Better Than Before (RightMatch.com Trilogy) (13 page)

“Because before I met you, I wasn’t looking for a relationship with a woman.”

“That’s impossible. You joined RightMatch.”

“I went on the site to prove a point. To win a bet.”

“A bet?” Annie inched back into the sofa and folded her arms across her middle.

Despite wanting to take away all her negative emotions, he promised himself he wouldn’t gloss over this, he wouldn’t sugarcoat what he’d done. He’d tell her the unvarnished truth. Too much depended on the outcome to do otherwise, and besides, he owed her total honesty.

“I’m a venture capitalist. Do you know what that is?”

“Yes, Julia calls them Vicious Cannibals. One of them tried to buy her husband’s business out.”

He’d heard worse about himself, but coming from Annie, it affected him more. “I wouldn’t go quite as far as calling us cannibals. I invest in companies that I can help, but sometimes, I do buy them and dismantle them. You could say I absorb them.”

“I can’t imagine you doing that. The Spence I know likes to build things.”

“No, Annie, I don’t. I made up the guy who enjoyed that. I went online and created a profile the exact opposite of who I really am.”

“Why on earth would you do that?” Her voice was incredulous because Annie could never conceive of perpetrating this kind of cruel hoax.

“RightMatch is Cole’s website.”

She went white. “Y-your family was in on the bet?”

“My brothers were at first. We didn’t think anyone would get hurt. I told my mother I’d done something unconscionable Saturday night and she told me to fix it.”

Moisture welled in her eyes. It made total sense that this part of the confession would bring out intense emotion. Family was sacrosanct to her. “
Why
? Why would you do this?”

“Cole needed capital to start his website—he wanted a business to run from home because of Ellie.”

“And you gave it to him?”

“Yes, of course. But Cole’s such a romantic, so naïve sometimes, I wanted to shake him out of that infernal certainty he has about relationships. So I agreed to give him the money for the site contingent on a bet. He believes people are straightforward on these sites and my contention was that everybody lies on them.”

“
I
was straightforward.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t.” He didn’t know how to convey his regret as forcefully as he felt it and his words seemed hollow.

She laid her head back on the pillow and stared up at the ceiling. “So I was a bet.” Her voice cracked on the last word.

“At first you were. But that all changed.”

Now she clasped the pillow in her lap to her chest, poor armor against the emotional onslaught he was leveling at her. “What were the terms?”

“Annie, we don’t have to go into that.”

“What, Spence?”

“You don’t need to know the details.”

“Damn you. Tell me!”

Suddenly, he realized he didn’t have a choice, realized he couldn’t control the circumstances. And it scared the shit out of him. Still, she was important enough to do this her way. “There were two parts to the bet.” He told her about his real profile. “But then, I put up a second one. As I said, I created a man the exact opposite of who I am. I told Cole I could make six women fall for someone I wasn’t, just like they fell for the real me.”

“How was it supposed to end?”

“When all of the women wanted to meet the other me, I’d won.”

“What number was I?”

“Annie…”

“
What
, Spence?”

“Number Six for my alternate persona.”

She shook her head, sending all that beautiful hair flying. He wondered if he’d ever get to touch it again. “So when I asked you to brunch, you’d won?”

“Yes.”

“Did you meet all of them?”

“No. Just you.”

“Why did you go through with meeting me if you’d won the bet? You could have let me down easily.” She gestured to the two of them. “Avoided this whole charade before I got so involved with you.” Her lips trembled. “Before we…” She motioned upstairs, as if she couldn’t say the words. The gesture and its meaning killed him.

Leaning forward, he linked his hands between his knees and held her gaze. “This is the important part, Annie. Please listen carefully to it. By the time you asked to me to meet, I was truly interested in you. We shared so much online. I wanted—”

“
I
shared, Spence; not you. You told lies.”

“Not everything was a lie. A lot of what I said was the truth.”

“That’s right. Keith explained it to me once. The first rule of successful deception is to stay as close to the truth as possible.”

