A Solitary Heart

by Amanda Carpenter

  Her hands trembled on the drawing. Carefully she turned to lay it back in its place, carefully she smoothed the immaculate edges. Then she felt a feather-light stroke across the back of her shoulders as he drew aside her hair and kissed the side of her neck. “I’m glad you came,” he murmured against her soft, beating skin. She felt his lips part, and he stroked her pulse with a velvet tongue. “I missed you. Did you miss me?”

  Liquid waves of pleasure rippled down her back, loosening muscles and inhibitions. Her head fell to one side as he nuzzled her, as her eyelids lowered, and her breath, coming from between parted, full lips, quickened in tempo.

  “Matthew,” she groaned.

  “Go on,” he purred, bringing up both hands to flex those long, clever fingers around her narrow waist. “Say it. You missed me a little bit, if only for the lack of someone to rant and rave at when you’re feeling peeved.”

  Her head went back against his shoulder; somehow she had come to lean on him. He spread his legs apart to support her weight, slowly running his flattened palms around the curve of her ribs and up to her breasts, and she turned her face with a sigh into his hair, raising one hand to caress his temple. She opened her mouth to confess the truth of just how much she had missed him, but just then he bit her neck with delicate savagery, and she arced and gasped, and his hands crushed her back to him convulsively.

  “Matt! Where did you hide your tequila?” Joshua’s shout from down the hall made her jump. For a second he continued to press her against his beating heart, and she felt the lean muscle in his jaw tighten against her cheek.

  Then he laughed shortly, let go of her and whispered, “Saved by the bell, darling?”

  “You said it,” she told him huskily, “not I.”

  He seemed to freeze, but she could not look at him. Joshua shouted again, so that Matt snarled something vicious-sounding under his breath and went to answer the summons, and Sian had enough wit left to wonder just what exactly she had meant to convey by saying that.

  Chapter Seven

  After Sian had recovered herself and checked on Jane, she made her way to the living-room where the three men appeared to be concerned with nothing more vital than the proper mixture of ingredients contained in drinks.

  At her entrance, Matt looked up and said, “We’re just whipping up a batch of margaritas. Would you like one?”

  She shook her head and replied with a smile, “No, thank you. I don’t drink spirits, even diluted in cocktails.”

  “You’re not counting calories, are you?” He cast a swift, doubtful glance down the length of her already slim body.

  “No,” she said, choosing a stuffed armchair to sink into. “I just can’t take the alcohol. It puts me to sleep. A couple of glasses of wine are about my limit for the evening. I’ll tell you what I would like, though—do you have any lemonade?”

  “No, but I’ve got some fresh lemons. Would you like to make some?” She nodded, and he handed the budding concoction over to Joshua. “Finish that up, why don’t you, while I show Sian where everything is in the kitchen?”

  “Sure thing. Shall I pour you a glass?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  Matt led her into the compact kitchen, fetched a sharp knife and an empty pitcher, and pulled out several lemons from the vegetable container in the refrigerator, while Sian admired the butcher block inset between the stove and the sink. He laid the tart yellow fruit before her and said with a rakish grin, “If you slice, I’ll squeeze.”

  She turned away, composure triumphant, and began to work. “There you go again, always making innuendoes.”

  “What did I say this time?” Sexy laughter threaded his low voice, a sultry undertone.

  “You know perfectly well, and don’t try playing the innocent with me. It doesn’t work. You’re about as innocent as a piranha!” The knife she wielded thunked satisfyingly into the butcher block, and she reached for another lemon.

  “Piranhas, my love,” murmured Matthew silkily, “only do what is in their nature to do.”

  “Hi, guys,” said Jane who had wandered in. “Matt, I love your condo. What are you talking about?”

  “Fish,” said Sian. The knife thunked again. Matt leaned back against the counter and shook silently, and she shot him a sharp look. “Matt likes piranhas.”

  “Actually I prefer octopuses. All those waving tentacles,” he said, hazel eyes limpid. “When one of those grabs a hold of something, they don’t let go.”

