“Would it?”
“Yes. I also know that if I were in a job or lifestyle that was unsafe or unsuitable for that precious little girl, I would send her away, to some place where she could grow up safe, and I would deny myself the selfish pleasure of letting her depend on me too much.”
So much fell into place, now that she could look back with the clarity of hindsight. Devin’s phone call to her, his odd manner of behaving, his refusal to come to her commencement and birthday party—they had been right after the big score; of course he would never come within a thousand miles of her if he thought for any reason he was under threat. He wouldn’t want any breath of danger to fall on to her.
She leaned her forehead against the cold window-pane of the taxi and sobbed drily, “Oh, why did he do it, Malcolm? He’d already made more than enough money to keep him in luxury for the rest of his life! He always knew how to quit when he was ahead. Why couldn’t he have stopped all this years ago?”
“He didna want to, lassie,” said Malcolm quietly, his Scots burr becoming pronounced whenever he was under stress. “Ever since your ma died, I think Devin’s been lookin’ fer some way to join her. He loved her, you know, more than anything, even enough to try to quit when they married. But his old life wouldna let go of him—too many people knew him, and there was always somebody looking to pay him back for winning too much. In the end, he left her, and you, for he wouldna ever have forgiven himself if something had happened to either of you because of him.”
Sian turned around to stare at Malcolm with wide, unseeing eyes, and her heart was just not big enough to sustain the huge grief that she felt. Was it that simple? Was that the final truth after so many years, when all her life she had believed her father to be a faithless, irresponsible charmer? How could she have been so blind, for so long?
It wasn’t any wonder that she had believed time and again how much Devin loved her, for that was the reality, not the number of times he had shrugged out of so many important events in her life. And she had grieved and convinced herself that his absence meant that he didn’t care, when he had been protecting her the entire time.
“Why didn’t he tell me?” she groaned.
“Sure, and put all that burden on a wee little lassie such as yourself?” replied Malcolm, shaking his greying head. “No, Sian. That wouldna be right.”
There had been no change in Devin’s condition when Sian and Malcolm reached the hospital. No, the doctors did not know whether he would come out of the coma or not; only time would tell them if he would survive. All they could do was wait.
Sian took up a vigil at Devin’s bedside, and, watching the smooth, handsome planes of his serene face, she felt as if she were looking at a stranger. The man she had thought she had known all her life was gone, vanished in an insubstantial puff of air, and she was terrified to think she might never come to know the real flesh-and-blood person before her.
Time meant nothing. Food was put in front of her and taken away again unnoticed. She dozed in the chair where she sat, and left the hospital only to wash and change into the new clothes Malcolm went to buy for her. Any more danger from an outside source, the police had assured her, was highly unlikely. Malcolm kept vigil with her, and she was grateful enough for his affection and loyalty, but she had never felt so lonely in her entire life.
She needed someone to hold her, and reassure her that everything would somehow work out all right, for her faith and stamina were draining away bit by bit with the hours that trickled by. She needed someone to be strong for her, and reliable, someone whose shoulder she could rest her tired head on. Oh, God, how she needed Matthew, but he was half a world and an entire lifestyle away, and Sian had lost all capacity for hope.
At last persuaded that Devin was not about to die in her absence, she left her father’s side on Thursday afternoon to phone the States, planning the time difference so that she would catch Jane before she went to work. At the sound of her friend’s voice at the other end of the connection, she nearly broke down and cried.
She explained what had happened, as briefly and concisely as she could, and when the dreadful words had dried out in her tight throat Jane exclaimed, “Oh, Sian! We’ve been so worried about you! It was all just so terrible, you vanishing into thin air like that—I’ve been beside myself with fear, but I never imagined anything like that could have happened! Matt went crazy when you disappeared. He came out to South Bend after he’d called on Thursday and you weren’t here.”
Her heart leaped so violently she felt it as a physical pain, and she gripped the phone receiver so hard her fingers went numb. “Is he there now?”
