The Misconception (22 page)

He closed the distance between them until he was so close she could feel his warm breath on her face. “Hi,” he said, smiling into her eyes.

“Hi,” she answered, which seemed to be the extent of her vocabulary at the moment. She couldn’t make sense of his interaction with the redhead. There had to be some explanation for it.

“Were you grading papers?” he asked.

She dredged up another word from her seriously depleted vocabulary. “Huh?”

Slowly, gently, he reached out and touched the corner of her mouth. His forefinger rubbed lightly against her skin, proving that any part of the body could be an erogenous zone.

“You’ve got a smear right there. Like a pencil mark.” Never taking his eyes from hers, he licked his finger, returned it to her face and rubbed. Electricity crackled, the world shifted, and Marietta jerked backward.

She forced herself to think, and came up with the only explanation that made sense. Jax had rebuffed the woman, because he’d seen Marietta walk into the bar. That had to be it.

“I’m not your fiancé,” she said, trying to sound firm. Instead, she sounded shaky.

“How long have you been here? I didn’t see you come in.”

“You didn’t?”

“Nope. But you’re right about not being my fiancé. We’re practically engaged, but not actually engaged, so you’re my fiancé-to-be.” He tipped his head as though he found her fascinating. Unfortunately, no doubt due to his amazing physical presence, that’s exactly how she was regarding him. “What brings you here?”

“I was just wondering the same about you,” she said.

“I came with Tracy.” He glanced over his shoulder. “She’s in back with Ryan. Nice guy, that Ryan. Great sense of humor. They’re playing darts, I think. I offered to get her a fresh glass of wine.”

“How could you?” Marietta asked.

His brow furrowed. “She was finished with her last one. I thought it would be a nice thing to do.”

She made a face at him. “Not that. How could you encourage her this way? You heard our conversation about Ryan. You know they’re practically divorced.”

His lips twitched. “The same way we’re practically engaged?”

She jabbed her index finger into his chest, which felt just as hard as it looked. Who was he anyway? Superman? Able to wow unsuspecting woman with a single touch? “I won’t let you twist my words around. Not this time. I will not have you aiding and abetting Ryan Caminetti’s ploy to get Tracy back.”

His eyebrows rose as though he didn’t know what she was talking about. Yeah, right.

“All I did was agree to come here with Tracy,” Jax said. “I’m not butting into anybody’s business, which is more than I can say for you.”

“What?”

He tapped the side of his face with a forefinger. “Let me see if I’ve got this right. You worked late, even though you should be taking it easy considering your condition.” He saw that she was about to object so he talked faster. “When you got home and realized Tracy took Ryan up on his offer, you drove straight to Paddy’s Pub. And now you plan to convince Tracy to leave.”

“You’re wrong. My car wouldn’t start, so I took a taxi,” she snapped, belatedly realizing she’d confirmed his account.

“Tracy is a grown woman who’s old enough to make her own decisions,” Jax said. “Her relationship with her husband is her business, not yours.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She rubbed her temples. “You don’t know what he did to her.”

“I take it you do?”

“I saw him at the hotel with another woman,” Marietta said. “I know he was cheating on her.”

“The same way you saw me with a woman when you came into the bar? Tell me something, Marietta. If you’d walked away instead of overhearing our conversation, would you have believed I was cheating on you?”

Yes. The answer made her pause, made her wonder if what she and Tracy had seen that day had been what it appeared, or if Ryan, too, had been innocent. But Jax, she reminded herself, wasn’t innocent. No matter what he claimed, he’d known she was behind him. He must have. Men didn’t turn away beautiful women without a good reason.

“Stay out of this, Marietta.” He took a step closer to her, reminding her of a dangerous, primal cat. She wouldn’t have been surprised had he growled.

“What?”

“You heard me. Stay out of it. I know you love Tracy, but this isn’t the way to help her. I don’t see any good coming of that.”

As much as she didn’t want to listen to him, what he said made sense. Tracy would be furious at her for interfering. Maybe, by trying to pull her sister away from Ryan, she’d be pushing them closer. She swallowed, feeling her pride sliding down her esophagus.

“What exactly do you propose?” she asked with as much dignity as she could muster.

“I propose that you get out of here before Tracy sees you. Give me a minute. I’ll get her the drink and let her know I’m leaving. Then I’ll drive you home.”

“Why should I let you drive me home?” Marietta asked. “Especially considering you’ve been drinking for the past hour?”

“All I’ve been drinking is ginger ale,” he said. “I’m giving up alcohol for the next six months or so.”

The time frame resonated with Marietta. “Why would you do that?”

“You can’t drink until after the baby was born, so why should I?” He touched her face. “A Maserati is a darn sight more comfortable to a pregnant woman than a taxi. What do you say to that ride?”

She stared at him, dazed by the realization that he’d given up alcohol. There had to be an explanation, such as that he was one of those rare men who didn’t like alcohol. That had to be it.

“Well?” He arched an eyebrow and reached out to tuck a strand of her hair behind one of her ears.

Since he was traveling in the same direction as she was, refusing him would be churlish. That, and not the little shivers that danced on her skin where his fingers brushed, was the only reason she was going to accept his offer.

“I’ll wait for you by the door,” she said in a low voice.

