Читать книгу Marriage Without Love - Пенни Джордан, PENNY JORDAN - Страница 4

IT was quite a long way from the canteen to the office of the Editor of the Daily Globe, especially when one was carrying a tray holding two tea cups, a pot of tea, milk and sugar, but Briony Winters was used to it. Her small, slight frame belied her strength just as her soft, feminine features belied her nature.

She pushed open the door of the outer office, which was hers, noticing with a frown the heavy masculine topcoat flung carelessly over the spare chair. Doug Simons, her boss, often had visitors, but very few of them wore coats like that. It was wool, and expensive, meticulously tailored and lined in silk. Briony put down the tray, wondering about whether to give up her own cup for the visitor, when she realised that the inner door was not quite closed.

‘Well, you’ll have no problems with the job, of course,’ Doug was saying. ‘Not after working on the Telegraph.’

‘Which, I take it, means I could have in other areas.’

Although the man’s voice was faintly muffled, there was no mistaking its hard inflexibility, and Briony frowned, her lips drawing together in a cold line.

‘Well, it’s just Briony…’

The very mention of her own name should have been sufficient to send her out of earshot, but despite allegations among the male staff of the paper to the contrary, Briony was only human.

‘Briony?’

Again that note of sharp query.

‘Briony Winters, my secretary,’ Doug supplied. ‘Well, your secretary now. She might give you a hard time at first… until she gets used to you.’

‘She might…? My God, no wonder your sales are slipping if you allow your secretary to dictate to you, Doug!’

The coolly insolent words made Briony’s fingers curl angrily into her palms. For two pins she’d march right into Doug’s office and demand to know exactly why he thought it necessary to explain to his replacement that he might have ‘problems’. Didn’t she fulfil her secretarial duties with a good deal more efficiency and effectiveness than any of the other secretaries?

She had been away on a fortnight’s holiday when the news of Doug’s promotion broke and had come back to find the paper in an uproar, with Doug due to leave for New York only three days after his replacement arrived. Since the Globe had been taken over by an American newspaper group, such transatlantic moves had become commonplace, and Briony hadn’t been unduly surprised to hear that Doug’s replacement was from the States. She herself didn’t particularly like American men. They were inclined to be brash and noisy. And worse, they didn’t know when to take ‘no’ for an answer. She stared angrily at the door. Doug had no right… no right at all to discuss her like this.

‘What is she?’ she heard the other man say sardonically. ‘Some sort of female dragon? A Women’s Libber with her hair in a bun and thick ankles?’

‘No way,’ Doug said dryly. ‘As it happens, she’s got one of the sexiest bodies I’ve ever seen.’

Outside the door Briony writhed in furious resentment. Doug had never given the slightest inkling that he had even noticed her body, and if he had she wouldn’t have continued to work for him.

‘Woe betide you if you try to touch it, though,’ Doug was warning his companion. ‘Briony has a hang-up where men are concerned. She can’t stand them, and it isn’t a sham. Something to do with something that happened in her teens.’

‘A teenage romance goes wrong and turns her into a man-hater? Come on, Doug. These are the nineteen-eighties!’

‘Well, some people take things harder than others. I’m just warning you to take things easy. She’s the best secretary I’ve ever had—works hard and is meticulously efficient.’

‘Maybe so,’ the hard voice said curtly. ‘But if she wants the kid glove treatment she shouldn’t be working on a paper. Secretaries are expendable, Doug,’ the man added in a bored voice, ‘even the best of them.’

Briony gripped her desk, her voice white with fear and shock. There had been redundancies on the paper the summer before and she had been terrified, then, that she might lose her job. It was something she daren’t even contemplate. She depended on it too heavily. It paid well, and Doug had always been flexible about hours, which had been an added bonus. But now Doug was leaving and she would be working for a man she had already decided she hated, without even meeting him. He was still talking to Doug, and she moved away from the door on legs suddenly weak and trembling. Whoever he was, he was no American. His accent was English. She could tell that even though his voice was muffled by the door.

The intercom buzzed and she flicked it down, her voice coolly remote as she answered Doug.

