Out 0f The Night (HQR Presents)

by Penny Jordan

  There was something extremely difficult about being angry with another person when you were virtually lying in their arms, when they were looking at you with a grave concentration that made your heart ache, and when there was nothing you really wanted to do more than to lean over and kiss the male mouth so temptingly close to your own, Emily acknowledged dizzily.

  ‘But you can’t know,’ she protested weakly. And then another thought struck her. ‘But if you know, then why did you pretend that we were engaged? I—’

  ‘No. Your explanations first,’ Matt interrupted her quietly.

  Her explanations first. Emily looked uncertainly at him. He looked very determined, stern almost, and yet behind that sternness she was sure she could see anxiety, even pain, shadowing his eyes. Telling herself she was imagining it and acknowledging that he probably had every right to demand some kind of explanation from her, she steeled herself to be as honest with him as she could without revealing to him how she really felt about him.

  ‘Come on, Emily,’ he pressed determinedly. ‘You were going to tell me why you pretended you were engaged to Travis.’

  ‘Well…it was the shock of seeing you here,’ she began shakily. ‘And it was a shock. I thought—’

  ‘That I’d demand that you make an honest man of me, and so to stop me you invented a non-existent fiancé,’ Matt suggested roughly.

  Emily gaped at him, unable to stop herself shaking her head and saying immediately, ‘No—no, of course not.’

  Was she really imagining that slight relaxation in the grimness round Matt’s mouth?

  ‘Well, if that wasn’t the reason, then why did you appropriate your sister’s fiancé?’

  In view of what he had just said, the truth seemed so appallingly insulting that Emily wasn’t sure how she was going to voice it. It had seemed perfectly logical then, when she didn’t really know Matt, to assume that he, like Gerry, was quite prepared to use a woman sexually without feeling the slightest degree of emotion or commitment for her. Now that she actually knew Matt… She swallowed, wishing that this were all just a dream and that she would wake up and find herself… Where? Somewhere where Matt didn’t exist? No, of course not. Even here, now, when her mind was stricken with guilt and pain, her body was drawing pleasure and comfort from its closeness to Matt’s. Her body had no conscience, no doubts, no fears, she decided tiredly. It only knew that it loved Matt, while her heart, her mind, her brain…

  ‘Why, Emily?’ Matt prodded impatiently.

  ‘I thought you were going to try to make me—I thought you wanted—’

  Heavens, this was even more difficult than she had imagined. The words just stuck in her throat, refusing to be uttered, until Matt said evenly, ‘You thought I wanted to make love to you, is that it?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Emily told him quietly. ‘I’ve already tried to tell you—I thought you wanted to have sex with me, Matt,’ she told him, stressing the words with a distaste she couldn’t quite hide. ‘I thought you’d assumed because of—of what had already happened, that I’d be only too willing to be your sexual partner.’

  He was angry now. She could see it in his eyes, in the tightening of his jaw and the small muscle that flickered dangerously there.

  ‘You thought that—’

  ‘I didn’t know you, Matt,’ she reminded him huskily.

  ‘No, you didn’t, so why assume that I would behave so—so basely? Did our lovemaking really mean so little to you, that you could actually think—’ He broke off, so obviously angry and trying to control that anger that Emily felt her guilt increase.

  ‘I’m sorry. I know I misjudged you, but everything you said seemed to confirm my fears. You said you wanted—’

  ‘I said I wanted you, and I did, but never in the kind of cold-blooded, cynical way you’re implying. You don’t have much of an opinion of my sex, Emily, or is it just me?’

  She shook her head, stopping him. ‘No, it isn’t you. On the contrary. The first time we met, you gave me the impression that you didn’t have a very good opinion of my sex, Matt. My experience with men is—was very limited. I fell in love when I was at university, and he—Gerry—well, I thought he loved me in return, but he was just using me. He made it more than plain to me that for men sex is just a physical appetite, completely divorced from emotion.’

