Passion and Peril: Scenes of PassionScenes of Peril

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Maybe he was going about this all wrong. Maybe instead of trying to show her how calm and collected he was—how much he’d changed over the years—maybe he should show her...

  For the first time in days, Matt actually had hope.

  He headed, fast, for Sparky’s—where the entire cast was meeting to toast the opening of the show. He wanted to get there first.

  * * *

  MAGGIE PUSHED OPEN the door to Sparky’s feeling much less than enthusiastic.

  But it was a tradition with the theater group to drink a toast to the show, and this year, because they’d had no volunteers willing to host a party, the party was here at the bar.

  Maggie was only going to stay for the toast, and then run for home as fast as she could.

  As she went inside, she saw Matt was already there—sitting at the bar. Charlene, the flirtatious soprano, was next to him. She leaned in close to tell him something. And, God, he actually had his arm around her.

  Maggie looked away, but not before she’d met Matt’s eyes in the mirror.

  He actually had the audacity to smile at her.

  She found herself staring at the old-fashioned jukebox sightlessly, blinded by tears of jealousy. No, tears of anger. She wasn’t jealous, she was mad.

  She couldn’t believe what he’d said to her after the show. Payment for sex... And now he was here, like this, with Charlene....

  She glanced up to see Matt standing right behind her.

  Quickly, she blinked back her tears and fished in her pocket for a quarter. She pushed the coin into the slot and pretended to be absorbed in choosing her song. But he reached over her shoulder and pushed the numbers for an old Beatles song, “P.S. I Love You.”

  “Dance with me,” he said.

  Maggie gazed up at him, suddenly beyond exhausted. She’d danced with him all night long, and that hadn’t solved a thing. “Why don’t you dance with Charlene?”

  “Look, she sat down next to me. What am I supposed to do?”

  “She made you put your arm around her?” Maggie couldn’t stand it anymore. “I think it’s kind of obvious that it’s over between us,” she said forcefully. “Why don’t you just relax and have a beer and a cigarette and Charlene while you’re at it.”

  “Is that really what you want?” Matt said. God, she was playing right into this entire scene. It was perfect. And he was right about her still caring. Oh, man, she cared so much. He wanted to kiss her. Instead he shrugged. “Fine. You got it.”

  He remembered the way he used to act, back in high school, before he’d learned to control his anger. It wasn’t hard to get back into character—the bad boy was a part he’d played for years. He’d already started, over at the bar with Charlene.

  He spun now, nearly colliding with a waitress. He took one of the oversize mugs of beer from her tray, ignoring her protest, and crossed to a table where some of the cast members were sitting. He put down the beer, took a cigarette out of a pack on the table and, holding Maggie’s gaze, he very slowly and deliberately lit it.

  He picked up the beer and crossed back toward her, taking a long pull on the beer and then an equally long drag off the cigarette.

  Christ! He had to work hard not to cough. God, he hated the taste of both, but he didn’t let her see that.

  “This is more like it.” He exhaled the smoke as he gazed at her. “Isn’t it? It’s what you expect from me, right? God forbid I should ever actually change.”

  He took another long swig of beer as, from the corner of his eye, he saw Dan Fowler watching them with horrified fascination.

  Maggie’s eyes were filled with tears. “Matt, stop.”

  “Gee, I don’t know, Mags,” he said, his voice rising in volume. “I mean, you got me pegged for this role. I’m a liar and a cheat, right? At least according to Angie and Dan. A liar who smokes and drinks too much. And let’s not leave out Charlene. I think she’ll be glad to go home with me, don’t you? Oh, but wait, maybe not after she sees this!”

  He pretended to chug the rest of the beer, but really just poured it down his shirt. “Or this!” he shouted, and slammed the mug down with such force on top of the jukebox that the record skipped with a wild screech. The music stopped.

  The noisy bar was silent.

  But Matt dropped character as he stubbed his cigarette out in a nearby ashtray.

  “You’re ready to believe all that about me,” he said softly as he looked up at Maggie, “but you won’t believe that I love you. If that’s really true, then go to hell, Maggie. I don’t want you anymore.”

  He turned and walked out of the bar, knowing all too well that his words had made him exactly what she thought he was.

  A liar.

  * * *

  MAGGIE FOLLOWED MATT out into the parking lot.

  And found him on his hands and knees in the grass next to his Maserati, throwing up.

  “Oh, my God,” she said.

  He swore. “Go away.”

  She dug in her purse for some tissues, crouching down next to him.

  He took them from her, wiped his mouth, and sat up with his back and head against the side of his car. “Remind me never to smoke again.” There was dark humor in his eyes as he looked at her. “Well, that sucked. So much for the tough guy act, huh?”

  “Do you want me to drive you home?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “No, I’m okay. It just was... I haven’t had nicotine in so long, and, God, it just made my stomach...”

  “That was impressive in there,” she said. “Making the jukebox shut off that way...”

  “Too much?”

  “No,” she said, starting to cry. “It was perfect.”

