A Solitary Heart (22 page)

Matt's eyes had widened at her stricken expression, and for a moment

his own cracked to reveal the aspect of a. man floundering deep in

grief, then his face hardened into razor-edge angles.

'So,' he said with the staccato force of a bullet. 'It was true. I'd

wondered at first. Joshua can act like a petulant brat when he doesn't

get his own way, and somehow I couldn't quite believe it of you.

There was no way that you could be the coolly calculating woman

Joshua had made you out to be. You seemed so vulnerable, and

innocent despite that veneer of poise you wore, that I had completely

revised my first opinion of you. I didn't even listen when you warned

me that you'd get me somehow in the end. Well, congratulations,

sweetheart! You took me in hook, line and sinker, and I hope the

satisfaction of it warms your bed at nights, because, by God, no self-

respecting man ever will! And I'll see you in hell before I let you get

your claws any deeper into my brother!'

She had listened, at first in uncomprehending hurt and a desperate

understanding for how angry he was, but the unrelenting, unfair

cruelty of his words whipped invisible lashes along her exposed skin,

bringing her temper boiling to the surface. At the very last her brittle

control snapped to pieces. She cried, her hands balled into fists at her

sides, 'I don't want him, you stupid man! I never wanted him!'

'That's the most damning thing you have ever said about yourself!' he

said violently, striding forward to grasp her by the shoulders in such

a heavy iron grip that her body bowed underneath his strength. 'How

dare you use people like so many pawns? How dare you play with

their hearts?'

Blinded with the pain in her own aching heart, she raised up her hand

to strike him, then stopped before his unflinching glare. .

'No,' she said coldly, letting her hand fall open-palmed to her side

again. 'I won't leave you the satisfaction of your so righteous wrath!

I'll tell you the truth, and you can believe me or not as you please,

though God knows your dogmatic presumptions probably won't let

you! Yes, Joshua and I were going to say we were engaged— as a

pretence, just to teach you a lesson for interfering in matters that

didn't concern you!'

His mouth twisted bitterly. 'When did you concoct that cosy little set-

up?'

'We decided the very day after you stormed into my life and called

me names I wouldn't say to my worst enemy, let alone a total

stranger!' she snapped, then told him, her eyes wide in astonishment

at her own idiocy, 'Then I forgot about it—how do you like that? I

just clean forgot, because I thought I got to know you, and I
thought

you were different from the man who h-hurt me by saying those

awful things to my face!'

She gave a sharp, angry laugh, and her head bowed as the low sound

turned into a gut-wrenching sob. His fingers tightened spasmodically

on her shivering flesh; the look in his eyes was terrible. At that she

came so near to breaking down and reaching for him that she

wrenched out of his hold and took several quick strides away to face

the print on his wall.

'Do you know what the real joke is?' she told him, as the tears spilled

over and her shivering increased. 'Me. I'm the punch line. I was so

sure that I wouldn't fall in love with any man! It just wasn't in the

cards for me— I had other plans for my life. But you came along, and

you did your damnedest to try to change my mind, and, fool that I

am, I listened to you! Despite all my better judgement, I listened

enough to consider changing my life for you, leaving my friends,

home, school, everything. So there you have it, Matt. I got you, and

you got me—and you tell me this. Which of us has won in the end?

No -' this, when she sensed his uncontrolled movement behind her

'—don't bother. You can claim the final trophy. I don't want it.'

'Sian,' Matt whispered hoarsely. 'God, Sian—listen to me -'

'No!' she cried, shrinking away as she felt his touch at the back of her

head. 'I've listened to you and your fine talk too much already! Just

go back to your own life, and leave me to mine!'

She whirled and rushed out of the room, and he raced after her,

which so destroyed her sense of direction that she didn't watch where

she was going and blundered straight into Jane's arms.

Of course, neither she nor Matt had heeded the level of their voices in

the heat of the moment, and as a consequence had roused the whole

household. So much for privacy, she thought, shaking like a leaf in

the shelter of her friend's protective hold.

'Leave her be! Whatever you've done, now's not the time to correct

it!' Jane said to Matt in a sharp, authoritative voice she had never

heard before.

But Sian had seen Joshua, in the doorway of the guest bedroom

looking as if he was facing an executioner, and her own private

demon dragged her out of Jane's arms.

She strode over to him, white-faced and beyond restraint. 'What you

did to me was bad enough. When you saw that things had changed

between Matt and me, you should have come to me and we could

have sorted it out. What you did to your own brother was

unspeakable,' she said icily. 'It went far beyond a prank, Joshua. It

was an act of malice done to someone who loves you, and that I find

unforgivable. I don't know you. I thought I did, but I don't.'

Joshua looked stricken to his heart. Good, she thought in her own

pain, good.

Something tugged. She looked around, unseeing, and let Jane lead

her into Matt's bedroom. Then, fuelled by the glacier of ice that was

crystallising over her bruised, overwrought emotions, she pulled

away and stated flatly, 'I'm all right.'

'Well, you don't look it,' said Jane with unflattering bluntness.

Sian's head turned from side to side, then she strode for the door.

Jane sprang for her. 'Where are you going?'

'To pack,' she snarled. 'I'm leaving as soon as I can get ready.'

'But where would you go?' the other girl exclaimed. 'What would you

do?'

