'No, I'll leave it to you. Jet lag,' he added in explanation. He did look tired, she acknowledged, and oddly pale as well.

The main roads had been gritted, and they were lucky enough to be travelling during a lull in the traffic. Neither of them spoke; Heather was too busy concentrating on her driving to make polite small talk.

It seemed odd to be going home with Kyle, and yet it seemed right as well. Often during her teenage years he had picked her up from parties or dates. Then he had been the one driving, while she huddled resentfully in her head, keeping as much distance between them as possible. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him shiver and automatically she reached out to boost the car heater.

'Are you all right?' The anxious words came out automatically.

'I'm fine.' He sounded so terse that she frowned again, sensing that he was lying.

'Kyle...'

'Don't fuss.' he told her sharply. 'It's just a bug I picked up in New York. Some sort of forty-eight-hour virus. I'll be all right in a few moments.'

He looked dreadful, she admitted worriedly, s.n.a.t.c.hing another glance at him, but there was nothing she could do for him, other than get him home as quickly and as safely as possible.

Once off the main roads she had to slow down her speed and concentrate all her energies on manoeuvring the large car. Kyle had either gone to sleep or pa.s.sed out, and she could only hope that it was the former.

When she eventually saw the turn-off for the village she felt quite limp with relief.

She was just turning into the now familiar drive when Kyle stirred and opened his eyes. He seemed to be having a problem recognising where he was, Heather realised, but then like a swimmer emerging from the sea he shook his head and sat up.

'You managed to get us back in one piece, then.'

This was more like the Kyle she knew, that sharp edge of mockery taunting her inability to be his equal.

'I did offer to let you drive,' she reminded him, equally acidly.

She had been going to ask him if he needed any help, but in view of the sharpness of his comment she judged that he must be feeling fully recovered, and so she went on ahead to unlock the door, leaving him to follow.

The snow was inches deep on the drive, the wind colder than ever now, cutting sharply through her clothes and bringing icy goose-b.u.mps to her skin.

The warmth of the centrally heated house welcomed her inwards as she opened the outer door. Meg left her basket and came up to greet her. Heather looked back over her shoulder and saw that Kyle was still standing beside the car. She wavered on the threshold, uncertain as to whether to turn back to him or go in.

The abrupt dismissive wave he gave her made up her mind, and so she turned back to the house and left him to it. When he walked into the kitchen ten minutes later she was shocked by the exhaustion greying his face.

He sank heavily into one of the kitchen chairs, shivering convulsively, and this time she didn't bother to ask, but simply picked up the kettle and filled it with water.

She had no idea what sort of virus he had picked up, but a hot drink could only do him good.

He made no demur when she handed it to him, cradling his hands round the mug and drinking deeply.

Where he had been grey with exhaustion, now his face was flushed, drops of perspiration already beading his skin.

'It looks like 'flu,' Heather commented worriedly.

'Something similar,' he agreed briefly, and she sensed that he was trying to conserve what little energy he had left.

'You should have stayed in New York until you were over it.'

'I couldn't.' His eyes closed. 'I promised your father I'd be here in case you or your mother needed me.'

What could she say? How could she find the words to express the mingled feelings of guilt, pain and anger that filled her? How could she tell him that she didn't want his care of her to be commanded by her father, but to come from himself?

'I think you ought to go to bed,' she said flatly instead. 'I'll make you a hot water bottle and another drink, and bring them up.', A little to her surprise, he got to his feet. His body swayed, and she reached out towards him instinctively, suppressing her skin's instinctive recoil from its electric contact with his. His forearm felt hard with bone and sinew, the skin dry and hot, the crispness of his dark hair alien to her sensitive fingertips.

As though he, too, disliked the contact, he pulled away grimacing, straightening up to walk past her and through the door.

