Liar Liar (18 page)

“So, what’s next?” Seneca asked. “Is there anything we can do for the investigation?”

“The mediation hearing is set for Monday.” Matteo exhaled noisily. “Jessica is set to arrive at a Dallas hotel this afternoon. Tomorrow, she’s set to visit our headquarters.”

“Huh.” Seneca barked a laugh. “Headquarters? You mean here?” Her hand swept around the ranch house.

“The thought had crossed my mind.” Matteo ran a palm over his face, trying to suppress the desire to see Jess astride one of the Smoking Brandt Ranch horses. Or riding atop him. “Nothing in my little office downtown but paperwork. I’ll copy my office files on a flash drive. Until then, I think it’s best if we answer her questions thoroughly. She’s going to want to review all our paperwork, especially the legal language of the guarantee. Give it to her. Give her anything she needs.”

“And what about you, Bro?” Seneca asked with a wicked smile. “You gonna drop by and give her what she needs?”
Abuela
Tina laughed as she cleared away their plates.

As closely knit as their family was, sometimes Matteo wished he had a little more privacy when it came to his personal life. Still, it was nice that they cared so much.

“Maybe.” Matteo ruffled Seneca’s hair like he hadn’t done since they were kids. “I didn’t realize my love life was anyone’s business.”

“Ha!” Seneca jerked her head out of reach and fluffed her dark bangs out of her eyes. “Someone’s got to keep their eyes on you!” Seneca snatched up her glass and followed
Abuela
Tina to the kitchen.

Matteo bit his lip. The ‘someone’ he wanted was probably taxing down the runaway from Atlanta to DFW right now. She may refuse to see him, if he just popped over to her hotel, but, he had to try. He owed her an apology and an explanation, even if she never wanted to see him again. He meant to give his failed test results, however dismal, to her.

One way or another, Jess deserved to know that for once, he didn’t give a damn about what his software dictated as truth.

The Dallas-Fort Worth airport was a nightmare and the rest of the trip looked just as promising. It was far too easy for Jess to fall back into her pit of worry and self-doubt. She couldn’t believe that Matt would go to such lengths to thwart an investigation—or that he’d been so attracted to her that he’d succumbed to her womanly wiles. Neither scenario was probable and both left her with a sour tang in the back of her throat that tasted of disbelief.

After a hasty conference with Max, she hopped a direct flight under orders to meet with the company execs at LoveLines over the weekend before the scheduled legal mediation session with the plaintiff on Monday morning. While Max wasn’t thrilled that she’d had an affair with a man who was now known to be the defendant, the fact that Matt admitted the system hadn’t matched them only added fuel to the fire. Heck, the guy wasn’t even a client! She fumed. At least she hadn’t had to describe the gory details of their affair to Max. Jess had packed her most business-like attire, refusing to even consider how Matt might like it.

Her cell rang while she took the shuttle to her downtown Dallas hotel.

“All ready to see Mr. Hot Fudge again?” Suze asked.

Jess gulped. She wanted to see Matt more than anything, but she absolutely dreaded it. “Hardly.” She steeled herself. “I just have to finish this case, and then I’m out of here.”

“Listen, hon. I know this is shit timing and all, but I have to tell you. You’re my closest friend…you’re like a sister to me.”

Jess frowned. Suze wasn’t normally this cagey. “What’s up?” she asked.

“Well, I’m on my way back from Barbados. Early.” Suze hedged in an entirely un-Suze manner. She was typically bold and brazen.

“Just you? Where’s Caroline? Isn’t she with you?” Suze had booked the trip with her pretty cousin, when Jess hadn’t been able to take the time off.

“Well, yes, I mean, she was. She isn’t anymore.” Suze paused and then blurted out. “I saw Caro coming out of Stan’s room the day before yesterday. At two in the morning, so you can draw your own conclusions,” she emphasized. “I couldn’t believe it. I mean, she’s always been a man killer, but…with Stan? Your ex? She always hated him, even in college.”

Caroline? With…Stan?
Jess felt numb. “Did you talk to her?”

Suze sighed, and Jess could sense her embarrassment. “Yeah, I confronted her. She got all defensive and told me to mind my own business.”

