He laughed at that, a cold hard sound that sent a shiver down her spine.
“A wonderful man? How little you know.”
He started toward her, his steps slow, and he never took his eyes off her.
“What are you doing, Mr. Hawthorne?” she asked, her blood beginning to rush.
“I’m going to show you exactly how wonderful I am.”
“I don’t like the look in your eyes.”
His gaze was menacing. “You shouldn’t.”
“Matthew,” she said, forgetting to be formal, holding out her hand to ward him off.
“Yes?” he asked, taking another step closer.
“Don’t do something you’ll regret just to prove some idiotic point.”
His eyes bored into her with murderous intensity. She turned to flee, but it was too late. His hand snaked out and grabbed her wrist in a punishing grip and he pulled her close.
Sparrows chirped madly outside, flying in and out of the snow-covered bushes in some sort of game.
“Don’t do this,” she pleaded.
But his mouth came down on hers, painfully, slanting and ravaging. He punished her with his lips until she went limp in his arms, her body trembling, though not with desire.
Pulling back, he looked into her eyes, his own tormented. He didn’t move. Didn’t seem to breathe. Their gazes met and held as she looked close, so close she could see the dark flecks that made his eyes so blue. With effort, she pushed away from him.
“You might be able to prove to yourself that you are a monster,” she whispered fiercely, “but it will take more than that to make me believe.”
His face hardened, and she could tell he was going to pull her back, intent on proving the worst once and for all. But this time she was too fast for him, and she leaped away.
“This isn’t about being a monster,” she said when she was well beyond him. “This is about fathers and sons.” Her head snapped back in thought. “I think it must be the same as mothers and daughters—only the opposite. Sons love their mothers but see their worth in their father’s eyes.”
He went still.
“You’re angry because of it. And lashing out.” Her eyes flickered as another thought occurred to her. “That must be what’s wrong with Nester, why he’s so angry. He didn’t know his father’s love.”
She started to pace. “And that must be why Jeffrey is so kind,” she added, her brow furrowed as her mind circled with insight and understanding. “He must have had a strong relationship with his father.”
Matthew stiffened. “Jeffrey Upton?”
“Yes, the gentleman who sat next to me at dinner.”
“I know who he is.”
The green of Finnea’s eyes clouded. “He is nice, and he’s handsome.”
“I’d hardly call him nice, and I certainly wouldn’t call him handsome. I’d call him old. Old enough to be your father.”
She scowled. “That isn’t true. He is mature, not old. And he is a terribly kind man.”
His eyes narrowed dangerously. “Why should it matter if he is kind or not?”
She suddenly remembered where she was, in Matthew Hawthorne’s house, with paintings ripped to shreds all around them. “Because,” she said uncomfortably.
“You think he’s going to ask you to marry him, don’t you?” he demanded, his gaze penetrating. “Whose idea is it? Yours? Upton’s? Or is this something your mother wants you to do?”
She tried to turn away. “Stop this!”
In a few bold strides, he came up to her and grabbed her wrist once again, turning her to him. “Does Jeffrey touch you this way?” he demanded in a hoarse whisper, pulling her close. “Is that why you are thinking about marrying him?”
Furtively, she pushed at his hand, but he only persisted, his strong fingers running down her cheek to her jaw. “Or like this?”
“Stop it, Matthew.”
“Why?” he rasped against her skin.
She pulled a deep breath when he pressed his lips against her hair, gently, with infinite care, no longer punishing.
“Does he touch you like this, Finn?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Call you what?” His fingers trailed to her neck.
“You know what. Don’t call me Finn.”
“You didn’t object before.”
“I’m objecting now.”
But the words were barely out when his fingers tangled in her hair, and he tilted her head as he leaned down to her.
Their lips met and she groaned. This time the kiss was long and desperate, filled with quaking need.
He captured her against the wall while his hand trailed down her side. He touched her breast, his thumb brushing the tender peak, and she stiffened, trying to step back, but there was nowhere to go.
“Shhhh,” he murmured, gentling her, stroking her hair, “it’s all right. I won’t hurt you.”