  ‘For some men,’ Matt corrected her, ‘and for some women, too. Jolie, my fiancée, was the same. She was sleeping with me, letting me believe she loved me, when in reality…’

  ‘She must have hurt you badly,’ Emily whispered.

  ‘I thought she did,’ Matt murmured back, ‘and, like a fool, I clung on to my resentment telling myself that no one was ever going to hurt me like that again. That I was never going to fall in love again.’

  For no reason at all the timbre of his voice, the way he was looking at her, made Emily’s heart jump frantically.

  ‘Matt, I want—’

  To get dressed, she had been about to say, but Matt stopped her before she got any further by interrupting softly, ‘Mm…so do I. Last night was the closest I hope I ever come to hell. Sleeping next to you, wanting you, remembering—but first there’s something very important which you and I have to sort out, and let me tell you, Emily Blacklaw, that this time I am not prepared to let you take advantage of me sexually until we have sorted it out.’

  Emily stared at him. ‘Matt—’

  ‘No,’ he insisted virtuously. ‘I mean it, Emily. No matter how much I want to make love to you, no matter how much you make me ache, no matter how crazy it’s been driving me knowing that I was your first lover and wanting to be your only lover, I am not prepared to let you use me for sexual satisfaction. Not unless you’re prepared to make both an emotional and a legal commitment to me.’

  Emily wondered if she dared actually believe what she was hearing. Beneath the bedclothes Matt’s hands were stroking her skin, doing all manner of distracting things to her senses, turning her weak with need and longings. ‘Matt,’ she murmured dizzily.

  ‘I’m tired of playing games, Emily. Tell me that this thing between us means as much to you as it does to me, tell me you want me…tell me you love me.’

  Immediately she tensed, searching his face warily, wondering how on earth he knew, and why he was choosing this particular method to inform her of that knowledge.

  ‘Emily, please! I can’t go on like this much longer. It’s driving me out of my mind. You’re driving me out of my mind. All these weeks of living close to you, wanting you, believing you belonged to someone else, and wanting to kill him for not looking after you, for not loving you as he ought…I couldn’t understand why you had needed to turn to me for physical satisfaction—for physical love. I couldn’t understand why he had not valued and treasured the precious gift you gave to me. All these weeks and I haven’t known whom I hated the most, him for having your love, you for loving him and not me, or myself for loving a woman I couldn’t have. When I discovered the truth—when I found out yesterday from Gracie that Travis was never engaged to you, I told myself you deserved to be punished for what you’ve put me through. I told myself that, since I already knew you wanted me physically, somehow or other there must be a way I could teach you to want me emotionally as well, but I can’t go on with it. Another ten seconds in this damn bed with you in my arms like this, and I’m going to forget everything I’ve told myself and make love to you, and that’s the last thing I should be doing if you don’t love me as I love you, if there’s no future in what I feel for you, if all you were really doing the night we met was indulging in some sexual exploration.

  ‘So be honest with me now, Emily, for both our sakes. Either you love me and want me as I do you, or you don’t.’

  Emily swallowed hard. If every word he had just spoken to her hadn’t been raw with emotion and truth, just one look into his eyes would have convinced her that this was no game, no clever deceit. Her throat ached so much she couldn’t speak, couldn’t tell him what was in her heart, could
n’t do anything other than place her head on his shoulder and kiss the rigid outline of his throat, tenderly at first and then less gently as she felt his involuntary reaction to her caress.

  ‘Stop that, you witch,’ she heard him growl, his fingers sliding almost roughly into her hair as he tilted her head back so that he could look into her face. ‘I meant what I said, Emily,’ he told her hoarsely. ‘I won’t…I can’t make love to you without a commitment from you, without knowing that you share what I feel for you.’

