know you!’ she exclaimed fiercely. ‘You’ll soon get bored doing nothing. Even if you don’t need the money.’
Matt shrugged. ‘We’ll see.’
‘Oh!’ Diane’s exclamation was impatient. ‘All right, what about me? Have you thought about me at all? I can’t live here. My job’s in London.’
‘I know that.’
‘And?’
Matt bent his head, rubbing palms that were suddenly slick with sweat over the knees of his pants. ‘And—I think it would be a good idea if we cooled it for a while—’
‘No!’
‘Yes.’ Matt knew he was being harsh but he really didn’t have a choice. Not in the circumstances. ‘Help me on this, Diane. I need some time on my own; time to get my head straight.’ He paused, considering his words. ‘Pretending things are the way they used to be isn’t going to do it.’
‘It could.’ Diane quickly crossed the room to kneel at his feet. ‘Darling, don’t do this to me. To us. We’re so good together.’
We were, thought Matt flatly, making no attempt to touch her. ‘Diane—’
‘No, listen to me.’ She looked up at him appealingly, her heart-shaped face alight with enthusiasm, grey eyes entreating now, eager to persuade him she was right. ‘I can help you, darling. You know I can. But not if you send me away.’
‘Dammit, I’m not sending you away,’ he muttered grimly, but she wasn’t listening to him.
Moving his hands aside, she replaced them with her own. For a moment, she was still. And then, watching him with an almost avid concentration, she slid her hands along his thighs to the apex of his legs. Her intention was clear. When she licked her lips, he could see her anticipation. Then, she spread his legs and came between them…
Matt couldn’t let her go on. With a surge of revulsion, he thrust her aside and sprang to his feet. Somehow he managed to put the width of the room between them, his pulse racing, his heart hammering wildly in his chest. But it wasn’t a good feeling. He felt sick, and sickened, by what she’d tried to do, and he could hardly bear to look at her now.
‘Well…’ Diane got to her feet, bitterness and disappointment etched sharply on her flushed face. ‘You had only to say no, Matt. There was no need to practically knock me over in your eagerness to get away from me.’
Matt groaned. ‘Diane, please—’
‘At least I know where I stand,’ she went on, patting down her skirt, brushing a thread of cotton from the silk jersey. ‘What happened in Abuqara, Matt? Did you suddenly acquire a taste for different flesh from mine? Or was it something even more extreme? A change of sex, perhaps?’
Matt’s hands balled into fists at his sides. ‘I think you’d better go, Diane,’ he said harshly. ‘Before I forget I was brought up to be a gentleman.’
She stared at him for a moment, and then her face crumpled, the coldness in her expression giving way to a woeful defeat. ‘Oh, Matt,’ she breathed, scrubbing at the tears that were now pouring down her cheeks, ‘you know I didn’t mean that. I love you. I’d never do anything—say anything to hurt you.’
Matt felt weariness envelop him. It was all too much. Diane was too much. She had no idea how he was feeling and he didn’t have the urge—or the patience—to deal with her histrionics.
That was why he’d bought this house in the first place. He’d known Diane would not be able to accompany him and he’d persuaded himself that she’d come to see it was the best solution for both of them. He still cared about her, of course he did. But she had to understand that his attitude had changed, his aspirations had changed. He was not the man he used to be.
God help him!
‘Look,’ he said at last, crossing his arms against any attempt she might make to touch him again, ‘I know this has been hard for you, Diane. It’s been hard for both of us. And I don’t expect you to give up your life in London and move down here.’
Diane sniffed. ‘So what? You’re giving me the brush-off.’
‘No.’ Matt gave an inward groan. ‘I’m not saying I never want to see you again—’
‘Is that supposed to reassure me?’ Diane pushed back her silvery cap of hair with a restless hand. ‘Matt, I thought you loved me; I thought that one day we might—well, you know, make it legal.’
‘And I’m not saying we won’t. One day,’ said Matt steadily. ‘Come on, Diane, you know I’m right. It’s just not working right now.’
Diane regarded him from beneath her lashes. ‘And that’s all it is? This—need you have for some time alone, for some space?’
‘I swear it.’ Matt spread his hands. ‘What do you think? That there’s someone else? Goddammit, Diane, when have I had the chance to find someone else?’
‘I don’t know everything you did while you were in Abuqara,’ she protested. ‘Tony said that Abuqaran women are really beautiful—’
‘Tony!’ Matt was scathing. ‘I might have known Tony Corbett had a hand in this. Since when has he been such an expert on Abuqaran women?’
Diane shrugged a little defensively now. ‘He was only speaking objectively.’
‘I’ll bet.’
Diane pulled a face. ‘He’s my boss. He cares about me.’ She paused. ‘I’m glad he’s wrong.’
‘Yeah.’ Matt managed a faint smile in response. ‘So—what are you going to do? I’d offer to let you stay the night but only one of the rooms is furnished.’
‘We could always share—’ began Diane, and then cut herself off with a wry grimace. ‘No, scrub that. I can’t stay in any case. I’ve got a meeting with the board of governors this afternoon and I’ve promised to have dinner with Helen Wyatt this evening. She’s hopefully going to give the gallery some good publicity and I wouldn’t want to disappoint her. No, I’ll drop in on Mummy and Daddy and then I’ll head back to town. I suppose I just wanted to assure myself that the move had gone OK, to assure myself that you were all right.’ She paused. ‘And obviously you are.’
Matt inclined his head. ‘Thanks.’
Diane managed a bright smile. ‘My pleasure,’ she said, restricting herself to a quick squeeze of his arm. ‘OK, you look after yourself, right? I’ll be in touch again in a couple of days.’
The words ‘I’ll look forward to it’ stuck in Matt’s throat and he gave a rueful smile instead. ‘You take care,’ he said, as she picked up her handbag and headed towards the front door.
‘I will,’ she replied, and he felt guilty when he heard the sudden break in her voice. ‘Bye.’
‘’Bye,’ he answered roughly. But he closed his eyes against the sudden surge of relief he felt as the BMW crunched away down the drive.
‘I’ve