  “That’s not me anymore,” he told her.

  Maggie nodded. “I know. I know.” She couldn’t bear to look at him. His words were echoing in her head. I don’t want you anymore. “Oh, Matt, will you ever forgive me?”

  “I’ll think about it,” he said. He pulled himself to his feet and unlocked his car door. He had a bottle of water in the cup holder and he took a swig, rinsing his mouth and spitting it out.

  She wiped her face, her eyes. “Stevie told me you were working on something...?”

  Matt looked at her. “Yeah. I’m not, um... I’d prefer not to use our marriage as a way to win this thing,” he told her. “I mean, if it comes down to it, I will—all those jobs are at stake. But I didn’t marry you because of that fricking codicil. I didn’t know I had that document in my briefcase.”

  “I know,” she said. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry.”

  “What’dya do, talk to Vanessa?” he asked.

  “No,” she said.

  “You call the cancer center? I gave them permission to give you whatever information you wanted.”

  “No,” she said.

  He was surprised. “You don’t want proof that—” He laughed. “Did Stevie show you the thing I’m working on?”

  “Stevie doesn’t know what you’re working on,” Maggie countered. “He told me you were doing something and you could probably use some legal help. That’s all he said to me.”

  Matt was trying to be casual, but for someone who was such a good actor, he was doing a truly lousy job. “So you just, like, decided that you believe me?” he said. “No proof, no...”

  “It was actually something Stevie said tonight,” Maggie admitted. “He reminded me that I knew you. That I knew you. Matt, please, please forgive me. All those awful things I said...”

  She met his eyes, and as she looked at him, she could see tiny reflections of her face in the darkness of his pupils. She belonged there, in his eyes, and she knew she had to do whatever she could to stay right there.

  But he reached for her, and as she held him, she started, again, to cry.

  �
�God,” he said, “no matter what I do, I seem to make you cry.”

  She looked up at him. “I’m madly in love with you, and if you don’t forgive me, I’m going to die.”

  Fire, life and tears sprang into Matt’s eyes simultaneously. He held her tightly as he laughed. “Yeah, like there’s any doubt I’m going to forgive you.”

  “You said you needed to think about it.”

  “I was kidding!” He laughed. “Hey, if this failed tonight, I was going to fly my doctor out from California and pay him to follow you around until you believed me. I was going to take a lie-detector test. I was going to—”

  “I love you, Matt,” she said. “Do you still love me?”

  “For always and forever,” he promised her.

  She would have kissed him, but he turned his head. “I’m not kissing you,” he said. “I just barfed. But if you want to come home with me and let me run upstairs and brush my teeth, you can try that line of Stevie’s again, verbatim this time, and I guarantee it’ll work as well for you as it did for him.”

  She held him tightly. “I think I vowed to love you in sickness and in health.”

  Matt laughed. “Get in,” he said.

  Maggie got in.

  And he took her home.

  Chapter Nineteen

  MAGGIE SIGHED AS she lay with Matt in his bed. Their bed. It felt so good to be home.

  “I was such a jerk,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You were.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re not supposed to agree with me.”

  “I’m not going to lie,” he told her as he touched her face. “Not even about something like that. I’m never going to lie to you, Mags.”

  “I know,” she whispered.

  He kissed her and she felt herself melt. And then she started to laugh.

  “What?” he said.

  “I’m madly in love with you,” she said, “and if you don’t go down on me right this second, I think I’m going to die.”

  He shouted with laughter. “Can’t have that,” he said. “God, I missed you...”

  * * *

  MAGGIE WOKE UP to find Matt sitting up in bed, reading the papers in a file.

  The clock read 5:34.

  “Hey,” he said, smiling at her.

  She stretched. “Did you sleep at all?”

  He shook his head. “I think I was afraid if I fell asleep I’d find out that your coming home was just a dream.”

  Oh, Matt... “It’s not,” she said.

  He nodded. And handed her the file. “You awake enough to put on your lawyer hat?”

  She sat up, arranging her pillow behind her. “My lawyer hat seems to have disappeared with the rest of my clothes.”

  He grinned at her. “I meant figuratively. And as long as we’re leaning heavily toward all honesty all the time, I should probably tell you that the idea of your giving me legal advice while you’re naked appeals to me in a very decadent way.”

  “Do I need to call you Mr. Stone?” she asked, opening the file and starting to read and...

  She closed the file. And looked at Matt. “Are you serious about this?”

  He nodded.

  She opened it again. He’d outlined his plan for improving the company. It included on-site day care and a fitness room. It also included joint ownership in the company for every single employee from the managers to the cleaning staff.

  Maggie flipped through his notes. “You’re proposing to give the employees all but twenty-five percent of the company.” She looked up at him. “You’re just...giving it to them?”

  He actually shrugged. “These people are the ones who’ve worked so hard to make this company successful. Can you imagine how much harder they’ll work if the company actually belongs to them?”

  She kept flipping through his notes. “And what’s this? A grant program and...”

