The Misconception (31 page)

“Did you ever consider,” he asked in a low voice, “that you were wrong about what you saw in that lobby? Did it ever occur to you that maybe that woman invited me to have lunch at the hotel because she wanted to get me into bed?”

Marietta hadn’t considered it then. She wouldn’t be gullible enough to entertain the ridiculous notion now. “So now you’re going to tell me her seduction didn’t work?”

“Yes,” Ryan said, and there was force behind the word. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you. I’m guilty of being naïve. That’s all. You and Tracy saw her kissing me. If you’d stuck around, you would have seen me stop her.”

The image of Jax thrusting away the buxom, beautiful drunk the other night at Paddy’s Pub sprang to Marietta’s mind. If she had walked away a moment sooner, she would have believed the worst of him, just as she and Tracy had believed the worst of Ryan. For the first time, a sliver of doubt chipped away at Marietta’s consciousness. Logic warred with it.

Man’s propensity to stray was a scientific fact. She still couldn’t quite believe that Jax hadn’t known she was behind him when he’d rebuffed the woman just as she couldn’t believe that Ryan was telling the truth. Especially since he’d rendezvoused with the woman at a hotel instead of a restaurant.

“So you make a habit of meeting amorous women for lunch at hotels?” Marietta asked.

“She was a client who said she wanted to discuss the house I was building for her,” Ryan said. “She said she was staying at the hotel, because she was having problems with her husband.”

“Oh, please.” The doubt was mushrooming, but Marietta ignored it and injected her voice with sarcasm. “I’m a biologist, remember? A man doesn’t turn away an attractive woman offering sex. Especially when he’s the one who registered for the room.”

He leaned closer, narrowing the gap between their faces. “I didn’t do that, either. She used my name on the registration form, hoping I’d foot the bill for her room. When it comes to sex, she thinks the man should pay.”

Marietta didn’t reply. Even though it sounded logical, what Ryan was saying couldn’t possibly be true. Men were predisposed to stray. Hadn’t she seen enough examples of that in her life? Hadn’t her own father proved her theory?

“I don’t know why I wasted my breath telling you that.” Ryan shook his head, sounding resigned as he leaned back in his seat. “Just do one thing for me, Marietta. Don’t tell Tracy what we talked about.”

“Why not?” Marietta asked. “I would have thought that
explanation
is something you’d want her to hear.”

“What I want,” Ryan said, “is for Tracy to ask me what happened that day and to reach her own conclusions.”

Marietta was about to ask Ryan to expand on his reply when she caught sight of a very large man walking up the creaky steps toward them. A very large, very symmetrical man if you didn’t count the white sling encasing his left arm.

“Jax,” she mouthed, as new questions flooded her brain.

Across the distance, Jax grinned. The circumstances weren’t ideal and the theater was nothing more than a stage and some rickety chairs, but he was headed exactly where he wanted to be.

With Marietta.

Her brown-blonde hair was back in its customary bun, and she was wearing a god-awful shade of green that did unflattering things to her skin. His libido hummed to attention anyway.

Before he could get to Marietta, however, there was the matter of the man sitting in the aisle seat.

“Ryan, my man.” He reached their row, slapping the other man lightly on the shoulder. “Could you let me through, pal? No offense, but she’s prettier than you are.”

“Sure thing.” Ryan stood to grant him access to the row, and Marietta scooted over one seat to make room for him.

“What happened to your arm?” Marietta asked before he could sit down, her multi-colored eyes wide.

Jax took his time settling into his seat, hoping he could get through the next few minutes with his secret intact.

“Hello, Marietta.” He leaned over and kissed her. Her mouth went soft and welcoming. Her silence, he knew, would only be temporary.

“Is it broken?” She asked the question the instant he broke off the kiss.

Here goes, he thought. “It’s my shoulder, and it’s not broken. Just dislocated.”

Marietta gasped. “You dislocated your shoulder selling stocks and bonds?”

“Of course not.” Jax had a story ready, but he didn’t want to tell it. Instead, he wished he could confide that he’d instinctively stretched out his arm to break his fall when Raving Maniac had slammed him to the mat with too much gusto.

“Then how did you do it?” The question came from Ryan, who was supposed to be his friend.

Jax rolled his eyes. He was dying here. Didn’t Ryan realize he didn’t need this kind of pressure?

“Jax? How did you do it?” Marietta pressed when he didn’t answer. Her eyes were soft with concern as she laid her small hand on his uninjured shoulder.

The truth bubbled on his lips, but then he thought of how Marietta would react. He sighed aloud.

“In the gym when I was working out,” he lied. “I tried to lift too much weight. It’s nothing. I have to wear the sling for a while, but I’ll be good as new in a couple of weeks.”

“But—”

“The play’s about to start,” Jax interrupted as the lights dimmed.

He settled back in his seat and slung his good arm around her shoulder. Instead of batting it away, she turned and smiled at him. Guilt rose up in Jax like floodwater.

Damn, he hated lying to her. But how could he tell her what he did for a living after the things she’d said about pro wrestling?

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if he shed the Secret Stud act and took up another. Such as the Say-No-To-Drugs Dude or the Taboo-on-Tobacco Man. He might even be able to dream up an act throwing infidelity in a bad light.

He frowned. He wasn’t only dreaming, he was stuck.

