Boardroom to Bedroom

The way to a man’s heart…

is through the bedroom!

THE BOSS’S MARRIAGE ARRANGEMENT

by Penny Jordan

and

HIS DARLING VALENTINE

by Carole Mortimer

Two original stories to celebrate Valentine’s Day by your favorite Presents authors—together in one volume!

PENNY JORDAN has been writing for more than twenty years and has an outstanding record: over 130 novels published, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour and Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Penny Jordan was born in Preston, Lancashire, England.

CAROLE MORTIMER was born in England, the youngest of three children. She began writing in 1978, and has now written over ninety books for Harlequin Mills and Boon®. Carole has four sons, Matthew, Joshua, Timothy and Peter. She says, “I’m happily married to Peter Senior. We live on the Isle of Man.”

Look out for more titles from these authors coming soon in Harlequin Presents®

Possessed by the Sheikh

by Penny Jordan

#2457

Coming in April

The Vengeance Affair

by Carole Mortimer

Available from our book club in May (#250) and also available from retail in November as part of the Secret Passions series in our Collectors’ Edition.

Boardroom to Bedroom
The Boss’s Marriage Arrangement
Penny Jordan
His Darling Valentine
Carole Mortimer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

THE BOSS’S MARRIAGE ARRANGEMENT

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

EPILOGUE

HIS DARLING VALENTINE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

THE BOSS’S MARRIAGE ARRANGEMENT

Penny Jordan

CHAPTER ONE

AS ALWAYS when she had to walk past her boss’s open office door, Harriet felt her body tense and she forced herself to look straight ahead and not into the room.

She should never have agreed to work for Matthew Cole, she admitted, reflecting darkly as she did so that if it hadn’t been for her best friend then she wouldn’t have done. That was the trouble with best friends; sometimes—too many times, in her experience—they tended to believe that they knew what was best! Her particular best friend certainly did, which was why he had coaxed, cajoled and generally used every trick in the book to get her to submit her CV for Matthew Cole’s personal appraisal.

Yes, that was right, her best friend was male! She and Ben had been friends since their junior school days, and that friendship had strengthened when they had both chosen to go to the same university.

Now, four years after they’d left university, their friendship was as strong as ever—which was why she had taken Ben’s advice and applied for the job at the firm of architects and design consultants, which he had insisted would be perfect for her.

And, to be fair to him, in all probability it would have been. If the job hadn’t come with strings. Strings that were firmly held in the uncompromising grip of the company’s owner, Matthew Cole. And strings which Matthew Cole had absolutely no compunction about pulling extremely hard when he felt like it. Take the way he had dictatorially announced that her desk was to be on the opposite side of the room from Ben’s, even though they were collaborating on the same office design project.

She should have listened to her own inner feelings right from the start, Harriet admitted, her green eyes shadowing as sunlight spilled through the window, burnishing her conker-coloured shoulder length hair. The thickness of her long black eyelashes gave her eyes a certain smouldering sensuality, which was echoed by the warm fullness of her mouth.

As she passed Mathew Cole’s office she let out a sigh of relief. She knew without looking in that he wasn’t there. For some reason she had developed a very sensitive early-warning system that told her very explicitly whenever Matt was about.

If she had had any sense she would have paid far more attention to that stab of shocked awareness and its ricocheting fall out when he had first interviewed her. She should have done, but when Ben had asked her jovially if she had been, as he put it, ‘knocked out by Matt’s sexiness, like every other woman who sets eyes on him,’ she had of course denied being so much as remotely aware of any such thing, never mind affected by it!

Ben had been hugely amused by her reaction, shaking his head and laughing as he told her how women normally reacted to his boss. And that had been her downfall. Because of course when she had been offered the job her own pride had not allowed her to refuse to accept it.

Despite the shock that Matthew Coles’s potent air of sexuality and masculine power had given her, she was totally immune to it—and to him, Harriet assured herself, with blatant disregard for the truth, as she walked into the open plan office she shared with Ben and other members of their team.

‘Nice weekend?’ Ben asked as she sat down.

‘Fine,’ Harriet assured him. ‘Everyone at home sends their love, and your mother has sent some of her damson jam for you.’

Ben groaned. ‘I’ve got a shelf full of the stuff already. You’d think that after twenty-six years she’d know I don’t like damson jam.’

‘Perhaps she’s trying to convert you. Which reminds me—she wants to know when she and your dad are going to get to meet Cindi!’ Harriet laughed, but her laughter died on her lips as she studied Ben’s haggard face.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, her concern intensifying as he shook his head. ‘Come on, Ben,’ she cajoled, ‘this is me—remember!’

She hadn’t forgotten, even if Ben had, how he had helped and comforted her through the break up of her own first big romance during their first year at university.

‘It’s Cindi,’ Ben admitted unhappily. ‘We had a bit of row over the weekend. And it isn’t the first one either. Harry, I just don’t understand her,’ he said vehemently as he swung around in his chair to look at her. ‘I mean, one minute she’s “let’s move in together and start planning a future” and then the next she’s saying, “I’m out with my friends and I don’t want to know you.” And all because…’

‘Because what?’ she pressed, but Ben shook his head. Harriet sighed. Cindi, the girl Ben was dating, had recently joined the company too, although since they were working on different projects, and she herself had been away on holiday, Harriet hadn’t had any opportunity to get to know her as yet. She knew that Cindi and Ben had been dating, and that they had fallen head over heels in love with one another.

‘Everyone has lovers’ tiffs, Ben.’ She tried to comfort him. ‘Perhaps give yourselves a chance to talk the problem through together…?’

‘This isn’t a tiff. She’s being totally unreasonable and she knows it. And as for talking it through—!’ His normally easygoing expression hardened. ‘No way I am going to be given ultimatums about the way I live my life!’

Harriet could see that he genuinely believed he had a grievance, but she still tried to lighten his mood by teasing, ‘What has she done? Told you all your old sports stuff has to go?’

