The Engagement Party

by Barbara Boswell

  “Sweetheart, it was so much more than I thought it would be. I wanted you so badly. I can’t remember wanting or needing any woman as much as I wanted and needed you last night. You were so honest and sensual and sweet. The most exciting, responsive woman I’ve ever known. I completely lost control with you, and that was a first for me. I’ve been intimate with women, but last night was the first time I felt such a strong emotional connection, too, and—”

  “It was too much,” Hannah concluded. “You weren’t looking for emotional involvement last night. You were looking for good-time sex. Imagine your surprise when you found yourself in bed with a virgin!”

  “I confess to being surprised,” Matthew said tightly. “But I liked it, Hannah. I’m proud to be your first lover. Your only lover. Hell, I loved it! And I panicked. You’re so beautiful, so sexy. I couldn’t believe that you’d held back your passion for so long and then given it all to me. That’s why I didn’t say any of the things that I should have said to you, that I wanted to say. Before I had the chance to pull myself together and tell you, you took off.”

  “I didn’t feel like sticking around while you bemoaned the fact that I’d never slept with any of my ex-fiancés.”

  “I admit I was an insensitive ape.” His mouth hovered over hers, then his lips touched hers as he spoke.

  “Yes, you were. But I don’t believe in holding a grudge, so I’m willing to accept your apology.” She didn’t expect one. She thought he’d come back with some wisecrack about apologizing to her after she’d begged his pardon for slugging him.

  “I’m sorry,” Matthew growled, and her eyes widened in surprise.

  She touched his cheek, the one she’d smacked. Hannah winced. “I’m sorry, too, Matthew. For hitting you. I’ve never hit anybody in my life except for Bay when we were kids. And he hit back twice as hard.”

  Matthew smiled and covered her hand with his. “The siblings were rivals, huh?”

  “More like mortal enemies.”

  “You’re very passionate about everything, whether it’s selling or dancing or hating...or loving.”

  Hannah blushed. His dark eyes seemed to see inside her. She felt exposed and vulnerable, and the intensity of her feeling scared her. She understood more clearly those unnerving feelings that had driven Matthew to withdraw from her last night. Right now she very much wanted to retreat behind a protective cover herself.

  “When I said I loved you last night, I—I didn’t mean it,” she said, averting her eyes to avoid his piercing stare. “It was the kind of thing I thought I ought to say under the circumstances. I’ve always pretended to be sexually sophisticated but no one knows better than you that I’m not.”

  “I promise not to hold you to any declarations of love made in the passionate heat of the moment,” he said lightly. But his deep frown and the hard glitter in his eyes belied his casual air.

  “Good. Because I couldn’t possibly be in love with you. I hardly know you, Matthew.”

  “You don’t have to keep explaining. I understand.”

  “I’m glad. Because I would hate for you to think that I—”

  “Hannah, kindly shut up.”

  She slanted him a sultry, challenging glance. She was desperate, shivering with frustration and reluctant but raging need. “Maybe I feel like talking.”

  “Well, I definitely don’t feel like listening.” His mouth came down on hers, fierce and hard and demanding.

  Nine

  Instantly, Hannah raised her arms and linked them around his neck, arching herself into him as he kissed her, then kissing him back with a hot, wild urgency of her own.

  His warm weight pinned her to the mattress; her breasts were nestled snugly against the hard plane of his chest. He pressed his thigh higher and harder against her, until she was straddling him. As he increased the rhythmic pressure, a sensuous, syrupy warmth suffused her.

  “I owe you more than an apology, sweet baby.” He slipped his hands under her tank top and caressed her through the cotton of her sports bra. “I owe you pleasure. A lot of pleasure. And I intend to deliver.”

  His words and the smoky sensuality in his eyes made Hannah quiver. And then his mouth took hers again, gently this time, his tongue teasing her, slipping between her teeth to taste her, then drawing back. She opened her mouth wider, to deepen the kiss, inviting the strong, full thrust of his tongue. Still he kept on teasing her until she was so desperate to have him that she slid her own tongue past his and kissed him hungrily, deeply, the way she wanted him to kiss her.