  ‘Oh, Matt, you must know I love you. I’ve betrayed it a thousand times. Every time I’m with you. I couldn’t bear it—loving you, knowing you so intimately. I don’t know how it happened, but that first night—’

  ‘Without either of us knowing it emotionally or intellectually, we fell in love,’ Matt finished for her. ‘Our bodies, our senses were wiser than our minds. They knew what our intellects refused to acknowledge. We fell in love the night we met, Emily. Since then we’ve both done everything we can to confuse things. Both of us have clung on to our bad memories and used them as barriers against the truth, to deny our real feelings and to try to destroy our love. It hasn’t worked, and now I think the time has come for us both to acknowledge the truth. We love one another. I want that love to flourish and grow, Emily. I want to marry you, give you children, share a lifetime with you—nothing else will be enough.’

  ‘I feel the same way, Matt. For weeks after I left you I kept on hoping—’

  ‘I tried to trace you, through your car, but you’d had it transported down here, and giving me a fictitious name didn’t help, either. I hadn’t given up, though, Emily, I promise you that. I was just waiting to get settled down here before I started combing every village, every farm along that road to find out where you’d come from—and I would have found you too, if fate hadn’t decided to intervene. She obviously didn’t have a very high opinion of either of us, did she?’

  He cupped her face and kissed her tenderly, and then far less tenderly, breaking away from her eventually despite her soft protest.

  ‘No, my love, I’m afraid we can’t make love,’ he whispered back to her. ‘That first time we were lucky, but it would be tempting fate a little too much to rely on that luck a second time round. It won’t be long, though. We will marry in June, and I think your Uncle John will be quite happy to sell this place to us and move closer to the university.’

  ‘He could always stay here. There’s plenty of room.’

  ‘Oh, no. I’m not having my wife turned into a slave. I’m very fond of the old man, but I resent the way he treats you sometimes. I know you enjoy your domesticity, but my view is that it’s something that should be shared, not something to which a woman is relegated—and besides, I shall want you to myself for a very, very long time. There’s an awful lot of work for you to do in that garden yet,’ he added teasingly.

  Emily had stopped listening. She was too busy discovering the pleasure of tasting the strong, warm male body so temptingly close to her own, rediscovering the magic of that one very special night they had shared, in allowing herself to revel in the knowledge that Matt returned her love.

  * * *

  ‘Emily, you’re looking marvellous. When is the baby due?’

  ‘Another two months yet,’ Emily responded, beaming at Matt as he stood proudly at her side. It was almost a year since they had married, and now it was Gracie’s and Travis’s turn.

  Her aunt was saying something, asking them if they were permanently settled in Oxford, and once she had gone Matt bent his head and muttered to her, ‘Don’t think I don’t know why you’re looking so pleased with yourself, Mrs Slater. That little bundle of joy you’ve got tucked away in there has very effectively put an end to your enforced labours in the garden, and don’t think I don’t realise it.’

  Emily grinned at him and teased back, ‘Ah, but don’t forget that you had rather a lot to do with this bundle of joy, as you call it. An awful lot, as I seem to recall.’

  ‘Mm…are you sure Dr Jacobs thinks it might be twins?’

  ‘She swears it is. Do you mind?’

  ‘Not if you don’t.’

  ‘The only thing that I mind is that we wasted all that time before discovering that we loved one another.’

  ‘Mm…and whose fault was that?’

  On the other side of the room, Gracie grinned at her husband and said, ‘Will you look at those two? We’re the newlyweds, not them. They’re an old married couple now.’

  ‘Yes, well, my guess is that Matt’s making the most of it before she gets any bigger and he can’t get his arms round her!’ Travis returned wryly.

  Oblivious to the interest they were causing, Emily and Matt stayed locked in one another’s arms, sharing a lingering lovers’ kiss, the rest of the world forgotten.

  * * * * *

  Now, read on for a tantalizing excerpt of Louise Fuller’s next book,

  CONSEQUENCES OF A HOT HAVANA NIGHT

  The wild vibrancy of Kitty’s new home in Havana must be infectious. Why else would the naturally cautious rum distiller have succumbed to the sudden desire to seize one night with a stranger? But if it’s shocking to learn that César is actually her powerful, elusive boss, it’s nothing compared to Kitty’s latest bombshell—she’s pregnant!

