“What do you want from me then?” It wasn't a safe question to ask. No matter what his answer was, she would be caught. If he said he wanted something, she couldn't give it and face her family. If he said he wanted nothing … She didn't want to think of what that would mean to her even though it was what was best.
Matt gave her a tender look. “How about a little friendship, for starters?”
Now what was she supposed to do? Her plan had been to scare him away with her bad temper and righteous indignation. And he was asking her to be his friend. The idea was much too appealing, much too tempting.
“I'm sorry if you took my remarks the wrong way, Sarah. I was only teasing. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I'd never do that.”
The gentleness in his voice was her undoing. She couldn't stand the idea that she'd hurt him. So much for her impromptu strategy.
“No,” she murmured, looking down at the nubby toes of his wool socks, “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have snapped at you. What kind of hostess I make, taking my temper out on the guests?”
“You make a fine hostess,” Matt said, just barely resisting the urge to draw her up against him and hold her. Instead, he crooked a finger under her chin and tilted her head back so he could lose himself in the endless depths of her lake-blue eyes.
Sarah stared up at him, afraid that he would see every feeling she was struggling with, and equally afraid that he wouldn't. She thought for one heart-stopping instant that he was going to kiss her again, but he gave her a tender smile instead.
“You've had a rough day, you're tense. I know just the thing to fix that.”
“You do?” A number of half-formed notions tried to weave their way through the sensual fog in her mind, notions that involved lips and skin and strength and softness and whispered words. None of them quite got a hold, though, and Matt backed away from her, leaving her feeling abandoned.
He went to the bookshelves, to John Wood's fancy radio-stereo machine, which she had always been afraid to touch. With a flick of a switch and a twist of a knob, soft music filled the room. Sarah shivered a little at the magic of it and at the unfamiliar beauty of it. She was used to music; she had grown up in a house filled with singing. But always the Amish songs were about love to God and duty and suffering gladly and going to heaven at the end of a long, painful life. English music was about the world and the relationships between people. It seemed to her, in the litde bit she'd heard, that most of it was about love. Falling in love, falling out of love, the glory of love, the pain of love. The one playing now was sung by a man with a strong, smoky voice crooning that he'd be in trouble if she left him now.
“Paul Young,” Matt murmured appreciatively, returning to stand in front of her again. A relaxed smile curved his wide, handsome mouth as he took a deep cleansing breath and sighed. “Music to get mellow by. Take a deep breath and let it out slowly.”
Sarah did as instructed, letting the air hiss out of her lungs slowly only to suck in a sharp breath when Matt settled his hands on her shoulders. He clucked his tongue in reproof, but his eyes were twinkling and Sarah couldn't decide whether he was being serious or not. He made her feel so emotionally off balance, a part of her—the coward in her—wanted to run out of the room and upstairs to the safe haven of her quarters, but another part of her was too drawn to him, too intrigued, by-him, too tempted. She took another deep breath and expelled it.
“I'm afraid I'm not up to playing Patrick Swayze,” Matt said. “So dancing is out.”
“Who is this Patrick? A friend of yours?”
“Not exacdy,” Matt said with a chuckle. Half the women in the free world would have given their fingernails to dance with Patrick Swayze; Sarah didn't even know who he was. Of course she wouldn't. She had probably never been to see a movie. He thought for a minute what it would be like to take her to her first. It would be like experiencing it for the first time himself all over again. Everything would be that way with Sarah. Her innocence would make the world seem new. Lord, how tempting that was to a man who'd seen too much of the worst of it.
“Never mind,” he said at last. “Anyway, the point here is to get you to relax.”
“I am relaxed.”
“Fibber.” His fingers massaged her shoulders in a slow, sensuous rhythm. “Close your eyes and just listen to the music, let yourself sway with it.”
Sarah did as she was told and was filled by a strange feeling. It was a little like being un derwater, she thought. She was drifting in a sea of sound, weightless, boneless, sightless. The only thing anchoring her to reality were Matt's hands, hands she began fantasizing about working magic on other parts of her.
“Mmm … that's it,” Matt whispered.
His voice washed over her in the same kind of sensual wave as the music, warm and soft. The Paul Young song ended and another began with no interruption between the two. This song was even slower, softer, more heart wrenching. The words seemed to reach right into her to touch her soul. It was another song about needing love, about hungering for love, a prayer for God to speed the love of a special someone to the singer.
Matt listened to the stirring strains of “Unchained Melody” and watched the look of sweet yearning that came over Sarah's face, and felt something melt inside him. The city, the ER, the noise, the violence were a million miles away in that instant, and he was glad. It was just the two of them and the beginning of something special. He didn't know where this growing feeling would take them, but he wanted to find out.
It seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to step closer to her, to take her in his arms. He couldn't think why he had resisted the urge this long. He was a man accustomed to getting what he wanted and what he wanted was to feel Sarah next to him. It didn't matter that he'd only just met her. He felt like he'd been waiting half his life to find her. Sarah with her funny moods and Mona Lisa smile, her sweetness there to take all the bitterness from him.
He pulled her gently against him as the song built to its soulful crescendo, and felt the most incredible sense of lightness and peace. It felt so good, it ached inside him. He brushed his lips against her temple, kissing the fragile skin, his breath stirring the baby-fine tendrils of hair that curled there like wisps of silk.
As the last strains of the melody drifted away Sarah stepped back and looked up at him, her eyes so dark a blue, they looked the color of pansies. She stared up at him a long moment, saying nothing, her expression carefully blank.
“Sarah.” He didn't know what he meant to say. All that came out was her name, as soft as a secret.
“I … I'd best say good night,” she whispered, backing slowly away from him, the way she would from a dangerous animal encountered in the wild.
He stayed where he was, watching her go, saying nothing. Then she was in the comforting dark of the hall. She curbed the urge to run. By the time she got to the stairs, she stopped altogether, her hands clutching the polished oak newel post as if it were the only thing keeping her from sinking into bedlam.
“Oh, dear heaven,' she whispered, her voice trembling with emotion. “Please don't let this happen. Please don't let me fall in love with him.”
But as she climbed the stairs to her room, she had the terrible feeling it was already too late for prayers.
It seemed like the wisest course of action was to distance herself from Matt as much as she could. Sarah had come to this conclusion during the course of another long, sleepless night. He wouldn't be staying forever. If she could just manage to keep her heart out of reach until he had gone back to the city, maybe it wouldn't hurt so much when he left.
Her taste for adventure had been seriously depleted by her fear of pain. Adventure probably wasn't all it was cracked up to be anyway, she told herself as she readied a tray of warm muffins and fresh fruit for Matt s breakfast. So far this one had mostly just upset her.