  Matthew gave a low growl and took control, his mouth rough with passion as he kissed her so intimately and intoxicatingly that Hannah sighed and surrendered completely to his mastery.

  He unclasped her bra and fondled the warm, bare flesh that spilled into his palms. His hands were exquisitely gentle at first, caressing her, tantalizing her until her nipples were tingling and taut, sensual proof of her heightened arousal.

  His mouth brushed her breast lightly, tasting her skin, and she arched against him in a silent plea for more. She shuddered with pleasure as his tongue and teeth played first with one nipple, then the other.

  While his mouth pleasured her, his hands were busy, too. He slid his fingers beneath the waistband of her shorts, beneath her high-cut cotton panties to cup her bare buttocks and settle her precisely where he wanted her, against the full thickness of his masculine arousal. His hips rocked her in slow, seductive circles. Hannah moaned as her body succumbed to the age-old erotic rhythm.

  The fire between her legs grew and spread. He withdrew one hand to stroke the smooth length of her thigh, then extended the caress to her hip, her belly and back again. He lifted her leg over his hip, gliding his hand along her inner thigh, lightly kneading its silky softness. But he didn’t touch the hot, melting core of her that throbbed and ached until she whimpered a soft plea.

  “Is this what you want, sweet?” His fingers slipped between her legs, probing the hot wetness there.

  “Please, Matthew.” She could barely speak as his deft caresses made her arch and writhe against his hand.

  “Yes, baby, I’ll take care of you. I promise I’ll please you.”

  He kissed her again, his tongue moving in her mouth with the same shatteringly intimate strokes of his fingers deep inside her. Hannah completely gave herself up his kiss, just as she surrendered to the sensual magic of his hand.

  He seemed to know exactly what she wanted and how to make her want more. Higher and higher she soared, until the pleasure was so intense that the spiraling coil of tension deep within her suddenly unwound and exploded into a vibrant frenzy of release.

  She loved it. Hannah caught her breath on a sob as the waves of ecstasy pulsed through her. She dug her fingers into his back and clung to him while the rapture slowly subsided, leaving her limp and weak and radiant in the warm afterglow.

  He held her, stroking her hair, occasionally kissing her forehead, her cheek, until she opened her eyes.

  He was watching her. Hannah blushed under the intense scrutiny of his gaze. She tried to think of something to say but she couldn’t find her voice.

  Matthew kissed her lips lingeringly, then disengaged himself from her to sit up. Lying flat on her back, too replete to move, Hannah watched him put the birth certificate, which had been pushed aside, into his jacket pocket. Then he removed the jacket and began to unloosen his tie.

  Hannah was so sated, so languorous, that it took a few moments for his actions to fully register. He’d already taken off his jacket and tie and unbuttoned his shirt when it finally dawned on her.

  He was getting undressed!

  Hannah sat up. “Matthew?”

  He shrugged out of his shirt and unbuckled his belt. “What is it, baby?” His fingers moved to the zipper of his gray trousers.

  “Matthew, stop!”

  He paused and looked at her, his black eyes glittering fiercely, possessively. Hannah’s eyes darted to the thick bulge straining against that unzipped fly. His
whole body was hot with passion, while her own had been deliciously satisfied.

  A few moments ago, her mind had been fuzzy from the urgency of desire. Now she was thinking clearly. Very clearly.

  “Matthew, no.” She scrambled off the bed. “We can’t.”

  He stared at her, his eyes glazed. “What?”

  His voice was thick, his thought processes muddled. He felt as if he were becoming unglued. Never had he known such ferocious desire, not even last night, which had been the pinnacle until this moment.

  His eyes swept over Hannah. He thought of her passionate response to him a few moments ago when she had cried out with ecstasy. He had given her much pleasure, just as he’d promised, and he wanted to give her more. And to share it with her this time.

