Page 13 of At the Heart of It
Kate flinched, and Jonah felt like an asshole. Okay, so that came out a little gruffer than he meant it to. The question—or maybe the bluntness of it?—seemed to catch Kate off guard. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out, leaving Jonah staring at those perfect, soft lips for a little too long.
Way too long. Jesus.
He swung his gaze back to Vivienne. “What’s going on here?”
“You two know each other?” Vivienne looked genuinely perplexed, which wasn’t like her. That killed his initial theory that this was some sort of weird matchmaker scheme, which was totally something Viv would do. Helping her ex-husband find love again would make a great bestselling self-help book.
“I—we—” Kate was still fumbling for words, and Jonah couldn’t help remembering how cool and composed she’d been for their newlywed playacting in Ashland. That meant she was really rattled.
He looked back at Viv again, trying to make sense of things. His ex-wife gave a stiff smile and swept an arm out over the parlor. “Please, Jonah—have a seat.”
Christ. She only used his full name when she wanted something. After the publishing house had slapped him with that ridiculous “Average Joe” moniker during edits for On the Other Hand, Viv had taken to calling him Joe all the time.
At least until she needed something from him.
“I’m sure we can get this all sorted out,” Viv was saying as she poured him a glass of cucumber water. “Can I get you something else? A beer, maybe?”
She was really laying it on thick. Beer? Really? At ten in the morning when she used to flip him shit for drinking the stuff at all?
She’d tried for years to make him love wine instead, signing them up for a couples’ pinot noir tasting class and booking a romantic vineyard getaway when all he’d wanted was a goddamn pale ale and a quiet afternoon with a good book.
And now here he was getting worked up over the beer issue again when he still had no idea why Kate was sitting in Viv’s living room.
Jonah shook his head and took the water glass. “Water’s fine, thanks.”
He surveyed the array of seating options in the parlor and selected a leather club chair the color of squash puree. It looked new, something she’d acquired in the months since their divorce, along with this house. He’d been here only once before to pick up a cookbook that had belonged to his mother. They’d been cordial enough then, but something told him this was a different sort of meeting.
He set the glass on the sleek glass coffee table, deliberately avoiding the coaster just to watch Viv blanch. Then he sat back with his hands on his knees and looked from one face to the next—Viv, Kate, and a curly-haired blonde who seemed so flustered she’d forgotten to introduce herself.
“So what’s going on here?”
The words came with an echo, and Jonah realized he and Viv had spoken them at the same time. He stared at her for a moment, resisting the urge to call “Jinx!” the way they might have in the early years of their marriage.
Viv looked away first and focused in on Kate. “I’m confused. You told me yesterday that you’d never met Joe. You were even joking about how you couldn’t find photos of him online.”
“Jonah,” he muttered, not that anyone was listening.
The blonde gave a vigorous nod and stared at him like he’d emerged from a spaceship. “It’s true about the photos. The only things we found when we Googled you were a couple pics from college and this one where you had a big lumberjack beard.”
Jonah frowned, wondering why the hell any of these people would be Googling him. “The military required me to keep a low profile for a number of years,” he said.
“And then he refused to have photos in the books,” Viv said in a tone that suggested she was still irritated about it.
“Oh,” the blonde said as realization seemed to dawn. “We were also Googling Joe Porter, not Jonah.”
Kate seemed to find her tongue at last. “Vivienne. This is—wow, such a coincidence.” She looked at Jonah then as though expecting him to correct her, but he apparently knew even less than she did.
She licked her lips—a nervous gesture that sent his libido reeling—and flicked her gaze back to Viv’s. “So, uh—Jonah and I met four weeks ago in Ashland. We stayed at the same bed and breakfast and ended up going to the same play that afternoon and?—”
“Oh dear.” Vivienne raised a hand to her lips, eyes wide with amazement. Someone who didn’t know her well might mistake the look for dismay, but Jonah knew better. Viv lived for serendipitous shit like this.
She looked at Jonah. “You two slept together?”
“No!”
This time it was Kate whose words came out in an echo of his, and Jonah looked at her again. She was shaking her head like the thought of sleeping with him was only slightly less repugnant than the thought of bathing in a pit of raw sewage. He tried not to take offense.
“Definitely not,” Kate said. “We saw a play together and had dinner together and?—”
