A moment later, however, his voice betrayed nothing. "Do you need a ride in to work tomorrow morning?"
She shook her head quickly, but not before Matt glimpsed a flash of pride in her eyes. "I'll have to take care of getting my tires replaced first thing in the morning, so I don't know what time I'll be in."
He took a sip of his coffee, his gaze never leaving hers. "You're a very independent woman, aren't you, Angie Hall?"
Instinctively she felt her defenses rise, but when she saw that he meant no offense, she relaxed—somewhat. "I've had to be," she returned quietly.
Matt leaned back against the cushions and regarded her. "You've been alone-—" he frowned "-—how long now?"
Her fingers tightened around her cup. A faint bitterness crept into her thoughts as her mind delved backward. Evan had been lost to her months before his death, but she knew what Matt meant.
"Two years," she answered, not looking at him.
The silence spun out between them. There was a faint rustle as Matt reached out to set his cup on the coffee table. "It just occurred to me," he said slowly, "that the other night... well, I never said I was sorry about your husband."
It was an awkward apology, and as he saw her face shut down all expression, he cursed himself for a fool. It was obvious the subject of her husband's death was a painful one. He heard her utter a toneless thank you, then walk to the window where she stared solemnly out at the dark night.
Her lovely profile was hidden in shadow, but there was something abominably pitiful about the slender
lines of her back and shoulders set in proud but rigid lines. It was a sight that sent some nameless emotion stabbing into his heart. She seemed so vulnerable. So alone despite the determination and ability to stand on her own two feet.
Matt was a man who understood pride. He was also a man who understood pain, and he felt a strange kind of empathy stir deep inside himself.
He moved toward her, responding only to the loneliness he glimpsed beneath her facade of control. Perhaps it was borne of the desire to comfort, for there had been many times in his own life that he would have welcomed comfort from the arms of another.
He laid his hands on her shoulders, a feather-light touch, nothing that would frighten her. "Angie..."
Exactly what he might have said, he would never know. The muscles of her shoulders stiffened beneath his fingers, and he saw her drop her head. "No more questions, Matt." She moistened her lips. "Please."
It seemed a simple request, and yet it was far from simple. Angie was not a woman who would easily bare both heart and soul, and he sensed that there was much she held deep inside herself, perhaps too much. What would it take for her to confide in him, to trust as he wanted her to trust? Time? He had time, all that he needed. And patience? He had to be patient, for he suspected Angie would give him no choice.
Ever so slowly he turned her around to face him, then let his hands drop back to his sides. Her eyes, those gorgeous blue eyes framed with feathery black lashes, were dark and shadowed. Her tension radiated from her like a shield of armor, but it was a barrier he was determined to tear down. Little by little, if necessary.
"Do you dislike me, Angie?"
The mildness of his tone, as much as the question itself, startled her. "I... no." She took a deep breath to combat the erratic beat of her pulse. He was close, so close she could see the individual lines that fanned out from his eyes, the faint darkening of his beard-roughened jawline that proclaimed he was a man prone to five o'clock shadow. "No, I don't dislike you."
"But you're not comfortable with me, either."
Her thoughts were vague and a little disjointed. A part of her realized she'd been right to be wary of him. Nothing escaped his notice, nothing.
She wanted to look away, yet she couldn't. Her eyes traveled with unerring accuracy to the face that hovered just above her own, a face whose harshly masculine beauty she couldn't deny. They lingered for long, uninterrupted seconds on his mouth, a mouth that looked strangely inviting with its sensuously curved lower lip.
"No," she confessed. "No, I'm not comfortable with you!" She was suddenly upset with him for riling her like this and angry at herself for letting him get to her. She would have stepped away, but his hands on her shoulders wouldn't let her. Those same hands coasted down her arms, sending a prickle of sensation over her skin. To her dismay, it wasn't unpleasant. Indeed, it was entirely too pleasant for her own good.
"Why?" he asked very quietly.
