A Solitary Heart (2 page)

coming towards them, their expressions in- supportably cheerful,

their eyes avidly curious. On Matthew, eating him alive. She

stiffened, and said to him with cold courtesy, 'Your reiteration is

noted. I see you've finished your drink. Why don't I get you another?'

Even as she became the gracious hostess, Matthew saw the

approaching pair, and his hold on her arm dropped away as he

adopted the role of polite guest so smoothly that she stared in

consternation. His charm was absolutely seamless, and deadly as the

edge of a cliff. She hated him quite passionately.

'Don't bother, I can help myself,' he said, and gave her a remarkably

beautiful public smile as he added privately, 'This isn't over.'

'What a pretentious creature you are; of course it is,' murmured Sian

in a fine show of contemptuous indifference as she stepped away.

Matthew engaged the other two women in light conversation,

ignoring her as if she didn't exist. Trite and meaningless phrases, and

they snapped it up.

Sian's expression was very dry. The heel of her narrow, elegant shoe

knocked something and she looked down. After a moment, she bent

and picked up the beer can. It was crushed almost beyond

recognition.

Sian held on to her composure by sheer force of will until she finally

managed to escape to the study. She shut the door on any possible

prying eyes, collapsed weakly into the chair pulled back from her

desk and dropped her face into one unsteady hand. A flashback to the

unpleasant little scene in the back garden made her jaw harden and

her eyes blaze anew.

How
dared
Matt Severn speak to her like that? How
dared
he look

down his aquiline nose at her with such contempt? She'd seen that

look before, on others who thought they were better than she because

of her chequered past and disreputable family.

Sian was proud of all the things she had seen and done as a child. Her

mother had died when she was too young to really remember her, and

so she had tagged along on Devin Riley's travels and entered a

carnival world of famous places and people. Regarded through a

child's innocent eyes, it had been a fabulous life. Rio de Janeiro,

Monte Carlo, London, Rome, Las Vegas—Sian had seen them all

before she was ten, and her father, heart- wrenchingly handsome and

charming as the sun was bright, with a computer brain and a gilded

tongue, had seemed like a fairy-tale prince who walked a higher

plane of existence from other mere mortals.

It was only when she was old enough to be sent away to boarding

school that Sian grew to realise just how flamboyant and bizarre her

childhood had really been. Before the whispers and the gossip that

had interrupted many a budding friendship, she had merely accepted

the lifestyle as normal. That was how Devin lived. He loved her, but

men with his particular glamour and genius couldn't be expected to

settle down in one place just for a little girl who missed her daddy

when he left her all alone in a strange place.

Sian smiled that wry twist of the mouth that so characterised her

pensive turn of thought. She was indeed her father's daughter. After

the first year or so of loneliness and bewilderment, she had got the

measure of all those whispering gossips and proceeded to charm

them one by one, those songbirds in the bushes, until they were

eating out of her hand. Her school years had been, in the main,

positive after that and, during the holidays when she was not

travelling with her father, she was visiting at the homes of her

friends.

She had been happy—oh, yes—and she wouldn't trade her colourful

memories for anything. Her father Devin could still steal the heart of

the devil, who would thank him for the pleasure, and she loved to see

him when he made the rare visit.

But something had happened to the little girl who'd begged for more

champagne with her breakfast. Either the schools had taught her

otherwise, or Sian had grown up to realise it for herself. Whatever the

reason, however the cause, she had a deep, abiding yearning for a

solid, secure life.

Sian had a middle-class mentality. She wanted a home, family, a

steady job, the same circle of friends that she could relate to and

grow older with. She wanted to belong, somewhere, somehow. If

anyone had asked her what her goals were, that would be her first

reply. She wouldn't even think to wonder, in that first instant of

reaction, if they might have been asking about something so obvious

as a choice of career.

And if it was one thing guaranteed to drive her absolutely wild,

beyond any hope or shade of reason, it was to come up against

narrow-minded bigots like Matt Severn! One sneer got past all her

guards; one judgemental opinion breached all her defences. He, a

total stranger, had hurt her today, as she stood marble-faced and icy,

then hot with eruptive anger by turns before him, and it wasn't any

use to realise afterwards just how ridiculous his behaviour had been.

He had got right inside, and Sian did not forgive easily.

Sian swivelled in her chair and reached automatically into the top

drawer of the desk.

The door to the study opened some ten minutes later, and she looked

up. Her room-mate Jane slid inside and shut the door behind her.

Noise from the party blared loudly, then resumed the muted musical

beat that carried through the floorboards and pounded in the walls.

'Hey, Solitaire,' said her bubbly friend. 'What are you doing in here

all by yourself? We've food and drink and a whole army to feed off it

outside!'

Sian smiled at Jane. 'I'm just catching a moment of peace and relative

quiet.'

'Right,' said Jane, as she settled like a fluffy cat on one corner of the

desk they'd shared for four years, 'speak to me, woman. You're

young, gorgeous, and supremely talented as a budding dress designer,

and you've just sailed through your undergraduate finals. What's

more, you've got hunky Joshua Severn panting like a lovesick puppy

at your heels. So what gives?'

Sian had smiled reluctantly at Jane's brisk, no- nonsense recital of her

worldly assets, but at the mention of Joshua's name her expression

had darkened. She puckered her mouth into a delicate peach rosebud

and prevaricated, 'Why does anything have to "give"? Can't I want to

be by myself for a few moments?'

