'Don't go back to the hotel,' she said.

They went upstairs.

Nick Stratton was an experienced lover and a highly accomplished one at that. In avoiding serious relationships with women, he had not avoided pleasuring them in bed. In fact, he'd made it quite an art form, for his own sake as much as theirs. A woman's s.e.xual pleasure was to him the most erotic aspect of copulation.

Now, as he made love to Elizabeth, his pent-up longing to possess her, far from impeding his performance, only enhanced it. He'd kept himself in careful check for months and he had no trouble keeping himself in check now as he teased her to the brink of ecstasy and beyond. Then, when she'd slightly recovered herself, he started all over again. He revelled in the control he had over her and the pleasure he could give her.

When she was close to exhaustion, and when he felt his own climax nearing, he worked her once again into a fever pitch for the mutual finale, still maintaining the presence of mind to withdraw at the last minute just to be on the safe side. He always did. He never took chances. But as he held her quivering body close, his own release meant little anyway. He would have preferred to have gone on forever, driving her into a frenzy of s.e.xual delirium. His greatest personal pleasure lay in the exercise of his power.

He rolled away from her and they both lay on their backs catching their breath.

Elizabeth stared up into the darkness. She could feel, like tiny electric shocks, involuntary muscular spasms in the very core of her being, as if her body, like her mind, was trying to come to terms with what had transpired. When she'd recovered herself sufficiently, she turned to him. She couldn't make out his eyes, but his face was clearly silhouetted in the moonlight spilling through the window that looked out onto the far end of the balcony.

'I didn't know it could be like that,' she said.

He'd guessed as much. He'd sensed tonight had been something of an awakening for her.

'You're a very s.e.xual woman, Elizabeth.'

'Am I really?'

She was pleased he should think so, and felt rather as she had when he'd told her she'd done well in her swimming lesson.

'Oh, yes, indeed,' he said with heartfelt sincerity. How extraordinary that she didn't know it herself, he thought. 'You're not very experienced though, are you?'

She wasn't sure if the remark was an insult or a compliment, but either way it seemed to imply criticism. 'I'm not a virgin, you know.'

He smiled in the darkness. He'd made a simple observation, but she was instantly defensive and on the attack. How typically Elizabeth, he thought.

'I'm aware of that,' he said.

'Oh. So it showed, did it?' Her reply was arch. 'Well, of course it would, wouldn't it? I mean to someone as experienced as you obviously are.'

Elizabeth had no idea why she was being so brittle and girlish. What did she expect of the man? That he take her in his arms and tell her he loved her? How puerile. She'd been like a b.i.t.c.h on heat. She'd wanted raw, animal s.e.x and he'd given it to her beyond her wildest expectations. She should be grateful instead of behaving like a wounded ingenue.

'I'm sorry,' she said, her voice lost and bewildered in the dark, 'I'm being unfair. I don't know why.'

'I do.'

He leaned over and switched on the bedside lamp. She was startled by the light, but said nothing as she sat up drawing the bedclothes around her.

'How old are you, Elizabeth?'

'Twenty-six.'

'I'm forty,' he said. 'I'll be forty-one next month, and I've never married. Of course I've had many women during my life, of course I'm experienced. It's natural.'

'I know that, Nick. I'm sorry, I didn't mean '

'And do you know what else is natural?'

She sensed the question was rhetorical, but she shook her head anyway, like an obedient student in response to a teacher.

'Your s.e.xuality,' he said. 'Your s.e.xuality is the most natural thing in the world; it's nothing to feel guilty about.' He kissed her lightly. 'You're a healthy, highly s.e.xed woman. Now that you've discovered that, don't be ashamed. Be proud.'

He put his arm about her and they snuggled back into the bed, where they lay quietly, her head on his shoulder. He waited for her to say something, and when she didn't he wondered whether he was invited to stay the night or whether she'd like him to leave. He would prefer to stay. He'd like to make love to her again. In fact, he'd like to make love to her again right now, but he needed a little more recovery time these days. He remembered how in his twenties he'd needed virtually no recovery time at all, not for a second bout anyway.

'Would you like me to go?' he asked after several minutes' silence, but she didn't hear him. She too had been lost in thought.

'I've only slept with one man before,' she said, 'and only several times during one very short weekend. That was over a year ago now. We were engaged to be married, but he was killed last October.'

Nick made no response. This was sounding altogether too serious. It was tragic that her fiance had been killed, but what was he expected to say?

No response was necessary, however. Elizabeth was not seeking sympathy.

'I loved him very much,' she continued, 'and I always will. But we were both young and both inexperienced. We never had time to get to know each other s.e.xually.' She turned to face him, propping herself on one elbow. 'So you see, you're quite right, Nick. Tonight has been a s.e.xual revelation for me. And I'm grateful for your advice, very grateful indeed.' She paused. She'd given the matter serious consideration and had come to a definite conclusion. 'I did shock myself, and I was feeling guilty, but I heartily agree with you. To suffer guilt or to feel shame would be foolish. In fact, it would not only be foolish, it would be the height of hypocrisy on my part.'