When he didn’t respond she looked worriedly at him and said quietly, ‘Okay, so it’s something serious and I’m out of order trying to joke about it, but you can be a stubborn so-and-so at times, and if it’s a matter of giving a bit or losing someone special to you then—’

‘It isn’t as simple as that, Harry, and if she genuinely loved me she wouldn’t need to make such bloody ridiculous conditions because she’d know…’

‘She’d know what?’ Harriet demanded, mystified.

For a minute she thought that Ben wasn’t going to answer, and then, as though he couldn’t help himself, he burst out furiously, ‘She’d know that you’re the closest thing I’ve got to a sister, as well as my best friend, and that no way do you feel any differently about me than I do about you. Hell, just because she’s never had any close friends of the opposite sex doesn’t mean that— And as for saying that you might secretly be in love with me—well, that’s just plain ridiculous!’

It took Harriet several seconds to assimilate what Ben was telling her, but once she had, she protested immediately, ‘She can’t possibly think that! You must have misunderstood.’

‘I wish!’ Ben responded darkly.

‘Look, Ben, let me have a word with her,’ Harriet offered.

‘No. No! It’s no use. She won’t believe you, Harry. And that’s what’s really getting to me. I’ve given her my word that I’ve been totally up front with her about us, but apparently my word isn’t good enough.’ His voice hardened. ‘What she wants—what she says her friends have told her she should demand—is for me to prove to her that there’s nothing going on between you and me by cutting you out of my life completely. She says if I loved her then I’d agree. She says she will not accept me having another woman in my life who means more to me than she does. And she says that if I don’t accept her terms then it means that you do mean more! I’ve tried to make her understand— to see…to admit that she’s being sexist and stupid, and that if she loved me she would accept my word that she’s got it all wrong. After all, I know you a damn sight better than she does. You aren’t secretly in love with me, are you?’

Harriet burst out laughing. ‘No, I am not!’ she assured him truthfully.

From where she stood it was easy for her to see how and why the argument had escalated out of control, even if she did feel affronted by Cindi’s assumption that she was the sort of person who would try to break up someone else’s romance. Take two people who had fallen passionately in love but who did not know one another all that well, add a generous helping of female jealousy, a pinch of insecurity and a good measure of male pride, and what you had were all the ingredients for a very destructive explosion.

Right now Ben might have an angrily stubborn look in his eyes, but Harriet could see the pain he was trying to hide. Automatically she leaned forward and took hold of his hand, giving it a comforting squeeze.

On his way past the large room which housed his creative design team, Matt Cole came to an abrupt halt as he surveyed the intimacy of the way Harriet was leaning towards Ben and reaching for his hand, her eyes liquid with tender emotion.

Matt was thirty-six years old, the head of his own highly innovative and profitable company, and supposed to be possessed of a sharply astute brain—so why the hell had he not recognised what was happening to him the minute he had set eyes on Harriet and taken immediate and evasive action then?

Because he had believed then, in his arrogance, that he had more than enough power and control over his emotions to keep them in check, that was why. He had felt the immediate fierce surge of emotional and physical reaction to her and dismissed its importance, shrugging it and his own feelings aside, telling himself that it hardly mattered that he happened to find her attractive since he had a rule that he never mixed business with pleasure. And, since he had never previously had any problems in sticking to that rule, he hadn’t thought it would pose any problems now.

But he had misjudged the strength of his own feelings. Big time. Very big time.

He was the only child of older parents. His mother had died shortly after his birth, while his father had died when he was in his first year at university, and so all along Matt had focused on his work as a means of providing him with the only kind of security he had told himself he needed.

Marriage and children were on his agenda—eventually. But falling passionately, mindlessly and helplessly in love, and having his whole world turned upside down were not!

But that was exactly what had happened. And, what was more, with every day that passed it was growing harder and harder for him to deal with his feelings.

He had tried to distance himself from Harriet, to cut himself off from what he felt by putting up a façade of cold indifference, but he might as well have tried to breathe without oxygen he acknowledged grimly.

Every day, several times a day, he found himself making some kind of excuse to be in the vicinity of her desk. Every day he watched with a jealousy that made him appalled at himself as she lavished on Ben the attention he longed to have her lavish on him!

He had tried everything, from telling himself he was behaving unprofessionally to telling himself he was behaving ridiculously, but nothing made the slightest difference to what he felt. What he felt right now was that he wanted to stride over to Harriet and take her in his arms and kiss her—if not senseless then at least into a state where she wanted him to the same extent that he wanted her, and to hell with the consequences! But even stronger than his desire to make love to her was his desire to shield and to protect her. To shield her from some of her colleagues’ contemptuous and critical comments about her and to protect her from the consequences of her own behaviour.

It made no difference how often he told himself that as one of his employees she had no more right to his protection than any of the others, or that he had no right to want to protect her. He loved her, and he couldn’t bear to hear what was being said about her. He found it hard to stand to one side and allow the inevitable to happen. Because everyone, it seemed, believed that sooner or later someone, if not Ben himself, was going to tell her to stop making a fool of herself by displaying so plainly her feelings for a man who obviously did not return them.

If an adult human being had to suffer unrequited love, then better by far that they suffer it in secret— as he was doing.

But what right did he have to interfere? Either as her employer or as the man who loved her?

Morally perhaps none! But emotionally… Matt exhaled sharply.

Helplessly he watched Harriet move even closer to Ben. It was a physical effort to stop himself from going over and separating them.

Didn’t she know what a fool she was making of herself? Didn’t she care? Didn’t she realise that people were discussing her and her obvious love for Ben—a man who saw her only as a friend—behind her back?

Because if she didn’t she damned well ought to!

It would take a much braver man than Ben himself to tell her though, Matt recognised, and her female colleages seemed to prefer to gossip about the situation rather than do anything about it. He had happened to be standing out of sight but well within earshot the previous week, when Cindi had been despairingly confiding in an older woman employee about a row she had had with Ben over his friendship with Harriet.