Spence had thought that, too, when all this had started in what seemed like a lifetime ago. Now his rationale, all of his actions, sounded so seedy, so sordid, that he was ashamed of himself.

“I’m sorry I lied to you, Annie.”

“I don’t want an apology, I want to know your motivation.
Why
would you make a bet like that in the first place and risk hurting so many people?”

“I told myself it was to best Cole. The two of us compete like that.”

“Do you have any idea how shallow that sounds?”

Of course, he did. And maybe not even correct. Once again, it struck him that the failure of his love life was the real source of the bet. Could he trust her with that information? Did he have a choice if he wanted to keep her in his life? He decided to take a huge leap of faith. “There’s more. Down deep, I might have been trying to prove the complete failure of my relationships with women hasn’t been my fault.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ve been married and divorced twice, Annie.”

Her hand clapped over her mouth. “There’s no beloved widow?”

Damn it. Why was she so naïve? “No.”

“Oh, Spence.”

He rushed on, afraid that any minute now, she’d make him leave. “The marriages failed miserably. By making this bet, and proving Cole wrong, I think I was trying to prove that everybody lies in relationships so I could convince myself that none of my breakups were my fault.”

“What kind of man would do that? What kind of man
are
you?”

“I was a different kind of man, Annie, until you came into my life.”

She didn’t respond.

“I couldn’t stop myself from meeting you in person. Then I couldn’t stop myself from seeing you after that.”

Again, the moisture in her eyes. “And I suppose you just couldn’t resist taking me upstairs and making love to me tonight.” She closed her eyes briefly. “Oh, God, what a fool I was. Did you share,
will
you share our intimacies with your brothers? Laugh over them?”

“No, never. I didn’t share anything like that with them. Sweetheart, my feelings for you were—
are
—real. I do care about you. More than I can express.”

“Don’t you dare call me sweetheart.”

He was taken aback by that, primarily because he didn’t even realize he’d used the endearment. “Please, Annie. Say you believe that I care about you.”

Instead, she bolted off the couch and stood before him, her righteous anger evident in every rigid line of her body. “How can I? Nothing is real in this whole relationship.”

“That’s not true. My feelings are real.”

“Do you even know
how
to care about someone other than yourself?”

He didn’t answer that. She was entitled to her tirade, though he’d never allowed a woman—anybody—to treat him like this. Nor had he ever put himself into the position of letting someone outside of his family hurt him this much.

“All I know is I care about you. And I want to spend some time with you now that you know the truth.”

Pure shock suffused her face. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You actually think I’d give you another chance?”

“I’m hoping—”

She gestured to the door. “Get out, Spence.”

“What?”

“Oh, dear Lord, you’re surprised. You really thought I’d fall in line, do whatever you asked. It’s probably what you’re used to from women.”

He stood, too, and reached out for her hand.

She stepped back. “I said, get out of my house. My life.”

“No, I won’t do that.”

“I’m not one of your companies, Spence. You can’t buy me with your money, then discard me when you don’t want me anymore. Now leave!”

The only other time he’d felt this impotent was when he’d been under his father’s control. It occurred to him maybe that was why he’d never given any woman power over him. Until now. “I’ll go, if you say you’ll think about all this. That you’ll consider seeing me again.”

“Oh, I’ll think about this! Now get out of my home.”

He owed her that, he guessed. Slowly, Spence made his way to the foyer, knowing he’d lost this skirmish. But he’d be damned if he’d lose the war. At the door, he turned to her and could barely look her in the face, his shame was so deep. “It isn’t over, Annie. I’m not going to let you go this easily.”

“You’re wrong,
Spencer
. It is so over.”

Chapter 7

After Spence left, Annie sank to the floor on her knees and came apart. She cried into her hands, thinking about making love with him, how tender he’d been one moment, how passionate the next. She sobbed until her insides hurt but she didn’t get up for a long time. Then she stood, stumbled to the couch and sank into the cushions.

She sat staring into space, remembering the awful words he’d said...

You were number six.

I’ve been lying for months.