She knew the answer in the hesitation in her friend’s voice, even more when Jane said very gently, “No, darling. He’s gone back to Chicago. He said that he had too many responsibilities to put them on hold until you decided to show up. But I’m sure that as soon as he knows why you went away the way you did, everything will get sorted out somehow… Sian? Sian, are you there?”
She never heard Jane. Too much had happened to her in the last few days, and the long unrelenting crisis on her mind and body at last took its toll. A crushing weight of darkness had descended on to her shoulders, and the phone receiver slipped out of her nerveless hand to fall dangling from its cords. Always running away, aren’t you? echoed the accusing ghost in her head. And you weren’t there when I called, even though you promised.
Guess what, kiddo? Looks like you’re going to lose this game of Solitaire, all hands down.
It was a long fall to the ground, without Matthew’s arms to catch her.
She woke gradually, and lay for some time blinking up at a strange ceiling. She was in a large bed and she couldn’t remember how she had come to be there. But she remembered the dream of Paris in the spring-time, with the rain falling softly on her upturned cheeks, and, as she heard the shadow of movement on the other side of a half-open door, she stirred groggily and murmured, “Matt?”
Quick footsteps sounded outside, and a shadow fell across her body from the indirect illumination. “Lassie?” said Malcolm quietly. The first tentative gladness in her heart withered away as dark reality slammed home. She turned her face away with a silent sob; of course, now she remembered. Of course Matt wasn’t there.
“What happened?” she croaked out.
“You fainted.” Malcolm came into the room, sat on the edge of the bed and laid cool, dry fingers against her cheek.
“Good God,” she exclaimed weakly. “I didn’t know I had it in me.”
It was a feeble attempt and Malcolm wasn’t smiling. “The doctors said it was just exhaustion. I warned you that you were pushing yourself too hard, but you’re just like your dad. You wouldna listen.”
“How is he?” Impelled by a renewed sense of urgency, she pushed herself to her elbows, cursing and amazed at the trembling in her limbs.
“No change. I’m sorry, lassie—now wait just a bloody minute! You’re not getting out of that bed until you’ve had a bite to eat! You’ve slept round the clock. You need food in your stomach or you’ll just faint again. The hospital will call if there’s any news.”
Despite her irritable complaints, Malcolm ordered up a hot nourishing meal from room service and stood over her until she had forced down enough food to satisfy him. Only then would he let her rise, and as she showered and dressed in jeans and a blouse she had to admit that, if nothing else, at least she felt steadier on her feet.
The heavy cloud cover had broken while she slept, and the Friday evening sunset was a rainbow kaleidoscope as she and Malcolm left the hotel. With a wince she fumbled in her purse for her sunglasses, for her dry, strained eyes could not take the shining brilliance. When their taxi had dropped them off at the main entrance of the hospital, Malcolm put a massive arm around her shoulders and led her inside, his searching gaze scouring the immediate vicinity.
Observing the protective attitude,
Sian said drily, “I thought any more danger wasn’t likely.”
“Aye, well, it doesna hurt to be careful, lassie,” he said, his soothing tones at complete odds with the tough, capable stance of his body as he pushed open the door for her to enter. “Especially with your dad already occupying one hospital bed.”
She stepped inside as she argued, “But surely since the men who attacked you have confessed, and Scotland Yard has the casino owner in custody, there isn’t anything more to worry about?”
They were passing through the information desk and main lounge, which due to the evening visiting hours, was crowded with people.
A man rose to his feet to walk towards them. “Sian?”
Her head started to turn automatically, in profound surprise and the first, incredible start of recognition at the familiarity of the deep, husky voice. But all she saw of him was a blur, for she was shoved violently against the wall as Malcolm said sharply, “Look out!”
She reeled into the wall, then recovered with desperate speed. Malcolm was spinning with lethal grace to thwart the advance of the intruder. Before conscious thought had time to register, she flung herself bodily between the two men. “No, Malcolm!”
