“Charming!”
“Not quite the word I’d use.” Matt offered her a tender smile. “Still, my approach is the one Charlie should have taken. I tried to tell him that, but he wasn’t about to take advice from me. The more she backed off, the more he pursued her.”
“I’ll bet she just loved that.”
“Oh, she lapped it up,” Matt said, rolling his eyes. “One evening we’d been to a concert and a party afterward. When I took her home, neither of us was exactly sober. Her mum and Peter were out, and well, one thing led to another, and the next thing I know, she’s telling me she’s carrying my baby.”
Ashley’s soft heart went out to him. “Oh, Matt, what a thing for her to have done.”
“Well, it takes two, and I wasn’t about to shirk my responsibilities. Looking back on it, I think it was a deliberate ploy to trap me. She told me she was on the pill, you see, and I didn’t query it. I mean,” he said, lifting his shoulder, “why would she lie about it? Anyway, I did the right thing and married her.”
He looked so forlorn that Ashley wanted to get up and hug him. Instead, she clasped her hands together and hardened her heart. Eve was conniving, but Matt had yet to convince her that the baby really wasn’t his.
“It was the first time that I actually felt sorry for Charlie,” he said. “He genuinely loved her, I knew that, and once again I’d usurped him. What’s more, he was forced to act as my best man, which really must have rubbed salt into the wound. My father expected it of him, and he wasn’t about to do anything to upset his relationship with the old man.”
“What happened after that? Did you go back to college?”
“Initially. Jack was born, and at first, Eve played the part of the devoted mother. But, as with everything she does, the novelty soon wore off. We were living in a tiny flat, I was studying all the hours God sent for finals, working part-time jobs to bring in the bacon, and sleeping no more than four hours a night. Then Eve got ‘ill,’ and I found myself changing nappies and getting up at night to feed the baby because she was too unwell to cope.”
“That should have told you something.”
“Yeah, it probably should have. I guess I was just too tired to piece it all together. I just lived for one day at a time.” He sat down, then stood again, too agitated to settle. “Six months after Jack was born, my father had his first stroke, and it was obvious he wasn’t going to be able to carry on with the company until he recovered. Charlie thought his day had come, but my father was adamant that he wanted me to take over.”
“But what about your studies?” Ashley could hear the indignation in her own voice. “You wanted to be a barrister. You’d worked so hard.”
“Yes, but we were all on emotional overload, especially my mother. She begged me not to upset Dad when he was so ill. It would only be a temporary measure, and when Dad recovered, I’d be able to finish my degree and go my own may.” Matt shrugged. “What choice did I have? Philip Roker worked there, so did Charlie. They both knew the business backward, so they didn’t really need me. I’d just stay for a few months to put Dad’s mind at rest. At least the salary meant that we could move somewhere better and get help with the baby. I worried about him, left all day in Eve’s unpredictable care, and felt a lot better once we had a reliable au pair. It was the final nail in the coffin as far as my relationship with Charlie went, though. He was full of anger and resentment, even though I tried to convince him that I didn’t plan to stay with the company for long.”
“You’d taken the woman he loved and the job he wanted.”
“That’s the way he saw it.” Matt sat down again. “Eve remained close friends with Charlie, knowing he’d do anything she asked of him. Looking back, I suspect she ran to him all the time with tales of my neglect. You see, Eve was never happy unless she was the centre of attention, but I rapidly ran out of patience with her when she started to neglect our home and baby.”
“Why did she do that?”
“She said she was too young for motherhood, that I was always working and she never got to have any fun.”
Ashley opened her mouth to say what she thought about that, remembered that Eve was still Matt’s wife, and closed it again.
“It’s okay,” he said, offering her a lilting smile. “I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right.”
“So why did you stay?”
“For Jack’s sake, at first, anyway. Then, about two years into our marriage, I came across her at a party in an intimate clinch with Charlie. I seriously thought about leaving. Dad wouldn’t have liked it—”
“You were still working for the company?”
“Yes, every time I talked about going back to what I wanted to do, Dad persuaded me to stay just a little longer. He was still frail, I knew a serious argument would set him back, and to be honest, I had a family to support and couldn’t afford to go back to college life.”
“That’s sad.”
“Yeah well, it was my own mess. We all have to take responsibility for our own actions and make the best of things. I’d been forced to give up the career I really wanted and had married a girl I didn’t love, who now appeared to be playing fast and loose. I wasn’t happy and confronted Eve about her behaviour, threatening to leave if she carried on the way she was. She denied doing anything more than flirting.”
“Did you believe her?”
“No, but she must have sensed the change in me because, hey presto, she did it again. She forgot her birth control pills and got pregnant.”
Matt turned to fully face Ashley, a grimace replacing his earlier smile. “Hence the vasectomy,” he said quietly. “She’d outmanoeuvred me for the last time.”
“Why was she so desperate to hold on to you if she was fooling about with other men?”
“Because Eve always wants what isn’t available to her,” Matt said, a cynical twist to his lips. “I wasn’t dancing to her tune anymore.”
