by Penny Jordan
‘On the contrary, I have every right not to want another man to have access to your home, your bed, and most especially to you.’
A weakening female longing ran through her. If only those words were true! And thank heaven that she was not foolish enough to voice that wish!
‘The only thing Ben wanted access to was to my washing machine,’ she pointed out waspishly, adding, when Matt remained unmoved, ‘You do realise that he’s now going to think we really are lovers, and that we’re…?’
‘That we’re what?’
‘Ben knows I wouldn’t go to bed with someone if I didn’t…if I wasn’t…’
Harriet compressed her lips. ‘I think I should warn you that Ben has some pretty old-fashioned ideas about how…well, certain things. And now that he’s seen us like this he’s going to start asking all sorts of questions.’
‘He already has,’ Matt informed her nonchalantly. ‘Which is why I’ve told him that we’re getting married!’
Getting married!
Harriet couldn’t believe her ears!
‘Try to look on the bright side,’ Matt encouraged her.
‘What bright side?’ Harriet croaked acerbically. ‘How can there be a bright side?’
‘Well, for one thing Ben isn’t going to find it necessary to protect your virginity anymore, is he?’
‘But I’m…’ Harriet began, and then stopped, colour flooding her face as something in the way Matt was watching her made her heart start to race bumpily. ‘This whole thing is crazy. I’m going downstairs to ring the police and a glazier,’ she told him crossly.
‘It wouldn’t have worked, you know,’ Matt said as she reached the door.
‘What wouldn’t have worked?’ Harriet demanded.
‘Saving yourself for Ben.’
Harriet had had enough. With her hand on the door she told him angrily, ‘You are the one who came up with that scenario—not me! So far as I’m concerned my virginity is just an…an unwanted encumbrance, and personally I’d be only too happy to be rid of it. But of course there’s no way you are going to believe that, is there? Because there’s no way you would ever admit you are in the wrong! You just aren’t going to believe it—whatever I say—or do! Not even if I went out and…and…and slept with the first man I could find!’
‘Why go out to find one?’
Harriet’s eyes rounded and she stared at him, not sure if she had misheard or misinterpreted his soft question.
‘You mean, I should…you would…?’ She stopped and shook her head as her voice became a small, breathless squeak.
Matt gave her a mocking look. ‘See what happens when you make theatrical threats you can’t carry through?’ he taunted her.
‘It wasn’t a threat—’ Harriet started to defend herself, but to her relief Matt’s mobile phone started to ring, and as he reached out to answer it she made a swift exit from the bedroom.
Downstairs in the kitchen, as she waited for the kettle to boil, she closed her eyes and leaned against one of the kitchen units.
What if she had taken Matt up on his challenge? What if she had boldly told him that she wanted him to relieve her of her burdensome virginity? What if…?
But she knew that her feelings for Matt would never be satisfied by a clinical cold sex session, no matter how proficiently executed on Matt’s part. And, worse than that, she knew that such an event could and would only leave her craving what she had been denied.
Instead of indulging herself in imagining them making love, what she really ought to be doing was worrying about the complications Matt had caused by pretending to Ben that they were getting married.
Matt’s telephone call was from Ben, who wanted to tell him how much his washing machine was going to cost.
‘Have you and Harry set a date for the big day yet, then?’ Ben asked, once Matt had assured him that he meant what he had said about paying for the washing machine.
‘We’re working on it,’ Matt answered, tongue in cheek.
After he had ended the call Matt started to frown. Did Harriet really think he had been deceived by her denial that she wasn’t saving herself for Ben?
And as for that idiotic claim she had made—hadn’t it occurred to her that he could have chosen to take her words at face value and put her in a position where…?
Where what? Where he would physically take her in his arms and then take her to bed and show her, share with her, so much pleasure that she would never want him to let her go? Where she would love him as he longed for her to do? As though he was the only man she ever could or would love, now and forever!
Matt’s frown deepened. The intensity of the feelings she aroused in him still had the power to shock him.
Pushing aside his pain, Matt got off the bed and headed for the bathroom. Did Harriet not realise the risk she had taken? Didn’t it occur to her how another man might react to the kind of challenge she had given him? He was beginning to think that for her own protection, and his sanity, he ought not to let her out of his sight!
CHAPTER FIVE
HARRIET had just finished speaking to the hospital to check on her elderly neighbour when Matt walked into the kitchen, and her concern for the old lady was in her eyes as she turned to him and said worriedly, ‘Mrs Simmonds’s injuries are more serious than they thought. She’s fractured her hip and she’s still in shock. The hospital says that it could be several weeks before she’s well enough to come home. What kind of people would do a thing like that, Matt?’ she demanded passionately. ‘To a helpless elderly woman…’
‘The kind who would do the same thing to a young woman who is equally helpless, even though she might be too damned stubborn to accept that!’ Matt warned her grimly.
Harriet gave a little shudder.
‘I’m going to ring the police to report the damage here last night, get someone ’round here to install a decent security system, and then—’
‘You’re going home?’ Harriet suggested eagerly.
‘And then we are going out shopping,’ Matt told her with an unkind smile.