"Why, what?" She deliberately chose to misunderstand.
"Why aren't you comfortable with me?" Just as deliberately he fitted their hands together, palm to palm, finger to finger.
His skin was warm, not at all soft like her own. She was acutely conscious of the way his large hands dwarfed her own.
"Because of this?"
This was an undeniable feeling of heat and awareness flowing between them, hotter than fire, charged with the sizzling energy of a lightning bolt.
Angie jerked her hands away as if she had been burned. "Why are you doing this?" she asked in a low voice, fighting the impulse to back away.
Maybe it was to prove to himself that she wasn't as 1 unaware of him as she pretended—or perhaps that was what he was trying to prove to her. It was, he decided, a little of both.
"I'm very attracted to you, Angie. And I think if you're honest with yourself, you'll admit you feel the same."
She looked away, feeling suddenly ill equipped to deal with such candor. She had the uneasy feeling that he saw right through her, that he was aware of every nuance of emotion she was trying to hide. He made her feel exposed. And never again would she allow a man to do that to her. Never.
"The only logical thing to do is see where that attraction takes us," he added.
"Then I'd suggest you find yourself another taker!" she retorted. She'd struggled a long time to rebuild even a measure of the confidence she'd lost at Evan's hands. She wouldn't stand by and let another man tear down what little she had regained!
Matt hid a smile. Her eyes were huge in her pale face. She reminded him of a frightened rabbit, but she had the tongue of a spitting tiger. He knew what she was trying to do, but he wasn't buying it.
"The only one I'm interested in is you," he said in a voice as wispy soft as cotton.
Angie shook her head, as if to negate his words. His gentle manner, the sensitivity that he didn't bother to hide, made his masculinity all the more overpowering. Still, both seemed almost at odds in such a hard- featured man. Yet all she had to do was look into his eyes to know that he wasn't as hard or tough as he appeared at first sight. The knowledge confused and unsettled her.
Her eyes slid away, but in the fraction of a second she allotted him, Matt was taken aback at the depth of emotion he saw reflected there, a kind of vulnerability that was quickly replaced by something that might have been despair.
"Matt..." Somehow she didn't even question that her voice was tainted with regret. "I really think you should find someone else."
"Janice is already spoken for. So is Georgia. And Mrs. Johnson... well, I think she's a little old for me."
His grin was so utterly disarming that she felt her heart turn over. She knew he was trying to lighten the suddenly intense atmosphere, but it made her all the more determined to say what she had to. "I think you should find someone who has more to give than I do," she told him quietly.
His grin evaporated. She felt as if he had penetrated clear to her soul, and his next words seemed to prove it. "You have two daughters who obviously aren't suffering from a shortage of anything—especially love."
Angie chose her words carefully. "The love between a parent and child is different. The other kind, the kind between a man and a woman..." She faltered uncertainly. How could she say what she felt without revealing too much of herself? Even now after all this time, when she looked in the mirror, she saw only a shell of the intensely passionate woman she had once been.
For just an instant she
experienced a burning sense of betrayal. Her looks were something she had always taken for granted, but Evan had made her feel unattractive. Worthless. He had stripped her of her pride in her sex, the most precious gift a woman could give to a man.
Was it any wonder she had avoided men m all but the most impersonal of relationships since Evan's death? Todd was the only one she had let get even remotely close, and she had set boundaries he didn't dare impose upon. She was right. She had nothing left to give.
She took a deep, unsteady breath, angry with Matt for putting her through this. "Let's just say it's not for me," she finished in a low voice.
For his part, Matt was trying to decipher the fleeting emotions that flitted across her face, not the least of which was fear. What did she have to be afraid of? "You're saying you're not capable of that kind of love anymore?" He couldn't quite keep the skepticism from his voice.
"I'm not," she agreed quickly—a little too quickly, she soon realized. She started to avert her eyes, but a lean finger laid on her jawline prevented her.
"You're wrong, Angie."