“Huh.” Jess exhaled noisily, surprised that she didn’t feel angrier. It was a surprise that after the Montana trip, betrayal from someone she considered a friend paled in comparison to her raging riot of emotions of losing Matt. “Well, it has been a year,” she said. “I just don’t understand it. Why would she get involved with Stan. She hated him most of all. Always called him the worst of womanizers.”

She didn’t want to believe Caroline would deliberately sleep with her ex-husband, but even more surprising was the fact that she wasn’t fuming.

In fact, Jess didn’t feel anything at all, except minor irritation.

Her best friend, however, was ready to explode.

“I just can’t believe Caro would do something like that!” Suze exclaimed. “So, I packed it in. I’m at the airport now, on standby for home.” She sniffed. “I’m really sorry, hon. She’s practically the only family I have left. I never dreamed we’d run into Stan here, or that Caro would be such a….”

“It’s fine, Suze. Really, it is.” And, Jess realized with a jolt, it was.

While Caroline’s betrayal irked her, it was nothing compared to the hurt she felt from Matt. She felt more regret over losing him than she had in years of unfaithful treatment with Stan or Caroline’s seduction.

“Well, I just thought you should know…Hey!” Suze brightened with relief. “You want to get lunch when you get back to Atlanta, hon?”

“Of course,” Jess promised. “I have to run now. I’m heading to the hotel. Need to put on my game face.”

“Kisses,” Suze said. And the line cut off.

Twenty minutes later, Jess felt more steady and primed to go over the allegations from entertainment exec Alicia Lange. She resolved to put aside her feelings for Matteo Brandt until the trial was over, when she would have the chance to sift through them like clues.

After a short flight, it was amazing how little time one needed to freshen up when there was no chance of a hot hookup. She washed her face, pulled her hair back, and dialed a quick call for room service, ordering a snack without anything chocolate or decadent.

She wasn’t playing the part of a LoveLiner anymore. Now, she was back to being ‘just Jess’. She dumped her briefcase, powered on her laptop and changed into a grey tank top, a black yoga wrap and matching lounge pants, before settling in for a long boring evening.

Though it was bound to have little impact on her case, Jess couldn’t resist doing an internet search variations of Matteo Brandt, his ranch and LoveLines for any media coverage or insight. What she found were a few mentions, mainly in entrepreneurial magazines. And an obituary, showing Frank and Maria Brandt reportedly killed in a vehicle accident almost two decades ago. So, the death of his parents wasn’t an exaggeration. Poor guy really had lost his parents early. The obit cited surviving family as a teen son, Matteo, a younger sister Seneca, and maternal grandmother Destina DeVera. Matteo’s
Abuela
Tina. So, LoveLines truly was a family affair. Then, the other name caught her eye again. Seneca.

Seneca Brandt.

Her personal love consultant was Matteo’s sister.

Jess felt like such a fool, which only fed the conviction that her seduction was nothing more than a carefully crafted lie on the part of Matteo Brandt. She’d been duped by the supposedly confidential questioning of her love consultant, who no doubt fed her answers to Matt in order to set her up. No wonder they’d connected so easily! The one thing Jess couldn’t fathom is how they knew she was a plant for investigation. Seneca had been her consultant from the first, long before Jess had ever been assigned the case.

She rubbed her forehead. It just didn’t make sense.

A knock on the door heralded her food. Thank god, she was starving. Jess scooted to the door and flung it open.

Matt stood just outside, his expression guarded.

“You can’t be here,” she blurted out, trying to bar the space with her arm.

“We need to talk,” he said. Though he didn’t move, he seemed to take up all the space in the hall.

“I have nothing to say,” Jess leaned against the doorjamb. Why didn’t she just slam the door in his face? Hours of mental toughening up from here to Atlanta should’ve made her immune to the fact that he looked just as delicious now as he had in Montana.

“Then let me do the talking.” Matt spoke softly, his whole body radiating tension.

She shouldn’t. She really, really shouldn’t.

Jess exhaled noisily. “Fine.” She checked the empty hallway. “But only for a minute. I have some research to do.” It galled her how much leeway she was willing to give him—something she would never do for any man.

“I can imagine how busy you must be.” A wry smile quirked the side of his lips and then faded. “I want you to know that I never meant to hurt you. What happened between us….” He shook his head. “I’ve never felt anything like that.

