A Solitary Heart (6 page)

haggard signs of the stress they had all gone through in the last

month as they struggled to finish papers and study for final exams.

She and Jane had stalked around the apartment, short-tempered

through lack of sleep and snapping at each other over the most

ridiculous things.

Still, the work had been worth it. Sian was well qualified to seek out

a position as a junior designer in a fashion house, though that wasn't

what she wanted to do. She nursed a secret ambition to set up her

own design company but lacked the self-confidence in how to go

about doing it in such a cut-throat industry. It was why she had

decided to continue going to school so that she could supplement her

knowledge of design with courses in marketing and business

administration. That way she stood a better chance of at least some

modest success. She wasn't looking to make her fortune. She just

wanted to earn a good living with some degree of independence.

Lost in contemplation of the future, she began to strip off her clothes

absent-mindedly, completely unaware of the sudden still attention

she attracted. Off came the pink top, revealing the pale rose bikini

that moulded like a second skin over high rounded breasts. Down slid

the elastic band of the skirt over a long, narrow waist, widening to a

soft rounded belly and shapely hips. Her flawless ivory skin was so

thin that delicate blue shadows could be seen in the strong sunlight at

temples and wrists, the bottom of her soft beating throat, the backs of

her knees.

She had just reached down for her bottle of water- resistant sun lotion

when two long, athletically muscled legs entered her peripheral

vision. Matt murmured silkily into her ear, stirring the tiny sensitive

hairs at the nape of her neck, 'Like me to rub some of that on to your

back?'

Joshua had appropriated the ball, and Jane and Steven chased him

down into the water, the trio laughing maniacally. Sian turned to look

at Matt with a wide gaze more green than long whipped strands of

sea oats and grasses. She smiled at him pleasantly. 'Yes, thank you.'

Startlement flickered past the mischief in his own hazel eyes. Got

him again, she thought with satisfaction, but he recovered himself

with admirable ease and took the bottle to squeeze a portion into one

large hand. She put her back to him and pulled her braid to one side

while he started to rub her shoulders.

She had steeled herself for the alien sensation of his touch roaming

by consent over her body, but found she was relaxing almost

immediately under the warm surprise of his extremely gentle hands.

He worked over the muscles of her back with unhurried sensitivity,

discovering knots of tension and kneading them loose with care. Her

head began to droop as she gave an unconscious sigh of pleasure.

'What happened to the open warfare?' he asked. The smile had

carried to his voice.

She said, 'It's gone underground in a change of tactics. I believe they

call it "low-intensity conflict".'

She felt rather than heard his laugh. Low and husky, it reverberated

through his hands to her body, and her heart missed a beat. 'You

won't give up, will you?'

'Is the Pope Catholic?' she returned sweetly. 'Besides, you don't strike

me as the kind of person who would give up easily yourself.'

'You're right. I don't, especially when I see something I want. Then I

go after it, and nothing short of flood, fire or act of God can make me

stop,' he murmured.

She could well understand that. He wouldn't have got where he was

today as a valued and respected senior partner for a huge

multinational architectural firm if he hadn't had that unswerving drive

to mould his actions. Certainly she had caught the backlash of his

aggression; unleashed and in full force at the workplace, it would be

something to see. His was the kind that erected
towers
and moved

mountains.

'I stand warned,' she said, and hoped the quiver of her voice could be

attributed to an answering amusement, instead of the real cause

which was the unbelievable magic he was working on her body.

He reached up to massage the exposed nape of her neck and she must

have made some sound, for the pressure in his fingers immediately

eased and he asked, 'Did I hurt you?'

'No,' she replied, muffled. 'My neck's just stiff because I slept on it

wrong.'

Then she almost flinched, half expecting another sardonic remark

about her sleeping habits. Instead Matt said gently, 'Where, over

here? Hold still a minute. There, how does that feel?'

Sian turned her head experimentally and said, surprised, 'Much

better, thank you.'

'You're welcome,' he told her, then purred, 'Want me to do your

front?'

She threw back her head and laughed out loud, the sound like music

in the air, and held out her hand for the lotion. 'Not on your life! The

warfare hasn't gone
that
far underground!'

He shifted to settle on the sand beside her, looping his arms around

upraised knees, showing no inclination to join the others who were

cavorting in the water. She shifted her gaze away from the flex of

those powerful- looking biceps and bent her attention to applying

lotion to the rest of her body.

After they had sat watching the swimmers and the silence had

stretched to several minutes into something like peace, Matt turned

his head and looked at her. 'It won't work, you know.'

'What won't?' she asked, startled and wary.

'What you're trying to do.' He regarded her with a cool, measuring

stare and said, soft and deliberate, 'I'm no young, inexperienced boy

you can get around by using your charm.'

The predator was back, curled and waiting his moment in the sun for

a chance to spring, the hard eyes unblinking on her sun-flushed face,

that mobile mouth taut. But for the first time Sian saw past the

impact his forcefulness had on her and smiled: It was nice to see him

doing the reacting for a change.

An attempt at innocence would be a mistake, for he had been right.

She leaned back on her elbows and returned stare for stare. 'Is that

what you think I'm trying to do?'

