A Solitary Heart (3 page)

that you find me weeping with disappointment. My other reactions

are far too satisfying for that!'

Her room-mate hesitated in the act of striding out of the door and

looked at her sharply, then began to smile. 'Why, I declare, Solitaire,

you've got a devil twinkling out of your eye. Just what do you have

fermenting in your nasty little mind?'

'Not a lot,' she purred sweetly as her anger settled cold and wicked in

the pit of her stomach. 'But if Matt is so determined to consider me

unsuitable for his august, respectable family, I might have to show

him just how unsuitable I can be.'

'Do count me in,' whispered Jane delightedly. 'That bad old sexy man

can't tell
my
best friend off and get away with it! What are you going

to do?'

She shrugged. 'Play it by ear. After all, he's already declared war. I'll

just wave the red flag around and see what happens.'

She followed Jane out of the room and down the short hall to the

kitchen, and then there was no more time for intimate conversation,

for they were engulfed in light, and noise and the welcoming cries

from their friends.

Instantly upon entering the kitchen, Sian felt the heat of attention

radiating from the man in the corner. Her betraying gaze winged over

to him; yes, she had not been mistaken. By some radar sense she

managed to pin-point where he was.

Matt Severn was leaning against a low open window- sill beside

Joshua, appearing to talk to the parents of Jane's boyfriend Steven,

who lived in Michigan City and had come to South Bend for the day.

The hunter appeared to be at ease, but Sian took in a silent quivering

breath under the weight of his sharp stabbing stare. Why did this

have to be so difficult? Why did he have to look at her in such an

appraising, antagonistic way? Why did she have to feel so

intimidated and somehow
small
for all her height of five feet ten?

He was too hard; not stone-cold hard, but the healthy, aggressive

hardness of sophistication, maturity and physical confidence, and by

comparison with the impact of his presence she felt a frailty in the

curvature of her bones and slim body in a way she'd never felt before.

Then Joshua strolled over and put his arm casually around her

shoulders, and Sian saw Matt Severn's gaze shift infinitesimally at

the movement, and his subtle, inward calculation, and all her self-

confidence came surging back. She gave him an insouciant smile and

saw him register that as well with dark anger, and then she turned her

attention to Joshua.

'Happy birthday, beautiful,' said Joshua with a grin. 'What have you

been up to?'

'No good; you can bet on it,' she replied as she slipped her arm

around his waist, and she coaxed his beer from him to take a quick

sip. That looked intimate, didn't it, Matt? Eat that until you choke on

it.

'Cake time!' called out Steven. Jane clapped her hands, eyes glowing,

and a frothy confection appeared that had Jane's and Sian's names

written on the top. It was ablaze with candles. After the cake came

presents, and wine, and the last of the afternoon flitted away.

People moved in and out of the apartment, danced outside in the back

yard, cooked hamburgers and hot dogs and drank beer. Sian slipped

away from the group in the kitchen and went to get some supper. The

sun was setting, the breeze turning cool at last, and, though a few of

the older folk had left already, the party was still in full swing. It

looked as if it might carry on all night and, since the next day was a

holiday, probably would.

As she was piling coleslaw and potato salad on to a paper plate,

Joshua sidled up to her, and Sian sighed with resignation. Masking

her irritation, for she didn't feel up to handling a tête-à-tête with him

at the moment, she smiled at him and said, 'Be a love and get me a

glass of wine, will you? My throat is parched after talking so much.'

He planted a kiss on the tip of her nose. 'Don't go off dancing with

somebody while I'm gone.'

'That'd be a trick,' she muttered as she looked down at her laden

plate, even as Joshua left her side. 'I'd end up putting coleslaw down

their front.'

'Putting coleslaw down whose front?'

The lazy voice came from her other side and a curling thread of anger

trickled hot fingers down her spine as her head jerked in surprise. She

had dared to hope that Matt would go with the other early departures,

for he lived in Chicago, which was a good two-hour drive away, but

he had hung around instead. Spying on her the whole time, if his

prompt appearance was anything to go by.

She squelched the traitorous gratitude that she was, at least, spared

any intimacy with his younger brother and managed to find a dry,

even tone. 'There are possibilities. What a good attention span you

have. Do you like what you see?'

And she could have immediately bitten her wayward tongue out as

Matt ran his predator's eyes down her entire length—heavens, he had

to be well over six feet tall—and said, with mocking amusement,

'Drop-dead legs and a pretty smile. I've got to hand it to the little

brother—he's got good aesthetics.'

Sian's paper plate trembled and she gripped it so hard in an effort to

steady herself that she buckled the edges. But her face remained

smooth; she even managed to wrinkle her nose in faint distaste. 'I

don't know; the description sounds vaguely heavy metal to me. I'm

surprised. I would have thought your tastes ran to the more

conservative.'

The setting sun slanted across his hard, intent face, and for the merest

instant those hazel eyes were lit and reflective. The effect was

barbaric, uncanny. He almost didn't look human. Sian fought the urge

to step back in alarm. He said, soft and gentle, 'But we weren't

talking about my tastes, just my brother's.'

'What about your brother?' asked Joshua, reappearing at her side with

her wine and a newly opened beer. He looked defiant as he

challenged Matt's presence, and almost childishly unformed next to

the other man's chiselled, hard features.