The UWA wasn’t about to let go of a proven crowd-pleaser. Lance Strong, the president of the organization, was determined to give the fans more of what they wanted. According to unscientific exit polls, that was to see the Secret Stud unmasked.

Strong was pushing for the unmasking to take place during the pay-per-view anniversary extravaganza, which was inconveniently scheduled after Jax’s shoulder would be healed.

The UWA would milk all the publicity from the unmasking it could get. If the mainstream press ran a photo of Jax, there was a chance Marietta would see it. Unmasked, Jax might as well kiss goodbye his chances of becoming Marietta’s husband.

She snuggled closer to him, and he got a whiff of shampoo. It didn’t smell of flowers, papaya or any of the other scents the shampoo industry was always promoting, but something simple and clean. Marietta’s shampoo was as straightforward as she was, as sincere as Jax didn’t have the courage to be.

Down on the stage, the curtains parted. Tracy appeared with a male actor, both of them dressed entirely in black and white. Marietta’s sister wore a white top hat over hair that seemed to have been dipped in an ink well.

“Why did Tracy do that to her hair?” Jax whispered to Marietta.

“It’s a mood thing,” she answered back in a quiet voice. That made absolutely no sense to Jax. Then again, even though Tracy had always seemed sensible, she
was
related to Marietta.

Nobody spoke on stage, amplifying the occasional cough and fidget from the audience. The actor next to Tracy stood deathly still. Then, very slowly, very deliberately, with slow, staccato movements, Tracy removed her hat. Just as slowly, and just as jerkily, she examined it. Bit by bit, she moved the hat toward a utilitarian pine table.

“What’s going on?” Jax asked Marietta.

“Tracy’s taking off her hat and laying it on the table,” she answered.

“I can see that, but why?”

Marietta shook her head. “This is experimental theater. Who knows why the actors do what they do?”

Beside them, Ryan leaned forward and placed a finger to his lips. “Shhhh.”

Jax returned his attention to the stage where Tracy was removing a wristwatch with the same frustrating slowness. He glanced at Ryan to gauge his reaction. The other man’s expression was rapt, as though Tracy were performing a slow-motion strip tease. At this rate, it’d be Christmas before the guy saw any skin.

A long while later, with the watch finally deposited on the table, the male actor spent an agonizing amount of time loosening his tie. Jax glanced at Marietta. Her eyes appeared to be closed.

“Are you asleep?” Jax asked close to her ear.

She startled. “No, of course not!”

“You can’t fool me,” Jax whispered.

Marietta elbowed him and Ryan shushed them again. Jax supposed that was because on stage Tracy was getting into the act again. The male actor was making a pointed show of handing his tie to Tracy, who Jax supposed would deposit it on the table with the other items.

Jax stifled an urge to stand up and yell, “Would you just put the blasted tie down?”

Eons later, after the crew members pulled out a large white screen and shadow dancers positioned themselves behind it, Jax was already resigned to a long evening.

He entertained himself by playing with the hair that had gotten loose from Marietta’s bun, expecting to get a slap on the hand. Instead she nestled against him, and he wondered if the craziness on stage had transferred itself to Marietta.

The small smile she gave him heated his blood, and he was insanely glad he was sitting next to her at the worst play he’d ever attended. Even if it had taken a separated shoulder and a forced vacation from pro wrestling to get him here.

CHROME AND MIRRORS was as far removed from Old Town Alexandria’s quaint streets as a peacock from a skinned chicken. Whereas the rest of the community strove to keep the past alive, the nightspot resembled Jax’s idea of a future gone glimmer mad.

Everything inside the place glinted. The chrome accents on the long, sleek bar and the solid chrome legs of the tall stools reflected off the diamond-patterned floor. Wall-to-wall mirrors enhanced the effect, nearly blinding Jax with chrome.

He drummed his fingers on the shiny chrome of the table separating him and Ryan from Tracy and Marietta, worrying about the effects of secondhand smoke on pregnant women and their unborn babies. They were in a booth at the back of the bar, away from the handful of smokers, but still he worried.

Across the booth, Marietta caught and held his eyes. She was different tonight, somehow softer and infinitely more approachable. He wanted her away from the smoke, but mostly he just wanted her.

So how had he ended up sitting next to Ryan instead of beside Marietta? He liked Ryan a lot, but their side of the booth was so full, it’d be grounds for assault and battery if either of them moved an elbow.

“You were great, Trace.” Ryan reiterated what had become a familiar refrain since
Insignificant?
had come to a merciful end. “I especially liked the way you picked up that penny during the shadow dance.”

Tracy glanced up at Ryan and just as quickly looked away. Considering heat had risen off the two of them the last time Jax had seen them together, he wondered why she was keeping her distance. She’d practically dragged Marietta into her side of the booth.

“You knew I was picking up a penny?” Tracy asked.

“Of course,” Ryan said. “It was obvious.”

No, Jax thought, it wasn’t. He’d thought she lost a contact lens. Either that or she was in the early stages of keeling over from boredom.

“Speaking of obvious, how about the meaning of the play?” Jax asked, fishing for information. In truth, he had no idea what message the actors had been trying to get across.

A smile shadowed Tracy’s mouth. “I wasn’t sure the audience would get it, but I’m glad you did, Jax.”

“I’d love to hear your take on it,” Marietta said, an impish grin on her face.

Uh-oh. “It’s a very simple concept,” Jax hedged, “but difficult to grasp.”