'I think,' he said slowly, not returning her smile, 'that you would try to

charm the leaves off the trees if you thought it would be to your

advantage.'

Sian's eyes narrowed, a quick, telling gesture; and the slim lines of

her eyebrows became tokens of unpredictability. She said abruptly,

'People are like circles, don't you think?'

His face became shuttered, the thoughts moving behind the mask

with subterranean speed. After a moment he asked, 'How so?'

She drew him a picture in the sand, slim forefinger moving lightly

through the grains, of circles interlocking. 'Like so. Joshua sees this

part of my circle, and he thinks what he sees is me. Part of it is, but

that isn't all I am. We show different aspects of our personalities to

different people; we assume roles. Child to parent, friend to friend,

lover to lover, enemy to enemy.'

The quick hazel eyes lifted lightly to her face, the sun reflecting out

of his eyes in vivid sparks. 'And which are you?' he asked. Probing,

ever probing. 'Child, friend, lover, or enemy?'

The lines of her face were pared, stripped of every social convention,

clean of animation until what was left was a patient and unforgiving

intelligence.

'You drew a circle of all those preconceived notions about who I am,

and what I would do,' she said quietly, and clenched her fist in the

sand of her drawing. The tendons stood out, dusted with gold. 'You

think you've dropped your original ones, but you've only gone on to

form others. You're just so arrogant, Matt. That's your biggest failing

and that's how I'm going to get you, because, every time you turn

your back on me, I'll be jumping out of the circle.'

MATT just continued to watch her, large and powerful as some

transcendent classic, enigmatic as the Sphinx. In the glare of the

unrelenting sun his brown face showed marks of imperfection that

made his handsomeness so very human. There was a dangerous

attraction in the tiny laugh-lines fanning from his eyes and the faint

signs of exhaustion that lingered from recent overwork, for they

made him all that more approachable. He was no invincible

juggernaut; he was a man, with more than his fair share of a man's

strengths and not a few of the failings.

With an inward shiver, she steeled herself against such observations,

for she could not afford to soften. One slide into the tender side of

her emotions and she would be in trouble. In that one respect he was

like her father, for he too was a soul-stealer, one of that rare breed

that women invariably fell for all over the world. He could lay his

tawny head against a woman's breast and call forth all the feelings

Sian was so determined to avoid, accept them as his due, and then

walk away without a backward glance. He was more than dangerous;

he was lethal.

'You're not a forgiver, are you, Sian?' he commented, almost

absently. The keen focus of his attention took apart the definition of

her.

'No, I'm not much of a forgiver,' she agreed, after a moment of deadly

silence. It was an acknowledgement made in honesty, without pride

or prevarication. Fair warning, tit for tat. An eye for an eye.

Then, quietly, he said an astonishing thing. 'I hadn't realised that I

had hurt you so much.'

Reaction animated her expression as her green eyes flared, and she

turned her head away in a harsh jerk that sent her french braid

whipping over one shoulder. 'Did you?' she returned, with the faintest

mocking edge of vicious rejoinder. 'Or did you just get in my way?'

'Are you so sure,' asked Matt then, wise and gentle as he bent forward

over her half-reclining body, 'that I'm the one with the preconceived

notions now, and not you?'

The change in his position cast a shadow over her face. She glanced

up swiftly. He was a silhouette against the vast bright bowl of the

sky, and all she could see was the outline of his head, which

contained some fugitive quality that brought an unconscious parting

of her dry lips. The tip of her pink tongue darted out to moisten them,

and some slight change in the inclination of his head made her

extremely aware of the act and shortened her breath.

He whispered, and the sound of it came over her like a warm breeze,

'All I said to you earlier was that I considered you unsuitable for

Joshua, and you are. You're far too strong and volatile for someone

as young and inexperienced as he, even down to the lovely curves

and graceful shape of your perfect body. He hasn't got the capacity to

give you the depth of emotion and quality of passionate lovemaking

that you deserve. If you marry him, you will always ache for what

you don't have, and he will always feel inadequate without quite

understanding why.'

She trembled and longed to take the weight of her torso off the

uncertain strength in her arms, but if she tried to sit up now she

would bring herself within inches of his face, and the ravishing

devastation pouring forth from that sexy, ruthless mouth. So, rather

than moving towards him, she tried to attack instead. 'Maybe

somebody like Joshua has just what I'm looking for,' she mocked,

wishing her voice didn't sound so husky. 'After all, you can't control

his money forever.'

Matt sounded amused. 'I had that one coming, didn't I? All right,

Sian, I take it back unreservedly. A person who could handle that

poker game the way you did, with reluctance, finesse and

compassion, could never settle for a shallow, short-sighted goal such

as money. What are you really looking for?'

The insight that she had only recently wished for in Joshua was

present in abundance in his older brother, but Sian did not rejoice in

the finding of it. Instead she felt exposed and self-protective.

'Try stability, for one,' she said, her tone clipped. 'Plenty of people

build secure relationships on other things besides love and passion,

which can fizzle out so easily once the honeymoon stage of the

marriage is over.'