Читать книгу A Past To Deny - Kate Proctor - Страница 6

MAGGIE WALLACE sat cross-legged on the bed, haphazardly drying her hair. Cocooned in the luxury of Professor Connor Fitzpatrick’s elegant Dublin home, she gazed through the rain-splattered window into the stormy darkness beyond with cosy contentment.

It was a shame that her stay had to coincide with the Prof’s trip to America, she reflected lazily, before giving a wry grin and deciding that it was probably just as well, given their shared penchant for staying up half the night, chatting.

The smile abruptly left her attractive features as she remembered the state in which she had been when the Prof had rung her, announcing a problem that had cropped up which he’d hoped she would help him solve.

Once again, albeit unknowingly, the Prof had come to her rescue, she mused despondently, then gave an angry shake of her head. No, she didn’t need rescuing any more, she told herself firmly, leaning forward and sweeping her shoulder-length dark blonde hair up over her face. She switched the hair-dryer up a notch and dried off the damp underneath parts, but the unsettling thoughts lingered on.

All right, so it had taken far too long, she argued defensively, but she had already begun looking to the future before Peter had turned up out of the blue and momentarily knocked her tentative reawakening sideways. And the fact was that it had actually proved to be a blessing in disguise in that now she could feel the future beckoning her with added strength.

Maggie switched off the hair-dryer and groaned at the distant sound of the telephone ringing. In a house this size any normal person would have at least a couple of extensions, she grumbled to herself as she flew down the stairs to the study, but not the Prof—with his negative attitude to telephones, it was a wonder he actually had one at all.

‘Connor, I hope your ears are burning!’ she exclaimed when she heard the soft tones of the distinguished Irish academic greet her. ‘I nearly broke my neck getting down the stairs to answer this.’

‘The exercise will do you good, darling,’ he chuckled. ‘So tell me, has the lad arrived?’

‘Lad?’ queried Maggie. ‘If you mean the Fitzpatrick Consolidated chemist, he hasn’t contacted me yet.’

‘No—Slane. I could wring that young devil’s neck,’ complained Connor. ‘The one time I’m in his part of the world he takes off for Dublin.’

‘Slane? I take it we’re talking the Yankee Fitzpatrick Slane?’ Maggie drew the receiver back from her ear as a roar of laughter assaulted it from across the Atlantic.

‘The very one,’ chortled the professor. ‘My late cousin James’s boy, and not simply one of that filthy capitalist lot from the other side of the Atlantic I keep telling you about, but the numero uno Yankee Fitzpatrick.’

‘It would serve you right if they cut you off without a penny, the way you talk about them,’ laughed Maggie. Back when they had first met, and for no reason that she could really explain, she had been surprised to discover just how closely related the professor was to the powerful American family that owned Fitzpatrick Consolidated—one of the wealthiest and most commercially ruthless of the big American corporations.

‘Stop sidetracking me, girl,’ grumbled the professor, his aversion to the telephone beginning to assert itself. ‘The point is there’s been a change of plan—it’s Cousin Slane you’ll be assistant to for the tests and—’

‘Connor, I hope you’re joking!’ exclaimed Maggie, her alarm sensors shrieking into overdrive. ‘You told me this would be an opportunity for me to take a couple of weeks to brush up on my rusty lab technique, not that I’d be involved in something so important that the big boss of Fitzpatrick Con—’

‘Maggie, you’ll be dissecting a few plants, damn it,’ cut in Connor. Then he added with a sigh, ‘I suppose, now that I think on it, I’m not at all surprised young Slane’s decided to get involved…And there’s also the fact that it gives him an excuse to return to Ireland, which—’

‘Why would he need an excuse?’

‘He hasn’t been to Dublin since Marjorie’s funeral,’ he said, his voice catching at the mention of his beloved wife, ‘and, believe me, he worshipped her…Damn it, this will be a doubly hellish trip for him—and here I am stuck on the Yankee side of the Atlantic.’

‘Hellish?’ exclaimed Maggie, wondering what on earth she was about to be let in for.

‘Pay no heed to me, darling,’ he responded, discomfiture ringing in his tone. ‘You might not remember, but James died just six months before Marjorie. Anyway, forget these old man’s ramblings of mine and just rest assured that Slane possesses one of the finest scientific minds there is.

‘Come to think of it, I should be giving thanks he’ll be putting it to its rightful use for a while, even if it is on something this elementary, instead of squandering it on running that damned company.’