‘Come into my office for a moment, would you, Briony?’ he requested. ‘There’s someone here I’d like you to meet.’

There was a small mirror on the wall behind her, but she didn’t bother to look in it. She stood up picking up her notebook and pencil through sheer force of habit, a small girl, with a mane of dark red hair that curled thickly round a perfectly oval face. Her skin was pale and creamy; almost translucent. She had delicate features and large green eyes which looked as though they might once have been vulnerable but which now reflected only the image of whoever looked into them. Looking into Briony’s eyes was like looking at a one-way mirror, from the wrong side, one of her infuriated male colleagues had once said. The only time anyone saw any expression in them was if some man tried to sexually belittle her. Then they filled with bitterness and contempt. Slender to the point of fragility, there was a steel-like quality about her, a coldness which allowed no one to trespass close enough to discover the woman she might be beneath the layers of ice in which she was encased. She was twenty-three and as composed as a woman ten years older. ‘Frigid’ and ‘incapable of feeling were just two of the many insults frustrated males had hurled at her, but they pleased rather than offended. Where men were concerned her emotions were completely burnt out, leaving nothing but bitter hatred.

Despite that, Doug was envied his secretary. She was cool, and calm, and could be relied on completely in an emergency. Her job was no sinecure. She was on the go from nine until six every day, working late quite often, and always ready to work through a lunch-hour or give up free time if it was necessary. The other girls joked that she didn’t have a private life, and that the paper was her family; and although they were reluctant to admit it, most of them felt slightly in awe of her.

As she pushed open the door Doug smiled at her. Doug Simons was in his mid-fifties, a power-house of human energy, who had worked in newspapers since he left school. He and Briony got on very well—or at least she had thought they had until she heard him discussing her so freely. Happily married with a grown up family and a wife on whom he doted, he represented no threat to her defence systems. Neither did he constantly annoy her with unwanted sexually based conversation or false flattery of a type insulting to both her intelligence and her taste. Men thought they only had to smile and wheedle and girls would gladly jump into bed with them. Well, not her!

Doug smiled warmly at her, his expression faintly ingratiating as though he was half afraid of what she might do or how she would react.

She smiled back—a slight widening of warmly curved lips to show even white teeth, the smile not reaching her eyes, which remained as clear and cold as glass.

Doug’s companion had his back to her. He didn’t turn to look up at her, nor did he betray any other awareness of her presence, and she prickled with animosity. His hair was dark and thick, brushing the collar of the expensive suit he was wearing, and she stiffened as warily and antagonistically as a cat faced with a large, threatening dog.

‘Kieron, meet your new secretary, Briony. Briony—Kieron Blake.’

She at least had had the advantage of hearing his name, and thus the precious gift of a few seconds to prepare herself. He had had nothing, and she observed the shocked incredulity of his expression with grim satisfaction. Navy-blue eyes swept slowly and disbelievingly over her; looking for the scars? she asked herself bitterly. He wouldn’t find any. She had concealed them all too well.

‘Briony?’ His eyebrows rose in contemptuous accusation, and although inwardly terrified, Briony refused to be drawn. Let him think what he liked. He hadn’t changed. The long-boned Celtic face was still as physically compelling; the high cheekbones and harsh male features still as disturbing. His skin was tanned, the thick dark hair worn slightly longer than she remembered, and the suit more formal. He had himself under control now, the shock carefully masked, only the faint clenching of his jawbone revealing the control he was having to exert.

‘Kieron’s going to need all the help you can give him until he settles in, Briony,’ Doug told her, sublimely unaware of the undercurrents eddying fiercely around him. ‘I’m going to take him round and introduce him to the other editors and then we’re going out to lunch. Anything urgent, get Phil to deal with it, will you?’

Phil Masters was Doug’s assistant, a tall gangly Scot with a shock of red hair and a temper to match.

Doug and Kieron were standing up, Kieron extending his hand to her, his expression a mingling of contempt and indifference, which changed to anger as she withdrew automatically from him.

With Doug looking on she could hardly make a scene, but the touch of those cool brown fingers against her own skin made her shake with a sickness and fear that left her drained and trembling. And this was only the beginning.

