All his anger disappeared. Alex was still living in her own hell, and it pained him more than his wounded ego. He sat on the couch and turned so he could look at her.
“I have never lied to you, Alex,” he said quietly. “Never. The situation with Sharon was one in a long line of events involving Travis Hart. It never crossed my mind to tell you about it because, honestly, I hadn’t thought about it in years.
“I was never romantically involved with Sharon. She worked for the D.A.’s office, and technically I was her direct supervisor. Many people cross that line; I’m not one of them.
“Sharon was, however, involved with Travis. Travis is charming and attentive and used his slick manipulative skills to use her to sabotage me. She believed everything he said because Travis is, at his core, a con artist. He will say or do anything to achieve his goals. At that time, his goal was to get rid of me.
“And it worked, after a while. Even after Sharon left, I was spending so much time trying to salvage my relationship with my colleagues and staff that I couldn’t focus on my job. Sandy—Sandra Cullen, the D.A. at the time—saw what was going on but because most of Travis’s games were he said/he said, she couldn’t do much about it. After the incident with Sharon, she made sure we never shared a clerk, then I moved to the sex crimes unit.
“I ran for the State Senate for two reasons. One of the reasons was because of Travis—the work environment had become toxic. But the primary reason was because of a case I prosecuted where a teenager in a group home raped and murdered a young boy. The law at the time didn’t allow for neighbors to know whether any juveniles in a group home had a record of sex crimes, because of juvenile privacy laws. I wanted to change that—fix what was broken in the system. I thought if I could just explain to the rest of the elected officials that prosecutors’ hands were tied in some cases because of laws on the books, that they’d change the laws.
“I learned real quick that the system was broken on that end, too. When Sandy asked me to run for D.A., I did—because at my core, I’m not a politician. I can’t sit in a room full of people elected to serve this great state, tell them clearly what is wrong and how it can be fixed, and then have them completely ignore the problem or, worse, make up reasons for the problem and pass legislation to address so-called ‘root causes’ without fixing the problem placed in front of them. It was soul-breaking.” That was an understatement. To this day, Matt regretted his three years in the State Senate – he’d resigned after winning the District Attorney’s race.
“I came back to the D.A.’s office and Travis was still there, only it had gotten worse because he had opposed me in the election. The three years I was gone, he’d built himself a small but loyal following that would do anything he wanted. He was good at that—building alliances. They sabotaged cases—jeopardizing their careers—while Travis directed it without getting his own hands dirty. That was his M.O. The one valuable trick I learned from working in the Capitol was how the game was played. I put an end to it real quick. But not before we lost a major case because of evidence tampering. Evidence tampering that I could not prove was the work of Travis Hart, but used nonetheless to force him to resign. I threatened to pull every case he’d worked during the three years I was gone and go over them with a fine-toothed comb. He resigned.”
Matt rubbed his hands over his face. Alex was staring at him, a mix of emotion on her face. She was exhausted, but she believed him. He could see it in her eyes. Why didn’t she talk to him? Tell him what she was thinking?
“In hindsight,” he continued, “I should have gone over Travis’s cases because it’s clear that he was worried I would find something. I’d been so relieved that he’d left, I put the threat aside and rebuilt my team. Some reassignments, some re-training, some firings, some new hires. Now, I am extremely happy with our unit. I trust each and every prosecutor who works under me. Our law clerks are among the best in the state.”
“I should have talked to you instead of Dean,” Alex said softly. “I don’t know why I didn’t. I’m sorry, Matt.”
He got up and put his hands on her shoulders. “Alex, I will never lie to you. I will never use you. If you don’t want to work undercover, we’ll find another way. But more than anything, how you see me matters. It matters to me.” He pushed her hair away from her face and kissed her. “You matter to me.”
Matt kissed her again. Her lips parted and she leaned against him, kissing him back with the same barely restrained passion he had. He wanted to take her to bed, he wanted to make love to Alex and wake up with her next to him.
As if she felt his intensity, she stepped back. “Matt--”
“Don’t turn me away.”