‘Are you sure he hasn’t deliberately picked a time to return when you’ll not be here?’ teased Maggie, only too willing to follow his lead in lightening the subject. ‘Excuse me a moment—I thought I heard something.’

It was the sound of a car drawing away, followed by muffled movement in the area of the porticoed porch. ‘I’ve a feeling your illustrious cousin has just arrived. I’d better let him in.’

‘Connor, you old devil, where are you?’ bellowed an American-accented voice from the hallway.

‘Too late—he’s already in, and bellowing for you.’

‘Damn it, I’ll never get off this wretched contraption,’ grumbled Connor. ‘I’d better have a word with him.’

‘Mr Fitzpatrick,’ called Maggie, putting down the receiver and running over to the study door. ‘The professor’s on the phone and would like a word with you.’

It all happened in a blur—the tall, dark-coated figure striding past her to pick up the receiver she had placed on the desktop and the sensation of her world crashing to pieces around her.

It was a trick of the light, a voice inside her shrieked from amidst the chaos breaking out within her—the room was in virtual darkness save for the small desk lamp angled uselessly across the blotter…Then he spoke, not in the raised tones that had issued from the hall and struck no chord in her, but in softly exasperated tones that were her complete undoing.

‘That’s great, Connor—me here and you there… No, I haven’t seen Mom; I just got back in from Australia a couple of days ago and…OK, OK… Right, I am listening.’

His dark-lashed blue eyes rose as he listened and alighted on Maggie, standing immobile a few steps from the doorway.

‘Damn it, Connor, you must have a pretty good idea why I’m here!’ he exploded suddenly, and turned slightly, lowering his voice. ‘And I’m not about to act as surrogate instructor to some student you’ve taken under your wing.’

Although Maggie was no longer able to see his face, her mind’s eye took over and she was able to conjure up every last detail: the blue-blackness of his hair, tousled almost to curliness; eyebrows arching in elegant symmetry above heavy-lidded, lushly lashed eyes; the nose, fine-boned and patrician, in perfect proportion to the rest of those faultless features; the mouth, wide and dramatically defined in its intriguing blend of harshness and sensuality…The face of the stranger whose body, one night long ago, had time after impossible time possessed her own in a mindless frenzy of rapture.

‘OK, Connor, you have me convinced,’ he said, his tone softening with affection. ‘No problem—it’s just that right now I’m jet-lagged and dead on my feet… Yeah, all I need is some of Mrs Morrison’s food in me to restore me—that and a bed to fall into.’

Maggie felt herself sway. Bed…cool linen sheets slipping from glistening, passion-driven bodies to lie rumpled on the floor.

‘Perhaps you should tell her that for yourself.’ The laugher-filled words cut across the madness of Maggie’s wandering thoughts. ‘OK, OK, I’ll do that…And you have yourself a good time—and give Mom my love when you see her…No, she doesn’t know anything about this; I’ll tell her when I get back.’

He put the phone down, then dragged his hands wearily across his face before turning his attention to Maggie, who still stood where he had passed her, her body rooted to the spot by a petrifying mixture of horror and incredulity.

‘Hi, Maggie—I’m Slane. I guess that’s about the only place for us to start,’ he muttered, tiredness hoarsening his voice.

No, thought Maggie dazedly, the deal had been no names…complete anonymity. She wanted to protest, but remained frozen as everything slurred into slow motion and he began walking towards her, his hand outstretched.

She was too busy steeling herself for the impact of his belated recognition to have any consciousness of how her hand came to be briefly enfolded in the cool clasp of his. It was beyond her comprehension that she might have given it freely.

‘Look, whatever you heard me say to Connor,’ he said, the familiarity of his voice washing over her like an intimate caress, seeking out and threatening to expose those secrets whose very existence made her feel that she could more easily die than acknowledge them, ‘ignore it—apart from the fact that I’m dog-tired and jet-lagged.’

A state, in fact, in which his memory would be functioning well below par, reasoned Maggie—the idea that he actually might not have recognised her suddenly proving almost as impossible to accept as that of seeing him again—especially with regard to a woman he had met only once almost three years ago.

‘I can see we need to talk,’ he murmured, his eyes for a split second catching hers, their look momentarily confounding her with the certainty that he had recognised her. ‘I’ve plainly upset you.’

‘And what makes you think that?’ The coolness of that utterance astounded her; there was no way she could accept that it had emerged from her own traumatised person.

