by Penny Jordan
She loved someone else. It had been easier for him when he had believed she was another Jolie, cheating on someone she professed to love without guilt or compunction. Now he knew better. There had been no mistaking the genuine confusion and shock in her voice when she had told him she wanted him and what that wanting was doing to her. He had never expected such honesty. It had taken his breath away, compelled him to listen, made him ache to comfort her, to hold and protect her.
She wanted him, but she loved someone else. As he watched her walk unsteadily away from him, he kicked savagely at the plastic bucket she had left on the pathway, wishing he could tear down the barriers between them, wishing he could tell her that what they had shared was rare and special, and that two people who reacted to one another as they did could never remotely describe what they had shared as merely sex; but to do that would mean revealing that he knew that she and this Travis had never made love, and he knew instinctively that she would hate him for revealing that knowledge. If she couldn’t bring herself to admit to him that he was her first lover, then there was no way he could force that knowledge on her.
Logically controlled human beings did not fall desperately in love between the space of one heartbeat and the next, and they certainly did not go on to consummate that love without any of the preliminaries that normally preceded such intimacy—without caution, or thought for the consequences of such lovemaking, compelled to reach out to one another by a force so strong that neither of them could resist it. Such things simply did not happen… Only they had, and he was still reeling from the shock of it; still half fighting against the implications of it. Still, until today, mentally rejecting what in his heart he knew to be the truth. That he loved Emily and that he would have loved her no matter how many fiancés she had in her life, no matter how much she herself could not or would not allow herself to recognise that love.
He could understand her feelings. She was already committed to someone else; it would be easier for her to believe herself to be motivated by physical desire than to allow the possibility that she might love him. And he was beginning to be convinced that she could love him, and that, if it weren’t for this Travis, he would far more easily be able to convince her that, unorthodox though the start of their relationship had been, that did not mean that their feelings weren’t real…and enduring.
* * *
In her bedroom, Emily stared unseeingly at the wall. She was still trembling from head to foot. Still trying to come to terms with the shock of discovering how much she loved Matt.
Not merely needed him, wanted him, desired him, even though she did feel all those things—she loved him as well. He had been so gentle, so understanding, so generous and caring, it was as though her perception of him had suddenly been wiped clean of most of the misconceptions and fears she had deliberately fostered within herself, and she had seen him clearly and properly for the first time—and in doing so had recognised truly for the first time what manner of man he was.
It was a very lowering sensation indeed to realise that her body, her senses, were far better judges of character than her brain, that they were far better attuned to her real needs and feelings than her conscious mind, that they had recognised within Matt, a stranger, something for which they yearned, some essential sweetness of nature, some basic generosity of heart and mind that they had reached out for. If she hadn’t lied, if she had been honest with him right from the start, if…
But what was the use? He didn’t love her. He felt sorry for her, she suspected; he desired her; but love… That was something else, and she would be an even greater fool than she already was if she started dreaming impossible daydreams, if she allowed herself to build a fantasy world around Matt, a world peopled by the two of them and by love—a world she knew quite well could never exist outside her imagination. A world it would be very, very dangerous to walk into, even if only in the privacy of her own thoughts.
CHAPTER NINE
NOW, after wishing for so long that the lengthy months of Matt’s stay would pass as quickly as days, Emily found herself clinging desperately to the time that was left. She didn’t want him to go, and yet in so many ways she couldn’t bear him to stay. Every time he looked at her, every time he so much as walked into the same room, she was so intensely aware of him that her body seemed to be in a constant state of intense tension.
When he touched her by accident, while he was helping her with the household chores, his touch was both purgatory and heaven. She was so desperately afraid of betraying what she felt that she found herself going to extraordinary lengths just to avoid being with him.
She had lost weight, her face and body gaining a haunting fragility that made Matt frown and mentally curse this fiancé who could leave her like this, when she was so plainly pining for him. It made his heart ache to see her drawn, wan face, and sometimes it was almost impossible for him to stop himself from reaching out to her and taking her in his arms. Instead, he spent his spare time working in the garden, trying to dissipate the emotional trauma he was suffering in hard physical work.
Three months after Matt had moved in with them, Emily set out for Oxford to do her monthly domestic shop. Matt had offered to go with her, but she had refused his offer. Things were bad enough as it was. Odd how a simple and very mundane chore such as supermarket shopping could become fraught with emotional anguish and delight when that chore was performed with Matt.
Matt watched her drive away wishing there were something he could do to ease her obvious distress…wishing there were some magic formula he could use to make her stop loving this Travis and love him instead.
It seemed so unfair: she liked him, she desired him physically—but she loved someone else, and, no matter how much he lay in bed at night aching for her, he couldn’t use the physical desire she felt for him to draw her into his arms. Not when she had begged him not to, when she had let down her defences and pleaded with him not to let her break the commitment she had made to someone else.
In other circumstances, he would have been pleased with the work he had done in the garden; his thorough weeding of the tangled herbaceous border had revealed several large clumps of peonies, complete with fat, bursting pink buds, and, next to them, the feathery fronds of pale pink poppies. Along the wall were old-fashioned climbing roses and clinging to them clematis, while in the middle of the wall grew a stately and very old wistaria, with a gnarled trunk, and the most stubbornly rooted couch grass he had ever come across in his life growing happily at its base.
