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These last months working for Matt had shown her how easy it was for just the thought of him to activate that pleasure, and right now her over-stimulated senses were clamouring hungrily for the real thing.
‘Why don’t we forget dinner?’
Harriet blinked. How had that happened? How had she said the very words she had just been thinking but in Matt’s voice?
Matt groaned inwardly as he realised how out of control he was getting. ‘Forget I said that!’ he told her tersely.
Forget he had said it?
‘I suppose you thought I was someone else?’ Harriet challenged him angrily.
‘Just as you wish that I was someone else?’ Matt demanded.
Whilst Harriet struggled to regain her composure Matt hurried them both out of her front door and locked it, handing her the keys before he guided her to his parked car.
Harriet was too engrossed in her own thoughts to object to his cavalier control of the situation, along with her door keys. She had wanted Matt to take her to bed! No, Harriet corrected herself. She had wanted to drag Matt upstairs and take him to bed, and she had nearly told him so!
‘Look, there’s no point in you giving me the silent disapproving treatment because I’m not Ben. Try facing up to reality!’
Harriet didn’t trust herself to reply. She just shook her head in silent frustration.
‘Good evening, sir, madam. Would you care for a drink in the bar first? Or would you prefer to go straight to your table?’
Matt looked questioningly at Harriet.
‘Straight to the table, please,’ she answered, ruefully aware that despite everything she was extremely hungry. And she was also extremely aware of the fact that they were being shown to what had to be one of the restaurant’s very best tables, with a little almost private area all to itself. They could see out through the windows over the river and also around the restaurant, if they wished, and yet at the same time retain their own privacy.
Grimly she wondered how many other women Matt had brought here. An awful lot if the way the head waiter had recognised him was anything to go by, surely?
She had barely completed her chain of thought when Matt suddenly announced, ‘I’m surprised that Henri remembered me—it’s ages since I last ate here.’
Harriet almost choked on the delicious walnut roll she was eating.
‘There wasn’t really any need for you to do this, you know,’ she said later, when they had given their order and been served with their food. ‘After all, Ben isn’t going to see us here!’
‘Do you wish he could? Do you think it would make him jealous?’
Harriet exhaled fiercely down her nose and put down the glass of wine she had just picked up.
‘For the last time, I am not in love with Ben. And having him around when I am out on a date is normally the last thing I would want.’ When Matt frowned she told him fiercely, ‘This may come as a shock to you, but the only way I love Ben is as a brother, and it’s as a brother that he behaves when I date anyone—a very over-protective brother at times, and that isn’t always what I want!’ she added darkly.
She stopped as she realised how much the wine had loosened her tongue and just what she was in danger of saying and to whom!
‘In answer to your question, I brought you here to save you from the temptation of going to see Ben,’ Matt said curtly, before continuing, ‘I don’t need to ask why you don’t want Ben treating you like a brother. You obviously want him to think of you as a potential lover, not a sister, and because he doesn’t, you—’
‘You are just misinterpreting what I said to suit your own ends,’ Harriet objected angrily. ‘That is not what I meant at all.’
They were glaring at one another like two opponents, their argument only brought to an end by the waiter coming to remove their plates for the next course.
CHAPTER THREE
HARRIET stiffened as she saw the look of appreciation and invitation the pretty girl behind the reception desk gave Matt as they left the restaurant. Yet another reason for keeping clear of him, she decided grimly. What woman in possession of all her senses wanted a man who attracted and encouraged the interest of virtually every female he came into contact with?
Not that Matt had encouraged the girl’s acquisitive hungry look, Harriet was forced to concede as Matt strode past her obliviously. But that did not alter the fact that if he had done the girl would have leapt to seize the opportunity, Harriet acknowledged.
Courteously Matt placed his hand beneath her elbow to escort her across the car park, rather in the manner that her father adopted towards elderly female members of the family, she reflected darkly.
Her attention was momentarily distracted by the sight of a couple several yards away, wrapped in each other’s arms and exchanging the most passionate of kisses as the woman fumbled to unlock the door of the car.
The pounding of Harriet’s heart inside her chest was followed by an ache of longing that seemed to seep into every bit of her.
What would it be like to be loved and wanted by Matt like that? Well, whatever it was like she wasn’t going to be the one to find out, she told herself sharply.
Matt frowned as he glanced down towards Harriet. She hadn’t spoken since before they had left the restaurant—which was, he suspected, quite a record, since during the rest of the evening she had engaged in the kind of conversation that had left him reluctantly impressed by its range and depth. Matt wasn’t used to his dates having as keen an interest in world affairs as he did himself, nor in them being so comfortable and informed in debating them.