‘Come on now, Maggie—even aside from the fact that it’s written all over you, you hadn’t been able to bring yourself to utter a word to me until just now.’

‘I’d have looked a bit of an idiot trying to strike up a conversation wtih you, given that you’ve been on the phone to Connor ever since you walked in here.’ She was about to disintegrate into a gibbering wreck, she thought dazedly, yet once again she had managed to sound the epitome of cool composure. ‘But you’re right about one thing—we need to talk.’

‘Have you any objection to our doing that over coffee?’ he asked, tiredness once more hoarsening his tone.

‘No, of course not!’ she exclaimed, her momentary certainty evaporating. ‘I’ll make some…and I suppose we should do something about finding a room for you, though I’m afraid I haven’t a clue where the Prof keeps bedlinen and things.’

‘Don’t worry, I do,’ he murmured, his mouth quirking with humour. ‘And I still have my own room here, even though it’s a good while since I’ve used it’

Maggie’s legs were shaking beneath her as she led the way to the kitchen and her mind had also started playing horrifying tricks on her which she was ruthlessly suppressing.

‘My God, nothing’s changed,’ he muttered to himself, pausing to gaze around the large, comfortable kitchen before slumping down on one of the chairs, still huddled in his coat.

‘How do you like your coffee?’ asked Maggie, still thrown by how remarkably well her mind was working, seemingly independently of herself.

‘Exactly twice as strong as Connor drinks his,’ he replied, with a chuckle that slid over Maggie like warm silk and made her lose control of the thoughts she had been so frantically suppressing. ‘But you don’t have to wait on me,’ he added, rising. ‘I can make it myself.’

‘You stay where you are—you look exhausted,’ said Maggie. ‘I’ll hang up your coat if you like; you must be sweltering in it.’

It horrified her that she should even have mentioned his taking anything off, given the images she was battling to banish from her mind—of a body, golden and stark naked and as awesomely perfect as that of a Greek god—the body of this man as she had once seen it and now kept seeing it…because her deranged mind kept stripping it of the clothing adorning it.

‘I’ll keep it on a while,’ he muttered. ‘I guess my body’s as out of sync as my head is—I feel a bit cold.’

‘Perhaps you should have a bath,’ she said, sympathy creeping into her voice as she handed him a large mug of coffee. ‘Would you like milk and sugar?’

‘No, this is fine, thank you.’

Maggie poured her own coffee and went to the fridge for milk, her movements slow as she played for time to search for reason amongst the chaos of her thoughts. The sympathy in her tone had irritated her, but really there were no grounds for her to feel antagonism towards him…apart, perhaps, from those of wounded pride. After a night such as they had shared, how could he possibly not remember?

She took her mug and sat down opposite him. ‘We might as well get straight to the point,’ she said. ‘It’s obvious I’m not the right person for the work that—’

‘Connor says you are,’ he cut in coolly. ‘And you must have agreed, otherwise why are you here?’

‘I’m here because the research student Connor had originally lined up had to drop out at the very last moment. Look, I don’t know what Connor said to you, but the truth is I haven’t been anywhere near a lab since I left university, so I’m hardly the person to be assisting someone in your position.’

‘My position? Hell, all we’re talking about here is dissecting a few plants, not who or what I am. And how come you felt able to assist a guy employed by the company I run, but not me?’

‘Forgive me for sounding naïve,’ snapped Maggie, ‘but, if that’s all it is, how is it that the managing director—or whatever it is you are—of a concern as vast as Fitzpatrick Consolidated is dealing with it personally?’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve never given in to a whim, Maggie.’

Instead of rounding on him in fury as her every instinct demanded, Maggie raised her mug to her lips. His words had been loaded to the hilt…Yet, on the other hand, his expression had been utterly blank. She took several sips of her coffee as confusion seeped its way into every pore of her being.

‘Well, I didn’t happen to come here on a whim,’ she eventually responded stiffly. ‘I came here because the Prof persuaded me I’d be helping him out of a fix, and that I’d also benefit from the experience.’

‘And you’re happy to help Connor out of a fix but not me—is that what you’re saying?’

‘No, of course not! I…look, I—I don’t care wh-what either you or Connor say,’ stammered Maggie, ‘the mere fact that someone like you would involve himself in the donkey work tells me that this project is a million miles away from anything run-of-the-mill.’

He dragged his hands wearily across his face. ‘I guess a bus ride could be described as pretty run-of-the-mill,’ he sighed. ‘There again, the reason for it being taken could make it anything but.’