The quiet conviction in his voice frightened her as nothing else had. Matt Richardson was a threat, a threat to the carefully constructed life she had built for herself. It was enough that her life revolved around herself and her daughters... for now.
For now. The phrase caused a feeling of dread to gather in her stomach. She couldn't stop her mind from
jumping forward. What about tomorrow? Next year? What about forever? That was something she didn't dare let herself think about.
Her gaze focused somewhere in the vicinity of nis shirt collar. It was the only way she could say what she had to. "I'm not ready for a man in my life again," she said in a voice so low he had to strain to hear.
"How do you know if you haven't tried? And you haven't, have you?" he mused aloud. "Not even with Todd."
"Todd is a friend," she asserted stiffly.
"So you've said." He watched her closely. "What about me, Angie? Am I a friend?"
"You tell me!" What was his point? she wondered irritably.
"I'd like to be." The admission came freely, as Angie had expected. She had already discovered he was not a man to mince words. "I'd also like to see our relationship go beyond friendship." His eyes echoed the sentiment as they made a leisurely tour of her body. He made no attempt to hide either his desire or his approval.
"If I wanted a man in my life again, which I don't," she reiterated stiffly, "it certainly wouldn't be you!"
The slow smile that spread across his face set her teeth on edge even further. "You'd rather have a nice, safe man who makes no demands, right?" He paused, hoping he wasn't going about this the wrong way. "I've no doubt that losing your husband was hard on you. But that was two years ago, not yesterday. And it doesn't change the fact that you're a beautiful woman, a beautiful, unattached woman. Like it or not, that makes you fair game." He paused, then added softly,
"The sooner you let go of the past, the easier it will be."
"And all the more convenient for you, I suppose." She squared her shoulders proudly. "What makes you such an authority, anyway?"
The slight hardening of his eyes was the only sign of his anger, but in spite of everything, he felt a familiar, though long-forgotten pain twist through his gut. Marriage to Linda hadn't been the easiest thing in the world to cope with, but it hadn't stopped him from feeling he'd lost everything when she divorced him.
"I know," he said evenly, "because I've been there. It's not easy to pick up the pieces after someone you love is gone, but sooner or later it has to be done."
To her horror, she felt herself on the verge of tears. What he said sounded perfectly logical, but true to human nature, emotions weren't always logical.
"You don't understand," she whispered. "My husband.. ." A hollow emptiness welled up inside her, and she closed her eyes against it. How could she tell him of her secret shame, the humiliation Evan had put her through?
It wasn't until she felt the roughness of Matt's palm against her own that she realized she had thrust out her hand. Her eyes flew open to find it blanketed firmly within both of his. Slowly, giving her time to pull away if she wanted to, he lifted it between their bodies, twining his fingers with her own.
Angie found she couldn't look away as his lips found the sensitive skin on the back of her hand. The touch was so fleeting, so feather light, that she might have convinced herself it was purely her imagination—if it wasn't for the ripple of sensation that shot down clear to her toes.
Then he settled her hand firmly on the muscled landscape of his chest, still holding it lightly beneath his own. Beneath her fingertips Angie could feel the hardness of muscle sheathed in smooth skin, the faint rasp of hair below the fine linen of his shirt and the slow, steady beat of his heart.
Her body trembled.
Matt felt it, too. "You said you weren't afraid of me," he reminded her quietly.
"I... I'm not." Her voice was whisper thin as she fought a silent battle within herself. She knew what he was doing, and all her self-protective instincts cried out against it. "I'm not ready for this," she heard herself say.
He shook his head and wedged his hand more tightly over hers, as if to deny her words.
She felt his heartbeat accelerate.
"You see?" His smile was almost sad as he saw her eyes widen. "I think it's too late." Once more his lips caressed the back of her hand. "It'll be okay." His whisper was a sound that carried the night-dark intimacy found only between lovers. "Nothing's changed—not really. Things can be just as good, maybe even better, the second time around."