She gave him ten minutes to get himself into bed, and then boiled water for the hot-water bottle she'd found in a drawer next to the sink. She made him another cup of tea, and then on impulse opened the fridge. As luck would have it, there were some lemons there. Good, when she came down she'd make him some proper lemonade, the kind her mother used to make and which he had always loved.

He was using the house's main bedroom, which had obviously been furnished and designed for a couple. The curtains hadn't been closed and, as she pulled them across the window, she noticed that the sky was clearing. Outside she heard the terrified screech of some small creature, followed by the triumphant hoot of an owl, and she shivered as she shut out the bright light of the silvered moon.

'You always were too sensitive for your own good,' Kyle said drowsily from the bed. 'Hunter... hunted... there's something of both in all of us, Heather, and you can't shut it out forever.'

'I've brought you some more tea. Is there anything else you want? Aspirin? Ought I to ring your doctor?'

Immediately he shook his head. 'It looks worse than it is, and adding a ma.s.sive dose of jet lag to it doesn't help. I'll be all right in the morning.' He shivered again, and she moved instinctively towards the bed, to give him the hot-water bottle.

'You're going to make someone a wonderful mother,' he taunted drowsily as he took it from her. 'Why aren't you married already, Heather? Or have you been waiting for some wealthy young bucolic type like David Hartley to come along and sweep you off your feet? Be careful, he's no Prince Charming, and you'll have to get past his mother.'

Immediately, her sympathy for him vanished, and she glared furiously at him as she put his tea down.

'I'm not ready to get married yet, Kyle,' she told him acidly. 'I've still got far too many things I want to do. Besides, you're the one who should crave the cosiness of family life,' she gibed unkindly.

If he heard her he gave no sign of it, simply turning on his side and pulling the bedclothes up round his head.

Sighing faintly, Heather left. Why was it, whenever they seemed on the verge of actually making contact with one another, that something happened to drive them apart again? Did it just happen, she wondered soberly as she went downstairs to let Meg out for a final run, or was it manufactured? But if so, why, and by whom? Sometimes she knew that she was the one at fault, her defence system springing into action to protect her against the old remembered wounds Kyle had once inflicted, but sometimes he was the one at fault, and surely he had nothing to fear from her?

She opened the kitchen door, and Meg dashed out without waiting for her to pull her boots on.

It was freezing now, the cold turning the snow-shrouded trees into fantasy spectres straight out of a fairy-tale. While Meg investigated the magical white stuff that covered the ground, Heather watched a cautious squirrel. It froze the moment it saw them, tiny beady eyes holding Heather's, as though willing her not to attack.

Meg came bustling through the snow-covered undergrowth, crackling and panting, and the tiny creature disappeared. Meg's nose was covered in snow and she grinned happily up at Heather, her plumy tail waving.

'Come on, time to go in.'

She had loved the house when she had it to herself, but now, with Kyle sleeping upstairs, she felt somehow as though it was even more of a home. Perhaps because of what Kyle had said to her, perhaps not, she didn't know, but as she tidied up the kitchen and settled Meg and the cats for the night, she couldn't help peopling the room with small faces and excited little voices: children who would love this house, who would be privileged to grow up here in its freedom.

Sighing faintly, she banished the mental images, uncomfortably aware that she had furnished them with Kyle's dark hair and eyes.

She switched off the lights and went upstairs. Outside Kyle's room, she paused. Her hand touched the doorhandle and then fell away. If he needed her he would call, and yet it had been hard to suppress her instinctive urge to go in and check that he was all right.

Because that was the way she had been brought up, she told herself drily. That was all; there was nothing more personal in her desire to check up on him; it had no bearing at all on that odd frisson of sensation that had raced through her when she had accidentally touched his skin.

She slept heavily and late, and was woken by the ring of her alarm. She sat up, switching it off, swinging her feet to the floor and looking sleepily for her robe.

She was just about to walk into her bathroom when she heard the telephone ringing downstairs.

Immediately, the thought of her father and the possibility of a relapse sent her flying downstairs, but when she eventually picked up the receiver it was only to discover that it was a wrong number.