Maggie heard his words, but it was the faint hint of Irish brogue that had momentarily slipped into them which caught her attention, striking a chord in her that sent her thoughts careering off at a tangent She hadn’t noticed it at first, all those years ago, and even when she had later it hadn’t consciously struck her as being Irish—that soft lilt interwoven into his husky words of passion…

She gave an almost angry toss of her head. ‘Well, whatever your reasons for being here, I’m sure someone like you won’t have too much difficulty finding a suitably qualified lab assistant,’ she stated firmly, rising.

‘I’d have insurmountable difficulty,’ Slane told her quietly. ‘I don’t have the contacts Connor has here, and even his are pretty sparse, with him having been in England so long. Besides, you were his second choice. If you pull out the project will have to be scrapped until next year.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ protested Maggie, suddenly feeling horribly trapped.

‘There’s nothing ridiculous about it,’ he replied, with a barely perceptible shrug. ‘The only complicated thing about these tests is the time factor involved—and that happens to be crucial…What exactly did Connor tell you about the project?’

Maggie sat back down on her chair, her head swimming. ‘Nothing much,’ she replied, ‘except that the plant involved was on the verge of extinction and a botanist here had managed to reproduce it. He also mentioned that this plant was alleged to contain some miraculous property or other, though he seemed somewhat sceptical about that and didn’t enlarge on what it was.’

‘His scepticism is in no way misplaced,’ muttered Slane, once again dragging his hands wearily across his face. ‘But, if a minor miracle could be the end result, I guess it has to be worth a try.’

His own undisguised scepticism brought a startled look from Maggie, which in turn elicited a wry smile from her companion—a smile which, innocuous thought it was, sent a surge of unequivocally sexual longing blasting through her.

‘Or don’t you agree?’ he persisted, his smile, as it softened into a coaxing one, wreaking further havoc within her.

‘I…O-of course I agree,’ she stammered, hot colour rushing to her cheeks.

‘But?’

‘But nothing,’ she muttered, part of what Connor had said earlier ringing in her head. ‘I’ll stay.’

‘What—you’ll stay and assist me?’ he asked, his eyes wary.

‘Well, I certainly didn’t mean I was going to keep house for you,’ she snapped, appalled that she hadn’t stopped to think twice before committing herself.

To her complete surprise he slumped forward, burying his face in his arms, convulsed with laughter.

‘You might not find it quite so amusing when I tell you that as from today Mrs Morrison is off on a two-week visit to her sister in Galway.’

He groaned as he raised his head. ‘You may not believe this, but I have spent a number of years fantasising about sampling Mrs Morrison’s cooking again,’ he protested. ‘Hell, I’m almost tempted to pack my bags and go back home,’ he added, with a grin.

‘Except that you haven’t unpacked them yet,’ pointed out Maggie, finding it impossible to keep her face straight, and even more impossible to do anything about the mind-blowing effect he had on her every time he smiled.

‘You can’t wait to be rid of me, can you, Maggie?’ His words were teasing, but there was a deeper element of mockery in his eyes…Or was that simply her imagination?

‘I’ve a nasty feeling you’re going to be the one who can’t wait to get rid of me once you’re faced with exactly how rusty my lab skills are,’ she stated woodenly. ‘But as for Mrs Morrison’s cooking—there’s one of her magnificent concoctions in the oven, just waiting to be heated.’

Laughter burst unchecked from her as he clutched at his heart and rolled his eyes theatrically. There had been so many things about him that had attracted her even before the physical element had engulfed her, she thought with dismay—so why should anything be different now?

She rose to her feet. ‘Why don’t you get your things sorted and have a shower?’ she suggested, her own aplomb still a source of amazement to her. ‘And I’ll get the food under way.’

He rose from the table. ‘Maggie, I…Thanks,’ he muttered disjointedly. He hesitated as though about to say more, then turned and walked from the room.

For several seconds Maggie stood there, immobile in body and mind. When her body at last reactivated itself she switched on the oven, then prepared potatoes and carrots. By the time the potatoes were boiling she had cut the carrots into thin strips…and still her mind had not responded. Great, she told herself numbly, my mind’s packed up on me.

Close to tears, she marched over to the cooker, threw a lump of butter, some sugar and a cupful of chicken stock she’d found in the fridge into a shallow pan and added the carrots. Then she gave a dazed shake of her head. What on earth had possessed her to attempt her mother’s glazed carrots, she asked herself incredulously, when she only had the vaguest idea how to do them?

