He was a total ass. He’d thought that making love to Jess would put things right in his head. That once he’d had her he could forget about her and put an end to the affair that could jeopardize everything he’d worked for. Damn, damn,
damn
.
Making love to Jess only made him realize one thing. He was falling in love with her. Totally and completely.
What’s worse, now that he confirmed her as a plant for investigation, he’d ruined her. Her trust and her career. Aside from the fact that he’d lost her forever, she’d never be able to testify in court. Hell, she’d probably be fired.
He should be thrilled—his family and his company were safe. He could go on with business as usual.
Instead he felt like a total shit.
“You had to do it, Bro.” Seneca patted him gently on the arm. “For the
familia’s
sake.”
“Doesn’t make me feel any better.” Matteo shook his head, staring at the sun rising over the mountains in the distance. He didn’t know what to do now. Him. The guy with all the answers.
Seneca made a soft clucking noise. “Well, it should. Once we get back to Fort Worth, everything will be back to normal, you’ll see.”
“Sure.” Matt got up to leave. Seneca had no way of knowing the depth of his feelings for Jess. The last thing he was capable of doing was pretending everything was as it used to be. It wouldn’t be—not for him, anyway. Not for Jess, either, he guessed. He’d spent all that time getting to know her, building up her confidence so he could break down her inhibitions. Now it was he who felt broken apart inside. What had started out as a sham to protect his family had ended with him being exposed. He would never be the same.
“Sure, I’m right.” Seneca agreed, earnestly. “I mean, who knows? Now that you got her to open up, there’s no reason she can’t fall for one of the guys in the program, right? Isn’t that what you said?”
“What?” A thought pierced his shattered mind. Matteo stopped in his tracks. “What did you say?”
Seneca looked confused. “Remember? You said once she opened herself up, she could find a guy in the program.”
A plan began to formulate, coalesce in his brain like a thundercloud about to wash away his guilt and shame. Could it work? Matteo ran a palm over his chin. Maybe he
did
have all the answers, after all!
“Seneca,
mi hermana
, you are a genius!” He kissed both her cheeks and dashed from the room.
“Wait,” she called down the hall. “Where are you going?”
“To my room. I’ll call you later.” He shouted over his shoulder. He dashed to the elevator, then, impatient shoved at the double doors to the stairwell. Thankfully, the lodge had unlimited wi-fi. He could access the LoveLines website in less than five minutes. Two, if he hurried.
Matteo put on a fresh burst of speed, swiping his keycard through the slot in record time. Seneca was right; maybe he could fix this so everyone could get what they wanted. After last night, he had no more illusions.
He wanted Jessica Barlow for himself.
He’d make it happen, by god. He’d open a LoveLines account for himself, take the profile matching surveys and manipulate his answers to match Jess! The computer system would show another legitimate match, the fraud case would be tossed out and she would be his—at least, he hoped she would be after they both apologized. Surely it wouldn’t take long for her mind to follow where her body had already been. Her body had been his. Now he wanted the rest of her. He flipped his keycard on the dresser and fired up his laptop.
Matteo was a man on a mission, a man with a very important test to take. The LoveLines page loaded and he immediately set to work establishing his client account. He drummed his fingers impatiently as the first survey question of the matching system loaded.
Then, he took a deep breath and laid out Jessica’s profile for reference before typing in his first response.
It took hours to complete--mostly because he had to keep stopping to verify that he was duplicating words from Jess’s profile. Time well spent, he thought. With a guaranteed match, maybe things could work. He would be matched to her, there’d be no support for the phony fraud case and she’d finally believe they were meant to be together.
After the last survey entry, he exited the LoveLines system. Then he logged back in as an administrator, and queued up the next profile matching sequence for all LoveLines clients.
When the screen finished buffering, and photo icons of the women matched to his profile began to pop on his screen, Matteo smiled and laced his fingers behind his head. This would work. It had to.
Ten minutes later, he stopped smiling.
It didn’t work.
She wasn’t listed in his matches.
