A Solitary Heart (9 page)

your arm around my neck and let go with your legs.'

She turned her face into the salted heat of his neck. She tried to put

her injured arm around him but, though he felt so strong and rock-

steady, she lacked capacity to hold on to him. 'I can't do it,' she said

in despair. 'I'll fall.'

'Ssh,' he whispered, and turned his face into hers. The corner of his

open mouth moved against her cheekbone. 'I'd lose my arm before I

let you fall. You'll just swing around, that's all. I promise.'

Her weak tears slipped along his neck. 'But I've hurt my shoulder. I

don't think I can manage the climb down.'

'I'll be right behind you the whole way, with one arm around your

waist,' Matt said steadily. The rigidity of his arm was severely

restricting her breathing. 'Please, Sian. Trust me.'

Her eyes closed, and she did as he asked, the tension in first one leg,

then the other, loosening in submission to either death or safety. Her

body swung around and the world righted, and she groaned, a shaken

animal sound, at the terror and the pain of it. The muscles in Matt's

arm bunched hard as granite at her back; she connected with the

length of his body.

He had one leg hooked around a branch, the other outstretched to a

stronger one below, and he held her perfectly steady with just the one

arm—at what cost of strength, she couldn't guess—until her feet had

found the same branch and she could stand for herself.

Then, for long moments, he just crushed her to him, burying his face

into her hair. 'I'll give you this much, young lady,' he said tautly from

the back of his throat, 'you do know how to frighten the wits out of a

man.'

She huddled, shaking, between the barrier of his chest and the tree

trunk. 'Is he safe?'

'Safe and sound and howling his eyes out, the little beast,' said Matt

grimly. 'Sian, my love, delightful as it is to hold you in my arms, I

think could do a much better job of it on the ground. Is this your way

of sweeping me off my feet?'

She leaned her forehead on one hand. 'It was entirely unplanned, I

assure you.'

'Your poor, lovely back—you're scraped all over. Have you the

strength to hold on with one hand?' he asked. 'Good, then I want you

to move as I move, and you can let go when I have my arm around

your waist like this. All right?'

'All right.'

Pressed against her back, he bent to plant a swift kiss behind her ear.

'Good girl.'

The trip down to safety was a nightmare, made bearable only by

Matt's steady chest pressed against her back. Afterwards Sian could

never recall much of what happened; she just blindly put her hand

and feet where he told her to, and trusted him to do the rest.

Then came the blessed moment when he helped her ease into a sitting

position on the lowest, thickest branch before leaping gracefully to

the ground. Sian leaned against the tree-trunk, scarcely able to

believe that they had made it down alive.

There seemed to be quite a crowd around them, but such was her

reduced state that the only person she had eyes for was Matt. Her

huge, glazed eyes rested on him, numbly patient, until he

straightened and turned back to her, the predator's gaze alien with

relief and some vast undefineable emotion.

He held open his arms and said gently, 'Last stop, sweetheart.'

She went down into them as if she were coming home.

Sian woke with a start in darkness, and for a disorientated moment

couldn't remember where she was or how she had come to be there.

Then, recognising the shape and feel of her own bed and the familiar

outlines of her dresser in the moonlight that spilled in from half-shut

curtains, she relaxed and hugged a pillow to her chest.

The pillow was soft and had a faint, clean, spicy smell to it that was

strange and yet comfortingly familiar as well. She turned her face

into it, inhaling deeply. She ached, all over, from the back of her

knees along the length of her raw back and stiff, sore shoulder, and

the throbbing lump at the back of her head.

Now she recalled the little boy stuck in the tree, though the image

was shot through with the recollection of fear and pain, and through

it all, stronger than anything, threaded the memory of Matt's strong

body.

After he had helped her down from the tree, he had immediately

swung her overstressed body into his arms and carried her away

through a babbling confusion of thanks and well-wishing from the

mother of the boy she had helped to rescue. Sian had rested her

aching head against his shoulder, face turned into the privacy of his

neck.

Joshua and Steven were dispatched to clear away the picnic things,

while Jane came along to direct Matt back to South Bend and the

quickest route to Memorial Hospital. Though the long day and the

ride back had made her sleepy, he wouldn't let her fall into a doze for

fear she had suffered concussion when she'd banged her head.

At his and Jane's insistence during the speed-limit- breaking drive,

she had irritably recited times-tables, poems, songs, anything that

kept her awake and showed she suffered no impairment of her

faculties. Then came the wait in the emergency ward, for X-rays and

first aid. The doctor who had seen her had been brisk and

overworked; the heat, he had said, seemed to bring out all the

crackpots, and he had looked at Sian as if she were one of them,

while she tried to ignore Matt's sardonic smile and Jane's muffled

chuckles.

Having found nothing wrong with her other than scrapes, bruises and

strained ligaments, the doctor had prescribed some muscle relaxants

for her stiffening arm and shoulder. Matt drove them back to the

apartment and went to get the prescription filled, while Jane helped

Sian bathe and dress in an over-long T-shirt.

When Matt had come back with the prescription, she'd swallowed a

dose and had promptly gone out like a light, but she must have slept

for hours, for the medicine had worn off and pain was what had

awakened her.