As she walked back into her own office, Kieron murmured something to Doug, and the connecting door was closed. Alarm prickled over her, fears she had thought long submerged suddenly filling her mind and obliterating everything else.

‘How long has Briony worked for you?’ Kieron asked Doug casually as the latter picked up his coat.

‘Umm, about eighteen months. Best secretary I’ve ever had.’ He hadn’t been as unaware of Kieron’s reaction to Briony as he had pretended, and naturally he was curious as to its cause. ‘Am I right in thinking you know her?’

‘I once thought I knew someone who looked like her, but it turned out that I didn’t know her at all.’

His tone of voice warned Doug not to probe.

‘I’m not surprised to hear she’s a man-hater,’ he added sardonically. ‘She’s one of those women who seem to get a thrill out of leading men on and then kicking them in the teeth. Quite a hang-up!’

Doug didn’t argue the point. Whatever relationship had once existed between Briony and Kieron was their business and theirs alone, but he could foresee fireworks between them in the not too far distant future, if they were going to work together.

The two men emerged from the office, and Briony darted a quick look at Kieron’s shuttered face. It told her nothing. When they had gone she stared unseeingly at her typewriter, ignoring the over-flowing ‘in’ tray, her mind racing frantically in circles as she tried to think of a way of ensuring that she need never set eyes on Kieron Blake again.

There wasn’t one, of course. Not unless she gave up her job, and that was impossible. In a more buoyant economic climate she might have done so, even if it meant taking a drop in salary, but to take the risk in the middle of a depression would be extremely foolhardy. She needed her salary. Every penny of it. She closed her eyes, shivering suddenly with cold. The office door opened and she jerked upright, her face paper-white, but it was only Matt Dyson, one of the sub-editors. It was the joke of the Globe that while Briony gave every other male the cold shoulder, Matt Dyson, the original worm who never turned, was her only male escort.

‘Is something wrong?’ he asked, eyeing her with mingled uncertainty and embarrassment.

Doug referred unkindly to Matt as her ‘lame dog’, and it was true that his long face often wore an expression of anguished apology. He was nervous and introspective and the other men often made fun of him behind his back. He had once confided to Briony that he had wanted to become a painter, but that his parents had disapproved. He was in his late twenties, with fair, thinning hair, and mild hazel eyes. His wife had left him two weeks after Christmas, and now in April he still hoped every day that she would miraculously return to him. He worshipped the ground she trod, although Briony could not see why. Mary Dyson was a dumpy brunette, narrow-minded and everything that Briony disliked in her own sex. She had often contemplated telling Matt that his wife might treat him a little better if he treated her a little worse, but she had no intention of getting involved in other people’s personal problems.

‘Lunch with me?’ Matt asked hesitantly. ‘Or have you another date?’

She hadn’t, and she didn’t particularly feel like eating, but she knew that she could not remain in her office thinking about Kieron Blake.

To her surprise Matt took her to a fashionable new restaurant which had recently opened, and had become a favourite haunt of Globe staff. It was inclined to be rather pricey, and since she knew that Matt was having problems making ends meet, Briony frowned, wishing he had taken her somewhere more modest. Now she would have to insist on paying for her own meal and he would be hurt and offended.

The restaurant was full apart from one table set for six and one vacant one for two next to it. The waiter removed Briony’s coat with a flourish and a look in his eyes which immediately made her own harden as she directed a freezing stare at him.

Matt dithered over the menu. He always did, and Briony had grown used to it. In contrast she had decided what she was going to eat immediately, and she gave her order coolly, while Matt cast anguished glances, first at the menu and then at the hovering waiter. It took all of five minutes and they still had to endure the fiasco of choosing the wine. Matt hadn’t a clue about wine and normally ended up hot and bothered and very obviously patronised by the wine waiter. Briony sat through it all with detached uninterest, throwing a cool smile at Matt when he eventually managed to make up his mind, which he accepted with the gratitude of a dog being thrown a bone.