'I don't care!' she shouted, then leaned her elbows on the wall and put

her head on her forearms. 'I'll go to the airport. I can take a bus from

there to South Bend. I won't ride back in Joshua's car. I don't want to

see him or talk to him.'

'Sian, it's half past one in the morning. You don't even know if the

buses run at night. Could you just wait a minute and calm down,

please?'

Sian raised her head and looked at the other girl in sizzling silence;

she was wild to get away and only just able to keep from swearing at

Jane out of love for her. Her friend stared, wide-eyed, then said

quietly, 'Please. Five minutes. Then, if you insist, I'll get dressed and

come with you.'

But she had halted in her impetuous path and reason had crept in. She

closed her eyes; had she ever deserved such a friend as this? 'No,

you're right,' she said, and sagged. 'I won't drag you out in the middle

of the night. We can leave first thing in the morning.'

Matt's bed was quite big enough, so she shared it with Jane, and lay

awake through what remained of the night, her head aching with the

irony of it. Just after dawn, she rose and woke the other girl, then

went to the study to drag on her last change of clothes. She slipped

on a pair of sandals, stuffed her other things into her case, and felt the

tears well up again.

In an excess of bad temper, she kicked the case across the room. No

more tears. She had to be strong and keep her anger cold and hard.

To allow warmth to creep back in now was to weaken; she had crept

out of her self- imposed shell and found the wide world a hurting

place to be, so she'd just crawl back to where she came from. Never

mind that the shell seemed a small and confining prison. She could

learn all over again how to take pride in being alone. It was only

what her father had taught her, after all.

'Sian,' said Matthew from behind her.

She gasped, and whirled around, and cried, 'Get out!'

'N6,' he said, his eyes dark and shadowed with sleeplessness. In the

clear light his face had settled into hard and haggard lines. 'If I leave

you now, you'll retreat forever behind your barriers and never come

out again. I told you yesterday that I wanted you so badly I could

hardly see straight. Remember?'

'Well,' she said with a bitter laugh, 'didn't we learn differently?

You're too quick to anger, and I'm the credulous fool. So what?

Better to learn it now, than later. Now, where's Jane? If she's coming

with me, she'd better do it fast, because I'm not waiting around for

any more of this post-mortem.'

With a muffled oath, he lifted his hands to rake through his hair

distractedly, looking like a man who had come to the end of his

tether. He said tightly, 'I am trying to tell you that I'm sorry! I

behaved like an utter fool. I was angry, and hurt too, and lost control

at the thought of you in Joshua's arms, or any other man's for that

matter—can't you understand that?'

By luck he had managed to say the one thing that provoked the

memory from last night of her own instinctive whiplash of reaction at

the thought of him involved with another woman. Her furious desire

to get away from him faded somewhat, and she looked at him with

pained, very sad eyes.

'Oh, yes,' she sighed. 'I can. But just because you're ready for

forgiveness, it doesn't mean that I'm ready to forgive you. And even

if I did, today only shows how destructive we can be to each other.'

'But we weren't destructive last night until the very end,' he said

quietly as he raised his head. 'We were good, and hopeful, and

beginning to build something full of promise.'

'And it blew up in our faces,' she muttered, her face averted.

He replied, with pain and clarity, 'Everything that's ever been bad

between us has been a misunderstanding; we seem to do pretty well

at understanding. Don't you remember that as well, or are you so

determined to block out everything about me?'

She shook her head helplessly at that, and he paused. She knew she

was hurting him by her rejecting manner. He showed that

transparently, but she didn't know if she could let go of the hard knot

that lay like a coiled snake in her breast.

'Listen to reason for one moment,' he went on carefully, 'and try to

hear it in spite of the fact that it comes from me. Yesterday you felt

an entire world away from what you feel today. Who's to say that

tomorrow you might not feel differently again? Let's give each other

time to calm down, and look around us. Maybe things will look

better, maybe not. I know I need to do some heavy thinking about

faith and courtesy. Can we at least promise to talk to each other in a

few days, without anger? Can we at least make that one, small step,

even if it is to say goodbye?'

She closed her eyes, for she didn't know where to look. Oh, didn't she

just warn herself a few minutes ago? To allow warmth to creep in

was to weaken, and to hesitate was fatal.

'Just one phone call?' she said doubtfully.

'Hi, how are you? Have you been busy? I've missed you,' he

responded immediately, with a tenderness in the words that looked

fair to break her heart. It certainly cracked something, if only the

brittle casing of an old, outworn shell. 'You know the sort of thing.

Just wait and see, it'll be easy.'

'I must be more of a fool than I thought,' she whispered, and looked

up with wide, wet eyes.

He turned away, so that she could not see his face. 'Fine,' he said.

How did he manage such calm? 'I'll call you Tuesday or Wednesday,

all right?'

'A-all right.'

'I'm ready to go to "the bus station whenever you are, Sian,' said Jane,

tier gaze very gentle as she looked at Matt's expression. 'Steven will

go back to South Bend with Joshua.'

She cleared her throat. 'Then I guess we'd better go.'

She left without a backward glance, unable to trust her own

precarious control or to fully believe in the new fragile tendrils of

communication Matt had worked so hard to re-establish after their

explosive confrontation.

The very stability in Jane's loyal, unquestioning friendship brought a