Free A Solitary Heart by Amanda Carpenter

of the boy she had helped to rescue. Sian had rested her
    aching head against his shoulder, face turned into the privacy of his
    neck.
    Joshua and Steven were dispatched to clear away the picnic things,
    while Jane came along to direct Matt back to South Bend and the
    quickest route to Memorial Hospital. Though the long day and the
    ride back had made her sleepy, he wouldn't let her fall into a doze for
    fear she had suffered concussion when she'd banged her head.
    At his and Jane's insistence during the speed-limit- breaking drive,
    she had irritably recited times-tables, poems, songs, anything that
    kept her awake and showed she suffered no impairment of her
    faculties. Then came the wait in the emergency ward, for X-rays and
    first aid. The doctor who had seen her had been brisk and
    overworked; the heat, he had said, seemed to bring out all the
    crackpots, and he had looked at Sian as if she were one of them,
    while she tried to ignore Matt's sardonic smile and Jane's muffled
    chuckles.
    Having found nothing wrong with her other than scrapes, bruises and
    strained ligaments, the doctor had prescribed some muscle relaxants
    for her stiffening arm and shoulder. Matt drove them back to the
    apartment and went to get the prescription filled, while Jane helped
    Sian bathe and dress in an over-long T-shirt.
    When Matt had come back with the prescription, she'd swallowed a
    dose and had promptly gone out like a light, but she must have slept
    for hours, for the medicine had worn off and pain was what had
    awakened her.
    The apartment was very quiet. Sian tried to twist around and find the
    luminous display of her bedside clock, and immediately wished she
    hadn't. It had just gone midnight, which meant that there was
    probably no one else around, for the group had been planning to see a
    midnight movie at the local cinema.
    Because she was feeling under par and sorry for herself, Sian sniffed
    a bit and rubbed her nose into the fragrant pillow, and belated
    recognition blossomed as she recognised Matt's scent, which lingered
    on the linen case.
    Of course, he had slept in her room only the night before. The smell
    of him triggered a whole wealth of images and it was no use trying to
    make sense of the convoluted and certainly stormy aspects of their
    relationship, for Sian's sensual memories were only of the good
    things—comfort, and strength, and the urgent relief with which he
    had held her after the traumatic ordeal.
    Easy tears filled her eyes and she blinked them away angrily. All he
    had to do was be useful in a crisis, and she started to associate his
    scent with attributes like reliability and steadfastness! She hadn't
    even known him for more than a couple of days, and now, just
    because she was feeling a little down and he had been there when she
    had needed him, she had to go and miss him, didn't she?
    How sillily she was behaving, how weak and stupid! This was just
    the sort of thing she had wanted to avoid: this empty, idiotic
    yearning. Thank God she was too sensible to fall in love with the
    man, for that would be the final straw.
    Oh, how she ached. Sian tossed and turned fretfully but couldn't get
    into a position that gave relief to her abused body. Finally having to
    admit defeat, she threw back her covers and rose shakily on sore feet
    to search for the muscle relaxants. If she remembered correctly, Jane
    had left the bottle on the kitchen counter.
    Sian left her bedroom and stepped into the hall. She noticed the light
    was on in the living-room and curiously went to investigate, for the
    light she and Jane normally left on when they went out for the
    evening was the one over the back porch.
    As she limped around the corner and into golden, indirect
    illumination and the sound of soft music playing on the stereo, a
    tawny head lifted from the arm of the sofa where a long, tough body
    reclined, and Matt said quietly, 'Sian?'
    She faltered to a halt. One self-conscious hand crept up to her
    gleaming, tousled