by Penny Jordan
Somewhere in the distance Matt was saying lightly, ‘I agree with Emily. Besides, you haven’t set a date for your wedding yet, have you, while Emily and I hope to be married in June?’
In June…Emily couldn’t believe what she was hearing. June was just two weeks away.
‘June…But the parents aren’t due back from Brazil until then,’ Gracie was saying.
Emily struggled to comprehend what on earth was going on. Someone—Travis, she thought—handed her a mug of tea, which she gulped thirstily. Gracie was still talking about weddings, and Matt was saying something completely ridiculous and insane about not being prepared to wait very long to make her his wife, and that, as she had a romantic desire to marry in June, that meant that marry in June they would, whether it was only two weeks hence or not.
‘Which reminds me, darling,’ Matt added, coming towards her, and somehow or other elbowing Travis out of the way so that he was standing right beside her, his arm draped very possessively along her shoulders. ‘Did you finally decide on a dress?’ He turned to Gracie, and to Emily’s stunned horror told her confidingly, ‘She’s refusing to wear white, silly thing. After all, in this day and age, and feeling as we do about one another…’
The look he gave her would have burned holes in metal, Emily decided disbelievingly. It was certainly doing the most incomprehensible things to her insides…almost making her believe that that burning, melting look of desire was actually real, and not simply fabricated for heaven alone knew what purpose.
‘But she tells me she’s found something she likes in cream. Personally, I’d like to see her in something very twenties-style, all soft, flowing satin or chiffon and heavy antique lace—’
‘Oh, yes, that would be just right for you,’ Gracie chimed in. ‘If you haven’t found anything yet, there’s a place in London that specialises in the most wonderful period clothes.’
Emily discovered that her hands had curled into protesting fists and that, moreover, she wanted very badly indeed to open her pretty mouth and scream loudly. Her head was buzzing and aching, she felt as though she had strayed into a scene from a play where everyone apart from her knew their lines, she couldn’t understand why Matt wasn’t demanding to know why she had lied about being engaged to Travis, and, most of all, she could not understand how she had supposedly come to be engaged to him.
Engaged to him. The shudder that racked her body was so self-illuminating that Matt who was watching her had to fight not to take hold of her and make love to her so passionately, so lovingly, that she wouldn’t be able to resist loving him in turn.
Loving him. Was he deluding himself in believing that she did love him, that this whole ridiculous situation had arisen because neither of them had had the courage to tell each other when they had made love just what they had really been feeling, because neither of them had had the breadth of imagination, the trust, to accept the precious gift they had been given?
‘Emily, we were hoping you could put us up here for a few days,’ Gracie was saying. ‘We want to have a good look round so that when Travis’s parents arrive we can make sure they see everything they ought to see. Matt said he didn’t think there’d be any problem with us staying.’ She pulled a face and added drily, ‘I suppose for Uncle John’s sake we’d better follow your example and have separate rooms, but next to one another, please. You and Matt might not mind flitting up and down the landing…’
She ignored the gasp Emily gave, just as Matt ignored the rigid tension in her shoulders.
‘Come on. Show me which rooms we can have,’ Gracie pressed. ‘And you can tell me more about what’s been going on, as well,’ she added cheerfully. ‘Fancy not letting me know you were engaged.’
‘It was very sudden,’ Matt said breezily.
Emily found she was trembling when she stood up. Somehow or other Matt was standing right in front of her, and as she tried to step past him he moved as well, so that she walked straight into him.
He put his arms out, to steady her she supposed, but what actually happened was that they closed round her, and the warm, familiar, arousing man-smell of him went straight to her head like wine and she had a dizzying impulse to simply lean against him and howl like a child.
Indeed, she discovered that she actually was leaning against him, and that one of his hands was cradling the back of her neck, burrowing beneath her hair to stroke the tension from the overstrained muscles there.
She felt his breath against her hair and then her ear as he bent his head to murmur, ‘Don’t be long, will you. I want to show you what I’ve been doing in the garden.’
