A Solitary Heart

by Amanda Carpenter

  “Yes. I also know,” he continued after a pause, “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. I can’t speak for your father, of course, but self-sacrifice comes in many different ways.”

  “Oh, you’re right, of course,” she said with a sigh, as she leaned her tired, sore head back. The muscle behind her was very still. “I know he does love me in his own fashion, and he did keep me with him as long as he possibly could. I certainly have never wanted materially for anything. I just want something better for my children, that’s all. A real home where they can be happy, always knowing that they’ll have some place to come back to if they need it. Is that too much to ask?”

  “No,” he whispered, pulling her against his chest. “That’s not too much to ask.”

  The muscle relaxants were working, and the throbbing pain in her limbs was liquidly melting away. She yawned so widely her jaw cracked, and drowsily considered asserting her independence by pushing away from him. In fact, she would in a minute.

  Her head sank down to rest on his shoulder, and he shifted so that she could curl comfortably into his side. Warmth stole over her; who would have thought that the towering, icy stranger who tore strips off her at the party on Sunday would be such a delight to cuddle?

  “Isn’t it funny?” she murmured.

  Matt rubbed his cheek against the perfumed softness of her hair, a slight, stealthy movement, and asked, “Isn’t what funny?”

  “All the roles we play,” she murmured, and fell asleep.

  He sat for a long time with his head bent down to hers, then, when headlights flashed through a gap in the curtains, he twisted unhurriedly to ease her lax body into his arms. She stirred to nestle her face into his sweatshirt but didn’t rouse as he carried her into her room to tuck her into bed. For a few moments he stood looking down at the Madonna-like beauty of her moonlit face until the voices of the returning cinema-goers sounded at the back door.

  Then he bent, and pressed his warm mouth lightly against the luscious, still curve of her lips, and whispered, “Wake soon, sleeping princess.”

  Sian smiled and snuggled deeper into her pillow. She was dreaming of a midnight lover.

  Chapter Five

  The phone was ringing as Sian fitted her key into the lock at the back door. She tried to hurry, but the mountain of bags and packages that she’d balanced precariously on one arm slowly listed to one side. Jane, similarly laden, lurched forward to catch them but they cascaded all around her.

  Sian hesitated, caught between the mess on the porch step and the distant shrill of the phone, until Jane cried, “Go on—go on—I’ll pick all this up. It might be somebody important!”

  She hurried down the hall as fast as her protesting muscles would allow, swung around the corner and lunged for the receiver. After all her scrambling, it would probably be for Jane, she thought in amusement, as she snatched up the handset and said breathlessly into it, “Hello?”

  There was a click and a crackle, then a man’s voice, wonderfully familiar, came down the line, “Sian?”

  “Daddy!” she exclaimed in surprise and pleasure, as she dropped into a nearby stuffed chair.

  “Sure, and what other man would be calling for you, darling?” Devin said teasingly. “Might there be some little secret that you’ve been keeping from your old Dad?”

  “Quite a few, now that I come to think of it,” she retorted with a grin, while a delighted glow spread all over her. He never failed to make her day when he called; she was crazy about him, fool that she was. “But nothing along those lines. How are you? Where are you?”

  He paused, but she must have imagined it, and promptly put the reason down to long distance when he said, “London. I was just checking to see if your birthday present had arrived yet.”

  “Yes, thank you,” she replied, touching the heavy antique gold necklace that she wore. It appeared deceptively plain but the craftmanship was exquisite, of Egyptian design, the smooth sculpted plates linked on the underside. The necklace had arrived by courier and was accompanied by a heavy cream card on which was the name of a company of an English insurance company, and must have cost a fortune. “It arrived a few days ago, and it’s simply gorgeous. I love it very much—I hardly ever take it off. Jane’s threatening to take a pair of metal-cutters to it.”

  “How is the little scamp?”

  “She’s fine. She’s still wondering when you’re going to take her ballroom dancing.”

