Boardroom To Bedroom: His Darling Valentine / The Boss's Marriage Arrangement

‘I suppose you even sleep in the damn bed after he has gone, do you? Dreaming virginal dreams of sharing it with him?’

Now it was Harriet’s skin that blanched as fury and shock poured through her in a thunderous fall of ice-cold disbelief.

Turning on her heel, she headed for the door. But Matt got there before her, barring her way with the arm he stretched across it. He felt as shocked by what he had said as Harriet looked, but it was impossible for him to recall the words now.

‘Harriet, I’m sorry,’ he apologised gruffly. ‘I…I was out of order. I shouldn’t have…’

Harriet wasn’t sure she could trust herself to speak, so instead she put both her hands on his arm and pushed hard against it, to make him remove it from the doorway and let her walk away.

Which was a mistake.

A big mistake. As she discovered when, instead of giving way, his arm pushed hers back and then snapped around her along with its fellow, so that she was tightly bound against Matt’s chest.

‘Let go of me!’

Not only was her demand ineffectual, it was also muffled against Matt’s body, Harriet recognised weakly.

‘Not until you’ve let me apologise!’

Was he serious? Did he realise just how many apologies he now owed her?

‘For what?’ she asked him pithily, if somewhat breathlessly, and she tussled to put enough space between his flesh and her lips so that her own breath didn’t come bouncing back to her off his skin and, by some alchemic means, taste of him! ‘Insulting me or imprisoning me?’

‘I shouldn’t have made that comment about your virginity.’

Harriet went completely still, and then took a deep, shuddering breath.

As though he knew she was going to try and lie to him, Matt added quietly, ‘Ben told me.’

‘Ben?’

‘He thought it was something I should know… Just in case my intentions towards you weren’t serious. He may not love you as you want him to, but it’s obvious that he feels a…a certain sense of…of responsibility towards you.’

Matt discovered that he was having to battle with himself to make that admission. It would have suited his purpose far better had he been able to point out to Harriet that Ben had no feelings for her of any kind.

But Harriet was barely aware of the last part of his speech. All her concentration was focused on those three appalling words—Ben told me.

Never had Harriet wished more that she were the fainting type. Deprived of the opportunity for such an escape, she contemplated the effectiveness of a long, piercing scream—but abandoned it as pointless.

Instead she took a deep breath and said heavily, carefully spacing out each word, ‘Ben told you that I am a virgin?’

Did she realise how cute she looked, breathing heavily down her nose like that when she was angry? Matt wondered adoringly.

‘He was trying to protect you!’ Matt found himself defending Ben in a gesture of male solidarity, but then he saw the smouldering volcano of wrath that was burning in her furious gaze.

‘Oh, yes, I’m sure he was,’ Harriet burst out furiously. ‘After all, he’s been doing it ever since I hit puberty, when he told me that boys only wanted one thing! What is it about you men?’ she demanded in a wearily aggrieved voice. ‘Ben would run a mile if he found out that a girl he was dating was a virgin, but he expects me to…to feel grateful to him for preserving mine when… Oh, this is just too much!’ she exclaimed. ‘How could he do this to me? Doesn’t he realise that if you and I were in lo— Er, I mean, if we were seeing one another you would have discovered for yourself long before now that I hadn’t slept with anyone before?’

Discovered for himself? Long before now? Matt found that he was suddenly having a great deal of trouble breathing. To calm himself down he forced himself to play devil’s advocate. ‘Perhaps I’m so passionately in love with you that I’m prepared to wait?’

Harriet gave him a narrow-eyed look of open female contempt.

‘Because I want to make our first time extra special for both of us…’ he elaborated.

Hell, what was he saying that for? Matt cursed as his own body reacted immediately and openly to the intimate images his words were conjuring up.

Harriet could feel herself starting to tremble. No, not tremble. It was a small, delicious, erotic shudder of anticipatory pleasure that was galvanising her body, making her feel so sensuously boneless and weak that she couldn’t move a single muscle to prise her eager flesh away from the hardness of Matt’s body.

The hardness! Matt had an erection, and her body was savouring that knowledge as her hips ground hungrily against him.

A man could drown in the deep green pools of Harriet’s gaze, Matt decided rawly, as his hands slid lower to lift her more tightly against him. His own gaze lowered from her eyes to her mouth, and all hell broke loose inside him.

Inside him—and somewhere upstairs inside the house, where the crash of splintering glass shocked through the silence.

‘Wait here,’ Matt commanded as he released her, but Harriet ignored him, following him as he took her stairs two at a time and then almost cannoning into him as he threw open the door to the small bedroom which overlooked the street. Harriet paled as she saw the broken window and the glass covering the bed and the floor.

Amongst the glass was a brick. Matt frowned and said, ‘Ten to one this is the work of those louts who attacked your neighbour. There’s no point in ringing the police at this time of night—we’ll do that in the morning. You’d better pack a case.’

‘What?’ Harriet shook her head vehemently. ‘Nothing is going to make me leave here. They might come back, and if the house is empty…’

‘Nothing?’ Matt queried meaningfully.

Harriet frowned in confusion, not following his train of thought.

She could see the impatient rise and fall of his chest as he breathed in and then exhaled.

‘No way am I leaving you here on your own. The other bed is covered with shards of glass which means that if you opt to stay here then I shall be sharing your bed!’