Just listening to Harriet gave the words ‘verbal foreplay’ a whole new meaning, he decided ruefully. Certainly he had never expected that he would find anything erotic in a vigorous discussion about the merits of a home-based workforce. But then he found just about everything about Harriet erotic. In fact, she fascinated him, infuriated him, and just about occupied every one of his waking hours as well as a large percentage of his sleeping ones. And that meant…
Harriet glowered at Matt as he suddenly and for no reason at all stood still right in the middle of the car park.
The couple by the car were still kissing.
Matt followed the direction of her gaze and tugged grimly on her arm so that she had to look away.
‘Stop thinking about it,’ he said curtly. ‘It’s not going to happen!’
Harriet could feel her face starting to burn with guilt and chagrin. Had he really guessed so easily how much she had wished that she were the one being kissed so passionately, and by him?
‘What makes you think I want it to?’ she demanded defensively.
They had reached his car, and as he unlocked it Matt gave her an oblique look. Her full lips were set in a constrained closed line and her green eyes were a mutinous jade.
He opened the passenger door for her, but as she stepped past him he encircled her with the car door and his body.
‘Of course you want it to. You’re in love, or you think you are. But Ben is not in love with you.’
Ben! Harriet went limp with relief and sagged against the car. Of course—he thought she was in love with Ben!
‘But that doesn’t stop you wanting to feel his mouth on yours, wanting to…’
The raw sound of Matt’s voice jerked her into defensive anger.
If she had been in love with Ben his last words would not have done her any good at all. As it was they were making her want to look at Matt’s own mouth as though she were magnetised by it! And not just look at it, she admitted longingly.
‘Have you ever thought of writing sex scenes for films?’ she asked him, with what she had intended to be sarcasm but which instead sounded more like breathless wonder, Harriet recognised in self-disgust as she scrambled into the car.
To her relief Matt refused to pick up her gauntlet, and started the car instead.
Half an hour later, as they drove through the down-at-heel area where she lived, Harriet could well imagine what Matt must be thinking. But she liked her small house, tucked in cosily with its neighbours, and she liked her long back garden even more.
As though he had read her mind Matt broke his silence to announce tersely, ‘This is a pretty rough area. Not one I would have thought safe for a woman living on her own.’
Yes, it was a bit of a rough area, and following an outbreak of violent incidents she felt increasingly worried about the fact that gangs of youths had begun to roam the local streets, and that if you possessed a car it was not considered wise to park it outside.
But the area still had a certain artisan quaintness about it, and—even more important to Harriet—her little house was affordable and within public transport distance of the office.
She also liked the fact that she had a local butcher and grocery shop, and that most of her elderly neighbours had been born and bred there and so were full of stories of how the area had once been. But now she was seeing it through Matt’s eyes, and what she was seeing made her feel both angry and uncomfortable.
Outside a local take away a gang of youths were scuffling and exchanging obscenities. Harriet could see the look Matt was giving them.
She felt obliged to defend them. ‘They’re only young.’
‘And that gives them licence to be foul mouthed?’ Matt challenged her. ‘Aren’t your family concerned about the kind of area you’re living in?’ he demanded.
Mutinously Harriet turned away from him, pretending not to hear. The truth was that her parents had been dismayed when she had shown them her new home—but she had managed to talk them around.
One of the reasons she had returned home at the weekend had been to wave them off for her father’s lecture tour of America. Since her brother and his family lived in New York, Harriet knew how much her parents were looking forward to their visit, and being able to spend some time with their grandchildren.
‘Harriet…’ Matt began ominously, and then stopped as he turned into her narrow street and they both saw the police car and the ambulance, lights flashing, outside her elderly neighbour’s home.
Her own feelings forgotten, Harriet pressed her hand to her mouth in anxiety. Mrs Simmonds was in her late eighties, and had a fund of interesting stories about the past, but Harriet was aware that she had a weak heart and had taken to surreptitiously checking on the elderly lady every day in a way that meant that she did not hurt her pride.
‘Oh, no!’
‘What the—’
They both spoke at the same time, and Matt stopped his car.
‘It’s Mrs Simmonds,’ Harriet told him shakily as they watched two burly ambulancemen carrying the old lady into the ambulance on a stretcher.
A police officer was already approaching the car.
‘What’s happened?’ Matt asked.