  “Well, you can tell her for me that the answer’s still the same: not until she’s grown an inch or two. I’m too old to get done for child molesting.”

  “Forty-six isn’t old!” Not that he even looked his age. With his elegant slim figure, unlined face and just a sprinkle of distinguished grey at the temples of otherwise jet- black hair, Devin Riley could easily pass for ten years younger. She could just picture him at seventy, leonine and gracefully light on his feet, charming his grandchildren with the same fairy-tales he used to tell her when she was small.

  “It’s old enough, daughter, it’s old enough. So, tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself.”

  Sian obligingly settled back and regaled him with various anecdotes from the last few weeks. She stifled a pang when she described the graduation ceremony he had not been able to attend, concentrating instead on his roar of laughter as she told him of the scene in which she dumped a laden plate down the front of a guest at the recent party, and how he grew silent over the incident about rescuing the little boy from the tree the day before yesterday, even though she took care to edit out the frightening bits.

  Without bothering to explain that the party guest and Matthew were one and the same, she finally concluded, “Joshua’s older brother has invited us to his place in Chicago for the weekend, then it’s down to work for those who have summer jobs. I’ve already said that I couldn’t go to Chicago with the others since you’re flying in for a visit. Do you have any idea how long you can stay?”

  Again there was a pause, and Sian was sure she hadn’t imagined it this time as it was such a lengthy one. “That’s another one of the reasons why I called, actually,” he told her. “I’m afraid that I won’t be able to come after all.”

  “Oh, Da, no,” she said, unable to help herself as crushing disappointment settled on to her shoulders. First her commencement ceremony, then her birthday, and now this.

  “I know, poppet. I wanted to be there as well, but it can’t be helped.”

  “But why ever not?” she asked, and hated herself for the asking. How many times over the past had they enacted the same scene? How many times did she tell herself that never again would she beg for his company, when it was obvious that he was too involved in his own life to make the time to share the important parts of hers? But this time, as ever, she had believed that things would be different. “Surely if you’ve double-booked yourself, you could cancel your other engagements just this once?”

  “I’m afraid not, darling.” The thread of disappointment that leadened the Irish lilt in his voice was really good, she thought bitterly. He could sound so sincere, so he could make her believe all over again, just when she’d erected her strongest barriers, that she was the most precious and important thing in the world to him.

  “Well,” she said flatly, “if it can’t be helped, it can’t be helped. Maybe next time, huh?”

  “I’ll be there with bells on, I promise. And in the mean time, there isn’t a parent alive who could be more proud of their child than I am of you.”

  “Yeah,” she whispered, opening her eyes very wide. But the tears spilled over anyway. “Well, you tell Malcolm ‘hi’ for me, will you? And tell him he’d better be looking after you. How is he, anyway?”

  “Fine,�
� he said of his partner and old friend. “Just fine.”

  He sounded so odd. “Da, is anything wrong?”

  “Of course not, poppet,” her father replied more strongly. “We just have a bad connection.”

  “All right, then. Take care of yourself.” But then, didn’t he always?

  “Sian—”

  “Yes?” she asked, as he hesitated.

  “Nothing,” he said with a sigh. “I just love you, that’s all.”

  “I love you too, Daddy.”

  And that, she thought coldly as she replaced the receiver, was the whole problem. Despite everything, she still loved her father.

  Maybe love belonged to a secret society, a magical few who were imbued with the depth of personality that could cope with disappointment and disillusionment, then rise above them to emerge unscathed and without bitterness. Maybe there was some flaw in her that made her incapable of loving without clinging on.

  She didn’t know. But what terrified her enough to make her break into a cold sweat was that, if she could be so hurt by loving someone like her father, how much greater would be the pain if she were to fall in love with a man; really fall in love, with the complete and utter abandon that Matt had described that day on the beach?