Sian consigned yet another sigh to the nether regions of her empty

stomach. It looked to all intents and purposes as if the two men

would wrangle over her right then and there like two dogs over a

bone, never mind what the bone thought of the contention. The

situation was passing beyond the ridiculous into the farcical.

'Oh, you got it, thanks,' she said with outward poise to Joshua and

took the wine. 'We were just discussing individual tastes. I said Matt

seemed the conservative type.'

Joshua laughed rather too loudly. 'Matt's about as conservative as a

race-track. What he got up to in
his
youth shouldn't be told in polite

company.'

One corner of Matt's sensually cut lips pulled to the side, and what

were engaging dimples in Joshua's young handsome face were deep

creases stamped into his older brother, signs of decision, temper, and,

yes, humour. The two looked alike only in their colouring and

general build of body, and, when they were standing side by side as

they were, Sian had to admit reluctantly that Joshua was another man

who paled next to Matt's settled, virile maturity.

'But you know what they say about youth being wasted on the

young,' remarked Matt with pointed silkiness, as his fierce hazel eyes

met and locked with his brother's.

Sian bit her lip as Joshua bridled visibly and snapped back, 'Just

because you're young doesn't mean you can't know your own mind!'

'No, but it does mean that you have a great deal of inexperience in

knowing what to do when you change your mind,' replied Matt

coolly, his voice at complete odds with the anger that sparked like

black lightning from the depths of his darkening gaze.

Sian looked yearningly across the laughing people who were

enjoying themselves, oblivious to the storm gathering in their midst.

She turned her attention back to the men who were glaring at each

other over her head. Over her head! This bone most certainly did not

agree to the contention, and said in a dangerously soft voice, 'Let's

clear the air, shall we?'

Joshua recalled himself with a start. Matt merely raised his eyebrows,

and his weary, sardonic expression was the final straw that broke her

sorely tried patience and ignited her fuse. Sian's eyes blazed and she

bit out succinctly, 'Your brother, Joshua, has seen fit to tell me that

he does not approve of our engagement! I, on the other hand, had to

hear myself denounced at unflattering length in my own home by a

total stranger. Now, you two can fight among yourselves all you like,

and it is no concern of mine! However, you will not do so at my

birthday party, in my time!'

Joshua fell back a step in astonishment, for Matt had been right

earlier; he had never seen her lose her temper before but she was far

too gone in her butane heat to care.

Well into her stride, she rounded on Matt in fine fury, strands of her

hair flicking along ivory collarbones like ribbons of black silk. 'And

you! I have never met a more rude, arrogant, overbearing and blindly

prejudiced man in my life! You ought to be ashamed of yourself,

though I suspect in saying so I am merely wasting my breath! If

Joshua, or any other man, does me the honour of proposing marriage,

I will accept or reject him strictly on the merits of our relationship,

and believe me, you have a snowball's chance in hell of being able to

influence my decision one way or the other! I have
not
enjoyed your

company, you may leave at your soonest convenience, goodnight!'

Oh, the awful nerve of the man; Matt grinned, swift and slightly

incredulous, shedding his former demeanour of ennui. He looked so

satirically entertained that Sian's temperature shot sky-high. Her

vision dimmed and blurred, and, in one beautifully controlled

expression of purest rage, she dumped her laden plate together with

the wine down the front of his shirt.

Someone gasped in the dead silence. Sian suspected that it might

have come from her. She stared up into the sudden, deadly calm of

his face and it was like looking down the twin barrels of a shotgun.

With supreme and enviable poise Matt brought up a hand, and she

flashed back to the scene by the tree when she'd thought he was

going to slap her.

His savage gaze held her prisoner. With one forefinger he hooked

one dollop of creamy potato salad off his white shirt and brought it to

his lips to suck it off.

Shock sizzled down the raw nerve-endings of her every limb at the

sheer sensuality of the act, while the worldly hazel eyes mocked and

challenged and baited. He smiled, smoky and satanic; she tossed her

luxuriant head in disdain and all but stamped her foot. A slight gust

of wind lifted her hair and blew it across her face in a transparent

midnight veil, through which could be seen the lovely shape and

colour of her unwinking eyes.

The moment of frozen tableau passed. Jane was suddenly present,

interposing her small body between Matt and Sian while babbling

about accidents and washing machines and detergents. The world

moved and breathed and lived again, but Matt and Sian still stared at

each other with the naked aggression of two boxing opponents,

insulated in their own electrical current.

This was war, and Sian no longer cared about the how or the why of

it; she only knew that it sang a hot fusion to the juddering blood in

her veins.

SIAN had a quick word with Jane and left the party at around two

o'clock to spend the night at a girlfriend's apartment, frankly running

from the overwhelming events of the day. Late the next morning,

which was as bright and promised to be as hot as the day of the party,

she showered and dressed quickly in a pale rose bikini, over which

she wore a matching pink vest top and a blue miniskirt, showing a

good length of the long slim, perfectly muscled legs that Jane

yearned for.

Karen, a manager of a local restaurant that didn't close on Memorial

Day, had already left for work. Sian wrote her a note of thanks for