Feeling more guilty and miserable with every word her sister uttered, Emily increased her speed, hurrying her down the landing and almost pushing her into one of the spare bedrooms. ‘This one has a connecting door to the one next to it,’ she told her hurriedly. ‘Travis—’
‘They’ll be ideal,’ Gracie interrupted her. ‘But why on earth aren’t you and Matt using them? Honestly…’
She saw the way Emily flushed, and added teasingly, ‘When Matt let it slip that the two of you were already lovers, I was so surprised I almost fell off my chair.’
Instead of feeling pleased, Emily was suddenly for no reason at all quite definitely angry. ‘Why?’ she demanded bitterly. ‘Did you think I was so abnormal that I wouldn’t want to make love with the man I love? What were we supposed to do?’ she challenged. ‘Wait until we’re married? As you’re doing?’
‘Ouch. Come on, I’m not criticising,’ Gracie told her gently. ‘I’m all for it, and no, I don’t think you’re abnormal. It’s just that, knowing how much Gerry hurt you…well, I’d always assumed for some reason that you’d decided to turn your back on passion and romance. Don’t be cross with me, Emmy,’ she coaxed. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s only that you’ve always been just that little bit…’
‘Prissy,’ Emily suggested shortly.
‘No—not prissy. I can’t explain it properly. It’s just that anyone who knows you couldn’t help knowing that you’d never go to bed with a man unless you loved him and were in a committed relationship with him.’
Emily opened her mouth to tell her just how wrong she was, but Gracie was still speaking. ‘I’ve always rather envied you that moral strength of mind of yours, and Matt obviously adores you. Come on, we’d better get back downstairs. I want Travis to bring up our stuff. I’m not sure how long we’ll be staying yet; a few days at least. Oh, and by the way, if Uncle John should come back within the next hour, will you be a darling and tell him that Travis and I are resting—er—recovering from our jet lag,’ Gracie told her, giving her a naughty grin.
When they went back downstairs, Travis had already unloaded the hired car. Matt, he explained, had gone into the garden; and, watching her sister and brother-in-law-to-be heading for the stairs, Emily knew she couldn’t put it off any longer. She had to confront Matt and find out exactly what was going on.
CHAPTER TEN
EMILY found Matt studying the fat buds of the peonies. He didn’t look up as she approached, but he must have heard her because he said enthusiastically, ‘Just look at this. I’d never have believed it could survive, almost smothered by those weeds. It’s going to give us a glorious show of colour—’
Emily couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘Matt, what’s going on?’ she interrupted him abruptly. ‘Why does Gracie think we’re engaged?’
Matt stood up too. He was standing far too close to her—far, far too close, and when his arms suddenly closed round her and his hands ran possessively down her back, urging her so intimately close to his own body that the breath left her lungs in a single stunned gasp, she automatically tried to ease herself away from him. But Matt wouldn’t let her go. Instead he brushed his lips against her ear and told her softly, ‘Your sister is watching us.’
And then, as she instinctively tried to turn her head to look back at the house, Matt’s hand came up to turn it back again and hold it still while his mouth moved hotly over her skin, searching almost desperately for her mouth. When he found it, he didn’t kiss her gently as he had done before, nor lightly in the manner she had been expecting, but with such a depth of thrilling need that she succumbed to it immediately, her arms locking round him, her body melting into his as it had been aching to do for weeks, her lips parting sweetly and invitingly, clinging to the firm outline of his, while all the time his hands moved eagerly over her body making every part of her aware of how much his touch aroused her.
The kiss seemed to go on for ever; each time she managed to find the strength to break free of him, his mouth would caress some other part of her throat or face and, having sensitised that area to the point where her self-control had shattered, would move back to her lips as though magnetised by them, and each time he kissed her she sank deeper and deeper into the whirlpool of delight he was spinning around her.
She felt him lift her off her feet while he was still kissing her, but it wasn’t until she felt his mouth trail down her throat to the exposed curve of her breast that she realised he had unfastened her blouse.
She tried to protest, to demand that he release her, to summon all the cogent and vital reasons why she should make him stop what he was doing immediately—but another and stronger feeling ran counter to this sensible plan, and the closer his seeking lips got to the hard pinnacle of her breast, the more difficult it became to hold on to her common sense. In fact, she even found herself arching eagerly towards him, wanting to assist him, wanting to feel again the sweetly agonising sensation of his mouth caressing her so intimately.
When he stopped suddenly centimetres short of his goal, and unsteadily lowered her to the ground, tugging the sides of her blouse together as he did so, she could almost have screamed with frustration.
‘It’s all right. They’ve gone now,’ she heard him saying, but it was several seconds before his meaning penetrated. When it did, she went bright red and wrenched herself away from him, her fingers trembling as she fought to fasten the buttons.
‘I demand to know what’s going on,’ she told him fiercely, conscious that her voice was shaking almost as much as her hands.
There was an odd silence, and when she automatically looked up she saw that Matt looked as flushed as she felt. ‘I should have thought it was obvious,’ he told her tersely. ‘I wanted to make love to you.’
For a moment she stood there and let the sweet, wild tide of joy carry her, and then she dammed it and said severely, ‘That wasn’t what I meant. Why did you tell Gracie we were engaged?’
‘What? Oh, that. Well, it seemed the best thing to do. I did it for your sake, you know,’ he added in a softer voice.
‘For my sake.’ She was dumbfounded.
‘Well, I guessed immediately what must have happened when she walked in and announced that Travis—your Travis—was her fiancé,’ Matt told her quietly. ‘I suppose they came here to tell you that they’d fallen for one another, and to ask you to release Travis from your engagement to him. I must say I thought it a bit thick that Gracie should actually introduce him as her fiancé. Perhaps I shouldn’t have leapt in the way I did, but all I could think about was how you were going to feel when you came back and dis
covered that he’d dumped you for her.’
Matt had taken hold of her hand and was caressing it gently, and yet so arousingly that she could barely concentrate on what he was saying. Her senses were screaming out to her that they needed far more than the deliberately provocative stimulation they were getting—that they wanted his hands on her body…his mouth…his body… With an effort she tore herself from such erotic yearnings and tried to listen to what he was saying to her.
‘So I thought I’d steal a march on them, so to speak, and tell them that you and I were engaged. Of course, I didn’t let on that I knew that you and he…’
Matt paused and Emily stared speechlessly at him. This was the last thing she had thought of—that Matt should want to protect her, to help her. Her throat was thick with emotional tears; she longed to fling herself into his arms and howl—and even more she longed to be able to tell him the truth.
‘I must say you’ve taken it marvellously well. I half dreaded you coming in and flinging yourself into his arms before I could say a word. You must feel like hell. And after you’ve struggled so hard to be faithful to your engagement,’ he added innocently.
Emily still couldn’t say a word.
‘Of course, you won’t think so now,’ Matt comforted her. ‘But in the long run it’s probably for the best. Just imagine if he’d left you for her, after the wedding.’
The wedding. Emily suddenly remembered something far more important than her supposed broken heart over Travis. ‘What on earth possessed you to tell Gracie we were getting married in June?’ she demanded bitterly.
Matt looked hurt and embarrassed. ‘Well, she managed to drag out of me the fact that we’d been lovers—don’t ask me how—and, well, to be quite honest, after that I didn’t have much option. I suppose Travis must have told her that you and he had never made love,’ he added carelessly, so carelessly that for a moment Emily almost didn’t take in the significance of what he was saying.