‘Everyone has lovers’ tiffs, Ben.’ She tried to comfort him. ‘Perhaps give yourselves a chance to talk the problem through together…?’
‘This isn’t a tiff. She’s being totally unreasonable and she knows it. And as for talking it through—!’ His normally easygoing expression hardened. ‘No way I am going to be given ultimatums about the way I live my life!’
Harriet could see that he genuinely believed he had a grievance, but she still tried to lighten his mood by teasing, ‘What has she done? Told you all your old sports stuff has to go?’
When he didn’t respond she looked worriedly at him and said quietly, ‘Okay, so it’s something serious and I’m out of order trying to joke about it, but you can be a stubborn so-and-so at times, and if it’s a matter of giving a bit or losing someone special to you then—’
‘It isn’t as simple as that, Harry, and if she genuinely loved me she wouldn’t need to make such bloody ridiculous conditions because she’d know…’
‘She’d know what?’ Harriet demanded, mystified.
For a minute she thought that Ben wasn’t going to answer, and then, as though he couldn’t help himself, he burst out furiously, ‘She’d know that you’re the closest thing I’ve got to a sister, as well as my best friend, and that no way do you feel any differently about me than I do about you. Hell, just because she’s never had any close friends of the opposite sex doesn’t mean that— And as for saying that you might secretly be in love with me—well, that’s just plain ridiculous!’
It took Harriet several seconds to assimilate what Ben was telling her, but once she had, she protested immediately, ‘She can’t possibly think that! You must have misunderstood.’
‘I wish!’ Ben responded darkly.
‘Look, Ben, let me have a word with her,’ Harriet offered.
‘No. No! It’s no use. She won’t believe you, Harry. And that’s what’s really getting to me. I’ve given her my word that I’ve been totally up front with her about us, but apparently my word isn’t good enough.’ His voice hardened. ‘What she wants—what she says her friends have told her she should demand—is for me to prove to her that there’s nothing going on between you and me by cutting you out of my life completely. She says if I loved her then I’d agree. She says she will not accept me having another woman in my life who means more to me than she does. And she says that if I don’t accept her terms then it means that you do mean more! I’ve tried to make her understand— to see…to admit that she’s being sexist and stupid, and that if she loved me she would accept my word that she’s got it all wrong. After all, I know you a damn sight better than she does. You aren’t secretly in love with me, are you?’
Harriet burst out laughing. ‘No, I am not!’ she assured him truthfully.
From where she stood it was easy for her to see how and why the argument had escalated out of control, even if she did feel affronted by Cindi’s assumption that she was the sort of person who would try to break up someone else’s romance. Take two people who had fallen passionately in love but who did not know one another all that well, add a generous helping of female jealousy, a pinch of insecurity and a good measure of male pride, and what you had were all the ingredients for a very destructive explosion.
Right now Ben might have an angrily stubborn look in his eyes, but Harriet could see the pain he was trying to hide. Automatically she leaned forward and took hold of his hand, giving it a comforting squeeze.
On his way past the large room which housed his creative design team, Matt Cole came to an abrupt halt as he surveyed the intimacy of the way Harriet was leaning towards Ben and reaching for his hand, her eyes liquid with tender emotion.
Matt was thirty-six years old, the head of his own highly innovative and profitable company, and supposed to be possessed of a sharply astute brain—so why the hell had he not recognised what was happening to him the minute he had set eyes on Harriet and taken immediate and evasive action then?
Because he had believed then, in his arrogance, that he had more than enough power and control over his emotions to keep them in check, that was why. He had felt the immediate fierce surge of emotional and physical reaction to her and dismissed its importance, shrugging it and his own feelings aside, telling himself that it hardly mattered that he happened to find her attractive since he had a rule that he never mixed business with pleasure. And, since he had never previously had any problems in sticking to that rule, he hadn’t thought it would pose any problems now.
But he had misjudged the strength of his own feelings. Big time. Very big time.
He was the only child of older parents. His mother had died shortly after his birth, while his father had died when he was in his first year at university, and so all along Matt had focused on his work as a means of providing him with the only kind of security he had told himself he needed.
Marriage and children were on his agenda—eventually. But falling passionately, mindlessly and helplessly in love, and having his whole world turned upside down were not!
But that was exactly what had happened. And, what was more, with every day that passed it was growing harder and harder for him to deal with his feelings.
He had tried to distance himself from Harriet, to cut himself off from what he felt by putting up a façade of cold indifference, but he might as well have tried to breathe without oxygen he acknowledged grimly.
Every day, several times a day, he found himself making some kind of excuse to be in the vicinity of her desk. Every day he watched with a jealousy that made him appalled at himself as she lavished on Ben the attention he longed to have her lavish on him!
He had tried everything, from telling himself he was behaving unprofessionally to telling himself he was behaving ridiculously, but nothing made the slightest difference to what he felt. What he felt right now was that he wanted to stride over to Harriet and take her in his arms and kiss her—if not senseless then at least into a state where she wanted him to the same extent that he wanted her, and to hell with the consequences! But even stronger than his desire to make love to her was his desire to shield and to protect her. To shield her from some of her colleagues’ contemptuous and critical comments about her and to protect her from the consequences of her own behaviour.
It made no difference how often he told himself that as one of his employees she had no more right to his protection than any of the others, or that he had no right to want to protect her. He loved her, and he couldn’t bear to hear what was being said about her. He found it hard to stand to one side and allow the inevitable to happen. Because everyone, it seemed, believed that sooner or later someone, if not Ben himself, was going to tell her to stop making a fool of herself by displaying so plainly her feelings for a man who obviously did not return them.
If an adult human being had to suffer unrequited love, then better by far that they suffer it in secret— as he was doing.
But what right did he have to interfere? Either as her employer or as the man who loved her?
Morally perhaps none! But emotionally… Matt exhaled sharply.
Helplessly he watched Harriet move even closer to Ben. It was a physical effort to stop himself from going over and separating them.
Didn’t she know what a fool she was making of herself? Didn’t she care? Didn’t she realise that people were discussing her and her obvious love for Ben—a man who saw her only as a friend—behind her back?
Because if she didn’t she damned well ought to!
It would take a much braver man than Ben himself to tell her though, Matt recognised, and her female colleages