He threw back his head and laughed out loud. 'My G.o.d, what a formidable force I've unleashed.'

'Yes, you have rather, haven't you?'

'No, Elizabeth. No, I haven't at all.' He quickly sobered up, although he was still smiling he found her mixture of worldly intelligence and blind naivety utterly disarming. 'You've always been a highly s.e.xual creature. Everyone else seems to sense it except you. Someone was bound to unleash you at some time.'

'That doesn't sound particularly flattering,' she said, although she was clearly not offended.

'I'm just lucky it happened to be me.' He reached out and traced the tips of his fingers very, very slowly down her neck and across her shoulder and down the length of her arm. 'I'm ready again if you are.'

'Of course I am.' Her skin was tingling.

He drew her to him. His months of patience had not been in vain. The conquest of Elizabeth Hoffmann had proved well worth the wait.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

Elizabeth had wholeheartedly embraced her s.e.xual liberation. Or so she told herself. And she certainly made the pretence that she had, to herself and to Nick as their relationship blossomed into a fully fledged affair. But deep down she knew it was all bravado. She was in love with Nick Stratton. She tried to persuade herself that love and s.e.x were separate issues and that she was confusing the two, but it didn't work. She loved the man, it was as simple as that. She loved him in every sense of the word.

Her liberation was true in one respect, however. She was surprised to discover that she experienced neither the guilt nor the disloyalty she would have felt only a short time ago for loving a man other than Daniel. She could love two men, couldn't she? She could love two men in two very different ways. There was no shame in that.

Daniel remained very much in Elizabeth's thoughts. She was no less committed to solving the mystery of his death than she had been when she'd first arrived in Australia. Indeed, the controversial facts she'd learnt from Hedley Marston had fuelled her interest in the entire mystery that surrounded Maralinga. But uncovering the truth about Daniel's death remained her first priority and she wondered briefly, now the situation had changed, whether she should try to enlist Nick's direct help. Surely he would understand her need to determine the truth. Perhaps he even knew the facts himself what if it were that simple? But by doing that she could be placing him in an invidious position. He might even be offended that she should so presume upon their relationship. She dared not take the risk, she decided. Their affair was hardly based upon solid ground.

Elizabeth had no illusions about their relationship. Nor did she have any illusions about Nick. Perhaps he loved her in his own way he was certainly obsessed with her, she was aware of that but she doubted his true capacity to love. She felt a little sorry for him in some regards. He was a man who put up walls, and she wondered why. In any event, she was realistic about their affair. She never told him she loved him, knowing it wasn't something he wanted to hear. He clearly wasn't interested in any form of commitment, and one day, when the novelty had worn off, he would look for a fresh conquest.

Nick was most certainly obsessed with Elizabeth. As their affair continued throughout July and into August, his interest, far from waning as it normally would, only increased. At first he put it down to her s.e.xuality. He found her extraordinarily exciting in bed. So erotic, indeed, that at times he had to fight for control and it became a battle with his own body. A battle he always won, he made sure of that, but she was a test of his power. As the weeks pa.s.sed though, he had to admit that even when they weren't making love, she continued to fascinate him. She was clever and witty and funny, all of which he'd recognised from the start, but she was also strong and capable, a woman of integrity. He admired her.

Admiration was a dangerous factor, and a warning voice occasionally sounded in Nick's brain, but he felt safe in ignoring it. If he was becoming a little infatuated, did it really matter? The affair would eventually run its course, as all affairs did. They would tire of each other and move on. Elizabeth accepted the relationship on exactly the same grounds and made no demands upon him. Where was the harm in their mutual enjoyment?

'Happy birthday,' she said, saluting him with her wine gla.s.s. 'It's a Penfolds shiraz by the way.'

'So I noticed.' He smiled as they clinked gla.s.ses.

'Bon appet.i.t. Don't let it get cold.' She set about attacking her own steak by way of example.

She'd insisted he tell her when his birthday was. 'Next month, you said "I'll be forty-one next month", those were your very words. Well, it's next month now, so when's the actual day? I haven't missed it, have I?'

'The eighteenth.' It had been simpler to give in to her badgering.

'Ten days to go. Excellent. You must w.a.n.gle a trip into town and I'll cook you a birthday dinner.'

He'd arrived on a relentlessly wet and wintry night to find the table in the lounge room romantically candlelit, with a bowl of crisp bread rolls and a bottle of wine in the centre. He'd been touched by her efforts, but he hadn't seen her for over a week and there were priorities more important than birthdays.