They had just started on their main course when the table adjacent to them filled up. Briony was conscious of being scrutinised but refused to look up. Matt turned to say something to her, and upset his wine glass, an expression of abject apology on his face as the contents cascaded over the table and dripped on to her cream wool skirt. She stood up, shaking off the moisture and assuring him that no harm had been done. As she sat down again she realised that the occupants of the other table were Doug and Kieron, and four other deputy editors from the paper.

Doug grinned at her, but it was Kieron Blake of whom she was most aware, her hands shaking beneath the narrowed blue stare he turned upon her.

‘Come and join us,’ Doug invited, calling over a waiter to move the tables together. ‘We’ll soon catch up with you.’

Briony willed Matt to refuse, but of course he didn’t, and somehow she found herself sandwiched beween Doug and Kieron while Matt sat opposite her next to the Features Editor, Gail Wyndham.

Gail and Briony had never been particularly friendly. Gail was a tall blonde, a career woman first and foremost but one who made no secret of her enjoyment of the opposite sex. It was rumoured that she knew every attractive male on the Globe intimately, and watching her openly flirting with Kieron Blake Briony suspected that it would not be too long before he joined that list. He was letting Gail make all the running, his manner lazily amused, just enough awareness in it to encourage her, and Briony felt faintly sick as she watched them together. One of the other men tried to engage her in conversation, but she cut him off abruptly, shocked to discover that Kieron had switched his attention from Gail to her, his eyes alert and watchful, a cynical twist to his lips.

‘I’ve been dying to meet you for ages,’ Gail murmured softly, stretching out a plum-tipped hand to touch his arm. ‘You were quite a celebrity on the Street even before you went to the States.’

‘Oh?’

Under the table Briony gripped her hands together until her knuckles showed white. From the moment she had seen Kieron Blake in Doug’s office she had known this moment would come. It seemed ironic that after so many years of nightmares about it, the confrontation should arrive just when she had at last hoped she was over them. Inwardly she was shaking with mingled sickness and fear, but years of hiding her feelings and repressing them behind a blank wall helped her to concentrate on her food, although if anyone had asked her what she was eating she would not have had the faintest idea.

‘The Myers case,’ Gail continued in a husky voice. ‘It made newspaper history—the sort of scoop we all dream about. While the rest of the press were speculating about what part of the world James Myers might have disappeared to, you managed to discover that he was right here in this country all the time, posing as his sister’s boy-friend.’

‘The Myers case?’ Doug frowned. ‘Wasn’t he the crooked financier? The one who was reputed to have salted millions away?’

‘Yes. It wasn’t a very pleasant business,’ Kieron said coolly. ‘The man had been indulging in a form of legal robbery for years, but then he made a fatal slip and got found out. Everyone knew what was going on but no one could prove it, and before the police could build up a case against him it was rumoured that he’d skipped the country.’

‘Only you knew differently,’ Gail admired. ‘How on earth did you find out the truth? By all accounts he was quite a master of disguise, and had been coming and going quite freely for weeks, posing as his sister’s boy-friend.’

‘Yes. He was hoping to leave the country when things had cooled down a bit. I had a few lucky breaks.’

‘And a guillible informant, if all one hears is true,’ Gail laughed. ‘Didn’t you get most of the detail for the story from Myers’ sister’s flatmate?’

‘I never disclose my sources,’ Kieron told her, smiling to soften the words. Briony could tell that Doug was impressed by this apparent show of loyalty and she could feel Kieron’s eyes upon her across the width of the table, but she refused to look up. No matter what he might pretend to others, she knew the truth!

‘In that case you didn’t need to,’ Gail said frankly. ‘I wonder what on earth happened to that girl? There was some talk of her being tried as an accomplice at one stage.’

‘Tried? but.…’ Kieron caught himself up, but not before Briony had observed his momentary shock with bitter satisfaction.

‘Surely you knew?’ Gail queried.

‘As a newspaper editor you should know better than merely to assume the obvious,’ Kieron parried.

Because he had no other defence against the question, Briony thought angrily.

‘It was a very clever piece of reporting,’ Doug observed, joining the conversation, his words jarring a nerve Briony had thought long dead.

