Project Suite temporay variables' value not being retained across all projects in suite run

I have a project suite that contains several projects. and are all ran together as one suite.  The last one is a simple results email project.  To achieve this, at the beginning of each test item in every previous project I set a Project SUITE temporary variable with the same test name to "fail."  Then, at the end of the test, I set that variable to "pass."  



The problem is that when TestComplete moves from one project to the other in the suite run, the temporary variables revert back to their default value, which is an empty string.  Why is their value not being within the Suite run?  I would expect that to happen if I was saving PROJECT variables, but not PROJECT SUITE variables.  



I  can achieve what I am trying to do using persitant variables, but I then have to save the project after running it since the variables were edited.  This won't work because the tests are run using Task Scheduler on a Windows VM every night, and I don't want to have to go into the VM every day to save the project.



Any thoughts?  Thanks!