'Don't worry,' she'd said, 'everything's perfectly organised the dinner can wait,' and they'd made a detour to the bedroom as she'd known they would.

It had been a good forty minutes before they'd emerged.

Now, as she watched him sawing his way through a steak that was like leather doing his best to make it look easy, which she found rather gallant Elizabeth wondered where she'd gone wrong. She'd given up on her own steak. It was quite inedible.

'I'm sorry the steaks are so tough. I don't know why they should be. The butcher told me it was an excellent piece of rump, aged and all that, which is supposed to make it tender, or so he said.'

'How did you cook them?' he asked, jaws working furiously.

'Oh, not for too long,' she a.s.sured him. 'I know true meat lovers don't like their steaks overcooked. I fried them up just before you got here and then put them in the oven to keep warm.'

'Ah.' He nodded. 'That might be where the trouble lies. The salad's nice,' he said encouragingly. 'I like the dressing.'

'Oil and vinegar. I don't dare make my own. I've tried to several times but it's always abysmal. I'm a terrible cook.' She topped up their gla.s.ses. 'If I were you, I'd fill up on the bread rolls and wine and wait for dessert. Peter's ice-cream and tinned fruit salad, with cheese to follow. Even I can't make a mess of that.'

'Ice-cream and fruit salad's a real treat to an army man.'

'I'm sorry.' She gazed regretfully at the dried slabs of meat on their plates. 'I thought if I chose something really simple I might get it right for once.'

He realised that her flippancy was an act and she was genuinely dismayed the steak had proved a disaster. What did it matter if she couldn't cook, he wondered, although the fact did come as something of a surprise. He'd never known a woman who couldn't cook, and Elizabeth was normally so proficient at everything she turned her hand to.

'Well, it's a relief to discover there's something you can't do,' he said jokingly.

'I can't swim.'

'That's true.'

'But at least I can learn how to swim. I can't seem to learn how to cook.' She took a healthy swig of her wine. 'I have a theory. True cooks are born. They have a pa.s.sion. I don't. I've tried, I really have, but it's just not there. Even the basic ability isn't there, which I find rather sad. It makes me less of a woman.'

'What?' He looked at her blankly; she was joking of course.

'I lack the nurturing capabilities of the normal female.'

She wasn't joking. 'If you were any more of a woman, Elizabeth, you'd have to be locked up.'

She smiled, appreciating his effort to jolly her along, but still feeling something of a failure.

'I have an excellent idea,' he said. 'Let's keep the dessert for later and go straight to the cheese. Bread rolls, cheese and a good red wine you can't get much better than that.' He crossed to the Gladstone bag, which he'd dumped on the coffee table, and opening it up he took out a bottle. 'I naturally arrived with supplies,' he said, 'we won't run out.'

Elizabeth cleared away the steaks and fetched the cheeses: a New Zealand cheddar and a French brie, which she'd gone to a lot of trouble to find. Edna Sparks had directed her to a superb little delicatessen that specialised in a line of imported foods. They settled down at the table once again while outside, through the French windows, the deluge continued.

'd.a.m.n,' she said, 'I've even managed to mess this part up.'

The brie was firm; she'd forgotten to take it out of the refrigerator.

'No matter,' he a.s.sured her, 'it'll warm up soon. We'll start on the cheddar.'

'Maybe a talent with food is genetic,' she said thoughtfully. 'My mother can't cook. Well, she says that she doesn't. She views her choice not to cook as a statement, but it may very well be that she can't. Perhaps I've inherited her disability what do you think?'

'Perhaps.'

She'd certainly inherited her mother's eccentricity, he thought. Although he knew if he were to suggest such a thing she would vehemently deny it, considering herself the only sane member of her family. Nick enjoyed listening to Elizabeth talk about her parents. They featured quite regularly in her conversation and, from what he could gather, both were bizarre. Little wonder, he thought, that they'd bred such a remarkable daughter.

'What about your mother, Nick?'

'Eh?' What did she mean, what about his mother?

'Is she a good cook?'

'I wouldn't have a clue.'

He'd been so caught out by her change of focus, he'd had no time to formulate any answer but the truth.

'Oh.' The bluntness of his reply brought her to a halt.

'We don't see each other.'

Elizabeth longed to ask 'why not?' but decided it would probably be too intrusive, so she stuck to the original topic. 'Was she a good cook when you were little?'

'I don't know. I really can't remember.'

He didn't appear in the least annoyed, but as he obviously wasn't interested in talking about his mother she switched to the cheese.

'I think the brie's softened up a bit,' she said.

'I'm not trying to avoid the subject, Elizabeth.' Which was strange, he thought. Normally he would. 'I like hearing you talk about your family. I don't mind telling you about mine.'

'Oh, good.'

She settled back happily with her wine. How interesting, she thought. He'd not talked of his family before.