His expression softened and a corner of his mouth lifted, throwing his symmetry off kilter but still making him look so darn tempting that she wondered if, by doing right by Tracy, she was doing wrong by herself.

Chapter 15

As he’d proven many times in the wrestling ring, Jax was a cooperative kind of guy.

When he performed a leg drop, instead of crushing his prone opponent’s windpipe, he landed on his butt so his leg didn’t touch the other guy’s neck.

When he walloped another wrestler with a folding chair, he made sure to hit him across the beefiest part of the back, where it hurt the least.

He never, ever drove his opponent’s head into the mat when he had him in a bulldog headlock. He just made sure it looked that way.

His cooperative skills had never been put more to the test than after he discovered that, through no design of his own, Marietta was pregnant.

He could have kept on ranting and raving at her for duping him, but he hadn’t. He’d tried instead to comprehend her incomprehensible conception scheme. When that failed, he put the past behind him and focused on the best interests of their unborn baby. The truce, the marriage proposal, the move next door: They’d all been in the interest of cooperation.

He’d gone so far above and beyond the call of cooperation, it was scary. And now he’d moved into the realm of involvement, which is what he’d been engaging in when he’d sagely advised Marietta to leave Tracy alone. By doing so, he’d probably saved her relationship with her sister.

That’s why it irked the hell out of him that Marietta didn’t seem to know the meaning of the word cooperation. She’d fought him at every juncture and now. . . now she’d gone as silent as a mime.

Fourteen minutes into the fifteen-minute drive from Paddy’s Pub to their side-by-side townhouses, anybody would have thought she’d lost the ability to speak.

He’d tried everything to get her to open up, including jokes about Captain Hook having trouble telling time because his second hand kept falling off and nobody being sure which position the Invisible Man played on the football team. In response, he’d gotten nothing. Not a laugh. Not a chuckle. Not even a request to shut up.

By the time he pulled his Maserati curbside behind Tracy’s car in front of their townhouses, he was considering getting his crowbar out of his toolbox to pry open her teeth. Then the Red Sea of her mouth parted, and she spoke.

“Why didn’t you tell me at the bar that Tracy didn’t drive to Paddy’s Pub?” Marietta asked.

Since Marietta’s mind moved in strange ways, Jax was a little freaked out that he immediately grasped the implications of her question. He got out of the car, came around to the passenger’s side and opened the door while he considered how to answer. He could lie or play dumb, but that wasn’t his style. So he told her the truth.

“Because I thought you might not leave with me if I told you Ryan was going to give her a ride home,” he said.

His hand was outstretched to help her get out of the low-slung automobile, but she ignored it and got out herself. “Damn it, Jax,” Marietta cried. “How could you do that?”

“Tracy didn’t seem to mind.”

“Of course she didn’t! She still thinks she’s in love with him.” Marietta slammed the car door. The harsh sound cut through the still night, echoing her fury. She walked quickly to her door, which was in darkness since she hadn’t left on a porch light.

Jax stood on the sidewalk, his hands jammed in his pockets, watching Marietta rummage through her purse for her keys. Minutes ago, he’d been thinking about how uncooperative she was. Now he added unreasonable to the equation.

He shouldn’t attempt to reason with Marietta any more tonight. He should disappear into his own townhouse and shut the door on Marietta’s anger, which was exactly what she deserved.

He’d no sooner taken a step toward his place when he saw her swipe at something on her face. Oh, hell. It was a tear. His feet changed directions before his mind reconsidered the wisdom of reasoning with the unreasonable.

She was still rifling through her purse when he reached her, so he put two fingers under her chin and forced her to face him. As he suspected, her eyes glimmered with unshed tears. Something wasn’t right here. Marietta’s reaction was much too strong.

“I don’t know what’s come over me.” She blinked rapidly to keep the tears at bay. “It must be true what they say about pregnant women being overly emotional.”

“That’s not all of it, Marietta. Something’s wrong. It might help if you told me what it was.”

“I’m worried about Tracy, that’s what’s wrong.” Her voice had lost all its anger. “She fell for Ryan’s lines once. Chances are she’ll fall for them again.”

Jax wasn’t fooled into believing there wasn’t more to Marietta’s pain, but worry over her sister certainly seemed to be part of it. He smoothed the hair back from her face, which looked pinched and upset.

“What if they’re not lines?” he asked softly. “If Ryan did cheat on her, what if he regrets it? What if he truly loves her and wants to make their marriage work?”

“Oh, please.” She swiped at another escaped tear. “Men like Ryan don’t love. They lust. He’s only lusting after Tracy, because he’s been without her for a while. If he gets her back, it won’t be long before he’s lusting after someone else. It’s a never-ending pattern perpetuated by the male of the species.”

He stared hard at her until the tough facade she wore like a mask slipped, revealing the vulnerable woman underneath. Her eyes were dewy with tears, her chin quivering with emotion.

“Who did this to you?” he asked softly.

She lowered her eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Who hurt you like this that you can’t trust any man?” he asked, willing her to tell him, to let him into her life.

“Nobody hurt me,” Marietta said so harshly he knew it couldn’t be true. “I don’t trust men, because evolutionary evidence supports the fact that they can’t be trusted.”

He shook his head, still studying her. He advanced a step, and she retreated, until her back was against the door and only the breeze was between them. “I don’t buy that. Somebody did something to make you this way. Who was it? An ex-husband?”