The Home for Broken Hearts (37 page)

She’d been expecting someone, Matt realized, wondering who it might be. And then with a sudden cold thrill he realized that she’d been expecting him. Fuck.
Fuck!
What was he going to do? He felt like he was fifteen again and Charlotte Mackenzie had told him that they could have sex if he liked as long as he was careful. Except he’d fancied Charlotte Mackenzie from the age of eleven, and just the thought of doing anything so intimate with her had meant that it was all over for him before he’d even laid a finger on her. Charlotte Mackenzie hadn’t spoken to him again and he had hoped never to be so humiliated again in his life. But now, suddenly, it seemed like a very real possibility. This couldn’t be happening, not here, not now. Not like this. He wasn’t ready, he didn’t know how he felt about her, and besides, he was really, really drunk. He was never any good at sex when he was really, really drunk, and…

“I wanted to thank you, for staying up all night with me last night,” Ellen said. Slowly she walked across the kitchen toward Matt, which was when he noticed her silver high heels, an observation that was inevitably followed by an image of Ellen wearing nothing but a pair of silver high heels. Matt swallowed and backed away, praying that she wouldn’t touch him. What had happened in the fifteen or so hours that he had been out of the house? Had some kinky alien life force with a thing for
push-up bras come and taken over Ellen’s body? Where was the offer of tea and biscuits? Where was the debriefing of the day, when he’d tell her what he’d done at work and she’d tell him about something Charlie had said or done?

It was going to be much harder to admire her from afar if she actually started throwing herself at him.

Please don’t touch me, please don’t touch me, please don’t touch me
, Matt pleaded silently as Ellen approached him. She handed him the glass of wine, which he took as a defensive tactic, assuming that a receptacle full of liquid would act as some barrier between them. He was wrong.

Ellen took one more step on her silver high heels into his personal body space and rested her palm on his shoulder. She looked into his eyes.

“I wondered if there was anything I could do to thank you?” she asked, batting her smoky lashes.

“Um… well, a coffee would be great,” Matt squeaked as Ellen’s hand traced its way down his torso, over his waistband, and… Matt grabbed her wrist before it got any farther.

“Ellen,” he said, studying her face at close quarters, noticing the slightly swollen lids and the reddened eyes that hid behind the newly applied and flaking mascara. “Ellen, what’s all this about?”

“Oh, God, you don’t fancy me, do you,” Ellen said, stepping away and stumbling a little. Matt realized that she was probably as drunk as he was, if not a little more so. “I knew it, I knew there was no way I could carry this off. Here I am being reckless and spontaneous, and it never occurred to me that you just didn’t fancy me. I’m delusional, that’s what I am.”

“What, are you joking? Of course I fancy you, I don’t think I’ve ever fancied anyone more,” Matt told her. “You look stunning; that dress… your body looks slamming, Ellen. It’s kind of hard for a man to ignore, which is why I’m wondering what all this is about.”

“Really?” Ellen perked up, smiling a bit like the old Ellen—
the one who wasn’t a sex-crazed, alien-possessed siren. Matt was more than a little bit pleased to see her. “Because you know, you spend so long not noticing yourself, or looking at yourself, that you sort of have no idea what you look like anymore. I used to be beautiful once, and I mean once. It was a Thursday evening in 1998. I was wearing this dress. That was the last time I was beautiful.”

“That’s not true, Ellen,” Matt said. “You… you are one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. And I know that sounds like a line but it’s true. I’ve never, not since Charlotte Mackenzie, ever wanted so badly just to… touch your hair.” Matt winced. “Which makes me sound a bit weird, doesn’t it?”

“You can touch my hair,” Ellen said in a low, husky voice, taking a step toward him again. “You can touch me anywhere.”

She pressed herself against him so that they stood breast to breast, hip to hip.

“The thing is,” Matt said, finding it quite difficult to keep his hands anywhere other than Ellen’s beautifully rounded bottom, “is that I can’t. I can’t just come in from work and find you—you, Ellen Woods—dressed up and a bit drunk and up for it and take advantage of that. I can’t.”

“You mean you don’t want to?” Ellen asked him, her hot breath tickling his neck.