“You haven’t explained why you stayed with the company. I thought it was a temporary measure.”
“It was a condition of my father’s will. He had another massive stroke that killed him just after Ross was born. He left me forty percent of the company on the understanding that I remained in charge. I suppose by then he’d started to see through Charlie, and Philip had already left to take up a position at Stevenson’s.”
“Roker resented you as well, then?”
“No, not at all. It was very all amicable. He knew that Charlie and I would always be ahead of him, simply because it was a family firm. He got another offer but continued to be a friend of the family. It was him who first suggested the amalgamation, as a matter of fact.”
“Oh, I see.”
Matt looked at her askance. “You don’t like Philip?”
“I only met him briefly for the first time the other night,” she said evasively.
“Anyway, returning to my father, I couldn’t afford to turn my back on that bloody will. I had a wife and two children to support. There was no way I could afford to finish my degree. My mother would probably have financed me, but I would have been uneasy about leaving Charlie in charge of Interactive.”
“You’d got involved with the business in spite of yourself?”
“I suppose so. It was the final straw for Charlie, though. He’s still full of resentment, and our relationship has never recovered.” The smile her directed at her, so full of entreaty, tugged at places she had no control over. “But don’t feel too sorry for me, darling,” he said softly. “For a year or two, things improved. I took overall control of the company, with the help of Eve’s vital five percent, and got on with life as best I could. If nothing else, I had the boys and was determined they would have as normal a family life as possible, in spite of their mother’s instability. They’ll eventually choose their own careers without any influence from me.”
“So you’ve spent your life doing what everyone else wanted you to do.” She released the smile she could no longer hold in check. “What about your
own aspirations?”
“They were fulfilled when I met you.”
“Matt, don’t.” She shook her head, confused, irresolute, but still determined not to come between him and his new baby. If he so much as touched her, that resolve would crumble.
“I’m sorry, Ashley, but you did ask.”
“Tell me more. There is more, isn’t there?”
He cocked a brow. “Sure you want to hear it? It’s not pretty.”
“Now I’m really intrigued.”
“Okay, don’t say you haven’t been warned.” Matt propped his buttocks against the windowsill and looked directly at her. “In those early days, I had my mother to use as a sounding board when things got rough and, of course, the horses at Lingfield. I stopped pining for what might have been and decided to make the best use I could of the hand life had dealt me. After all, I was in a far better position than most, and if not happy, I was at least content. The boys have adjusted well to life at school and received encouraging reports. On their holidays, I always make time to be with them and we go off doing things together that exclude Eve.”
“She doesn’t mind?”
“She barely mentions it. We really do lead separate lives. She has a ton of friends and also spends a lot of time in the West Country with her mother and stepfather. I don’t often go with her. Stephanie and I don’t see eye to eye.”
“Like mother, like daughter?”
“Something like that. Eve goes off doing whatever she does whilst the boys and I ride, go sailing, stuff like that. They even somehow persuaded me to go white-water rafting with them recently.” He raised his eyes to heaven, but Ashley wasn’t fooled. He was as big a child as his sons were. “The boys are used to the way their mother behaves and treat her with offhand affection. But they aren’t particularly keen to spend much time with her in the holidays and prefer to be with their grandmother.”
He looked up at her and the smile he offered her melted her already vulnerable heart. “And then, Ms. Wilde, I met you and you turned my whole well-organized world on its head. I stopped being satisfied with what I had and began wanting so much more. I wanted you. I still want you so much that it hurts like hell. And I give you due warning, it might have taken me a long time to find you, but now that I have, I’ve no intention of ever letting you go.”
“Matt,” she said, ignoring the surging tide of emotion his possessiveness stirred deep within her core. “You still haven’t explained about the baby. Whose it is, I mean.”
“Haven’t you guessed?” She shook her head. “I should have thought it would be obvious. It’s Charlie’s, of course.”
Chapter Six
“What!” After everything Matt had just told her, it shouldn’t have come as any great surprise, but she still had trouble getting her head round something so tawdry. “Surely he didn’t tell you so?”
“No, but think about, it would be his ultimate revenge.” Matt suddenly looked bone weary and every one of his forty-one years. Ashley desperately wanted to comfort him, but her emotions were too raw, she still didn’t totally believe him, and so she didn’t move. “Not only has he finally had the woman he’s loved for years,” Matt said with a derisive little shrug, “but he also thinks he’s put me in the position of having to bring up his child as my own, and that I won’t realize I’ve been duped. He’d get a real buzz out of that.”
“But Eve must know you can’t father any more children.”
“No, actually she doesn’t. I never told her about the vasectomy.”
“You didn’t tell me, either.”
“It’s not something I talk about. When we first got together, you told me you couldn’t have children and not to worry about condoms. When our relationship got more serious, it didn’t seem to matter.”
“Yes, I suppose I can see that, but why didn’t you tell Eve?”
“I didn’t see the need since we don’t sleep together anymore.”
