“Oh, no, honey.” Jillian moved to the girl and took her in her arms. “That’s not right. It’s not Zoey’s fault. I’m fine.”
“But Daddy said you were sick.”
Anger, cold and fierce as an arctic blizzard, blew through me.
“I had a bad dream that made me feel bad, but now I’m okay,” Jillian said. “And Savannah’s wrong. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Hold on a minute, Sophie,” I said. “Zoey pretended to be sick this evening?”
She nodded, her eyes downcast. “We wanted Jillian to stay the night so she’d fix blueberry pancakes in the morning.”
I looked at Jillian. The stricken look on her face confirmed all my suspicions.
Sophie’s eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t mean to get Zoey in trouble.”
It took all of my control to keep my voice calm. “Nobody’s going to get in trouble, but I’m going to talk to Zoey. And neither of you should ever do this again, understand? Not because it’ll make other people sick, but because it’s not honest.”
She nodded.
“Come on, sport. I’ll tuck you back into bed.”
I came out of the girls’ bedroom a few minutes later to find Jillian sitting on the side of the bed in the guest room.
I couldn’t bring myself to look directly at her. “Get dressed, get your things, and come downstairs,” I ordered.
I changed out of my sweatpants and into a pair of jeans, thenwent to the kitchen, reached in the cabinet, and poured a stiff drink of bourbon. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so angry.
Jillian came into the kitchen a few minutes later, looking pale and shaken. “Matt, I didn’t mean to upset you. I just wanted...”
I took a gulp of bourbon. It burned all the way down my throat. “It’s pretty clear what you wanted.”
Tears spilled down her face. “I can’t help it, Matt. I love you. We would be so perfect together. I thought that if I could break through your defenses, then you’d see that.”
The bourbon’s warmth spread to my brain. Maybe the bourbon had been a bad idea. I certainly didn’t feel any calmer. “So you told my daughter to lie to me?”
“I made sure she didn’t say anything untruthful. She just said she was ready to go to bed.”
“You coerced her into deliberately misleading me.”
She looked at the floor. “That was wrong. I admit that. But, Matt—I can tell I’m running out of time. I’ve researched when a man is most likely to fall in love after the death of a spouse, and most widowers with small children are either in a serious relationship or married by now. You’re ripe for the picking, and you’re getting more and more attached to Hope, and she’s going to leave, and then you and the girls will just be sad again. I thought if I could reach you before you and she...” Her voice broke off in a sob. She put her hands to her face. “... before you went too far with her.”
Too late. But where the hell did she get the idea things worked like that?
She took a step toward me. “I know that you miss Christine. And I know that I’m not her. But I can make you happy. I know I can.”
I held up both my hands, palms out. “Jillian... look. I just don’t think of you that way.”
“I know, I know, and that’s the problem! You’ve got the sense of taboo because I was your sister-in-law, but that’s justridiculous.” She spit the word out as if it were rotten fruit. “You and I—we’renot blood kin. And anyway, in the Old Testament, men are supposed to marry their widowed sisters-in-law, so this is the same thing.”
I stared at her.She convinced my daughter to lie to me, she woke me from a sound sleep with a hand job, she’s saying the Bible says I’m supposed to marry her—andI’mridiculous?I took another swig of bourbon. Had she always been crazy, or was this a new development?
She took a step toward me, her eyes pleading. “There’s nothing wrong with us being a couple—nothing wrong, and everything right. I thought that if I could get you to lower your inhibitions and see how wonderful things could be, well, then your feelings about me would change.”
I held up my hands again. “Stop right there. Don’t come any closer. Listen to me, Jillian, because I only want to say this once: If I had never met your sister, and if I’d never met Hope, I still would not be romantically interested in you. There’s nothing wrong with you—you’re a terrific woman, Jillian—but the chemistry’s just not there.”
“But...”
“There are no buts to this. For me, there is no chemistry. None. Nothing. Nada.Rien. You need to accept it and move on. All of this...” I waved my glass, trying to encompass the whole scenario. “... well, it’s just embarrassing.”
