Between Noah’s accident yesterday and the huge mistake he’d made with Ari, Matt had already been on edge. If Irene had been standing in front of him, he would have yelled until she was reduced to tears, no matter how many times he swore he’d never do that. She flitted in, created an uproar, then flitted out again, leaving him to pick up the pieces.
Leaving was the only thing about her that he could count on.
And Noah was like Humpty-Dumpty, who couldn’t be put back together again.
“I’m sorry,” Ari said. “I didn’t realize how upset he’d be. Poor guy cried himself to sleep. He thinks she doesn’t love him.”
Jesus, it killed him that he couldn’t figure out how to protect Noah from his own mother. Matt had never wanted his child to feel unloved or unwanted the way he had. But Irene never stuck around to see the aftermath of what she’d done, and when he told her, she simply rolled her eyes and said Noah seemed perfectly happy.
“Don’t apologize,” he told Ari, his voice gruff as he worked to contain his fury at his ex. “It’s not your fault. I should have warned you about Irene.” But he barely wanted to admit his terrible choice in girlfriends to himself, let alone tell his new nanny. Especially when he’d been lusting after Ari despite knowing better.
Yet she had clearly handled the whole situation well, calming Noah down enough to play with his Legos. Sometimes it took days for what he’d dubbed The Irene Effect to wear off.
“Actually, that’s not all.” He braced himself as she said, “She told Noah the reason she couldn’t take him to Paris was because you wouldn’t let him go with her.”
Damn Irene. “I need to mend fences with Noah.” He ran his hand through his hair. Because while he needed to deal with the mess Irene had left, that didn’t mean he could use it as an excuse to avoid Ari. She deserved better than that. “We need to talk about Irene after Noah’s in bed. About last night too.” He paused, trying to read her expression, but couldn’t get a better handle on what she was feeling than he had that morning. “Is that okay?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “I’ll leave you two alone for now.”
The last time he’d talked with her after Noah had gone to bed, he’d lost control. Ari was pure temptation. But tonight he vowed not to touch her. He wouldn’t beg to kiss her. He wouldn’t remember the softness of her skin or how sweet she tasted.
No matter what.
Not even if he lost his mind trying.
* * *
Thankfully, Noah settled down by dinner, and at story time Ari was hugely relieved to see him reading with his father as though nothing had ever happened. She marveled at how quickly—and deeply—the little boy had burrowed into her heart. His happiness mattered to her big-time.
It was unimaginable that Irene had chosen to give up Matt and her beautiful son for the freedom to hop private planes and attend fashion shows in Paris. Ari would have done anything to have a family like them.
Once Noah had fallen asleep, Matt and Ari headed downstairs together to talk. In the living room, he gestured to the sofa while he went to the sideboard. “Would you like something to drink? A glass of wine?” he asked as he poured himself a finger of scotch.
“White, please.”
“I should have explained about Irene.” He was obviously more ready to tackle the subject of his ex than what they’d done last night. “But she hasn’t been here for months. I wasn’t even sure she’d show up again.”
Ari hated how carefully he avoided brushing her fingertips as he handed her the glass.
“You deserve to know what happened so you understand how it affects Noah when she drops in.”
“He was so sad it broke my heart,” she said softly.
“That’s what I hate.” He rolled the glass in his hand, and despite knowing better, she couldn’t help but want to be the glass, his hands all over her, heating her. “Nothing I say makes it better. You really helped today, Ari. He doesn’t normally recover so quickly.”
“A five-year-old shouldn’t need to recover from his mother’s visit.” Maybe she was speaking out of turn, but she understood only too well how hard it was when a parent acted carelessly with your feelings.
He set his glass on the side table, elbows on the arms of the wingback chair, and steepled his fingers. “When she found out she was pregnant, she thought it was a ‘total gas.’” He laughed without an ounce of humor. “I would have married her for the baby’s sake, but Irene wanted to wait and see how things went.”
Ari curled her feet up under her, propped her chin on her hand, and sipped her wine. She wanted to put her arms around him, to erase the pain that laced every word of his story. But after this morning, when he’d made it perfectly clear what a huge mistake their lovemaking had been, she didn’t dare touch him.
All she could do was ache.
* * *
Matt didn’t say that Irene had initially wanted to terminate the pregnancy and he’d talked her out of it. He only said, “She was pretty cavalier about the whole thing.” He stared at his glass on the table beside him. “She did have some fun with the attention the pregnancy brought.”
“Until she had the baby shower and all the presents were for Noah instead of her.”
He snorted an abrupt laugh. “That’s Irene. Admitting things like that doesn’t even bother her.”
“At least she’s honest about who she is, I suppose.”
He was impressed at how much Ari had already figured out. “She told me right up front that she’d make a crappy mother. She bitched and moaned when I said she couldn’t drink or have the occasional cigarette. But she gave them up for the duration.”
Maybe he’d told Ari enough already, but he’d never really talked about this with anyone before. Not even the Mavericks—at least, not beyond the basics. Susan and Bob knew more, but they were worriers, so he was careful to edit with them too. Ari, though… Ari was different. He got the feeling she understood in a way no one else ever had.
“We met at a Silicon Valley party. I’d started Trebotics.” He’d made his first few million, and he’d reshaped himself physically and mentally from the weakling his father had believed him to be. “She was young, only twenty-three. And she made me feel young too.” He’d had women before Irene, but she was so fun-loving that she made him want to be fun-loving too. “She never took anything seriously, and for someone like me who took everything seriously, it was…different.”