Sarah's Sin

He picked up her kapp and examined its sheer fine mesh, the carehil workmanship, the delicate ties. She stared at it, too, with a look that was akin to horror, as if she'd just realized she'd been sitting there half-naked. Her hand went self-consciously to her hair. Impulsively, Matt reached up and covered her nervous hand with his own, overlapping it so that his fingertips stroked the crown of her head. He got the impression that she would have sunk down into the netherworld of the sofa with the lint and cracker crumbs and loose change if she could have.

“You have very pretty hair,” he said soffly. It had the texture and sheen of sable, and there were masses of it wound and pinned and knotted at the back of her head. It nearly took his breath away to imagine what it must look like down. “Why do you hide it?”

“It is the way of my people. A woman's hair is her glory and only for her husband to see, else it would be Hochmut, pride. Pride is a sin.”

“I think the sin is in hiding away something so lovely.”

Sarah herself had long wanted to go with her hair loose and flowing for the wind to tease and tangle. She associated the sensation with freedom of spirit. But it irked her that she wanted to agree with this outsider who was already so dangerous to her, so she answered with one of her father's most famous infuriating lines. “It's the way of our people, not for you to agree or disagree. Its just our way.”

“Well, it's not mine,” Matt said pleasantly, smiling when she scowled and batted his hand away from the pins that were holding her bun in place. He slouched against the cushions, letting his arm fall along the curve of the back of the couch. “And I have a feeling it wouldn't be the way of an expert tree climber either.”

Sarah shuddered at the thought of him reading her mind so easily. “I was a little girl then. Now I'm a woman.”

“I noticed, believe me,” Matt said dryly. “In spite of the lengths you go to, to hide the fact, I noticed.”

“Again you make fun,” Sarah snapped, deliberately taking offense. It seemed safer to keep him at an arm's length with bad temper, so she dredged up all she had. She vaulted out of her seat to pace the floor, knocking over a stack of books in the process. “Always with your teasing and cracking wise, making fun.”

“No!” Matt protested, pushing himself to his feet. Dizziness swam through his head but he couldn't decide whether it was from his condi tion or from the sucker punch Sarah had just delivered.

“A kiss and a pinch and make sport of the little Amish maid—”

“Wait a minute!” He grabbed her shoulders, effectively halting her pacing if not her tirade.

“Just because I wear simple clothes and live a simple life doesn't mean I'm simpleminded, Matt Thorne,” she declared, glaring into his face.

“I never said you were. I never implied you were. Jeez, Sarah, this isn't the Victorian Age. I'm not the kind of man who goes around tumbling housemaids for a cheap thrill.”

“What do you want from me then?” It wasn't a safe question to ask. No matter what his answer was, she would be caught. If he said he wanted something, she couldn't give it and face her family. If he said he wanted nothing … She didn't want to think of what that would mean to her even though it was what was best.

Matt gave her a tender look. “How about a little friendship, for starters?”

Now what was she supposed to do? Her plan had been to scare him away with her bad temper and righteous indignation. And he was asking her to be his friend. The idea was much too appealing, much too tempting.

“I'm sorry if you took my remarks the wrong way, Sarah. I was only teasing. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I'd never do that.”

The gentleness in his voice was her undoing. She couldn't stand the idea that she'd hurt him. So much for her impromptu strategy.

“No,” she murmured, looking down at the nubby toes of his wool socks, “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have snapped at you. What kind of hostess I make, taking my temper out on the guests?”

“You make a fine hostess,” Matt said, just barely resisting the urge to draw her up against him and hold her. Instead, he crooked a finger under her chin and tilted her head back so he could lose himself in the endless depths of her lake-blue eyes.

Sarah stared up at him, afraid that he would see every feeling she was struggling with, and equally afraid that he wouldn't. She thought for one heart-stopping instant that he was going to kiss her again, but he gave her a tender smile instead.

“You've had a rough day, you're tense. I know just the thing to fix that.”

“You do?” A number of half-formed notions tried to weave their way through the sensual fog in her mind, notions that involved lips and skin and strength and softness and whispered words. None of them quite got a hold, though, and Matt backed away from her, leaving her feeling abandoned.

He went to the bookshelves, to John Wood's fancy radio-stereo machine, which she had always been afraid to touch. With a flick of a switch and a twist of a knob, soft music filled the room. Sarah shivered a little at the magic of it and at the unfamiliar beauty of it. She was used to music; she had grown up in a house filled with singing. But always the Amish songs were about love to God and duty and suffering gladly and going to heaven at the end of a long, painful life. English music was about the world and the relationships between people. It seemed to her, in the litde bit she'd heard, that most of it was about love. Falling in love, falling out of love, the glory of love, the pain of love. The one playing now was sung by a man with a strong, smoky voice crooning that he'd be in trouble if she left him now.

“Paul Young,” Matt murmured appreciatively, returning to stand in front of her again. A relaxed smile curved his wide, handsome mouth as he took a deep cleansing breath and sighed. “Music to get mellow by. Take a deep breath and let it out slowly.”

Sarah did as instructed, letting the air hiss out of her lungs slowly only to suck in a sharp breath when Matt settled his hands on her shoulders. He clucked his tongue in reproof, but his eyes were twinkling and Sarah couldn't decide whether he was being serious or not. He made her feel so emotionally off balance, a part of her—the coward in her—wanted to run out of the room and upstairs to the safe haven of her quarters, but another part of her was too drawn to him, too intrigued, by-him, too tempted. She took another deep breath and expelled it.

“I'm afraid I'm not up to playing Patrick Swayze,” Matt said. “So dancing is out.”

“Who is this Patrick? A friend of yours?”

“Not exacdy,” Matt said with a chuckle. Half the women in the free world would have given their fingernails to dance with Patrick Swayze; Sarah didn't even know who he was. Of course she wouldn't. She had probably never been to see a movie. He thought for a minute what it would be like to take her to her first. It would be like experiencing it for the first time himself all over again. Everything would be that way with Sarah. Her innocence would make the world seem new. Lord, how tempting that was to a man who'd seen too much of the worst of it.

“Never mind,” he said at last. “Anyway, the point here is to get you to relax.”

“I am relaxed.”

“Fibber.” His fingers massaged her shoulders in a slow, sensuous rhythm. “Close your eyes and just listen to the music, let yourself sway with it.”

Sarah did as she was told and was filled by a strange feeling. It was a little like being un derwater, she thought. She was drifting in a sea of sound, weightless, boneless, sightless. The only thing anchoring her to reality were Matt's hands, hands she began fantasizing about working magic on other parts of her.

“Mmm … that's it,” Matt whispered.

His voice washed over her in the same kind of sensual wave as the music, warm and soft. The Paul Young song ended and another began with no interruption between the two. This song was even slower, softer, more heart wrenching. The words seemed to reach right into her to touch her soul. It was another song about needing love, about hungering for love, a prayer for God to speed the love of a special someone to the singer.

Matt listened to the stirring strains of “Unchained Melody” and watched the look of sweet yearning that came over Sarah's face, and felt something melt inside him. The city, the ER, the noise, the violence were a million miles away in that instant, and he was glad. It was just the two of them and the beginning of something special. He didn't know where this growing feeling would take them, but he wanted to find out.

It seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to step closer to her, to take her in his arms. He couldn't think why he had resisted the urge this long. He was a man accustomed to getting what he wanted and what he wanted was to feel Sarah next to him. It didn't matter that he'd only just met her. He felt like he'd been waiting half his life to find her. Sarah with her funny moods and Mona Lisa smile, her sweetness there to take all the