‘Clever?’ she burst out before she could stop herself, her eyes burning with resentment, a loathing in her voice she did nothing to hide. ‘Is that what you all think? That it’s “clever” to destroy someone’s life, just to get a front-page story? Well, I don’t. I think it’s despicable. Hateful!’ She broke off, realising that the others were exchanging puzzled and amused glances.

‘Come on, love, aren’t you taking it a bit personally?’ one of the other men commented. Briony knew Kieron was waiting for her to speak, but she couldn’t. How could these cynical, worldly people understand the effect of their sophisticated moral code on others less worldly? And Kieron’s attempts to pretend that he hadn’t known.… That he had actually cared.… God, how she hated him!

‘Something wrong, Briony?’ Kieron asked her smoothly, giving her name faint emphasis. ‘You don’t seem to be enjoying your lunch.’

‘The lunch is fine,’ she retorted bleakly, ‘but if you’ll all excuse me, I’ve got work to do.’ She glanced at Matt, not wanting to embarrass him in front of the others by offering to pay for her own lunch, and then shrugged the concern away. She could settle up with him later.

She had just walked past the table when she heard Gail say triumphantly, ‘Beth Walker—that was the girl’s name!’

Briony froze, her eyes dilating with fear, her hands cold and clammy.

‘Beth Walker,’ Kieron repeated softly, and Briony knew without looking at him that he was watching her.

She walked back to the office on legs which almost refused to support her, each breath a conscious effort. Her instinctive response was to grab her coat and leave before Doug and Kieron got back. But she could not.

On impulse she reached for a phone book, dialling the number of a well-known employment agency. The girl on the other end was helpful but regretful. In normal circumstances, she told Briony, they wouldn’t have the slightest difficulty in placing her, but the way things were at the moment it might be months before they could find her a job which came anywhere near approaching her present highly paid one.

She slumped in her chair, not entirely surprised, wondering what on earth she was going to do. She felt as though her life had suddenly turned into a horrendous nightmare. Beth Walker. When she had discarded that name she had discarded the past, or so she tried to persuade herself, but it hadn’t been easy. There were too many intrusive memories, too much that could not simply be forgotten. She had changed her name by deed poll after the attentions of the Press became too much to bear. It was ironic really that she should end up working for a newspaper. It had been from necessity rather than inclination. She had needed a job that paid well, and employers who were prepared to take her on without digging too deeply into her past. Doug had taken her completely on trust, and for that alone she felt she owed him a debt which could never be entirely repaid. One had to experience the contempt and loss in faith of others before one could appreciate fully the value of trust.

She had once trusted Kieron Blake. And not just trusted him. Even now it made her feel sick to think how gullible she had once been.

The first time she had seen him had been at the flat she shared with Susan Myers. He had come, so he told her, to interview Susan for a gossip column article, and she had not been surprised, because although she and Susan lived together, their life styles were entirely different.

They had been brought up in the same small village. Susan was the spoiled and petted daughter of the local ‘lord of the manor’, Sir Arthur Myers, and his wife, and Briony had got to know her through her father who was their doctor. They had gone to school together, although never particularly intimate—Susan moved in a different, faster crowd, and it was only the death of Briony’s parents within six months of one another—her father from a heart attack and her mother from a broken heart—that brought them together.

Briony’s father was not a wealthy man. There were some investments and the house, which on her solicitor’s recommendation Briony had sold. She had been contemplating going on to university after school, but fearing to use up her slender financial resources had decided instead to invest in a good secretarial course. It was then that Susan Myers, chaffing under the parental yoke, suggested that they ‘flat’ together. Not that Susan was contemplating a secretarial career. Her ambitions were nowhere near as modest. Her long-suffering parents paid for her to undergo an expensive modelling course from which she emerged sleek and soignée; the occasional modelling job and her father’s allowance giving her a far different life style from Briony’s steady nine-to-five routine. In fact long before her secretarial course was over Briony was regretting her decision to share with Susan. All-night parties; casual sexual morals; these had no place in her life, but she was unable to afford the expense of the flat without Susan and had perforce to endure her presence.

Susan’s brother she knew only by hearsay. Ten years separated them, Susan being the child of Sir Arthur’s second marriage, and although Susan was fond of boasting about her successful half-brother, Briony had never met him. Nor had she wanted to, disliking what she read about him in the Press, but when the story had broken, no one had believed her innocence, and the one person who could have substantiated it was missing.