She slammed the lid onto the pan then walked to the back door, opened it and stepped out into the freezing night air.

A couple of months ago, when autumn had already begun yellowing the leaves on the trees that it would soon strip bare, something had begun stirring in her, she reflected, the thought still peculiarly tinged with detachment. It wasn’t simply that circumstances had forced her into taking decisions regarding her life…it was more that the need burgeoning in her had happened to coincide with a change of circumstance in her working life; the effect—or, rather, the ultimate lack of effect—that Peter’s reappearance had had on her was proof enough of that.

But for almost the past three years she might just as well have been asleep for all the living she had done, she concluded bitterly, then took a step back towards the doorway as the wind suddenly changed direction and sent rain whipping against her. She drew a hand down her face, uncertain whether the wetness it encountered was from the rain, her own tears or a mixture of both.

And now what? she asked herself bleakly. She had tried to deny the past out of existence for almost three years, and it hadn’t worked. OK, so she had to face it, but how was the question, when the man who comprised such a large part of it had either forgotten her or was deliberately not facing it himself…And the answer wasn’t exactly leaping out at her.

‘Hey—Maggie!’

She jumped, startled not just by his voice but also by his tone of open censure. She stepped inside and was about to pull the door closed behind her when the acrid smell of burning hit her.

‘Don’t, for God’s sake, close that door,’ ordered Slane irritably as he strode across the kitchen and slung the pan containing the carrots into the sink. ‘And it might have been an idea to turn the darned things off before you started trying to clear the air,’ he muttered, leaning forward and throwing open the window above the sink.

‘I’m sorry, I thought I had turned them off,’ lied Maggie, automatically avoiding the truth and all its accompanying complications…As usual, she noted bitterly as she watched him stride back to the cooker, his tall figure, now clad in jeans and a large sweatshirt, oozing casual elegance. ‘It’s all right, I’ll see to the potatoes,’ she said as he lifted the lid from the pan.

‘There isn’t much in the way of potato left for you to see to,’ he informed her baldly, stepping out of her way as she approached.

Her cheeks burning with mortification, Maggie took the pan to the sink and resignedly watched most of the potatoes disappear down it when she drained them. She returned to the cooker, her eyes studiously avoiding the tall figure now engrossed in laying the table, turned up the heat in an attempt to dry out the mush in the pan, added a lump of butter to it and attacked the lot with the potato masher.

The silence ringing in her ears like pealing bells, she transferred the potatoes to a heated bowl, relieved to find that they were now of a consistency that required a spoon, instead of simply being poured.

By the time she had everything on the table she was feeling light-headed, wobbly-legged and not in the least like facing food, despite the tempting aroma emanating from the casserole…and even less like sharing a meal with the man seated opposite her, who had amusement plastered all over his face as he leaned over and began serving.

‘Did you know Marjorie?’ he startled her by asking.

She shook her head, the Prof’s words about this being a double ordeal for him filling her mind just as they had in the moments before she had recklessly said she would stay. ‘I wish I had. Connor’s told me so much about her—she sounds a very special person.’

‘Oh, Marjorie was special all right,’ he said, his eyes momentarily clouding. ‘In a funny way you reminded me of her just now.’ He glanced up at her with an apologetic grin. ‘Though, to be fair to you, had it been Marjorie in charge of these carrots the house would have been burned to a cinder.’

Maggie felt herself relax slightly; she even managed a smile. ‘I do seem to remember Connor mentioning something about Mrs Morrison trying to ban her from the kitchen soon after they were married. But, I promise you, that was a first for me.’

‘So how did you meet Connor?’ he asked. ‘I notice you sometimes refer to him as “the Prof”, but I’d have thought you were too young to be one of his students.’

‘Actually, I was one of his students in my final year in London,’ she replied, her minding skidding away from other thoughts about that particular year. ‘I was lucky; I was a member of one of his last groups before he retired fully.’

‘Well, now I am impressed,’ murmured Slane, his eyes widening in mock awe. ‘So you made it into one of those crème de la crème groups he now and then indulged himself in before finally sliding into what he inaccurately refers to as “full retirement”.’

‘I know exactly what you mean,’ said Maggie. ‘He’ll never really retire—that’s the way he is.’

‘Are you trying to change the subject?’ asked Slane, a lazy grin softening any trace of harshness from his features. ‘You know, your being one of Connor’s chosen few really does set you apart from the mob. I guess any errors made in these tests we’re about to do won’t be down to you.’