‘He swears that she is nothing more to him than a friend,’ Matt had heard her saying tearfully.

‘Well, he may see their relationship that way, but it’s obvious that she doesn’t,’ her companion had retorted darkly. ‘Look at the way she’s followed him here! Don’t make the same mistake I did, Cindi,’ she had warned her. ‘My ex swore to me that his secretary meant nothing to him, but, as the little tart told me the day he left me for her, she wanted him and nothing was going to stop her having him. Some women are like that! And if you want my opinion Harriet is one of them! I mean, you’ve only got to see her with Ben. It’s obvious how she feels about him. She spends every spare minute she can with him. Take it from me, she wants him—no matter what he might say or think!’

‘Don’t, please,’ Cindi had protested. ‘Ben says he loves me, but…’

‘Then tell him to prove it! Tell him that you want her out of his life!’

But Harriet very plainly was not out of Ben’s life, and had no intention of getting out of it.

Didn’t she realise what people were saying? Didn’t she care that Ben was actually seeing something else? Had she no pride, no sense of self-respect or selfworth? Hadn’t it occurred to her to stop obsessing about Ben and find a man who loved and wanted her? Matt wondered angrily.

A man?

His mouth compressing, he wondered helplessly for the thousandth time why this had had to happen to him! It wasn’t what he wanted, and it sure as hell wasn’t what he needed! It felt as if his jealousy was burning a hole in his gut.

Cynically he reflected that a sitcom writer would have a field-day, if not a whole carnival with the situation!

Matt loves Harriet, who loves Ben, who loves Cindi, who loves Ben, who does not love Harriet, who does not love Matt, who does love her—with the kind of savage, self-destructive, all-consuming hunger that set all his inner emotional buttons on overdrive and meltdown every damned time he saw her. And it didn’t help that every damned time he did see her she was draping herself on or around Ben!

And what in some ways was even worse was the fact that Matt knew that if he were Ben, business ethics and self-imposed rules or not, he’d have had her in his arms, his mouth on hers, faster than she could blink. He drew in a deep, shuddering breath and fought for self-control.

Ignobly and impossibly he had even at one stage contemplated firing her. But, even if the law hadn’t prevented him from doing any such thing without a watertight reason, she was far too much of an asset to the business for it to lose her.

And that was just one of the more minor reasons why he loved her. Unlike Ben, who was a good, solid and cheerful worker, Harriet had brought a passion and flair to her role in the team that had infused the project she was working on with a new dynamism.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t tried to overcome his feelings for her; he had! In the past few months he had dated more women than he had done in the past few years. But none of them had so much as dragged his thoughts away from Harriet for as long as five seconds.

Her Matt-aware antennae for once not working efficiently, Harriet was oblivious to the fact that Matt could overhear her as she shook her head and told Ben firmly, ‘We can’t talk about this here.’ Giving his hand another squeeze, she suggested, ‘Why don’t we have dinner together tonight? I’ve got loads to tell you about what’s going on at home.’

Watching her, Matt felt as though someone was ripping his heart, muscle from muscle. He wanted to stride over to them, to take hold of Harriet and ask her if she realised what she was doing. And then what? Force her to back off and allow Ben and Cindi to get on with their lives—and their love?

He had no right to interfere, he warned himself harshly. But if he didn’t then who would? And besides, a dangerously reasonable little voice inside him argued, didn’t he have the right as an employer to want a workplace free of any emotional entanglements and dramas that would take his employees’ attention away from their work?

Oblivious to what Matt was thinking, Harriet watched Ben. He looked so dejected that she felt desperately sorry for him, and wanted to do whatever she could to help. Cindi obviously loved Ben, and Harriet knew that Ben loved Cindi. She was amazed that Ben had even needed to ask her if she was secretly in love with him! How could she be when…? When what? When she was desperately afraid that she had fallen in love with Matt?

Matt! Automatically she lifted her head and looked towards the corridor which led to his office, her body stiffening and hot colour staining her skin as she saw him standing watching them.

Ben was a good looking young man, but he was just that—a young man. In no way did he compare in sheer male presence to Matthew Cole, who was pure lethal adult, and so fully charged with testosterone that no woman living could fail to be aware of him. Not that she didn’t do her bit for her own sex by fiercely pretending that she was not. She was aware of him. All the time! But some days, sometimes—like right now—something went wrong and her protective shield failed to work properly. Sometimes just the sight of Matt was enough to set up a chain of reaction inside her body that resulted in butterflies in her tummy and a weakness in her legs. But that weakness was nowhere near as dangerous as the weakness in her emotions.

Because the truth was that Matt epitomised everything Harriet had ever dreamed about in a man. He was her childhood prince come to life; her knight in shining armour. He was her darkly disturbing, secret sensual-fantasymade man. He made her ache with feverish longing—and, far more dangerously, he made her dream impossible daydreams about love and happy ever afters, and at least four little Matts or Matildas calling her Mummy!

And no way was that ever going to happen! Matt didn’t even like her, never mind love her. In fact sometimes when he was looking at her the way he was right now, his slate-grey eyes iced with permafrost and freezing her with the most intimidating glare of fury she had ever seen, she felt that he actively disliked her.

Her heart might be sinking, Harriet acknowledged, but her chin wasn’t going to. Bravely she tilted it, and met his slicing scrutiny.

What was it about the thickness of his closecropped dark hair that made her want to slide her fingers into it, to mould them against the curve of his well-shaped head, whilst one of his strong hands cupped her own, and that hard mouth softened with desire and…?

‘Harriet, I’d like to see you in my office.’

The cold, clinical words brought her back to earth.

‘You mean now?’ she queried. She needed to keep her distance from him right now, not get even closer to him. Harriet had her pride—the same pride that had led to her refusing to give in to her first love’s demand that she go to bed with him—and she was not going to join the ranks of Matt’s lovelorn adorers.

