painted low-sheen gold. Two impressive staircases curved their way to an upper floor. Behind and between the staircases were two massively proportioned doors, closing off what she presumed was the living area. To the right was a door matching the one Matt had gone through to get to the library.
She tilted back her head, expecting to find a chandelier hanging from the ceiling, and even when that was exactly what she found, she couldn’t quite believe it. All that was missing was a gigantic vase of exotic flowers on a marble table and Matt’s entrance hall would rival the lobby of the five-star hotel she was staying in. Her entire flat, with its jammed-together living, dining and kitchen areas, would fit into this one space.
She tried to imagine the library, using this as an example, and decided she couldn’t actually get past the fact that Matt had a library. He only read ebooks! How did an e-reader require an entire room?
Of course, Matt had only moved in a week ago; the first she’d heard he was even looking for a place was when he’d emailed her three days after her fateful phone call, asking what he’d need to set up his new kitchen. So the library was probably just an empty room waiting to be repurposed. Or maybe it was nothing but a grandly named study housing a desk, a couple of chairs and his computer paraphernalia. Because libraries weren’t Matt’s style. Libraries were what the Teague Hamiltons and Veronica Johnsons of the world had in their homes. And not because Teague and Veronica were any more loaded than Matt—by his twenty-seventh birthday last year Matt had made a fortune selling the online payment software he and Artie (his partner in all things geek) had built while still at college. It was more that where Teague and Veronica carried the suggestion of the bred-in-the-bone wealth that went with stately homes, self-made Matt was just Matt. He still drove a beaten-up Toyota, still wore Levi’s, T-shirts and Vans when barefoot wasn’t an option, still drank Sam Adams.
A curse floated out to her through the doorway on the left, followed by a thud.
Ha! And he still swore like a sailor and had the patience of a gnat.
She reached up a hand to pat at her hair. Took off her overcoat and gave her dress a more thorough brush down. Adjusted the silicon-lined band at the top of one of her thick black thigh-high socks, which had slid down half an inch. Re-pasted her smile. Picked up her briefcase.
Showtime.
FUCK, FUCK, FUCK.
It had seemed so easy two weeks ago. A favor to a friend. On par with what he’d done for Romy back in their Capitol U days, when they’d all lived on top of each other in Veronica’s town house and there’d been no hiding the fact that menstruation was more a feat of endurance for Romy than a normal bodily function.
He, Veronica and Rafael had taken turns refilling her hot water bottle, making her cup after cup of Lapsang Souchong, breaking the megawatt-but-useless painkillers out of their blister packs, restocking her why-are-they-disappearing-so-fast sanitary items. Even Teague had taken a few turns, despite not living with them—during and after his brief stint as Romy’s boyfriend.
So when Romy had called two weeks ago to update him on where she was at with getting her whack job of a uterus fixed, it was pretty much a case of business as usual.
Or it would have been, if Camilla hadn’t answered his phone.
Women he was fucking always seemed to need to do that when Romy’s name flashed up, so it wasn’t the act of answering the phone that bothered him so much as the way she’d said, Oh, it’s your Romy, before swiping to accept the call.
His Romy? Fuck that! Romy was just Romy.
And then Camilla had told Romy that Matt would call her back, and that was a step too far in the proprietary stakes so he’d pulled the phone out of her hand fast enough to give her whiplash of the wrist and taken it into another room.
Camilla had looked mightily displeased, but it was poor form for a guy to ask a girl about her menstrual cycle in front of someone she’d never met, so he’d left Camilla to it and launched straight into it with Romy via a short, sharp opener: Enough of this bullshit, how do we fix it?
We can have an ablation, she’d said.
Then have one, was his response.
She couldn’t if she wanted a kid one day—which she definitely did, she’d explained—because there’d be no having one afterward.
So have a baby now, he’d said, what was stopping her?
Little problem of no man in her LIFE! And yes, she’d screamed the last word, because a cramp had ripped her in half at that exact moment.
He’d paced the floor while she’d breathed through the pain, and then said, fuck it, he’d give her a baby—why not?
And she’d said, Why not? Because it was a big deal requiring more than the one minute’s reflection he usually afforded life-and-death decisions.
And he’d told her it sure as hell didn’t require her usual one thousand years’ reflection, and that it would make the top ten list of easiest things he’d ever fucking contemplated: a quick ejaculation on his side of the Atlantic, a turkey baster on hers, a courier in between, a baby at the end and Yippie-Kai-Yay motherfucker to the problem.
She’d laughed so hard at the Yippie-Kai-Yay motherfucker she’d snorted, but she was crying at the same time, and then she’d said he was the next best thing to Captain America to offer, even if she couldn’t accept.
And he’d snort-laughed then, insisting that Captain America was a virgin as well as not being the masturbatory type, whereas Matt had shot out so many gallons of semen over the years—with and without the assistance of a second party—he could have his own page in Guinness World Records so where was the comparison?
And somehow during the ensuing argument over Captain America’s sexual expertise—or lack thereof—which they’d been having forever—Matt’s sperm offer had been accepted and general terms for proceeding agreed to, and he’d felt pretty damn happy with himself because hey, he was going to be a father, which he’d never thought he’d be.
Correction: godfather.
Because obviously he couldn’t be a real father.
By that stage Camilla had left, presumably in a huff since he hadn’t heard from her since, and Matt had figured that was just as well since she probably wouldn’t appreciate his commitment to impregnating another woman even if he wasn’t actually coming within spurting distance of Romy’s fallopian tubes.
And now here they were, and he felt pretty sure Camilla had jinxed him with the his Romy bullshit because his Romy wasn’t the Romy he’d opened the door to.
His Romy had obviously been kidnapped by aliens and replaced with a metamorphosed porn star version who looked exactly like his Romy—neat and chic, clean and bright—but was on a mission to drive him out of his fucking mind with the need to get his hands on her. Which he could not do, because his Romy, his real Romy, was off-limits.
He wasn’t allowed