‘I wouldn’t bet on that,’ she muttered, and gave her full attention to her food, appalled by the burning, meltingly erotic sensation now churning inside her.

Shock could do terrible things, she told herself edgily, not certain that the monumental one to which she had been subjected hadn’t destroyed her mental capacities altogether.

‘I guess I should be filling you in about the tests—not that there’s much to tell,’ he said after a while. ‘But I’m not sure I could get my head round it right now.’ He glanced over at Maggie as he spoke, and for one brief moment she was certain that she saw a flash of mocking recognition in those heavy-lidded eyes; then they drooped in unmistakable exhaustion and her certainty yet again evaporated.

‘That’s understandable,’ she said, rising to clear the dishes. ‘You’ve had a lot to contend with today, we’ll leave it until tomorrow.’ Even before the words were fully out she sensed that they were a mistake. ‘There’s fruit if you’d like some,’ she added hastily as the ambiguity of her words belatedly hit her. ‘I’ll make some coffee.’

‘Just the coffee will be fine,’ he said, his handsome face drawn with exhaustion as he leaned back in his chair, his eyes barely focusing as they followed her movements. ‘So, I’ve had a lot to contend with today, have I?’ he enquired.

It was the steely note in his tone that made Maggie freeze with apprehension.

‘It was just that Connor mentioned you hadn’t been back here since his wife died,’ she stated woodenly.

‘And that’s all?’ The note of challenge was undisguised.

Maggie switched on the kettle, playing for time as she fought to control the anger suddenly blazing within her. Perhaps he was only asking if that was all Connor had mentioned…perhaps not. Mortifying in the extreme though the idea was that he might have mentally erased the passion they had once shared, the idea that he was simply playing cat-and-mouse with her made her blood boil.

Unable to contain herself, she spun round to confront him. His head was tilted back and his eyes were closed. It wasn’t the expression of weariness on his face that shrivelled the anger in her, but the anguish with which it was interlaced.

‘He said that you loved her very much,’ she stated quietly, turning away from his pain to attend to the coffee. And Connor had also mentioned his father’s death, she reflected unhappily, feeling the ghosts of what had once been a scarcely bearable anguish stir within her.

It had been six long years since her own beloved father had died, and despite the healing process of time there were still moments when she could be taken unawares and become engulfed by a suffocating sense of loss. The expression she had witnessed on Slane Fitzpatrick’s face was one with which she could not help but empathise.

‘Yes, I loved Marjorie,’ he said, straightening as she brought the coffee to the table. ‘It would have been difficult not to,’ he added, his eyes clouding over.

She had no idea what connection his coming to Ireland could have with his father, but Maggie felt certain that it wasn’t Marjorie alone occupying his bleak thoughts. Because she could think of nothing she could trust herself to say, she picked up her cup and slowly drank from it. When it was empty she rose to her feet.

‘I’ve a couple of letters I have to write,’ she said, walking over to the dishwasher and starting to stack it, ‘so I’ll just get this cleared—’

‘Leave those; I’ll see to them—you’ve waited on me enough as it is.’

‘Of course I haven’t been waiting on you,’ protested Maggie, closing the dishwasher and turning. ‘You look all in—in fact, you don’t look as though you’ll last much longer.’

His eyes met hers, another of those lazy, disturbingly disruptive grins sauntering across his lips. ‘You get off to your letters, Maggie, and don’t be deceived by appearances,’ he murmured. ‘This guy has reserves of stamina you’d never believe.’

His words poleaxed her and it was left to that other, miraculously detached Maggie to take over, mouthing a polite goodnight and urging her leaden limbs from the room.

It was only when she had closed her bedroom door behind her that her real self re-emerged and her violently trembling body sagged against the wall. There was no way that his remark could have been an innocent coincidence…It couldn’t simply be her imagination that he had just reminded her of the stamina which had enabled him to make love to her time after time that night long ago…or could it?

‘This is impossible,’ he had groaned at one stage during that passion-filled night, when insatiable hunger had flamed between them yet again. ‘What have you done to me?’

And, even though she had been sexually innocent until that same night, she had instinctively known that what was happening between her and the beautiful stranger was an impossibility.

She gave a dazed shake of her head as she straightened her still violently trembling body and then stumbled towards the bed.

That night she had needed the magic of something impossible to heal her vicious wounds…but the cure had come close to destroying her.