‘I mean now!’ he agreed, in a clipped voice that made Ben give her a small shove.

‘See you tonight, then,’ he said.

Matt had already disappeared down the corridor, and as she followed him Harriet wondered feverishly what he wanted.

There had never been any open clashes between them. How could there be when he was not just her immediate boss but the owner of the company as well? But there had been plenty of subtle indirect ones.

It wasn’t so much Matt’s antagonism towards her that sparked off the fiery pride that led to her spirited defiance but her own shocked stark inner awareness of just how vulnerable to him she was.

Apart from the brief catastrophe of her first foray into love Harriet had remained heart-whole, and that was the way she had intended to remain until she was well into her thirties and ready to settle down. And then she had seen Matt and her sensible plans had self-ignited after one incredulous look at him. Nor had it made any difference telling herself that no sensible and right-thinking woman would be so idiotic as to fall crazily in love with a man who obviously was never going to feel the same way about her.

Abruptly Harriet realised that she had reached Matt’s office.

An inimical biting grey glance impaled her where she stood, leaving her feeling as though her every thought had been dissected and then rejected.

‘Come in and close the door.’

Her heart was going crazy inside her chest. But it wasn’t her erratic heartbeat that bothered her as she mentally cursed herself for leaving her jacket on her chair.

The state-of-the-art office had a climatically controlled temperature that made it totally unnecessary for her nipples to do some temperature-awareness testing of their own. But that was exactly what they were doing—pressing themselves against her clothes for the entire world to see, as though she was standing in an arctic wind.

Or sexually aroused. Well, she certainly knew which it was, and she could only hope that Matt did not!

Her nipples tightened so fiercely that she almost cried out in protest.

‘Sit down.’

Woodenly, Harriet did so.

For once Matt had no carefully thought out plan of action mentally organised. He only knew that for her own sake Harriet needed to distance herself from Ben—both in her own emotions and in other people’s eyes.

The intensity of his grim expression as he battled with his own private devils increased Harriet’s apprehension. What on earth had she done?

‘It’s come to my attention that your…feelings for Ben are the subject of a great deal of office criticism and gossip.’

Harriet could feel the tips of her ears starting to burn hotly in mortified shock. Matt had swung his chair around so that she could only see his profile, but she was miserably and humiliating aware that he could still see how his words were affecting her.

Her whole face was burning now, with both anger and humiliation, as the full ramifications of his accusatory and demeaning statement sank in.

Immediately she rushed to defend herself, and to reject what he was saying. ‘If you are referring to Cindi’s ridiculous suggestion that I am secretly in love with Ben—’

‘Secretly?’ Matt stopped her sharply, turning to face her. ‘There was nothing secret about the touching little scene I just witnessed. Touching, that is, unless one happens to know the truth! And the entire company knows the truth, Harriet.’ The look Matt gave her made her want to disappear!

Through stiff, shock-numbed lips Harriet managed to demand, ‘And that truth is…?’

There was a look in her eyes that made Matt want to go to her and hold her, tell her that nothing and no one was going to be allowed to hurt her whilst he was there to prevent it, but he knew that he couldn’t. He was doing this because he wanted to help her, not because he wanted to hurt her!

‘That you are refusing to see that your love for Ben is not returned, that it never will be returned. The way you are pursuing him so obsessively, following him and clinging to him, is not only coming between him and Cindi, it’s making you the object of other people’s contempt as well.’

The cold, brutal words hit her like physical blows, and as from physical blows Harriet recoiled from them, whispering painfully, ‘No, that isn’t true.’

‘It is true. Have you no pride? No self-respect?’

The blood receded swiftly from Harriet’s face, leaving it creamily pale as shock and outrage filled her.

Cindi’s assumption and Cindi’s ultimatum had obviously not been confined merely to Ben! It was bad enough discovering that her colleagues shared Cindi’s misinterpretation of her relationship with Ben, but to discover that Matt was not just privy to it but believed it as well filled her with blistering hot shame.

Valiantly she struggled to overcome her feelings and to explain. After all, no matter what her private feelings might be, Matt was her boss, and at this stage in her career she couldn’t afford to earn any kind of black mark, still less be written off as some kind of obsessive who was trying to force herself on a man who didn’t want her!

‘I was just trying to tell Ben—’

‘What?’ Matt challenged her, striding from behind his desk and coming over to her. ‘What were you trying to tell him? That he’d be better off with you? With your love?’

‘No!’

‘No? So what, then? Were you pleading with him to love you?’

‘No! No!’ Harriet denied fiercely, getting to her own feet to confront him and then wishing that she hadn’t as she realised how close to him she was.

She wasn’t a small woman, at five feet nine inches tall, but she was small-boned and slender, and Matt was well over six feet, with a physique which Ben had told her came from his days as captain of his university’s rugby team.

How on earth had this happened? How could she possibly be in this sickeningly humiliating situation?

Matt could see the pain in her eyes. Part of him felt bitterly angry with her for what she was doing, but most of him simply wanted to hold her and comfort her. Her pain was his pain, and he hurt for her and with her.

It was simply to comfort her that he had put his hands on her and drawn her towards him. Nothing more!

Harriet stiffened as Matt’s hands closed on her upper arms, knowing that right now she was far too emotionally frail to withstand something like this.

Ben was forgotten as though he had never existed. She tried to drag air into lungs compressed with shocked physical awareness.

Matt was touching her. Matt was looking down into her eyes with frowning bleakness.

She exhaled shakily.

He shouldn’t have done this. He shouldn’t have touched her, Matt recognised grimly. No matter how altruistic his original motivation and intention had been. Abruptly he released her.

As Matt thrust her away Harriet tensed, hating herself for the way she wanted—no, not just wanted, but ached and needed—to cling to him.