  She shuddered delicately. “They don’t even look as if they belong on this earth. They probably came from outer space.”

  “Why,” asked Jane reflectively of no one in particular, “do I get the feeling that I’m missing something here?”

  “Don’t worry,” Sian said soothingly, “you’re not missing a lot.”

  “Oh, thanks very much,” drawled Matt, and she blinked wide, innocent-looking eyes at him.

  “Gibberish, pure gibberish,” exclaimed the blonde in exasperation, as she turned to exit the kitchen. “I give up on you two, I really do. You’re talking in some kind of foreign language!”

  “Am I, Sian?”

  The quiet question came from Matthew when they were alone once more. All his lightheartedness had disappeared; he sounded brooding, grim.

  She said after a moment, warily, “What do you mean?”

  “Am I speaking some kind of foreign language to you?”

  The knife wavered in her hand; prudently she removed her fingers from danger, waiting until she gained more control. His strong hand clasped her wrist; her chest moved hard on a deep breath. She admitted in a shaken voice, “I don’t know.”

  “Tell me.” His insistence was wearing her down, wearing her out, his hazel eyes adamant. “Tell me when you do know.”

  Her lips parted as she looked at him. Then she nodded, and he sighed, and his hand slipped away as Steven came into the kitchen with his margarita.

  They settled with their drinks in the spacious living-room, talking comfortably for about a half an hour. Sian was curled on the floor, cradling a tall, cool glass of the refreshing lemonade she had made, thankful that Matt had to abandon his intimate pursuit in favour of a more general companionship.

  She needed the reprieve, for she felt flustered and confused by not only his confounding behaviour, but her own complex reactions to it. Flirtation carried its own set of rules, which she knew very well, but the layers upon layers to Matt’s own particular game were impossible to fully divine. Dimly she could sense the makings of a greater pattern to his intentions, in the fluidity with which he shifted from mood to mood, and, though she could not seem to glimpse his real motivations in their entirety, she was caught in the spell of fascination for how he so cleverly manipulated and anticipated her own mood swings.

  The first layer was friendliness. How easy it was to relax in the warmth he could generate. Then, when he had her relaxed and open-minded, he touched her vulnerable side with confessions of his own hopes and longings and awakened in her sympathy and tenderness—all the softer emotions she had once vowed never to become entangled in when involved with a man.

  And just when she was beginning to feel the fear of exposure, he danced away with a wickedness that was so irresistible to her highly developed sense of humour, she followed him along the path to bright laughter and a quick repartee interwoven with delight.

  When she was angry, he slammed head on into her. When she was roused, he taunted her to a higher pitch. When she was shaken, he held her. When she goaded, he responded; when she was attracted, he lit her torch. When she was thoughtful, he challenged her.

  Was this seduction? If so, it was unlike anything she had ever before experienced. Most men were so ridiculously easy to evade, for they declared their sexual intentions with about as much finesse as a trumpeting elephant. By comparison, Matthew had a manifold touch: a gossamer thread floating in the
sunlit air, a rampant whirlwind rush, a quiet observation, a laughing taunt. He was straightforward and demanding, yet remained so oblique and inconclusive that every exchange of the undoubted sexual attraction quivering between them could be taken at face value alone, just another part of the flirtatious game which could lead anywhere or nowhere, nowhere at all.

  She wondered, as she rested her contemplative gaze on him, smiling to herself at the mellifluous change of expression as he listened attentively to something that Joshua said, then responded with quick, concise logic. How extremely clever he was, on every level. A declaration of intent was a tangible thing and therefore easy to react against, and reject. But he declared nothing, admitted nothing, and, while she laughed, pondered, expostulated, and tripped through every other mood he inspired, he always kept her guessing.

  Soon it was time to change for the theatre, and after agreeing upon a system in which the girls shared the bathroom off Matthew’s bedroom, and the men shared the other bath in the hall, they dispersed to their various rooms.