As she lifted her head she saw Gracie’s amusement, and felt herself flushing.
‘Emily and I share an interest in gardening,’ Matt told her sister loftily. ‘We’ve both been working very hard to try and resuscitate the garden here. In fact, we’ve both fallen in love with it so much that we’re hoping your Uncle John will sell the place to us.’
If anyone other than herself was conscious of her shock, they didn’t betray it. What on earth was Matt saying? Just for one heart-stopping second she had felt her heart leap fiercely with joy and excitement and had known illuminatingly just how much she would have loved to make her home here, and then she had fallen swiftly and painfully into the pit of truth, and had known how stupid she was being. She had no idea what was going on, but the moment she and Matt were alone she intended to find out.
But first she had to take Gracie upstairs and show her the spare rooms. Fiercely hot colour dyed her skin as she pulled away from Matt and heard him whisper, loud enough for Gracie and Travis to hear, ‘The sooner you and I are married, the better. Gracie is quite right, I’m tired of having to leave you on your own and go back to my own bed.’
Emily didn’t know where to look. Why on earth was Matt making such outrageous remarks? He must know… What? That her sister, who knew her so well, would never believe she would have such an intimate relationship with someone unless she was deeply, wildly in love with them and knew that that love was returned in equal measure.
It was all very well for him to talk about a marriage between them as though it were an accepted fact, and certainly he was lying very convincingly—even she, for one light-headed moment, had almost believed…but sooner or later Gracie would have to know the truth.
As she turned towards the door, Matt pulled her briefly to him so that her back was to the others, and then, as he bent his head down to her, pressing his mouth first against her temple, so that she shivered involuntarily, and then lingeringly and devastatingly against her mouth, so that she swayed and fought dizzily against an overwhelming impulse to fling her arms around him and hold on to him, he whispered against her lips,’ Meet me in the garden as soon as you can, and I’ll explain.’
So there was an explanation. She had no idea what on earth it could be, she reflected numbly as she led Gracie upstairs. Needless to say, as soon as they were out of earshot of the two men, Gracie rounded on her and took hold of her shoulders, saying teasingly, ‘What a dark horse you are, Emmy… All those letters and never once any hint of what was going on. Oh, you mentioned Matt right enough, but if I hadn’t read between the lines I’d have had no idea.’
Read between the lines. Emily’s face flamed as she wondered what on earth she must have betrayed so unknowingly, unaware that her sister was using a little licence of her own in maintaining Matt’s fiction.
However, the sight of Emily’s pale, drawn face caused Gracie to have a small pang of compunction. Emily had already suffered once by loving a man. She paused halfway up the stairs and stood there, making Emily feel even more like a dwarf as she stood looking back up at her.
‘I like him, darling, and it’s plain he adores you,’ Gracie told her, ‘but you’ve hardly said a word, and you look so tense. You do love him, don’t you?’
Here was her chance to say that she had no idea what was going on, and that she and Matt were most definitely not engaged. Here was her chance, so why on eart
h wasn’t she seizing hold of it? Why on earth was she saying shakily, and oh so truthfully, to her sister, ‘Yes. Yes, I do love him.’?
And with such conviction in her voice that Gracie smiled happily back at her, and said cheerfully, ‘Well, that’s all right then. Now, show me these rooms Travis and I are to have. Poor Travis,’ she added with a chuckle. ‘He won’t take kindly to our having separate rooms. Your Matt must have the self-restraint of a saint. I’m not surprised he’s not willing to have a long engagement. You’ll have a church wedding, of course, and at home. Look, Travis and I are on our way up there—why don’t I have a word with the vicar and fix things up with him while I’m there? Matt told us that you were both hoping to take a couple of days off to make all the arrangements, but that you were reluctant to leave Uncle John. We could easily—’
Emily managed a strangled, ‘No,’ which caused Gracie to stop and turn to look at her. ‘I…I haven’t written and told Mum and Dad yet,’ Emily told her weakly.