  “Matthew, we—we can’t do this. My parents and Bay might come home, and my grandmother is—”

  “You’re right, you’re right,” Matthew agreed, pulling on his shirt. He didn’t bother to button it. “We can’t stay here.” He draped his tie around his neck, and it hung there loose and unknotted as he grabbed his suit jacket and stood. “Come on, sweetie, let’s go.”

  “Go where?”

  “For a little ride.” His smile was sexy and inviting. “My van is parked out front.”

  “Your van,” Hannah repeated. With the big air mattress in the back. She was appalled by how much she wanted to go with him in that van, park in some secluded spot and then climb into the back and onto that air mattress with him.

  She braced herself against the insidious melting desire that was already beginning to build within her as she gazed at him. His open shirt revealed the mat of wiry dark hair, and a body taut and strong. She raised her eyes and they focused compulsively on the firm, sensual lines of his lips.

  A convulsive little shudder rippled through her as she remembered the moist warmth of his mouth on her breasts. If she went with him, he would do that to her again. And much more. He would touch her intimately with his strong, clever fingers....

  Hannah gulped. Just saying no was not as easy as it was purported to be. But she persevered. “No, Matthew, I can’t.”

  Matthew caught her arm. “I think I understand,” he said huskily. “Last night wasn’t all that great for you and you’re in no hurry to experience that sort of...discomfort again.” He began to stroke a path along her inner arm.

  The sensuous motion of his fingers reminded her of the arousing patterns he’d traced on her inner thighs. Hannah shivered.

  “Don’t be afraid, baby. I won’t hurt you,” he soothed. “I promise that this time it will be what you—”

  “Matthew, last night was an aberration. I was acting completely out of character when I went to your room and...and...”

  “Made love with me,” Matthew finished for her.

  “We had sex, Matthew,” Hannah countered flatly. “Love had nothing to do with it.”

  “Semantics,” Matthew snapped. His grip on her arm tightened. “If I felt like playing word games, I’d be back at the boardinghouse with the Porter sisters and their Scrabble board.”

  An unholy combination of frustration and fury surged through him. He hating hearing her dismiss last night as nothing but a sexual romp. It had been much more than that. His senses, numbed for so long, had come alive again. He’d experienced emotions and sensations he had never encountered before. He wanted it all again; he wanted her again. Over and over.

  But she was telling him no.

  “Is this your idea of revenge?” he demanded roughly. “I didn’t satisfy you last night and tonight you’re paying me back for it? Sending me away while I’m so hot and hard I can hardly stand?”

  “That’s a pretty good plan. Too bad I didn’t come up with it myself.” Hannah pulled her arm free. “But the truth is, I’m not punishing you, Matthew. I’m trying to do the right thing, and having sex with you tonight in your van doesn’t strike me as right.”

  “But you want me!” His voice rose. “And I want you.” His voice softened and turned cajoling. “It doesn’t get any more right than that, baby. Hannah, sweetheart, we need each other.”

  “You’re suggesting that we have sex because it’s a physical urge that we should assuage? Kind of like scratching an itch? Or taking a drink of water to quench your thirst?”

  Matthew did not like the turn this conversation had taken. “You don’t have to make it sound so damned prosaic,” he muttered.

  “But that’s all it is to you. And it isn’t enough for me, Matthew. It never has been.” She smiled wistfully. “What did you expect from a woman who’s been engaged three times but still wanted to wait until—”

  Matthew panicked. “I want you desperately, Hannah, but I won’t marry you to get you into bed again!”

  “Who asked you to?” Hannah was indignant. “Not that I’d marry you, even if you begged me.”

  “I wouldn’t have to beg. If I even hinted at a proposal, we’d be engaged tonight.”

  “Your imagination is working overtime for you to come up with that bit of fiction!” Hannah flared. “Oh, no, Matthew, I absolutely will not put myself and my family through a fourth broken engagement.”

  “Baby, if you were engaged to me, you wouldn’t dream of breaking it off. Because we wouldn’t have one of those insipid, sexless, failed arrangements that you called an engagement. We’d have the real thing.”