“Oh, God,” Matt groaned, knowing by the tone of her voice that she realized exactly how much he wanted to. “I want to, Ellen, I want to—but not like this. Not with you. I mean, when I left the house this morning you were in a full-blown crisis. How is Hannah, and what about Charlie, how’s he coping?”

“I don’t want to talk about any of that,” Ellen said, her hand traveling along his inner thigh. “I’m a bit out of practice—in fact, totally out of practice when it comes to taking charge—so you must tell me if I get it wrong.” She cupped her hand over Matt’s erection and pressed it gently. “How’s that working for you?”

“Oh, God.” Unable to resist anymore, Matt put down his glass of wine and pulled Ellen to him, one hand cupping her bottom, the other
finding its way immediately to one breast, which he squeezed hard as he kissed her deeply. He moaned low in his throat as he turned her around, thrusting her back against the kitchen counter that she had pinned him against only seconds earlier, tearing one hand away from her backside and entangling it in her hair, pulling her head back to expose her neck, which he covered with kisses and bites, pulling at the neckline of her dress, tucking it under the rise of her breasts, which he exposed to his lips with a tear of nearly new lace. Suddenly resolute and focused, Matt lifted Ellen by the hips onto the counter, pushing up her skirt to expose her panties, and with one fluid movement ripped them off and dropped them on the floor.

It was when her hand was on his belt buckle that he noticed the expression on her face. There was desire there, yes, a flush of heat traveling across the bridge of her nose and down her throat. But there was something else, too. Fear? Uncertainty? Even sadness? Matt let his hand drift to his side as he looked at her there, the woman who made him think about poetry and look at the stars, with her clothes asunder, her underwear ripped. At that moment she looked sexier and more desirable than any woman Matt had ever known. But this sordid centerfold affair wasn’t how it was meant to be, not between him and Ellen.

They looked at each other for one breathless, silent moment and then Matt scooped Ellen up in his arms and held her. She wound herself around his body and buried her face in his neck. Matt increased the pressure of his embrace as he felt her frame begin to shake with sobs.

“Ellen,” he whispered, retreating onto one of the kitchen chairs and pulling her onto his lap, cradling her in his arms. “Ellen, tell me. Please, tell me what’s happened.”

Ellen pushed her hair back from her face, which was streaked with tears, and looked into his eyes.

“You must think I’m such a fool,” she said. “What would someone like you want with a past-it old woman like me?”

“I think you can see that someone like me would want
someone exactly like you very, very much,” Matt said, smoothing her tangle of hair off her face. “But when you’re ready and when you’re sure that it’s what you want. And you’re not sure, are you?”

Ellen looked into his eyes for a second and then shook her head, a response that surprised Matt by how much it stung and disappointed him. For the first time in his life, he wanted a woman who didn’t want him back.

Ellen climbed off his lap and half turned her back on him while she rearranged her clothes to restore her modesty. Sheepishly, she quickly scooped her knickers off the kitchen floor and, uncertain as to what to do with them, hastily put them in the plastic-bag drawer.

“I mean I do, I do want you, but I’m not sure if it’s for very sensible reasons.” She sniffed, glancing nervously at Matt, who look uncomfortable as he sat, the heat of his desire taking some time to subside.

“What should we do now?” Matt asked. “I’m not sure what to do after some amazing making out and then a break to reassess the situation. Apart from explode, maybe, or bash my head against the tabletop until I’ve got enough brain damage to stop me from coming over there and getting you.”

They looked at each other for a moment longer, Ellen wondering exactly what was happening between them.

“I’ll make us a cup of tea?” she offered.

“I’ll make it,” he said. “You sit down. And talk—start talking and explain to me what happened today to make you decide to give me the most difficult night of my life.”

“I’m not really that difficult to resist, am I?” Ellen smiled shyly.

“Woman,” Matt said, turning his back on her and closing his eyes. “You have no idea.”

