Marrying Maddy (12 page)

They'd pull it off. He, Ryan, Linda. For Maddy's sake, Ryan wouldn't let on that he knew Matt was going to end the engagement tonight. Linda was like the Sphinx, so there were no worries there of her mentioning J.P. in any way at all.

And, although he was sure Jessie had known about J.P., she couldn't know that he, Matt, had been planning on calling off the wedding. Why, she might even feel sympathetic toward him, want to comfort him. He could drink a little all through dinner, act the brave but hurt ex-groom, take her sympathy if that was all he could get.

He could live with that.

Lord, he was pathetic….

“Come on, Maddy, let's go back to the house. Suddenly I'm very hungry. But remember. Subdued, as we have a nice, civilized dinner. We'll let them all think you dumped me. Nicely, but that you dumped me just the same. I mean, hey, Ryan might even give me two strokes on him next time we play golf, just because he's feeling sorry for me.”

“I love you, Matt Garvey,” Maddy said in all sincerity as they made their way back to the house, arm in arm.

“But you'll be leaving me now, to go next door and give J.P. a blow-by-blow, right?”

“Wrong,” Maddy said as she slipped the emerald cut diamond from her hand and slipped it into Matt's pocket. “After all he's put me through? I think we're just going to let him stew in his own juices a while longer.”

“Always the gourmet cook, Maddy,” Matt said, standing back so that she could enter the drawing room ahead of him. “Here we go. Here's where I earn my Oscar, you fickle heartbreaker you.”

 

There was something very wrong with this picture.

He'd watched, shamelessly, from his attic window as Maddy and Matt walked into the garden, then cursed as the covering trees hid them from his view.

He'd watched as they'd walked back to the house, arm in arm.

Which meant that either Matt Garvey was up for the Nice Guy of the Year award, or Maddy hadn't told him.

So he'd gone back downstairs, gone back to his pacing.

After an hour of that, and deciding that pacing was getting him nowhere, he sat down on the couch, stared at his hands.

And thought.

Was this how he'd gotten to the top of the career ladder? By being passive? By letting someone else
do his talking for him? By being afraid to walk in, tell it like it is, and the hell with the consequences?

Was he Joey O'Malley from South Philly, or was he Joseph the Worm, letting his woman do his dirty work for him? A woman who, for all he knew, was caught between loving him and wanting his head on a stick.

“I'm outta here!” he told the carpet as he slapped his hands against his knees, stood up. Headed for the door.

A minute later he was knocking on the door across the way, shifting from foot to foot like a prizefighter as he waited for someone to open up and let him in. Let him get on with it.

Mrs. Ballantine opened the door, still looking back over her shoulder as she did so. Without looking at him, she said, “Good evening, Mr. O'Malley. The family is at dinner. You…um…you might want to go away, come back later?”

Joe pushed the door completely open as he walked inside the foyer. “Hello, Almira,” he said to the woman standing halfway down the stairs. “What's the matter? Are things so screwed up that you had to send Mrs. Ballantine to get rid of me? And you're not
at dinner
with the family, are you? Want to tell me why?”

“Mr. O'Malley, I really think you should—”

“Oh, don't bother, Lucille,” Almira said, coming the rest of the way down the stairs, trailing her ivory silk dressing gown behind her. “I'm a big girl now, and capable of facing up to my own mistakes.” She took Joe's arm and led him into the smaller drawing room on the opposite side of the center hallway.

“Joe, my dear boy, I may have overplayed my
hand—our hand, actually. Yes, I've successfully convinced Maddy that marriage to Matt Garvey would be a huge mistake. Yes, she's going to tell him she can't marry him. But, in doing so, I may also have ruined any chance you have to get her back. You do want her back, don't you?”

“No, Almira,” Joe said as he glared at the woman. “I buy a mansion a week. Come crawling after a woman engaged to another man, just on the off chance she might still love me, want me. It's just something I do.”

“Don't be sarcastic, Joe, that won't help.” Almira sat down, motioned for Joe to do so as well. He ignored the gesture. “I think,” she continued, then sighed, shook her head. “I
think
you'd better stay away from Maddy for a while, let her calm down. She loves you, I'm still sure of that, but you aren't her favorite person right now. And, yes, I think that's my fault. I meddled. I shouldn't have done that.”

Mrs. Ballantine entered the room, carrying a small silver tray with two glasses of white wine on it. “She's been blaming herself all day, Mr. O'Malley. Between us, we've decided that Miss Maddy is about the unhappiest happy woman we've ever seen. So it might be best if you were to go home now, come back tomorrow. Or just wait for Miss Maddy to come to you.”

“The hell I will!” Joe said, already halfway out the door, and on his way through the foyer, in search of the dining room. So he didn't see Mrs. Ballantine hand one glass to Almira, keep the other for herself.

“That should about do it, Lucille,” Almira said as the two clinked their glasses together in a toast.
“Care to join me in the dining room? I think this should be fun.”

So Almira and Mrs. Ballantine were only a few paces behind Joe as he entered the dining room.

The scene that met Joe's eyes when he banged open the double doors was enough to make him wonder if he'd somehow stepped into the Twilight Zone.

Ryan Chandler sat at the head of the long table, Jessica Chandler at its foot. That was reasonable enough.