Ashley mulled over what he’d said. “I don’t think she’s as indifferent to your lack of interest in her as you want to think.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Her visit to the office the other day. What prompted that, do you suppose? She’s never put in an appearance here before, not in all the years I’ve worked here. She never even comes to the company dos. Well, not the ones in Reigate, anyway. That’s why I’ve never met her before.”
“Perhaps she really did come up on a whim to look at a house.” He shrugged. “Who knows? I don’t think she knows about you and me, well, not for sure, anyway. I guess I must have changed since we’ve been together, and she will have sensed that. I don’t spend a lot of time in the Southampton house, but even so, she must have noticed a difference.”
“But why does she care if she plays around, I mean?”
“Because she hates to be sidelined. Everything has to be on her terms. I’d had enough of it, and when we decided to move the head office to Reigate, I saw an opportunity to distance myself from her even more.”
“Wasn’t that Charlie’s suggestion? The move, I mean.”
“Yes, and one of the few he’s come up with that I supported wholeheartedly, and not just because it means I can spend even less time in Southampton. As the boys are now old enough to understand, I saw it as an ideal opportunity to make the break. Not that I told her so. Until the amalgamation’s in the bag, I need her five percent. So I procrastinated, I’m afraid, let her get estate agents leaflets for houses in this area.”
“Isn’t that rather playing into her hands?”
“Perhaps, but what else could I do?” He scowled at some private memory. “She knows that right now the balance of power lies with her, and she’s loving every minute of it.”
“Do you think she really knows about us?” Ashley shook her head. “How could she? We’ve been excessively careful.”
“She would have run straight to Charlie with her suspicions, and dutiful lover that he is, he’d have moved heaven and earth to find out.” His scathing tone caused Ashley to shiver. Mistaking her reaction for being cold, Matt threw another log on the fire, pushing it into place with the heel of his shoe. “It would suit him admirably to catch me out.”
“Yes, but I still don’t see—”
“He could have had someone follow me, I suppose. I know I always put my car in your garage overnight, but I have to admit I’ve never thought that I might actually be tailed here.”
“That would explain why Charlie was being so charming to me last night,” she said with the ghost of a smile. “And why it upset you so much.”
He exhaled sharply. “You have no idea!”
“But you still haven’t told me how Charlie and Eve could possibly imagine you’d think the baby is yours if you don’t sleep with her.”
“Well, Charlie can be an inventive sod, when it suits him. We were invited to spend the weekend with Peter, Charlie, and Charlie’s new wife about four months ago now. Thankfully I was supposed to be away on business, which was unfortunately cancelled at the last minute, so I had no excuse not to go with her.”
“I remember you complaining about it at the time.”
“Yes, and matters got worse when it turned out that Charlie’s wife was away on a photo shoot.”
“He thought you’d be away as well and hoped to get Eve there alone?”
“Exactly. He was less than pleased to see me, and the feeling was entirely mutual. I drank more than usual on the Saturday night, just to drown out their irritating flirting. I didn’t, however, drink enough to make me literally legless, which is how I finished up. I remember Eve and Charlie between them having to put me to bed.” He fixed her with a penetrating gaze. “And that’s all I can remember until the morning when I woke up next to Eve.”
“So what happened?”
“I can only surmise that Charlie put something in my drink. It’s just the sort of thing it would amuse him to do. Rohypnol, perhaps? Otherwise known as the date-rape drug,” he said in response to Ashley’s blank gaze. “
He wouldn’t have forced himself on Eve. If she turned him down, he’d have accepted her decision. She obviously didn’t, though, and he took advantage of me being there to get one over on me. To do that, he needed me to be out of it.” Matt scowled. “I vaguely recall some activity, but it’s all pretty hazy.”
Grimacing, Ashley covered her mouth with her hand. “They made love with you in the same room?” She shuddered. “That’s gross.”
“Yes, but shagging my wife in my presence, whilst I was virtually out cold and in no position to do anything about it, would appeal to Charlie’s warped mind.”
“Is Eve so depraved that she’d allow that to happen?”
“Trust me, he’d only have to flatter her a bit, tell her how despicable I am to neglect her, and she’d be putty in his hands.”
“Oh, Matt!” Ashley’s heart literally melted. She no longer doubted the validity of his story. Matt would never make up anything so perverted. “You’ve not exactly had it easy, have you?”
“Perhaps not,” he conceded, his eyes alight with love as he reached across the distance that separated them and finally touched her. He picked up her hand and bestowed lingering kisses on the inside of her wrist. “But I found you, didn’t I? You’re the love of my life, Ashley, and everything that’s happened has been worth it, so long as I can have you at the end of it all.”
Ashley’s insides were reduced to jelly. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth before? Why have we had to live with this agony for the past weeks?”
“I wanted to protect you. There’s still more involved, and I didn’t think it was fair to involve you.”
“To do with the business?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m already involved.”
“I know, but even so—”
“What made you decide to tell me now?”
“Apart from Charlie making a play for you?” he asked with a mordant smile.
“Apart from that.”
“I went to Lingfield after the dinner last night. Mum was still up, and I found myself telling her everything.”
Soliman, Wendy - The Name of the Game (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Page 7