‘Quite apart from anything else,’ she could hear Matt telling her grimly, ‘your behaviour is causing disruption and…and discord here in the office. And that is something I will not tolerate. We work together here, in very tight-knit teams, and every single member of those teams has been selected by me personally as a vital component of their particular unit. But if I thought it necessary for the greater good to replace one of those components then I would have no compunction whatsoever in doing so. Do you understand what I am saying?’

‘Yes, you’re threatening to sack me,’ Harriet answered him briefly. ‘But you’ve got it all wrong! And so has Cindi! I do love Ben, yes! But as a friend…as a brother, if you like. Not…not in the way that you are trying to imply!’

‘You mean there’s nothing sexual in your… your…?’

‘Nothing,’ Harriet emphasised fiercely, without letting him finish.

‘No?’ Matt gave her a cynical look that made her whole body burn with resentment. ‘Then prove it,’ he told her in a clipped voice.

Harriet exhaled noisily. ‘And how exactly am I supposed to do that?’

‘Well, you could start by making it obvious and public that you’re very involved with.. dating someone else.’

‘Dating someone else?’ Harriet repeated blankly. ‘Who?’

‘Me!’

The colour came and went in Harriet’s mobile face—and if she had but known it her shock only echoed his own, Matt acknowledged. What the hell did he think he was doing? Morally and in every other way there was he was totally out of order. He should make it clear immediately that he hadn’t meant what he had said and that Harriet was to ignore it. Immediately!

Matt was suggesting that she pretend to want him? No pretence was necessary!

‘You can’t mean… Are you saying…? Oh, no, I couldn’t do that. It’s impossible… No. No way!’ she told him a little breathlessly.

Her words didn’t just sting Matt’s pride raw, they blew a large hole in his good intentions as well as shattering them into nothing. A ruthless determination swept over him, swamping everything else.

‘You’ve just said that you aren’t in love with Ben—I’m giving you an opportunity to prove it.’

There was a small suspenseful pause.

‘If you don’t take it then I’ll know that you are lying,’ Matt finished coldly.

Harriet looked at him, wondering how on earth she had ever got into such a mess.

‘No one will ever believe that you and I are dating.’

‘Then it will be up to us to convince them, won’t it?’ Matt said smoothly. ‘The choice is yours!’

‘Some choice,’ Harriet muttered, adding fiercely, ‘Why are you doing this?’

Her throat felt raw, the backs of her eyes stung, and her chest hurt, as though she were about to come down with a heavy cold. Her physical reactions weren’t caused by a physical virus, though, but an emotional one.

‘I’m doing it to stop you causing disruption and discord in my business. Besides, I should have thought that if you genuinely don’t love Ben, as you claim, then you’d jump at the chance to prove it— and to give Ben and Cindi a chance to find happiness together,’ Matt reiterated curtly.

No way could he tell her that he was doing it purely and simply because he wanted any excuse to be with her…

‘What was all that about?’

Harriet gave a nervous look over her shoulder as Ben came up to her at the water cooler.

‘What…what do you mean?’ she hedged.

‘What did Matt want? You were in there for ages, and when you came out you looked…’

For a moment she was tempted to tell him, but before she could say anything she heard Matt saying smoothly behind her, ‘Have you told Ben about us yet, darling?’

Harriet almost dropped the cup of water she was holding, but she suspected that the shock on her face was nothing to the stupefaction on Ben’s as Matt came between them.

‘Harry?’ Ben questioned incredulously.

‘You’re trembling. I hope that’s because of me,’ Matt was murmuring against her ear as he relieved her of the paper cup she had all but crushed by sliding one hand around her waist to turn her towards him and removing the cup with the other.

Ben was positively goggling at them, his mouth half open and a look of total shock on his face.

‘You mean, you two are…?’ He shook his head.

‘We certainly are,’ Matt assured him calmly. ‘In fact we very much are—aren’t we, Harriet?’

The look he was giving her was practically a physical caress in itself, Harriet recognised weakly, and her wretched body was certainly responding to it as though it were.

Ben obviously hadn’t missed the high octane sensuality of the smoky look Matt was giving her, because suddenly he started to frown—an expression that Harriet recognised all too well.

Ben was her friend, but he was also male, and as such he had always taken a very brotherly and protective attitude towards Harriet where other men were concerned. And right now he was looking at Matt as though he was a suspicious father about to demand to know Matt’s intentions!

‘You never said anything to me!’ he accused Harriet sternly.

‘I asked her not to,’ Matt answered promptly for her.

Somehow the hand which had relieved her of the paper cup was now holding her own, his fingers sliding between hers in a manner so intimate that Harriet was having trouble breathing properly. Her skin tingled, and liquid pleasure shot up her arm like an injection of some kind of sensual drug that locked into her heart.

She had the strongest need not just to move closer to Matt’s body, but also to press herself against him with wanton abandonment.

Wicked images of the two of them alone together somewhere very private filled her head in a dangerously explicit slide show. Matt perching on the edge of a desk, his legs open as he drew her to him to kiss her passionately, whilst her fingers explored the hard muscles of his thigh, her touch making him growl in protest and take her hand and place it on the swollen bulge of his erection. Whilst he was kissing her he would slowly unfasten her top and remove it. His hands would cup her breasts and savour their shape and feel as her tight, erect nipples flaunted their eager hunger for his touch… Abruptly Harriet called her thoughts to order as she heard, ‘But now that things are serious between us it’s different. I don’t care who knows how I feel about Harriet!’

‘Things are serious between you?’ Ben’s frown cleared, leaving him looking both relieved and happy.

CHAPTER TWO

‘HARRIET, I don’t understand you! There’s Matt telling me that things are serious between the two of you and you haven’t said a word! Why not?’

‘Er…well, until he called me into his office I didn’t know that things were serious,’ Harriet explained, mentally justifying her statement by reminding herself that it was the truth after all—if not in the way that Ben would interpret it.

‘Well, once Cindi knows this she’s going to—’

‘Be very relieved,’ Harriet finished firmly for him, adding, ‘If you love her as much as I think you do, Ben, you won’t make an issue of this silly mistake about me. After all, if she didn’t love you she wouldn’t care about my relationship with you, would she?’