  “Scholarships, too,” he said. “Funded through the sale of some of my father’s assets. I’m going to keep only two of the cars— I mean, thirteen cars? Come on. Some of those are antiques and worth a ton of money. I’m going to put it all into a trust. I’ve worked out the preliminary numbers—I need you to check my math. But I’m pretty sure that with the bulk of the cash inheritance included in the trust, there’ll be about three million in interest each year—to give away.”

  “And you’re going to run the grant’s foundation,” she saw.

  “With you,” he said, “if you’ll take the new position.”

  Maggie looked up at him. “Matt, this is...”

  “Crazy?” He shrugged again. “I never really wanted my father’s money—I told you that from the start. I was trying to save the company. I mean, don’t get me wrong—my twenty-five percent will keep me very comfortable. I’m not going to give it all away.”

  She closed the file. “Well.” She frowned slightly, tapping it with her finger. “I guess my legal advice to you would be...let’s try it. Let’s go for it. Let’s set it up and present it to the court. I can’t tell you for sure if they’ll accept this as the kind of improvement your father intended, but I’m willing to argue it—I think I can put up a good fight. And we do have a failsafe—our marriage certificate. I know you don’t want to use it, but, like you said, you want these people to have their jobs come next Christmas.”

  She reached for a pen from the bedside table and started making notes right on the manila folder. Matt took both from her hands and kissed her.

  “We can work out the details later,” he said. “One thing I want you to do today is go through my briefcase, make sure there aren’t any other unpleasant surprises hiding in there.” He kissed her again. “Will you do that for me?”

  “I don’t need to,” Maggie said.

  “But I want you to,” he told her as he pulled her on top of him. “Later.”

  “Later,” she agreed.

  * * *

  MATT’S BRIEFCASE WAS filled with roses.

  Roses and his hospital records from California.

  He’d also written out an explanation of the night he’d gone up to Wildwood to a party, telling her how Vanessa had come into his car, falling-down drunk after breaking up with her boyfriend. She’d come on to him, but he’d taken her home. End of story.

  There was a note from Dan Fowler, too, apologizing for giving Maggie misinformation, explaining that Matt had chosen a privacy option at the cancer center, which meant that all information about his illness—including information he himself requested—had to be obtained via mail, in writing.

  And there was a copy of an email from Angie.

  “Dear Mags,” her friend wrote.

  Matt emailed me a few days ago. I’ve spent some time thinking about it, and I’ve come to the rather earth-shattering conclusion that I was wrong.

  I’m not going to tell you everything Matthew said to me (I wouldn’t want it to go to your head!), but I do believe that he truly loves you. He’s loved you for a long time, and I suppose I’m mostly to blame for you guys not getting together before this.

  You were right—I was jealous. Even now, even married, even completely in love with Freddy. I’m a bad person—if I couldn’t have Matt, I didn’t want you to have him, either. I think I knew back in high school that his feelings for you went way beyond my own relationship with him. Hell, they went beyond my relationship with you. I think I was afraid that if you and Matt got together, neither of you would have anything left to give to me.

  I know now that that’s not true. I love Freddy as much as Matt loves you, and love like that is like a fire. It just keeps spreading; it keeps burning brighter and bigger.

  I’m sorry for the things I said to you. I hope you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me.

  LOL! I know you will.
I know you—you’ve already forgiven me. You’re such a pushover. You need to work on that, all right?

  So stay good and mad at me another week—God, I’m such a rotten bitch—and then call me and tell me that you still love me, okay?

  I love you.

  Love, Angie

  Maggie looked up to find Matt standing in the office door.

  “I didn’t need any of this,” she told him. “I didn’t need proof or permission from anyone to—”

  “I know,” he said.

  She went through the pockets of the briefcase, but they were all empty.

  “That’s all that’s in there,” Matt said. He’d made sure of it.

  “Are you positive?” she said.

  Uh-oh. “Did I leave something out?” he asked.

  She sighed. “I was sure you were going to ask me...” She stood up. “I guess I’m going to have to ask you.” She took a rose from the bunch, and crossing to him, got down on one knee. “Matt, will you not unmarry me?”

  He laughed.

  She did, too, but back there, in her eyes, he could see that she wasn’t entirely kidding.

  “Oh, Mags.” He got down on his knees, too, and kissed her. “Yes,” he told her. But then he looked at her. “Wait, maybe I need to consult with my lawyer. The wording of that question was a little complicated. Yes, I won’t unmarry you.” He figured it out. “Yes. Definitely, yes.”

  Maggie kissed him. She kissed his face, his neck, his jaw, his cheeks, but then stopped, with only a whisper of space between her lips and his.

  “I want,” she said, and he could feel her warm, sweet breath against his face, “my wedding ring.”

  He kissed her—a long, lovely, heavenly kiss—then pulled back and reached into his pocket. He’d carried the jeweler’s box with him for days now, hoping...

  Opening the box, he removed the two golden bands. Hers was so small, so delicate, compared to his. But both were engraved on the inside with the same inscription. “Maggie and Matt. Forever.”