Her mouth twisted bitterly. Kieron must have thanked his lucky stars that Susan was so conveniently missing that evening. She had told him when the other girl would be in, but he had shown a flattering disinclination to leave. They had talked—she couldn’t remember what about—only that for the first time since her parents had died she didn’t feel completely alone. When he asked her out, she hadn’t even hesitated, and had never once suspected that his questions were based on anything other than an interest in her own background. Later, of course, when the truth came out, she had realised that it was James Myers’ background he had been seeking, not hers.

He had taken her out to dinner the evening they came back and found Susan and her new ‘boy-friend’ in the flat. Briony had put Susan’s awkwardness down to the fact that she was merely playing one of her silly secretive games. Susan had a vivid imagination and liked to pretend her life was full of drama and suspense, but with hindsight she suspected that Kieron had known the truth right from the start.

It had said in the papers that James Myers was a master of disguise, and certainly it had never crossed Briony’s mind that he was Susan’s brother. He visited the flat quite often, and the two of them would retire to Susan’s room, talking together in muted whispers. Whenever Kieron had asked about Susan and her ‘boy-friend’ Briony had innocently supplied the answers. She had even been the one to tell him that Susan was due to go abroad on a modelling trip, never dreaming that it was just a cover to smuggle James Myers out of the country on the false passport and documents he had had prepared.

Kieron had been particularly passionate that night. They had driven out of town and stopped at a small Thamesside pub for a drink. It had been a long hot summer and she remembered she had been wearing a thin camisole top and a pretty cotton skirt. Kieron had traced the neckline of her top with one lazy finger, the casual caress sending her pulses racing with frightened excitement. How could anyone so attractive be interested in her? When he announced abruptly that they were leaving she had gone willingly. In the car he had pulled her to him, moulding her body against his own with a new intimacy that thrilled her. There had never been a second when she doubted his feelings. When he parted her lips in a passionate kiss she had responded without check, trusting him completely.

They had driven back to the flat in a silence which on her part was filled with tense excitement. Tonight was to be the climax to which their relationship had been slowly building. Her body felt curiously weightless, open adoration in her eyes as she turned them to her companion. She had remembered later how Kieron had stopped the car then, even though they hadn’t reached the flat, his voice rough as he said unsteadily, ‘Don’t look at me like that.…’

And she, little fool that she was, had thought he meant that if she did he wouldn’t be able to control himself! If only she had known! There hadn’t been a single occasion during their association when he hadn’t known exactly what he was doing, hadn’t been completely and absolutely in control of everything, including her. Manipulating her like a jointed doll, and she had let him.

It was dark when they got back, and the flat was empty. Susan had gone home for the weekend. Her father hadn’t been feeling well, and she had been furious when her mother phoned to beg her to return. She hated the country and seemed to have no feelings for her parents whatsoever.

The flat had been unpleasantly cool after the warmth of the car, and Briony had shivered slightly. Kieron had removed his jacket, draping it round her slender shoulders, and laughing gently because it drowned her. Then the laughter had died and he had taken her in his arms, kissing her with a new demanding force that overwhelmed her. She remembered that she had protested slightly and said something about making them some coffee, but Kieron had laughed, and said no, he had other things in mind.

Somehow his hand had slipped beneath the flimsy camisole and was caressing her breast, the sudden passionate surge of her own flesh taking her off guard. She had gasped slightly, her eyes wide and wondering, wonder giving way to a totally different emotion when Kieron slid the thin strap down from her shoulder, placing his lips to the burgeoning flesh his hand had just vacated.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he had told her slowly, his hands removing her clothes and his eyes doing incredible things to her emotions. She told herself that what she was doing was wrong, only her arguments were somehow less than convincing. How could the way she felt about Kieron ever be wrong? It was deliciously and passionately right.

She couldn’t remember how they got into the bedroom, but she could remember, with vivid clarity, the hard warmth of Kieron’s body against hers; the strangeness of his male flesh, and the aching sensation of intense need that seemed to start somewhere in the pit of her stomach and spread languorously all through her body.

