pieces clicked together in Marnie’s mind. The timing of Jack’s arrival. Picking up my father, he’d said.
She glanced from one man to the other, and prayed she was wrong. “Dan’s your father?” she said to Jack, then spun back to Dan. “But…but your last name is Simpson.”
Dan grinned. “Guilty as charged. I’m this trouble-maker’s stepfather.” He draped a loving arm around Jack and gave him a quick hug.
“You know Dan’s son?” Helen asked Marnie. “You never told me that.”
“I didn’t know until just now. And, Ma, I think you should know that Jack…” Marnie started to tell her mother the rest, the truth about who Jack was, but she watched The light in her mother’s eyes dim a bit, and she couldn’t do it. The urge to keep the peace, to keep everyone happy, overpowered the words and she let them die in her throat.
Dan Simpson. Father of Jack Knight, the man whose company had ruined her family’s life.
Dan Simpson. The man her mother was falling for.
Dan Simpson. Another Mr. Wrong in a family teeming with them.
“You should know that, uh, Jack and I met the other night,” Marnie said finally. “We sort of…ran into each other.”
“Oh, my. What a small world,” Helen said, beaming again.
“Getting smaller every day.” Jack grinned at Marnie, but the smile didn’t sway her. “How do you know my father?”
She gave a helpless shrug. “It seems I just fixed him up with my mother.”
“You’ve got one talented matchmaker standing here,” Dan said, giving Helen’s hand a squeeze. “You should see if she can fix you up, too, Jack.”
Fix him up? She’d rather die first.
“You’re a matchmaker?” Jack raised a brow in amusement.
“Guilty as charged,” she said, echoing Dan’s words.
Her brain swam with the incongruity of the situation. How could she have created such a disaster? Usually her instincts were right on, but this time, they had failed her. And she’d created a mess of epic proportion. One that was slipping out of her control more every second.
Beside her, Dan and Helen were chatting, making plans for dinner or lunch or something. They were off to the side, caught in their own world of just the two of them. All of Marnie’s senses were attuned to Jack—the enemy of her family and son of the man who had finally put a smile on her mother’s face. How was she supposed to tell Ma the truth, and in the process, break a heart that had just begun to mend?
Jack leaned in then, close, his breath a heated whisper against her ear. “I’m surprised you didn’t try to fix me up the night we met.”
“I wouldn’t do that to one of my clients,” she whispered back.
Confusion filled his blue eyes, a confusion she had no intent of erasing, not here, not now.
“I’m not sure what I did to make you despise me,” he said, “but I assure you, I’m not nearly as bad as you think.”
“No, you’re not,” she said just as the valet arrived with her car. She opened the door, and held Jack’s gaze over the roof. “You’re worse.”
Then she got in her car and pulled away.
A matchmaker.
Of all the jobs Jack would have thought the fiery redhead Marnie Franklin held, matchmaker sat at the very bottom of the list. Yet, the title seemed to suit her, to match her strong personality, her crimson hair, her quick tongue.
His stepfather had raved about Marnie’s skills the entire ride from the restaurant to the repair shop to pick up the car the taxi driver had rear-ended, return the rental, then head home. The event had agreed with Dan, giving his hearty features a new energy, and his voice renewed enthusiasm, as if he’d reverse-aged in one afternoon. At six-foot two, with a full head of gray hair, Dan cut an imposing figure offset by a ready smile and pale green eyes. Eyes that now lit with joy every time he talked about Helen.
“I never would have expected to fall for the match-maker’s mother,” Dan said. “But I tell ya, Jack, I really like Helen.”
“I’m glad,” Jack said. And he was. His stepfather had been alone for a long, long time, and deserved happiness. Just with someone other than Marnie Franklin’s maternal relatives. The woman had something against him, that was clear.
“Her daughter’s quite pretty, too, you know,” Dan said.
“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
Dan laughed. “You lie about as well as I cook. I saw you checking her out.”
“That was a reflex.”
“Sure it was.” Dan shifted in his seat to study his son. “You know, you should use some of the arguments you used on me.”
Jack concentrated on the road. Boston traffic in the middle of the day required all his attention. Yeah, that was why he didn’t look Dan in the eye. Because of the cars on the road. “What are you talking about?”
“The list of reasons why I should go to that event—and I’m glad I did, by the way—is the same list I should give you about why you should ask Marnie out.”
“I did. She turned me down.”
“And?”
“And what? End of story.” He didn’t want to get into the reasons why he had no intentions of dating anyone right now. He, of all people, should steer far and wide from anything resembling a relationship.
He could bring a business back to life, turn around a lackluster bottom line, but when it came to personal relationships, he was—
Well, Tanya had called him unavailable. Uninvolved. Cold, even. More addicted to his smartphone than her.
A year after the end of their relationship, he’d had to admit she had a point. When he woke up in the morning, his first thought was the latest business venture, not the woman in his life.
Then why had he asked Marnie to coffee?
Because for the first time in a long time, he was intrigued. She’d been on his mind ever since the night they’d met. Confounding, intriguing Marnie Franklin had been a constant thought in the back of his head. After seeing her today, those thoughts had moved front and center. But he didn’t tell Dan any of this, because he knew it would give his stepfather more ammunition for his “get back to dating” argument.
Right now, Jack was concentrating on work, and on making amends. Jack Knight, Sr. had ruined a lot of lives, and Jack had spent the last two years trying to undo the damage his father had done, while still keeping the business going and keeping the people who worked for him employed. As soon as he’d moved into his father’s office, he’d vowed he would do things differently, approach the company in a new way. He’d gone through all the old files, and had tried to apply that philosophy, one deal at a
