My Stubborn Heart (19 page)

On the drive over from Chapel Bluff, he hadn't been sure how he'd feel about having Kate inside his house. He hardly ever had people here. But as he'd watched her make her way through these rooms that were so personal to him, it had hit him. The pleasure of it. Powerful, dangerous pleasure. It made him greedy. Like he wanted to lock the door behind her and not let her leave.

Beth had never been to this house. His parents had sold it to him right around the time he and Beth started dating. He'd kept the house locked for the next few years, always meaning to drive Beth out to see it, always intending to do something about fixing the place up. But other things had been more urgent or interesting.

He had no memories of Beth here, but already tonight he had dozens of Kate. She'd imprinted herself on his house, and he didn't know how he was going to look at these rooms and not see her in them once she left.

He ran a hand through his hair. He was really losing it. He'd lived in this house three years. Kate hadn't even been here three hours. How could her being here such a short time change anything?

It couldn't. And yet it had. His house had always been familiar and quiet. But it hadn't been warm until she'd come and brought warmth with her.

The movie droned on and on. He sat next to her in the darkened room, his body locked down, his instincts pulling like a dog against a leash. As the minutes ticked by, an ache began inside of him that doubled and redoubled in size. He ached to touch her hair, just a piece of it. To reach for her hand like he had the other morning. To tell her he thought she was beautiful. It scared him that he might not be able to keep himself from doing or saying any of those things. Even though he knew,
he knew
, he'd regret them later.

His entire life he'd been attracted to the kind of girls in Budweiser ads. Blond, big curves on top, mile-long legs.

Kate? Completely different. Not short, but definitely not tall. The top of her head hit him near his chin. She had a slim and delicate body, like a ballet dancer. Her long, straight hair held a dozen shades of dark red. And her eyes . . . Lately, those eyes could make his heart pound or his spirits plummet with a glance.

Everything about her brought out the most primitive feelings of protectiveness in him. She made him eager to use his size and muscle to fight for her. Kate would give him flak for it if she knew. But it couldn't be helped. He'd never felt so stupidly possessive of anyone in his life. Which was why he
hated
that she was dating Tyler. Every time he thought about it, it hurt to breathe, and he thought about it almost constantly.

When she shivered he noticed immediately and went to turn up the thermostat. He didn't have any throw blanket things, so he took one of his sweat shirts off the arm of the chair and handed it to her.

She threw him a smile, zipped herself into it, and continued watching the movie.

He forced himself back into his spot on the sofa, a respectable distance between them, and pretended to watch the movie, too. He'd have loved to turn and simply watch her instead. But as soon as he focused his attention on her, she'd be on to him and asking him about it. So he remained rigid, bracing inwardly and outwardly, trying not to feel anything else, working not to notice how much it pleased him to see her wearing his sweat shirt, struggling not to do any of the things he wanted to do.

He couldn't have her.

He didn't deserve her.

She wasn't here to stay.

His head understood how it was, yet his control over the rest of him kept unraveling, deserting him when he needed it most.

After the final scene of
Notting Hill
, with Hugh Grant and a pregnant Julia Roberts together on a park bench, the credits rolled. Kate sighed contentedly. She adored that movie. How could she not? It was a romance with a happy ending—exactly her cup of tea.

Matt hadn't seemed as entertained. He'd barely moved an inch during the entire thing, and he hadn't laughed once. In a way, she understood. He probably hadn't had to sit through a chick flick since Beth died.

They made their way to the kitchen. Matt watched her silently while she rinsed their two dishes. She took off the sweat shirt he'd loaned her with a pang of regret and put on her jacket. Matt followed as she scooped up her purse and let herself out the front door.

She paused on the porch facing him. “Thanks. It was fun.”

He dipped his chin.

“I'll be back the next time the seniors force me on you,” she said, her smile self-deprecating.

“You can come any time.”

“You can invite me any time.”

She'd meant the reply to be silly and easy. But in response he kept very still, looked utterly serious. “Would you come?” he asked.

“Of course I'd come.”

He nodded.

“Good night, Matt.”

“Night.”

As she made her way to her car, she glanced back at him. He stood outlined in the light spilling from his front door. Tall, broad shouldered, powerful . . . with a heart exactly as fragile as his body wasn't.

Late Monday afternoon, Kate was sitting on her upside-down Home Depot bucket chatting with Matt when her phone beeped to tell her that she'd received a text. She slipped her cell out of her pocket, punched a button, and viewed the message.

“Tyler?” Matt asked, his voice expressionless. He'd learned that Tyler communicated with her mostly by text.

“Yep. Excuse me for a minute.” She went downstairs and slid onto the den sofa to reply. While typing her response, she heard Matt come downstairs and make his way out through the kitchen. He shut the back door with a semi-loud bang.