‘I’m Mrs Simmonds’s neighbour,’ Harriet told him, and got out to join Matt and the policeman. ‘I know she has a weak heart…’
‘Some young thugs broke into her house,’ the policeman told them angrily. ‘Ransacked the place, they did, and made so much noise that someone across the street rang us. We don’t know yet how bad the old lady’s injuries are. She’s had a very nasty shock, so they’re taking her into hospital to keep an eye on her for a couple of days.’
‘Why would anyone break into her house? She doesn’t have anything to steal,’ Harriet protested, pale with alarm. ‘She…’
The policeman gave her a pitying look. ‘It will be a drug-related crime, miss. They get that desperate for it they’d rob their own grandmother—and often do—’
Harriet shuddered.
The ambulance was already drawing away, and the policeman turned to return to his own car and waiting colleague.
‘Right—that’s it,’ Matt announced as soon as both vehicles had gone. ‘No way are you staying here on your own! I’m going to give you two choices,’ he told Harriet grimly. ‘Either I stay here with you tonight or you come back to my place with me. I don’t care which choice you make, but let’s put it this way. I only have one bedroom!’
Harriet felt a jolt in her stomach as though someone had kicked her. One bedroom! Already her body was reacting to the sensual mental fantasy she was creating! What would Matt say if she told him she wanted the second option?
‘I mean what I say, Harriet!’ he said sternly, oblivious to the erotic meanderings of her wayward thoughts.
She wished! Oh, how she wished!
Her heart was bumping uncomfortably against her ribs—and not just because of the effect Matt was having on her.
Her own honesty compelled her to admit that the attack on her neighbour had shocked and frightened her. She was extremely apprehensive at the thought of spending the night alone, worrying that the attackers might decide to come back!
‘I don’t have much of an option, do I?’ she asked Matt, saccharine-sweetly. ‘But I warn you my spare room is very small and has a single bed. A very small single bed.’
‘I’ll live,’ Matt answered laconically. ‘Give me your keys.’
Idiotically she handed them to him, her heart giving a funny little skip beat at the intimacy such an action suggested. And then it gave a much stronger kick as Matt’s hard, warm fingers closed around her own. Inside her head she had a sudden mental image of him enfolding her hand within his own and them sliding his fingers between hers, and inside her body she had an immediate and explicit surge of aching heat.
Hot-faced, she dragged away her hand and then berated herself mentally for being so vulnerable and weak-willed as Matt let them both into her small, cosy home.
And Harriet’s home was cosy. As cosy as a small, neat and warm little nest. Her little front room was painted cream, to match the cream rugs on the polished floorboards, and Harriet had made the curtains herself, in a natural woven fabric. Her log-burning stove was her pride and joy, a bargain buy from a scrapyard, and the small terracotta linen-covered sofa had been cadged from her parents and reupholstered for her as a moving-in present.
Harriet could see Matt staring around the small room before following her into the kitchen, with its dining area in the conservatory addition.
Harriet had painted the cheap flat pack kitchen units herself, after bullying Ben to help her assemble them, while her dining room furniture had been junk shop finds which she had patiently restored.
As he looked around the comfortable kitchen, with its cream painted units and earthy-toned décor, Matt acknowledged that it took far more than an expensive designer to create a home—and, moreover, whatever it did take Harriet had it in spades.
To Harriet, though, his silent inspection of her small home spoke of arrogance and even possibly contempt. After all, she had heard all about Matt’s state-of-the-art expensive penthouse from Ben.
‘You don’t have to stay here,’ she told him fiercely. ‘It was your choice. Not mine. My home may not compare with yours—’
‘No, it doesn’t.’ Matt stopped her grimly.
His rudeness momentarily silenced her.
What would Harriet say if he told her how much he had grown to detest the sterile bleakness of a place that not even the most charitable person could call a home?
Broodingly he roved around the kitchen whilst Harriet watched him resentfully. What was he doing? Trying to make the point that her small home made him feel confined?
‘Look, there’s really no need for you to stay here,’ she said. ‘I can always ring Ben and ask him to come over.’
Immediately Matt swung around. ‘Oh, yes, you’d like to do that, wouldn’t you? Like hell you will, though! Hasn’t anything I’ve said to you sunk in? The whole purpose of this…this…’
‘Farce?’ Harriet supplied bitterly for him.
‘This exercise,’ Matt continued, ignoring her, ‘is to put a barrier between you and Ben, not give you the excuse to invite him to share your bed!’
‘He would not be sharing my bed!’ Harriet protested, rushing into impetuous denial. ‘When he stays here he always sleeps in his own room.’
‘His own room?’
Harriet could understand the hard edge to Matt’s voice, but not the white line of tightly reined in emotion around his mouth.