He couldn’t believe it! Matteo smacked his hand against his forehead. How could this be? He’d been so careful to try to create exactly the kind of profile that should’ve paired him to her. Every fiber of his being belonged with her. What the …?
He had total faith in his system, it was the perfect blend of psychological profiling and compatibility. There was no way in hell he shouldn’t be with her. Not from the messages he got from his heart and his head, not to mention other raging parts of his body.
She should be his.
He dragged his hand through his hair. Something was terribly wrong. Maybe Alicia Lange and her high priced lawyers were right. Maybe his LoveLines matchmaking system was faulty. He needed to get back to his computer files and research, to check the codes for processing the matching system.
He grabbed his cell, and punched in his sister’s number. “Get us on the next flight to home. And get the family together. We need to talk.”
No matter how you sliced it, Matteo Brandt may have just risked his family’s security on a guaranteed lie.
She should have seen this coming.
She hadn’t allowed herself to get hurt…not since Stan. After that, Jess had been too afraid to let anyone get close enough to hurt her…until Matt. Or Matteo, she supposed she should call him. Her heart ached. She was just so furious. How could she have let him get close to heart, let alone her body? She should’ve known better, should’ve seen this coming….
She haphazardly packed her clothes, ignoring the stab of regret when she trashed her ivory silk blouse, the one ruined on the first day stormy interlude. The first time she’d let him touch her. Damn that man. She didn’t care what his reasons were, he’d lied to her. Jess snatched up her betraying files and stuffed them deep into the folds of her briefcase. Her door slammed with a satisfying thunk as she left.
In the lobby, she plunked her luggage onto the rack near the hotel shuttle podium and turned, just in time to run directly into Rex Stanton.
“Looks like our breakfast date is out?” Rex smiled politely.
“Mr. Stanton.” Jess felt her cheeks grow warm. “You could say that.” She bit her lip. Honestly, she had the worst luck in the world when it came to men.
“It’s a shame, Ms. Barlow. You were definitely one of the more promising clients in this little adventure. I was hoping to draw you out a little more and see what’s underneath all that pretty packaging.”
His compliment was like a slap in the face. So, even Stanton didn’t feel like he’d scratched her surface? She didn’t know why she couldn’t just open up and let things go. She never had, actually, except for the past two days. With Matt.
“I guess sometimes things don’t work out as well as we had planned,” she replied, swallowing a stab of painful regret. She would not cry over Mr. Hot Fudge. Not in front of Mr. Vanilla Bean.
Rex stared at her sympathetically. “They rarely work out as intended, Ms. Barlow. But how we deal with them makes life interesting. Don’t you agree?” He touched her arm gently in farewell and moved away, giving her the space to check out of the lodge and resolve to clear her head of all things related to love or LoveLines.
She would
not
cry.
When the hotel shuttle for the airport pulled up, she shoved in her things and scooted to the far end of the back seat, away from the driver. Grabbing her cell, she called Suze on the way to the airport.
“Hey, hon,” her best friend answered the phone. “How’s things in Montana?”
Jess burst into tears and laid the whole sordid story out for her.
Suze gave a low whistle through her teeth. “Now what?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. Max is sending me to Dallas to finish the investigation. I’m not sure if I handle this.” She felt so out of control. Of her tightly reined emotions, of the demands of her heart.
“You can and you will. Maybe you can talk to Matt…er…Matteo?” Suze asked hopefully. “Explain how you really feel?”
No way. “He lied to me, Suze. Just like Stan.” Jess was miserable.
Suze was quiet. “I don’t know about that, hon. I mean, we all saw Stan for what he was…but you were so blinded by his charms…once you had your heart set on him, we couldn’t talk you out of it.”
“I just wanted the happily ever after, Suze. Was that too much to ask?” Jess hiccupped.
“If anyone deserves to be happy, it’s you. You’ve sounded better than I’ve heard you in years. Must have been some trip. I’m not wrong about this? You were happy with Matt, weren’t you?” Suze asked.
Jess bit her lip. “More than I ever expected. But he
lied
.”
And left
, she finished in her head.