There is no dead wife.

My brothers knew and I told my mother…

What a fool Annie had been. She’d believed everything he’d said,
everything,
and it was all a lie. A vicious lie. Keith had always told her she was naïve, too trusting, and the insecurity over what those epithets always caused resurfaced. Along with them came the knowledge that she hadn’t been enough for Keith and could never be enough for a man like Spencer Wickham.

She wondered what he’d been feeling while they’d had sex and he knew he was deceiving her. And what did it matter in the end? He’d tricked her in the worst way by making love to her under false pretenses, and nothing could ever change that.

After a while, Annie couldn’t stand the recriminations any longer. She remembered how she’d gotten through the tough times in the months following her divorce from Keith by
doing
things. So first, she cleaned the downstairs, scouring the kitchen, vacuuming the floors, even polishing the cupboards. Then she headed to the second floor. At the door to her room, she saw the bed, still bearing evidence of their lovemaking. The pretty pink-and-white quilt was in a ball on the floor, along with some pillows that they’d tossed off. The sheets were in a tangle. The room still smelled like rosebuds. For a moment, juxtaposed over all that, was the image of the bed strewn with white petals, and Annie lying on them with Spence, naked and beautiful, leaning over her.

“No, I will not do this!” she said aloud.

Instead, she stalked to the bed, ripped the sheets from the mattress, tore off the pillowcases and stuffed all the linens down the laundry chute. With military precision, she remade the bed. Then she vacuumed every inch of the rug. Exhausted, she headed for the bathroom. It held a hint of his aftershave or cologne, which she now realized probably cost more than groceries for her and her kids for a week. Fishing out the cleaning products from under the vanity, she scoured the entire room from top to bottom until it smelled like ammonia and she’d erased every trace of the man who’d deceived her. If only she could disinfectant her heart as easily.

That took till one a.m. She showered and put on her favorite pajamas, but when she went to go to bed, she found she couldn’t climb in. What the hell had gotten into her, to sleep with a man after knowing him only two months?

Making a quick decision, heading downstairs, she grabbed her purse, put on a light coat and drove the five miles to her mother’s house. When she pulled up to the curb, she saw the light was on in the main bedroom upstairs, so Norma was home. Thank God, because she needed her mother now. Exiting the car, she made her way to the front door. It was locked—Annie had a key—but she was fearful of scaring her mother this late at night. So she rang the bell.

Norma opened the door a few minutes later. Dressed in a nightgown-and-robe set Annie had bought her, she seemed wide awake.

“I’m sorry to bother you.”

“Don’t be silly. Come on in, honey.”

She shepherded Annie inside, took her coat and led her to the kitchen. “Want a drink?”

“Tea would be good.”

Norma made quick work of putting on the pot, then returned to the table, sat and took Annie’s hands in hers. “What happened?”

Annie felt tears well. No, damn it, she wouldn’t cry over Spence. She wanted to stay mad. Furious, actually, at a man who’d deceived her unconscionably. “It’s about Spence. He’s been lying to me. He’s not who he says he is.”

As Annie recounted what Spence had told her, she was embarrassed by her own gullibility. Saying the truth out loud made her seem even more the fool. “I can’t begin to imagine what he had to go through to keep up the lies.”

“This is horrible, Annie. All for a
bet
?”

Annie had inherited her mother’s values. Erroneously, she’d thought Spence shared them. “That’s what he said. I had no idea he was so shallow.”

“I’m shocked at the lengths he had to go through to pull such a thing off.”

The kettle whistled, and while her mom fixed tea, Annie began to catalogue in her head what those lengths might be. The elaborate story he’d concocted to even meet her online. Making up and continuing the lies about his construction job. The less expensive clothes he’d had to buy. Hell, she’d thought he hadn’t asked her to his home because he felt guilty about his dead wife. A dead wife who didn’t exist.

When her mother returned to the table with tea, she blurted out that last reprehensible fact. “Mom, he even went as far as to make up a dead wife and give her a name. He’s really been married and divorced twice.”