Soliman, Wendy - The Name of the Game (BookStrand Publishing Romance) by Wendy Soliman

went, though. He was full of anger and resentment, even though I tried to convince him that I didn’t plan to stay with the company for long.”
    “You’d taken the woman he loved and the job he wanted.”
    “That’s the way he saw it.” Matt sat down again. “Eve remained close friends with Charlie, knowing he’d do anything she asked of him. Looking back, I suspect she ran to him all the time with tales of my neglect. You see, Eve was never happy unless she was the centre of attention, but I rapidly ran out of patience with her when she started to neglect our home and baby.”
    “Why did she do that?”
    “She said she was too young for motherhood, that I was always working and she never got to have any fun.”
    Ashley opened her mouth to say what she thought about that, remembered that Eve was still Matt’s wife, and closed it again.
    “It’s okay,” he said, offering her a lilting smile. “I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right.”
    “So why did you stay?”
    “For Jack’s sake, at first, anyway. Then, about two years into our marriage, I came across her at a party in an intimate clinch with Charlie. I seriously thought about leaving. Dad wouldn’t have liked it—”
    “You were still working for the company?”
    “Yes, every time I talked about going back to what I wanted to do, Dad persuaded me to stay just a little longer. He was still frail, I knew a serious argument would set him back, and to be honest, I had a family to support and couldn’t afford to go back to college life.”
    “That’s sad.”
    “Yeah well, it was my own mess. We all have to take responsibility for our own actions and make the best of things. I’d been forced to give up the career I really wanted and had married a girl I didn’t love, who now appeared to be playing fast and loose. I wasn’t happy and confronted Eve about her behaviour, threatening to leave if she carried on the way she was. She denied doing anything more than flirting.”
    “Did you believe her?”
    “No, but she must have sensed the change in me because, hey presto, she did it again. She forgot her birth control pills and got pregnant.”
    Matt turned to fully face Ashley, a grimace replacing his earlier smile. “Hence the vasectomy,” he said quietly. “She’d outmanoeuvred me for the last time.”
    “Why was she so desperate to hold on to you if she was fooling about with other men?”
    “Because Eve always wants what isn’t available to her,” Matt said, a cynical twist to his lips. “I wasn’t dancing to her tune anymore.”
    “You haven’t explained why you stayed with the company. I thought it was a temporary measure.”
    “It was a condition of my father’s will. He had another massive stroke that killed him just after Ross was born. He left me forty percent of the company on the understanding that I remained in charge. I suppose by then he’d started to see through Charlie, and Philip had already left to take up a position at Stevenson’s.”
    “Roker resented you as well, then?”
    “No, not at all. It was very all amicable. He knew that Charlie and I would always be ahead of him, simply because it was a family firm. He got another offer but continued to be a friend of the family. It was him who first suggested the amalgamation, as a matter of fact.”
    “Oh, I see.”
    Matt looked at her askance. “You don’t like Philip?”
    “I only met him briefly for the first time the other night,” she said evasively.
    “Anyway, returning to my father, I couldn’t afford to turn my back on that bloody will. I had a wife and two children to support. There was no way I could afford to finish my degree. My mother would probably have financed me, but I would have been uneasy about leaving Charlie in charge of Interactive.”
    “You’d got involved with the business in spite of yourself?”
    “I suppose so. It was the final straw for Charlie, though. He’s still full of resentment, and our relationship has never