Part 8 (2/2)
”I'm sorry. I never meant...1 didn't intend...”
This time, the burning sensation under her skin was caused not by desire but by embarra.s.sment, the embarra.s.sment of knowing what Matt was telling her.
”Look, why don't you leave your car here and let me drive you home?”
he continued.
”You're upset and--' ” I'm perfectly capable of driving,” she told him brittly. She wasn't and she knew it, but she felt as though if she had to spend any more time with him she would shatter like a piece of overstressed gla.s.s.
She still wasn't sure quite what had happened to her, or how what she knew Matt had only intended as a gesture of comfort had turned into the fiercely burning physical desire she had experienced.
If that was how she had behaved that night, no wonder he had looked so--so smug and self- satisfied in the morning, she thought sickly.
She closed her eyes briefly against the hot burn of fresh tears and said thickly, ”Please, go...1 want to get home...”
She tensed as she felt him hesitate, knowing that if he argued with her now she would probably break down completely.
”Go, Matt,” she demanded.
”Please...”
To her relief he opened the car door and made to get out, pausing to tell her, ”I still don't think you're in any fit state to drive, so I'll follow you to make sure you get home safely. No arguments,” he added curtly.
”Otherwise, I'll carry you out of this d.a.m.n thing by force if necessary...”
Silently Nicola watched him go, suppressing the temptation to race off into the night before he could return to his own car, knowing that he'd been quite right when he'd said she wasn't really fit to drive.
Luckily the roads were quiet but, despite the fact that she applied all her concentration to the task of driving, she was very conscious of the fact that physically she felt oddly weak, and that her mind kept straying, drawn dangerously into a whirlpool of thoughts and fears which had nothing to do with what she was doing and everything to do with what had happened with Matt.
When she turned into her parents' drive, she glanced in her driving-mirror and saw that Matt's car was parked at the end of the drive.
He had been behind her all the way home, monitoring what she was doing, watching over her. What had motivated him to do that? Guilt, because he felt responsible for her distraught state? But why should he feel guilty when she had been the one.
She shuddered as she stopped the car, remembering how she had moaned beneath his mouth in aching frustration, wanting more. wanting him. Her skin flushed and she was glad that there was no one to see her, to witness her shame and anguish.
That Matt had never intended to do more than offer her a comforting male shoulder to cry on she already knew. Even that first tentative pressure of his mouth on hers had been comforting rather than arousing.
As she went inside, she found herself almost wis.h.i.+ng that he had remembered her at first sight. Then, she had no doubt that he would have avoided her like the plague, then there would have been no intimacy between them to taunt and disturb her. Then he would have remembered how she had reacted to him before, even if she could not, and he would have acted accordingly.
Her first initial fear on recognising him--that he would remember her and cause her humiliation and embarra.s.sment by doing so, by making her behaviour public--no longer existed. He was simply not that kind of man. Witness his behaviour towards her tonight. His kindness. His concern.
He had even apologised for what had happened when both of them knew that the real blame lay with her.
Ironically, once she was alone and free to cry, she discovered that she no longer had any real desire to do so. Neither, it seemed, was she going to be able to get much sleep, because every time she closed her eyes she was tormented by far too vivid memories of how she had felt when Matt had kissed and held her.
Matthew Hunt . Why was she so susceptible to him? Was it because of the past? As she curled her body into a small, tight ball of distress, she tried to convince herself that, once Matt had left the area, once he was only someone who visited the company at rare intervals, she would soon overcome her present feelings--that, starved of the object of their desire, her emotions would soon be back under her control.
And just as long as Matt thought, as he obviously did think, that she loved Gordon, she would be reasonably safe from the humiliation of his realising how she felt about him.
A tiny, bitter smile curved her mouth. How ironic of fate to send him back into her life like this. How ironic and cruel. The sensuality which she had denied she possessed for all these years had, with Matt's arrival, suddenly burst into eager life, tormenting her with desires and needs with which she was wholly unfamiliar. Even now, hours later, the mere memory of his lips touching hers had the power to make her whole body go taut with aching heat. She even found herself wis.h.i.+ng that she could remember that night she had spent with him so that she could. So that she could what? Relive it, if only mentally?
Miserably she closed her eyes and willed herself to at least try to go to sleep.
CHAPTER SEVEN.
'nicola, meet Tim Ford. ”
”A rather delayed meeting, I'm afraid,” Tim commented as he and Nicola shook hands.
They were in Nicola's office, where she had arrived ten minutes earlier to discover that Matt was already there and that their new manager was with him, having been able to return to work a little earlier than had originally been antic.i.p.ated.
Trying to ignore the shock of anguish that had hit her with the realisation that her daily contact with Matt would soon be a thing of the past, Nicola reminded herself that if she had any sense she would be feeling relieved that Tim Ford had arrived.
Since the night he had followed her home from the dinner party, she had been so acutely aware of Matt that working with him had become an almost unbearable strain.
She was losing weight and growing tense and, even though she knew that her parents and her friends were concerned about her and had erroneously put the change in her down to her breakup with Gordon, she couldn't bring herself to admit the truth to any of them.
It had taken her long enough to admit it to herself. She was in love with Matt.
She looked at him now, a quick, surrept.i.tious glance under cover of the conversation he was having.
During office hours. Matt had made no reference whatsoever to what had happened between them, but on the day following the dinner party he had called round totally unexpectedly to see her. She had been in the garden, picking some peas for lunch, her hair sc.r.a.ped back off her face, and dressed in a pair of tatty jeans and an equally old T-s.h.i.+rt.
His grave apology for what had happened had left her tongue tied with guilt and shame, wanting to tell him that she was equally responsible, but unable to find the words to do so.
He wanted her to know, he had told her, that she need have no fear of suffering the embarra.s.sment of any kind of s.e.xual hara.s.sment from him; he knew she loved Gordon; they were both adults, both aware that the most innocuous of events, when coloured by very powerful emotions, could result in things happening which had never been intended to happen.
What he was trying to tell her was that he had never intended to do anything more than ensure that she was all right. She already knew that, and his apology had made her feel even worse than she had done before, especially when she had happened to look up at him and all too betrayingly remembered what it had felt like to be held in his arms, to have his mouth caressing hers.
When he'd suggested that both of them put the entire incident out of their minds, she'd been only too willing to agree.
She realised that Tim Ford was speaking to her, and quickly dragged her attention back to focus on what he was saying.
He was a pleasant-looking man in his early thirties, whom, she had learned, was unmarried, and who had worked for Matt for several years.
His leg was still in plaster from the accident which had immobilised him and caused the delay in his taking over from Alan.
”Site visits are going to be tricky for a while,” he told Nicola ruefully while Matt was taking a phone call.
He then went on to ask her how she was liking the new computer systems they were having installed, and whether she had found them to be of any benefit.
Within half an hour of meeting him, Nicola knew she could work in harmony with him, probably more efficiently than she could work for Matt, with whom she was never free of the tensions caused by her awareness of him as a man.
Matt had finished his call and, when she glanced across at him, unable to resist the temptation of looking at him, she saw that he was regarding them with a slight frown. Her own muscles tensed in response. Had she done something wrong, irritated him in some way?
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