Malcolm’s fist had already lifted into a swing. Even as he tried to throw his weight back, he was caught off balance and the blow would have connected with stunning force into the side of her face, except that the newcomer thrust out a powerful forearm with lightning speed to cover her vulnerable, exposed head.
The two men stared at each other over Sian, both pale and shaken, for had the blow connected it would have broken her jaw. She never realised how close she had come to injury. She had twisted under the canopy of their outstretched arms to stare at the newcomer and whispered unbelievingly, “Matt?”
His hazel eyes dropped to her, and he looked hard, haggard, and gloriously real, and then his face softened with indescribable tenderness as he said huskily, “Oh, love, I came as soon as I heard.”
She took a sleep-walker’s step forward. He reached to gather her hungrily to him, and the urgent strength of his hold was such sustenance to her starving soul that she clung to his neck.
She felt as if her heart had leapt right out of her skin. It resided in the large, solid frame of the man who bowed himself around her, beating in time with his own. He cupped the back of her head, pulled her face to him and drove into her mouth with shaking ferocity.
Tears slipped out of the corners of her eyes and streaked their salted path downwards. Very carefully Matt lifted the dark glasses away from her face. At the sight of the heavy shadows ringing the delicate skin around her eyes, her beauty bruised by the events of the past week, his own gaze darkened with acute pain.
“But how did you know where to find me?” she asked, touching his lean cheek with wondering fingers, for she still could not quite bring herself to believe that he was actually with her and not a figment of her imagination.
“Jane,” he said harshly. “She called me right after you talked to her. Remember, you told her which hospital your father was in. I packed my bag and was at the airport inside of forty-five minutes. Luckily there was a last minute cancellation on a British Airways flight, otherwise I might still be going insane at O’Hare. When I got into Heathrow this morning, I called around at every hotel in the phone books, but you weren’t anywhere to be found, so I came here to wait.”
“Malcolm booked me in a suite at the Hilton under an assumed name,” she told him in bemusement.
His expression hardened, and his hold around her waist tightened so that her breath whistled in her throat.
“Yes,” he said, his voice a grim, graceless scrape of sound. “Jane said that your father had been attacked. My God. I’ve been in seven different kinds of hell these past few days! First Joshua told me how you went white as a sheet when some strange man showed up on your doorstep, and you just meekly went away with him without a word of explanation. I’ve been torturing myself ever since with all kinds of scenarios, each one more wild and outlandish than the last. The only thing I could think of was that he had some kind of Svengalian hold on you, and that I would never see you again.”
“It was Malcolm. He’s my father’s associate,” she said, shocked by the flash of remembered terror that twisted his expression. “He never came to South Bend. Whenever my father visited me, he was alone. I think he wanted to appear ordinary—as much like everyone else’s parents as possible. When Malcolm showed up without Daddy, I knew something terrible had happened. All I could think of was that my father might die before I saw him again.”
“How is he?” he asked quietly.
She bowed her head against him and shuddered. “In a coma. Malcolm and Daddy tried their best, but there were three of them—one of his attackers struck him over the head with an iron pipe.”
“God,” he muttered, running his strong fingers through her hair, as if to reassure himself that she was whole and unscathed. “No wonder that fellow had such a hair-trigger reaction when I walked up to you.”
“Oh, Matt,” she groaned, “he looks so white, just like a wax image. I don’t know what I would do if he died—he’s the only family I’ve got—”
“No, oh, no.” He breathed the words, almost crooning, into the shell of her ear, cradling and soothing her with every giving part of him. “Sian, no matter what else happens, you’ll always have me.”
It took a moment for what he said to sink in. When it did, it was only what she could have wished for, but Sian’s personal demon did not always listen to the dictates of her heart.
It said bitterly, in her voice, “Just as I had you over the weekend?”
He stiffened and drew back, his own swift anger flashing in those predator’s eyes, and his hands, sliding to her shoulders, became claws. He shook her, not once or consciously or hard, but in a fine continuous tremor, and what it communicated to her in terms of his depth of emotion and endurance was a cornerstone revelation. She stared, transfixed, at his face.
