Playing Dirty (3 page)

But everything else
had
changed.
 

Drastically.

How was it even possible? Her husband, her
new
husband stood less than six feet away from her. She looked from Trenton to Ford and back again, guilt slicing through her heart. Guilt that she’d betrayed Ford by marrying Trenton. Guilt that she’d just betrayed Trenton by kissing Ford.
 

“Oh, God,” she whispered.

This simply could
not
be real. She was dreaming. They were on a flight from Paris to New York, somewhere over the Atlantic, and she’d fallen into an exhausted sleep. She had to be dreaming, otherwise she was hallucinating, and that meant she’d gone and lost her ever lovin’ mind again. Any second now, they’d hit an air pocket and she’d be jolted awake.

Wishful thinking. She knew better. This was real, all right. She still had the moist lips to prove it.
 

Ford was alive and she was married to another man.

Ford reached for her before she could slip completely away. “Babe.” His hand manacled her wrist.
 

She attempted to tug free, but his grip was iron tight. Shame rippled through her as she looked at Trenton. His expression went from curious to furious in two seconds flat.

He took a threatening step toward them, his hands fisted, fury registered in his golden brown eyes. “Get your goddamned hands off my wife.”
 

She shook her head. “No, Trenton. Wait.”
 

“Your wife?” Ford moved in front of her, pushing her behind him as if he were protecting her from...her husband? “Think again, asshole.”

Before she could extricate herself, Trenton hauled off and clocked Ford in the jaw. Ford stumbled against her, then came back up and charged Trenton. He slammed his shoulder into Trenton’s midsection, driving him into the island that separated the kitchen from the family room.
 

She rushed toward them. “Stop it,” she said, but they were intent on maiming each other and ignored her. She reached Ford, but only managed to grab a handful of shirt before he slipped out of her grasp when Trenton landed another blow that sent Ford staggering two steps to the side.
 

“Enough,” she shouted, but it did no good. As if she weren’t screeching her fool head off, Ford charged forward again and shoved Trenton up against the wall of cabinets. Before Trenton could catch his balance, Ford drew back and punched Trenton’s face. Trenton attempted to return the favor, but his fist glanced off Ford’s shoulder when Ford dodged the hit by slamming his body into Trenton.
 

They crashed into the family room, knocking over the end table, then landing on the floor with a bone-crushing thud. Trenton rolled, taking out the lamp, where it sparked and shattered against the hardwood.

She needed to find a way to shut this down before one of them was seriously injured, or the neighbors called the police. That’s all she needed. She could see the headlines now...

LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER ARRESTED,

CHARGED WITH BIGAMY.

HUSBANDS JAILED FOR ASSAULT.

With an agility that never failed to amaze her considering his size, Ford moved, avoiding a fist to the face. He leaped to his feet, and reached for Trenton. She attempted to shove him away, but he like a bull who’d seen red, there was little she could do to stop him.
 

“Dammit, Ford,” she shoved at him again, harder this time. “Don’t do this. You’re going to hurt him.” Which wasn’t exactly true, because Trenton was essentially holding his own. But Ford
was
a Navy SEAL. He possessed a certain skill set which gave him a distinct advantage.

Trenton held up his hands to stop Ford’s approach. He turned his hard flinted gaze in her direction. “What did you call him?”
 

She moved next to Ford and faced Trenton. “It’s Ford, Trenton.” She pulled in a quick breath. The pain and confusion in his eyes clawed at her conscience. “He’s my husband.”

“But he’s—”
 

“Not dead?” Ford flexed the fingers of his right hand and winced.
 

“So it would seem.” Despite the quaking of her insides and the trembling in her limbs, she walked into the kitchen and went to the refrigerator where she pulled a couple bags of frozen vegetables from the freezer. She returned to the family room in time to see Ford snagging a bottle of Jack Daniels and a glass from the bar. The determination in his eyes when he looked at her nearly stole her breath. Ford had always been a little possessive. The fact that she’d gone and married another man no doubt hurt him deeply.

Join the club.

The fact that he’d “died” had nearly killed her.
 

She walked toward him as he sat in one of the two, turquoise club chairs situated near the fireplace, then gently placed the bag of frozen peas against his jaw before she handed one off to Trenton to do the same. “You both need to cut the macho bullshit.” She wasn’t any man’s territory and she sure as hell didn’t appreciate them destroying her home.

Trenton went to the bar and opened a fresh bottle of scotch. “I’d like to know, exactly what the fuck is going on?” he asked as he poured a liberal portion into a short glass. “How is this even possible?”

She barely recognized the man she’d been married to for a mere two weeks. His golf shirt untucked, his khakis a wrinkled mess and his neatly trimmed, warm-brown hair was mussed. He looked unkempt, a bit rough around the edges and so unlike the man she’d promised to love, honor and cherish in a ceremony before three hundred of their friends, family and Trenton’s important business associates. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I don’t know how it’s possible.”
 

She looked at Ford. Far too many emotions to catalogue crashed into her. Confusion. Elation. Devastation. They all jockeyed for position, yet she failed to settle on one to help her survive the next few hours let alone the next two minutes. “But it is,” she added, her voice catching with emotion.
 

Trenton tossed back the scotch, then poured himself another. Almost as an afterthought, he poured a splash into another glass, which he handed to her as he made his way to the black leather sofa. He sat and looked at Ford. “Where the fuck have you been for the past five years?”

Mattie sipped the scotch, grateful for the numbing effects of the alcohol. Numbness she prayed would stop the agonizing pain from tearing her in two. My God, she had no clue what she was supposed to do or say. For that matter, what on earth was she supposed to say to her daughter? How did she tell Phoebe that her daddy was alive?
 

