In Too Deep_ Husband Material & the Sheikh's Bargained Bride - Brenda Jackson [28]
He intended to do whatever had to be done to remind her of what they’d once had. More than anything, he wanted her to accept that there was nothing the two of them couldn’t work out together. That was the one thing he was certain about. Two people couldn’t love each other as deeply as they did and still stay apart. In his book, things just didn’t work out that way.
He watched as she slowly moved across the room toward him and he sat up to catch her when she all but dived into his arms. And then she was kissing him with a hunger and need that he quickly reciprocated. He fought for control, his body burning with a need that was driving him off the deep end. He wanted to do nothing more than bury himself inside her body.
Moments later, she ended the kiss and leaned back. Her robe had risen up her thighs and the belt around her waist was loose, giving him a glimpse of a tantalizing portion of her breasts and the dark shadow at the juncture of her legs. The scent of her was drawing him in, making him remember how he’d felt being inside of her.
Unable to resist, he reached out and slid his hands beneath the silk of her bathrobe and began stroking her breasts, letting his fingertips tease the hardened nipples. When he began moving lower, she whispered, “Matthew, let’s talk.”
He agreed with her. They should talk. He wanted to start off by telling her how he felt, but the moment he opened his mouth to do so, he realized he wasn’t ready after all. He didn’t want to revisit the past just yet. Instead, he wanted to stay right here, right now. “I’m not ready to hash out the bad times, Carmen. Right now I just want to forget about what drove us apart and only concentrate on this, what has brought us together.”
He held her gaze, knowing as well as she did that there was no way they could totally forget. If this was about nothing but sex, then that was one thing, but deep down he knew it wasn’t. The love between them was still there, which meant there were problems they needed to address. Had his long hours been the only thing that had driven her away from him? He was certain she knew he hadn’t been unfaithful to her.
She nodded, and he drew in another deep breath. Eventually they would talk, and he meant really talk. Because now that he had his wife back in his arms, his heart and his bed, he intended to keep her there.
Eleven
Carmen had agreed to postpone their conversation at Matthew’s request, and they had spent an amazing week together, enjoying each other. They were both fearful that an in-depth discussion of the state of their affairs would put them back at square one. And they weren’t ready to go back there yet.
Instead they’d opted to spend time together, living in the present and not venturing to the past. At the polo matches, everyone was speculating as to what exactly was going on between them. And the Wagging Tongue wasn’t helping matters. More than one snapshot of them together had appeared in the tabloid, and she and Matthew didn’t have to work hard to figure out the identity of the person passing the photos to the paper. Ardella Rowe was the prime suspect. They had seen her at dinner the same night they’d run into Sheikh Adham, and she had tried pestering them with questions, which they’d refused to answer.
At one polo match, she and Matthew had stuck to “no comment” when a mic was shoved in their faces by a reporter wanting to know whether or not they’d gotten back together. The fact of the matter was, they couldn’t exactly answer that question themselves.
One paper she had seen claimed they were having a summer fling with no chance of reconciliation while another had announced they’d remarried at a church on Martha’s Vineyard. A third had even reported the real Carmen Akins was in Rome with Bruno and the woman Matthew was spending time with in the Hamptons was only a look-alike,