  She would never survive it. She hadn’t the strength. An all-consuming passion like that would incinerate her to white ash; she knew it as she knew the force of her own emotions. She couldn’t love a man and still keep her distance; she would give him her heart and soul until nothing remained of her but an empty shell.

  Jane wandered back into the living-room, her relaxed demeanour dropping away instantly as she took in the sight of Sian’s streaked, tight face. “Who was on the phone?” she asked in quick concern.

  Sian wiped her cheeks and tried to assume a more normal expression. “It was my father. He isn’t coming for the weekend after all.”

  She could hardly bear the gentle look of compassion that came over her friend’s face, and the disappointment for her sake. “Oh, Sian, I am sorry.”

  “Never mind,” she said, attempting a careless shrug. She thought she’d succeeded rather well. “That’s life.”

  It might not be for some—for Matt. But that was how life was for her, and it was high time she got used to the fact and got on with it.

  It had turned cooler, the sky leaden and overcast; the temperature had been so high over the weekend that by Wednesday afternoon the sultry threat of thunderstorms was making Sian’s head ache dully.

  It suited her mood, which had turned grim and silent after talking with her father. Clad in jeans and sweat-shirt, she went out in the back garden to take advantage of the cooler weather while it held, weeding with scrupulous care the flower-bed she’d planted and maintained over the last four years.

  After she’d finished a section, she sat back on her heels and stretched her aching back, dirt-encrusted hands lying passive in her lap. The moisture-heavy air was unrefreshing. She closed her eyes and tilted back her face, mouth tight with unhappiness. Just rain, damn it.

  “You missed a weed,” said Matthew.

  She started violently, heart thumping a wild rhythm, and her eyes flew open; she hadn’t heard him approach. “Think of the devil,” she said, deadpan.

  His regard of her was sardonic, unsmiling. “Always a dangerous thing to do.”

  He stood at ease, balanced lightly as a swordsman, long legs planted a few feet apart, the thick, powerful thigh muscles straining the denim that covered them. He looked ready to hold his position forever if need be, or to pounce with lightning speed.

  Sian ducked her head from the poised, lithe sight of him. She located the weed he had mentioned and yanked it, with a vicious twist of the wrist. Instead of pulling out the roots, it snapped in her clawed fingers. “I thought you went back to Chicago,” she said, and could have groaned at what he might read into the flat statement.

  “No. Vacation, remember?” said Matt briefly. He broke out of his fighter’s stance, fluid as a dance, and crouched lightly beside her. “I went to Indianapolis for the day, to visit my mother. Have dinner with me.”

  Sian’s soft mouth would have trembled, if she’d let it. She moved to another unweeded section, away from him. “No.”

  Matt’s voice was harsh, impatient. “Why not?”

  “I’m busy.” She attacked another weed, shoulders hunched.

  There was a pause, then he said, very evenly, “Jane and Steven are going out tonight. Joshua is studying for his LSAT exams. What are you busy with?”

  “None of your business.” She was very rude. She didn’t care.

  He did. Hard fingers snaked under her downbent chin and forced her face up, angry predator’s eyes raking over her, raking through her tight façade with one neat, psychic claw-slash, and uncovering the pain beneath it. The harsh planes and angles of his face eased somewhat, as did his grip; she took advantage of that and jerked away, her breathing unsteady.

  She thought he was going to comment on what he’d seen, but he didn’t. Instead, Matthew rocked back on his heels and said, slow and contemplatively, “Lobster bisque, sautéed scallops, chicken tetrazzini. Barbecued ribs, stuffed potato skins, linguini with shrimp, fried mushrooms. Fruit, yoghurt, salad, hell’s bells, even a hamburger would do. Sian, I’m hungry.”