  Read on for a glimpse of

  CONSEQUENCES OF A HOT HAVANA NIGHT

  CHAPTER ONE

  GAZING OUT AT the sun-soaked, shimmering turquoise sea, Kitty Quested held her breath.

  IT WAS STRANGE to imagine that this water might one day be curling onto the shingle beach near her home in England. But then, even now, nearly four weeks after arriving in Cuba, everything still felt a little strange. Not just the sea, or the beach—this incredible scimitar of silvery sand—but the fact that for now this was her home.

  Home.

  Lifting the mass of long, copper-coloured curls to cool her neck, she felt her throat start to ache as she imagined the small coastal village in the south of England where up until a month ago she’d lived out her whole life.

  Birth.

  Marriage.

  And the death of her childhood sweetheart and husband Jimmy.

  Pushing back the brim of her hat to see better, she blinked into the sunlight as a light breeze lifted her hair, blowing fresh against her cheek and reminding her of everything she’d left behind.

  Her parents, her sister Lizzie and her boyfriend Bill, a two-month tenancy on a one-bedroom terraced cottage overlooking the sea. And her job at Bill’s start-up, distilling what had become their first product: Blackstrap Rum.

  She felt a sharp pang of homesickness.

  When Miguel Mendoza, director of operations at Dos Rios Rum, had called her three months ago, to discuss the possibility of her creating two new flavours for the brand’s two hundredth anniversary, she’d never imagined that it would lead to her moving four thousand miles across the Atlantic Ocean.

  If she’d allowed himself to think about it she would have refused. She’d been flattered to be asked but, unlike Lizzie, she was by nature cautious, and the hand she’d been dealt in life had taught her to be wary. Accepting the Dos Rios job would not just boost her salary, it would mean leaving everything and everyone she’d ever known. But, five years after Jimmy’s illness and death had put her life on hold, change was what she wanted and thought she needed in order to put her grief behind her and start living again.

  So, five minutes after putting the phone down, she’d called him back and said yes.

  And she didn’t regret her decision. Her new home, a white single-storey villa, was beautiful, and only a short walk from the beach. Everyone was friendly, and after three years in Bill’s cramped stillroom working in the vast state-of-the-art Dos Rios lab felt like a treat. In so many ways it was absolutely the fresh start she’d imagined. She’d made new friends and was building a career. But one part of her life remained untouched—

  Her throat tightened.

  And it was going to stay untouched.
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  Reaching up, she captured the dark red hair spilling over her shoulders and down her back. At the airport she’d promised her sister that she would ‘let her hair down’. It was an old joke between them, because normally she tied it up, here in Cuba though she had started to let it hang free.

  But her hair was one thing…her heart was another entirely.

  Jimmy had been her first love, and she couldn’t imagine feeling about any man the way she had felt about him. Nor did she want to. Love, real love, was both a lightness and a weight, a gift and a burden, one that she didn’t have it in her to give or receive any more. Of course nobody really believed her—her friends and family were convinced that it was just grief talking—but she knew that part of her life was over, and no amount of sunshine or salsa was going to change that fact.

  Glancing down into the water, she felt her pulse jump as she spotted a cantaloupe-coloured starfish floating serenely in the gin-clear shallows.

  Starfish! What was that in Spanish? she wondered. It wasn’t the kind of word she’d learned in the lessons she’d been taking back home—the lessons that had seemed less like a hobby and more like fate when Dos Rios had offered her this four-month contract.

  Star was estrella and fish was pescado, but that didn’t sound quite right. If only Lizzie was here to help. Her sister had studied Spanish and French at university and had a natural affinity for languages, whereas her own dyslexia had made even learning English a challenge.

  Pulling out her phone, she was just about to look up the word when it began to vibrate.

  Her lips curved upwards. Speak of the devil! It was Lizzie.

  ‘Are your ears burning?’ she asked.

  ‘No! But my feet are soaking wet. Will that do?’

  Hearing her sister’s burst of laughter, Kitty started to smile. ‘Why are your feet wet?’

  ‘It’s not just my feet. I’m soaked through. And please don’t tell me that you miss the rain!’