‘Shopping?’ Harriet queried uncertainly.
Matt leaned back against the wall and folded his arms across his chest ‘Shopping! As of now, until I deem it safe for you to be here on your own, you and I will be sharing the same roof. That roof can be this one—although it could be damned uncomfortable with a team of workmen installing a security system—or it can be mine. I don’t care. But what I do care about is that when, as it will do, our relationship becomes public knowledge, you are wearing my engagement ring—here.’
As he finished speaking he took hold of her hand and tapped her ring finger meaningfully.
‘What on earth for?’ Harriet asked, once her body had stopped reacting to his touch and her emotions had stopped rioting at the thought of what it would be like if he really meant it. ‘No one gets engaged these days just because they’ve spent a night together…’
‘No, but they do when they’re planning to get married.’
‘But we aren’t!’
‘Ben thinks we are,’ Matt reminded her. ‘And I intend him to go on thinking that! There’s no way out, Harriet,’ he informed her. ‘I’m not letting you off the hook. You need to break out of this addiction you’ve developed—for your own sake as much as Ben’s and Cindi’s.’
‘I am not addicted to Ben and I am most certainly not letting you buy me an engagement ring!’ Harriet protested. ‘Wearing it would make a…a travesty of…of…’
‘What you mean is that you don’t want Ben to see you wearing my ring. Why not? After all, he’s already seen you in bed with me—’
‘Exactly!’ Harriet pounced triumphantly. ‘He’s seen me in bed with you, so why does he need to see me wearing an engagement ring?’
‘He doesn’t, but I think it would be better for you.. and me—if other people did,’ Matt replied obliquely.
‘If I loved a man I wouldn’t care who knew I had spent the night with him,’ Harriet told him passi
onately, even though a small voice inside her reminded her that Ben would certainly mind, and would be all too likely to assume his big brother role and tell Matt so!
‘Maybe not. But if he loved you with the same intensity, and if, like me, he was a certain old-fashioned type of male, who wanted to tell the world how he felt about you and how committed he was to you, he might! In fact there’s no might about it! He would!’
Harriet opened her mouth and then closed it again, for once lost for any kind of comeback.
If she refused to go along with what Matt was planning, and if Ben then thought that she and Matt had quarrelled and their ‘relationship’ was over, he’d be fussing over her like a mother hen—just as he always did when he thought she was upset or in trouble. Harriet could well imagine what that would do to his own relationship with Cindi, especially in view of the ultimatum Cindi had already given him.
Sometimes in life a person had to put another person’s feelings and needs before their own. This was her time to do that for Ben, Harriet recognised. She had already come between him and Cindi unintentionally; she certainly wasn’t going to risk doing so a second time.
And what was an engagement ring anyway? Nothing permanent or legally binding! If by wearing it she could buy Ben and Cindi enough time to patch up their differences and get their relationship on a sound enough footing for Cindi to have complete trust in Ben’s love for her, then that was what she was going to have to do! And besides, seeing her wearing Matt’s ring should surely also go a long way to making Cindi herself realise that Harriet wasn’t romantically interested in Ben.
* * *
‘So that’s the ring sorted out,’ she heard Matt declaring. ‘Now, you’d better pack enough stuff to last you at least a week—I’ve decided it’ll be much safer for you to stay at my penthouse…’
‘Your penthouse! But that’s in our office block! I’m not staying there!’
‘Of course you are. What better way could there be to reinforce the fact that we are now a couple?’
Wearing Matt’s ring was one thing—moving into his apartment was quite definitely another.
Harriet put up the fiercest fight and the best argument she could against them ‘living together,’ but in the end Matt wore her down by the simple expedient of steamrollering over every single point she made, and she was forced to give in.
Her hands trembled as she packed her things, her nerves jangled by the situation which had gone way beyond her control.
Why on earth couldn’t Matt have simply accepted her assurance that she had no romantic interest in Ben? Instead of involving them both in this increasingly complicated and, for her at least, increasingly dangerous situation!
Miserably she acknowledged that his misjudgement of her was going to expose her to far more emotional danger than she felt equipped to handle—and if, as she feared, she fell even more deeply in love with him he would be the one to blame!
Yes, he would be the one to blame. But she would be the one to pay, in sleepless nights and in a heart and body that ached unbearably for him.
* * *
Matt broke his concentration on driving to turn his head and glance briefly at Harriet. She had not spoken a single word to him since they had got into his car, but he could almost smell the hot, slow burn of her angry resentment.
‘This city is becoming too damned overcrowded,’ he commented grimly as the intersection in front of them became gridlocked.
‘That’s why so many firms are encouraging their staff to work from home,’ Harriet replied without thinking, and angry flags of colour flew in her cheeks when she realised that Matt had tricked her into breaking her mental vow to keep as much distance between them as she could by not talking to him.
‘Well, it’s an excellent option for some businesses,’ he agreed.
‘Including yours?’ Harriet asked him.
‘Maybe in time. I can certainly see that if I were to marry and have children then there would be a distinct appeal in it for me personally. With modern technology I could work from home myself quite easily, and therefore no doubt so too could my employees.’