“Yes,” said Matthew starkly. “As you had over the weekend. Giddy, aroused, terrified, amazed, humbled. In hell. As you had me from the very first moment I laid eyes on you. I came to your party with everything planned, how I would approach you, what I would say. It was to be such a reasonable conversation. I stood on your back porch, and looked across the yard at you, and everything sane and sensible blew up in my head. You were the most desirable woman I had ever seen, and you were, as I thought then, engaged to be married to my brother. God in heaven, you belonged to another man, and I went crazy. I was terrified that I might have come into your life too late.”
“Matthew—” she whispered, in awe and pity. She raised her hands to stroke his transformed expression, to check the terrible beauty of his words, but he was ungovernable.
“I love you,” he said from the back of his throat. “I love you in a way that has redefined the course of my life. I love you more than anything else in the world, as if I’ve never known the meaning of the word before—I couldn’t stay away from you any more than I could stop breathing. I thought the ache I felt for you was like nothing I’d ever experienced, but it was nothing compared to the agony I went through when I realised you might be in danger yourself, while I was stuck in a soulless airport three thousand miles away. I only hope to God I never have to go through that again.”
“Stop,” she breathed, touching him, straining towards him. “Oh, darling, stop.”
His introspective gaze focused on her with sharp, ravenous clarity. “Never,” he told her quietly.
If before she thought she was starving, now her heart felt full to bursting. She closed her eyes and exclaimed, “You’ve made me so angry. I’ve never been so furious as I have been with you. You shot straight through all my defences as if they never existed, and from that first moment onwards I seemed to spend every waking moment thinking of you, swearing at you, yearning for you, denying you. I
thought I knew what I wanted out of life, and I was so smug and self-satisfied with my plans, then you came along and, with hardly any effort at all, you showed me how all those things I wanted—stability, a proper home and family—were only reflections of the love I felt for you.”
“That wasn’t effortless,” said Matthew with twisted smile, and a new-born light in his eyes that warmed her to the depths of her soul. “I worked as I’ve never worked before, trying to convince you in as many ways as I possibly could how good we could be for each other. I set out to seduce you, not just physically, but intellectually and emotionally as well, holding my breath every time you backed away, and wincing inside every time I put my foot wrong. I felt so desperate after the first few days, I was reduced to inviting all your friends to my place for the weekend, and, when it looked as if you were the only one who wasn’t coming, I felt a king-sized fool.”
“You never showed it,” she said drily. “You were so cool, so contained.”
He tilted back her chin and let his intent, heavy-lidded gaze fall to her lips. “Oh, no?” he murmured. “I seem to recall a certain scene played in a restaurant parking lot, and the follow-up scenario in your kitchen. I couldn’t keep my hands off you! I was a moth to a flame, circling you, beating against you, singeing my wings and dying from it.”
A dark wave of red colour stained the pale skin covering her cheekbones as a flicker of remembered passion licked through her body. He laughed, a slumbrous, smoky, satisfied sound.
She looked about them, embarrassed for the exposure and vulnerability she felt, but nobody paid them any attention. Emotional scenes in a hospital were everyday occurrences, and Malcolm, bless his soul, had disappeared discreetly some time ago.
Matt had sobered at once, and with a dark, sombre look he said quietly, “Last Saturday, I felt on top of the world. You came to me, and kissed me, and set my soul on fire. With every reason to hope, I went to talk to Joshua, and he pulled the rug out from underneath my feet. Sian, I can never tell you how sorry I am for those things I said to you. I was out of control, and wild with the thought that you weren’t as caught up with me as I was with you. I regretted it almost immediately, but I couldn’t snatch the words out of the air. They hung there, between us, and then, when you’d confessed how close you had come to loving me, I knew that I’d cut my own throat with my willful anger.”
A Solitary Heart Page 16