Gran nodded. “I think it’s time for bed, period. It’s been a long day. But you two young people should go out and celebrate.” She turned to Matt. “Matt, dear, I don’t know how you found Viola, but thank you. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”
“My pleasure, Miss Addie.” He kissed her cheek. I did the same, and we wished her good night.
“Want to go out for a drink?” Matt asked when we were alone in the room. “Peggy’s watching the girls.”
“I think I’d rather just go out on the porch.”
Matt refilled our juice glasses, and we moved to the front porch swing. The day had cooled and a pleasant breeze lifted my hair off my neck. “So howdidyou find Mrs. Madison?”
“Through a private detective.”
My feet dragged on the porch, stopping the swing. A hard, hot knot formed in my stomach. “I asked you not to hire one.”
“I know, I know. But I already had.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
Matt rested his juice glass on his thigh. “After I learned how you felt about it, I called to pull him off the case. It turned out he’d already found Mrs. Madison and learned you had an inheritance coming. He said Mrs. Madison insisted on meeting you and Addie and telling you in person. She wanted it to be a surprise. So I decided to just let things play out.”
I knew it was petty of me; I knew I should feel grateful, but the thought that Ishouldfeel grateful for him going against my wishes made the knot in my stomach smolder like a coal. “So you just kept me in the dark, because you figured you knew what was best.”
“No. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to blow a potential bonanza for you.”
The knot tightened and burned. “There’s no excuse for not telling me.”
Matt looked at me. “Whoa—what is this?”
“I want to make my own decisions about my life, that’s what this is.”
“I thought I was doing you a favor. I hope you’d do the same for me if anyone ever shows up out of the blue wanting to give me nearly a million dollars.”
“You should have told me,” I said stubbornly.
“So you could do what? Contact her on your own? I was afraid that if Mrs. Madison didn’t get to handle it the way she wanted, she might decide to wait until Adelaide was dead to give you the money. It would have been entirely within her rights. I was trying to look out for your best interests.”
His logic was sound, but my feelings weren’t responding to logic. “You have no right to presume that you know my best interests better than I do.”
He held up his hand. “Wait a minute. You’re actually mad at me for bringing in a woman who just handed you an enormous check?”
“No. I’m mad at the way you did it.” He was just like my ex—making high-handed decisions about my future without consulting me, acting as if I were somehow incompetent.
It punched my buttons—and not just because of my ex, I realized. It was how I’d often felt around my incredibly accomplished, brilliant, glass-ceiling-crashing mother.
“Know what, Hope? ‘My way or the highway’ isn’t usually the best strategy. Sometimes things work out best when you trust other people.”
“I tried that once, and it didn’t work out so well.”
He looked at me, a look that lasered right through me. “So that’s what’s really going on here, huh? You’re done with trust because of your ex? You’ve got such big control issues that you can’t deal with any deviation from a plan?”
“Of course not.”
“You sure? Because that’s how it looks from here.” He set his glass down on the porch railing with a final-sounding thump. “Well, I promise you this: the next time someone wants to give you a bank vault of money, I’ll keep in mind that you don’t want my ‘interference.’” He rose. “I think I should say good night.”
The thud of his footsteps on the porch echoed in a hollow part of my chest. I knew I was being unreasonable. I knew I should admit it, that I should apologize, that I should thank him, but some stubborn, unreasonable, angry part of me resisted.
We were going to be over in just a couple of weeks anyway. All that would happen in two more weeks was that I would grow to love him more, and it would hurt that much more when I left.
Love.Oh God. Was that what I felt for him? Despite my best intentions, had I fallen in love with Matt?
