Authors: Amanda Carpenter
fancy going to the theatre on Friday night, or will that be a bit much
after the drive?'
'I can't speak for the others, but I'd love to,' she said slowly, still in
part reserved because of his apparent change of mood and yet
disarmed at the importance he seemed to attach to her opinions and
wishes.
'Then I'll have a look around tomorrow and see what I can book. We
can go to supper afterwards, and, if we're out during the day on
Saturday, I thought I'd invite some people over for the evening. Then
you can sleep as late as you like the next morning, have a relaxing
brunch with the Sunday papers, and travel back to South Bend at
your leisure. That way those of you who have summer jobs lined up
won't be too tired on Monday. How does that sound?'
It sounded carefully thought out, and considerate, and just exactly
right. The last of her lingering disappointment, which had been
resurrected by the topic of conversation, faded away as she began to
look forward to the weekend.
'Well done,' she said quietly. 'But your plans can't have been what
you wanted to discuss. You didn't know this afternoon that my own
plans had fallen through.'
The Mercedes slid into a parking space at the restaurant. Matthew
turned off the engine and turned to her, his expression inscrutable.
'No, I didn't,' he said softly, 'did I?'
The confinement of the car was stifling. Sian unbuckled her seatbelt
as quickly as her fumbling fingers would allow, but he must have had
split-second reflexes, for he was already striding around the back of
the convertible to reach her door even as she grasped the handle.
What she had intended as an escape became an advancement into
further confrontation, as she slid long legs around and rose to her
feet.
The added height from her heels brought her almost to his level. The
fact added a subtle link in her armour; Sian didn't like the
vulnerability she felt when she had to tilt back her head to look up at
him.
'Well, then,' she said at last, obscurely disturbed by his coiled manner
and his reticence, 'what was it?'
Matthew's amusement was a dangerous, velvet thing. 'Did no one
ever tell you about curiosity and the dead cat?'
Her nostrils pinched. She told him, with a pointed chill as he curled
one hand around her elbow and they strolled towards the restaurant,
'You were the one to initiate this. I was merely following through.'
'Yes, tenacity is one of your strong points, isn't it?' He shouldered a
door open and slanted a smile at her, brief and private. 'I would do
well to remember that.'
She chose to ignore what his intense regard did to her midsection,
and stepped into warmth, light and muted noise.
Sian had heard of the restaurant but had never been. She liked the
rich wood decor and the unobtrusive efficiency of the staff. As the
hostess checked for Matthew's booking, then led them to their table,
she wondered, surprisingly without much heat, just when he had
made the reservation. Before or after he had talked with her? But
then perhaps he had meant to eat here whether she came or not. She
was glad she had not said something precipitate and foolish.
She could not help but be aware of the attention they received, in an
oblique fashion, from the other diners in the restaurant as they
walked through. Sian saw the women glance casually at Matthew's
sulphurously graceful prowl, then halt in wide-eyed assessment. One
or two held forks suspended in mid-air. She had a sudden, primitive
image of stalking over to the more blatant ones and slapping their
laden utensils out of their hands.
When Matthew held out a chair, she settled into it smoothly, her face
dark with self-mockery.
Their conversation was at first desultory as they perused the menu.
Sian settled quickly for a simple meal of grilled rainbow trout, salad
and a glass of white wine. Matt ordered a steak, then when their
waiter left he settled back in his chair and lazily contemplated her.
What shifted, she wondered, behind those private eyes, reflecting the
intense blue of his dark suit so that he seemed almost a stranger?
'What will you be doing with your summer, Sian?' asked Matt, one
corded, long-fingered hand idly twirling the glass of Scotch that had
been set before him. 'Do you have a job lined up?'
'I was going to wait until my father came for his visit before I
decided what to do,' she replied, unaware of her wry grimace or the
downward bent of her mouth. 'Now I suppose I'll have to rethink
things. To be quite honest, I'm not sure what I'll do. The last few
months of school have been too pressured for me to do anything but
cope with the deadlines as they came up.'
'Jane mentioned you graduated top of your class. Congratulations,' he
said, 'and well done. You've worked very hard.'
'Thank you.' Her green eyes held genuine pleasure from his praise.
'But it's not over yet.'
Their meal came, attractively displayed and superbly cooked. Sian
picked at hers without much interest.
'You're going on to graduate school?' he asked after the interruption.
'Mmm, two more years.' He was not looking at her any longer, but
instead studied the amber lights in his drink; she wasn't sure why she
went on to confess, slowly, 'I'm rather intimidated by it, actually.
Courses in business administration aren't exactly my strong point.'
'So you choose to grapple with the subject, instead of avoiding it. I'm
sure you'll do just fine once you're in the middle of it,' he remarked.
His iced-water glass was sweating. With one forefinger he wiped
down the edge of the glass and came away wet. She gave the
movement close attention. Matt lifted his gaze and said softly, 'After
all, as with anything else, it's the anticipation that's the worst part.'
The gold necklace at the base of her neck winked with her tight
swallow. 'Is it?' she said very drily, regarding him from under level
brows. 'And what of reality that exceeds all expectations?'
He was sober-faced, and laughing at her. 'Clarify the matter for me. I
don't see reality's exceeding all expectations as necessarily a terrible
thing.'