“So?” Jess folded her arms over her chest. She refused to let him know how much he affected her. “So what?”

“So, after I left you that morning, I knew it was a mistake. You see,” he paused. “I still want you. Want us. I mean, I want things to work out between us.”

“I hardly think that’s possible.” she asked, skeptically.

Matt continued as if she wasn’t giving him the cold shoulder, plowing through his words in a way that made her wonder if he’d done some rehearsing on the way to her hotel. “In fact, I went back that day to prove it. I…uh…I took the test.” His eyes dropped to the floor and she noticed that he carried a manila file folder tucked into the back of his jeans.

“Test?” She frowned. “What test?”

He handed her the file. “At LoveLines. I created a personal account, and took the profile assessment.”

“You expect me to believe you’ve never created a LoveLines account? For your own system?” She crossed her arms over her chest.

Matteo smiled again. “I never had a need.”

Jess groaned and put her hand on her forehead. “So why now?”

“I thought for sure it would match us, and then you would see we were meant to be together. I even used your profile as a basis for my responses.”

Jess shook her head. “I can’t believe you did that.”

“I did it for you…for us. Or what I hope to be ‘us’ someday. There’s just one problem.” He grimaced as she took the file and scanned the pages. It looked like gibberish to Jess, just some meaningless numbers and algorithms.

“What’s the problem?” she probed. They had more than one problem separating them, but Jess didn’t feel like mentioning it right now. Not when he looked so endearingly sheepish. His tanned cheeks were fairly pink with embarrassment. She wanted to kiss and smack him at the same time.

“We didn’t match.” Matt’s voice was heavy, leaden. “I can’t explain why. Everything about you and me is so right, and yet the system…my system…says we aren’t compatible. It made me question everything. Even my feelings about you.”

Jess felt her heart sink. She moved away, covering her actions by tossing the files he’d handed her onto the desk. “I see.” Even a complex computer matching system couldn’t link the two of them together.

“No, you don’t see.” He closed the space between them. “I don’t give a damn what the test says. I know what I feel, Jess and what I feel for you is as true and honest as it gets.” He reached up to touch her hair.

She whirled away, refusing to let him see her eyes filling with tears. “You don’t know what honesty is. Gorgeous men like you never do.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I’ve always been a man of my word. I pride myself on it.” He took a step closer. “Look at me, Jess. I don’t want to be without you.” He stared in her eyes, as if daring her to call him a liar.

“You left me once already, remember?” she countered. “At the lodge. You just bailed on me.”

“That was a mistake, one I’m not willing to make again.” He shrugged. “I won’t do it again. If you walk out on us now, Jess, I’m walking after you. Just fair warning.”

Her heart beat wildly. “Is there an ‘us’? I don’t remember establishing that fact.” Jess turned away.

“We established that fact the first time I put my mouth on you.” He snuck up behind her and his arm came around her waist. Oh, she wanted that mouth on her now! She willed herself not to lean against him, to revel in the citrusy warmth of his body. Heat radiated off him touching her through her grey tank top and she trembled with excitement. She wasn’t supposed to want him, damn it!

Clearly, her body thought otherwise.

“Oh, Jess,” Matteo sighed, his breath warm against the back of her neck. “We fit so perfectly together. Like…like ice cream and hot fudge.”

“No,” she murmured, closing her eyes, but not moving away from him. What she wanted to do with him and hot fudge….

“You’re so cold to me,
querida
. When I want you hot. So very hot.” His teeth grazed the back of her neck, and moisture flooded between her legs. Jess felt herself caving, giving in to him again.

Why was it so easy to forget herself when she was around him?

His palm slipped under the hem of her grey tank top to cup her bare breast, and she shivered at the play of his fingertips across her abdomen.

“Matteo,” she warned. It was a mock protest. Her body reveled in his touch again, on the feel of his warm breath racing along her skin.

“Matt.” He corrected, cupping her chin and turning her face to his. “I’m Matt to you Jess. Only for you.”

And then he was kissing her. Those lips of his, the ones that spoke half truths were on her face, her neck, her hair and she wanted it. Wanted all of him, god help her.

She felt her own lips part and knew that tonight would be no different than any other time she was with him. He pushed her beyond her carefully crafted boundaries, beyond all the barriers she put up around her heart.