The day was clear and crisp, with a blue winter sky and a pale yellow sun. Letting Meg out, Heather set off back upstairs to shower and dress.

She was just pa.s.sing Kyle's door when he called out to her. She opened it and went in.

He was still standing beside his bed, and she automatically averted her glance from the hair-roughened nudity of his torso.

She had surely seen him like this before at some time or another, clad only in a brief pair of briefs, because somehow part of her mind registered the sight of him as a familiar one. But in those days he could scarcely have been so... so male, she thought weakly, wishing that she had the savoir-faire to coolly shrug off her awareness of him.

'I heard the phone, was it the hospital?'

'No, just a wrong number. How are you feeling this morning?'

'Weak as a cat.' He grimaced and, as though to prove it, as he started to move, he seemed to lose his balance.

Heather rushed towards him instinctively, catching him just as he fell heavily towards the bed. She was pinned beneath the full weight of his upper body, his chest crushing her, her face pressed into the hot arch of his throat.

She could feel a pulse beating erratically against her mouth. Her senses swam, reality as unwelcome as envisaging last night's fairy-tale snow-covered branches denuded of their beautifying white blanket and left bare and stark.

Afterwards, she wasn't sure which of them moved first; whether it was she who wrapped her arm tightly around Kyle's neck, or he who groaned despairingly into her hair and cupped his hands against the back of her head, his lips moving to her ear as he demanded rawly, 'Open your mouth, kiss me, Heather.'

His whole body surged against her as she complied mindlessly, filled with the pleasure of tasting his skin, of being free to explore the solid arch of his throat with all its tastes and textures, and with a hunger inside her so deep that there was no way she could block out the knowledge that she must have, with some part of her, wanted this intimacy for an aeon of time.

His hand cupped her breast, ruthlessly pushing aside both her robe and her nightgown, seeking the warmth of her flesh with a compulsion that echoed her own. Part of her knew and recognised it and responded to it as well, the sensation of his hands on her body making her arch up in eagerness as surge after surge of primitive delight washed through her.

'You like me touching you like this... and like this?'

His voice, the hoa.r.s.e pa.s.sion of the words he muttered in her ear excited her senses, orchestrating her responses. Somehow she was free of her clothes. Free to run her hands over the hard velvet of his skin, free to revel in the exquisite sensation of flesh against flesh. Her body flowered, bloomed in his touch. His mouth caressed her. His weight pressed her to the bed, imprisoning her, and yet she knew she had no desire to escape. The heat of him, the hard pulsing urgency of his manhood, these were things she had never known before, and yet her body welcomed them as though they were long familiar to her. Even the scent of his arousal excited her, as though in some curious way it had an aphrodisiac effect long known to her and mourned in his absence.

Later she would be shocked, shattered, in fact, by her reaction to him, appalled that she had not fought to prevent it, and confused by how easily she had slipped out of her familiar mould and into one she herself could not recognise.

His tongue-tip stroked her skin, his whole body trembling with the need she could feel pulsing through him. Soon she would feel the heat of his mouth against her breast, soon he would...

The sharp sound of a vehicle outside cut through her rising desire for him. Both of them tensed.

'Hartley,' Kyle said thickly, pulling away from her. 'I'd recognise that Land Rover of his anywhere.'

Cold air rushed over her skin as Kyle moved, and immediately she was as conscious of her nudity as Eve after she had taken that first bite at the apple. An apt simile, for like Eve she had wantonly tasted forbidden fruit!

She rushed to pick up her discarded things, while Kyle said laconically, 'No need to rush, he's only at the bottom of the drive.'

'Kyle...'

He heard the anguish in her voice and laughed.

'Oh, it's all right, I'm not going to betray you to him, if that's what worrying you. He's not exactly pure as the driven snow himself, you know.'

She tried again. 'Kyle!'