Drawn into his spell, she started to ease. It was always that way when he touched her, seeking his warmth. But then he cupped her round bottom and molded her against his hardness.
“Matthew,” she cried softly, concerned.
He lifted his head with a groan. She could tell he was reining in his desire. He reached up and gently brushed his thumb over her full lower lip, and she shivered with longing.
“God, you make me forget.” He kissed her forehead. “I want to taste you.” He kissed her cheek. “Hold you.”
She could feel him tremble as he trailed his kiss down her jaw to the curve of her throat, tasting a glimpse of skin beneath the layers of her gown.
“Let me touch you.”
Those words. The endless, slow-looping replay of the night in the jungle, the memory filling her mind. But this time the words weren’t from memory, they were real. And her breath caught.
“Yes, Finn, let me touch you.”
She whimpered and her hands pushed hard against his chest, pushing him away.
He stopped, his breathing ragged, but when he started to concede, her fingers curled into the fine linen of his shirt.
And they were lost.
His mouth covered hers, desire raging unchecked. He cupped her again, pulling her up, moving her against him in slow, torturous strokes.
She wrapped her arms around his shoulders so tightly, afraid that she wouldn’t be able to let go. She could feel the beat of his heart, the hard planes of his body.
She understood then how inextricably she was linked to him. Bound together by that day on the train when he could have left but hadn’t. Bound to him because he had saved her life. Bound to him because he had treated her with honor. She didn’t just owe him, as she had told him, as she had thought. She was bound to him as surely as she was bound to the earth and not the sky. As his lips pressed against hers, she couldn’t deny it any longer.
He pulled her closer, his hard muscles beneath her hands, beneath her palms, which only grazed the material.
“Touch me,” he rasped.
He pressed her hand to his chest with his own, a dance of fingers and lips.
She needed him as if in him she could find something of herself, something of Africa. But then Africa was the very thing she needed to extricate from her soul. Just as she needed to extricate Matthew from her mind. He was too strong, too forbidding. Too much of Mzungu Kichaa. They could be friends, as she had tried to convince herself they were, but she couldn’t allow herself to think about the way he had made her feel that night in the jungle among the thick, green leaves and deafening silence. Or here. The yearning. The need.
She might be drawn to this man, but she had no place in his life. Just as he had no place in hers.
With a sound that started deep in his chest, he pulled back and looked at her.
“Do you actually think he loves you?” he asked, his voice ragged.
She tried to look away but he grasped her chin, gentle but determined.
“Why do you even think about a man like Jeffrey Upton?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“You say that because you don’t know why you would consider him,” he said, pulling her back.
“That’s not true.” But she hardly understood what she was saying when his lips brushed against her neck.
She told herself to focus. “Jeffrey is perfect for me.”
“Liar,” he replied on a stroke of breath against the collarbone beneath her velvet gown. “Unless you mean he’s perfect because of the way he condescends to you,” he added, his voice sharp as he grazed his teeth against the curve of her ear.
Her head fell back, her lips parting in a gasp. “That is not true.”
He stopped abruptly and held her by the shoulders. “Isn’t it? I saw the way he treated you at my parents’ party. Like you were a child, not like the woman you are.”
She tried to move away, but he held her secure. “Tell me, Finn,” he demanded, his voice a raw edge. “Do you love him?”
No sound. A quiet that seeped to the soul. Not even a faint rustle of the thick, succulent leaves in the jungle.
The pain receded, floating at the back of her mind like a ship at sea. Matthew held her close. This perfect man with his warrior’s scar had saved her. Had cared for her. Pressed his strong, bold fingers to her skin to stop the bleeding, bound her thigh with a long swathe of material he had found in a satchel, securing it around her hips, then wrapping her nearly naked body in one of his shirts he had pulled from his pack. His ministrations so caring. So gentle. So different from how he had been on the train.
Tears burned in her eyes at the thought of him leaving her.
“Hold me, “she whispered.
His arms tightened around her and he settled her against his chest.
“I am holding you, Finn. You’re going to be fine.”
