Then, when she lifted her head, he twisted sharply and said, with quick and urgent pleading, “No, don’t—”
“Don’t what?” she murmured, lost in the strains of the languid dance.
“Don’t go,” he groaned, and reached with one hand to rake her head back down and plunge into her mouth.
The roaring bonfire had them writhing together in an ascendant blaze that fused mouth to mouth, heart to racing heart, and her arms twined around his neck, and his hold was an inescapable bond around her body.
She fell victim to the loss of his seductive control, as his fingers clenched into her hair, and he broke from the kiss to run his hot, open, trembling lips along the line of her cheekbone to the sacrificial stalk of her neck. Mindlessly she raked her fingernails along the width of his back, and his harsh resultant gasp melted her like wax.
They were both so engrossed in each other that neither heard the quick, light footsteps over the loud music blaring from the living-room, or Joshua calling out, “Matt? Sian?”
The light in the study came on, and shattered the silver-shadowed intimacy into incandescent shards.
Matt’s head reared back. She jerked in surprise and would have pulled out of his arms, except his hand at the back of her head, around her waist, held her stationary. All she could do was stare into the glittering pools of his eyes as he looked beyond her to his younger brother.
Whatever he saw in the heavy, dead silence behind her made his face settle into hard stern lines. He said to Joshua coolly, “I’ll be out in a minute.”
The other man said nothing, but the sharp report of the door slamming spoke volumes, and Matt looked down at her with a frown. Her expression had filled with distress, her green eyes clouded with concern. She whispered, “God, I—just didn’t think. Maybe I’d better go talk to him.”
“No,” he said with a sharp sigh, “I’ll do it. Are you all right?”
“That’s the second time today you’ve asked me that,” she murmured, and his hold tightened.
“I thought the first time was bad enough, but if you’re now feeling anything like I am, you’ve just been pole-axed.” He stared at her grimly. “This doesn’t change you and me. If you think it does, to hell with talking to Joshua, I’m going to stay right here and kiss you until you come to your senses.”
“And what are we?” she asked him, with a wistful smile. “Enemies, lovers, or just good friends?”
He stared at her. “Don’t go back to South Bend tomorrow. Stay here with me.”
Her eyes fell to the opening of his white shirt, and she muttered, “Oh Matthew, I—I don’t know.”
“Why not?” he asked. His hard hands were branding marks on her. “You’re not going back to a summer job. Why couldn’t you stay?”
“But for how long?”
He shrugged, a careless movement that belied the cool, deep shadow of thought moving at the back of his hazel eyes. “A few days, a week, a month. Hell, who knows, you might end up staying the whole summer and liking it.”
Her face twisted. “My things are in South Bend—my friends, clothes, school, plans.”
He was harsh. “All I know is that if you leave now, you’ll spend all your spare time making up reasons not to come back, and erecting your barriers, and Chicago is too far away for me to be popping back every weekend just to try to change your mind.”
“But,” she argued, fiddling with the top fastened button, “maybe we need time to think.”
“See what I mean?” he replied drily. “There goes another barrier, and you’re not even out of my arms yet. We don’t need more time alone, we need it together, to explore one another in depth, to find out what we enjoy about each other, and what we disapprove of, to make love in the long warm evenings, and the dark cool of early morning.”
Her fingernail jerked and the button slipped free, and at the exposure of yet more of the hair-sprinkled skin of his chest, she recalled the pressure and excitement of his hard body pinning her to the floor. Why was she hesitating? It was what she wanted. She leaned her forehead against him.
“Please,” she whispered. “Ask me in the morning. Don’t ask me now.”
He sighed into her hair and his arms loosened. “All right. Tell me tomorrow. In the mean time, I’d better go find Joshua and have a talk with him. Do you want to come out with me?”
She shook her head and said, muffled, “I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
He dropped a kiss on to the top of her forehead and straightened from the settee. Already he was absent-minded, thinking ahead to other things. “Fine. Just don’t talk yourself out of something that would be good for the both of us.”
But what about the long run, Matt? she asked, but silently, as he left and shut the door behind him. Never mind about tomorrow, or the day after, or the week after that. What about a year from now? Who’s to say what would be good for us then? What about the rest of our lives?
Chapter Nine
Both Matthew and Joshua were conspicuously absent when Sian finally mustered up the energy to leave the study. She had brushed her hair and touched up her make-up, so that the only evidence of what had happened lingered in the over-bright glitter of her eyes and the hectic flush staining the high curves of her cheek-bones.
At first glance the party still seemed to be in full swing, but, with used plates stacked in the kitchen sink, glasses littering the counter and most of the people sitting and talking in the living-room instead of dancing, it looked as though it might wind to a close very soon.
She checked her wrist-watch and found to her shock that it was already well past midnight. Jane came up and whispered in her ear, “Lordy, where have you been? You missed the fireworks. Joshua just came storming into the room, looking like a thunder-cloud, and Matt came in soon after, stern and hard and cold as you please, and he took Josh into the bedroom. They’re in there now and it’s ominously quiet, don’t you think?”