  Hannah shivered a little with excitement. Being engaged to Matthew would be very different indeed from her previous engagements. Nothing involving Matthew would ever be insipid or sexless. That indescribable sense of rightness that she had felt the night they’d made love suffused her, and she gazed longingly at him. He was the right man for her but he hadn’t realized it yet. Would he ever?

  He began to button his shirt, though he left his tie undone.

  Hannah watched as he donned his suit coat. “I guess you’re leaving?” She didn’t want him to go!

  “I guess I am. And I’m leaving alone, apparently. Unless you’ve changed your mind?”

  She shook her head. “I just can’t, Matthew.”

  “You mean you won’t.” He opened the bedroom door and started down the hall.

  Hannah followed, scurrying to catch up and walked alongside him. He gave her a questioning glance. “I’ll see you to the door,” she explained.

  “The old family retainer has retired for the night?”

  “The Farleys don’t have an old family retainer. It’s your kinfolk, the Wyndhams, who do,” she noted. “Remember that nice old butler who let us into the mansion today? He’s been with the Wyndhams forever.”

  “Don’t call them my kinfolk.”

  “Why not? They are. You claimed the Polks. Why not the Wyndhams?”

  They stood before the wide front door in the vestibule. “I don’t plan to publicly claim either,” Matthew grated through his teeth. “I’m not going to violate Alexandra’s privacy. Aside from Alexandra, Justine and me, nobody knows the truth but you and your grandmother. I know I can trust her, but so far your track record with my secrets isn’t too good.”

  Hannah flushed, remembering how she’d identified him as Galen Eden to Emma Wynn. “I shouldn’t have told Emma. I promise I won’t say a word to anybody about anything else. I swear I won’t, Matthew.”

  “I’m holding you to that, little girl.”

  They stood staring at each other as the silence grew and stretched awkwardly between them.

  “I guess I’ll go check on my grandmother,” Hannah said at last.

  He wasn’t going to make a move on her, Matthew vowed to himself. He wouldn’t kiss her, wouldn’t touch her. She was expecting him to, he could tell. But since she’d set herself up as the sex police, she was going to have to live by her own rules. If she wanted him around, she was going to have to do the pursuing. He’d done enough chasing after her. So far, he had exerted more effort trying to win her favor than he’d ever expended on any other woman. And to what avail? To be sent away, his insides tied in knots!
r />   Oh, yes, the next move must definitely be hers.

  Hannah inched closer to him. Didn’t he know that a good-night kiss was perfectly acceptable? She was standing so close to him that their bodies were almost touching. A thin piece of paper could barely be slipped between them. She tilted her head and raised her face invitingly. Her body language was unmistakable. Surely he would kiss her now!

  He didn’t. “Maybe I’ll see you around Clover, little girl,” he called over his shoulder as he strode from the house.

  Hannah quickly closed the door. From the small hallway window, she watched him walk to the van and climb inside. She stood staring at the darkness outside long after the taillights of Matthew’s van had disappeared from view.

  * * *

  Business was slow. The temperature had soared into the nineties, the air-conditioning in Yesterdays was not working to full capacity, and when she’d called for a repairman, Hannah had been told that no one could come to her shop until they’d finished maintenance work on all the individual units at the Clover Street Hotel. That could take days.

  Hannah closed the shop early, shortly after four. No one seemed to want to browse in an antique shop in this heat. With the air-conditioning malfunctioning, it was like being trapped in a stifling old attic. She sat in a booth at Peg’s Diner and sipped a tall glass of iced tea while trying to regain and maintain her composure. It wasn’t easy. She hadn’t seen or heard from Matthew in nearly a week. Every time the phone rang at home, she reached to answer it, but it was never Matthew on the line. Every time the door opened in Yesterdays, she looked up, her heart racing, but it was never Matthew who entered the shop.

  She’d refused to have sex with him and he’d stayed away, reaffirming the wisdom of her decision. But feeling wise was little consolation for this misery, caused by his rejection.