‘No… But…’ He gave a small sigh. ‘She had a few days’ holiday to use and she’s gone to see her parents—cooling off time, she called it.’

‘Well, if I were you I’d be waiting for her when she comes back with something very romantic planned.’

‘Yes. I’ll do that.’ He paused, and then said worriedly, ‘Harry, this thing between you and Matt… Don’t rush into…anything, will you? I mean, you haven’t… He hasn’t… And Matt is…’

Oh, yes! Matt most certainly was, Harriet agreed mentally as she told Ben lightly, ‘You worry about your own love life, Ben, and leave me to worry about mine.’

Smiling at him, she leaned forward and kissed his cheek.

Within seconds the phone on her desk rang, and when Harriet picked up the receiver she heard Matt saying coldly, ‘I’ve booked a table for us at the Riverside for nine p.m. I’ll pick you up. And by the way, I thought I’d made it clear there’s only one man you kiss from now on and it isn’t Ben!’

Harriet wanted to tell him that there was no way she intended to have dinner with him, but he had already ended the call. Silently she replaced the receiver. Her head was whirling and her heart was pounding at the thought of what had happened.

Matt had asked her if she wanted people to believe that she was secretly in love with Ben, and of course she didn’t. But the cure he was offering her was far, far more dangerous than the supposed disease!

And how ridiculous it was for him to go to the lengths of taking her out to dinner just to stop her seeing Ben, as she had planned. Her heart gave a funny little jerk as it threw itself against her ribcage. She acknowledged that there was a certain dangerous pleasure in the thought of Matt having the kind of feelings about her that would cause him to feel jealous of her being with another man. Not that he was ever likely to!

The Riverside was the area’s most exclusive hotel, and was run by an ex-TV chef and his model wife. What on earth was she going to wear? And what on earth was she doing worrying about what she was going to wear when she had so much that was far more important to worry about?

Displacement therapy, that was what it was! And nothing whatsoever to do with any wild and totally idiotic desire to have Matt take one look at her and wish that he was serious about her for real!

Matt stared out of the large window of his penthouse suite above the office block. He had bought the suite because it saved time to live and work in the same building, and he’d hired a turnkey designer to sort out the décor for him. The result was a state-of-the-art modern living space in which he constantly felt as though he was somehow a jarring and unnecessary presence, breaking up the place’s austere and sterile symmetry of grey on grey, chrome, glass and granite.

Harriet would, of course, be fiercely contemptuous of it—and no doubt of him for living in it. He just somehow knew that she was an Aga and comfortable country house kind of woman. And somewhere deep down Matt suspected that a part of him was dangerously close to being an Aga and country house kind of man, with four children, who chose to work at home so that he could be with them…

Because of Harriet? Matt started to frown. Why the hell had he fallen in love with her? How the hell had he fallen in love with her? He’d only had to look at her to know what that red hair and passionate energy were going to mean! And that was without the complication of her blinkered fixation on a man who didn’t want her. If he had any sense he would… He would what? Turn his back and walk away from her?

So why the hell was he sitting here reliving the feel of that thick silky waterfall of hair running through his fingers and the effect of those awesome green eyes looking up into his?

If he hadn’t had the presence of mind to push her away there was no knowing what might have happened. No knowing? Matt derided himself savagely— he knew damn well what would have happened: what he had wanted to happen and where he had wanted to have it happen!

It had stunned Matt when a male business associate had commented enviously on his ‘playboy’ reputation, remarking on the number of women Matt was known to have dated. It had never occurred to him that the method he had chosen of trying to eliminate his feelings for Harriet would result in him gaining the reputation of a would-be stud! The truth about his supposed ‘reputation’ was that it was largely unfounded.

His recent succession of dinner dates had been just that—dinner dates! And by his choice! In fact he couldn’t remember the last time…

Restlessly he got up and walked over to the large window with its view of the city.

Liar, he goaded himself mentally. Of course he could damn well remember. And he could remember too that halfway through dinner he had suddenly looked at his elegant blonde-haired companion and realised with a savage stab of anger that he was both totally unaroused by her and totally bored with her.

That had been the evening after he had interviewed Harriet for the job. His date had been none too pleased to be returned home instead of being taken to bed, and she had let him know it!

Matt frowned as he heard his intercom buzz.

Striding over to it, he flipped it on.

‘Matt, it’s Ben. I need to talk with you.’

Matt hesitated briefly before answering, ‘Fine— come up, Ben.’

As he opened the door to him Matt could see the way Ben looked admiringly around the apartment.

‘This is way cool, Matt,’ he enthused. ‘But Harry won’t like it—’ he began, then stopped, looking selfconscious.

‘It’s okay, Ben. I know this place isn’t to Harriet’s taste,’ Matt offered, intending to reassure him, but to his surprise Ben suddenly started to scowl fiercely.

‘Harriet’s been up here, then, has she?’ he demanded, looking pugnacious.

‘We are dating,’ Matt answered obliquely, an unfamiliar and unwanted sensation of having been wrong-footed suddenly hitting him.

Ben’s current attitude was not exactly that of a young man who resented Harriet’s emotional dependence on him and wanted her taken off his hands at any cost.

‘It’s about Harry that I came to see you,’ Ben told him determinedly, giving Matt the kind of look he last remembered receiving from the very protective father of the girl he had taken to his first school dance.

‘I see. Would you like to sit down? Or is it going to be a short conversation?’ Matt asked drily.

A tinge of colour darkened Ben’s face, but his jaw was still set stubbornly. He had come up here for a purpose and he wasn’t going to leave until he had a reassured himself on Harriet’s behalf. She was his best friend, after all, and, knowing what he did about his own sex, he wanted to make sure she would be all right.