Gracie seemed to accept her explanation, although she did warn, ‘Well, you’re cutting it a bit fine, you know. I appreciate that Matt doesn’t have any family and that you’ll only be having a small reception, and that you want it at home, but there’ll still be an awful lot of organising to be done, and if you think that Louise is going to let you off without the full works food-wise, then you don’t know her as well as you ought.’
Feeling more guilty and miserable with every word her sister uttered, Emily increased her speed, hurrying her down the landing and almost pushing her into one of the spare bedrooms. ‘This one has a connecting door to the one next to it,’ she told her hurriedly. ‘Travis—’
‘They’ll be ideal,’ Gracie interrupted her. ‘But why on earth aren’t you and Matt using them? Honestly…’
She saw the way Emily flushed, and added teasingly, ‘When Matt let it slip that the two of you were already lovers, I was so surprised I almost fell off my chair.’
Instead of feeling pleased, Emily was suddenly for no reason at all quite definitely angry. ‘Why?’ she demanded bitterly. ‘Did you think I was so abnormal that I wouldn’t want to make love with the man I love? What were we supposed to do?’ she challenged. ‘Wait until we’re married? As you’re doing?’
‘Ouch. Come on, I’m not criticising,’ Gracie told her gently. ‘I’m all for it, and no, I don’t think you’re abnormal. It’s just that, knowing how much Gerry hurt you…well, I’d always assumed for some reason that you’d decided to turn your back on passion and romance. Don’t be cross with me, Emmy,’ she coaxed. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s only that you’ve always been just that little bit…’
‘Prissy,’ Emily suggested shortly.
‘No—not prissy. I can’t explain it properly. It’s just that anyone who knows you couldn’t help knowing that you’d never go to bed with a man unless you loved him and were in a committed relationship with him.’
Emily opened her mouth to tell her just how wrong she was, but Gracie was still speaking. ‘I’ve always rather envied you that moral strength of mind of yours, and Matt obviously adores you. Come on, we’d better get back downstairs. I want Travis to bring up our stuff. I’m not sure how long we’ll be staying yet; a few days at least. Oh, and by the way, if Uncle John should come back within the next hour, will you be a darling and tell him that Travis and I are resting—er—recovering from our jet lag,’ Gracie told her, giving her a naughty grin.
When they went back downstairs, Travis had already unloaded the hired car. Matt, he explained, had gone into the garden; and, watching her sister and brother-in-law-to-be heading for the stairs, Emily knew she couldn’t put it off any longer. She had to confront Matt and find out exactly what was going on.
CHAPTER TEN
EMILY found Matt studying the fat buds of the peonies. He didn’t look up as she approached, but he must have heard her because he said enthusiastically, ‘Just look at this. I’d never have believed it could survive, almost smothered by those weeds. It’s going to give us a glorious show of colour—’
Emily couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘Matt, what’s going on?’ she interrupted him abruptly. ‘Why does Gracie think we’re engaged?’
Matt stood up too. He was standing far too close to her—far, far too close, and when his arms suddenly closed round her and his hands ran possessively down her back, urging her so intimately close to his own body that the breath left her lungs in a single stunned gasp, she automatically tried to ease herself away from him. But Matt wouldn’t let her go. Instead he brushed his lips against her ear and told her softly, ‘Your sister is watching us.’
And then, as she instinctively tried to turn her head to look back at the house, Matt’s hand came up to turn it back again and hold it still while his mouth moved hotly over her skin, searching almost desperately for her mouth. When he found it, he didn’t kiss her gently as he had done before, nor lightly in the manner she had been expecting, but with such a depth of thrilling need that she succumbed to it immediately, her arms locking round him, her body melting into his as it had been aching to do for weeks, her lips parting sweetly and invitingly, clinging to the firm outline of his, while all the time his hands moved eagerly over her body making every part of her aware of how much his touch aroused her.
