? I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Why are you explaining, if you’ve done nothing wrong?”
“Probably because you’re glaring at me, making me think I’ve done something wrong. He came—he saw—he fixed. The end. Unless you want to know the dinner menu, in which case it was supposed to be steak and ale pie.”
Matt leaned back in his chair. “Let me ask a different question. When did he arrive in London? Could it possibly have been yesterday?”
“Yes, so what?”
“So that gives me some context for that ‘closer to home’ reference in your email.”
“You mean...? No, you can’t mean—! Teague? Teague lives in Manhattan. How’s that close to London?”
“He’s here now. Ergo, close.”
“As are you—so what?”
“So it finally makes sense why you took so long to contact me.”
“You mean...?” But she shook her head. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I hear nothing from you for a month, but then Teague arrives and—wham!—notice to terminate my services comes flying through cyberspace.”
She stared at him while that sifted through her foggy brain. And then, “Oh. My God!” she said. “You cannot be serious.”
“And yet I am.”
She came storming over to the table as four weeks of pent-up emotion ruptured. “You dare to tick me off for not contacting you? You didn’t send me one text! One email! I didn’t get a phone call, a Facebook message, nothing! I had to fill the void by overthinking every damn thing that had happened in San Francisco until I thought I’d go crazy!”
“I’ve been hanging on the edge of my fucking seat waiting for two fucking words from you—not pregnant. A few seconds is all it would have taken!”
“Oh! Oh! You were not hanging on the edge of your seat! You made it crystal clear you’d lost interest in the whole thing even before I left your house! I saw your face, Matt, when it hit you—it hit you like a ton of bricks—what you’d let yourself in for, that maybe, just maybe, that boring paperwork I wanted to go through with you was worth reading after all!”
“I tore up that paperwork!”
“You—you—”
“Bastard is the word I think we agreed on in San Francisco.”
“You bastard!” she rapped out.
He set his jaw. “Which doesn’t change the fact that you were supposed to contact me, goddammit!”
“And I did!”
He banged his hand on the table. “Two weeks late!”
“Well, excuse me for not being buoyed with optimism by your last words to me. ‘Let’s go for broke this time’! It took me the whole month to get over that!”
He pushed his chair back from the table, jumped to his feet. “I told you to stop me if you didn’t like what I did!”
“It wasn’t that I didn’t like it, it was that you didn’t. That last time was a performance—a bravura performance but definitely a performance, even if you didn’t really want to give it.”
“That wasn’t a performance, Romy, that was me. What I am. What I like.”
“You didn’t like anything after you realized I might be pregnant. You couldn’t even muster up a goodbye when I left!”
“You didn’t give me time to say goodbye. You ran out on me like your ass was on fire.”
“You could have stopped me!”
“I don’t stop women from leaving me, remember? You want to leave, you leave!”
“If you believe that, why are you here?”
Split second while he stared at her. And then, “Good question!” he snarled, and strode for the door.
She hurried after him. “What are you doing?”
“Figure it out,” he said, an
d reefed his overcoat up off the floor, one-handed.
“Matt!”
Up came his bag. Flung over his shoulder.
She grabbed his arm. “You’re not leaving until we talk this through.”
He jerked away from her. “Read your own fucking email. You talked it through for both of us.”
“What is the problem? If you want to try again, we’ll just...try again!”
“No, Romy, we won’t. It’s too dangerous. I’m too dangerous.” And he turned to the door again.
“No!” she cried, and dragged his overcoat from him, threw it back on the floor. “What are you talking about?”
“I saw the bruises, okay?”
“They were nothing!” Romy cried.
He reached for his coat again—she blocked him. “If that’s really what’s bothering you—a few love bites—I’ll put some on you right now and we’ll be even.”
“That’s not funny.”
“No, it’s not funny, if you think I’m some delicate flower who can’t handle some enthusiastic sex! So read my lips: You. Didn’t. Hurt me. You didn’t. And you’re not going to leave me like this after keeping me hanging for a month.”
“You left me, Romy,” he said to her.
“Only because you wanted me to go.”
“Bullshit. I asked you to stay the night.”
“That was before.”
“Before what? Before you moved the goalposts? Before you replaced ten years with one night on a fucking whim? Plan B! Jesus! What made you think that was going to work with someone like me?”
“Someone like you? What does that even mean?”
“It means your email hit the nail on the head—I’m not the man for the job. I don’t want the job. So...so sign Teague up! I don’t care.”
“What is it about Teague tonight? It’s just Teague—same old Teague! But it’s like you’re suddenly jealous of him!”
He recoiled. “I’m not jealous of Teague.”
“Then what was all that about when you arrived?”
“Not jealousy. Not...what you think.”
Getting Lucky Page 8
