then turned back to me, her skin visibly pinker. “You?”
I shrugged. “Perhaps. I was looking forward to seeing the horses myself, but I should probably stay here and keep an eye on Livy until the nanny arrives.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that!” Jane said with a friendly hand on my shoulder. “Go on, have a little fun. We’ve got her.”
She winked at me, and warmth pooled in my chest.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “I really can wait for Patricia…”
“Are you kidding? Other than the helicopter ride, we’ve barely seen the munchkin since March, and I was such a mess. You go for a ride, and we’ll see you when you get back.”
Slowly, I nodded. It was strange. Having people offer to do me a favor without being paid. Or without wanting something in return. But I had come to realize that was simply how Jane was.
“All right. I’ll just get changed, then,” I said.
“Have fun!”
I made my way back through the parlor to follow my daughter upstairs. But when I rounded the corner into the foyer, I stopped again for a very different reason.
There he was. Standing in the middle of my family’s grand double staircase like he belonged there. Like it was made for his polished reserve, even for the occasional profanity that peppered his speech.
“Matthew?” I gasped.
He turned, and when he found me, his face broke into a bright smile, which was quickly replaced with horror.
“Hey, doll,” he croaked. “I—shit. You’re, um, you’re here.”
Chapter Fifteen
“What the hell are you doing here?”
As soon as the words escaped, I clapped a hand over my mouth, the metal of my wedding rings scraping my teeth. Reminding me, as they always did, of how simply looking at this man made me a very bad person. Lord, if Grandmother could see me now, she would have been appalled. I sounded rude. Impatient. And most of all, very, very guilty.
But Matthew was here. Against all odds, he was on my family’s estate, in the middle of the marble-encrusted foyer, looking like he owned every square inch of it despite the fact that his actual net worth was a tiny fraction of ours. And his presence was, like always, making me feel more at ease than ever and completely out of my comfort zone.
For an instant, I saw all the times I had visited this house with the man I’d actually married. Every time Calvin made some absurd (and usually inaccurate) comment about an expensive piece of furniture or mixed up a modern artist with an older one. Stupid things. Shallow things. But things that a connoisseur of any kind would be able to discern, and anyone else wouldn’t bother to identify. Things that only revealed how much Calvin hungered for some notion of class that he had no idea was just a myth. But which also revealed how he would never belong here, no matter how much he tried.
And then there was Matthew. The kind of man who took the time to do things right, whatever they were. He didn’t have everything, and he knew it, but he took pride in what he did have. I knew, for example, that he had poured years of research, sweat, and labor into his small Brooklyn house. I also knew without asking that the white shirt he was wearing fit him perfectly not because he had paid an enormous amount of money for it, but because he had probably taken a bargain piece to the tailor he had known most of his adult life.
It was so unfair. Too late, much too late, I had met a man who seemed to fit into the corners of my life with the precision of a puzzle piece. It had nothing to do with class or background, as I’d always assumed, and everything to do with simple compatibility. It didn’t matter that Matthew and I were effectively from different worlds. Together, we made such perfect harmony.
And yet…we couldn’t work. We both knew that very well, even though we weren’t always successful at abiding by the facts.
Like right now.
When Matthew was in my house, not looking very happy to see me.
“What am I doing here?” he asked, clearly recovered from his shock. “What are you doing here, Nina? Is Calvin here?”
“No, not that it’s any of your bus—”
“Eric said you probably weren’t coming when I talked to him last week.”
“Eric doesn’t keep track of my social calendar,” I replied, perhaps too haughtily. “He and Jane invited me a few days ago. My plans