‘Harry hasn’t said much about how things got going between the two of you…’ he began. ‘In fact, I wouldn’t have thought she was your type. I’ve known her since we were kids, and she’s my best friend.’ Ben stopped, took a deep breath, then began again. ‘You said you were serious about Harriet and I hope that you mean that, Matt, because Harry just isn’t the type of woman who would let a man into her life in a personal sort of way if she didn’t care a hell of a lot about him. She was pretty badly hurt by a rat of a guy when we were at university. Luckily she had the sense to listen to me when I warned her about him, so things never went too far, if you know what I mean. Of course I know it isn’t anyone’s business but their own how many partners a person has had, and I don’t suppose I’d be all that pleased myself if I found I’d got a virgin on my hands…’ Matt pressed on doggedly.

A virgin! Ben was trying to tell him that Harriet was a virgin?

Two vastly different emotions speared through Matt at the same time. One was a savage protective fury with Harriet for loving Ben to the extent that she did—ridiculously, in this day and age, she was saving herself for him—and the other was a fierce and disgraceful thrill of hot male hunting instinct. An assured and certain determination to ensure that he was the one who released Harriet from the sensual imprisonment of her virginity.

‘So you see,’ Ben was continuing, ‘if your intentions towards her aren’t honourable, so to speak, then it would be better—’

‘Ben,’ Matt interrupted him firmly, ‘I can assure you that my intentions are very honourable.’

‘You mean…commitment…? Marriage?’ Ben questioned.

Matt’s mouth compressed.

‘Yes, I mean just that,’ he agreed. He meant it, all right, he recognized—after all, he couldn’t be any more emotionally committed to her than he was. She already occupied his thoughts 24/7, and as for marriage…

As for marriage! His heart lurched against his ribs and pain tore into him. If circumstances had been different, if Harriet had felt about him as he did about her, then of course he would be wanting marriage, Matt acknowledged grimly. And so, he damned well hoped, after what Ben had just told him, would she!

‘You do? Oh, well, that’s all right then!’

Beaming with delight, Ben got to his feet to shake Matt’s hand. ‘Great girl is Harry,’ he assured him enthusiastically. ‘Good sense of humour, great legs. Must say I was worried… I thought you might just be… Well, I thought I’d better warn you that Harriet isn’t that sort of woman.’

No, she wasn’t. And Matt decided grimly that he suspected he knew why!

‘Thank you, Ben,’ he said, dismissing his guest.

Half an hour later, when Harriet opened her door to Matt’s knock, the great legs were in evidence but the sense of humour was not.

Not that Matt was in the best of moods himself. The fierce sexual elation he had felt at being told that Harriet was a virgin had given way to an equally fierce and savage fury that she should be idiotic enough to want to save herself for Ben. Ben who did not want her and who, quite plainly, was not right for her! It was, Matt had decided, just the kind of ill-judged, crazy thing a stubborn woman like her would do—saving the gift of herself as well as her love for just one man.

Of course if he had been the man…

Harriet took a step back in the hallway as she saw the way Matt was glaring at her. No doubt in his eyes she didn’t come anywhere near matching the sophisticated elegance of the women he normally took out to dinner. Her dress was four years old, a simple basic black crêpe number which up until now she had always felt she looked quite good in. With it she was wearing her one pair of expensive shoes, high-heeled and, if she was honest, just a little bit uncomfortable.

‘Do you live here alone?’ Matt demanded, frowning as he looked up and down the narrow dark lane.

‘Yes, I do,’ Harriet confirmed. ‘I shared with Ben at university, but—’

‘Now he wants his own space?’ Matt broke in, without allowing her to finish.

Angrily Harriet tilted her chin and told him firmly, ‘Actually, I am the one who wanted my own space. And my own washing machine and my own bed!’ she added pithily, remembering how much it had infuriated her to return from a visit somewhere, pre-Cindi, to find that one of Ben’s mates had ‘borrowed’ her bed in her absence.

Matt’s mouth compressed. When was she going to see sense and accept that Ben did not want her?

‘If you’re trying to convince me that you shared Ben’s bed you’re wasting your time,’ he told her angrily.

Immediately Harriet stepped back into the house, but as she reached for the door to turn and slam it Matt guessed what she was about to do and grabbed hold of her wrist.

‘Look, why won’t you face up to the truth? What is it about you that makes it so hard for you to accept that Ben doesn’t want you?’ he demanded brutally.

If she really had loved Ben the way Matt seemed to think she did his words would have been unbelievably hurtful and cruel, Harriet decided. ‘What is it about you that makes you think you’ve got the right to tell me what to do?’ she countered, trying to get her wrist back.

‘I’ve told you what my motivation is,’ Matt answered, refusing to release her.

‘And I’m telling you that you are barking up the wrong tree. I do not love Ben other than as a friend!’

‘How can you say that when—’

‘When what?’ Harriet challenged when Matt suddenly stopped speaking.

‘When you can’t string a sentence together without including his name in it,’ Matt said evasively.

What the hell was happening to him? He had almost blurted out what Ben had told him.

‘We’d better make tracks, otherwise we’ll be late,’ he added curtly.

Harriet glared at him. ‘If you think I’m going to have dinner with you now—’

She gasped as Matt tugged on her wrist and closed the space between them.

‘If you think that you aren’t…’ he retorted softly.

It must be the fact that she was not wearing a coat, coupled with the evening air, that was making her tremble so much, Harriet decided dizzily. But the truth was that it was the musky male scent of Matt’s skin playing havoc with her senses, making her want to bury her face against him and breathe it and him into her. She wanted to burrow against his warmth, she wanted…

A shudder ripped through her, causing Matt to curse under his breath and drag her into his arms, holding her hard against his body as he lifted his hand to cup her face and take possession of her mouth.

