Out of The Night

Emily was just thanking him gratefully, conscious of how painful it would have been if the full weight of the books had fallen on to her, when the office door opened abruptly and Matt walked in.

Peter had his arm around her shoulders, his other hand resting lightly on her waist. He had been about to say something to her, and she had turned her face up towards his. There was nothing really intimate about his touch; she might have been any woman he had rescued, but she saw immediately from Matt’s face that he had totally misconstrued their closeness.

Immediately she flushed guiltily and pulled away from Peter, even though she knew she had no reason to feel as though she had done anything wrong. And even if Peter had been about to kiss her, as Matt so obviously suspected, it was really no business of his, she told herself indignantly.

‘John wanted to go over one or two points again with you,’ Matt was saying flatly to Peter, ignoring her completely, Emily recognised.

Inwardly seething, she pretended that she was too busy to go back to the study with them. In reality she wanted some time by herself to try to get a grip on her runaway emotions.

Twenty minutes later Peter popped his head around the office door to tell her that he was leaving. ‘And remember,’ he added, ‘if you ever feel like a change of scene, I can think of half a dozen writers who’d jump at the chance of employing you. It can’t be much fun for you living and working here with your uncle.’

Wondering what he would say if she told him that she had chosen to work for her uncle, Emily thanked him and said goodbye. She glanced at her watch. It was almost time for her to start the preparations for dinner.

Her uncle and presumably Matt as well had gone outside to see Peter off. While the study was empty she removed the tea trolley and wheeled it into the kitchen, to stack the china in the dishwasher. She was engrossed in this task when the door opened and Matt walked in.

He looked furiously angry, she realised, her heart suddenly plummeting. It was no use telling herself that he had no right to be angry; her body refused to recognise the logic of her mind.

‘What is it with you?’ he demanded without preamble. ‘Does it give you some kind of thrill to pick up strangers and make love with them? Some kind of sexual excitement that you don’t get with your fiancé? First me, and now Cavendish.’

Emily had been staring at him in disbelief, unable to comprehend what he was saying to her, unable to understand the accusations he was making, protected from the bitter anger she could hear in his voice by some kind of invisible bubble. But the moment he stopped speaking and reached towards her as though he was going to physically shake her, the bubble broke, exposing her to the most acute physical pain she had ever experienced in her life.

Without stopping to ask herself why it should hurt so much, why it should matter so much what Matt thought of her, she tore past him, ignoring his demand that she stop, racing upstairs and not stopping until she had reached the sanctuary of her bedroom.

As she sank down on her bed, she discovered that she was crying—agonised, painful sobs that wrenched from her chest and tore at her throat.

‘Emily…I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…’

Matt was standing just inside her bedroom, quietly closing the door, watching her, and immediately she was conscious of the picture she must present. She could feel the wetness of her tears streaking her face and glared angrily at him. She wasn’t going to wipe them away in front of him. He had no right to follow her into her room. No right to have said the things to her that he had said. No right.

A gleam of sunlight shone through her bedroom window, picking out the tears clinging to her eyelashes. She heard Matt breathe in deeply, and focused automatically on the sharp lifting of his chest. The silence between them was stretched taut with tension. Emily felt as though she needed to gasp for air, as though suddenly it was almost impossible for her to breathe. Her heart was racing far too quickly. Matt’s features seemed to dissolve and reshape themselves as she tried to blink away the remainder of her tears. And surely he was much closer to her now than he had been.

She drew in a shaky breath and then another as he came closer to her bed. She had an overpowering desire to back away from him, but she wouldn’t let herself give in to it. ‘You have no right to be in here,’ she told him instead.

‘According to you, I have no rights at all where you’re concerned, and yet I’ve been your lover. I’ve touched your skin, caressed and tasted it; I’ve felt your body move under mine…I’ve held you naked in my arms and felt you glory in that nakedness. I’ve loved you, Emily, and that—’

‘Loved me. You mean, you’ve had sex with me,’ she said shrilly. What on earth was he trying to do to her? Why was he saying these things? Why was he tormenting her like this? She knew that all he wanted from her was a resumption of the intimacy they had so briefly shared—but not out of love. She wasn’t that much of a fool.

She saw his face change, something hardening in his eyes, but his voice was calm and even as he said quietly, ‘Very well then, I’ve had sex with you…and now I want—’

‘And now you want to use me as a sexual convenience,’ Emily interrupted him bitterly. ‘Well, I won’t be used in that way, Matt. I may stupidly have once allowed you—’

‘Allowed me? You asked me…begged me,’ he told her savagely. ‘You wanted it as much as I did, you—’

‘No… No… No…’ Emily moaned covering her ears and shaking her head from side to side, her control broken as the words hit her like physical blows.

‘Yes,’ Matt insisted, striding over to the bed and taking hold of her wrists to wrench her hands away from her ears. ‘Yes,’ he repeated with soft emphasis. ‘Emily, I—’

He broke off, suddenly silent, the way he was looking at her oddly mesmeric, like the slow caress of his fingers against the fast pulse of her inner wrists. Something was happening to her, something familiar and dangerous—something that only Matt seemed to be able to set in motion.

Once before he had made her feel like this. Onc

e before. But even though her brain shrieked danger, her body refused to listen. Her lips parted, her eyes becoming slumberous and shadowed with memories. The pulse in her wrist hammered wildly beneath his stroking touch.

The soft, almost inaudible murmur Matt made deep in his throat was interpreted faultlessly by her body, so that immediately it softened and yielded, yearning eagerly towards him.

She felt his hands in her hair, moulding the shape of her head, holding her still, his fingers softly caressing as he bent towards her. She knew that he was going to kiss her—knew and did nothing to avoid the fierce male pressure of his mouth. Somehow or other, her arms were already around him, her fingers tracing the hard bones of his shoulders, her eyes closing in eager anticipation of the pleasure to come.

The sound of her uncle’s voice calling her name outside her door shocked her back to reality, making her pull back abruptly at the same moment as Matt released her. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him, to endure the humiliation of the triumph she knew must be in his eyes.

‘Coming, Uncle John,’ she called out shakily, sliding off the bed and walking stiffly past Matt without even glancing at him, knowing that, if her uncle hadn’t appeared, if they had not been interrupted, she would willingly and wantonly have allowed Matt to press her down against the covers of her bed and make love to her as he had done once before, and that, not only would she have done nothing to stop him, but that she would actively and eagerly have aided and abetted him.

CHAPTER SEVEN

QUITE apart from her own very personal and private reasons for not wanting Matt’s presence in her great-uncle’s house, his arrival had had an extremely adverse effect on Uncle John’s progress with his book, Emily reflected irritably, glaring at her empty desk and pristine-neat study.

Matt had been here for almost two weeks, and during that time her great-uncle had spent far more time either with Matt or at the university than he had done at home.

She couldn’t deny that Matt’s presence seemed to have given Uncle John a new lease of life and a renewed enthusiasm and zest, but only yesterday Peter Cavendish had telephoned her to check on the progress of the manuscript and she had had to fob him off with a tactful fib.