  She had started to smile somewhere in the middle of his recital, albeit reluctantly, and at the pure pathos at the end she had to laugh out loud. At the musical sound the golden man kneeling beside her smiled, keen and white. She caught the tail end of it, just a suggestion of movement that drew her attention to the tough, sexy mouth. Her eyes lingered, helplessly fascinated in spite of herself, then she tried to cover it up by glancing down the robust, healthy length of him. “You’re obviously pining for a good meal,” she said wryly.

  “So come oblige me,” he told her in prompt reply. “Besides, I need to talk to you.”

  “What are we doing now, chopping liver?” she parried with false lightness.

  Jane called from the back porch, “Hi, Matt. Anyone interested in a glass of lemonade?”

  His hazel eyes held hers; they could contain a vast amount of patience when he willed it. “Alone,” he added drily.

  Sian wavered under his unrelenting stare, under Jane’s growing curiosity; she didn’t have anything planned for that evening, and she wouldn’t put it past her blonde friend to confess as much to Matt. Oddly, instead of feeling trapped into acceptance, she felt lighter instead. “All right,” she said in abrupt capitulation. “Dinner.”

  He rose to his feet immediately, a fluid surge of motion, and turned away even as she accepted; he would never be still for too long, for he was a creature of light and fire, a burning pillar who knew how to dampen the flaming inferno to accommodate the frailties of the company around him, but never quite extinguish it.

  “I’ll pick you up at eight o’clock,” said Matt over his shoulder. The slant of his gaze touched on her, with delicate amusement. “Don’t dress for a burger bar, will you? I’m not that desperate!”

  Sian and her room-mate had to share the bathroom with courtesy and timing as they readied for their respective evenings, a ritual that had been perfected over the tenure of shared occupancy.

  Sian wore an elegant cream linen suit and matching court shoes, with a long skirt that flowed to her shapely ankles. Her dull-mushroom blouse was pure silk, and the gold necklace winked with rich colour at the slim base of her throat. With her gleaming hair pulled back into a smooth French twist and her make-up subtly emphasising the contours of her green eyes and high cheekbones, she looked cool and composed, and strikingly elegant.

  Jane was finished with the bathroom, so Sian nipped in to insert one last pin into her hair. When at last she was satisfied that the thick, heavy mass wasn’t about to spill out of its confines in the middle of dinner, she swept up her cream bag and strolled to the op
en front door where Jane stood.

  The calibre of the deep male voice was unmistakable. Jane and Matt were involved in their conversation, and so did not see Sian’s stride falter, or the flustered flush that washed over her ivory complexion.

  The rest of her afternoon had passed in a daze, but now with its dissipation came the mocking-bird cry that she must have been mad to consider going out with Matt for the evening. His presence was overwhelming enough in safe company; being alone with him, with the promise of languid hours spiralling ahead, carried the acrid scent of dynamite.

  It was too late to back out. She recovered herself quickly enough, and by the time she reached the other two she appeared as unruffled as ever.

  Dressed in a navy blue suit with a white shirt and tie, and gold cuff-links glinting at his strong wrists, Matthew looked formally elegant and impacted on the senses with the same breathtaking force as the first glimpse of a masterpiece painting. Sian’s experienced eye admired the cut and rich quality of the suit and how it moulded itself without ostentatiousness and yet with devastating effect to the vibrant, powerful form of the body underneath.

  Jane had paused in the middle of a sentence when the blonde saw that Matt’s attention had shifted away from her, and an arrested expression had crept into his eyes. Sian looked up from the gleaming tips of his Italian shoes to his handsome face, and saw that he had caught her absorbed inspection. Neither Matt nor Sian responded to Jane’s discreet goodbye as she left them alone.

  His smile was naked and primitive, a lean, sexy, dangerous look that made Sian fear, shakenly, that she might be the main course for dinner.

  “My God, a woman ready, and on time,” purred Matthew, as he leaned one expensively sheathed broad shoulder against the doorpost, in a negligent attitude that Sian could sense was utterly false. Underneath he was thrumming, the hunter held under flawless control. “It’s a gift a man would sell his soul for.”