Page 69 of Rocky Mountain Desire
“Because you’re with Hope? What did you do? Go looking for her as soon as I left town?”
Matt kept walking.
“She’s not going to make you happy. Acting as if she’s some princess of the country. She’s using you just to get back at me…”
Helen raised her voice to a near shout. Matt paused at the entrance to the main room. From his vantage point, his entire family was visible. The girls gathered in a tight group, laughing and smiling as they eyed the guys at the tables. His brothers shooting the breeze and kicking back after a full day of labour. The kind of country living Helen had refused to see as valuable. The love and family she’d turned her back on at every chance.
Matt twisted to face her. “You trying to convince me your sister is pulling a fast one?”
The calculating expression spread, Helen’s eyes brightening. “She was so damn proud the first time you guys got together, she emailed me, gloating she’d finally gotten another thing I used to have. It wasn’t enough that she got the business and the apartment. She went after everything I had in my life.”
Weariness settled around Matt’s shoulders like a blanket of snow. The complaints were familiar—Helen often had something negative to say about Hope. For years he’d listened with only half an ear whenever she’d moaned about her younger sister receiving special attention, thinking it was typical family grumbles. Like him and Daniel poking that the twins got off easy being the youngest in the family—nothing serious, nothing more than a temporary protest. Now? Blinders fell from his eyes. She really did want him to think evil of Hope.
Still, he’d give her the rope she so obviously wanted just to let her well and truly show her colours. “Why would she do that?”
Helen stepped toward him unsteadily, and he wondered again if she was drunk in spite of there being no scent of liquor. She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Hope’s jealous. You know that—she’s always been jealous of me. Remember when we were young? She always managed to get the best of everything from my parents. Spoiled and greedy. She’s the same now as then.”
Matt watched as Helen placed a hand on his arm and rubbed her fingers over his biceps. “I remember you complaining.”
She nodded. “See? She doesn’t care about you.”
The sour taste in Matt’s mouth was enough to make him ill. A profound sadness settled over him. There was no depth that Helen would not stoop to. One deception after another. And like he and Jaxi had spoken about—Helen had chosen her path.
She wanted a war? She’d get one.
Matt laid a hand over hers and stopped her from caressing his skin. The optimism in her eyes—did she really think he was that gullible? Some country hick willing to swallow any story? To go from saying she loved him to trying to ruin his relationship with Hope?
When he pulled her hand off and dropped it as if he’d held a dead mouse, her sparkling confidence clouded.
“If Hope has the best of anything, it’s because she’s worked for it. She deserves her happiness. The business, the apartment. After you left she put in the time and made it happen.”
Helen’s right eye twitched. “You fell for her lies. She used money that should have belonged to both of—”
“I don’t know the financial details, and I don’t care. I’ve heard enough and seen enough to know that when it comes down to who I trust, you have nothing to stand on. Hope says you don’t own any of the Stitching Post? I believe her.”
Helen lifted her chin, “And what about me being in love with you? How convenient that she’s with you, at least for now.”
Matt shook his head. “You don’t love me. You never did.”
“Neither does she.”
“This conversation is over. I think it’s best if you don’t bother to try to talk to me again.”
“She’s not the pristine and pure thing you think she is.” The words burst out like a gunshot.
Images of Hope wrapping herself around him and accepting his nearly violent lovemaking raced through his brain. Pure? Pure heaven. “None of your business.”
“Remember what she did for a living while she was in school. She stripped, Matt. She did all kinds of things to the guys. Hell, I bet she was fucking a dozen of them a night all through college.”
This had gone beyond stupid. “You know what, Helen? You’re not getting it. What you and I had is over and gone. What Hope and I have is here and now. For all I care she could have fucked half the college and all the profs. But I doubt very much she did because that’s not the kind of woman she is.”
Helen laughed, a dark, dirty sound. “That’s what you think. Who did you think I got the idea to ask you for the ménage from?”
The stab of pain returned, harder than before, but none of the agony was connected to Hope—all the blame landed firmly on the shoulders of the woman in front of him.
He was a stupid ass for having stayed to listen in the first place. But now that she’d tried to poison his life again, he was going to have his own say.
“Helen, you broke my damn heart, but you taught me a lesson I needed to learn. I can’t make someone love me. For years you refused to say the words, and now I’m glad, because I don’t think you ever did love me. And what I felt for you—well, it might have been a kind of love, almost a practice for the real thing. Whether I’ve got that now or not you’ll have to watch from the outside because you’re not welcome around me. Hope can decide if she wants you around her, but—”