Was he leaving for the day? He always said good-bye.

Slipping her phone into her pocket, she followed the route he'd taken outside and found him slinging some of his tools into the back of his truck.

“You leaving for the day?” she called as she walked over to him.

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Well . . .” He looked majorly ticked, and she thought she knew why. Her relationship with Tyler irritated the heck out of him. A fact that irritated the heck out of her. Matt hadn't asked her out and wasn't going to ask her out. So why should he care if someone else did?

“Will you just . . .” When he brushed past her on his way to open his driver's side door, she reached out and laid her hand on his forearm. “Just hold up a second?”

He froze. His gaze fixed on where her hand touched him.

She hadn't meant to grab him. Had put zero thought into it. But now that she had, she couldn't stop her fingers from tightening slightly.

His attention traveled upward until he was looking squarely into her face.

She stared back at him. Attraction swirled through her like molten liquid.

He did nothing. Said nothing. They were only a breath apart.

Finally, his brow knitting, Matt lifted a hand and touched her cheek. His big fingers grazed a slow track to her chin, down her neck, across the top of her shoulder. He took hold of a strand of her hair and rubbed it between his fingers.

Kate's lower abdomen tightened with longing.

Then without warning, without giving her enough time to savor the moment, he dropped his hand and stepped away from her, cutting all contact between them.

No!
her body wailed. She held herself still, quaking inside. She wanted to launch herself at him and either kiss him or pummel him with her fists—she wasn't sure which. “What's the matter?” she asked, her tone impressively level. “Why are you in such a hurry to leave here mad?”

He strode away from her, rounded, and faced her. “You really want to know?” he asked.

“I think I already know, but I'd like to hear it from you.”

“Okay, here goes. I don't want you to date Tyler anymore.”

In the silence that landed between them like an atom bomb, Matt's expression took on a defiant cast. As if he were saying to her,
You wanted to know and there it is. The truth.

“Does that surprise you?” he asked.

“No.”

“What's going on between you two?” he asked.

“I'm not sure what business that is of yours.”

“None, but I'm asking anyway.”

The urge to pummel him grew stronger. “We've gone on a few dates, and we might go on a few more.”

He waited for her to go into more detail, but she didn't oblige.

“Tyler's full of it,” he said. “You can't seriously like him, can you?”

“Maybe I can.”

He glowered at her.

She glowered back. “I'm not sure why you care whether I go out with Tyler.”

“I care because I can't stand to think about you with him.”

“Why?”

He started to speak. Stopped. With a growl, Matt hit the side of his truck with the flat of his hand, then moved toward the door. Kate stepped out of his way. Without another word or glance he started the engine and drove off, vanishing from sight.

Kate stood there for a good long time in a vacuum of astonishment. At length, she realized her jaw was hanging open. She closed it with a stunned click. He liked her! Matt Jarreau actually liked her at least a little bit.

She couldn't believe it. Oh my gosh. He liked her.

It wasn't humanly possible, was it? No.

Yes?

For weeks she'd been telling herself that she wasn't into him romantically. But when he'd been standing close to her and rubbing a strand of her hair, she'd been
dying
inside for him to kiss her. She was such a hypocrite! What in the world was she going to do with herself?

The emotions jangling through her—giddiness, anxiety, excitement, amazement, confusion—wouldn't let her be still a moment longer, so she walked down the driveway. Then she turned back toward the house, reversed herself again, and headed toward the street at the end of the driveway because she had an excess of energy and nowhere else to go. She scrubbed her hands over her face, let them fall.

Her stubborn heart had refused all the practical guys she'd wanted to fall for over the past few years. Now, despite her best efforts, it had come to care deeply for the one guy she'd been trying hard
not
to fall for.

Oh. My. Goodness.

Where to go from here? What to do?

First, she had to acknowledge that all Matt had really done was touch her cheek, touch her hair, and admit that he didn't like her dating Tyler. He hadn't expressed out loud that he himself liked her. And he hadn't asked her out. It was still very likely that he never would.

And maybe—her spirits dropped at the thought—maybe that would be for the best.

She thought of her past relationships, of how devastated she'd been when they'd ended in shreds. By growing more attached to Matt every day, she was headed straight toward devastation again.

Kate neared the place where the driveway intersected the street. A black sports car roared along the road and shot past her, all snarl and gleaming paint. It left nothing in its wake but a flurry of fallen leaves.

Her thoughts were like those leaves, spinning and dipping. She didn't want to go through any more heartache, but she couldn't see her way clear of it. Even if he never asked her out, she was going to miss him badly when she left. If he did ask her out, she wouldn't have the strength to refuse.

