Savage Awakening. Anne Mather

I do something wrong?’

      Matt felt a wave of weariness envelop him again. ‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘It’s not you. It’s me. Like I said before, I’m not finding it easy to—to interact with people.’

      Fliss frowned. ‘Is that why you’ve moved out of London?’ she asked, and then coloured. ‘Oh, sorry. It’s nothing to do with me.’

      ‘No.’ He conceded the point. ‘But it’s the truth.’ He picked up his own cup and swallowed a mouthful of tea. ‘I needed some space. London offers very little of that.’

      She absorbed this, her eyes on the beige liquid in her cup, and, against his will, he noticed how long her lashes were. For someone with red hair, they were unusually dark, too, but lighter at the tips, as if bleached by the sun.

      His jaw tightened. As if it mattered to him. She could be a raving beauty, with a figure to die for, and he wouldn’t be interested. He wondered what she’d say if he told her that.

      ‘I suppose Diane’s parents said this house was for sale,’ she ventured now, and Matt accepted that she deserved some explanation.

      ‘No,’ he assured her. ‘As you might have guessed, Diane isn’t in favour of me moving out of London. I found the house on a property website. It sounded exactly what I was looking for so I bought it.’

      ‘Sight unseen?’ She was obviously surprised.

      ‘Well, I had Joe Francis, an architect friend of mine, look at it,’ he said, a little defensively. ‘And I did speak to the Chesneys. They seemed to think it was OK.’

      ‘And what do you think, now that you’ve moved in?’

      ‘I like it.’ He smiled in spite of himself. ‘I’ll like it better, of course, when it feels less like a mausoleum and more like a home.’

      Fliss glanced about her. ‘Colonel Phillips didn’t think it was a mausoleum.’

      ‘No, well, he probably kept the place furnished.’ He paused, wondering how much he should tell her. ‘That’s what I was doing in Westerbury. Buying some furniture that won’t look out of place in these rooms.’

      ‘From Harry Gilchrist,’ she said, and Matt quirked an eyebrow.

      ‘You know him?’

      ‘He lives in the village,’ she said regretfully. ‘I suppose he recognised you.’

      Matt finished his tea and set his empty mug down on the counter. ‘Did he ever,’ he said, pulling a wry face. ‘Oh, well, I guess a week is better than nothing.’

      ‘You might be surprised.’ Fliss finished her own tea and, to his surprise, moved to the sink to wash up the cups. ‘Most of the villagers tend to mind their own business.’

      ‘Do they?’

      Matt spoke almost absently, his eyes unwillingly drawn to the vulnerable curve of her nape. She’d tugged her hair to one side and secured it with a tortoiseshell clip, and the slender start of her spine was exposed.

      He wasn’t thinking, or he would have looked away, but instead his eyes moved down over the crossed braces of her dungarees. A narrow waist dipped in above the provocative swell of her bottom, the loose trousers only hinting at the lushness of her hips and thighs. Her legs were longer then he’d imagined, her ankles trim below the cuffs of her trousers.

      ‘What do you mean?’

      Her words arrested whatever insane visions he had been having, and he shook his head as if that would clear his brain. For God’s sake, what was he doing? And what was she talking about? He was damned if he could remember.

      ‘I beg your pardon?’

      His apology was automatic, but her expression as she turned towards him fairly simmered with resentment. ‘You said, Do they?’ she reminded him tightly. ‘What did you mean?’

      Matt didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed. For a moment there, he’d been entertaining himself with the thought that he was just the same as any other man. Of course, he wasn’t, but she didn’t know that. And she probably thought he was leering at her like any other member of his sex.