Matthew's Children

“It feels like a different place.”

“Too quiet?” Matt half rose. “We could go somewhere else.”

“This is fine.” The truth was she would feel uncomfortable wherever they went, because she hadn’t been in a social situation with him for a very long time.

She’d avoided Sully’s this past year in order to avoid him. In her heart she knew the reasons for his divorce had nothing to do with her. Yet, her conscience demanded that she keep her distance while he was going through the process of ending his marriage. Just knowing how she felt about him—and that her feelings had the potential to become much deeper if she let them—had been reason enough.

A server came and they placed their orders. Jane’s emotions steadied now that she had a drink in her hands. She swirled the glass and watched the ice cubes jostle in the translucent amber liquid.

Sometimes, when she was playing dangerous “what-if” games with herself, she wondered what would have happened if she and Matt had met each other much earlier—before Gillian. Jane was pretty sure he found her attractive. And she knew he liked her. So was she crazy to believe they might have ended up together?

Yes. She had only to recall the two failed relationships in her past for her answer.

“You’re avoiding eye contact.” Matthew sounded amused.

She lifted her head, glad he couldn’t possibly be aware of what she’d been fantasizing about. She tried to keep meeting his gaze, but eventually, she had to blink. The blue of his eyes was such a piercing shade. “You should be a judge. You would be impossible to lie to.”

“Is that what you’re planning to do?”

She smiled. “No. But admit it. Being alone like this. It must seem as strange to you as it does to me.”

All amusement drained from his expression. “I don’t want it to feel that way, Jane. I want us to be able to work together. To be friends.”

She swallowed. It didn’t sound like much. Yet it was. “It’s difficult not to remember the last time we were…”

Matt’s expression turned grim. He finished her sentence for her. “The last time we were alone in a public place together?”

“Yes.”

“I’m so sorry about that, Jane. I can’t tell you how sorry.”

His regret was deeply sincere, and it only made her respect him more. The scene hadn’t been his fault. It hadn’t been either of their faults. On the afternoon of their fateful lunch together, they’d been discussing business, a case that was before the court, when Gillian Gray had found them.

Jane could still picture the surprise on Matthew’s face. The gallant way he had immediately stood, reaching for a third chair so his wife could join them.

In those first seconds he hadn’t noticed Gillian’s fury. But Jane had. Because it had been directed at her.

“What are you doing with my husband?”

Nothing, Jane had been about to say. But before she could utter a word, Gillian Gray had grabbed a goblet from the table and hurled the white wine it contained into Jane’s face.

She would never forget the shock. The intense humiliation.

“Madam.” A server had been at her elbow almost immediately, leading her to the women’s washroom.

Behind her, she’d heard Matthew speaking to his wife. “Are you crazy?”

Not the right words to appease. Gillian had raged at him; she’d really let him have it. At the door to the ladies’ room, Jane had paused, unable to stop listening until Gillian—finally out of foul words and insane accusations—turned on her heel and marched out of the restaurant.

From across the room Jane had met Matthew’s gaze. She’d seen the abject apology in his eyes before he’d raced after his wife.

All of that would have been terrible enough. But Eve Brandstrom and two other lawyers from the firm had witnessed the entire debacle. Jane still didn’t believe Eve had said anything to anyone else.

But the other lawyers hadn’t been so discreet, and soon the story was circulating Brandstrom and Norton. Jane couldn’t go anywhere without being confronted with the speculation and curiosity in her coworkers’ eyes.

She had reacted by keeping her mouth shut and avoiding Matthew as much as possible. Since he’d done the same, it wasn’t difficult.

Now she couldn’t believe she was across the table from him again. She still wasn’t sure this was wise. He might be an unmarried man legally, but he would never be “available” where she was concerned.

“I should have apologized at the time,” Matthew said. “But I was afraid it would only feed the gossip at the office if anyone saw me talking to you.”

“I understand. I imagine you had enough to handle at home.” Jane had heard about Gillian’s subsequent obsessive calls to the office. If she couldn’t reach her husband, she would yell at the poor receptionist. A few weeks later, word got out that Matthew had spent the night sleeping in his office, on the couch.

Soon after came the announcement that Matthew and Gillian Gray had separated.

A year later, the divorce became final.

And now that the marriage was at last over, Jane had to know the answer to the one question that had puzzled her for so long. “Why did Gillian think we were having an affair?”

Surely, in this day and age, his wife had expected some of Matthew’s colleagues to be female. Why assume the worst?

Was it possible that Gillian’s feminine intuition had sensed Jane’s attraction—an attraction Jane had worked so hard to stifle—and had reacted instinctively against it?

“By that point in our marriage, Gillian was on the lookout for things to fight about. She noticed your name on my BlackBerry a few times, heard us talking on the phone, and it raised her suspicions.”

“But why?”

“Things hadn’t been going well between us for years. Opposites may attract, Jane, but they shouldn’t always get married. Especially not when they want different things from life.”

“You and Gillian were opposites?”

“In many ways. She was a drama major when I met her, and I found that exotic at the time. But after a while her incredibly emotional nature became draining.”

“I know what you mean by emotional.”

“Gillian could turn almost anything into an argument. That, too, was draining. Gradually I began staying later and later at work. After Derrick was born and Gillian opted to be at home full-time our problem became worse. Without the creative release of her career Gillian grew more restless and unhappy.”

“Did you consider hiring a nanny?”

“I’d just talked Gillian into that when she unexpectedly became pregnant with Violet.”

An old pain surfaced, but Jane refused to focus on it. This wasn’t about her. “How about you? Did you want a second child?”

“Secretly, I was thrilled, but I couldn’t admit it to Gillian or she would have accused me of getting her pregnant on purpose—which wasn’t the case. At any rate, when Violet was born, Gillian loved her as much as she loved Derrick, of course. She just transferred all her anger and resentment to me.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “The fights got worse. I began avoiding home even more, which only made Gillian angrier.”