As she started to hurry downstairs, tugging her wrist free of Matt’s confining grip, he leaned forward and said menacingly, ‘Travis—and just who is he?’
Later she had no idea what on earth had made her say it; it was so out of character for her to lie—and such a mammoth and idiotic lie as well, but then, everything she had done when she was in Matt Slater’s company was out of character, so that her quick, automatic lie of, ‘Travis is my fiancé,’ tripped off her tongue so easily and so unexpectedly that she could hardly believe she had actually spoken the words.
As she hurried into the study, she found that her heart was beating at what seemed to be twice its normal rate. She picked up the receiver with a hand that shook visibly; curling her fingers round it, she said tensely, ‘Travis, it’s Emily. Is anything wrong?’
‘No…no, nothing like that. It’s just that my folks are planning a trip to England. They’re leaving in three months’ time, they both want to visit your part of the world and Gracie suggested that your uncle might be able to put them up for a couple of days and that you might be able to show them around. Feel free to say no, if it’s going to be too much trouble.’
Trouble… She wanted to laugh in sheer hysteria. Trouble was the man she had left standing on the stairs. Trouble was the feeling she got inside when she looked at him. Trouble was the sick, awful knowledge that she had got herself into a situation completely beyond her experience—a situation she had no hope of being able to cope with.
‘No,’ she heard herself saying. ‘It won’t be any trouble. If you could just let me have the dates when your parents will be here…’
They chatted for a few more minutes; her sister, it seemed, was out shopping with her mother-in-law-to-be, and, conscious both of the cost of the call and the fact that Matt Slater was probably still standing on the stairs waiting for her, Emily said her goodbyes as quickly as she could.
He was, and he broke off his conversation with her great-uncle when she reappeared, waiting until they were out of earshot to demand abruptly, ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were engaged?’
‘You never asked.’
There was an unexpectedly grim silence, almost as though he was angry with her, but why should he be?
‘I see. Where is he? Why isn’t he with you?’
‘He had to go back to Australia.’
‘And because he wasn’t available, you made love with me, as a substitute—is that it?’ he accused.
They were outside his room now. Emily stopped, wishing she could find a way of ending this awful ordeal. Keeping her face averted, she shrugged nonchalantly and, she felt, unconvincingly.
‘I…I suppose I was missing him so much that…’ Her voice trailed off uncomfortably as she tried and failed to imagine herself, if she had been engaged to anyone, actually making love with someone else.
‘You were missing him so much that you used me to relieve your sexual need.’ He sounded furiously, bitterly angry, Emily recognised numbly, and hearing it put into words, and such words, made her shudder with self-loathing—but there was no way out now.
‘Yes. Yes, I’m afraid I did.’
There was an odd quality to his silence, but she couldn’t risk looking at him to see why. ‘This is your room,’ she told him stiffly, pushing open the door. ‘I’ll leave you to settle in. Uncle John likes to have dinner at eight-thirty.’
She was starting to turn away from him when he reached out and took hold of her arm, restraining her. ‘Tell me something,’ he enquired softly. ‘Is there any likelihood that you’re—er…going to miss this fiancé of yours while I’m staying here as a guest of your uncle? Because if there is…’
This was what she had been dreading. What she had tried to protect herself against, ever since she had stood in the hallway and seen that sharp, assessing look in his eyes.
It was worse, far worse than anything she could have imagined. The humiliation and anguish of it poured through her like burning acid. She went white with shock and pain, wrenching her arm away from him as she stammered wretchedly, ‘No… What happened between us happened…but it won’t happen again. I want to make that completely clear to you. You may make a habit of indulging in casual sex,’ she told him bravely, throwing all restraint aside, ‘but I can assure you that I do not.’
‘Because you’re in love with your fiancé.’
His question threw her. She stared at him for a moment and then said quickly, ‘Yes… No… That is, I wouldn’t indulge in casual sex even if I weren’t engaged—’ She broke off, biting her bottom lip, and then said huskily and truthfully, ‘I can’t explain why…what happened between us did happen.’
She swallowed, suddenly feeling drained and defeated, and was stunned to hear him saying softly, almost gently, as though he was trying to reassure her, ‘You were missing your fiancé, you were lonely…confused… Tell me about him. What does he look like?’
Emily blinked, thrown into complete confusion. What did Travis look like? She tried to remember, and managed to stammer awkwardly, ‘Well, he’s tall…and blond…’
‘You’ll have to show me his photograph. You do have a photograph of him, don’t you?’
Her mouth dropped. Of course she didn’t. At her side, Matt was saying helpfully, ‘I only mention it in case I’m likely to meet him.’
‘No…no you won’t,’ Emily told him quickly, tensing when he took hold of her left hand and said quietly, ‘You don’t wear his ring.’
‘No…no…there hasn’t been time yet. We only told my parents a little while ago. Travis had to go home to tell his parents. No one else in the family knows.’
‘He’s gone home, without you?’
Why was he asking her all these questions, pushing her, making her tell him more and more lies? ‘I—I couldn’t really go. There’s Uncle John’s book… Look, I must go downstairs—the dinner—’
‘Such reluctance to talk about the man you love. Most women like nothing more, especially when they’re newly engaged.’
‘Well, I’m not most women,’ Emily told him sharply, finally finding the strength to hurry away from him.
‘No,’ he agreed under his breath, watching her walk stiffly towards the stairs. ‘You certainly aren’t.’
He was frowning as he walked into his room, recalling the small, betraying stain he had found on his sleeping-bag. It had stunned him with disbelief at first, reinforcing his own crazy
feeling that what had happened between them was no casual, meaningless encounter, but something special… something rare…something almost predestined. And then to discover that the woman who had given herself to him so passionately, so completely, had been a virgin and he her first lover. Impossible, surely. But the evidence was there.
He had begun to wish more than ever that he had not let her walk away from him. But he had been so stunned by his own reaction to her, so overwhelmed by the intensity of his desire to make her stay, so caught up in the shocking reality of his own emotions, that she had been gone before he could think of protesting.
And then, when it was too late, he had realised that where an experienced woman, confident enough of herself and her sexuality to indulge so carelessly and passionately in sex with a stranger, might just be able to walk away from what had happened without giving their intimacy a second thought, a virgin, a woman who had had no previous lover, a woman who for whatever reason had never allowed her body to experience whatever need had driven her into his arms, was scarcely capable of the same dispassionate detachment; and, if he had not wanted to find her for his own sake, he must surely then have wanted to find her for her own, to make sure that she was all right…that she was not suffering any emotional or psychological scars from what they had shared.
He had tried to trace her, once he was free of the formalities of taking up his new temporary post, going back to the town where he had left her to check up at the garages there, but it had seemed that none of them had dealt with the removal and repair of her car. Having drawn a blank there, he had had to hurry back to Oxford before he could widen his net still further—to try to find a way of curing himself of what he had been feeling over a long period of sleepless nights, when all he could think about was how she had felt in his arms.
Looking at it dispassionately, it wasn’t hard to guess why she was so scared. She must be petrified that this fiancé of hers would discover what she had done, presuming of course that he knew she was a virgin. He scowled suddenly. She had claimed that she and this Travis were lovers, but of course that was simply to deceive him. He had seen the terror in her eyes, the fear that he would betray her. His scowl deepened. Just what sort of man did she think he was?