But there was Maddy, sitting next to Matt on one side of the table, and there was Larry Barry and some woman he'd never seen before, sitting on the other side.

They'd all stopped their conversations as the double doors banged against the wall, looking at Joe as if he'd come in wearing an Indian headdress or had forgotten his slacks.

“Larry?” Joe questioned blankly, belatedly realizing he'd forgotten all about the man. “What in hell…?”

Larry, dapper in his blue suit, his gray temples and gold-rimmed glasses giving him a mature, trustworthy gentleman of the world appearance, looked at Joe for a moment, then turned to his host. “You can take the boy out of South Philly,” he said, sighing theatrically, “but you can't always take the South Philly out of the boy, much as I've tried.” Then he turned back to Joe. “Were you invited? I don't think you were invited.”

“And
you
were?” Joe asked, looking at Maddy, who was sitting quite at ease beside the man whose
heart she was supposed to have broken earlier that evening.

“I invited him,” Almira said from behind Joe. “As I didn't think you should be here tonight, I thought it would be a simple way of evening out the numbers. I never liked having an odd number at my dinner table.”

Joe stood very still, the index finger of his right hand tapping back and forth like a metronome between Larry and Almira, ticking along with his thoughts. Larry, Almira. Almira, Larry. And, slowly, he smelled a rat. “How long has this been going on?”

“How long?” Larry repeated, patting his lips with his napkin, then getting to his feet. “Oh, I don't know. Almira, how long has this been going on?”

Now Maddy was on her feet, saying nothing, watching everything, and slowly figuring out that she hadn't been the only one who'd been maneuvered like a pawn on a chess board. “Allie?” she said hesitantly, then went silent when Matt put his hand on her forearm, shook his head to tell her she might want to just stand back and watch a while longer.

Joe was also thinking. Thinking back over the past months, and all the times Maddy's name had somehow cropped up in Larry's conversations with him. Oblique references to the “old days.” Odd times when Larry would seem to fall into reminiscences of the times he and Joe and Maddy would stay up until dawn, Maddy running out for sandwiches and coffee as Joe worked at the computer and Larry crunched numbers.

A plot. It had all been a plot. Almira Chandler and his best friend. Plotting against him.

No, wait. Plotting
for
him. For him, and for Maddy.

“Well, I'll be damned,” he said at last, grinning sheepishly as he ran a hand through his hair. “Maddy, we've been had.” He walked around the table, stood beside Matt's chair. “She told you, didn't she?”

Matt pushed back his chair, stood up. “Yes, she did.”

“And you two broke off the engagement?”

“We did,” Matt answered as Maddy slipped her hand into his, squeezed it. He didn't have to act the disappointed groom at this point. He was too busy figuring out that Almira Chandler had never seen him as husband material for her granddaughter. Did she feel the same way about both her granddaughters? He'd thought Almira liked him. He must have been wrong. “I've already promised Maddy that I'd handle everything, make all the necessary phone calls.”

Joe held out his hand, shook Matt's. “I'm sorry you had to be caught in the middle of this, Matt.”

“Don't be,” Matt said shortly. “I think we've all been playing the puppet as Almira worked the strings. Now, if you'll all excuse me?”

“Matt! Wait for me!” Jessie exclaimed, jumping out of her chair, and taking only a moment to glare at her brother. “Think retirement homes in Florida, Ryan. Think about them now!” Then, with only a glance at her grandmother, she ran after Matt.

Which left Maddy and Joe staring at each other.

“Are you all right?” he asked her.

“I think so,” Maddy answered dully, then straightened her shoulders, her spine. “So? Have we gone through all of this again because of Allie and Loony—I mean, because of Larry—just to end up where we were before? Are we really in love, Joe, or have we only been manipulated into thinking that way?”

Joe took both her hands in his. “What do you think, Maddy?”

Ryan motioned for everyone else to follow him as he led the way out of the room, leaving Maddy and Joe still standing there, still looking at each other.

“Maddy? Will you forgive me for not chasing after you?”

“If you'll forgive me for running away, for not having faith in you.”

“Would you really have married him? If I hadn't shown up, would you have married Matt Garvey?”

Maddy bit her lips together, shook her head. “No.” She looked up at Joe. “Somewhere deep inside my head, I knew it was wrong. I wasn't happy, Matt wasn't happy. We just didn't know what to do about it.”

“I did!” Almira said, poking her head back into the dining room, just to have a red-tipped and very white hand clamp down on her shoulder, pulling her back out again.

“I'm sorry about that,” Mrs. Ballantine said, sticking her head inside the door. “You two just pretend that didn't happen. I'll be sure you aren't interrupted again.”

Maddy and Joe nodded at the housekeeper, then looked at each other. Smiled. Began to laugh.

Fell into each other's arms, laughing so hard they practically had to hold each other up.

Until Joe sobered, pushed Maddy slightly away from him and looked deeply into her tear-bright eyes. “I love you, Maddy. I have loved you since the first time I saw you. I will love you ten years after I'm dead. Please, Maddy. Marry me. There—is my timing finally right?”

She never did get to say, “yes,” to any of his questions, because Joe kissed her then, kissed her long and hard and with the intention of never, never ever, letting her go again.