He was tackling this determined and obstinate intruder when he heard a car. At first he thought it was John returning early from a visit to a friend, but when he went to investigate it wasn’t John clambering stiffly and slowly from the interior of the stationary car but a tall, energetic-looking blonde with a mane of tousled hair and a wide, friendly smile.
‘Hi, I’m Gracie,’ she introduced herself, coming towards him and adding quizzically, ‘Emily’s sister.’ And then she turned back towards the car, and held out her hand to the even taller, blonder man who was unfolding himself from the driver’s seat. ‘And this is my fiancé, Travis.’
She wasn’t looking directly at Matt as she made this announcement, for which he was acutely grateful. He heard her saying something about only having arrived back in England the previous evening and deciding to surprise Emily with a visit on their way north.
‘Where is she, by the way?’ she asked him, turning back to look at him.
‘Er…out shopping.’ He knew he was speaking jerkily, nervously almost, and that he couldn’t keep his eyes off the man standing at her side. The friendliness of Gracie’s initial greeting was now held in check, a cool scrutiny taking its place.
‘You are the Matt Slater whom Emily told us was staying here, aren’t you?’ Gracie interrogated him sharply.
Numbly Matt nodded his head, and then, with none of his usual finesse or care, he blurted out, ‘Your engagement—how long… when did you…?’
Out of the
corner of his eye he saw Travis move forward, frowning. Gracie squeezed her fiancé’s hand and said evenly, ‘We got engaged at Christmas. We met while I was out in Australia.’
It was Matt’s turn to frown now. What on earth was going on? ‘Was Emily with you in Australia?’he asked, wondering if it might have been that Emily had flown out to visit her sister.
‘Emily, in Australia?’ Gracie gave a rich chuckle. ‘Good heavens, no. Emily hates travelling. She always has done; she says it’s because she and I saw so little of our folks while we were growing up because they were away so much. It’s as much as she can be persuaded to do to drive north to see Mum and Dad. No, Emily likes to put her roots down firmly and deeply in one place. When will she be back, by the way?’
‘Back?’ Matt focused on them with difficulty. Travis was still frowning at him, and he could sense that the other man didn’t like the way he had been questioning Gracie. There was so much here that just didn’t make sense. So much that was muddled and confused. He could spend all day carefully and discreetly trying to fish for information, but he sensed that this huge, frowning Australian would object quite forcefully to any more questions about their engagement, unless Matt furnished them with an explanation for his curiosity. Much as he hated the idea of discussing his private feelings, his private life and that of Emily with someone else, there was too much at stake for him to risk losing Emily simply because he had not wanted to reveal what he was feeling to a third party.
Looking directly at both of them he said quietly, ‘Listen, I know this may sound odd, but I need to talk to both of you—and before Emily comes back.’ He saw the look of concern that darkened Gracie’s eyes and the way Travis’s hand closed protectively around hers, and reassured her quickly, ‘No, nothing’s wrong. Emily is fine. It’s just that… Why don’t we go inside? I’ll make some tea and we can talk.’
* * *
Half an hour later, Gracie was staring at him in open amusement.
’emily pretended that she was engaged to Travis? But why? What on earth did you do to her?’
‘I made love to her,’ Matt admitted shortly, and suddenly Gracie wasn’t looking amused any longer. Neither was Travis. Gracie stood up. She was a tall woman, much taller than Emily, but still a good few inches short of Matt’s height. Even so, there was something quite definitely intimidating about the way she paced the floor—a lioness, all too ready and willing to protect her defenceless young. ‘You did what?’ she demanded ominously.
‘I made love to her,’ Matt repeated firmly, and then added just as firmly, ‘She is a woman, you know, and not a child.’
‘She’s also my sister,’ Gracie told him flatly. ‘She’s led a very sheltered and protected life. There was a man while she was at university… She had virtually chosen her wedding dress when she found out that he’d simply been using her.’
She was giving him a hard stare. ‘Emily might be my older sister, but she’s very vulnerable… very timid about the way she lives her life. I can’t think of any reason why she’d allow you to make love to her and then tell you she was engaged to someone else, unless she had found the experience so unpleasant that there was no way she wanted to repeat it.’
‘Or unless she found it completely the opposite,’ Travis intervened quietly.
Matt looked at him gratefully. ‘I think she loves me, and I certainly love her,’ he told them both, openly admitting his feelings, ‘but there’ve been so many misunderstandings and misconceptions between us…’ He spread his hands in mute explanation of the complexity of the situation.
‘If I went to Emily and told her that I know this engagement of hers is a fiction, if I told her how I feel about her, I doubt that she’d believe me. I don’t think she has the self-confidence to trust either what she feels, or me. I need to get closer to her, to win her trust, and I think I know the way.’