  Sian savoured the privacy of the study as she drew a dark grey dress from her case. It was very plain, made of an uncrushable jersey that looked good no matter how she abused it. It moulded to the figure with length at mid-thigh, was sleeveless and had a scooped neck and padded shoulders. It looked severe and sexy, and almost conventional until one caught a glimpse of the backless plunge to the waist. She could not wear a bra with it, of course, but then she didn’t need one, for her breasts were high, rounded and firm.

  The scrapes along her back were almost healed, but faint marks still remained. Sian covered them with a black long-sleeved, silk turtle-neck that was so transparently sheer that every draught of air wafted through and the lines of her arms and back were clearly visible, yet sheathed.

  The dress went over the turtle-neck, then she drew on black silk tights, slipped her feet into the patent leather pumps that elongated her legs, and fastened at her narrow waist a wide black belt that came just under the edge of the dress line at her back. Then she brushed her sleek hair until it shone and clipped it at the nape of her neck with a plain black, extravagantly feminine bow, and, with make-up applied to emphasise her large eyes, cheekbones and a touch of red lipstick, she finally pronounced herself ready.

  The evening would still be warm outside the comfortable air-conditioned coolness of the condominium, so she didn’t bother with a jacket and retrieved her bag from the leather settee as she exited the study.

  The men were already dressed and waiting in the living-room, formalised by their light summer-weight suits. Sian smiled to herself as the male conversation hesitated briefly at her entrance, and even Steven, who was very much in love with Jane, gave pause.

  But Matthew hardly looked at her. He said briefly, “Would you like some wine, or another glass of lemonade?”

  “Wine, please, if it isn’t any trouble,” she replied. It was only as she veiled the disappointment in her green eyes with dark lashes that she realised she had dressed with such care for him, and he showed no reaction at all, was even brief to the point of rudeness.

  “Not at all, we’d just—”

  She turned away to put her bag on the arm of a chair and exposed the graceful hour-glass curve of her cream and midnight-sheathed back to view.

  If there had been a pause before, now there was dead silence. She looked around her shoulder with a slight frown. “You’d just what?”

  Joshua and Steven were staring in frank admiration. Matthew, however, had turned away and busied himself at the drinks cabinet by the wall, so his reply was muffled. “We’d just opened a bottle while we were waiting.”

  “Sian, you look exquisite,” said Joshua simply.

  She forced herself to smile at him. “Thank you.”

  Matt’s expression, when presented again to the group, was composed to the point of being deadpan. In high, volatile contrast were his glittering eyes, in which the lambent flecks of blue and green were very pronounced. With the thick tawny length of his hair combed under severe control and the fresh change to a grey suit much lighter than Sian’s dress, he looked urbane, sophisticated and heartstoppingly sexy.

  It wasn’t fair, she had time to think despairingly, as he crossed the room with a wine glass in each hand. Just the sight of him was enough to send her weak at the knees, while he revealed absolutely no reaction to her whatsoever.

  As he came up to her, Jane entered the room and immediately wandered over to Steven and Joshua to coax a glass of wine for herself. Sian reached for the glass that Matt proffered, but he held on to it too long, drawing her questioning gaze up to his.

  Under the cover of the shift in movement and general noise from the others, he said, softly mocking, “I see the silk and leather. No lace?”

  Piqued already, she had no thought for caution and gave free rein to her own personal devil, who murmured, “Did I say I wasn’t wearing any lace?”

  His eyes shot down in lightning response to her hips and legs, for it was obvious the only other possible item of clothing she might be wearing that was not on display were her panties. “Now, there’s a concept guaranteed to send a man’s temperature up a few degrees.”

  She took a sip of her wine and held the liquid on her tongue to savour it, watching him over the rim as she said, “And here I was thinking that you didn’t like the cut of my cloth.”

  “Like it?” His gaze sprang back up to hers, and for one unguarded moment flared hot and ravenous, while the set of his face was anything but amused. He whispered hoarsely, “It’s all I can do to keep my hands off you.”