But that wasn’t it. That wasn’t what she wanted.
Her throat tightened. She curled closer, a desperate yearning seeping deeper than she understood. It was as if she couldn’t get close enough to him, close enough to sate this desperate need for a man she hardly knew. It made no sense, she realized that. But still she needed a word, a promise. She needed something to make her heart calm in her chest.
” Will I see you again ?” she said softly. “After this. After we get to Matadi.”
He looked away from her. Tried to move away, but they were tangled together.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, hating the unsteadiness she heard in her voice.
“Nothing,” he said, but she could feel tension fill his body.
Despite his sudden harshness, she took his large hand, stared at his long chiseled fingers still stained with her blood, then laced them with hers. Only hours before she had wanted to let go, drift away, but he had pulled her back, forcing her to survive. She felt overwhelmed by emotion, flooded by feelings for this man who had seen her, touched her, held her life in his hands—feelings she hardly understood.
“Will I, Matthew? Will I see you in Matadi? “
She held her breath, needing to know. But the look on his face made her heart drop.
His blue eyes were wild, his face etched in hard, fathomless planes. “No,” he said. No feeling. No caring. “No you won’t. I have no place for you in my life.”
Finnea blinked, the tiled warrior and snow-white dove in the high ceiling staring down at her, mortified as she remembered how he had seen her without clothes, had touched her bare skin, had listened as she foolishly bared her soul. Then turned her away. The one person she had felt connected to, the one person who somehow had made her feel safe, hadn’t wanted her.
In that moment in the jungle she had finally and completely faced the fact that there was no place for her in Africa. Her home had to be put behind her. Africa was her past, and she had to move beyond it. But then she had found him here. In a house called Dove’s Way.
“Do you care if I love Jeffrey?” she asked in a hoarse whisper, unable to help herself as a tiny spark of hope flared that not all of her had to be wiped away.
Matthew didn’t reply. He stood very still, too still.
The harsh stab of desolation snaked through her embarrassment, draining the life from her cheeks just as it had in the jungle. After a moment she stepped away, and this time he let her go.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, trying to believe, understanding then that her mother was right. Jeffrey Upton would make an ideal husband for her in this new world of Boston. “And if he proposes, I’ll say yes.”
She waited a moment longer, but still he said nothing. For reasons she wouldn’t let herself think about, she felt as if her heart were being ripped from her chest once again.
Gathering what little dignity she had remaining, she started for the door. But at the last minute she couldn’t help herself and she looked back.
“Did you love your wife so much? Is that why you went to Africa? To lose yourself? Is that why you hurt so badly now?”
She saw that her words caught him off guard. He looked at her long and hard, emotion scudding across his face.
“Just tell me,” she demanded, needing to know.
“Love her?”
The words were spoken with venom, and a chill raced down her spine. He looked her straight in the eye, and she would have sworn in that moment that he hated her.
“I found my wife making love to my best friend.”
Her head came back.
“Surprised? I certainly was,” he stated derisively. “It was the night of the party announcing my show. I thought Boston turned out to wish me well. As it happened, the cream of society actually turned out because my wife and her lover were the best show in town. I was the only person who didn’t know.”
“Oh Matthew, I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? Why? Because I was a fool?”
“No—”
“I was a fool. I loved her! I would have given her anything. But all she wanted was my name and my money. She had no interest in my love.”
Finnea tried to absorb his words, and she noticed how his hand clenched, then slowly came up to trace the scar on his face.
“Is that how it happened?” she asked before she could think better of it. “Is that the night you were scarred?”
His hand dropped to his side, and he glanced at the tattered remains of the painting of his wife, his face filled with blind despair. “Yes. It was the night I killed my best friend and my wife.”
Then he began to talk, the words spoken in an eerie monotone as he told her of that night, told her how he flew into the tiny house, blind with rage and fury, the door crashing back on its hinges.
Kimberly and Reynolds jerked in surprise. In a tangle of arms and clothing, the lovers tried to disengage themselves. But Matthew was on them. He tore them apart, flinging his wife aside, then taking to his best friend like a man possessed.