While he talked, Gracie and Travis listened. Once or twice, Gracie interrupted him, questioning him sharply, but slowly her hostility evaporated and amusement took its place.’ I’m not sure that I should be agreeing to this,’ she told him, once they had both promised to help him. ‘And if you hadn’t assured me that Emily won’t be hurt—’
‘If she hadn’t lied to me, none of this would be necessary,’ Matt pointed out with a certain amount of grimness. While he thought he could understand what had motivated her, when he thought of all the unhappiness she had caused them both by her creation of her fictitious fiancé, he wasn’t sure if it wouldn’t do her good to suffer a little.
When he carried the tea-tray out to the kitchen, Gracie went with him, stopping him in the hall to ask quietly, ‘You do love her, don’t you, Matt?’
‘Yes,’ he told her simply. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t be doing any of this.’
* * *
Oxford was busy, the supermarket was hot and crowded, Emily had managed to pick the wrong queue, and then on her way to the car her trolley had almost turned over on her, and, by the time she eventually turned into the drive of Uncle John’s house, she was feeling very out of sorts indeed.
She frowned a little when she saw the unfamiliar car parked in the drive, but thought little of it until she walked into the kitchen struggling with the weight of the heaviest of the cartons of groceries, which she had picked up deliberately to add to her feelings of being badly done to—and discovered her sister, Travis and Matt all busily involved in washing up, all laughing away together as though they were the best of friends, all so obviously amused by the sight of her struggling with the too-heavy box that for a moment she had a petulant impulse to hurl the thing at them and then burst into tears.
When the three of them rushed forward towards her at once, all obviously bent on relieving her of its weight, she felt like a pygmy being swooped on by a race of giants, and instead of being grateful for their assistance she said fiercely, ‘It’s all right, I can manage,’ adding peevishly, ‘After all, I have carried it all the way from the car.’
She saw Gracie’s eyebrows lift and felt her face colour guiltily. There was no reason for her to take her bad temper out on anyone else.
‘You should have come in and got Matt to carry those for you,’ Gracie was saying chidingly. ‘Heavens, what on earth is the point in having a fiancé if you aren’t going to let him do some fetching and carrying. I promise you, I make Travis work hard—don’t I, darling?’
This time Emily let go of the box, barely aware of the quick way Matt retrieved it, as she stood and stared at her sister. What on earth was Gracie talking about? And what was she doing here, anyway, and with Travis…Travis… Oh, my God.
As the realisation of her position dawned, her eyes widened, her face going white, so that Matt, who had dumped the heavy box on the table and turned round just in time to see her shock, had to quell an impulse to go over to her and take her in his arms, reminding himself sternly that what he was intending to do was in the best interests of them both. She had been evading him for so long that he suspected she would simply never accept that he loved her and had done from the first moment he had touched her.
Summoning a casual smile, he walked over to her and put his arm round her, quelling his compassion as he felt the shocked rigidity of her slender body. ‘I’m afraid I’ve already broken our good news to your sister, darling. I didn’t think you’d mind in the circumstances,’ he added meaningfully, looking from her to Travis, while Emily stared at him in bewildered confusion. What on earth was going on? Why had Matt told Gracie that they were engaged? He must surely have realised by now that she had lied to him about Travis.
Hard on the heels of the shock of discovering Gracie’s presence in the kitchen had come the appalling realisation that Matt must now know the truth: that she wasn’t engaged to Travis and that she never had been engaged to him. She had waited, frozen, to see the look of disgust and contempt in his eyes, but instead he was gazing down at her with warmth and affection. She blinked hard as his face suddenly became distorted, and she realised that she was about t
o burst into tears.
‘Poor darling,’ she heard Matt saying softly. ‘I should never have let you go to Oxford on your own. You must be exhausted. Come and sit down and I’ll make you a cup of tea.’
Emily had a crazy desire to burst into peal after peal of hysterical laughter. Since when had a grown woman of twenty-six been too fragile and delicate to be allowed to do her own domestic shopping? If she was feeling weak and fragile, it had nothing to do with the bad temper and irritation which had followed her monthly trudge along the soulless aisles of the supermarket, but the discovery that her sister and Travis were here in England, in Oxfordshire—in Uncle John’s house.
Somehow or other she found herself being shepherded towards the table and pushed gently, but oh, so firmly, down into a chair. She tried to stand up, but for some reason Travis and Gracie had materialised at her side, standing beside her like a pair of gaolers, she decided ungratefully.
‘I don’t want any tea,’ she started to say. It was true; she, a virtual teetotaller, wanted nothing more than a good stiff drink—no, two good stiff drinks, she decided muzzily. What on earth was going on? If she closed her eyes and then opened them again, would everything have returned to normal?
She heard Gracie saying something about how wonderful it was that she was engaged, and that perhaps they could make it a double wedding.
Emily shuddered and actually discovered that she was looking at her left hand in bewilderment, as though half expecting to see an engagement ring materialising there. She had never particularly liked Lewis Carroll’s Alice, but for the first time she actually found herself sympathising with her.
‘No,’ she croaked protestingly. ‘Not a double wedding.’ She had a momentary vision of the absurdity of it, of herself and Gracie walking down the aisle together—well, at least Gracie walking, while she almost ran to match her longer strides.