When Ellen stopped talking and looked up at Matt, she wondered just exactly how much he must pity her. He had not looked at her at all while she had told him about Hannah, and
her claimed love affair with Nick, and how even venturing just to the bottom of her garden path had made her feel like she was going to slip off the face of the planet and die. While she had been wondering how to explain to Charlie why he was never going to see his aunt again, or if she should feel guilty that she’d thrown Hannah out when she was so badly hurt, he had not redirected his gaze from the tabletop. For a few seconds back there, Matt had looked at her and he hadn’t seen Ellen Woods. He had seen a woman whom he wanted to rip the clothes off of and have unbridled sex with, whether she wanted it or not, just like Captain Parker, just like whoever it was who had hurt Hannah. But Matt wasn’t like either of those men, imagined or real. He’d seen the expression on her face, he had spotted the uncertainty, and he had stopped. It was something that Ellen was deeply grateful for, and yet she mourned the passing of only her second beautiful moment. She wasn’t sure that another one would ever come again, at least not with Matt. Not now that he knew everything about her.

Matt said nothing for a while, the muscles in his jaw tightening reflexively, as if he were actively trying not to say something. And then he shrugged.

“Well, this is a bit of a mess, isn’t it?” he said finally.

“Yes.” Ellen nodded. “The thing is, I’ve got a horrible feeling that I’ve seen the last ten years of my life slip by believing they were one thing when they were something else entirely. I thought I was one-half of a loving, committed marriage. That’s what Nick made me think, but I wasn’t—if anything I was his trophy for a while, his pet, and then… then I was this burden that he had to care for when all the time he longed to be with someone else.”

“That’s not true,” Matt said.

“Isn’t it? He was planning to leave me for my sister. Why did she have to tell me, Matt? Why couldn’t she have just let me go on believing in my sad little delusion? At least then I had some…” Ellen wanted to say “pride” or “dignity” but neither
one of those words seemed to fit. “At least then I had
something.
I was his widow. It was my reason for never looking in the mirror, never going out, never trying to live life. Now? Now I have no excuse. Now I am just a pathetic, drunk old landlady who throws herself at her lodgers. Now I am a character from a seventies sitcom.”

“Listen.” Matt seemed to be struggling with some emotion that Ellen couldn’t pin down. “If anyone ever had an excuse to be fucked up, it’s you, okay? You could dress in rags and never leave the house again and no one would blame you. But you can’t let that happen, Ellen—I won’t let that happen. Not to you. Some bloody, arrogant, selfish fuckwit didn’t have the brains to see what an amazing, wonderful wife he had, and I can promise you, if he were alive now I would kill him. And I am not letting him or Hannah or the road outside stop you from being who you are for one more minute. You’re great, Ellen, you’re funny and strong and a brilliant mum and probably a great copy editor. There is so much more waiting for you out there. Starting tomorrow, we’re going to get you back on track again.”

“Really?” Ellen looked at him, trying to see if he was still drunk. “Only won’t you be a bit busy, with work and bedding girls and all that?”

“I can handle work,” Matt said, grinning a little sheepishly. “And as for girls, well—you’re the only girl I can think about, and even if you need me to be there as a friend for you for now, that won’t change in a hurry.” Ellen dropped her gaze, not quite able to understand what she was hearing. “What I’m trying to say is, don’t worry, Ellen, you’re not alone. You’ve got me, Sabine, and Allegra—and that gay bloke who you work for, Simon Merry. And you’ve got Charlie. We all… care about you. Yes, someone’s gone and ripped a fucking huge hole in your chest and filled it with despair, but it will get better.”

“I don’t know what I did to deserve such nice lodgers,” Ellen said sleepily as Matt pulled her to her feet.

“Well,” Matt said as he escorted her up the stairs. “You make a lovely cup of tea.”

For the first few seconds after Matt woke up, he was confused, wondering where he was. It was a familiar feeling, opening his eyes to an unfamiliar room, searching around for some kind of marker or clue as to where he had ended up after a drunken night out. The pressure behind his eyes, the ache in his limbs, and his bone-dry mouth told him that he had a hangover, and normally that feeling, coupled with a foreign pair of curtains, meant that he had gone home with a woman. With the familiar mix of excitement and dread that always accompanied that sober first look at a woman he’d just spent the night with, he turned his head toward the sound of steady breathing. And that’s when it all came back to him.

Matt felt something like a silent rent in his chest when he looked at Ellen sleeping next to him. When he had taken her up to her room sometime early that morning, she had asked him to sit and talk to her for a while, explaining that she didn’t want to be alone because when she was alone she started thinking, and look what had happened the last time she’d done that—she’d decided to get drunk and throw herself at her lodger.