Whispers at Midnight (38 page)

He said good-bye and clicked his phone shut and slid it into his pocket. Then he took her hand—actually wrested her hand toward him when she initially resisted—went down on one knee in front of her, and pressed her hand to his heart. She could feel the warmth and strength of his chest through his tee shirt.

Too astonished to speak, Carly quit trying to get her hand back and gaped at him.

Her brows started to contract.

“I’m short on candlelight and flowers at the moment, but bended knee I can do: Carly, baby, darling, angel, will you marry me?”

“No,” she said, snatching her hand back. His phone rang while he was getting to his feet, and she took advantage of his momentary distraction to walk past him and out the door.

The garage was pitch dark and as hot and airless as Death Valley after the air-conditioned apartment. Probably going down those rickety stairs without being able to see so much as her hand in front of her was a mistake.

If it would get her away from Matt, though, it was a mistake she was willing to make.

The light came on just in time to keep her from breaking her neck, and Carly realized that Matt was coming down behind her. She didn’t even look back.

“What do you mean,
no?”
he said to her back. Having reached the bottom of the stairs, she turned to glare up at him. He was about halfway down, and he was looking thoroughly exasperated.

Had he really expected her to say yes? Had he really thought that she was so crazy about him that she would jump on an offer of marriage like a dog on a bone just because he felt guilty enough to toss one her way?

“Do you want me to spell it out? Write it down for you? What? N–O. No. How hard is that?” She stalked toward his car. “Take me home.”

“You’re the one who threatened to cut my balls off if I did another—what was it you called it? Oh, yeah, a kiss-and-run—on you.” He followed her across the garage. “So you should be happy. This time I’m not kissing and running. I’m
proposing,
for God’s sake.”

“Yeah, well, you know what you can do with your proposal.”

“Come on, Curls, get real. You know forever is what you want.”

Whoever it was who said the truth hurts had gotten it wrong. In Carly’s case at least, what the truth did was infuriate. Sizzling inside like sausage on a grill, she turned with one hand on the door handle and launched napalm at him with her eyes.

“Listen, you, just so you know. Forever is a heck of a long time. You’re not
that
good in bed.”

Opening the car door, she slid inside and pulled on her seat belt. It was even hotter and stuffier in the car, but she didn’t care. Anything that would get her away from Matt she was ready to embrace with open arms.

The garage door rattled up, the overhead light went out so that it was suddenly dark in the garage, and then he opened the door and got behind the wheel.

“Now let me get this straight.” He started the car, turned on the lights and began backing out. She could see him now. The reflected glow from the headlights touched his face. He was frowning, his brow furrowed, his eyes narrowed. “You’re mad at me.”

Typical Matt, exquisitely perceptive. Carly gave a little snort of laughter. “Ya think?”

“Want to let me in on why?”

Because you’re stomping on my heart here?
But she couldn’t say that. No, she wouldn’t say that. She had some pride.

“Because you’re a jackass?” she suggested sweetly.

He gave her a look before stopping the car, getting out and closing the garage door. The dashboard clock said ten-twenty-five. He had to be at work in thirty-five minutes. Good. The sooner she was rid of him the better. He got back behind the wheel, reversed out of the driveway and then shifted the car into drive and headed toward the main road before he said another word.

“Look,” he said in the measured tone of a reasonable man forced to deal with the unreasonable—which in this case would be her. “We’ve been tight since we were kids, I care about you, you care about me, there’s a lot of history there. Add sex to that, and it was bound to happen. This whole love thing should not be a surprise.”

“There is no—” Carly began hotly, glad of the darkness to cover the sudden heat in her face as she sought for any weapon—lies would do; anger wasn’t bad either—to deflect the humiliating certainty that Matt suspected—no,
knew,
get real—that she was in love with him.

“Let me finish here,” Matt interrupted, holding up a warning hand. Gritting her teeth, Carly crossed her arms over her chest and stared stonily out the windshield. The headlights arced over a half-empty parking lot and a small apartment complex as the car paused at the intersection and then turned right. “Like it or not, we have a relationship here that neither one of us is going to be able to just walk away from very easily. The thing is, I could do the ‘great sex, no strings’ thing, but you can’t. I know it. I accept it. Hell, there’s even an upside to it. If we get married, we can do it as much as we want. And we completely undercut the whole town gossip network.”

