Close Your Eyes (12 page)

‘Sonia is very understanding
.
’
H
e grinned, putting out the fire with a few efficient moves.

She
watched
him douse the ashes with water
. T
he rising smoke
scratched her throat and made
her cough.

‘We have
what
you could call an open relationship.’

‘I don’t want to hear about it,’ she protested weakly, her cheeks burning. ‘
You
have to stop talking about your private life like
that
,
Matt
.’

‘I am usually very discreet
.
’
He
grinned unabashedly,
showing his
insanely white
teeth
. ‘
It’s
just with you that I let my guards down.
I wonder
why that is
?
’ H
e turned away, only his broad back exposed to her eyes as he finished his work with the fireplace.

If she
hadn’t known
any better
,
she would think
he was
embarrassed to have admitted that
, and
the thought amused her
. They
’d
had a pretty good relationship over the years, her involvement with
Ry
making her probably one of the few girls he actually kept seeing for more than just a few months.
Even now, after his long absence as he stayed abroad for long periods of time and visited rather rarely, things didn’t change. She might have had a chance to chat with him no more often than once or twice in the last twelve months, but it felt like a moment really. Some unexplained magical connection refused to be broken, regardless of the time and distance.

‘
That’s
because I am a great listener
,
’ she offered, feeling lighter
right away
.
‘And because you know
I won’t judge you,
Matt
. Still, I think that an open relationship is kind of difficult to have, isn’t it? I mean, I would go crazy sharing my boyfriend with anyone, full stop.’

‘I can’t imagine anyone wanting to share you,
Megs
.’ H
e rose to his feet, dusting o
f
f his hands on the fabric of his pants.
His motion
pulled her eyes to his long, muscular thighs, making her remember what a
striking
ly
good-looking
man he
was
.

That
must have been the alcohol speaking
.
A confusing
wave of heat
swept
over her face.

Megan was desperate to say something witty
, anything to dissolve
the
sudden unexpected tension
between them
as he stood just a few feet away, his face unusually serious. But her head was completely void
. N
othing even remotely acceptable
came to
mind. She tried to remember
Matt
as a child, his skinny
,
freckly face smeared with dirt. Only she couldn’t.
Somehow
,
her brain
wouldn’t
cooperate,
locking away
memories from the past when she needed them most. Instead
,
she remembered his grin as they
’d
met a few weeks earlier, after his long absence. His antics had made it
easy
for his family
, hoping the new environment would take care of his wild streak,
to
decide to
send him
to the States
for a
two-year
post-
graduate program
. He
had
already
finished
his engineering degree
in England
,
and
the extra
two
year
s
at
MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts
,
was
an added bonus before he would
join
the family business.
Matt seemed to be enjoying his exile, she thought acidly, to the degree that he even stayed there over Christmas break and summer, his enthusiastic emails and phone calls the only signs of life.
Ry
missed him terribly
,
Meg knew it
. He had complained to her
about Matt’s sudden love for the US
more than once
.

When they’d met for the first time after the
long
time
apart,
for
one insane moment as their eyes met, she felt breathless and as shy as if she
were
talking to his grandfather. Underneath his smile
,
there was something else far more dangerous and tempting
that made
her shiver with trepidation. He looked at her like a man looking at a woman
and
liking what he saw
.

T
he moment
passed almost instantly, of course, before anyone else had
as much as
an inkling
that something was amiss.
Even
Ry
an
failed to notice her sudden shyness. But then again, he was too excited to notice anything. With
his arm around her shoulders in a possessive gesture he bickered
playfully
with his brother,
extremely happy to have
Matt
back from his
stay
abroad.

‘What’s wrong?’
Matt’s
worried words broke into her unhappy memories
,
and she looked up
at him. Their eyes met.
His eyebrows, several shades darker than his hair
,
were knitted together as he waited for her answer
. H
is serious face
made
her think of Henry
Harper
.

He
does
look a lot like his grandfather
.
She assessed
the elegant lines of his nose, cheekbones
,
and jaw
,
firm and powerful.

‘Nothing, really
.
’
She
tried to smile, eager to get back to their earlier
,
light
er
mood. ‘I just remembered something from the past, that’s all.’

‘Don’t let bad memories eat
away at
you.’ He was still serious, his blue eyes darker in the half
-
shade of the autumn afternoon. ‘I
learnt that
from
G
randpa
, you know. He told me once to keep the good
ones and get rid of the ones that hurt. It was a good adv
ice,
and
he is very wise. There had been enough
sh
—
mess
in his life to know
firsthand
how to deal with it.’

‘
Sometimes
the memories aren’t all bad
,
and that’s the problem
,
’ she said impulsively,
instantly
regretting her lo
o
se tongue.
S
he had no clue
what had possessed her to say that
,
and
she was mortified.

H
e nodded
slowly, his gaze pensive.
‘
It
sure is
,
’
he
agreed
. Softening marginally, h
is eyes
studied
her face. ‘I’ve got a few of those
of
my own, you know. Usually
,
I am pretty good
at keeping
them at bay, but sometimes
,
at night, they win.’

Suddenly
,
he was
very close to her.
His feet had moved so quickly that she hadn’t noticed his movement
. But he was there, his large frame dangerously near. She should have stepped back
.
H
er heart beat frantically as she listened to his voice, rough and honest.

‘
Sometimes
,
I remember what I thought when I was fourteen
,
and I saw
Ry
holding your hand. Or when we were older, and
Ry
was taking you to the
dance
, remember? You wore this blue dress that matched your eyes so perfectly…’
He
paused, his pale face drawn as if
he were
in pain. ‘
Most
of all
,
I remember seein
g you
a
few weeks
ago
,
after my return from the S
tates
,
though. I thought that you were the most beautiful girl in the world and what
a
lucky bastard
Ry
is to have you… I guess
that
was the first and only time I almost disliked my brother
.
’
When
he
finished, his
shaky and forced
laughter
was not enough to
make her believe he found his
self-deprec
ating
words funny.