The apartment was very quiet. Sian tried to twist around and find the

luminous display of her bedside clock, and immediately wished she

hadn't. It had just gone midnight, which meant that there was

probably no one else around, for the group had been planning to see a

midnight movie at the local cinema.

Because she was feeling under par and sorry for herself, Sian sniffed

a bit and rubbed her nose into the fragrant pillow, and belated

recognition blossomed as she recognised Matt's scent, which lingered

on the linen case.

Of course, he had slept in her room only the night before. The smell

of him triggered a whole wealth of images and it was no use trying to

make sense of the convoluted and certainly stormy aspects of their

relationship, for Sian's sensual memories were only of the good

things—comfort, and strength, and the urgent relief with which he

had held her after the traumatic ordeal.

Easy tears filled her eyes and she blinked them away angrily. All he

had to do was be useful in a crisis, and she started to associate his

scent with attributes like reliability and steadfastness! She hadn't

even known him for more than a couple of days, and now, just

because she was feeling a little down and he had been there when she

had needed him, she had to go and miss him, didn't she?

How sillily she was behaving, how weak and stupid! This was just

the sort of thing she had wanted to avoid: this empty, idiotic

yearning. Thank God she was too sensible to fall in love with the

man, for that would be the final straw.

Oh, how she ached. Sian tossed and turned fretfully but couldn't get

into a position that gave relief to her abused body. Finally having to

admit defeat, she threw back her covers and rose shakily on sore feet

to search for the muscle relaxants. If she remembered correctly, Jane

had left the bottle on the kitchen counter.

Sian left her bedroom and stepped into the hall. She noticed the light

was on in the living-room and curiously went to investigate, for the

light she and Jane normally left on when they went out for the

evening was the one over the back porch.

As she limped around the corner and into golden, indirect

illumination and the sound of soft music playing on the stereo, a

tawny head lifted from the arm of the sofa where a long, tough body

reclined, and Matt said quietly, 'Sian?'

She faltered to a halt. One self-conscious hand crept up to her

gleaming, tousled hair as she asked in a sleep- blurred voice, 'What

are you doing here?'

'We felt that somebody should stay to keep an eye on you in case you

needed anything, and, as I'm not a
Monty Python
fan, I volunteered,'

he replied, rising smoothly to his feet. He had forsaken his denim

shorts for a pair of equally faded jeans and grey sweat-shirt with the

sleeves ripped off. His casual good looks and masculine presence

were such an exactly perfect product of wish-fulfilment that the weak

tears flooded back again and glittered brilliantly in her green eyes.

'What's the matter—feeling achy?'

The gentleness in the question was just what she had not needed. She

turned away from him in embarrassed confusion as the tears spilled

over, nodding mutely.

He walked around the edge of the sofa and put a careful arm around

her. 'Come on. Let's get you some medication.'

She allowed herself to be led back through the hall, flinching and

wiping her damp cheeks when he flicked on the light, but he never so

much as glanced at her as he went to run cold water into a tall glass

and shook out a couple of pills into his palm.

He offered them to her and she took them with a grimace, drinking

thirstily until the water was gone. Then she exclaimed with disgust, 'I

hate taking those things, they make me so dopey!'

His grin was keen and white as he took away the glass and set it in

the sink. 'I know what you mean. Once I had whiplash from a car

accident and took some, but I only ended up doing more injury to

myself by walking into walls. Still, they'll help you sleep for the first

couple of nights. Your bruises are coming up lovely, aren't they?'

She glanced down in even deeper embarrassment at the rainbow of

colours mottling her bare arms. Some odd impulse made her say

slowly, 'They look worse than they really are. I bruise very easily,

and never remember afterwards how I managed to do it.'

The silence in the kitchen was very deep. Sian kept her face half

averted, downbent. When Matt spoke, his voice was wry.

'Forgiveness, Sian?'

A violent tremor rippled through her. She waited until it passed. 'I

don't know.'

'Your delicate skin -' He ran a light finger up her arm, then said

abruptly, 'Why don't you come into the living-room with me until

those muscle relaxants start to work, or are you already sleepy?'

She shook her head. 'I couldn't sleep yet.'

'All right,' he said easily, and opened up the refrigerator door. 'Want

another cold drink? I'm having a beer, but I'm afraid that's out for

you. What about orange juice?'

'Yes, please.' She watched him pour it, then asked somewhat

awkwardly, 'How are you—any lasting effects from this afternoon?'

His mouth whitened as it drew tight and deepened the lines beside it.

He let her precede him back towards the living-room. 'Not unless you

count the aftermath of shock. I thought only near-death experiences

were supposed to make one's life flash before one's eyes, but when I

saw that kid start to tumble, and you lunged forward to grab him and

it looked as if you were going to fall as well, all kinds of "should

have beens" and "might have beens" flashed in front of me.'

'I didn't have anything like that,' said Sian with a frown as she curled

stiffly on to the couch and he settled beside her. 'All I remember

seeing after I fell back and hit my head was stars.'

'Yes, well,' he said, looking at her with an odd, grim expression that

eased as he gave her the juice and opened his beer. 'You did a very

courageous thing today, and at least we all survived to talk about it.'

Sian tilted back her head and drank, then afterwards regarded Matt's

profile contemplatively. He was certainly unstinting in praising her