There was the faintest undertone of humor to that last.

Carly seethed. He was stomping all over her heart, and he thought it was amusing? She didn’t know why she was even surprised. After all, it wasn’t like she hadn’t known the score going in. She’d even been warned.

“You know, it’s kind of you to think of me and my needs, but contrary to what you seem to think, I’m not really in the market for a
second
husband.” If her tone got any sweeter, she was going to need insulin. “In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think I like you better as a one-night stand.”

Matt rolled his eyes skyward. “I don’t believe this. The only time in my life I ever ask a woman to marry me, and she gets all bent out of shape about it.”

All bent out of shape didn’t even begin to cover it. Try furious.

“Like I told you before, sweet cheeks, your romantic technique needs work.”

He shot her a look, but before he could say anything more his phone rang. Cursing under his breath, he fished it out of his pocket.

“What?” he barked into it. He was sounding pretty ticked off himself by this time. Which made her feel a little better. Anything was better than his sounding amused, resigned, prepared to shoulder the burden of one more responsibility.

She was many things, but
not
one of Matt’s responsibilities. And she never wanted to be as long as she lived. What she wanted, she realized dismally, was for him to be as madly in love with her as, to her everlasting regret, she seemed to be with him. Which, given the fiasco the “great sex” thing had turned into, didn’t look like it was going to happen anytime soon.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” He listened, focusing on the road ahead while the night flew by outside the windows. “Okay, I’m on my way. Twenty minutes, max.”

He hung up, then glanced her way.

“Antonio just backed his car up and ran over Knight’s foot, which means we’re short another deputy.” He shook his head and glanced at her. “I don’t have time for this.”

He was pulling up before her house as he spoke. The headlight beams touched on his motorcycle, parked right where he had left it. Carly looked up the hill, up at the softly illuminated windows of the big white house that was once again her home, and was suddenly so glad to see it that she could feel incipient tears burning at the backs of her eyes.

Or maybe tears were burning at the backs of her eyes because of Matt.

She was head over heels in love with him, and he “cared” about her. How humiliating, infuriating, heartbreaking was that?

“You know what? I think you were right about the bed thing being a really bad idea for us,” she said, already opening her door as he slid the transmission into park. “So why don’t we just agree not to do it anymore?”

Getting out, she slammed the door behind her with a considerable amount of force, and started tramping up the dark and shadowy slope toward the house. The tree frogs piped a welcome. The insect chorus joined in. A pale moon waxed high overhead. The sky was aswarm with stars. It was hot and steamy and the scent of magnolia and cut grass and rotting walnuts hung in the air.

“Like either one of us is going to be able to stick to that.” Matt fell into step beside her.

Carly cast him an evil look. “
I
don’t see a problem.”

“Well, I do.”

“How to put this? In that case, it sucks to be you.”

“Not to be ungentlemanly here, but if you care to cast your mind back you might recall that
you
were the one who practically begged me to take you to bed, not the other way around. Of course I could be mistaken, but it
was
you who said something about not having had sex in two years, wasn’t it?”

“Well,” Carly said, “
now
I remember why I let it go so long.”

“Don’t give me that. I made you come. Multiple times.”

Carly curled her lip and wished him dead. “Think that makes you special? So does my vibrator.”

Matt stopped dead. Carly could feel his eyes boring into her back as she marched on.
Hah,
she thought,
chew on that.

He caught up with her. “All right, I’ve had it with this crap. This is your last chance. Do you want to marry me or not?” He sounded fed up to his back teeth now. Carly could go him one better. She was mad enough to chew nails.

“Not.” Her legs were still rubbery, Carly discovered, and the discovery made her madder.

“Okay, fine, I asked. Don’t ever say I didn’t. I don’t ever want to hear that kiss-and-run malarkey come out of your mouth again.”

