His Forbidden Fiancee

Last night, when she’d said, “Matthias? Aren’t you going to make love to me?” he’d gone still and silent. Further prodding, “Matthias? Matthias?” had caused him to close his eyes as if in pain. Then he’d taken a long deep breath and replied, “No.”

In less than forty-five seconds he’d left her in the guest bedroom with one of his shirts and a kiss on the nose.

You had to hate that kind of self-control in a man.

But now it was morning and from the quiet sound of it, the rain had stopped, so she was free to take herself and her humiliation out of his house. She’d give herself a pass on breaking off the engagement in person. When she got a safe one-hundred miles or so away, she’d give him a call. Better yet, she’d send an e-mail from an anonymous account. Or perhaps a note by slow-flying carrier pigeon.

She wasn’t going to face him again, even if it meant driving home in a knee-length T-shirt and nothing else.

A woman who wasn’t yet thirty and yet who’d been rejected at both the altar and in the bedroom didn’t need to eat any more humble pie, thank you very much.

However, she wasn’t destined for near-naked driving that day. When she inched open the bedroom door, she found a neat pile of her dried clothing. Once she’d pulled it on, she crossed to the door again, listened to the quiet for a moment, then tiptoed along the hall and down the stairs on the first leg of her furtive escape.

Only to find her host was watching her take those exaggerated silent footsteps over the rim of a coffee cup.

“Oh, uh, hi.” She tried tacking on a casual expression to convince him that strutting like a soundless rooster was one of her normal morning activities. “I didn’t, um, see you there.”

Seeing him was the problem! Seeing him reminded her of what he’d looked like last night, smiling at her, touching her hair, her face, coming close-up for kisses that were burned into her mind. Crossing her arms over her chest, she tried banishing the memories of his dark gaze on her naked breasts.

How much she’d wanted him to touch her.

In an abrupt move, he half turned away, the liquid in his cup sloshing dangerously close to the edge. “Are you ready for that breakfast I promised?”

“Breakfast?” She sounded stupid, but she felt stupid that even sans merlot, cozy firelight and distant drumming of the rain, her attraction to him was alive and quite, quite well.

Her attraction to the man who’d been able to deny everything she’d offered him last night.

“I said I’d feed you.” He turned back. “And if I don’t get some decent caffeine I might start gnawing on table legs. I freely admit to being a coffee snob and this stuff isn’t up to my usual standards. This stuff is instant. There isn’t anything else in the house.”

“Oh. Well. Then.” She would have liked nothing better than to grab her keys and get out of there, but she was suddenly rediscovering that spine of hers. And her pride. Instead of running off like a cowardly ninny, she’d spend another hour with him.

Then she’d hide off someplace where she could rent a pigeon.

An hour without making a further fool of herself. That shouldn’t be so hard, should it?

She chalked up the silence of the car ride into the tiny town of Hunter’s Landing to his need for quality caffeine. For herself, she managed to clamp down on her usual nervous babble by digging her fingernails into her palms whenever she felt compelled to volley a conversational gambit.

She was afraid a neutral comment intended to sound like “Beautiful morning, isn’t it?” might come out as a plaintive “Why didn’t you go to bed with me last night?”

So she created some half-moon marks in her hands and applied herself to observing the view outside his SUV’s windows. It was a beautiful morning. The road was narrow and windy, taking them through heavy woods with pine boughs that still held raindrops winking like crystals in the sunlight. Every once in a while she’d catch a glimpse of the lake, its deep blue a match of the spring sky overhead.

As they neared the town, there was a slow-moving parade of “traffic”—actually a short line of cars in both directions that were pulling into or out of parking lots of small stores and cafés. Matthias glanced over at her. “Have you been to the lake before?”

She nodded. “But only during ski season.”

“You downhill? Cross-country? Snowboard?”

“Truth? I’m best at hot chocolate and stoking the fire.”

He grinned. “A woman after my own heart.”

Ha. After last night, they both knew that wasn’t true. “What, you don’t like snow activities that much either?”

“No, I like all sorts of snow activities. But when I’m done playing, I like a warm beverage, a warm fire and a warm woman waiting.”

She curled her lip at him. “That’s an incredibly sexist thing to say.”

He steered the car into a parking space outside a restaurant called Clearwater’s. “Hey, I didn’t say I expected it to be that way, only that I liked it. Since you do, too, I don’t see the problem.”

What did he mean by that? Did he mean he didn’t see the problem that she had with his comment or that, given their natural proclivities, he didn’t think they’d have a problem with their marriage during ski season?

Except they weren’t getting married. And she wasn’t going to bother making that point in case he really was only referring to the comment and he’d think her assumption about thinking he was referring to their marriage incredibly presumptuous. Oh, God. Now she was babbling to herself.