'Sian, you're my best friend and I quite love you to distraction,'

replied Jane in a light tone that belied her shrewd gaze, 'and I do

mean distraction. You always play solitaire when you're troubled.

Always. Obsessively. Game after game after game, so don't try to

pull the wool over my eyes! I want to know what's going on and why

you're sitting alone in a shadowed room on a beautiful sunny day.'

Sian sighed and immediately wished it hadn't come out sounding

quite so heavy, and she busied herself with sweeping the cards

expertly into one hand. Then, as if her shapely fingers had acquired a

mind of their own, they commenced shuffling and reshuffling the

pack. Jane watched with admiration the manoeuvres that were as

slick and polished as a professional croupier's, another legacy from

Sian's father.

'Nothing's wrong,' she insisted. Jane's glance turned into a glare.

'Honestly, nothing's
wrong.
It's just that— Joshua's older brother

Matt is out there.'

'Whew!' Jane wiped her brow in an exaggerated expression of relief.

'And here I thought you hadn't even noticed the sexiest, most virile,

exciting man present! There for a moment you had me worried!

Aren't you a cool customer?'

'Not exactly,' said Sian with a delicate bite, and her right hand

splayed the deck of cards into a fan and snapped them shut. 'Not—

quite—exactly. Mr Matthew Severn condescended to notice me upon

his unexpected arrival and made sure to communicate in precise

terms just how unsuitable I was in the role of Joshua's future wife. I

was a fortune-hunter and Joshua a victim, and he would make our

lives hell were we to go through with the marriage. Et cetera, et

cetera.'

' What?'
It was not so much a question as a high shriek of

astonishment, and Jane fell off the desk and into her lap, gabbling.

'You sly dog! When did Joshua propose, for heaven's sake? And what

did you tell him? How dare you keep this a secret from me?'

'That,' said Sian coldly with hot, glittering eyes as she wrapped both

arms around the other girl in an instinctive gesture to keep her from

falling to the floor, 'is the crux of the matter. Joshua hasn't asked me

yet. He probably hasn't got up the courage to, poor boy. The very

first I heard of this was from the devil himself. Accompanied, of

course, with a thorough lashing from those go-to-hell eyes.'

'Oh, no!' Jane stuffed the heel of one hand into her mouth, staring

over it at her, eyes wide and scandalised. 'And you with a temper as

hot and as Irish as they come—what did you do?'

Reel from shock, ache inside, feel buffeted like a gale- blown leaf.

Janey, Janey, there weren't enough words. Sian gritted from between

bared white teeth, 'I called him boorish and intrusive and pretentious.'

'Aha, that's my girl!' Jane threw her arms around Sian for an

exuberant hug. 'And what did he do?'

Sian buried her face into her friend's slim shoulder and began to

shake with fury and laughter. 'You don't want to know! Jane, that's

why Joshua has been wandering around looking so whipped and

worried. He's been trying to corner me all day. I don't know what to

say to him if he asks me. If he'd caught me when I was
really
angry, I

might have said yes just for spite!'

'Would you want to say yes anyway—for your sake, not for Joshua's

or Matt's?' asked Jane, sobering.

Sian groaned, long and low and full of frustration. 'God, I don't

know! Joshua's so sweet and gentle, considerate and handsome.

What's more he'd be the ideal husband and father -'

Jane slipped off her lap and on to the floor, leaning against her knees.

'But,' she said gently, 'what about love?'

'Love!' Sian used the word like an expletive, a furious snort of

contempt with a curl of her lip and flashing, brilliant eyes. To her

watching and concerned friend, she was magnificent and all woman,

her lustrous raven hair spilling like midnight down the ivory cream of

a willowy neck and shoulders, a creature of high spirit and sensuality

who was totally oblivious to the fact. 'What did
love
get my mother?

A thoroughly enchanting ne'er- do-well, a handsome faithless lover

with wanderlust and the gambling itch—don't get me wrong, I love

my father too. That's precisely why I think so little of the emotion.

Love, Janey, darling, is not on my list of requirements. Stability,

constancy, devotion—they're what's important and Joshua could be

the man to give them to me. I just don't know.'

'Oh, Sian.' Jane sighed and pressed her hands.

The dim, far-away look in Sian's gaze sharpened slowly to the

present awareness and she looked down at the blonde's upturned face.

What was Jane's expression?

Love, a dear certainty—tinged with a hint of sadness and... pity?

She felt shocked at the prospect, quite failing to see why she should

be pitied, unless it was for having undergone such a humiliating,

infuriating encounter on what was meant to be a day of sharing and

celebration.

'Well,' she said briskly, with a glint in her eye as she shook off her

reverie, 'what about joining this party, then?'

'That's my girl!' said Jane, who scrambled to her feet and straightened

her dishevelled dress. They made a perfect foil for each other, one

small and sun-kissed brown with light golden hair, the other tall with

raven hair and creamy skin.

'I'd murder to have legs like yours!' exclaimed Jane ruefully. 'I can't

think how Joshua's brother managed to be so hateful instead of eating

you up! You're a killer in that red dress—if I wore something like

that, the dropped waist would be down around my knees! It's a

wonder he didn't throw you over his shoulder and make off with you

the moment he laid eyes on you!'

'Somehow,' said Sian very drily, 'he managed to contain himself. Not