Then he was gone, and she was left alone. Alone in the silence of an empty room... and an empty heart.
She had a vague unsettling feeling that Matt was wrong—
And nothing would ever be the same again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Her image taunted Matt all through the long hours of the night. He dreamed of a woman with eyes the color of a cloudless sky and shimmering golden hair that danced around her shoulders, reminding him of sunlight in its purest form. Every nuance of her femininity intrigued him—her slim, delicate gracefulness, her subdued elegance, her polish and poise, her lilting, carefree, laughter. Laughter he hadn't heard nearly as often as he would have liked.
The woman who had everything. The thought mocked him, a blatant reminder of his human frailties. He'd branded Angie callous and cold without knowing anything at all about her. And now? Now he still had much to learn about her, but at least he knew better than to label her insensitive.
Grimacing, he rose from the kitchen table, dumped his cold coffee into the sink and poured himself another cup. The naked vulnerability in her eyes last night had shocked him. It roused protective instincts inside him he hadn't even known he possessed. He wanted to reach out and shield her in his arms, put himself between her and anyone or anything that might hurt her.
What stopped him was the certain knowledge that she would not have welcomed his touch. A wry smile touched his lips. If Angie had been so inclined, he wouldn't put it past her to get her message across to him loud and clear, through physical means or otherwise.
Yet he felt a thrill of elation as rte recalled the feel of her small hand trapped in the heat and hardness of his own. No matter how slight the gesture had been, however minor or inconsequential it might have seemed to someone else, he had touched her, both inside and out, this woman who did not like to be touched.
Angie. Linda. He couldn't stop himself from making one last comparison. Both fair, both fragile and * ethereal-looking, both possessing a remoteness that issued a silent challenge to covetous male eyes. But there, and once again Matt flinched, the similarities ended.
Angie was intelligent, financially solvent, and in spite of her claim to the contrary, he knew her capacity for love and tenderness hadn't yet reached its limit. He suspected she didn't even realize how sensual she really was; he had the feeling she saw it as something to be hidden deep
inside.
Angie was strong while Linda had been headstrong, cold and uncaring. Angie had struggled through a rocky period in her life and emerged victorious, though not without a few battle scars, he reminded himself grimly. But Linda had found it far too easy to rely on others, with no thought about how or why someone else might be hurt. Matt knew there was no way on earth that Linda could have gotten through it on her own.
Still, it disturbed Matt that Angie still carried a torch for her dead husband. The torment in her eyes cut him to the quick, yet it only deepened his desire for her. For Matt, thoughts of Linda no longer dredged up old ghosts, but it was obvious that didn't hold true for Angie.
Fighting the shadowy hold of her husband wasn't going to be an easy hill for her to climb, and he sensed she wasn't going to make it any easier for either one of them.
But she was strong. Strong on the outside, fragile and so very vulnerable inside, and so determined not to show it. That was his Angie.
His Angie. He grinned, caught up his jacket from the closet and locked the front door. She wasn't his yet, and if last night was any indication, she certainly wasn't going to fall into his arms like a ripe plum.
Angie needed him, he thought fiercely, as much as he needed her. She just hadn't discovered it yet.
***
Late that night Angie sat behind the huge rolltop desk in her den. A late evening breeze brushed a swirl of leaves against the windowpane. Kim and Casey were tucked snugly into bed. Only minutes before the clock on the living room mantel had chimed nine o'clock. It was a scene steeped in contentment, in peace and tranquility.
But there was no peace in Angie's heart. Shadowy memories of Evan were back with a vengeance because of Matt Richardson. He'd kissed her hand. She'd wanted him to kiss her mouth.
With a groan Angie threw down her pencil and pushed herself away from her desk. For three days her thoughts had displayed a rather irritating tendency to veer off in his direction whenever she let her mind slip. Much as she hated to admit it, it was because she was so acutely aware of him as a man, a very attractive man.
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