She went to the bar and poured herself another drink. There wasn’t enough scotch in the entire state of Texas to quiet the demons inside, throwing questions at her she had no hope of answering.
 

“Since when did you start drinking scotch?”

She turned and looked at Ford. All of a sudden she had an almost uncontrollable urge to throw her glass at his head. Instead, she downed the scotch like a professional barfly. “I think the question currently on the table is where have you been for the past five years?”

When he nailed her with those bluer than blue eyes she’d seen only in her dreams, more guilt piled on top of her and it ticked her off. She had done nothing wrong. She had no reason to feel guilty. It wasn’t as if she’d committed adultery. She hadn’t been unfaithful to Ford, she’d been his widow, dammit. But not even the truth of the matter could ease her shame.
 

He shot a pointed glance in Trenton’s direction. “We can talk about it later.”

“No.” She her glass on the bar with enough force she thought it might shatter. “We’ll talk about it now.”

“Mattie—”
 

“Don’t you dare feed me that ‘it’s classified’ crap,” she snapped. She took a step in his direction. “Not this time. I think I’ve earned the right to the truth.”

His jaw hardened. For the space of a heartbeat, she thought he’d feed her the tired old line about national security. Until he said, “I was captured.”

Tears immediately blurred her vision. “Oh, God,” she whispered. Her knees went weak, then gave out on her so she sank into the other club chair. When Paul Ravelli and the chaplain, Father Stevens, had come to see her, she’d known before they’d stepped from the government-issue sedan what they’d come to tell her—that Ford had been killed in action. If he’d been wounded or captured, she’d have received a phone call, or maybe a visit from some low-level Navy official. Still, she’d prayed like crazy that Ford’s commanding officer had personally come to tell her that her husband had been injured. She’d begged, pleaded with a God who’d ignored her.

Until now.

“That’s bullshit,” Trenton said. “No Navy SEAL has ever been captured. It’s common knowledge.”

“You’re right,” Ford answered. “But the official record will reflect otherwise. The story will be that I was behind enemy lines and had infiltrated a band of Taliban rebels. My mission will be labeled a success.”

“Okay, so then what’s the truth?” Trenton asked, his tone belligerent.
 

This was a side of Trenton she hadn’t seen until now. She really shouldn’t be surprised. He was a lawyer, after all. And a damned good one, on the fast track to making partner at his Dallas law firm. She’d seen him in action in the courtroom on a couple of occasions. He was a relentless interrogator on cross-examination, but he was never like this. Challenging. Dark.

How was it she had married a man without knowing the full extent of his personality? In the time she’d known him, she’d witnessed Trenton’s frustration, she’d even been given a brief glimpse of his temper once when they’d argued and she’d pushed a few of his buttons, but he was nothing like the man before her now who was practically a stranger.
 

But was it Trenton’s character she was questioning, or her own? How was it that she and Ford had been together for ten years prior to his “death” and yet she knew next to nothing about the places he’d been, the things he’d done, or what he’d seen during his career as a SEAL? And why on earth had she always accepted his silence on the subject as the norm?

Ford’s jaw tightened. “It’s classified,” he said.
 

The tension in the room thickened several more degrees, if that were even possible. She needed air. She didn’t care that they might pound each other into intensive care without her to referee, she needed a minute alone to absorb the insanity that had become her reality—that Ford was alive.

“Excuse me for a minute,” she said as she headed for the newly installed French doors leading out to the back deck.
 

“Babe, wait.”

Ford reached for her, but she side-stepped him. “Don’t.” If he touched her right now, she’d fall apart.
 

“Mattie?” Trenton called out to her.

She shook her head. “Not now. Please.” The stunned expressions of both men as she unlatched the door would’ve been comical if the situation weren’t so incredibly insane. “I just need a minute.”
 

She walked outside, into the stifling humidity. She closed the door behind her, shutting out the raised voices of her
husbands
.
 

Husbands? How crazy was that?

Leaving Ford and Trenton alone probably wasn’t a great idea, but she needed time to absorb the magnitude of the situation. Somehow she had to figure out how to deal.

She braced her hands on the wooden deck railing for support. The light gray fingers of dawn were just beginning to stretch across the cloudless sky. A last shooting star streaked in the fading darkness, and she shook her head at the mocking irony. How many falling stars had she wished upon for Ford’s safe return? Too many to count, she realized. Too many sleepless nights spent alone while he was away, only God-knew-where. She couldn’t begin to catalogue the number of nights she’d looked up at the stars, worrying if he was safe, if he’d come back to her—until she’d eventually received word that he was never coming home again.
 

Now, when she’d finally made peace with the past and had stepped into the future with a man she could count on to be there for her, Ford had returned. How was it even possible that he was alive? Paul had told her there’d been an explosion, that Ford’s plane had gone down over the Mediterranean Sea, and there’d been no bodies to recover. For three years after that horrible day, she’d made bargain after bargain with God. She’d hoped and dreamed, wished and continued to pray that it had all been a horrible mistake and that Ford was alive but unable to return to her. How many nights had she stood on this very deck that Ford had built himself, harboring a false hope, until she could no longer deny the truth, or the futility, of her hopeless dreams?
 

Too many. Too many years of unbearable pain, of tears and unanswered prayers. Until, finally, she knew if she didn’t move on with her life, she’d stay forever mired in the heartache. For her daughter’s sake, she’d had no other choice. Phoebe deserved better. Her daughter may have had only one parent, but what she’d really needed was one who was present every single day, not living in the past and praying for a future that could never be.

Although she’d had no body to bury, she’d found a way to lay the past to rest. By having a headstone placed in the Hart family plot in the cemetery on the edge of town, she been able to bury her memories of the only man she’d ever loved. Only then had she allowed herself to believe Ford’s death had been real, giving herself permission to move on with her life—to finally let go.