  For a suspended electric moment, they stared at each other, while Sian’s world rocked under the clear, unmistakable power of his intent rigidity, the veneer of urbanity stripped clean away from the naked planes and angles of his expression.

  Her eyes grew huge and her breath froze in her lungs, and, in a terrific surge of wild reaction, she didn’t know if she wanted to reach blindly for the towering strength of his shoulders, or run away in terror.

  Then he cocked his head at her, just a little, and smiled a tiny smile, and took up again the cloak of normality he had so impetuously cast at her feet.

  Matthew said to everyone, “We’d better leave for the theatre now. Do you want to catch a few cabs, or would you prefer walking? It’s not far away, about a fifteen minute stroll.”

  The general chorus of reaction was that everyone would like to walk. Nobody seemed to notice Sian’s frozen immobility or her silence; she noticed and was grateful, for she was still trying to recover from what had just happened.

  She felt dizzy, concussed. The stroll to the theatre helped to clear her head somewhat. Matt led the way, while Jane had grabbed hold of Joshua’s arm and was busy teasing him unmercifully. The pair bobbed and weaved erratically along the pavement, while Sian and an amused Steven brought up the rear.

  She did not know how he had managed it at such short notice, but Matt had procured excellent seats for a highly popular romantic comedy. He presented the tickets to a woman usher who showed the group where they were located, then he courteously stood back and let the others file into the seats that were at the end of one row. Sian had held back so that Jane and Steven could sit together, and as they studied the seat numbers and compared them with the ticket stubs Matt had handed to them, they stopped in confusion. Joshua looked back with a frown and said, “There’s only three here.”

  “It’s all right,” replied Matt, who gestured carelessly. “The other two are over here, across the aisle. It was the best I could get on such short notice.”

  He had only voiced what Sian had thought moments before, but she regarded him with deep suspicion, for somehow she couldn’t help but wonder if he had somehow arranged for this to happen.

  Jane was watching with bright, scarcely concealed merriment. Sian scowled at her friend, who shrugged expressively, then turned to cajole Joshua’s sha
rp stare away from his brother.

  Matthew raised his eyebrows at Sian. He wore his most guileless expression. She shook her dark, elegant head at him, and said softly as she slid into the second seat of the row he indicated, “You’re a very naughty man, Matt.”

  “And unrepentant, one might add,” he replied, and put a proprietorial hand at her back. The unexpected physical contact of his hand radiating warmth through the sheer transparency of silk covering her skin quivered shockwaves through her muscles, and she averted her head sharply at his barely audible intake of breath.

  “Do you always go for what you want, no matter how unscrupulous the method?” she asked, watching him carefully.

  “That’s a very subjective question,” he replied coolly as he frowned. “And I think it depends on what your priorities are. If you want something so badly that you will do whatever you can to get it, and pay any price, some people are bound to call that unscrupulous. The key is to reach out for what you want while still maintaining your own sense of integrity. For instance, there are parts of myself that I will not sacrifice, not for love or money. Compassion, consideration, a sense of justice, and fair dealing in business are but a few. High safety standards in my work—that’s another one. I’m not an idealistic man, but to me these things are paramount. If I lose them, I lose the greater part of myself, and money becomes just another dirty word, and love a meaningless commodity.”

  “Faith, hope and charity?” she whispered, turning her gaze to stare unseeingly ahead of her.

  “Yes,” he said with quiet simplicity, and reached out to take her hand in his.

  The house lights dimmed then, and the curtains went up, and for the next few hours they laughed until their eyes teared at the lighthearted, witty play. During the interval, Joshua and Steven went to fetch ice-creams for everybody and Sian was content to relax in her seat in silence while Matt chatted with Jane, who had come over to visit them.

  When the other two men had returned, and they had eaten their ice-cream and gone back to their seats to await the second half of the play, Matthew retained her hand and asked, “Want to help me fix breakfast in the morning? I can butter the toast, but I’m not too confident about cooking eggs for five people.”