The kiss seemed to go on for ever; each time she managed to find the strength to break free of him, his mouth would caress some other part of her throat or face and, having sensitised that area to the point where her self-control had shattered, would move back to her lips as though magnetised by them, and each time he kissed her she sank deeper and deeper into the whirlpool of delight he was spinning around her.
She felt him lift her off her feet while he was still kissing her, but it wasn’t until she felt his mouth trail down her throat to the exposed curve of her breast that she realised he had unfastened her blouse.
She tried to protest, to demand that he release her, to summon all the cogent and vital reasons why she should make him stop what he was doing immediately—but another and stronger feeling ran counter to this sensible plan, and the closer his seeking lips got to the hard pinnacle of her breast, the more difficult it became to hold on to her common sense. In fact, she even found herself arching eagerly towards him, wanting to assist him, wanting to feel again the sweetly agonising sensation of his mouth caressing her so intimately.
When he stopped suddenly centimetres short of his goal, and unsteadily lowered her to the ground, tugging the sides of her blouse together as he did so, she could almost have screamed with frustration.
‘It’s all right. They’ve gone now,’ she heard him saying, but it was several seconds before his meaning penetrated. When it did, she went bright red and wrenched herself away from him, her fingers trembling as she fought to fasten the buttons.
‘I demand to know what’s going on,’ she told him fiercely, conscious that her voice was shaking almost as much as her hands.
There was an odd silence, and when she automatically looked up she saw that Matt looked as flushed as she felt. ‘I should have thought it was obvious,’ he told her tersely. ‘I wanted to make love to you.’
For a moment she stood there and let the sweet, wild tide of joy carry her, and then she dammed it and said severely, ‘That wasn’t what I meant. Why did you tell Gracie we were engaged?’
‘What? Oh, that. Well, it seemed the best thing to do. I did it for your sake, you know,’ he added in a softer voice.
‘For my sake.’ She was dumbfounded.
‘Well, I guessed immediately what must have happened when she walked in and announced that Travis—your Travis—was her fiancé,’ Matt told her quietly. ‘I suppose they came here to tell you that they’d fallen for one another, and to ask you to release Travis from your engagement to him. I must say I thought it a bit thick that Gracie should actually introduce him as her fiancé. Perhaps I shouldn’t have leapt in the way I did, but all I could think about was how you were going to feel when you came back and dis
covered that he’d dumped you for her.’
Matt had taken hold of her hand and was caressing it gently, and yet so arousingly that she could barely concentrate on what he was saying. Her senses were screaming out to her that they needed far more than the deliberately provocative stimulation they were getting—that they wanted his hands on her body…his mouth…his body… With an effort she tore herself from such erotic yearnings and tried to listen to what he was saying to her.
‘So I thought I’d steal a march on them, so to speak, and tell them that you and I were engaged. Of course, I didn’t let on that I knew that you and he…’
Matt paused and Emily stared speechlessly at him. This was the last thing she had thought of—that Matt should want to protect her, to help her. Her throat was thick with emotional tears; she longed to fling herself into his arms and howl—and even more she longed to be able to tell him the truth.
‘I must say you’ve taken it marvellously well. I half dreaded you coming in and flinging yourself into his arms before I could say a word. You must feel like hell. And after you’ve struggled so hard to be faithful to your engagement,’ he added innocently.
Emily still couldn’t say a word.
‘Of course, you won’t think so now,’ Matt comforted her. ‘But in the long run it’s probably for the best. Just imagine if he’d left you for her, after the wedding.’
The wedding. Emily suddenly remembered something far more important than her supposed broken heart over Travis. ‘What on earth possessed you to tell Gracie we were getting married in June?’ she demanded bitterly.
Matt looked hurt and embarrassed. ‘Well, she managed to drag out of me the fact that we’d been lovers—don’t ask me how—and, well, to be quite honest, after that I didn’t have much option. I suppose Travis must have told her that you and he had never made love,’ he added carelessly, so carelessly that for a moment Emily almost didn’t take in the significance of what he was saying.