“Don’t worry, you won’t.”

“Meaning?”

“Figure it out.”

He didn’t reply. The two of them stalked upward in silence for a moment.

Fuming, Carly cast him a sideways glance. “I thought you had to be somewhere.”

“I do. I’m walking you to your door first.”

“I don’t want you to walk me to my door. I want you to leave.”

“Too bad.”

“You know, I’m getting pretty sick of this whole king of the world thing you do.”

“Gosh almighty, are you really? What can I say? How about, deal with it.”

They had reached the steps now. Carly stomped up them. Matt followed. Not stomping. But he was scowling, and for Matt that was something.

The soft yellow porch light was warm and welcoming. The house itself seemed to glow invitingly. Sandra had left the curtains open, and Carly noted that, seen from the porch, the front parlor looked both elegant and serene. Viewed through the wavery prism of century-old glass, even the portrait of Great-grandfather over the fireplace looked charming rather than dour. From the looks of things, Sandra had turned every lamp in the house on, and no wonder, Carly thought, as it occurred to her for the first time that her prolonged absence had meant that Sandra had probably been home all alone when darkness fell.

She fished her keys out of her pocket and he took them from her without so much as a raised eyebrow asking permission and found the right one, fitting it into the lock with no difficulty. As he opened the door and stood back for her to enter, the tinny buzz of the alarm sounded in the distance.

Okay, so Matt had been right about the security alarm. Its reassuring presence did make her feel safer.

Just like the nails in the upstairs windows.

Hugo was crouched on the radiator, his tale twitching. Carly scooped him up and turned to face Matt as he stepped in behind her.

“Good
ni-ight,
” Carly said, the last word stretched into two falsetto syllables.

Frowning now, with the soft light of the hall chandelier spilling down on him so that she could see the angry glint in his eyes, Matt was looking tall and dark and dangerous. He loomed over her, his eyes narrowed, his mouth unsmiling. His stance might almost have been described as intimidating—except she knew him too well to be intimidated.
Nice try though,
she thought, as his gaze flicked to her mouth.

“Go for a good-night kiss and die,” Carly said.

“Know what, Curls? You’re being a real pain in the ass.” Matt’s eyes were hard. His voice was soft.

She knew that expression and that voice. He was on the verge of losing his temper. Well, goody-goody. She’d lost hers about half an hour back.

“Then I guess that makes you a—”

His phone started to ring.

“Dammit to hell and back.” He pulled it out, opened it, answered, listened, said, “On my way,” and closed it again.

“I don’t have time for this,” he said again, glowering at her. “Not tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Not if I see you first,” Carly said, knowing that it was childish and not caring. Matt gave her a look, then turned on his heel and walked out the door. She closed it behind him, locked it, and watched him stride across the porch. Then, still clutching Hugo, she hurried toward the kitchen. She didn’t know how long that last little exchange with Matt had taken, but she couldn’t have very much time left before the alarm went off.

She made it just in time, putting Hugo down and keying in the code. The warning buzz went silent. She reset the alarm and glanced around. There were a couple of dishes in the sink, but otherwise everything was tidy. The back door was locked. The curtains were drawn. For a moment she just stood there, gripping the counter and taking deep breaths as she tried to block all memories of the night’s debacle from her mind before Sandra saw her and knew immediately that something big had occurred with Matt.

God, had she blown it or what?

The great sex thing had seemed like a good idea at the time. Unfortunately, it had backfired on her with a vengeance. In the heat of the moment,
I love you, Matt
had just kind of popped out, and now he knew. And felt
sorry
for her. How pathetic was that?

Carly groaned and pushed away from the counter. She couldn’t stand to think about it. She
refused
to think about it. Crossing to the refrigerator, she opened the door and peered inside. It occurred to her that she hadn’t had supper. She’d had sex instead. But she wasn’t going to think about that, she reminded herself fiercely. The contents of the refrigerator, tempting just seconds before, were suddenly unappealing. She wasn’t hungry anyway. What she was was rubbery-legged, weak-kneed, drained. Sex—at least sex with Matt—was exhausting.