PENNY JORDAN - Boardroom To Bedroom - His Darling Valentine / The Boss's Marriage Arrangement

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?’