She was a rising star in management at General Motors. He was a former top union leader at the car maker’s Oshawa plant. But their romance went up in flames when she was charged with setting his house on fire — with him in it.

“It’s quite a story,” says Jim Hoy, who woke up at 5:30 a.m. to the smell of smoke that day in June 2009. “Nobody believes it.”

Turns out there’s much he didn’t know about the woman he proposed to six months into their love affair, according to Hoy, who says his brother has acquired the movie rights to the tale.

It was only the day before her arrest, Hoy says, that he learned her husband was still very much alive, contrary to what she’d told him.

Hoy met Melanie Ann Bos 20 years ago at GM, where she is manager of the stamping plant, overseeing about 225 workers who make body panels for cars. He worked for Local 222 of the Canadian Auto Workers, the largest union local in the country’s auto industry.

After retiring following 28 years of service, and leaving his position as first vice-president of Local 222 and plant chairperson, Hoy says he took friends’ advice and asked Bos out in the fall of 2007.

“I’d known her for years and years and we got along good in our professional relationship,” he recalls of their time spent working on labour issues together.

“She was friendly. She was absolutely brilliant, well-educated, a rising star at GM,” says the well-groomed, youthful-looking 50-year-old.

GM insiders describe her as a talented “up and comer” and one of the top 50 senior employees at General Motors of Canada Ltd.

With what he says was her assertion that her husband had died many years ago, Bos, now 44, and Hoy began a romantic relationship.

“When I started going out with her, everything was really good at first,” he remembers. So much so, he says, that the following spring he asked her to marry him.

But things started to unravel when they went into business together, buying investment properties and a house in Bowmanville, where they planned to live. She was having trouble coming up with her share of the money, including $100,000 for a commercial property in Prince Edward County, Hoy says.

That deal was supposed to close around the time the fire happened at his country home in Courtice, a 10-minute drive from GM.

Rumours were going around that Bos was still married. So, Hoy says, a friend hired a private investigator.

“I found out her husband was still alive, but she was engaged to be married to me.”

Her husband, meanwhile, had discovered she was involved with another man, Hoy says.

“He figured her and I were trying to kill him, and I thought he was dead,” Hoy says in amazement. The two men have since become good friends, he says.

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Looking back, Hoy realizes Bos was leading a double life, “big time.” But nothing seemed amiss, even though when they spent time together it was always at his place and never hers, he says. He was out of town a lot and had plenty of work to do looking after his own property.

He has met her two grown children but says they were told not to mention his name around their dad.

Around the time Hoy learned about Bos’s marital status, he woke to the smell of smoke. His house, which was being renovated, had been set ablaze, in a wall by the fireplace. He found a woman downstairs.

Bos stands charged with arson and mischief in connection with the damaged wall. Under the terms of her release, Bos is living under house arrest with a friend in Oshawa. She is allowed to go to work at GM but must be accompanied by her friend whenever she leaves the house.

A $15,000 bond has been posted and she is prohibited from having contact with a dozen people, including Hoy, her estranged husband and her daughter.

Bos will plead not guilty, says her lawyer, John Whelton, who declined to comment further while the case is before the courts. A trial date has not been set.

GM officials would not disclose any information about Bos, who now goes by her maiden name of Chandler.

“We won’t comment on any issues surrounding our employees,” said communications director Tony LaRocca.

Hoy struggles to make sense of it all, but he keeps his thoughts to himself in anticipation of the trial. He’s still trying to see through the smoke and mirrors.

With files by Tony VanAlphen