'Oh, for G.o.d's sake, stop acting like a Victorian virgin!' he derided her. 'It's not the end of the world. We both knew it would happen some time.' He looked wryly at her. 'It's always been there between us, after all. I don't think there's been a single woman I've taken to bed who I haven't at one time or another mentally compared to you.'

Heather stared at him, appalled both by his cynicism and what he was revealing.

'No... no, that's not true!'

'Oh, come on, Heather.' Impatience deepened his voice. 'OK, I admit that when you were a teenager you probably couldn't recognise all that aggression between us for what it was, but you're not a kid any more. You must be as able to recognise desire as I can myself. All right, I had an advantage. I knew then that I wanted you. I tried to tell myself it was because you were forbidden fruit, but you've haunted me for years, making me ache in a way that no one else can.'

'But we don't even like one another.'

He shrugged. 'So what? You must know that it's possible to be driven mad by a need of someone you don't particularly like.'

She could sense a tension about him she hadn't noticed earlier, and his eyes were shielded from her, almost as though there was something there he didn't want her to read, but panic clawed at her and she was in no mood for rational a.n.a.lysis. She had to get out of his room, she had to get back to reality and sanity and to the safety of a world where Kyle was just a man whom she disliked, instead of the one man in the whole world who had the ability to make her feel that nothing else mattered other than being in his arms.

These were feelings she had always a.s.sociated in her mind with the word 'lover', with the sort of relationship shared by her parents, but as Kyle had just cynically pointed out, they did not even like one another.

Appalled, almost horrified, Heather picked up her things and fled.

By the time she had pulled on a jumper and jeans she discovered why it had taken David so long to get up the drive. His Land Rover was towing a small snow-plough and he had cleared the drive for them.

If he hadn't arrived when he had, by now she and Kyle... She swallowed hard, trying to banish the tormenting image.

'Well, haven't you got a reward for my hard endeavours?' David Hartley demanded cheerfully as she opened the kitchen door to both him and Meg.

Forcing a smile, she invited him in. Behind her she heard Kyle enter the kitchen, and instantly she was so aware of him that the small hairs on her scalp stood up.

He came over to join them, menacing her somehow. Even David was aware of something, because he frowned and checked himself and gave them both a speculative look.

'Actually, I came to see if you fancied going out for a drink with me tonight?'

'Heather doesn't.'

'I'd love to go with you,' she said quickly, over-ruling whatever it was Kyle had been about to say. 'What time?'

'I'll pick you up about eight.'

She could sense Kyle's disapproval, and she was so acutely aware of him still that she also picked up on his s.e.xual jealousy.

Kyle, jealous of David? She shivered, and tried to stem the flood of primitive pleasure rushing through her. This was madness! She was playing with fire. There could never be any real sort of relationship between her and Kyle, and to have one based on the sort of s.e.xual intensity they had just generated was so appallingly dangerous that she automatically dismissed it. No, she didn't want to fall into that sort of trap. Instinctively she fought against what she knew would be dangerous to her, trying to dismiss the feelings Kyle had aroused in her, trying to convince herself that they had been born out of anxiety and proximity.

It was obvious from Kyle's silence, once David had gone, that he was furious with her, but stubbornly Heather refused to be the first to break it. It was no concern of Kyle's whom she dated, just because... just because they had almost been lovers. She shied away from the word physically, just as she shied away emotionally from what was happening to her.

It was Kyle who eventually broke the silence, saying heavily, 'Heather, we have to talk.'

'No!' Panic hit her, she didn't want to talk about what had happened. It was shaming enough that it simply had. 'No, no, I don't want to talk. What happened this morning... it's over. I just want to forget it!'

She saw his mouth tighten, and for a moment she held her breath, frightened by the contempt she saw in his eyes, but then he turned away and shrugged.

'If that's the way you want it. You never did like facing up to anything, did you, Heather? I suppose I should have expected something like this. I'm going out.'

'You're not well enough,' she protested.