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His brows bounced once as he split the coffee into two waiting mugs. “That’s about the size of it.”
Jo scowled as she flipped the French toast, and tried to buy herself a moment. “What are your thoughts on the subject?”
Matt sprinkled chocolate powder on the drinks. “I don’t like what he did, but I don’t see how refusing to rent to him would help anything.”
Intellectually, Jo agreed. No matter what happened, David had paternal rights to Isabelle and Emily, his and Sophie’s daughters, and would always be part of their lives. Embracing that made sense. But on a personal level, Jo was so angry with him she could barely stand the sight of him, and the thought of having any legal tie to him made her cringe. Plus, since Sophie hadn’t yet made up her mind about how to proceed, this was a craggy stretch of shoreline to walk—Jo and Sophie’s complicated relationship was fraught with hidden land mines. If Jo refused and Sophie reconciled with David, Jo would be the hard-ass sister-in-law who’d been a jerk. But if Sophie permanently kicked him to the curb while he was living in Matt’s house, Sophie would want David kicked out, and that could create problems for Matt.
Jo sighed. “Probably the best thing for me to do is call Sophie.”
Matt managed to infuse his nod with apology and sympathy, and slid one of the mochas over toward her.
She grabbed her phone, opened Duo, and tapped through a video call—she wanted to be able to read Sophie’s expressions. Sophie picked up on the second ring.
“We have a situation,” Jo said after initial greetings. “David asked if he can rent Matt’s house.”
“Of course he did.” Sophie’s green eyes, identical to Jo’s own, narrowed in suspicion, and her hand raked through her perfect brown bob.
Jo looked up at Matt as she answered. “We’ll do whatever you want us to do.”
She blew out a puff of air. “I don’t know what to do. I suppose it doesn’t really matter. He has to live somewhere.”
“If that’s what you think is best, that’s what we’ll do,” Jo said cautiously.
Sophie’s eyes flicked off into the distance. “Shecalled me yesterday.”
A frozen lump dropped into Jo’s stomach.Shewas David’s pregnant mistress, a twenty-eight-year-old blonde with a Ph.D in English Lit and a wealthy, influential family.
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Luckily, I never answer the phone unless I recognize the number. But she left a message.”
Jo rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Oh God.”
“Yeah.” Sophie gave a single, dry laugh. “Hearing her voice made me want to leap through the phone and scratch her eyes out.”
“What did she want?”
“To convince me she’d also been duped by David.”
“What, he told her he was single?” Jo asked.
“Oh, no, he wasn’t that stupid. He told her our marriage wastroubled. That I was an unreasonable harpy that didn’t understand him.”
Jo slapped the French toast onto the waiting plates with her free hand. “That you hadn’t had sex in months, and he was just waiting for the right moment to ask for a divorce?”
Sophie repeated the dry laugh. “Isolove being caught inside a living cliché.”
“No other reason?”
One of Sophie’s manicured nails tapped in the background. “To assure me he’s all mine.”
Jo nearly choked. “How generous of her.”
“And that she’s keeping the baby. So she hopes we can befriends, since we’re both victims of David’sbad judgment, and because our children will be siblings.”
Jo’s wry laugh was an unconscious twin of Sophie’s. “Ah, the delusional audacity of youth. She better buckle up, she’s got a wild ride coming.”
Sophie surprised her with a sigh. “I suppose I’ll eventually have to find a way to be civil. She’s right, Isabelle and Emily are going to have a little brother—it’s a boy, by the way—and they have a right to know him. But right now, I’ll be damned if I can even imagine what that’s going to look like.”