It was impossible that he should like her! Too incredible to believe. If he liked her, even a little, how was a regular girl like her supposed to keep herself from tumbling into love with him?

God brought you here
, she reminded herself,
to help him, remember? He didn't bring you here to hook up with him!

If she were a better person, more plugged in to God, maybe she could be more selfless about trying to help Matt through his grief and back toward God. Instead she feared she was helping Matt very little and potentially hurting herself a lot if she lost her head over him.

“What could you be thinking?” she whispered to God, closing her eyes. “Putting me here with him? This is going to cost me.” It scared her to think that God had intentionally placed her on a collision course with catastrophe. Yet at the same time, her entire body was still thrumming with delight because she could clearly remember the way he'd looked at her, the way his chest had expanded with his breath, the way his fingertips had slid gently along the surface of her cheek.

Late that night as Kate brushed her teeth, she had to wonder why she was so often using her Sonicare toothbrush manually. Was she
really
too lazy to unearth the charger, plug it into the wall, and stick her toothbrush into it? Really?
That
lazy?

From her bedroom, she faintly heard her cell phone ring. Odd. It was after eleven. She was still up only because she'd been bingeing on peppermint taffies and thoughts of Matt.

She spit out her toothpaste, did a quick rinse, and hurried to the bedroom. The caller ID read
Unknown
.

Kate hit the Talk button. “Hello?”

“Hey,” Matt said.

Her pulse tripped, then started sprinting. “Hey.”

He paused. Kate lowered herself to sit on the side of her bed.

“I wanted to . . .” He sounded edgy. “I wanted to say that I'm sorry about today.”

“It's all right, Matt.”

“No, it's not. I was out of line, and I don't have any excuse.”

“Apology accepted.”

Silence followed. Kate picked at the nap of her pajama bottoms.

“I like you,” he said.

She could barely breathe, much less speak. “You do?”

“Yes. I want to go out with you myself. I do. I just . . . can't.”

“I understand,” she said quietly. And surprisingly, she thought she did. His head was messed up from Beth's death, and he wasn't ready. He might never be ready.

“Are we still friends?” he asked. “I don't want to lose you as a friend.”

“We're still friends.”

“Good. Thank you.”

“You're welcome.”

“Okay,” he said. “Then . . . I guess I'll see you tomorrow.”

“See you then.”

He hung up. Kate set aside the phone, then sat in silence, her hands in her lap, staring at nothing.

So there it was. After all the wild thoughts and wilder feelings that had possessed her this afternoon and evening, he'd called and stated the situation very simply in under a minute.

He liked her but couldn't ask her out and wanted to keep her as a friend. Plain as day.

And probably exactly as it should be, for both their sakes.

So why, oh why, were tears pricking her eyes?

Matt sat alone in one of the wooden deck chairs on his back patio. Dark trees and cold air surrounded him, punctuated only by the frost of his breath. When he'd left Kate earlier that day he'd driven aimlessly, worked out at the gym, paced his house, driven around for a few more hours, and finally returned home before breaking down just now and calling her.

Of all the things that had upset and worried him since he'd left her earlier, what had worried him most was the possibility that she'd want nothing to do with him now. He thought he could maybe bear not to touch her or kiss her, but he knew flat out that he couldn't bear not to see her and talk to her.

She'd assured him just now that they were still friends. He still had that to hold on to. She wasn't going to shut him out. So how come her reassurance didn't make him feel much better?

Because he wanted to be more than just her friend.

Groaning, he fisted his hands.

Half of him still couldn't believe he'd done and said the things he had to Kate earlier. She'd taken hold of his arm as he'd been walking past her and that one small, innocent touch had shut down everything inside of him. All his intentions and defenses had fallen as hard and fast as a heavy curtain dropping onto a stage. He hadn't been able to stop himself from doing what he'd been wanting to do for weeks, from reaching out and touching her.

It had been bliss to feel the smooth skin of her face. His gut ached with pleasure even now, just remembering it.

It had felt almost as good to finally tell her how he felt about Tyler.

For that little gap in time today he'd actually been honest in his actions and his words. Being his true self and touching her, telling her plainly how he felt, had been like eating something forbidden that you'd been starving for day after day. Once you got hold of it, you wanted to gorge on it even though you knew it was wrong.

And it had been wrong. Matt pushed restlessly to his feet and walked toward the back of his property, only vaguely registering the trees that engulfed him.

Before he and Kate had even finished arguing about Tyler, guilt had begun to creep up on him. Beth had been dead three years, but until recently, he'd felt all that time as if he were still married to her. He couldn't shake the idea that he was failing her by indulging his attraction to Kate. Almost as bad, he was failing himself. He knew plainly that he had to resist Kate. He wasn't worthy of her affection, and he sure wasn't whole enough for a relationship with anyone.