She pressed one hand against her hot cheek and closed her eyes, confessing shakily, “I didn’t entirely miss the drama. Matt and I were in the study, and Joshua came in and found us together.”
Jane’s eyes were very wide. “What were you doing?”
“Well, we weren’t exactly discussing the weather!” she snapped in an explosive release of tension, though she immediately regretted it. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m just strung out.”
“No wonder.” Her friend studied her closely and with a great deal of sympathy. “Don’t blame yourself Sian. None of this is your fault. You never encouraged Joshua. Whatever he built up out of your relationship with him was entirely in his own head, so try not to worry. Matt will sort him out, you’ll see.”
“I hope so,” she said, but there was a wild, hunted look in her eyes. Immediately Jane put one arm around her shoulders and led her into the relative privacy of the kitchen, where she sank against the counter.
“Tell me,” urged Jane in a gentle voice.
Sian stared blankly at her feet. “Matt’s asked me to stay tomorrow instead of going back to South Bend with the rest of you.”
“Is that all?”
“Is that all?” she echoed incredulously, her green eyes flashing up to her friend’s compassionate, but calm expression. “Jane, the very thought terrifies me! I love him so much it hurts, and I have no idea what his intentions are, or how long it might last.”
“Then you must stay,” Jane said simply, reaching out to grasp her hands. “And love him for as long as you can.”
Her head shook from side to side, and her eyes filled with pools of salted wetness that streaked diamanté paths down her marble cheeks. How could she explain this crisis of uncertainty? In just a week she had travelled too far from what had been a corner-stone of belief in her life, and to reach out for what she wanted now would be to deny every best judgement she had always believed in. She wasn’t a gambler like her father. Sh
e was just a young woman who was frightened to find that the understanding she had built her hopes and dreams on had turned to shifting sand underneath her feet.
“Don’t you see?” she said, almost begging. “It’s too soon. It happened too quickly. I don’t even know what he feels for me, beyond the physical attraction. Maybe someone else might have the strength of mind to take such a risk, but I don’t know if I can.”
“Then come home,” said Jane and squeezed her cold hands. Then she added with quiet, relentless wisdom, “But if you do, you must be prepared to let Matt go. Because some day, some time, he will find a woman who can, for she will recognise how much courage it took for him to risk opening up his heart and his life to her.”
Every strong emotion inside her rose up in nauseous rebellion at the thought of Matthew living with, and loving, another woman, and she flinched back as if she’d been slapped in the face. Through a roaring in her ears, she heard her friend ask, “Does the consideration of that, if nothing else, give you an answer?”
She whispered through bloodless lips, “Yes, I rather think it does. I’ll stay, if he’ll still have me.”
“Oh, Sian.” Jane stepped close and hugged her tight. “I couldn’t wish for you to find a better man, but I am going to miss you!”
She put her arms around the other girl and laid her head on Jane’s shoulder, exclaiming, “What’s this? I might only be gone a few days.”
“Then again, you might not,” said Jane, who stepped back and wiped her eyes. “Which is only how it should be.”
Just imagining how it would be to wave goodbye to the others, then find herself alone with Matt at last with all the private future stretched before them, was enough to send her blood-pressure soaring. She was beside herself with excitement, consumed with dread. Would they be able to fill the empty space with light and laughter? Or would all her new emotions collapse under the weight of it? Would she discover after the first heated rush that she was merely caught in the illusory spell of infatuation? And he—how would he feel? Would he regret his invitation after a few brief days, or might he also fall in love with her?
She knew then that she was doing the right thing, for all the questions had assumed an imperative place in her mind, and there would be no rest, no peace, no hope for her until they were answered.
When the two men emerged from Matt’s bedroom at last, there was no chance to find out how things stood between them, for Matt’s attention was claimed by the departure of his guests, and Joshua was remarkably silent and subdued, and refused to meet her questioning gaze.
She schooled herself to patience as best she could, but her concern was growing into a deep, unsettled unease, for the shape of Matt’s mouth was a straight white line, and his eyes when they met hers briefly were cold with a kind of bitten-back fury that was all the more disturbing for the severe control he exerted over it.
The spectre of the scathing stranger she had confronted just a week ago rose in her mind. With an inward shudder, she banished the terrible ghost to the past where it belonged, for neither of them were really the people who had enacted that scene. She had worn, albeit unknowingly, the misshapen cloak of someone else’s caricature of her personality, and Matt had fleshed out since that time to become a real, full-blooded person with strengths and vulnerabilities, and a deep-bedded core of compassionate wisdom that made him so extraordinary.
She marked time, going into the master bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth, denying for as long as possible the need to go to Matt and discover what had caused that taut set of his mouth, or scored the deep lines on either side of it. She wanted to hug him, and stroke his tawny hair, and tell him that she was willing to stay for as long as they both wished it.
She drew on her light wrap of summer cotton that came to mid-thigh, and belted it at her slim waist as she walked back through the bedroom, wished Jane goodnight, and went to the study.
The light was on. Matt sat on the high stool facing the drawing-table, his back to the doorway. His hair looked ruffled, as if he had run his hands repeatedly through it, and she ached to smooth it back from his forehead.