Once, as his lips roved possessively over her skin, she protested, the small sound silenced as he cupped her face and kissed her lingeringly until there was no thought in her head but him.

He was beautiful, she had thought achingly, staring wonderingly at his body. He was like a Greek statue come to life, and she wanted to touch him and go on touching him for ever. As though he sensed what she was feeling he had guided her hands to his skin, murmuring soft encouragements whenever shyness made her hesitate.

The thought of his possession brought her no fear. His slow, expert lovemaking had expunged that, but what she had not expected was her own sudden passionate need, kindled by his touch and expertise, and pushing aside the barriers of innocence and inexperience.

When she arched against him, her fingers tensing into his back, he soothed her softly, driving her almost into a mindless frenzy of intolerable aching need, before finally parting her thighs with his full weight.

In confirmation of his greater experience he was ready for her sudden tremulous fear and clenching muscles, his hands steadying her and soothing her tension, as he kissed her softly, murmuring to her to relax. The pain was sharp and intense, and she cried out to him to stop, but her cry had been ignored and for a moment hurt and pain combined with outraged resentment to make her fight against his domination. But as though he had expected it, the rebellion was quelled, his body taking her through pain to pleasure—a pleasure such as she had never dreamed of, her cries of pain turning to soft moans of desire and those to hoarse, throbbing pleas for fulfilment.

She fell asleep in his arms, convinced that life could hold no greater happiness, her limbs tangled sleepily and trustingly with his. She felt no shame for what had happened. It had been natural and beautiful and she was filled with gratitude for his patience and skill. Her last conscious thought was that she could not imagine what she had ever done in her life to deserve him.

In the morning she felt exactly the same thing, but in a totally different context. While she slept, wrapped in pleasurable dreams, Kieron had searched the flat, and found, as he expected, the evidence of James Myers’ duplicity. He had managed to get the paper to hold the front page for him, but Briony did not see it until she got to work.

The article caught her eye while she was taking off her coat, and recognising the Myers name she had started to read it, work forgotten as numb, appalled realisation swept over her. The article bore Kieron’s name—as though he was proud of what he had done, she had thought bitterly. She had looked so ill that her boss had sent her straight home. When she reached the flat it was to find it besieged with reporters and police, and none of them had been gentle with her. ‘Kieron Blake’s informant,’ was how one paper described her. Others were less kind. Susan had returned from the country with her parents. Sir Arthur had been deliberately cruel and remorseless, and at the end of the week her boss suggested that because of the notoriety, it might be as well if she found another job. She worked in a solicitors’ office, and as he explained in great embarrassment, clients might not feel they could trust a firm which employed a girl known to have betrayed a friend’s trust.

She had wanted to scream that it hadn’t been like that, but pride held her silent. Her only crime was that she had believed herself loved; stupidly, criminally, foolish of her perhaps, but she had not and never would have breathed a word of anything that might have deliberately been construed as breaking a trust.

The police had questioned her for hours, and when Sir Arthur died from a heart attack just before the case came to court she had received an avalanche of poison pen letters. That was when she had decided to change her name.

For three months she had endured absolute hell, and not once in all that time had she heard a word from Kieron—neither of compassion, nor regret, not even of acknowledgement of what he had done. She had not tried to contact him. Pride alone had sustained her through the horror of it all, but her trust, her faith, and her innocence were smashed beyond repair.

The office door swung open, banishing the past. She looked up quickly, her eyes freezingly disdainful. Kieron had always been tall, but now he was broader than she remembered, filling the small space, his eyes deeply and darkly contemptuous as they looked at the open telephone directory. One lean finger ran smoothly down the page, stopping unerringly against the number of the employment agency.

‘No luck?’ he drawled sardonically. ‘Too bad.’

Briony forced herself not to respond, her eyes carefully blank as she removed the directory and put a piece of paper in her typewriter.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Blake.’

‘Mr Blake?’ he sneered coldly. ‘Oh, come on, surely we needn’t be so formal—Beth!’

The last word was said softly, almost a taunt, and Briony swung round, her eyes blazing with anger and contempt.