'Catastrophe?' she murmured. Her sarcasm was a delicacy flavouring
her words with rare spice. 'Flood, fire, act of God?'
'One cannot live one's life in constant fear of disaster, Sian,' he
returned. 'Bad things do happen, to good and bad people alike. Don't
you see that's why it's so important to snatch at the good when
fortune presents it to us?'
Her smile was excessively mild. 'I don't disagree with you, Matthew.
I do, however, take issue with the imposition of your values over
mine. I'm the one to judge what's good in my life, and I will take it
where I find it.'
His face had tightened until it was a study in angled severity. It gave
her no pleasure to look on it. 'Like Joshua?' he bit out.
She lifted her chin. She didn't know why she didn't just either tell him
.she was 'engaged' to his brother, or confess the real story to him. The
timing would have been right for either. But one was a weapon she
wasn't prepared to use, and the other too revealing. 'If I choose,' she
said coolly.
His eyes glittered. She distrusted him, and her own assessment of his
strange mood, however, as he paid for their meal with apparent
composure, as they strolled leisurely to the parking area.
She did well to be wary, but it was not enough. She waited in silence
while he unlocked her door, then quelled an impulse to step back as
he straightened and turned to regard her with brooding eyes, a taut
mouth.
'I have been remiss. I never did tell you how lovely you look,'
Matthew said then, almost absently. 'You are stunning, Sian. I was
proud to be seen by your side tonight.'
She was shaken by the intensity of pleasure that coursed through her
at his quiet compliment. How vain she was, to know such a fierce
thrill at his words, and to know, too, that they had been judged well
matched by outsiders: her cool femininity in delicate contrast to his
forceful masculinity.
'Thank you,' she said, gravely, sternly demure.
He looked down her, a bright and graceful fall. They stood in relative
privacy between the passenger side of the Mercedes and the car
parked next to it. The light from a nearby street-lamp burned white
along the edge of his bent tawny head; the rest of his face was in
translucent shadow.
'I like your blouse.'
An irony: despite the intimacy of his regard, she had room to be
grateful that he wasn't looking at her face, which felt as if it were
glowing neon-red. Her throat needed to be cleared before she could
speak. 'I like it too.'
He asked throatily, tightly, 'Is it as soft and as silken as it looks?'
Her legs went wobbling. She said, shaken and alarmed, 'I don't think
-'
He brought a hand up inside her open suit jacket and slid the fingers
around the slim curve of her ribs, just under her breast, and at the
light caressing pressure her pulse went wild.
'Mmm,' he sighed, with deceptively sleepy pleasure. 'It is. Cool and
whispery thin, and moulding itself to the body underneath it. That's
how a woman should always dress, in silk and lace, and—well,
maybe a touch of leather.'
His hand moved to the small of her back, and he pulled her to him,
and with slow, sensuous deliberation he began to lower his head.
Her composure, so hard won at the beginning, so grimly maintained
throughout the evening, was now a quivering bowl of jelly. It
trembled strengthlessly at the pit of her stomach, at the back of her
knees, in the base of her throat, and the softened curve of her mouth.
'Matthew,' she managed to gasp. 'Stop it.'
His lips hovered, a bare inch from hers. 'I'm sorry, I don't understand,'
he murmured with oh, such false innocence, as he lifted molten eyes.
'That isn't the message your body was telling me on the beach.'
Her hands rested on his forearms, tightened convulsively on him. Her
lips had gone dry; she licked them and whispered, 'It's what I'm
telling you now.'
With her body bowing back against the strength of his arm, her eyes
dilated to immense black pools; she looked young, dazed and
blinded. He took his time in examining her face, the arced lines of
her collarbones as they disappeared in shadowed mystery into the
neck of her blouse. Then he shook his head a little, and said softly,
'No, you're not.'
Her eyelids fell under an unsustainable weight as he kissed her, a
featherlight, moulded, exploratory caress, and the same searing
judder of sensation that always happened when he touched her
crackled down the length of her body. She made some slight sound,
reactive, incoherent, and his whisper of expelled breath answered.
Gentleness, civilisation's veneer, was discarded for the game it was.
He took her fully into his arms, hard against the length of him, and
slanted his opened mouth over hers.
The dark, secret invasion was impossible to resist. Her lips parted on
a sigh. He touched her inside, drew her out, and danced with her
tongue. She whirled mindlessly in a downward spiral, head to one
side and sinking fast to his shoulder, moulded breast to hard-muscled
breast, the arc of hip to hip, thigh to thigh.
She felt it as if it shook her own foundations, the uncontrollable
tremor that raced over him like fever. He cupped the back of her
head, then dug with delicate urgency into the French twist until the
pins scattered away and her hair spilled over her shoulders and he
sank greedy fingers into the midnight rain.
If he had not been holding her so very tightly, she would have slid
down to the ground. As it was, she clung to him, her arms wound
around his neck by some mysterious force while common sense flew
away on fickle wings and he drove with hard, escalating passion into
her unplumbed depths.
His heart beat like a sledge-hammer against her breasts. His breath
was coming in long-distance-runner gasps; gradually he eased the
ferocity of the tempo into something more bearable, swooping with
shallower intent on the bruised peach of her mouth. If it was meant to
soothe and restore, it did the exact opposite. Plunged into the