Right now, more than anything else, he wanted to take her back into the house, carry her upstairs and remove every piece of clothing from her body so that he could show her just what a fool she was for wasting her time wanting Ben when she could have him. That scent she was wearing was driving him crazy, making him feel so damned horny…

Harriet moaned excitedly beneath the hot, thrilling thrust of his tongue. Her fingers dug into the hardness of his shoulders as pleasure exploded inside her like a firework, showering her with golden starbusts of erotic sensation. She could feel his hand in the thick softness of her hair, his thumb massaging the delicate over-sensitive spot just behind her ear and sending a hot zigzag of female arousal jolting right through her.

Just his touch was enough to activate the kind of ache inside her that she already knew would lead to a sleepless, wanting night.

She might, thanks to Ben’s determined and sometimes unwanted protection, be the oldest virgin in the whole city, but that did not mean that her body didn’t already know how to respond to the sweet hotness of the pleasure that could possess and convulse it.

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.

‘I suppose you even sleep in the damn bed after he has gone, do you? Dreaming virginal dreams of sharing it with him?’

Now it was Harriet’s skin that blanched as fury and shock poured through her in a thunderous fall of ice-cold disbelief.

Turning on her heel, she headed for the door. But Matt got there before her, barring her way with the arm he stretched across it. He felt as shocked by what he had said as Harriet looked, but it was impossible for him to recall the words now.

‘Harriet, I’m sorry,’ he apologised gruffly. ‘I…I was out of order. I shouldn’t have…’

Harriet wasn’t sure she could trust herself to speak, so instead she put both her hands on his arm and pushed hard against it, to make him remove it from the doorway and let her walk away.

Which was a mistake.

A big mistake. As she discovered when, instead of giving way, his arm pushed hers back and then snapped around her along with its fellow, so that she was tightly bound against Matt’s chest.

‘Let go of me!’

Not only was her demand ineffectual, it was also muffled against Matt’s body, Harriet recognised weakly.

‘Not until you’ve let me apologise!’

Was he serious? Did he realise just how many apologies he now owed her?

‘For what?’ she asked him pithily, if somewhat breathlessly, and she tussled to put enough space between his flesh and her lips so that her own breath didn’t come bouncing back to her off his skin and, by some alchemic means, taste of him! ‘Insulting me or imprisoning me?’

‘I shouldn’t have made that comment about your virginity.’

Harriet went completely still, and then took a deep, shuddering breath.

As though he knew she was going to try and lie to him, Matt added quietly, ‘Ben told me.’

‘Ben?’

‘He thought it was something I should know… Just in case my intentions towards you weren’t serious. He may not love you as you want him to, but it’s obvious that he feels a…a certain sense of…of responsibility towards you.’

Matt discovered that he was having to battle with himself to make that admission. It would have suited his purpose far better had he been able to point out to Harriet that Ben had no feelings for her of any kind.

But Harriet was barely aware of the last part of his speech. All her concentration was focused on those three appalling words—Ben told me.

Never had Harriet wished more that she were the fainting type. Deprived of the opportunity for such an escape, she contemplated the effectiveness of a long, piercing scream—but abandoned it as pointless.

Instead she took a deep breath and said heavily, carefully spacing out each word, ‘Ben told you that I am a virgin?’

Did she realise how cute she looked, breathing heavily down her nose like that when she was angry? Matt wondered adoringly.

‘He was trying to protect you!’ Matt found himself defending Ben in a gesture of male solidarity, but then he saw the smouldering volcano of wrath that was burning in her furious gaze.

‘Oh, yes, I’m sure he was,’ Harriet burst out furiously. ‘After all, he’s been doing it ever since I hit puberty, when he told me that boys only wanted one thing! What is it about you men?’ she demanded in a wearily aggrieved voice. ‘Ben would run a mile if he found out that a girl he was dating was a virgin, but he expects me to…to feel grateful to him for preserving mine when… Oh, this is just too much!’ she exclaimed. ‘How could he do this to me? Doesn’t he realise that if you and I were in lo— Er, I mean, if we were seeing one another you would have discovered for yourself long before now that I hadn’t slept with anyone before?’

Discovered for himself? Long before now? Matt found that he was suddenly having a great deal of trouble breathing. To calm himself down he forced himself to play devil’s advocate. ‘Perhaps I’m so passionately in love with you that I’m prepared to wait?’

Harriet gave him a narrow-eyed look of open female contempt.

‘Because I want to make our first time extra special for both of us…’ he elaborated.

Hell, what was he saying that for? Matt cursed as his own body reacted immediately and openly to the intimate images his words were conjuring up.

Harriet could feel herself starting to tremble. No, not tremble. It was a small, delicious, erotic shudder of anticipatory pleasure that was galvanising her body, making her feel so sensuously boneless and weak that she couldn’t move a single muscle to prise her eager flesh away from the hardness of Matt’s body.

The hardness! Matt had an erection, and her body was savouring that knowledge as her hips ground hungrily against him.

A man could drown in the deep green pools of Harriet’s gaze, Matt decided rawly, as his hands slid lower to lift her more tightly against him. His own gaze lowered from her eyes to her mouth, and all hell broke loose inside him.

Inside him—and somewhere upstairs inside the house, where the crash of splintering glass shocked through the silence.

‘Wait here,’ Matt commanded as he released her, but Harriet ignored him, following him as he took her stairs two at a time and then almost cannoning into him as he threw open the door to the small bedroom which overlooked the street. Harriet paled as she saw the broken window and the glass covering the bed and the floor.

Amongst the glass was a brick. Matt frowned and said, ‘Ten to one this is the work of those louts who attacked your neighbour. There’s no point in ringing the police at this time of night—we’ll do that in the morning. You’d better pack a case.’

‘What?’ Harriet shook her head vehemently. ‘Nothing is going to make me leave here. They might come back, and if the house is empty…’

‘Nothing?’ Matt queried meaningfully.

Harriet frowned in confusion, not following his train of thought.

She could see the impatient rise and fall of his chest as he breathed in and then exhaled.

‘No way am I leaving you here on your own. The other bed is covered with shards of glass which means that if you opt to stay here then I shall be sharing your bed!’

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