‘Don’t call me that!’ she snapped.

‘Why not? It’s your name.’

‘Not any longer,’ Briony told him crisply. How dared he deliberately remind her of the past! ‘I left it behind me.’

‘How convenient.’ Kieron had his back to her, his dark head bent over some papers, ‘Tell me, Briony, did you bring anything of Beth with you, when you decided to trade personalities?’

‘Not a thing,’ Briony assured him shortly. Why was he plaguing her with these questions, resurrecting memories she would rather had remained forgotten?

‘That’s a pity. At least she was a warm, living, breathing woman.’

‘Who you destroyed!’

The words were out before she could stop them, and Kieron’s eyes narrowed sharply as he swung round and stared at her.

‘What makes you say that?’

Sheer disbelief held her rigidly silent. How could he stand there and ask her that? Hadn’t he deliberately and coldbloodedly used her, and then when he had got his story, simply dropped her? He knew how she had felt about him—she had never made the slightest attempt to hide it. He was an intelligent man; he must have known how she would react, how shocked and distressed she would be. She had learned from a photographer who had worked with him, and whom she had bumped into by accident three months after he had left, that his career was flourishing. He had been posted abroad somewhere, although where the photographer had not said.

‘So, nothing of the Beth I knew remains?’ Kieron persisted.

He was watching her intently and Briony felt like a helpless little fly being pursued by a particularly relentless spider. What did he want? An admission of how close he had come to completely destroying her, to gloat over?

‘Nothing,’ she told him emotionlessly.

His anger seemed to explode over her.

‘Don’t lie to me, Briony!’ he gritted furiously, ‘I saw your face when you walked into that office and saw me sitting there. You hate my guts, don’t you. Don’t you?’ he demanded when she refused to answer.

‘Haven’t I the right?’ Her hands were curled into two small fists. ‘After what you did.…’

For a long moment he said nothing, merely watching her in a way that made Briony shiver with apprehension. Why should he examine her with such contempt? He was the one at fault. He was the one who….

‘You’re quite right,’ he said softly, cutting across her bitter thoughts. ‘The Beth I knew has gone completely. You’re quite a woman, aren’t you, Briony? A woman of iron and steel, according to the office grapevine. The Beth I knew would never have held on to a grudge so tightly, nor become so bitter. But then the Beth I thought I knew never.…’ He broke off and without warning leaned over her, watching her eyes spit defiance. It was only when he kept on coming, and Briony eventually shrank back, that she thought she saw some emotion flicker deep in the narrowed eyes, but it was gone almost instantly, his expression withdrawn as he said curtly, ‘You’re perfectly safe. You’ve made your point, but I don’t intend working with a secretary who looks at me as though I’ve crawled out from under a particularly slimy stone. So if I were you I’d have another look at this.’ He dropped the directory he had removed from the shelf behind her on to her desk with a derisive smile, and started to walk towards the door.

‘One thing at least hasn’t changed,’ he said unkindly, pausing to watch the wary expression creep into her eyes. ‘At least not if all the gossip one hears is correct. It seems you still enjoy turning men on and then freezing them off. With one notable exception.’

Briony gasped at the unfairness of the accusation, and the cynical, twisted smile which had accompanied his last words, and was just about to demand an explanation when Kieron added acidly:

‘You’ve made how you feel about me quite plain, Briony. You hate and loathe me, right?’

When she didn’t comment, he breathed out sharply, anger etched deep in his face.

‘God, you must want to keep this job very badly!’

‘Very badly,’ Briony agreed coolly, hoping that her voice wouldn’t betray anything that she was feeling. How on earth she was going to work for Kieron and keep her sanity she did not know, but work for him she must.

‘So that you can be with Matt?’

Before Briony could get over the shock of the accusation, Kieron was saying with bitter contempt, ‘Is that what your taste runs to these days? He’s not a man, he’s a babe in arms!’

Briony went white, but Kieron had already turned away. She fumbled for a piece of paper and put it in her typewriter, her fingers rattling over the keys in an even staccato rhythm, but the typewritten words were blurred by a mist of tears she was powerless to control.