The very sound of the word ‘children’ on his lips made Harriet’s whole body ache. For them—for him—for the feel of him within her whilst his body and hers created the new life that would be their child.
The feeling that suddenly shook her was like nothing she had ever felt before—immediate, primitive, and possessive of her mate, of their child…of their love.
Unable to bear the intensity of her own emotions, she looked out of the car window and then frowned.
‘Matt, where are we going? This isn’t the way to the office,’ she protested sharply.
‘We aren’t going to the office. We’re going shopping. The engagement ring—remember?’ Matt answered as he turned into a narrow street that fed into the car park of an exclusive shopping mall built around the city’s most prestigious luxury hotel.
‘We’ll get the ring and then we’ll have dinner here later, to celebrate.’
‘Dinner here? We can’t!’ Harriet panicked. ‘I’m not wearing the right clothes.’
Honesty almost compelled her to add that she did not even possess anything remotely suitable to wear at such an exclusive establishment, but before she could do so Matt was shaking his head, telling her, ‘Don’t worry. I’d like to change, too. I’ll book a room and we can shower and change there before dinner.’
When he saw her expression he told her suavely, ‘It will be expected. People are bound to ask questions. It would be a very unusual couple who did not celebrate their engagement.’
‘We are a very unusual couple,’ Harriet reminded him through gritted teeth. But Matt was already pulling into one of the exclusive spaces reserved for hotel guests and the car door was being opened for her, making it impossible for her to continue her argument.
‘I’ve booked a table for dinner and a room,’ Matt told Harriet carelessly ten minutes later, when he returned to her side in the elegant reception area.
‘I can’t believe you’re making all this unnecessary fuss,’ Harriet protested.
‘If we were really getting engaged would you consider it an unnecessary fuss?’ Matt asked her evenly.
‘Of course not,’ Harriet denied promptly. ‘Every woman wants such a special occasion to be…special. Oh!’ She gave Matt a glare of goaded anger in response to his infuriating expression. ‘If I was really making that kind of commitment, a public dinner in an expensive hotel wouldn’t be the way I would want to celebrate it,’ she continued passionately.
‘No? Then where would you want to celebrate it?’ Matt asked her drily.
Looking away from him, Harriet said softly, ‘Somewhere private, romantic…and special…where we could be alone.’
‘Such as? A silken tent on desert sands?’ Matt mocked her, watching her face as she shook her head.
Her eyes were brilliant with emotion, and behind the anger she was showing him the wildly passionate side of her character. There was a longing that softened her mouth and burned hotly in her eyes, and immediately his own body responded physically to it. So much so, in fact, that he had to turn slightly away from her and try to distract her.
‘A remote cottage with open fires and soft rugs, perhaps?’ he suggested softly. ‘Where your lover could lay you down and cover your nakedness with his own whilst he watched the pleasure he was feeling reflect back to him from your eyes?’
As he spoke Matt’s voice had deepened and developed a raw note to it that raised the tiny hairs on Harriet’s arms. Deep inside her she felt a piercingly sharp ache.
‘Or perhaps you’d like to lie back in a bath scented with rose petals whilst he slowly…?’
Any one of them, Harriet wanted to beg him frantically. Any or all of them—and now, right now…
He was doing it again, Matt warned himself. He was building images, emotions, dreams for himself which had no substance in reality.
But what if…?
Wha
t if nothing. He stopped himself sharply.
* * *
A little ruefully Harriet acknowledged that a pair of jeans, a tee shirt and a casual lightweight jacket, no matter how much the modern, acceptable and go-anywhere uniform they normally were, were hardly the kind of clothes she would have chosen to wear for an outing such as this one.
No! Had she and Matt really been going to choose her engagement ring, and then going on to celebrate their engagement, she would have wanted to be wearing…
Unbidden, an image appeared inside her head of the bow-tied briefs she had last seen dangling from Matt’s fingers. As it just so happened the briefs were part of a matching set, and the bra that went with them tied provocatively at the front with satin ribbons…
Knowing they were going out on such a romantic and emotional mission, wouldn’t she have wanted to dress in something suitably reflecting the day’s mood and the reason for it?
But if Matt had been watching her dressing…watching whilst she tied those fragile bows…would they have got as far as leaving their bed, never mind their home?
The images that her over-excited mind were conjuring up brought a feverish flush to her face, and a shallow race to her heartbeat.
As Matt headed for the main exit from the hotel, Harriett discovered that she couldn’t resist continuing with her private fantasy. Mentally she covered her breasts and the hard peaking of her nipples against the semi-transparent silk of her bra with a soft cashmere top. Cashmere always felt so sensuous to touch, and, if it was fine enough, when he looked at her Matt would be able to imagine the shape of her breasts, the way he had caressed them during their early-morning lovemaking.
Locked in a battle with her own recklessly wanton imaginings, Harriet froze as Matt suddenly reached out and took hold of her hand, lacing his fingers through hers, and then locking his grip on her when she tried to pull away.
‘We’re madly in love,’ he told her when she gave him a mutinous look. ‘Remember?’
‘We’re in the middle of a shopping mall,’ Harriet protested. ‘People don’t—’