“Seems to me you both were there under false pretenses. It’s not like you found him boning someone else. Both of you were just trying to do your job. If anything, you are just as guilty as he is.”
The realization hit her like a thunderclap.
She’d lied.
Maybe not outright, but a lie of omission was still just as false. If she was so concerned about being completely honest, she should’ve told Matt from the beginning that she was investigating LoveLines. Maybe then, they could’ve avoided this mess. Maybe even avoided each other. The thought burned away her anger, until she was left with only regret.
If she’d never met him, her life would be tidy and predictable again. There would be no surprise sex on riverbanks, no passionate up against the wall interludes, no…heat. Even now, she missed him. His citrusy scent, his touch, and his voice…the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled. They way he made her feel beautiful and desirable. Did he feel the same way? Deep down, she just couldn’t believe that everything they’d shared together had been business.
No, based on his visceral reaction, his blatant hunger for her, the way he captured her soul with his touch…this was something much more personal.
It might even have been the beginnings of love.
“Jess,” Suze sounded strained. “Look, I hate to lay this on you right now, but there’s something you need to know. It’s about Stan….”
She didn’t care what her ex was up to, and she didn’t have any brain power to waste thinking about him. Not when so much of her thoughts were occupied with Matt and her upcoming mediation for LoveLines. She was feeling confident again, and the only man that could make her feel that way might be slipping through her fingers because of a technicality. Did she dare blur the lines, even for him?
“Later, Suze. We’ll talk, later. Right now, I have to finish what I started.” She wasn’t sure if she could escape the memory of Matt’s lips on her body, but she had to try.
“Oka-a-ay,” Suze agreed slowly. “Good for you. Go get ‘em, hon.”
“I just might.” Jess grabbed the files from her briefcase and threw her fraud investigation into overdrive. “I just might.”
***
“And you’re sure the matching software didn’t work, Bro?” Seneca asked worriedly.
They were all sprawled in the large common room of the Smoking Brandt Ranch house. His
familia
, the people who relied on him. Seneca, various cousins and a few of their close friends. Even his
Abuela
Tina had put in an appearance, her bronze earrings hanging to her shoulders and bangles clattering as she walked.
“I answered all the questions with her profile right next to me. It should have worked.” He shook his head. Were they so incompatible that a thirty-one point matching system couldn’t find enough common ground to give them a chance?
“You’re a good boy, Matteo.”
Abuela
Tina said, pinching his cheeks like he was still a scruffy schoolboy. “But you know
nada
about the heart.” She laughed heartily.
“I know women,
Abuela
. That should be good enough.”
“Bah,” she downed a shot of tequila and smacked her lips. “What you know wouldn’t even fill this!” She held the shot glass high. One of the cousins tittered behind her hand. “You think love can be distilled into a science? Like tequila?”
“I used to,” he muttered. He just couldn’t believe the system wouldn’t match him to Jess. Every fiber of his being said he belonged with her. “Just put the right combination of ingredients together, for a perfect recipe.”
“You’re a smart man, Matteo. Maybe too smart for your own good.” She eyed him, knowingly. “You’ll figure this out and do what’s right.”
“Don’t I always? Everything I’ve done has been for the good of this family. You, Seneca, the cousins…the Smoking Brandt depends on me and this business succeeding.”
Abuela
waved her hands, her bangles jingling. “What’s ‘right’ may not always be good, Matteo. And what is good may not always be right for you.”
“It’s not me, I worry about.
Abuela
. It’s the rest of the family.”
Abuela
Tina made a sympathetic noise. “My daughter raised a good boy. Now, be a good man.”
“I thought I was.” He shook his head miserably.
“You cannot be when you have half a heart. Go to her.”
“She won’t see me. She doesn’t trust easily and I broke what little faith she had in me.”
“If it’s meant to be, she will forgive you. Just as you have forgiven her. Do you really see this woman in your future?”
Matteo smiled. “As if it was written in the stars,
Abuela
.”
She nodded sagely. “Then I cannot wait to meet her. We’ll do what we can.”