She smiled involuntarily and stepped inside the room. “Hello there,” she said. “I was just going to look for you.”
His head turned to one side. “Funny,” he said flatly. “I came in here looking for you, but I half expected you to have made other sleeping arrangements.”
The short, clipped voice, and the glimpse of the hard line of his jaw made her hesitate. Why wouldn’t he turn around? If he only smiled at her, she would run to him with open arms, but this—she didn’t know how to react to.
“I don’t understand,” she said quietly.
“You’re always running away,” said Matthew, with a thin slicing edge of sarcasm. “You did it from the start. Even the first time we met, when I gave you hell, you ran away.”
A frown creased her brow. “But I’m not running now—you’ve got it all wrong. I told Jane that I wasn’t going back to South Bend with them.”
“You’re going to try to convince me that you want to stay?” he asked harshly. “That’s taking it a bit far, even for you, isn’t it?”
She didn’t know what was going on, but her heart thudded hard in apprehension, and she licked suddenly dry lips. “Matt, look at me.”
He swivelled around and thrust off the stool, in a stunning upsurge of movement, and the deep rage in his face was so far beyond what she had feared that she fell back a step and stared, one hand creeping up to cover the frantic beating at the base of her throat.
He asked fiercely, his lips drawn back, “And just when was it you were planning on telling me that you’d become engaged to Joshua—early in the morning, just before you left? Were you saving it for pillow talk? Damn you for a lying bitch!”
The bottom of her world seemed to drop away at the severity of his accusation, and she swayed on her feet. God, oh God, how could she have forgotten that little piece of mischief she and Joshua had cooked up between them? She whispered on a shuddering breath, “He told you?”
Matt’s eyes had widened at her stricken expression, and for a moment his own cracked to reveal the aspect of a man floundering deep in grief, then his face hardened into razor-edge angles.
“So,” he said with the staccato force of a bullet. “It was true. I’d wondered at first. Joshua can act like a petulant brat when he doesn’t get his own way, and somehow I couldn’t quite believe it of you. There was no way that you could be the coolly calculating woman Joshua had made you out to be. You seemed so vulnerable, and innocent despite that veneer of poise you wore, that I had completely revised my first opinion of you. I didn’t even listen when you warned me that you’d get me somehow in the end. Well, congratulations, sweetheart! You took me in hook, line and sinker, and I hope the satisfaction of it warms your bed at nights, because, by God, no self-respecting man ever will! And I’ll see you in hell before I let you get your claws any deeper into my brother!”
She had listened, at first in uncomprehending hurt and a desperate understanding for how angry he was, but the unrelenting, unfair cruelty of his words whipped invisible lashes along her exposed skin, bringing her temper boiling to the surface. At the very last her brittle control snapped to pieces. She cried, her hands balled into fists at her sides, “I don’t want him, you stupid man! I never wanted him!”
“That’s the most damning thing you have ever said about yourself!” he said violently, striding forward to grasp her by the shoulders in such a heavy iron grip that her body bowed underneath his strength. “How dare you use people like so many pawns? How dare you play with their hearts?”
Blinded with the pain in her own aching heart, she raised up her hand to strike him, then stopped before his unflinching glare.
“No,” she said coldly, letting her hand fall open-palmed to her side again. “I won’t leave you the satisfaction of your so right
eous wrath! I’ll tell you the truth, and you can believe me or not as you please, though God knows your dogmatic presumptions probably won’t let you! Yes, Joshua and I were going to say we were engaged—as a pretence, just to teach you a lesson for interfering in matters that didn’t concern you!”
His mouth twisted bitterly. “When did you concoct that cosy little set-up?”
“We decided the very day after you stormed into my life and called me names I wouldn’t say to my worst enemy, let alone a total stranger!” she snapped, then told him, her eyes wide in astonishment at her own idiocy, “Then I forgot about it—how do you like that? I just clean forgot, because I thought I got to know you, and I thought you were different from the man who h-hurt me by saying those awful things to my face!”
She gave a sharp, angry laugh, and her head bowed as the low sound turned into a gut-wrenching sob. His fingers tightened spasmodically on her shivering flesh; the look in his eyes was terrible. At that she came so near to breaking down and reaching for him that she wrenched out of his hold and took several quick strides away to face the print on his wall.
“Do you know what the real joke is?” she told him, as the tears spilled over and her shivering increased. “Me. I’m the punch line. I was so sure that I wouldn’t fall in love with any man! It just wasn’t in the cards for me—I had other plans for my life. But you came along, and you did your damnedest to try to change my mind, and, fool that I am, I listened to you! Despite all my better judgement, I listened enough to consider changing my life for you, leaving my friends, home, school, everything. So there you have it, Matt. I got you, and you got me—and you tell me this. Which of us has won in the end? No—” this, when she sensed his uncontrolled movement behind her “—don’t bother. You can claim the final trophy. I don’t want it.”
“Sian,” Matt whispered hoarsely. “God, Sian—listen to me—”
A Solitary Heart Page 14